The Wrong Man Read online

  “I’m sorry, too, that you lost your mommy. I remember what that’s like. It’s as if everything that is vibrant in the whole world suddenly fades to gray.” She swallowed with difficulty. “You’re lucky, though. You have a wonderful daddy who loves you.

  “My stepfather, though…” She closed her eyes at the memory. “He didn’t hate me. It was worse. I think he just didn’t care one way or the other. So long as I kept out of his way, we got along. For a time. Until…” She censored herself. “More than anything I wanted a loving family. A mommy and daddy who were crazy about each other and adored their children. Who laughed. You’re luckier than many kids, Kylie. You have a wonderful daddy and grandparents who care so very much about you. So, please, wake up, and come back to them. To me.”

  She picked up the girl’s hand and kissed it, her tears spilling over.

  “I love you, sweetie. I…I couldn’t bear to lose you.” Her voice sank just above a whisper. “Not like my other babies.”

  “Babies?”

  The word, barked into the quiet room, nearly stopped her heart. For a second she sat, paralyzed, incapable of turning around. Nothing registered except the sudden sickening memory of the strange doctor leaning over her, his glassy eyes fixed on hers, his unfeeling words destroying the most basic part of her.

  “Libby?” Trent’s tone was more urgent.

  As if in a trance, she forced herself to face him. He stood at the foot of the bed, his expression one of shock. “What do you mean ‘babies’ plural?”

  Each syllable struck her with the force of a blow, and without pausing to think, she covered her mouth and fled past him out of the room.

  DUMBSTRUCK, Trent stood halfway between the bed and the door, torn between his need to rush after Libby and his need to stay with Kylie. What had Libby meant? Had she miscarried twins? He paced to the window, then turned back. No, he would have known. He glanced at the door, then at Kylie, his eyes fixed on each rise and fall of her chest. He couldn’t leave her.

  Yet he had to go after Libby. The look on her face as she ran past him haunted him. Anguish, yes, but beyond that, panic.

  He rubbed his sandpapery face. What was it she hadn’t told him? Whatever it was, it was significant. Only recently they’d vowed to tell the truth to Kylie. But what truth had Libby withheld from him? And for how long?

  He sat down in the recliner in the corner, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, lost in thought. Right now he had to focus his attention on Kylie, on getting her well.

  But at some point he would confront Libby. He loved her, but obviously she still couldn’t trust him with her secrets. If he’d learned one lesson from bitter experience, it was that a relationship without trust was doomed. His arms dropped to his sides and he leaned his head back. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so physically exhausted or mentally heart-sick.

  Everything he’d hoped for—a fresh beginning in Whitefish, security for his daughter, a renewed relationship with Libby—now seemed threatened. But he’d sacrifice all his hopes and dreams for one sign from Kylie that she was coming back to him.

  Everything about the hospital—the smells, the hushed efficiency of the staff, the long, uncomfortable hours in a bedside chair, even the bitter-tasting coffee—was a vivid and wrenching reminder of those excruciating hours with Ashley, when hope faded with each new blood test.

  He was drained way past the point of tears. He let his head droop, his eyes close.

  And that was how Weezer found him an hour later, his soft snores a rhythmic counterpoint to Kylie’s gentle exhalations.

  LIBBY STARED BLANKLY at the wall of the nearly deserted waiting room, her body beyond numb. She shouldn’t be here. Yet she was powerless to leave before she had word about Kylie. She had run from Trent straight to the rest room, where she had bathed her face and neck in cold water until she could stop crying. Wiping her face with the coarse paper towels, she’d stared in the mirror, shocked by her own splotched, alien reflection. What kind of woman kept secrets from the man she loved?

  Approaching footsteps. Anxiously Libby looked up from her seat. An orderly who’d been out for a smoke walked briskly toward the elevators. She exhaled. No word on Kylie.

  Weezer had tried to comfort her when she’d returned to the waiting room, no doubt assuming Libby was upset about Kylie. But Libby had shrugged her off, pleading exhaustion and worry. Although the quiet presence of the older woman had been comforting, Libby was relieved when Weezer finally stood up and said she’d check on Trent and Kylie.

