Текст книги "The Good Father"

Автор книги: Taylor Quinn Tara

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BRETT HADN’T HEARD from Ella at all since he’d told her that nothing had changed.

Nor had he tried contacting her, other than a brief call to finalize Jeff and Chloe’s meeting plans.

As his mother had said, he had to let her go.

And still he hoped, as he flew into LA and drove home to Santa Raquel the following Thursday in time to meet Jeff at his place, that when Chloe showed, Ella would be with her.

“What time did she say she’d be here?” Jeff paced from the living room to the formal dining room and back again, his heels sounding on the hardwood floor with each step. Still in black pants and a white dress shirt with small black pinstripes, he’d taken off his tie.

And looked...wrinkled.

Jeff knew the designated time. But Brett told him again anyway. “Seven.” After dinner at the Stand, but Jeff didn’t know that, of course.

Chloe was a couple minutes late.

“She could be caught in traffic,” Jeff said now. “You know what LA traffic is like at rush hour.”

He did know. He drove in it a lot. And commiserated with his friend. More than Jeff knew. Loving a woman you couldn’t have—for whatever reason—was difficult.

“She’s bringing Cody with her, right?”

“That’s what she said.” Or rather what Ella had said when she’d spoken with him briefly to finalize meeting plans. He hadn’t actually spoken to Chloe. “She wants you to see him.”

He knew the mistake of his words as Jeff swung around, a look of horror on his face. “I thought...hoped...with Thanksgiving coming up and all...but if she’s bringing him so he can see me, that would imply that she’s not planning to come home.” He flopped down on the couch. “Where he’d see me every day.”

“You don’t know that,” Brett said. But he’d drawn the same conclusion. “Could be she didn’t want to leave him wherever he’s staying. Could be that she wants to ask for just a little more time.”

All Ella had told him was that Chloe needed to speak to Jeff.

A car turned in, coming up his drive. Ella’s car.

Was she with them?

“You sure we can talk in your bedroom?” Jeff stood, dangling his hands at his sides, rubbing them together and dropping them again, as though he didn’t know what to do with them.

“When you’re ready, I’ll take Cody into the living room, turn on the TV while you two talk. There’s a conversation alcove in the suite, and you’ll have privacy there.”

It was the only place he could think of where the couple could talk without being overheard. The walls in his house weren’t well insulated, and sound traveled through the old register ducts.

And the fact that there was a bed in the room, if they needed it...well, he’d changed the sheets.

* * *

ELLA DIDN’T SHOW. After playing with his dad for half an hour or so, Cody had fallen asleep on the blanket Brett had laid on the wool rug in the family room, watching a Blu-ray about a dog named Blue. Something Chloe had brought with her.

Jeff and Chloe had been in the bedroom for over an hour. With the little one asleep, Brett could concentrate on his agenda for the next morning’s meeting in Phoenix—a fifty-page booklet of motions—and research every item on it.

He was more than a quarter of the way through when he thought he heard his bedroom door opening.

The knob was old—had a bit of a squeak to it. Saving his work, he set his laptop on the coffee table, turned off the television and reached to eject the disc so that he could pack up the bag Chloe had brought with Cody’s things in it. The boy had fallen asleep before he’d had the graham cracker snack his mother had brought for him.

A snap and he turned. Had that been the door closing again? He heard a thump and, disc forgotten, Brett moved across the family room, through the kitchen to the hall leading back to the master suite. “Let me go, Jeff.”

Brett heard the words as he started down the hall. Chloe’s tone was firm. Not frightened.

“Chloe, wait! Just give me a second. I listened to you. I heard everything you had to say. I just want you to understand my perspective...”

A fair request. Brett stopped. Thinking he’d turn and go back to work.

“I listened to you, Jeff. For over half an hour. I understand that you think this is all me—but who, when he says he wants to reconcile, calls his wife a stupid bitch?”

What? Had he heard that right? Moving forward, Brett stood outside the door, his hand on the knob.

“I know, that was completely wrong,” Jeff said in a tone that told Brett his friend was truly sorry. “I apologized. It’s just...you have no idea how hard it’s been with you gone and me not knowing where you are. Not being able to see you or Cody. My son is learning new words, and I don’t even understand them because I’m not there...”

