Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) (6 page)

Maddie and Felicia set out first thing in the morning for
Harmony.  I dropped off Oliver and Max at pre-school and took Morgan to the
office with me.  Maddie’s mom would pick up the boys at noon then swing by to
get Morgan and babysit them for the rest of the day.  It was late morning when
I heard from Maddie.

 “They won’t let us see him,” she informed me.

“Why not?  What’s the problem?”

“They say he’s sick and can’t have visitors.  They don’t
believe Felicia is his sister.”

“Why should that matter?”

“I have no idea.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re in my car, sitting in the parking lot.  They practically
threw us out, Samuel.  Something’s going on here. ”

I didn’t like the sound of it.  I could just picture my wife
and her cousin doing something very stupid that could turn out to be
dangerous.  “What’s the place like?”

“The outside’s real nice.  Lots of trees and pretty
landscaping.  There’s a pond out here in front with swans and ducks swimming in
it.  I’m sure it costs a fortune to be admitted.”

“What about inside?”

“Whale, we didn’t get very far before they made us leave; but
let me tell you, the place gives me the creeps.”

Maddie gets the creeps fairly easily, so I had to discount the
statement proportionately, but even so, I didn’t want her anywhere near there. 
I certainly didn’t like the idea of my wife nosing around an exclusive private
institution out in the middle of nowhere. 

“I think you should come home, Maddie.  From what I’ve heard of
the town, it’s not a place where you want to make a scene.  We can get a court
order if we have to, but I’d rather handle it through proper channels.  How’s
Felicia?”

“Not good.”

I could imagine what an understatement that must be.  “Don’t
let her do anything that’s going to get you thrown in jail.”

“I know,” she said, and what worried me was that my statement
didn’t even piss her off.  She covered the phone and said something to
Felicia.  “Something’s rotten here, Samuel.  Or else, why wouldn’t they let us
see him?”

“I have no idea, but we’ll find out.   I’m going to call Niki
and get the names of the principals of the place.  Who did you talk to?”

“The Administrator.  He’s the one who kicked us out.”

“You’ve got to come back home, Maddie.  We’ll get a court order
and I’ll go there personally with you and Felicia, but please, don’t mess with
it anymore today.  Please.”

She thought about it long enough before answering to make me
very nervous.  “Okay, Samuel,” she finally said.

I didn’t realize that I’d been holding my breath until I
exhaled loudly.  “Good.  Call me when you get home.”

“Okay, sweetie.  Bye bye.”

*    *    *    *

When I got home at 5:30 and Maddie wasn’t back, I got this sick
hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.  If they had left when we talked, they
would have been home hours ago, even with a couple of pit stops and a break for
lunch.  This was not good.

I called Maddie’s cell phone and it went straight to
voicemail.  She was either out of range, or she had the damn phone turned off. 
I left a message for her to call me, trying to keep the anxiousness that I was
feeling out of my voice.  A part of me wanted to jump in my car and drive
straight towards Serenity, but rationality overruled the idea. 

I sent my mother-in-law home.  She’d been with my kids for
almost six hours, punishment enough for someone I liked; and I didn’t let on
that I was worried.  But when it got to be almost 6:00 o’clock and I still
hadn’t heard from her,  I knew something had to be wrong.  I called Niki
Lautrec.

“Okay, let’s think it through,” he said, always grounded in a
crisis.  “We need to rule out an accident.  Or jail.  Hold on a second.”  When
he got back on, I could hear him shuffling papers.  “Okay.  The closest
hospital to Harmony would be in San Angelo.  I’ve got a guy checking that, and
I’ve got someone else on the phone with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office
and with Department of Public Safety.  I honestly don’t think Maddie would have
gotten herself thrown in jail though.”

“She’s with Felicia,” I reminded him.

“Even so.  She can’t be that bad an influence,” he asserted.

“Beg to differ.”  It occurred to me that Felicia was not unlike
Niki in that respect.  I’d come way too close to being thrown in jail on
several occasions because of Niki.  He liked to live on the edge and he’d take
down anyone with him who was stupid enough to get talked into one of his little
escapades.  I considered calling him on the similarity, but I knew he’d deny
it. 

