Cormac banged loudly on his mother’s door. Now that she was dating, he rarely swung by unannounced, especially in the evening or early morning. He was afraid of what he might encounter. If she was sleeping with someone, he didn’t want to know about it. That was her business entirely. But he’d just dropped off Mrs. Wood and Astro and had a few minutes before he had to hurry home and shower. Fortunately, his first appointment at the clinic had canceled; he didn’t need to be at work until ten.
Finally, through the narrow side window, he could see his mother shuffling to the door while belting her robe, her short gray hair sticking up in back where her head had obviously been resting on the pillow.
“What is it?” she asked as soon as she let him in. “Is there some sort of emergency?” Her gaze swept over him in alarm. “Are you okay?”
He lifted his hands to signal that she could quit looking for injuries. “I’m fine. I just...wanted to talk to you.”
Now that she knew her nursing skills weren’t required, she scowled at him. “And you couldn’t have called me later? You had to wake me up at seven thirty in the morning?”
He gave her a sheepish look. “I’ve been up since five. Seven thirty isn’t all that early, is it?”
“It is to me,” she replied. “I worked late last night.”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve waited.”
She blinked at him. “But?”
But he’d looked out the window first thing this morning and noticed that the rock he’d left on the chaise in the Rossi yard was gone. Gia had probably gotten the note he’d written—or someone else in the family had—and yet she hadn’t come by. Maybe it’d been too late. But he couldn’t help being skeptical that she’d ever be willing to talk to him, which left him with no way to resolve the conflict inside him.
“I need to know something. Why did you divorce Dad? Did he molest Gia?”
Her jaw dropped. “What the heck, Cormac! You hit me with this at the crack of dawn seventeen years after the fact? Why’d you wait so long?”
He probably should’ve gone home and showered, then dropped by on his way to work. He was damp from running and getting a chill despite the well-worn Hart Veterinary Clinic sweatshirt he wore with his running shorts. “I...” He let his words trail off because he wasn’t sure how to express that it was loyalty that’d stopped him. He felt guilty even now for trying to verify his father’s story.
Besides, actually saying what he was thinking would identify him as a traitor, make it impossible to take back.
But the truth was the truth. He figured he might as well face it. “I was afraid of what you might say.”
“And you’re not anymore? What’s changed? You’re tired of putting up with the way he lives his life?”
“Yes, I’m tired of that. But it’s more that my desire to know the truth is finally outweighing my love and loyalty. Or...not my love,” he quickly corrected. “But you know what I mean. I’m finally willing to consider the possibility.”
“Really! After defending him for so long?”
“That’s the thing. I can’t keep it up any longer unless... unless I feel more confident than I do at this moment.”
“Okay.” She gestured to his truck, where Duke was staring at them with his head hanging out the window of the driver’s seat. “Will he be okay if you come in for a few minutes?”
“He’ll be fine.”
“Good.” She waited for him to step inside before pushing the door closed behind him. “Let’s go into the kitchen. I’m going to need a cup of coffee for this.”
She was acting as if he’d asked her to open Pandora’s box. Was this something he really wanted to do? After seventeen years, what did it matter what’d happened that night? Gia would probably only be in town for a few weeks or a couple of months, and then life in Wakefield would continue very much as it had before. He didn’t need to know, did he? Why stare down that ugly possibility?
Because the truth mattered. Being fair to Gia mattered. He was late forcing himself to entertain the possibility. And it could be that his mother didn’t know any more than he did. But he wanted to hear her perspective—at last.
“Sit down.” She circled the island and went to the far counter—and that was when he noticed the new automatic latte machine.
“When did you get that?” he asked.
“A few weeks ago,” she said nonchalantly.
“I saw that brand in Williams Sonoma when I was looking for your Christmas present. It was nearly four thousand dollars!” Which was why he’d chosen something else. No one who lived alone needed a four-thousand-dollar latte machine, especially when they weren’t—by any means—rich.
“Good coffee means a lot to me,” she said.
“Mom!” He was prepared to tell her she had to be more careful with her money, but she sent him a look that warned him off.
“Don’t start. We’re talking about your father’s problems today, remember?”
He sighed. He had a shopaholic for a mother and a reprobate for a father. Were either one of them credible? Or was this a fool’s errand?
