Gia was just reaching for the door handle of the bedroom, holding the green tea she was about to carry in, when she heard her mother answer a call that stopped her in her tracks. The surprise in Ida’s voice tipped her off that something was up, which was what initially made her pause. It wasn’t until she heard a bit more of the conversation that she realized the caller had to be connected to her former English teacher.
Instantly angry that anyone, especially someone from the Hart camp, would contact Ida about what happened seventeen years ago, Gia was tempted to barge in and grab the phone. But she was hesitant to give herself away so soon. She was keen to learn who it could be, what the person wanted—and to see how Ida would respond.
Although her mother’s voice came through the wooden panel, it was muffled enough that Gia found herself leaning closer. “It’s in the past...We didn’t decide his fate, the judge did...I’m not sure what to tell you, Louisa. Your father had the chance to give his side...That isn’t an easy thing to prove—it’s darn near impossible...She wouldn’t lie. Not for a grade...I’m not taking offense...Of course I appreciate the care you and your brother have given our cat. But there’s nothing I can do for you when it comes to your father...You’ll have to talk to Gia. But I can’t guarantee you’ll like how she responds. My oldest daughter speaks her mind...You, too...Thanks for calling.”
Louisa Hart had obviously been trying to enlist Ida’s help in getting Gia to finally “tell the truth about what happened,” which made Gia want to scream.
The conversation revealed something else, too. It wasn’t just Gia’s old schoolmates who’d become friendly with the Harts. It was also her family. They’d all been living in Wakefield together since Gia left and had, apparently, figured out a way to get along.
Gia was pretty sure they even liked each other. Her mother would’ve been much harsher otherwise. Gia supposed that didn’t constitute a betrayal exactly, but it sure as hell felt like one.
The sound of footsteps made her jerk her head up.
“What’s going on?” her father asked, wearing a quizzical expression as he trudged toward her from the living room, probably on his way to the bathroom down the hall.
“Nothing, I... I was just taking Mom some tea,” she said and opened the door.
When she entered the room, her mother looked up but didn’t mention the call.
“I thought you might like some green tea,” Gia said.
Ida’s smile grew pained. “I hate green tea.”
Gia had to be careful not to trip over Miss Marple, who’d gotten up to come toward her. “I’m not a fan of it myself, but...”
“I know,” she said. “They say it fights cancer. Not nearly well enough, apparently, but—” a tired smile softened her expression “—I’ll do my best to get it down.”
Gia wanted to bring up Louisa’s call. To reiterate that she’d been telling the truth all along. She had no idea how to convince everyone of that and was so tired of battling the doubt.
Feeling it was pointless to keep trying—she put the cup on the bedside table and started to leave.
Her mother’s voice stopped her at the door. “The truth is the truth, Gia. You were right to stick to it.”
This was the first time her mother had addressed the situation in what Gia interpreted as an authentic manner. After Evan Hart was sentenced to hundreds of hours of community service and had to register as a sex offender, Ida had said a few things, but they’d felt more like platitudes—a way to keep the peace between them because their relationship had become so rocky.
Gia held her mother’s gaze. “What I told you back then went down exactly as I said it did.”
“I know.”
Ida’s response caused Gia to blink in surprise. She hesitated to delve too far into this subject. It’d been such a source of pain through the years. The resentment she felt was bound to seep out in some way—and would probably start an argument. She didn’t want it to come to that. She’d only been home a short while. And she was here to help—not put her mother through another emotional episode.
Still, she couldn’t resist one final question. “So...why have I always felt as though you wished I’d never said it?”
Her mother removed her reading glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose for several seconds before putting them back on and looking up again. “Because I didn’t want what you told me to be true. No mother wants to hear something like that has happened to her daughter.”
Gia had expected Ida to insist she’d been as supportive as a parent should be. This far more honest answer took her off guard. “I didn’t invite that...that sort of relationship, Mom. I admired him, yes. And I was stupid and naive enough not to see his interest changing. But...I was seventeen.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
In that moment, Gia should’ve felt she’d just been relieved of a huge burden. Her mother had finally said the words she’d longed to hear ever since it happened. Ida didn’t hold her responsible!
But the self-doubt was still there—what had really made the incident so difficult. If she’d never felt anything for Mr. Hart and could be totally convinced her admiration was just that—admiration of a student for a teacher—she could accept this as the absolution she needed. But she’d found it flattering that he’d liked her so much, especially because so many of the other girls had vied for his attention. She’d been excited to visit his house, too. She’d thought he was so handsome and smart.
Could it be that she was partially to blame, after all? Should she have seen it coming and done more to stop it? What had made her agree to go to his house that day instead of asking why they couldn’t take care of the problem with her grade at school?
Those questions drove her nuts late at night. But she hadn’t crossed the line. He had, she reminded herself. “I cared about him,” she admitted, her voice almost a whisper.
“Which makes what he did even worse,” her mother said.
Gia wished she could kneel in front of her mother and sob into Ida’s lap—finally rid herself of the guilt she carried in addition to all the other emotions that’d plagued her since that long-ago evening.
But now she had to admit that it wasn’t just her parents’ doubt that’d been stopping her from letting go of the past.
It was her own.
Cormac was looking forward to the weekend when Louisa poked her head into his office. “You heading home?” he asked when he saw her.
She nodded, said good-night and started to leave—but then stuck her head back through the opening. “I called Gia’s mom this afternoon,” she blurted as if she just couldn’t hold it in.
He’d been annotating the charts of the animals he’d seen today. At this, he shoved away from his computer. “You what?”
“I couldn’t help myself.” Leaving the door open, she came in and slouched into the chair across from his desk. “I know Ida Rossi. She’s a fair and honest woman. She donates to the animal shelter every year. She brings her cat, Miss Marple, in for regular checkups and shots and is always friendly to us. I thought—”
“Ida Rossi is dying of cancer, Louisa,” he broke in.
