The Secret Between Us Read online

  Deborah was instantly contrite. She couldn’t answer for Grace, who loved Danielle like a sister, but Karen was her best friend. She would have called sooner had it not been for Hal, which was another thing to fault him on. But she couldn’t tell her friend about that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t phone anyone, Karen. It was a bad day. We were pretty upset.”

  “Which was why you should have called. If I couldn’t make you feel better, Hal could have.”

  Deborah cleared her throat. “That’s why I’m calling now. Calvin McKenna just died.”

  Karen gasped. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I don’t know the details. But I thought I’d run it past Hal. Has he left?”

  “He’s on the other line. Hold on a sec, sweetie, and I’ll get him.”

  Hal sounded nearly as hurt as his wife. “You took your time calling, Deborah. Any reason for that?”

  Deborah might have said, Because for starters, you’re apt to take it the wrong way, but Grace had followed her into the den, and Deborah had no way of knowing if Karen was still on the line. So she said, “It was an accident. All I need is information. I don’t think I need a lawyer.”

  “You need me,” he drawled, likely winking at his wife. Sadly, he meant what he said. He had loved Deborah for years, or so he professed shortly after Greg left, and no matter that she cut him off with, No way. I don’t love you, and your wife is one of my closest friends, he hadn’t taken back the words. School meetings, sports events, birthday parties—he took every opportunity to remind her. He never touched her. But his eyes said he would in a heartbeat.

  It had put her in an untenable position. She and Karen had shared pregnancies, kid problems, Karen’s breast cancer, and Deborah’s divorce. Now Deborah knew something about Hal that Karen didn’t. Keeping the secret was nearly as painful as the thought of what might happen if she divulged it.

  Hal had made her his partner in crime. She hated him for that.

  “I don’t think there’s any problem,” she told him now, “but I want to be sure. I went down to the station yesterday.”

  “I know. I talked with John. He doesn’t see any cause for concern.”

  Deborah might have been irked that he had taken it upon himself to talk to the police, but she knew her father was right; Hal was the best defense lawyer around. And Hal regularly played poker with Colby, so his assurance carried more weight. Of course, things had changed since yesterday.

  “Calvin McKenna just died,” Deborah said, “and don’t ask how, because I’m waiting to learn myself. Do you think this alters the picture?”

  There was a pause—to his credit, the lawyer at work—then a prudent, “That depends. Is there anything you were doing at the time of the crash to suggest you were at fault?”

  There it was, a golden opportunity to set the record straight about who was driving. She knew it was wrong to lie. But the accident report was filled out, and the fact of a fatality made it even more important to protect Grace. Besides, Deborah had repeated the line often enough that it rolled off her tongue. “My car was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. If they weren’t going to charge me with operating to endanger before, will a death change that?”

  “It depends on what the reconstruction team finds,” Hal replied, less comforting than she had hoped. “It also depends on the D.A.”

  “What D.A.?” Deborah asked nervously.

  “Our D.A. A death might bring him into the picture.”

  She had called for reassurance. “What does ‘might’ mean?”

  “You’re starting to panic. Do not do that, sweetheart. I can get you out of whatever it is.”

  “But what is it?” she asked, needing to know the worst.

  “When a death is involved,” he said in a measured tone, “every side is examined. An accidental death can be termed vehicular homicide or even negligent homicide. It depends on what the state team finds.”

  Deborah took a shaky breath. “They won’t find much,” she managed to say. Of course, she hadn’t imagined Calvin McKenna would die.

  “Then you’ll be clear on the criminal side,” Hal added, “but a plaintiff doesn’t need much to file a civil suit. The standard of proof is looser. John tells me he got a call from the wife. He says she’s looking for someone to blame. And that was before her husband died.”

  “We weren’t even going thirty in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone.”

