Shadow of Doubt (4 page)

“I was just checking to see if you cared,” he said, grinning at me, his body shaking with suppressed laughter.

“By risking your
life
?” I said.

“Look down, Robyn.”

“What?”

“Look down. Please.”

I clung to him as I peeked below. When I did, I felt like pushing him over the edge—not that it would have had much impact. A few feet below the finger of rock that he'd been spinning on, but completely invisible from where I'd been standing, a thick, snow-covered ledge jutted out. If Ben had slipped off the rock, he would have had a close, soft landing. He wouldn't have even bruised himself, but he would have scared me to death.

“See?” he said. “Perfectly safe. I've done a joke-fall off here a dozen times. You should have seen the look on my buddy Alan's face the first time I tried it.” He laughed again.

“But I thought—”

“I'm sorry,” he said, still chuckling. “But if you'd seen your expression...And you do care, don't you?”

“I didn't want anything bad to happen to you.” I looked into his mischievous eyes. “But now I'm not so sure.”

“I won't do it again,” he said. “I promise. Are you hungry? There's a hikers' shelter just up the trail.”

We made our way to a three-sided wooden hut with benches along the walls and a spectacular view of the lake below. Ben opened our packs, laid out the food we had brought, and handed me a sandwich. I was surprised at how hungry I was. I devoured that sandwich and reached for another one. Ben poured hot, sugary tea for both of us and leaned back against the wall.

After we ate, we hiked partway around the lake. Ben stayed close to me and talked the whole way about the history of the area. It had once been filled with forests and logging camps, he said, but those had gradually given way to farms and fields of crops—the rolling countryside was still dotted with barns and marked off with rows of trees that protect the fields from harsh winds. Nowadays, slowly but surely, the farmers were selling their land to developers, and suburban homes were springing up where cows had grazed and corn had grown.

Finally we went back to the car and started for home.

“I've been thinking,” Ben said. “We have a place up north. My father calls it a cabin, but it's not really. It's more like a country house. We could go up there for March break.”

“You and me?”

“Any other time, Peter would probably insist that he or Catherine be there to chaperone.” Peter is Ben's father. Catherine is his wife. “But the baby is due any time now, so that won't be a problem. I already invited Morgan and Billy to come with us.”

“You did?”

“Morgan seems really excited about the idea. So how about it? We can spend the whole week together. Maybe start making plans for the summer.”

Summer? It was only January.

“I was thinking we could do something with Habitat for Humanity. They need volunteers all over the world. Or there's another organization I heard about—it builds schools in poor villages and neighborhoods in South America. I put our names down for an info session.”

“You what?”

“We don't have to make a decision right away,” he said. “We'll just see what's involved. We can do something useful for a month or so. Then we can travel for a couple of weeks before coming home. It'll be a real adventure.”

“Well, I—”

He flashed me a smile. “We'll have a great time, Robyn,” he said. “I know we will.”

“But—”

“Can you think of a better way to spend the summer than building a school in a little village in the mountains of Peru—or maybe somewhere in the rain forest in Brazil?”

I had to admit that I couldn't.

“What do you say? Want to?”

A whole week together at March break?
Two months
together during the summer?

“We'll see,” I said. “I need to think about it.” As the words came out of my mouth, I realized that I sounded exactly like my mom.

“Morgan already said yes,” Ben said. He sounded disappointed.

“I need to think about it, Ben,” I said again.

I knew I hadn't reacted the way he had hoped, but I didn't want to commit to anything until I was sure it was what I wanted. Ben hooked his phone up to the car's sound system, and we listened in silence all the way home. When he pulled to a stop in front of my house and I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the passenger-side door, he didn't move.

“My mom invited you for dinner, remember?” I said.

“Apologize to her for me, will you?”

“Are you mad at me?” I said.

“No,” he said, but I didn't believe him. “But it's been a long day. I'm tired.”

“You
are
mad,” I said.

He shook his head. “I'm not. Really. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?”

I said my mom would be disappointed. But, secretly, I was relieved. Things were moving too fast.
Ben
was moving too fast.

