One We Love, The (20 page)

CHAPTER FORTY SIX

A
fter Sue had
dragged the full story of my recent endeavors out of me, I had my hands full
convincing her not to kill me herself. I finally pointed out it was ungodly to
kill your sponsee, but she took some persuading.

The conversation was helpful, though, because it really showcased
my rampant stupidity. At least one person, probably several, were dead and two
attacked, and I was still running around like Nancy Drew-on-steroids, as it had
so eloquently been phrased.

I was out of my league. Maybe even out of my mind.

Running to Blodgett wasn’t an option. In fact, a twinge of
guilt—more like a cramp, really—reminded me of just how badly I’d been
neglecting my friend. Instead of facing Diana, I’d been calling the nurses’
station to check on him, even when I knew they wouldn’t tell me anything
substantive. I needed to make amends, but I decided to hold off until I could
get the rest of this settled. Maybe, by then, I’d have answers. Maybe I’d be
able to tell them that his attack had nothing to do with Regina’s death or the
shelter. Or me.

I made myself three promises: I’d hand over my suspicions to
Pete Durrant, I’d pull out of the shelter before anyone else got hurt. And
then
I’d apologize to the Blodgett’s. I’d make it right.

I tumbled into bed and slept like the dead.

A
fter sleeping so
much the day before, I woke early. Way too early. I felt okay about my
resolutions, but there were still too many dangling questions to feel truly
comfortable. It felt like I’d been dreaming all night, but when I tried to
focus on them, they floated away like spider webs on a breeze.

Durrant’s call was another thing that had left me uneasy.
Scared, really. The snatched charm proved, to me at least, that the attack on
me was directly connected with Regina’s death. Any other day this might have
felt like simplistic reasoning. Achieving it with a bruised, Jell-O brain made
me feel like I’d been inducted into Mensa.

Since I was doing so well, I worked on recreating the events
that had left a blank spot in my memory. I found I had pretty good recall up
until just after my meeting with Clotilde. Looking at my calendar had helped
jog that loose.

Edna, my suicidal client, was the easiest to remember.
Details about her situation kept pouring in—her navy-blue dress; the afghan
she’d been working on; God bless her, the refrigerator she’d cleaned.

It was time for some music/hydro/aroma/chocolate therapy. I
made a cup of rich, hot chocolate, ran a bath sprinkled with flowery bath
salts, and after putting some light classical music on, settled in for a soak.
I promised myself I wouldn’t push. I wouldn’t beat myself up. Bits and pieces
of the blank areas, like confetti, started drifting back.

The red yarn. I’d told Durrant something about red yarn. A
crystal clear image appeared—Joyce and the blood red yarn spilling from her
fingers. I shivered.

Try as I might, I couldn’t remember anything after telling
Joyce’s knitting group about the study. There were still holes, but I could
only hope that more of it would come back.

The image of Joyce stayed with me. I toweled off, hurrying
to Regina’s files again. The copy of the newsletter was underneath the stack. I
flipped to the board members. Joyce Trent.

Google to the rescue, where I found another hidden history.
There were a lot of hits. The first, an article from seventeen years ago,
described the acquittal of Joyce Trent for the manslaughter death of her
husband, Phillip.

Her case, one of the first battered women defense efforts in
this area, pulled a lot of media attention. The extent of her long-term
victimization shocked the community, spawning questions about women’s rights
and the unusual defense that was being used. Clotilde was quoted several times,
and one whole article focused on Devlin House and the work done there.

After the announcement of the jury’s decision to acquit,
there was silence, broken only by one mention of the case at the year
anniversary mark that coincided with a similar case. That woman was found
guilty, I noted. Whether Joyce had wanted to be the poster child for women’s
rights, which I doubted, she’d practically taken a vow of silence afterward.
Nowadays, she’d have been booked on twenty talk shows and have had a movie in
development before the jury even deliberated.

With a start, I realized I was going to be late for the
shelter’s team meeting.

T
he side drive
was full of the shelter staffs’ cars, although I hadn’t been around long enough
to know who drove which car. I parked out on the street and entered through the
back kitchen door, hoping to nab some much-needed coffee on the way through. No
such luck.