  The pastels of the landscape hanging on the wall did nothing to soothe Libby, whose thoughts, despite her efforts to banish them, kept returning to that balmy May day in Oklahoma when she had told Daddy Belton her news, then to the moment she declared her independence from him and to that stormy winter night months later, the loneliest of her entire life. She rubbed her eyes, willing her mind to stay in the present. Anywhere but in that past she’d spent years banishing from conscious memory.

  Sadness overwhelmed her, not just for that cruel time, but for what would happen between Trent and her once he knew. What she had done was worse than a lie. She had expected him, out of some kind of supreme sensitivity, to understand what she had never explained. And, beyond that, to make it all right.

  Unbelievable.

  She stood and paced past the TV, in front of the reception desk, then back. Arrested by the painting, she stopped. A rushing mountain stream, a grove of aspen quaking in the soft mountain breeze and a doe, head up, alert, poised to bolt at the first snap of a twig. She raised a hand, wanting to touch the deer, to whisper she understood. She wanted to bolt, too. Danger was at hand. Not a natural predator, though, but the death of her dream.

  WEEZER STOOD by the window, her eyes fixed on the horizon, now showing the faintest streaks of light. The dark night was past; dawn was breaking. Just as the world stirred, so, she prayed, would Kylie.

  The child would bounce back, of that she had few doubts. She wasn’t sure she could say the same for Trent or Libby. Something had happened between the two of them. She hadn’t for a moment accepted worry about Kylie as the sole reason Libby had returned to the waiting room hollow-eyed and desperate. Up to that point, she’d managed her anxiety and self-inflicted guilt with grace. No, something had happened.

  As for Trent, he hadn’t spoken the entire time she’d been here in the room. He looked much the same, stricken and out of his mind with worry. But there was also a grim set to his lips that hadn’t been there before.

  Growing up on the reservation, Weezer had learned the rudiments of tracking. But the majority of her life had been spent seeking clues in body language and expressions, rather than damp paw prints beside a stream.

  Whatever had happened between these two, it was torturing them both.

  Over the distant mountains, a robust sun rose. Weezer bowed her head in contemplation, and at first didn’t hear Trent’s sudden gasp. Then his words penetrated. “Sweetie, open your eyes again. It’s Daddy.”

  Trent stood over Kylie. Weezer stepped closer, but observed no change in the girl’s expression.

  “Please, honey, open your eyes.”

  The movement was at first nearly imperceptible, then more pronounced. Kylie’s eyelids fluttered.

  This time Trent spoke more forcefully. “Open your eyes, Kylie.”

  Weezer clutched her folded hands to her chest, praying still.

  The child’s eyelids twitched again, but remained closed. Then they both noticed the fingers of her good hand bend feebly in an effort to clutch the sheet.

  Trent looked up at Weezer. “Oh, God, please.”

  “I’ll get the nurse,” she said, “and Libby.” As she left the room, she heard a noise like a stifled sneeze and realized it was Trent, gulping back his tears of relief.

  She had barely reached the door when she heard another sound—a quavering whisper full of love. “Daddy?”

  LIBBY LOOKED UP as Weezer entered the waiting room, a broad smile o
n her face. “Come.”

  Holding her breath against hope, Libby moved quickly toward the older woman. “Kylie?”

  “She’s conscious.”

  Like a deflating balloon, Libby released her breath.

  “Thank God.”

  Weezer put an arm around Libby’s waist. “Come see for yourself.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “They’ve called the doctor. We won’t know anything for sure for a while. But she certainly recognized her daddy.”

  Only a desperate need to see Kylie propelled Libby toward the room. She didn’t know how she could face Trent, but she had to.

  Weezer ushered her into the room. A shaft of sunlight made a stripe across the white bedspread where Trent sat, holding Kylie’s hand. “She’s resting,” he said, his eyes glazed with emotion.