. . .

“Where's Ben?” my mother said when I went into the house. “I thought he was going to have supper with us.”

“He said to tell you he's sorry. He's tired. So am I. We hiked all day.”

“But I made lemon chicken...” she said.

Lemon chicken is my mom's company dish. She makes it whenever she invites someone to dinner for the first time. It's easy to prepare, completely foolproof, and utterly delicious. People never fail to compliment her lavishly or to ask for seconds. My mom had obviously been hoping to make a good impression on Ben. That's why I decided not to tell her about his spring-break invitation. She would probably think it was a good idea.

“He doesn't know what he's missing,” I said. “But to be honest, Mom, I could probably eat the whole thing myself.”

“Good,” my mother said. “Because I made enough to feed both of us and one teenage boy. Go and get changed. I'll start the salad.”

I ran upstairs and, hurried along by the aroma of the chicken, quickly changed out of my long underwear and thick socks. I was on the way back downstairs when I heard the doorbell. I groaned. I didn't want my meal delayed by an unexpected visitor.

“Get that, will you, Robyn?” my mother called from the kitchen.

I veered for the front door and opened it. It was Ted. He smiled nervously.

“Is your mother home?” he said.

In fact, she had come out of the kitchen and was standing right behind me, a serving spoon in one hand and salad tongs in the other. “Ted,” she said. Her tone was as frosty as the night air.

“Patricia. I need to talk to you. To both of you.”

My mother stared at him a little longer. Her eyes were cold and hard. She used to have the same look on her face whenever my father showed up for dinner four hours late, or when he got called away in the middle of an anniversary celebration or, a couple of times, during Christmas. She sounded far from friendly when she said, “Come in.” But at least she said it.

Ted unbuttoned his overcoat and slowly peeled it off, but instead of hanging it in the closet the way he usually did, he stood in the front hall with the coat in his arms like a stranger.

“We were just about to eat supper,” she said as I reached for Ted's coat. Instead of releasing it, he pulled it away from me.

“I didn't mean to interrupt,” he said. “I just wanted to talk to you—about last night. I'm sorry I upset you, Patricia.”

My mother loves to hear the words
I'm sorry
. She claims to never have heard them from my father. Her face softened slightly. She handed me the spoon and the salad tongs. “Take these into the dining room,” she said to me. She gently tugged Ted's coat out of his hands and hung it in the closet.

“I'm assuming you haven't eaten yet,” she said to Ted.

“I have to tell you something first, Patricia.”

My mom nudged him into the living room and made him sit on the sofa. She sat beside him, not as close as she did when she was in the mood to snuggle, but not at the far end of the sofa, either. I sank into an armchair opposite them.

Ted peered into my mom's eyes, drew in a deep breath, and said, “Mac was at my place last night because I hired him about a month ago to do some work for me.”

My mom looked confused. She was probably trying to figure out what my father, a former police officer, could possibly be doing for Ted, a mild-mannered financial analyst.

“You're a client of Mac's?” she said. “What's wrong? Are you in trouble, Ted?”

“No,” Ted said quickly. “Nothing like that. I hired him to...find someone for me.”

The private security business, as defined by my father, isn't all or even mostly about security. My dad also does investigations—all kinds of investigations, for all kinds of clients, including lawyers, insurance companies, and private citizens.

“Who did you ask him to find?” my mother said.

Ted looked away.

“Ted?”

“My daughter,” Ted said quietly.

“You have a
daughter
?” I said.

My mom looked sharply at me. But when she turned back to Ted, she said the same thing: “You have a daughter?” Her tone was gentler than mine, but it was obvious that this was news to her too.

“I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you a dozen times. But it's one of those things that the longer you put it off, the harder it becomes to talk about it.”

“I don't understand,” my mother said. “What's so hard about saying that you have a daughter?” She looked at him sympathetically. “I would never judge you, Ted,” she said.

Ted squirmed in his seat. “It's not what you're probably thinking,” he said. “I was married. To the girl's mother.”