  “You could have been going twenty, and if she hires a hotshot lawyer who convinces the jury that you should’ve been going fifteen in that storm, she could recover something. But hey,” Deborah heard a smile, “you’ll have a hotshot lawyer on your own side. I’m giving John a call. I want to know what tests were done to register the guy’s blood alcohol or the presence of drugs. John said you took the crash report home with you. Did you fill it out?”

  “Last night.”

  “I’d like to see it before you file. One wrong word could suggest culpability. Are you going to be home for a little while?”

  “Actually, no.” She was grateful for a legitimate excuse to see him away from the house. “I have to take Dylan to school and, since the police are done examining my car, I want to drop it at the body shop. Can you meet me at Jill’s in, say, twenty minutes?”

  Jill Barr’s bakery, Sugar-On-Main, was a cheery storefront in the center of town. After leaving her car at the garage for repair, Deborah approached it on foot, her medical bag slung over her shoulder. Keeping her eyes on the sidewalk with its faux brickwork, she tried not to think of Cal McKenna’s wife. She tried not to think of vehicular homicide. She tried not to think that people seeing her walking along Main Street might view her now in a different light.

  The sweet scent of the bakery reached her seconds before she came to the small iron tables outside. Three of the four were taken. She nodded at several of the regulars as the familiar aroma took the edge off her fear.

  The inside of the bakery was gold, orange, and red—walls, café tables, easy chairs, love seats. Deborah had a favorite grouping among the upholstered pieces, which was where she would have normally headed. But people often approached her there. She even got the occasional medical question—Does this look like poison ivy? It was the downside of having a local practice. Usually she didn’t mind, but today she didn’t want an audience.

  Half a dozen customers waited in line; another dozen were seated around the shop. Head down lest one of them catch her eye, she continued on through the swinging kitchen door and went straight to Jill’s office. She had barely settled into the desk chair when her sister arrived with a tray. It held three coffees and three SoMa Stickies. “I take it I’m joining you?” Jill asked.

  “Definitely.” Taking a mug, Deborah studied her. Pregnant? With her short blonde hair and freckles, and her cropped orange T-shirt and slim jeans, Jill looked like a child herself. “I can’t picture it,” Deborah said, oddly bewildered. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Are you excited?”

  “Beyond my wildest dreams.”

  Deborah reached for her hand. “You’ll be an incredible mom.”

  “Then you’re not upset with me?”

  “Of course I’m upset. It won’t be easy being up at night with a crying baby and no one to spell you. You’ll be exhausted, and it’s not like you can call in sick.”

  Jill pulled her hand free. “Why not? Look out there.”

  Deborah didn’t have to look. She was at the bakery often enough to know that there were three people at work behind the front counter, rotating deftly between coffee machines and pastry bins as customers ordered from tall chalkboards that listed additional specialties like SoMa Shots, Smoothies, and Shakes. Two bakers would be in the kitchen until mid-afternoon, producing fresh-from-the-oven batches of everything from muffins to croissants to sticky buns. And then there was Pete, who came to help Jill with lunch.

  Deborah got the message.

  Still her sister said, “I have a great staff that
I’ve handpicked and carefully trained. Who do you think was minding the shop when I was going back and forth to the doctor? I do have a life, Deborah. It’s not all work.”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “And I love what I do. I was back there kneading dough a little while ago. SoMa Stickies are my recipe. And SoMa Slaw? If you think I don’t get joy making Mom’s recipe every day, think again. Honestly, you sound like Dad sometimes. He thinks it’s all drudgery and that I’m alone here. He doesn’t know Skye and Tomas, who get here at three in the morning to bake, or Alice, who takes over at seven. He doesn’t know I have Mia, Keeshan, and Pat. He doesn’t know about Donna and Pete.”

  “He knows, Jill,” Deborah said. “People tell him.”

  “And he can’t say the bakery’s a success? I did good at piano lessons when I was eight, so he decided I should be a concert pianist. I won a prize at the science fair when I was twelve, so he decided I should be a Nobel winner. Being me wasn’t good enough—he always expected something more.” She flattened a hand on her chest. “I want this baby. It’s going to make me happy. Shouldn’t that make Dad happy?”