He supposed he wouldn’t know until he learned what his mother had to say. Being irresponsible with money might indicate she wasn’t perfect, either, but that sort of thing didn’t make her a liar. “So...what do you have to say about Dad? Do you believe he did it? I mean...you left him right after the trial, so...you must think he was lying.”
He wished she’d been more forthcoming all along, but she’d been so careful not to influence their feelings toward their father. She’d always said they had to decide for themselves.
“There are things you don’t know about that night,” she said as the latte machine began to hum.
He slid onto one of three modern-looking black bar stools. His mother might be a shopaholic, but no one could say she lacked taste. “What are they? And why haven’t you ever told me about them?”
“Because you haven’t asked. And I don’t know anything for sure. Only he can tell you what really happened that night.”
Gia could, too, of course. If only he could believe what she had to say.
“I just...had a few more pieces of evidence to consider than you and the girls had,” his mother said.
“What are they?” he repeated.
“Subtle clues, for sure.” She set a macchiato in front of him and returned to make herself a cup. “The way he was behaving that night. The things he said.”
Cormac sampled his drink and was glad she’d decided to make coffee. The hot liquid helped warm him up. “I’m afraid I’m going to need a more detailed explanation.”
“When we left for your game that night, I asked him to come with us. I really wanted us to be there as a family to support you. But he said he had to work and insisted he couldn’t take the time.”
“That’s plausible, isn’t it? He was always busy the last couple months of school.”
“Except I knew he’d finished grading the research papers, which is what took so much time. There could’ve been other stuff he needed to get done, which is why I relented, but...something about his excuse didn’t ring true. I remember being frustrated that he wasn’t more committed to watching you play. And he certainly didn’t tell me he had a student coming to the house. I would’ve taken a strong stand against that.”
“Because having a girl at the house leaves him open to accusation?”
“Even having a boy over would do that. If a student claims they were threatened or struck—or molested, as in this case—there’s hell to pay, right? Believe me, after the years we spent in the school system, and the difficult students and even more difficult parents we encountered on occasion—not to mention the stories we read in the paper, which were even worse—we’d learned not to take chances. So I couldn’t understand why he’d set himself up like that.”
“The fact that he broke with protocol is what made you suspicious. But she was a neighbor, Mom. He claims she just walked over uninvited.”
Sharon shook her head. “No. That didn’t ring true, either. He was staying home that night for a reason, and I believe it was to see Gia.”
“Women’s intuition?”
“That and his growing obsession with her.”
Cormac felt his eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean?”
“Leading up to that night, I’d been treated to so many comments about this particular girl. How bright she was. How special she was. What a great student and writer and person and...you name it. He admired her for standing up to the women who forced him to ban the books he wanted to assign in class and was involved in helping with that renegade book club she started. In my opinion, it put them in too much contact.”
“Gia was beautiful, too.” She still was...
“He never came right out and said that, but I could tell he thought it. He was making me uncomfortable where she was concerned long before the accusations came out.”
“Did you say anything to him before that night? That you could tell he was getting too caught up in Gia?”
“I once asked him if he realized how often he talked about her, and he said I was being ridiculous, that he had no interest in her other than to see her make it to college.”
“Then why’d he give her a D on her paper, knowing she had to have a B to get an A in his class?”
“He claimed it was truly subpar. You heard him at his trial. But I read that paper. I’m not saying it was the best research paper in the world, but it wasn’t a D. It was well thought-out, the right length, structured correctly, with footnotes and everything. At the worst, he could argue she deserved a B minus, but not a D. She was right about that.”
His mother had hit a nerve because Cormac had read Gia’s paper, too. Way back when, a photocopy of it had circulated around the school. But he’d been a year younger and hadn’t understood what her research paper should’ve been like, so it hadn’t been too hard to trust that it was lacking in some way, as his father claimed. He’d told himself he just didn’t see it because he wasn’t a teacher.
Since then, however, he’d realized it truly wasn’t that bad and had relied on the fact that grading English papers could be very subjective to shore up his belief in his father. Besides, his father had admittedly high expectations for her. But a D? Ds were reserved for people who didn’t put much effort into their work, didn’t follow the syllabus, didn’t turn in the assignment on time or turned in papers with huge gaps in logic, poor writing, grammar and punctuation—or a mixture of all those things. Gia’s paper had none of that. “Did he mention he was disappointed in her paper before that night?” he asked, still looking for some way to cling to his conviction that Gia was lying.