Giving up on locating a source of caffeine, I moved farther
into the shelter. As I got closer to the group therapy room—the only room
besides the kitchen large enough to hold all of the shelter’s staff—I expected
to hear people talking; maybe, since it was early, to hear people shifting
chairs and tables around trying to fit everyone in.

But all was quiet. Too quiet?

I opened the group room door cautiously, half afraid Lachlyn
was going to spring at me like a demented jack-in-the-box—all freaky, bizarro
clown face and maniacal laughter.

She was there. They all were, including several women I’d
only had minimal contact with, and all so quiet that at first I feared I’d
interrupted a prayer service. But the feeling emanating from the gathering was
not peace. A fission of emotion seeped through the air—palpable anger, a touch
of fear?
Whose?

A half-dozen metal chairs had been added to the group circle.
The staff sat frozen, utterly silent, all eyes glued on Clotilde who had pulled
her chair back and away, creating a break in the circle, a sickle moon shape of
women arcing around her. If she was serious about running for office, she could
certainly count on a cadre of women helping her rise to power. An image flashed
through my mind—female acolytes serving at the feet of their warrior priestess.

“Hi, Letty!” A hoarse faux-whisper from the corner behind me
made me squeak and jump in surprise. As I flipped around, I heard the rustle of
clothes as the entire congregation swiveled with me to stare at the source of
the whisper.

Paul?
 

He sat tucked against the wall, segregated from the women
and perched like a Victorian virgin—bolt upright, knees together, hands clasped
in his lap—on the edge of his seat. Wide, anxious puppy eyes told me where the
“touch of fear” emanated from.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

Before he could answer, the hair on the back of my neck
zinged up; Paul’s gaze jumped from my face to just over my shoulder. I spun
around so quickly that I gave myself a free buzz.

Clotilde stood directly behind me. Lachlyn had taken up a
post at her side, apparently resuming her bodyguard persona. This didn’t seem
like the time to point out they were both invading my bubble.

“I see you two know each other.” Clotilde said.

“Um, kind of. I mean, we have some mutual friends—”

Suspicion curled around the barely suppressed anger already
marring her face. Her eyes took on that blank, inward gaze that occurs when two
disparate ideas combine in our minds to make a new whole. The light bulb
moment. Only it didn’t make her look bright and sparkly.

“I need to talk to you two. Go wait in my office.”

“Now?” I asked. I’d been gearing up all night to announce my
leave-taking and this seemed anticlimactic.

“
Now.
” She spun on her heel and walked back to her
chair.

“Sure. No problem.” I struggled to play it off, but my face
was suffused with heat and my voice shook. I’d never been sent to the
principal’s office, but from the dread-heavy feeling roiling loosely around my bowels,
I now knew what it felt like. I struggled with the urge to protest my innocence,
especially strong since I actually
was
innocent.

Lachlyn stepped back and gestured toward the door,
effectively escorting us out of the room. She trailed after, apparently not
trusting us to do what we were told. She was right; if she weren’t between me
and the door, I would have bolted.

I couldn’t leave Paul, though. I doubted he could keep up
and he’d be like a little, lost gazelle for the lionesses to feast on. With
Lachlyn at his back, he crowded up on me, stepping on my heels three times
before we reached Clotilde’s office. Lachlyn, still silent, watched us take our
seats, then pointedly left the door standing wide open as she left.

Surprised she wasn’t going to take a sentry stance outside
the door, I barely waited for her receding footsteps to reach the group room
before turning to Paul.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Despite the circumstances, a happy grin flashed out. “I’m
going to intern here. Cool, huh?”

“What . . .” I stopped talking and mashed my palms against
my eyeballs. I knew Paul wasn’t stupid, but he was one of those common-sense
deficient people who make you want to issue helmets and guardian angels at
birth. “Paul, this was
not
a good idea. They’re going to think that I—”

The group door banged open. Clotilde strode into her office,
circling her desk like a panther on steroids, and slammed an armful of folders
and paperwork down. The pile teetered precariously, then slid sideways knocking
a recycled play dough cup full of pens over the side with a clatter.

Paul stopped grinning.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

C
lotilde glared
at us over the desktop. Turning to Paul, she said, “Spell your name.”

He paled, mouth agape as though coming face-to-face with his
worst show-up-naked-to-class-and-take-a-pop-quiz nightmare. “My name?” he said.
It took longer than two syllables normally would because a stutter stretched it
to twelve.