  Libby approached Kylie. “Honey, it’s Miss Cameron. Can you hear me?”

  Kylie’s eyelids slowly opened. A sweet smile formed on her lips. “Hi,” she said in a weak voice before her eyes closed again.

  Libby steadied herself against the bed. Never had a greeting filled her with such gratitude. “Bless her heart.”

  Weezer approached and beamed down at Kylie. “It’s been quite a night, but all will be well with time.” Then she glanced from Trent to Libby. “You two are exhausted. Why don’t you let me stay with her. Go home, get some rest. Come back later.”

  “No,” Trent said. “I want to talk with the doctor. And I need to wait until the Chisholms get here.”

  Libby’s stomach did a somersault. She’d nearly forgotten about them. She gave a faint shrug. If Trent couldn’t forgive her, it hardly mattered what the Chisholms thought.

  “Go on, Libby.” Trent’s words would have been a comfort had they been offered with solicitude, but a drill sergeant could not have made the directive more clear.

  “Okay,” she said, then bent and laid a kiss on Kylie’s cheek. “Could I come back later?”

  She noticed Weezer do a quiet double take at the question, then glance quickly at Trent.

  “Kylie will expect you,” was all he said.

  Resigned to his censure, she started to leave the room, when she heard him add something else. “And so will I.”

  She clutched on to those words as she headed for the parking lot. Call it wishful thinking, but maybe, just maybe, there was still hope.

  But only if she told the truth.

  And that meant living through the pain she’d locked away for years.

  AS THEY PULLED INTO the outskirts of Kalispell, Georgia dabbed at her eyes. “An accident. And all because of going skiing. I still can’t believe it. We told Trent how we felt about endangering Kylie like that.”

  Gus concentrated on his driving. “Speak for yourself. You told him how you felt about it. Besides, it wasn’t a skiing accident. She fell in the parking lot. She’s a kid, Georgia. These things happen. You don’t want her to be protected like a hothouse flower, do you?”

  At this moment, a “hothouse flower” sounded far better than a girl lying seriously injured in a hospital bed. “It’s just so like him.”

  “What?”

  “To go off on his own like that. To entrust her care to someone else.”

  “The someone else was Libby Cameron, a highly responsible adult. And you make it sound like he frivolously went off on his own. For God’s sake, according to the news report, he was helping rescue two people from certain death.”

  Georgia stared straight ahead, oblivious to the never-ending stream of franchise businesses lining the highway, willing the hospital to materialize. Fear lodged in her chest like a knife. If only Gus weren’t so damn reasonable. Just once couldn’t he raise his voice and curse Trent and that woman the way she herself longed to? “Say what you want, but if anything happens to our Kylie, so help me God—”

  “What? You’ll blame Trent?”

  She shrugged. “Yes. It will be on his head.”

  “Just like Ashley?”

  She snapped around to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  His jaw worked, but he kept his eyes trained on the road ahead. “You never accepted Trent. I’m wondering whether, somehow, you’ve blamed him for Ashley’s death?”

  Georgia tightened her bony fingers around the rigid clasp of her purse. “Are you out of your mind?” She let out a feeble laugh that sounded more like a snort. “As if Trent could control leukemia.”

  “I meant that somehow, in your mind, you figure everything would have been all right if she’d married a different man.”

  It was irrational, Georgia knew, biting her lip, but she had never stopped asking the futile questions. What if Ashley had married that nice Browning Lafferty and moved to Denver? What if there had been some vile toxic substance in the walls of that dreadful condo where Trent and Ashley had lived? And now, would Kylie be lying in a hospital bed if Trent hadn’t moved with her to Whitefish? Had never interested her in skiing?

  She closed her eyes, anger and insight warring within her. Although she didn’t like what her husband was suggesting, a dreadful truth lay at the root of his question. She wasn’t that awful a person, was she? Had she made Trent the scapegoat for everything bad that had happened?

  Gus drove on in silence. Up ahead, Georgia saw the blue-and-white sign directing them toward the hospital. Her heart seized up in her chest.