“And telling me I’m not very bright just because I don’t agree with your take on our problems?”

“Frustration, Chloe. You know I don’t mean it. Hell, you’re smarter than I am by far, and we both know it.”

Nerves tense, heart pounding, Brett slipped into old habits, zeroing in on the mundane. The thoughts and words that were least threatening.

Jeff had been an average student. Chloe had excelled. But that only made one a better student than the other...

“And it’s not like you’ve never lost your cool, or said things you aren’t proud of,” Jeff said.

Brett’s shoulders relaxed. Maybe he should go...

“I’ve never called you an effin’ liar.” Chloe stumbled over the words.

“Would you just stop?” A new tone had entered Jeff’s voice. A tone Brett had never heard before. One that kept him standing at the door. “Why do you have to go on and on and on? It’s like you remember every bad thing I’ve ever done!”

“I’m only talking about the past hour, Jeff. You’ve threatened to divorce me if I don’t come home. To have me charged with fraud for saying that our home is my address when I’m not living there.”

“Stop!”

Brett heard the word just as Chloe screamed out, “Jeff!” and Brett burst through the door.

Jeff had been closest to him and the force with which Brett pushed into the room knocked him back, stopping him just before his raised hand made contact with his wife’s face.

Like a slow-motion movie, everyone just stood there. Frozen.

Jeff’s hand suspended, Chloe ducking and Brett breathing fire.

In the next second, or countless seconds later, Jeff’s hand fell slowly to his side. Brett could feel every inch of the descent. Chloe, crying, ran from the room.

And Brett...couldn’t leave.

The look of horror, of utter terror, on his friend’s face held Brett in place.

“Oh, my God, what have I done?” Hands over his head, Jeff fell to the bed. Rocking back and forth. “What have I done? Oh, God, what have I done?”

Brett couldn’t comfort him. If he hadn’t come in when he did, Jeff would have hit his wife.

That wasn’t okay. Jeff wasn’t okay. His marriage could very well be over.

The man rocked. His body shook, and Brett knew he was crying.

And remembered a night more than fifteen years earlier. He’d been a freshman college student, had had a call from his father who was in jail, wanting him to bail him out. He hadn’t done it. For his mother’s sake.

His father had been crying, too. Asking for Brett’s help. He’d turned his back. On his own father.

But he’d called his mother. Thinking she’d be thankful enough that she’d start talking to him again. Let him back in her life.

She hadn’t responded.

He’d just lost his sister, and that night he knew he’d lost both of his parents, as well.

He’d started to cry. Jeff had come in. Brett had pretended to be asleep. Praying that Jeff would either go to bed or get what he’d come in for and leave.

It turned out that he’d come in for Brett. Because he’d known that Brett had refused to help his father. He’d known, even though Brett hadn’t said so, that leaving his father in jail—no matter how much the asshole had deserved it—made Brett feel dirty.

Jeff hadn’t asked Brett to go get drunk. He hadn’t made a joke or shrugged off the situation. He’d laid a hand on Brett’s shoulder. Told him he’d get through it. And he’d sat with him for the rest of the night, listening to the horror stories of the previous eight years of Brett’s life.

Moving slowly, worrying about Chloe, wishing Ella was there, Brett approached the bed. Sat down. Put his hand on Jeff’s shoulder.

“You need help, man,” he said. “You gotta get help.”

Jeff stilled. He quit crying. But he didn’t meet Brett’s gaze. “The tension...it just gets... I tell myself everything will be fine. I remind myself that everyone else works and raises a family. That my challenges aren’t the end of the world. That there are others so much worse off. Others who handle so much more. I think of the good times. And still...the tension builds.”

Brett wasn’t a counselor. As Ella had said that night on the boat—he paid others to do the work.

“What causes the tension?” he asked because Jeff seemed to need to talk.

Shrugging, Jeff shook his head.

“Is it money?”

“Maybe. I’m definitely more irritable when stocks are down.”

Not uncommon after a bad day at work.

“Look at me,” Brett said.

Jeff slowly turned his head. But he didn’t hold Brett’s gaze for long. Clearly his shame was too great.

“Jeff?”

The other man turned his head again. “Are drugs involved?”