Clotilde sat motionless, glaring with flat, unblinking
steadiness.

Eventually he managed to connect a series of letters that
sounded like P-p-p-p-pee, a-a-ay, yu-yu-yu-l. He waited as though hoping that,
as in A.A., first names would suffice.

It didn’t. Clotilde maintained her dead-eye stare and Paul
embarked on his last name. It was a long name, too, or seemed like it. Sweat
beaded across his forehead, then trickled in salty, erratic paths down his face.
Because of A.A.’s first-name-only policy, I couldn’t even help him, making my
stomach cramp with a bilious mix of fear and frustrated enabling tendencies.
Eventually, utilizing Miss Marple-like decoding skills (which involved dropping
a letter if he repeated it multiple times,) I came up with “Paul LaFontaigne.”   

I was so relieved, I almost clapped when he finished. Paul slumped
back in his chair and we beamed at each other.

Clotilde remained unimpressed. She was a hard-hearted little
cookie. If anything, she looked even more malevolent.

“Paul LaFontaigne,” she said in a flat, monotone.

Paul nodded.

She repeated it, quicker this time, and that’s when I
understood.

“You thought he was a girl,” I said. “Paula Fontaigne.
That’s why you accepted him as an intern.”

“I didn’t accept him. Astrid did. Over the phone, I might
add, and as a favor to Kaylee Schroeder at the college. They’re sending the
paperwork over today. Nobody else wanted him.”

Paul gulped. He bowed his head, staring at the cheap
carpeting. I watched a red stain creep up the back of his thin neck.

Now I was pissed.

“A favor to the college? Really? Because I doubt you had a
lot of interns lining up to get in here. In fact, the board said you didn’t
have any. What’s the matter, Clotilde? Are people hearing what it’s like to
work here? It can’t be fun. The pay sucks, the building is decrepit and falling
down around your ears, you’ve got practically no funds, and frankly, the staff
are a bunch of mean, bitter zealots who have lost sight of what it means to
help others.”

“Lost sight?” she hissed. A teensy arc of spittle made me
grateful for the desk between us. “Just what is it you think we do here? We’re
here, every day, day in, day out.
Every
day!

These women come to us because they know that we'll—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Warrior women on a mission. I’ve
heard all that. And you
do
help. I never said you didn’t. I said you’ve
lost sight of what it
means
to help others. You and your minions have
gotten so caught up in making this a war that you’ve turned the rest of the
world into an enemy.”

We'd locked eyes and were both leaning forward as though
ready to launch ourselves across the desk at each other. She gripped the arms
of her chair so hard I expected her fingernails—short and stubby as they
were—to snap off.

"You'll never understand what we're doing here and you never
will. But if you think you're going to stack the deck with all your friends,
you are sadly mistaken. I will not tolerate it. You will
never
be—"

"It's just for a semester," a tiny voice next to
me said.

Startled, we broke the stare-off and turned toward it.

Paul. I'd forgotten about him. I realized I'd gone too far,
disclosed too much. Lost control. Maybe Clotilde thought so, too, because just
then we seemed to share a disturbing moment of synchrony as each of us sat
back, took two cleansing breaths, and willed our muscles to relax. Therapists
are so predictable.  

"If you think we're so misguided, why are you
here?" Clotilde finally asked. Control had descended like a shroud,
enveloping her features with a veil of inscrutability.

A multitude of answers flooded my brain. Exhausted, I reverted
to an AA basic: K.I.S.S.— keep it simple, stupid. "Because Regina needed
me to be."

"Then why are you still here?"  

"Because I'm not done." Technically, I
was
done
with the original task, but Regina still needed me. “And despite what you may
think, Paul has nothing to do with this.”

Silence descended. Clotilde’s jaw muscles pulsed and she
shifted her eyes away, thinking. After a few moments, she said, "I will
not have the women upset by his presence." She refused to look at Paul.
"Since you’ve forced yourself upon us, you can be his internship
supervisor. If you screw it up, he flunks. He can help you with the efficacy
study paperwork, and he can observe the group counseling sessions provided he
says nothing, sits in the back, and only if either you or Lachlyn are in
attendance. If I get any complaint, even one, he's out. Do you
understand?"

"Yes," I said.

And she was out the door.