  They weren’t talking about childbearing, but about the larger issue of parental expectations. Jill might be thirty-four, but she was still Michael Barr’s child. “Tell him you’re pregnant,” Deborah urged, perhaps selfishly, but she hated having to keep this secret too.

  “I will.”

  “Now. Tell him now.”

  By way of response, Jill asked, “Did you know Cal McKenna taught several AP sections?”

  Deborah stared at her sister long enough to see that Jill wasn’t giving in. With a sigh, she took a drink of coffee. “Yes. I did know that.” So did Jill, since Grace had him for AP American History.

  “Some of his students were in here yesterday afternoon. There was talk.”

  Picking a pecan from the top of her bun, Deborah brought it to her mouth, then put it back down. “And that was before he died. I let Grace stay home today. Was I right to do that?”

  “Dad would say no.”

  “I’m not asking Dad. I’m asking you.”

  Jill didn’t hesitate. “Yes, you were right. The accident itself was bad enough, but now it has to be even harder for Grace, who knew the man. Any word on why he died?”

  “Not yet.” Deborah opened her mouth, about to blurt out the truth. She was desperate to share the burden of it, and if there was anyone in her life she could trust, it was Jill. But before she could speak, Hal Trutter appeared.

  There was nothing subtle about Hal. Wearing a natty navy suit and red tie, he had LAWYER written all over him. Realizing that, Deborah guessed every one of the people out front knew why he was here.

  He took a coffee from the tray on the desk and looked at Jill. “Witness or chaperone?”

  Jill didn’t like Hal. She had told Deborah that more than once, without even knowing he had come on to her sister. It might have simply been her distrust of arrogant men. But in answer to his question, Jill folded her arms across her chest and smiled. “Both.”

  Feeling marginally protected, Deborah pulled the accident report from her bag. Hal unfolded it and began to read.

  Deborah was comfortable with the first page, a straightforward listing of the spot where the accident occurred, her name, address, license number, car model, and registration number. She grew more nervous when he turned to the second page, where there was a line labeled “Driver.”

  Fighting guilt, she kept her eyes steady on Hal. He ate some of the sticky bun and read on.

  Jill asked, “You’re not gooeying up that form, are you?”

  Just then, Deborah’s cell phone chimed. Pulling it from her pocket, she read the message, swore softly, and rose. “Be right back,” she said and headed through the kitchen. “Yes, Greg.”

  “I just got a message from Dylan. What’s happening down there?”

  Deborah wasn’t surprised Dylan had called his father. She wished he had waited, but Cal McKenna would still be dead. Greg would have to know sooner or later.

  Finding a spot in the shadow of a dumpster outside the back door, she told him about the accident. The questions that followed were predictable. Greg might have moved to Vermont to rediscover his inner artist, but to Deborah, he was still the CEO who had inadvertently micromanaged his business to success.

  To his credit, the first questions were about Grace and whether either of them had been hurt in any way. Then came, What time did you leave the house, what time did you get Grace, what time was the accident? Exactly where on the rim road did it happen, how far was the victim thrown, how long did it take for the ambulance to arrive? What hospital was he at, who’s his primary doctor, was a specialist brought in?

  “No specialist,” Deborah said. “He was doing fine. No one expected that he’d die.”

  There was a brief pause, then, “Why did I have to hear this from my ten-year-old son? You were involved in a fatal accident, and you didn’t think it important enough to keep me in the loop?”

  “We’re divorced, Greg,” she reminded him sadly. He sounded genuinely wounded, so much like the caring man she had married that she felt a wave of nostalgia. “You said you had burned out on your life here. I was trying to spare you. Besides, there was nothing fatal about it until early this morning, and I’ve been slightly preoccupied since then.”

  He relented a bit. “Is Grace upset?”

  “Very. She was in a car that hit a man.”

  “She should have called me. We could have talked.”

  “Oh, Greg,” Deborah said with a tired sigh. “You and Grace haven’t talked—really talked—since you left.”