“No.”

“And there’s no pressing debt? Are you gambling?”

“No! Of course not! If I knew I had a problem, don’t you think I’d tell you? Tell myself, for God’s sake? I’m losing the only thing in the world I care about!”

“Okay. Okay.” Stereotypes, profiling, weren’t going to help here. Because the answers weren’t always easy.

Weren’t always clear or neat or clean.

“So when did it start? What caused you to lash out the first time? How long has it been building?”

Jeff sat for a long time. Brett heard the front door open and close. Hoped to God that Chloe was going straight to The Lemonade Stand. Or to Ella, who would take her there.

He needed to call Ella. To warn her.

“You know...” Jeff sat up a little straighter. “I’ll tell you exactly when it started,” he said. “It was after Cody was born. Chloe was really struggling with her postpartum depression. I had to take time off work to stay home with her and take care of the baby. She’d follow me from room to room. Lie on the floor beside my desk when I was trying to get my work done. I get paid on commission, and I see money going out the door right and left, my marriage is pretty much empty and now I’ve got this tiny little human being who needs me 24/7. It’s like there wasn’t enough of me to go around...”

Reminded of how he felt when Ella had handed him the home pregnancy test results when he’d come through the door all those years before, Brett wished he couldn’t relate.

But he could.

“I wasn’t ever going to be able to do enough,” Jeff was saying. “I couldn’t provide enough. If Chloe wasn’t going to be able to contribute, I’d need a cleaning person, a babysitter, and I had to start a college fund, too. The pressure was always there, pushing me harder and harder.”

“But things got better. Chloe got better.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t think we had a problem. Everything was fine.” Jeff hung his head. “Or I thought it was.”

“I’m guessing you’ve got some anger built up over it all.” Brett said the only thing that made sense to him.

“I know that every time the stocks go down now, even when I know the recovery is going to follow, I get that same feeling I had right after Cody was born. Like I’m strangling, and there’s nothing I can do...”

“You need help.”

“Yeah.”

“You can get through this, Jeff. You and Chloe.”

He shook his head. “She’s never going to stick with me now. Not after what I did tonight. I don’t deserve her.”

Maybe not. And maybe Chloe would file for a divorce. Maybe she needed to.

“Ella told me once that all Chloe wanted was for you to see that you were having problems and get help. Just like she got help after Cody was born. You stuck by her then...”

“Yeah.”

“And you didn’t hit her, man. You’ve never hit your wife. Have you?”

Brett forced his fingers to loosen.

“No.”

Brett breathed.

“But I’ve shoved her,” Jeff said. “Pretty hard that last time. I didn’t mean to. She stepped up just as I was passing through the doorway, but when she got in my way, I reached out with both hands and shoved her into the doorjamb.”

Ella had been right.

“Have you ever hurt Cody?”

Jeff turned, meeting Brett’s stern look. “I’ve never left a bruise on my kid, Brett. I swear to God.”

“I believe you.” He did. No reason why he should. But he did.

“I was a little rougher than I should have been, once or twice,” he said. “I made him cry, and I swore to myself that I’d never do that again. That if I did, I’d hang myself. I’m not doing to my kid what your dad did to you.”

“Don’t do to your wife what my dad did to my mom,” Brett said.

“You think I should let her go?”

Brett couldn’t give advice on this one. This was Jeff’s row to hoe.

But he could empathize. He could be a friend.

“That’s for you to figure out, man,” he said. “Not every abuser or abuse situation is the same. And you have the advantage of growing up in a loving home. You aren’t starting out from behind, having to fight the pattern of abuse.”

He could guide Jeff to the help he needed. They had resources—people he trusted who could find a support group for Jeff to join in Palm Desert in addition to individual counseling.

“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Jeff said. But the man looked beaten.

Because nothing—no amount of counseling or time—would ever change what had happened there that night. Nothing would erase, in Chloe’s mind, the memory of her husband raising his hand to her.

And suddenly, as he looked at Jeff, Brett knew that there, but by the grace of God, went he.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ELLA SAT WITH Chloe until she finally fell asleep. When Chloe had called from Brett’s, as soon as she’d determined that Brett was with Jeff and that no one had been physically harmed, she’d told her to stay put while she took a cab over.