“Do you think they would have tried to go back inside?” Niki
asked.

“I don’t know.  The last thing Maddie told me was that they
were coming home.  That was at 11:45 this morning.”  Call waiting beeped in.
“Hold on a second, Niki.  Maybe that’s her.”  I clicked over to the other
line.  “Hello.”

“Samuel, it’s me.”

I was so relieved that my knees buckled.  The gamut of emotions
coursed through me so quickly that I didn’t know how to react.   I was worried;
I was relieved; I was pissed.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  We’re about an hour from San Antonio.” Being pissed
swooped to the forefront. 

“Where the hell have you been?  It’s after 6:00, Maddie! 
Didn’t you think I’d be worried?”  I’d forgotten about Niki on the other line. 
“Hold on.”  I clicked back to Niki.  “It’s her. She’s fine.  I’ll call you
back.”  I clicked back to my wife.  “Maddie.”

“I’m here.”

“Where have you been?”

“I’ll explain it when I get home.  I don’t want to talk about
it on the cell phone.”  She pronounced it
sale
phone.  “I tried to call
you earlier but I didn’t get any answer.  And I’ve been in a dead zone for the
last 40 miles.  This phone is useless.”

“You went back inside, didn’t you?” I asked, already knowing
the answer. 
Long
s
ilence.
  “Are you there?”

“We went back inside,” she admitted.

I was livid. “I’ll see you in an hour,” I said. 

I went to hang up on her but before I could, I heard her
saying, “I love you, Samuel.”

I hung up without responding, but it made my guts churn.  I
called her right back, and she answered on half a ring. 

“I love you too,” I grumbled, and hung up on her.

I was glad she was still that far away so I’d have a chance to
cool down before she got home.  We hardly ever fought and I couldn’t remember
ever actually being mad at her before.  It definitely wasn’t a feeling I wanted
to get used to.  Maddie and I had been friends before we were lovers, and I
valued her friendship as much as I valued her status as my spouse and as the
mother of our children.  I didn’t want to be mad at her. 

The phone rang and it reminded me that I needed to call Niki. 
I hung up on the salesperson and dialed Niki. 

“The important thing is that she’s okay, Collins.  Don’t lose
sight of that.”

“I’m not.  Thanks for your help, and sorry for the
inconvenience.  I guess I kind of jumped the gun in calling you.”

“It’s no inconvenience.  I’d have done the same thing if it had
been Stacy.  Except she’s so hot tempered I’d have been worried for whoever she
was up against.”

I laughed.  Niki was right.  The only thing that mattered was
that Maddie was okay.  Everything else was secondary.  By the time she got
home, all I wanted to do was take her in my arms and hold her.  I could have
strangled Felicia, but I was content to hold Maddie.

“Let me start by saying that when we talked earlier, I had
every intention of turning around and coming right back home.  I just don’t
want you to think that I lied to you when I told you that,” Maddie said.

She seemed genuinely remorseful on that point. “I never thought
you lied to me.”

“Okay, good.  I’m glad we got that taken care of,” she said,
then she launched into her story.  “After I talked to you, Fee and I were
getting ready to leave when we noticed the administrator guy and the woman we
had talked to were driving off.  So we thought that maybe since they were gone,
we could talk someone else into letting us see Fee’s brother.  We went back
inside, but there was no one around in the lobby reception area.  It’s real
weird though.  All the doors that go off the lobby, there’s four of them, are
kept locked.  Like the patients are locked in.”

“Is it a psych hospital?” I asked.

“That’s what I was thinking.  But why would Fee’s brother be
put in a psychiatric hospital?  He’s a quadriplegic, not a psycho.”

“Maybe just part of it is for psychos,” I suggested.

She waved her hand at me.  “Let me continue.  So we’re scoping
out the reception area.  It’s big, almost like a hotel lobby.  And there’s this
cart by one of the doors with all these name tags on it.  Each name tag had a
room number on it, so we figured they must be names of patients.”

I could only imagine where this was going.  “I don’t think I
want to hear this.”

“Be quiet and let me tell you!” she said.  Her eyes were
sparkling with excitement.  “There are name tags with room numbers on them,”
she continued.