“Oh,” my mother said again. The stunned look on her face told me that this was also news to her.

“I sort of have a tendency not to mention it,” Ted said.

My mom was silent. Paralyzed.

“I wasn't trying to hide it from you,” Ted said. “I swear I wasn't.”

Even I had trouble believing that. There are some things that aren't important to mention, like how poorly you did on your ninth-grade math finals or that you were still taking a favorite blanket to bed with you long after preschool. Things like that don't matter. But there are other things, bigger things, that do. If you make a point of not mentioning them, no matter what you say later, people are naturally going to assume that you were hiding them. Proposing marriage to someone without telling her that you've been married before and have a kid was one of those things.

“You were married?” my mom said finally. “And you never mentioned it? All those times I was trying to explain—” She glanced at me. “All those times we talked about what can go wrong between two people, why didn't you tell me?”

Ted wriggled as if his suit had suddenly shrunk two sizes. “I was embarrassed,” he said.

“Embarrassed?” my mother said. “You know practically everything there is to know about my marr—” She glanced at me again, probably wishing I wasn't there. “What could you possibly be embarrassed about?”

Ted shook his head. He tried to take my mom's hands in his, but she pulled them away.

“You've heard what people say about some of those celebrity marriages,” he said. “How they last all of five minutes? Well, my marriage was like that.”

“You were married to a celebrity?” I said.

My mom gave me an exasperated look.

“No,” Ted said. “But I was married for about five minutes. I think about it sometimes and I still can't figure out what was going through my head when I proposed. Or what was going through Beth's when she accepted.”

“Beth? Your wife?” my mother said.

“Beth was
the woman I married
, yes,” Ted said carefully, as if he were clarifying the matter. I didn't see a distinction, but he obviously did.

“I see,” my mother said, but it was clear to me, if not to Ted, that she didn't. “You were married for five minutes—”

“Actually, it was more like six months,” Ted said.

“—to someone named Beth, and you managed to produce a daughter in that space of time?”

“The reason we got married was because Beth was pregnant,” Ted said. His cheeks turned pink. “I was the father, and I guess I thought marriage was the right thing to do. But Beth and I weren't compatible. Not remotely. One day, while I was at work, she packed her bags and left. She took Bonnie with her.”

“Bonnie?” my mother said. “Your daughter?”

Ted nodded. “She didn't tell me where she was going. None of her friends would tell me anything. I think Beth told them not to speak to me. So I waited for her to contact me. I figured she would, you know. For child support.” He blinked at my mother from behind his gold-framed glasses. “But she never did. Never called. Never wrote. Nothing.” I knew what that felt like! “Finally I hired someone to track her down. She didn't like that. She said she never wanted to see me again. She said I was the biggest mistake she had ever made. Then she filed for divorce.”

My mother reached out and took Ted's hands in hers.

“I'm sorry, Ted,” she said.

“I had to go to court to get visiting rights,” Ted said. “Beth didn't like that, either. She was living with someone else by then. Her lawyer made it clear that she didn't appreciate me ‘interfering.' But Bonnie was my daughter.”

He kept using that word,
was
.

“Bonnie was five by the time I won the right to see her. It wasn't easy, though. Because of the distance, I couldn't see her every week or even every other weekend. I was supposed to get her for a week at Christmas and two weeks in the summer. But even that didn't work out.”

“What do you mean?” my mother said.

“Beth always called with a problem. She said that Bonnie was sick, or she'd been invited to a friend's place and she'd be devastated if she couldn't go. Once I went to meet the plane that Bonnie was supposed to be on, but she wasn't there. I almost had a heart attack. I thought somebody'd taken her. It turned out Beth had changed her mind at the last minute and hadn't sent her. She didn't bother to let me know.” He drew in a deep breath. “The year Bonnie was going to turn eight, I drove all the way out to where she was living to get her. Beth was furious. I was supposed to have Bonnie for two weeks. It was a terrible visit. Bonnie cried herself to sleep every night. She said she missed Beth. She was afraid of what would happen to her if she wasn't there.”