They’d gone straight from there to The Lemonade Stand. Sara had been at home with her fiancé and his daughter, but she’d come in. Lynn Bishop and her sister-in-law Maddie, both of whom had small children and lived on the premises, came up to the main house, too. Lynn, in case Chloe needed any medical treatment, and Maddie, to help watch Cody.

It had been nearly eleven by the time they arrived back at Ella’s apartment. Thankfully, Cody fell asleep in the car on the way home, and Chloe had been able to get him from the car seat to his bed without waking him.

Lila McDaniels had not notified the police, for which Ella was thankful. The only thing that could have made the night worse was to see her brother arrested.

But there’d been no reason to make an arrest. Thanks to Brett. The timing of his intervention had been seemingly divine.

And Chloe wouldn’t have pressed charges anyway. Although she’d been understandably shaken, she was holding up well, thanks to Sara’s counseling over the past weeks.

She’d handled the situation with Jeff just as she’d been coached.

And could have been physically hurt, regardless.

The whole situation left Ella feeling sick. Confused.

And out of hope.

* * *

JEFF WENT HOME. Put himself in anger-management counseling. Joined an anger-management support group. And went back to church. He talked to his pastor, asking him to keep an eye on him and to pray for his family.

And every night he wrote to his wife—letters that stayed with him since he had no address for Chloe.

A couple weeks after the incident at his house, Brett called Ella to ask if Chloe would be open to a supervised conversation with Jeff.

Thanksgiving had come and gone. Ella had called Jeff, who’d just come back from spending the day with a family he’d met through his support group. A middle-aged couple with three children. The husband had hit all of them at one time or another.

And hadn’t lifted a hand to them for more than eight years. Jeff told Ella that he’d never seen such a close, caring family.

She’d heard the hope in his words. But hadn’t relayed either the words or her interpretation of them to Chloe as the three of them drove to The Lemonade Stand to share with the rest of the residents the full turkey dinner Chloe had planned.

Jeff hadn’t asked about Chloe, and Ella hadn’t mentioned her, either.

According to Brett, when he’d called to relay Jeff’s request to speak to Chloe, Jeff had been making good progress and was at a point where there were some questions only Chloe could answer for him. Like when did she first notice the change in him? How long did the progression take from irritability to verbal abuse? He didn’t remember many instances, but had been told to expect her to remember many more. He needed her perspective. But only if she could give it without causing undue stress to herself.

Ella talked to Chloe, who asked if Ella would go with her when she talked to Sara about Jeff’s request. Chloe said she wanted Ella’s full support if she decided to speak with Jeff and figured Sara could help Ella understand what Chloe couldn’t always put into words. Sara advised that Chloe was certainly, in her opinion, healthy enough to speak with her husband, but strongly believed that the session should be supervised.

Sara seemed to think that Chloe had an interest in saving her marriage.

Ella hadn’t asked. She still didn’t.

But when she called Brett that night—the first Wednesday in December—she told him that she thought Chloe was leaning in that direction.

She’d waited for Chloe to go to bed and was in her own suite on the other side of the apartment, in her bathroom, with the fan blowing.

Speaking as softly as she could.

“You sound as if you don’t think them getting back together is a good idea,” he replied, as though they had all night to chat. He’d picked up on the first ring. His voice sounded good to her. Too good.

She didn’t think it was a good idea for Chloe to speak to Jeff yet. Just as she didn’t think it was a good idea for her and Brett to talk. It was too soon. For both of them. She’d been dating Jason for seven weeks. He’d made it clear he wanted to take things to the next level. And anytime he tried to get intimate with her, she pictured Brett and pulled back.

“I think it’s too soon for them to be together,” she told Brett, referring to Jeff and Chloe, wondering where Brett was. And not wanting to know. Not wanting to be able to picture him in real time.

“I mean, Jeff’s my brother, and I love him and want him happy. I don’t want him to lose his family. I don’t want to lose Chloe as a sister-in-law, either. But more, I don’t want Chloe hurt and my brother in jail. Just the thought of how close he came...”

“He’s in a twenty-four-month program,” Brett reminded her. “And he’s already making progress. He’s been able to take an honest look at himself. He’s taking moral accountability, and has a strong support system set up already and an even stronger desire to change.”

