“I have to go to work in the morning,” he says, walking into the foyer. “But I’m going to leave the Expedition for you.”
“What will you drive?”
“I have a motorcycle.”
“A motorcycle?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Well…” A strange laugh escapes my lips. “You have a plane and a motorcycle. I guess I associate that with a certain kind of guy. And you don’t seem like that kind of guy.”
“It doesn’t pay to stereotype people.”
“Touche.”
He takes a step back toward the kitchen. “I’ll leave the keys on the counter.”
I start to go up, but something has been nagging me since he said it. “Michael, what you said before…about why mothers keep quiet about abuse going on in their homes?”
“Yes?”
“You said they do it to keep their families together, right?”
“Right.”
“I would think that’s because the father in those situations is the primary breadwinner. The source of support for the whole family.”
Michael nods. “Exactly. The abuser creates a situation in which everyone in the family is dependent upon him. By denying the abuse, the mother avoids her worst nightmares of abandonment and poverty.”
“But that doesn’t work in my case, see? For my family.”
“Because your father wasn’t the provider?”
“Right. My grandfather was.”
“What about your father’s sculpting?”
“He didn’t make any real money from that until a couple of years before his death. Grandpapa paid for everything. I mean, we lived in his slave quarters, for God’s sake. It sounds terrible, but if my dad had been hit by a bus, it wouldn’t have affected our situation in the least.”
“Materially speaking,” Michael says. “But money isn’t everything. Based on what you’ve told me tonight, I think your father’s early death went a long way toward wrecking your life.”
He’s right, of course.
Michael steps back toward the staircase. “So why would your mother deny that your father was abusing you if she didn’t have to fear losing him?”
I feel blood heat my cheeks. “Right.”
“It may be that she didn’t really know about it. But think…your father returned from Vietnam with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. He told you himself that you couldn’t be around him at certain times. Now you’ve learned that he was part of a military unit that committed atrocities during the war. It would probably be difficult to overestimate your mother’s fear of what that man might do to her-or to you-if she confronted him about abuse, or worse, tried to take you away from him.”
Michael’s logic leaves me in cold shock. Why is it so easy to see the essential nature of relationships in other people’s families but not in our own? I’ve been angry at my mother for years, and I didn’t know why. Today I thought I’d discovered the reason. But now…given an idea of what it must have been like to live with Daddy, not as a blindly loving daughter but as a wife, my mother seems a completely different person to me.
Michael lays his hand over mine, which is resting on the newel post. “Get some sleep, Cat. It’s going to take a while for all this to sink in.”
I’ve gotten similar advice countless times from the women in my life:
“You’re welcome.” He withdraws his hand and walks back toward the kitchen.
I slowly climb the stairs and flick on the light in the first bedroom to my right. The walls are pale yellow, and the queen bed has a white comforter on it. Walking to the window, I see that it overlooks the glowing blue rectangle of the swimming pool.
I can sleep here.
The bathroom is stocked with towels and toiletries, even a new toothbrush. I strip off the warm-up pants and T-shirt Michael brought me, then lean into the shower to turn the faucet handles. Before I can, the opening notes of “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” fill the bathroom. I glance at the screen of my cell phone, and my pulse instantly accelerates. It’s a New Orleans number that I don’t recognize. Nathan Malik?
I press SEND and then hold the phone to my ear.
“Dr. Ferry?” says a man who sounds nothing like Dr. Malik.
“Yes?” I say cautiously.
“This is John Kaiser. I need to talk to you about Nathan Malik.”
Chapter 34
“Is he alive?” I ask without any rational reason.
The silence that follows this question seems interminable. I sit on the lid of Michael Wells’s commode and wait for Agent Kaiser to tip me off my precarious mental precipice.
“Why would you ask me that question?” he asks. “Didn’t you speak to Dr. Malik earlier tonight?”
Sean’s warning that Malik might be declared a fugitive from a murder charge comes back to me with all its implications. “Yes,” I confess. “Briefly.”
“You’re aware Dr. Malik purposefully evaded surveillance and will be declared a fugitive if he leaves Louisiana?”
Two things hit me instantly: one, Kaiser is speaking for a tape recorder; two, Sean obviously told Kaiser about our conversation. “Yes. I think you know that.”
“Did Malik give you any idea where he was when you were talking?”
“No, but you must have figured that out by now.”
A brief pause. “He called you from a pay phone on the West Bank in New Orleans. By the time we got a car there, he was gone.”
“Is that right?” I stall, trying to gather my wits. It’s disorienting to deal with this call while naked in the guest bathroom of Michael Wells’s house. I’d do better in my own house, or even in my car. But one thing I know: if Malik was on the West Bank when he called me, he could not have been shooting at me on the island.
“Dr. Ferry,” Kaiser says in a softer voice. “You’ve asked me to call you Cat. May I do that?”
“Sure,” I say, pulling the T-shirt back on.
“I need to cover several things with you quickly. I want you to tell me everything that pops into your head while we talk. Is there any reason you feel you won’t be able to do that?”
“Such as?”
“Some sort of loyalty to Dr. Malik.”
My cheeks burn. “I told you, I don’t even know the guy! You heard every word of our meeting in his office.”
“Yes, I did. But clearly the two of you feel some sort of rapport. An emotional connection. Perhaps it has to do with your similar medical histories.”
I close my eyes, wondering how much Kaiser knows about my personal life. Did Sean tell him about my sexual abuse? “Please go ahead with your questions, Agent Kaiser.”
“All right. Are you absolutely positive that Dr. Malik never treated you as a patient?”
“Yes.”
“Did Sean Regan tell you that we finally found a patient of Malik’s who would talk to us?”
“No.”
“Like his other patients, she feels great loyalty to Malik, but she had to drop out of her therapy group with