“How many were there?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe twenty.  And this real cute little Hispanic
woman comes out and she asked if we were touring or visiting, so naturally we
told her we were visiting.”

“Naturally.”

“So I read off the name of a patient from one of the name tags
and told her we were visiting him.”

“Why’d you do that?  Why didn’t you tell her you were visiting
Fee’s brother?”

“We’d already tried that and it had gotten us kicked out.  And
you know what?  She didn’t even ask if we were family or anything.  We signed
in and she gave us a visitor’s badge and she took us right back to the
patient’s room.  Now, why would it matter if we were family or not when it was
my cousin we wanted to visit?”

I started to say something but she shushed me.

“You don’t need to answer,” she informed me.  “So we went to
this poor old man’s room, bless his heart.  He was out of it; Alzheimer’s or
something.  But he was perfectly content to have us there.  Fee tried to pump
the old man for information on her brother, but it was useless.  I’m sure he
wouldn’t have recognized his own family, much less my cousin.”

Oliver and Max had gotten out of bed and were roaming the
house.  “Go back to bed!” I called out.  I heard laughing and little footsteps
padding back to the kids’ wing.

Maddie continued.  “We decided since we were already inside, we
should snoop around and see if we could find Jackson Whitaker, Fee’s brother.  Each
patient’s name is on the wall outside their room, so we started looking for Jackson’s name. We sneaked down a couple of different hallways but never found him, but we
ended up in a big recreation room.  It was just like you see in the movies. 
Some patients were playing cards or checkers; some were watching TV; some were
totally out of it and were conked in a wheelchair.  It was creepy.  So we’re
checking out all these people, thinking one of the wheelchair guys could be
Fee’s brother, when an orderly comes in pushing a cart.  We didn’t want to get
caught so we hid in a closet.  It’s where they keep a bunch of board games and
stuff.  Remember that game called
Sorry
?”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to answer, so I just nodded.

“They had that one.  I’d forgotten all about that game.  We
should get it for Oliver.” 

For being so smart, sometimes Maddie was a ditz.  She took a
breath before she got back on track. 

“Whale, we were peeking out the door and – this is where it
gets really weird – the orderly starts giving out meds to some of the
patients.  And there’s this one guy who’s slumped in a wheelchair looking
totally out of it, and he opens his mouth and the guy puts a pill in it.  So
after the orderly leaves, the guy looks around and when he sees that the
orderly’s gone, he sits up straight in his chair and spits the pill into his
hand.”

“No way.”

“Seriously.  Fee saw it too.  He was faking it, pretending to
be out of it.”

“That’s weird.”

“So we came out of the closet and Fee started at one end of the
room and went around asking everyone if they knew her brother.  So I started at
the opposite end doing the same, but no one knew him.  And then the Faker calls
out to Fee across the room, “You’re looking for Jackson Whitaker?”

“So Fee and I run over there all excited, but kind of scared
because of what we saw – you know, the pill and all – and he asks what we want
with Jackson.  Fee tells him that Jackson is her brother.  And the Faker says, 
‘I’ll tell you about your brother, but only if you help me get out of here.’
And I’m thinking that this guy is really nuts, when all of a sudden I feel this
vice grip on my shoulder and the orderly yanks me away from the Faker.  He’s
got one hand on my shoulder and the other around Felicia’s wrist and the guy
literally drags us out of the room, while the Faker is yelling at us and
pleading for us to help him and not to leave him there.  Oh my God, it was
awful, Samuel!  There was something in the guy’s voice that was so desperate.”

I didn’t give a shit about the Faker, but I was furious that
someone would manhandle my wife.  I wanted to beat the crap out of the guy. 
“Did you get the bastard’s name?”

“No.  He didn’t tell us.  But I think we need to help him,
Samuel.”

“Not the Faker!  The orderly.  Did you get his name?”

“Forget the orderly,” she said with a wave of dismissal. 
“We’re worried about the patient.  And he has information on my cousin.”

“You don’t need to be questioning psycho patients about your
cousin, Maddie.  I told you we’d go back with a court order.  You can question
your cousin personally.  Finish your story.  Did the orderly call the cops?”