“I was reading...” Ella stopped. Swallowed. Started again. “Only three to eleven percent of abusers actually recover...”

“Jeff’s issues haven’t escalated as far as many of those accounted for in those statistics, El. He was heading there, but he didn’t live the life of having to cover his actions over and over. He doesn’t carry around the memory of actually hitting his wife. And his lashing out wasn’t out of a need to control Chloe, or some lacking in his own self-concept. The only manipulation he’s guilty of is trying to get her to believe, as he believed, that he wasn’t heading down a wrong path. He has no drug or alcohol problems to fight...”

“You believe he can do this. That he can be one of the three percent.”

“Three to eleven percent. And I guess I do.”

With her knees to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her shins and cradled herself. She’d missed a period and was feeling cranky. While she’d had unpredictable and difficult periods, it had been a long time since her body had acted up on her. Not since she’d lost the baby.

“A key factor to recovery is that there be separation,” Brett added. “At least a year is recommended, but because Chloe acted before Jeff’s behavior escalated into full-on physical abuse, their time apart could be shorter.”

“I told Chloe she could stay with me until she and Jeff get things figured out. We’re doing fine here now that we’ve settled into a routine, and that way I can help with Cody.

“Anyway, Chloe said she was fine with a meeting. She wants to help. And if all goes well, she’d like to set up regular meetings with Jeff, one every couple weeks to start, so that he can continue to be a part of Cody’s life.”

She heard a squeak in the background. “Where are you?” The question slipped out before she could remember she didn’t want to know.

“Home. I just got in from LA, and I’m heading into my room to get comfortable.”

He was going to be undressing, he meant. Too much information.

“I heard a squeak.” The explanation sounded lame.

“The doorknob on my bedroom door sticks. I was going to get it fixed, but I’ve decided not to. If not for the squeak, I’d never have heard Chloe trying to get out of the room that night, wouldn’t have been outside the door...”

“I wondered how you happened to burst in at just the right moment...” So much rested on his having been there. Jeff’s whole life. His marriage. Chloe and Cody’s lives, too. “Your instincts are well honed to prevent abuse,” she said, thinking out loud.

But the words were true. Growing up as he had, Brett was always on alert.

She heard his belt buckle clink. And realized what was supposed to have been a two-minute call had already gone on too long.

Without an extra word getting in anywhere, she made plans with Brett to arrange an afternoon meeting with Jeff a week from that Friday—nine days away. She’d take time off work to drive Chloe to Palm Desert. Brett would let Jeff know to alert his counselor to the plan.

Brett would be in Texas at the end of next week so couldn’t be present himself, Ella was glad to hear.

And disappointed, too.

* * *

ELLA DIDN’T EVEN consider that something other than food poisoning could be wrong with her when she threw up suddenly at work Thursday afternoon—the day after she’d spoken to Brett.

Jason happened to be on the unit at the time. Told her to take the rest of the day off. She couldn’t figure out what she’d eaten that didn’t agree with her. With Chloe serving dinner at the Stand all week while she honed the menu, Ella had eaten out with Jason two of the past three nights. And had what the rest of the residents at the Stand had the other night. No one else had taken ill.

Jason checked in with her again the next morning, though he didn’t generally do Friday morning rounds, and she was glad to tell him she was fine.

Until that afternoon when she experienced another violent bout of nausea that caused her to run out of the room while she and Jason were in with a patient.

Jason found her half an hour later, in her office, going over notes for a staff meeting she was holding the next morning. He walked in, put a hand on her neck and then picked up her wrist, as though taking her pulse.

“Anything wrong, doc?” she asked, a twist to her mouth. She wasn’t worried. She knew her body. And nothing was seriously wrong.

She might have a minor bug.

Or a case of the nerves. Worrying about Jeff’s emotional state. His marriage.

Torn between Brett and moving on.

Dating a man she liked but knew she didn’t love. Wanting Chloe to be happy...

“Are you prone to nausea?” Jason asked, sounding all doctor-like as he looked at her.