“I didn’t mean her any harm. I just thought...maybe I could reason with her, get her to speak to Gia and convince her to have some compassion, before...before Ida isn’t around to have any influence.”
“Oh, my God!” He rubbed his forehead. “I hope you didn’t say that.”
“I didn’t, but—”
“Don’t tell me she hung up on you...”
“No. She was polite. She just wasn’t interested in helping.”
“Of course not. Gia’s her daughter!”
“But I’m not sure she’s entirely convinced Dad’s guilty, Cormac. I feel like she would’ve shown more anger back in the day—and wouldn’t have been so nice to us through the years.”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“Even so, there’s probably residual anger in that type of scenario.”
Cormac jammed a hand through his hair. “I wish you hadn’t bothered her. That was going too far. She’s dealing with more pressing problems than something that happened seventeen years ago.”
“What happened seventeen years ago is still very present in our lives. I’m desperate to dispel the black cloud that’s been hanging over us for so long—for Dad’s sake more than ours. I hate that he’s had to live with the assassination of his character all these years. I keep thinking that if we can clear his name, he might be able to pull himself together and be the man he once was.” She sighed. “But I agree that—”
The bell jingled over the door out front, causing Louisa to fall silent.
Cormac patted his desk, searching for his calendar. “Do I have another appointment today?” He’d thought he was done. He’d been planning to leave as soon as he finished updating his charts.
“Maybe we have a walk-in.” She went out to see, and Cormac came to his feet as soon as he heard her exclaim, “Gia!”
“Did you call my mother today?” Her voice was filled with anger.
In his rush to get out of the room, he whacked his thigh on the corner of the desk. Limping for one or two steps, he hurried to where his sister was squaring off against Gia Rossi.
His first thought was that it was after their normal business hours. Louisa should’ve locked the front door when their last patient left. Then Gia couldn’t have gotten in. But Louisa typically didn’t lock up until she left. As a small-town vet, Cormac tried to offer some of the more personal care shown by regular doctors in the old movies his parents had watched when he was a kid. That sort of approach had always appealed to him. Taking satisfaction in his work meant it couldn’t all be about the money.
“What’s going on?” he asked, even though it was obvious that Gia was furious her mother had been disturbed at such a difficult time.
“Your sister called my house this afternoon and brought up what happened when we were in high school. She thought she could turn my own mother against me and...what?” She yanked her attention back to Louisa. “Get her to convince me that what happened wasn’t what happened, after all?”
“It didn’t happen!” Louisa insisted. “When will you finally admit that?”
“You weren’t there!” Gia cried. “I was.”
“If my father said he didn’t do it, he didn’t do it,” Louisa fired back. “Why would he risk his family, his career, his reputation—to touch a seventeen-year-old girl?”
“I don’t know what he was thinking!” Gia said. “I only know what he was doing. And he was hoping to do a lot more than cop a feel!”
“You’re just trying to save face, and you know it!”
Cormac couldn’t get the vision of Gia crying at the pool last night out of his mind. Seeing her in such a vulnerable state had messed with his impression of her as a hard, lying bitch. But regardless of how he felt personally, he had to make sure this confrontation didn’t get out of hand. He had his business and reputation to worry about. “Look, I’m sorry Louisa called your mother,” he said, stepping between them. “She shouldn’t have done that, okay?”
Gia’s eyes were riveted on him. He saw anger flashing in them, but he thought he saw hurt, too, which took even more fire out of his reaction. It undermined his conviction, too. He also had that call with his father working against him, when Evan had backed away—far too easily—from challenging Gia about her lies. It’d felt almost as if he’d called because he was afraid Cormac would approach her, and he was worried about how that might go. Was it because he just wanted Cormac to continue to accept his version of events?
If there was a chance, even a remote one, that Gia could be telling the truth, Cormac and Louisa—Edith, too—had done her a grave injustice. He hated the thought that maybe they’d only made things harder on a girl who really had been molested.
He couldn’t bear to even consider that possibility. It was easier to stubbornly believe what he’d always believed. But he couldn’t help asking himself...what if? His mother must’ve asked herself the same question. And she must’ve arrived at a very different answer, or she probably wouldn’t have left Evan, at least not when she did.
He should’ve asked—with a much more open mind—why she’d doubted her husband enough to leave him. Did she know something they didn’t?
He hoped it was only the humiliation that’d caused the divorce, as Louisa claimed. Because calling Gia a liar and sticking with it all the years since would be—
Blocking the rest of that thought, he cringed. “We won’t try to contact her again,” he told Gia. “I apologize on behalf of my sister. We’re sorry. Truly.”
Tears welled up in Louisa’s eyes. “You’re apologizing to her?”
“Louisa, stop.” He sent his sister a sharp look before addressing Gia again. “There’s no fight here. You can go on your way.”
He thought Gia might continue the argument. How well he remembered the argument he’d had with her in the hallway of the high school way back when. She hadn’t backed down one inch. She was even more formidable as an adult. She came off as strong, confident.
But she glanced between them, made a sound of disgust and rolled her eyes before turning on her heel and marching out.
“What the hell, Cormac?” Louisa dashed a hand across her cheeks as soon as the door swung shut. “So much for confronting her and getting a retraction!”
“Do you think what you did has helped our cause?” he asked.
“I’m sick of it,” she said, amidst fresh tears. “What she claims happened paints such a terrible picture in my mind. It turns my stomach. And I’ve had to live with that for almost half my life!”
He almost said, That might not be her fault, but bit his tongue. He couldn’t start to doubt their father at this late date. That would open up a whole realm of unpleasant possibilities—including the idea that he and his sisters had made a bad situation even worse.