His mother carried her own cup to the counter and stood opposite him instead of sitting down. “No. After everything else I’d heard about her, I would’ve thought he’d say something. But he never said a word.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And the way he acted when we got home that night?” She grimaced. “He was so agitated. He couldn’t sleep, made several comments about how students make things up and that even the best teachers can run into trouble when there was dishonesty involved. It was as if he was preparing me for what was about to happen, hoping to inoculate me against Gia’s accusations.”
Cormac frowned. “Is there anything else?”
“Gia,” she said simply.
“Gia?”
“I hate to admit it, but she came off as more authentic to me. Could be that it was a trick of the prosecution, but the fact that she’s stood by her story ever since—”
“Dad’s stood by his story, too,” Cormac interrupted. “I feel like they’d both have to—to save face.”
“I realize that.”
“And Gia was strong-willed, a free spirit who wasn’t afraid to defy authority. I could see her trying to get away with something like...like making it all up to get a better grade.”
“Which is why Evan might’ve thought he had a chance with her,” she said softly. “Have you ever thought of it that way?”
When Cormac cursed under his breath, his mother came around to squeeze his shoulder. “Don’t let this drive you crazy, honey. It’s water under the bridge. Regardless of what your father did or didn’t do, it’s all in the past. Just...forgive him and move on.”
“Is that why you’ve never tried to persuade me or Louisa or Edith?”
“I didn’t want to persuade anyone because I wasn’t sure I was right. No one likes to accuse an innocent person. I just had enough doubt that I could no longer trust Evan. So, as much as I knew it would be difficult for you and the girls—and I still feel bad about how hard the divorce was on all three of you—I had to get out of the relationship and start over.”
He couldn’t accuse her of being selfish; she’d lived her life mostly for them for a decade or more after, when they were all well into adulthood. It wasn’t until a few years ago that she’d started to date, and even more recently that she focused on herself with the weight loss and new wardrobe. “If that was what you needed for your own sanity and happiness, you did the right thing.”
Her lips curved into a smile that was full of gratitude. “Thank you. I didn’t want to be married to someone who could—”
“Take advantage of one of his students?”
“Yes, but for me it was more about the lies. That he could do that to Gia and then try to make her look so terrible to save himself. She was only seventeen.”
“I’m sure she bears a few scars.”
“I’m sure she does,” his mother agreed. “So...what do you think?”
“I wish you had more of a smoking gun, that you could tell me Dad confessed to you or something like that.”
“I’m afraid I can’t make it that easy. But there is one other thing.”
He’d just lifted his cup again; at this, he put it back down. “What is it?”
“It’s...pretty personal, so hard to talk about, especially with you. I wouldn’t mention it if...if you weren’t struggling so much to figure this thing out.”
“Just say it.”
“Okay. In the name of full transparency, your father called me from school the next day to tell me what’d happened—that Gia claimed he’d acted inappropriately and he’d be home late because he had a meeting with the principal. I was so upset that I went through the entire house, searching for anything to prove her wrong.” She took another drink of her coffee before adding, “Or right, as it turns out.”
The acid in Cormac’s macchiato was beginning to burn his stomach. He pushed it away. “And what did you find?”
“A new lubricant I’d never seen before hidden in his drawer.”
“Oh, God,” Cormac muttered. “Why didn’t you say something at the trial?”
“That wasn’t exactly damning evidence, you know? He could easily have bought it for me, so I didn’t think I was holding back anything that would be important in that regard. I also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt—mostly for the sake of you and your sisters. But finding that... Well, it said a lot to me, especially because I never saw it again.”
“He got rid of it?”
“It wasn’t in his drawer when I looked again. I think he didn’t even try to pretend he’d bought it for me because he knew the timing would be weird.”
“And by that point, it probably represented his guilt, so he was ashamed of what it signified.”
“Exactly.”
Cormac hung his head as he thought about what she’d told him.
“So...are you sorry you asked?”
He slid off the stool to go home and get ready for work. “Yes.”
“You’re late.”
Louisa’s curt response to his greeting caused Cormac to hesitate before continuing to his office. “I have ten o’clock on my calendar.”
“That’s our first appointment. We open at nine. What if there’d been an emergency?”
“You would’ve called me.”
“People expect us to be open on time,” she snapped.