“No. I don’t think I’ve thrown up since I was a kid.” Back when she’d first started her period, her cramps were so bad they sometimes made her sick to her stomach. She later found out that her system basically told itself to ovulate and menstruate at the same time. Which was why she couldn’t conceive without help.

“Food poisoning doesn’t last more than twenty-four hours and doesn’t just come in once-a-day bouts.”

“You think I have the flu?” She’d been concerned about it herself, after this afternoon’s illness. She obviously had a bit of a bug that her body was mostly fighting off. With a bit of nausea as the only symptom. Which was why she was in her office, away from the patients. Since the initial Ebola scare in the United States, she’d been more aware of the viruses that could catch you unawares. More aware of her chance of catching something, working in a hospital. And more aware of her ability to spread, them, too.

“You don’t have the flu,” he said. “You aren’t the least bit flushed, have no fever and, by your account, aren’t feeling lethargic or achy.”

The way he was looking at her, eyebrow raised, he seemed to have something else on his mind.

Not that she knew him that well yet. He’d agreed to take things slow. She’d told him a bit about Chloe and Cody staying with her. About Jeff. As reasons why she couldn’t jump into anything with both feet at the moment.

They had dinner a couple times a week. Saw each other at work.

And he still made her laugh.

“I hate to ask this, especially in light of my hope that we’re on our way to being exclusive, but have you... Is there any chance you could be pregnant?”

“No!” Her response was immediate. And followed by another severe bout of nausea. She made it to her private bathroom. But just barely. And was embarrassed as hell when she took the moistened towel he handed her when she was done.

He was a doctor. He dealt with bodily functions every day.

But not hers.

Ella wiped her face, sitting on the floor of the bathroom, leaning back against the wall. She didn’t trust herself to stray far from the commode. And the cold tile felt good.

Jason stood along the opposite wall, his lab coat giving him a sense of authority that she didn’t need right then.

“I can’t be pregnant, Jason.”

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”

He didn’t want kids. It was one of the things that had drawn her to him in the first place.

She told him about her medical condition. About the years of treatments that had been necessary to help her conceive. About losing her baby. Leaving out the part about Brett not wanting the baby and retaining a divorce attorney.

“Have you had normal periods since you lost the baby?” He was frowning. And sounded so doctor like.

Her stomach felt sick again. “Up until recently, yes.”

“As you know, metabolic irregularities cover such a broad range, you don’t always hear or understand everything about them,” he said, looking more serious than ever. “But you should have been told...sometimes—not always of course, but sometimes—pregnancy corrects the irregularity in certain hormonal imbalances, allowing a woman who couldn’t conceive on her own prior to the pregnancy to conceive quite naturally afterward. Regular periods could indicate such a correction.”

Oh, God. She might have been told. She couldn’t remember a lot about the time immediately following her miscarriage. She’d been too busy grieving. And divorcing. Paralyzed, Ella sat on the floor, staring up at Jason as he said, “Doctors don’t always mention the possibility, depending on the circumstances, because there’s not enough known about why it does or does not happen, but, there are enough marked instances that we know that it can. Anyway...I find it interesting that you tell me you can’t get pregnant, not that you haven’t been with anyone recently.”

She knew the exact second that realization dawned on him. Knew, too, that he’d probably read the truth in her expression.

The timing had been right when she’d been on the boat with Brett. If she were a woman who ovulated normally, she could have conceived...

Afraid she might be sick again, she leaned her head back against the wall and said, “It’s not what you think.”

She wouldn’t have blamed him if he walked out on her. She’d been free to sleep with Brett. But when Jason had asked her if she’d been in a relationship recently, she’d told him the truth. That she hadn’t.

“I’m assuming this is why you’ve wanted to go slowly with us? Because there’s someone else?”

She didn’t hear any recrimination in his voice.

“There is no one else.” But yes, the fact that she’d slept with her ex-husband seven weeks and six days ago did probably sway her decision to take things slowly with Jason. Mostly, it had been the fact that she was still in love with Brett that had done it, though. And sitting there on the bathroom floor, Ella told Jason about Brett. The divorce. And his recent advent into her life. When Jason reached out a hand to her, suggesting with more kindness than she felt she deserved, that they go do a blood test, Ella had a feeling, as she knew he did, that they weren’t going to get the answer they wanted.