  After a few blocks, Gus spoke again. “Trent doesn’t need our anger or our judgment. He’s undoubtedly been through hell.”

  Images of her beautiful, laughing Ashley flitted through Georgia’s mind, then froze on one frame in particular. The absolute radiance on her daughter’s face the day she told her mother she was pregnant with the child of “the only man I will ever love.”

  A tear trickled down Georgia’s cheek and her mouth tasted salty. Only then did Gus look at her, his eyes full of an intuitive kind of understanding. “What they need, sweetheart, is our love.”

  “I know,” she murmured, wondering why all these bad things had happened.

  Then, as if the matter was settled, he patted her leg. “You have a lot of it to give, and here is as good a place as any to start.”

  With that, he wheeled into the hospital parking lot. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, especially since she hadn’t yet seen her granddaughter, Georgia felt calmer, lighter than she had in years.

  LIBBY HUDDLED in her bed, the shades drawn against the harsh sunlight, Mona curled at her side. A bracing shower had done little to relieve her body of its aches and pains, and there was no balm for her soul, except for the fact that Kylie was better. Shivering, she clutched the blankets around her and adjusted her pillow for the fifth or sixth time. She couldn’t get comfortable. Couldn’t shut down her mind.

  She rolled over on her back, folding her hands across the flat of her stomach, her only comfort the warmth of Mona’s body. She knew now she’d deluded herself that she had put her anger at the senator and her own overriding guilt behind her. Could she actually have thought she’d paid for her sins? That a lifetime devoted to loving and teaching children served as suitable atonement?

  And what about Trent? She curled into a fetal position. She had been so high and mighty, so sure she was right, that she could judge him and find him lacking. If the situation weren’t so tragic, it would be laughable.

  Had she been living in never-never land? Where everything came up roses and people actually did fly over the rainbow?

  The illusion of the happy family.

  She thought of the baby book buried in the cedar chest. Of the thwarted dreams of the naive eighteen-year-old she had been. Of her stepfather and his arrogant assumption he knew what was best for her.

  And of the only thing that had saved her—Trent. The man she had cast off because of her own misguided self-righteousness.

  Even if he didn’t blame her for the accident, she needed his forgiveness for so many other things. It was asking a lot from a man she’d once dismissed as selfish and pleasure-loving.
The father she’d observed at Kylie’s bedside tonight proved he was so much more.

  She reached for a tissue and let herself weep into the pillow, a much-needed physical release that did nothing to soothe her soul.

  Finally, cried out and exhausted, she felt her eyes close and her breathing slow as she welcomed the escape of sleep.

  At first, when the phone jangled in her ear, she started up, sure it was the school dismissal bell. Where were the children? Why weren’t they lining up? She rubbed her eyes and fell back against the pillow. The bell rang again. Where…? What…?

  Then, reluctantly, she realized she was in her room, that only three hours had passed since she’d climbed into bed, and that someone was calling her. With a stutter of her heart, she grabbed the phone as Mona hopped to the floor. It could be the hospital. Something might have happened. “Hello?” she said, placing the receiver against her ear.

  “Miss Cameron?” The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  “Speaking.” If it was a telemarketer, he was going to get an earful he wouldn’t soon forget.

  “Jeremy Kantor here. We spoke earlier about a possible interview.”

  Libby closed her eyes, dumbfounded. Not now. Not when everything was crumbling around her. “I remember,” she croaked.

  “I’m in Oklahoma City concluding my research here. If it works with your schedule, I’d like to talk with you Tuesday or Wednesday.”

  “This week?”

  “Yes. I plan to fly to Missoula and rent a car. We could work out a mutually convenient time.”

  Her instinct was to postpone the meeting. And yet, since she didn’t plan to tell him anything of significance, she might as well remove this one thorn from her side. There were plenty of others festering there. “Tuesday,” she said dully, “after school at my house. Do you have that address?”

  “Yes, I do. Will four-thirty work for you?”

  “I’ll be here.”