  “Maybe it’s time we did.”

  She didn’t know whether he meant talking on the phone or in person, but she couldn’t imagine proposing either to Grace right now. The girl saw her father every few months, and then only at Deborah’s insistence.

  “Now’s not good,” she said. “Grace is dealing with enough, without that.”

  “How long is she going to stay angry with me?”

  “I don’t know. I try to talk her through it, but she still feels abandoned.”

  “Because you do, Deborah. Are you imposing your own feelings on her?”

  “Oh, I don’t need to do that,” Deborah said with quick anger. “She feels abandoned enough all on her own. You’re her father, and you haven’t been here for the last two years of her life. Literally. You haven’t been down once, not once. You want the kids to go up there to visit, and that might be fine for Dylan, but Grace has a life here. She has homework, she has track, she has friends.” Deborah glanced at her watch. “I can’t do this right now, Greg. I was in the middle of something when you called, and I have to get to work.”

  “That’s what did it, y’know.”

  “Did what?”

  “Destroyed our marriage. You always had to work.”

  “Excuse me,” Deborah cried. “Is this the man who put in sixteen-hour days right up until the moment he dumped it all? For the record, Greg, I do go to Deborah’s track meets and Dylan’s baseball games. I do go to piano recitals and school plays. You’re the one who could never make time for us.”

  Quietly, Greg said, “I asked you to move up here with me.”

  Deborah wanted to cry. “How could I do that, Greg? My practice is here. My father depends on me. Grace is in high school—and we have one of the best school systems in the state, you said that yourself.” She straightened her shoulders. “And if I had moved north with you, would it have been a threesome—you, Rebecca, and me? Oh, Greg, you made me an offer I couldn’t accept. So if you want to discuss what killed our marriage, we could start with that, but not today, not now. I have to go.”

  Amazed at how close to the surface the hurt remained, Deborah ended the call before he could say anything else. Looking out over the yellow van with her sister’s logo on the side—a stylized cupcake, frosted into peaks spelling Sugar-on-Main—she took several calming breaths. When she was
marginally composed, she went back inside.

  Hal had finished reading the report. He was standing with his hands on his hips. Jill hadn’t moved.

  “Is it okay?” Deborah asked uneasily.

  “It’s fine.” He extended the papers. “If what you say here is exact, there’s good reason for us to know what the guy was doing out there in the rain and whether he was hopped up on booze or drugs. Anyone in his right mind would have moved to the side of the road when a car came along. So the big question mark is him, not you. I don’t see anything here that would raise a red flag on your end.”

  Feeling little relief, Deborah refolded the papers. “I’m sending copies to the Registry and to my insurance company. Are you okay with that, too?”

  “You have to do it. Just don’t talk with John again without me there, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the victim died. Because I’m your lawyer. Because I know John; John knows how to build a hand and hold it close. And, Deborah, don’t talk to the media. The Ledger ’s bound to call.”

  Of course they would, now that a death was involved. Deborah grew fearful. “What do I say?”

  “That your lawyer advised you not to talk.”

  “But then they’ll think I’m hiding something.”

  “Okay. Tell them you’re stunned by Calvin McKenna’s death and have no further comment at this time.”

  Deborah was more comfortable with that. Nervously, she asked, “You don’t see a problem, do you?”

  “Well, you killed a man with your car. Was it intentional? No. Did it result from reckless driving? No. Was there negligence involved regarding the condition of your car? No. If the reconstruction team supports all of the above, you’ll be clear on the criminal side. Then we’ll just have to wait to see what the wife does.”

  Deborah nodded slowly. It wasn’t quite the rosy, all-is-well picture she wanted, but a man was dead. There was nothing remotely rosy about that.

  Chapter 5

  Deborah was late reaching her father’s house. Hearing the shower, she put the coffee on and readied his bagel. When the water continued to run, she considered dashing over to the office to get ahead on paperwork, but the living room was too strong a lure.