Duke nudged him to the side so he could get through to his water bowl.
“Louisa, this is my clinic,” Cormac reminded her. “I set my own hours.”
“What would happen if I decided to treat my job like that?”
“What would happen to any other employee who didn’t show up for work?” He covered her paycheck. Surely, she could see the difference.
“You’d fire me?” she challenged.
He sighed. “This is about Gia, isn’t it?” He should’ve called his sister and tried to work through what’d happened in the office. He could’ve reassured her, convinced her to calm down and mitigated some of her anger. But he hadn’t wanted to admit that he was becoming so conflicted. He’d hoped they could just leave it as it was, ignore that little blip in their day and pick up where they’d left off before Gia had walked in.
“You took her side over mine,” Louisa said. “I never thought I’d see the day.”
“I didn’t take her side,” he argued. “I was trying to head off an ugly confrontation. We run a business. We need to maintain a certain image in this town, be professional.”
She sneered at him. “It had nothing to do with the fact that she’s so pretty?”
He flung out his hands. “What are you accusing me of?”
“You think I don’t know how you felt about her in high school? That she was your biggest crush? I remember when you joined her stupid book club. You didn’t even read back then. You were so caught up in baseball you were lucky to get your homework done.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Are you saying you no longer find her attractive?”
“This is ridiculous. I haven’t even talked to her, other than when I tried to stop what was happening here in the office. She’s tough. You don’t want to mess with her.” He should know. She certainly hadn’t backed down from arguing with him the day their dad had been fired. Most of the school had been privy to that shouting match.
“I can handle Gia,” she said. “Or I could have, if only I’d had a little support!”
He walked down the hall to his office, but once he swung the door open, he turned back. “I’m not going to gang up on her with you or anyone else. At some point, it has to be between her and Dad. I say we leave it there.”
She followed him into the room. “Why now? That’s the question. You know what she did to Dad. You’ve hated her right along with us for seventeen years.”
“Hate’s a strong word, Louisa.”
Her jaw dropped. “Oh, my God! What’s gotten into you?”
“Doubt!” he finally shouted. “Don’t you ever wonder if she’s the one who’s been telling the truth? Especially after the way Dad’s lived his life?”
“He’s lived his life the way he has because of her! She took everything he had. She broke him, Cormac. That’s why I’m so angry. That’s why you were angry, too.”
Cormac shoved a hand through his hair. “But is that the truth—or is that only what we want to believe?”
“You sat through the trial with me.”
“I did. But there’s such a thing as confirmation bias, which might be why we never changed our minds, but the judge, whose job it was to be impartial, came to the conclusion Dad was guilty!”
“That doesn’t mean the judge got it right. The benefit of the doubt often goes to the woman these days. You heard Dad’s attorney. After the verdict was read, he said that ten or fifteen years earlier, the result would’ve been completely different.”
“That may be the case, but that’s because the courts are finally giving victims the consideration they deserve. The fact that he was found guilty should at least make us examine the possibility that we could be the ones in the wrong.”
“No,” she said, adamant. “I won’t let Dad down.”
“Dad is the one who’s let Dad down,” he said. “At least since this happened. And it could be that he was the one who let us all down from the beginning.”
She threw up her hands. “I don’t know why you’re second-guessing everything. Have you talked to Dad?”
“I have.”
“And? Did he change his story?”
“No, but neither did he do anything to convince me. I’ve also talked to Mom. That’s what made me late.”
She froze. “What’d she say?”
Cormac had to be careful. The last thing he wanted was to further damage his family, especially his father, who was barely hanging on to a productive life as it was. “Nothing new. She has her doubts. That’s why she left him.”
“But...how convinced is she?”
“Enough that she couldn’t continue to live with him but not enough to try to convince us.” And neither was he in a position to try to convince Louisa or Edith or anyone else. He had no answers, just more questions. And if they were at peace with the opinions they held, so be it. They could easily be right; why challenge them?
The bell rang over the front door in the lobby. Louisa looked back when she heard it, then lowered her voice. “You’re wrong, Cormac. You’re making a big mistake.”
He wished he could be that confident. Instead, he found himself in no-man’s-land—suddenly on neither side. He was doing his best to regain his conviction, but the more he dug into the problem, the more uncertain he became. “Maybe that’s true,” he said. “But I have to be honest with myself and everyone else.”