In Confidence. Karen Young

help myself.”

      Rachel drove back to Rose Hill with a silent and sullen Jason Pate. He sat slumped in the seat beside her, the headset of his CD player vibrating at a decibel level that was certain to damage his eardrums. Accepting the silence as a missed opportunity on her part to try to do some good with the boy, Rachel’s own emotions were also in turmoil, and it was all she could do to hold herself together.

      Actually, she felt numb. But she knew, as a professional, that when something shocking or hurtful or grievous strikes an individual, going numb is a temporary coping mechanism sometimes necessary for survival. She needed time to decide how best to deal with this. A part of her was still clinging to shocked disbelief. To denial. Ted couldn’t possibly be serious. This was a crazy, midlife crisis thing and he would get over it. Then, maybe the horror of telling Nick and Kendall, destroying their illusions about their father, would not be necessary.

      On the other hand, if he was determined to carry on the affair, what then? She hadn’t asked him if he was planning on getting a divorce. In the first shock of discovering Ted’s infidelity, she didn’t think she was ready to consider ending her marriage.

      Definitely denial.

      Considering she’d left Dallas later than planned, she didn’t arrive in Rose Hill until after school was over for the day. She’d reached Nick on his cell phone after arranging with her friend, Marta Ruiz, a teacher at Rose Hill High, to pick up the kids and see that they were settled at home until she got back, leaving Nick in charge. Marta had been happy to oblige. Widowed after a brief marriage and childless, Marta had been Rachel’s friend since her first day on the job at Rose Hill High. At thirty-three, Marta was an award-winning honors English teacher and a great favorite with the kids, even while forcing them to read Thomas Mann and Shakespeare.

      “Is everything okay?” she’d wanted to know. “You sound funny, Ray.”

      “Everything’s fine,” Rachel had lied. “It’s been a hassle fighting bureaucrats in the Texas legal system.”

      “We’re bureaucrats, too,” Marta pointed out dryly. “I’d think you’d have a leg up, being entrenched yourself.”

      “Yes, but we don’t have to deal with lawyers,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I’ve got Jason now, and after I drop him off at school where Coach Monk awaits, I’ll go straight home. Are you sure it’s not an inconvenience to pick up the kids and drop them at my house?”

      “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll even stay awhile and watch Kendall if Nick wants to hang out with his buddies.” She paused. “I guess Ted couldn’t get away.”

      It wasn’t exactly a question. “No, he’s tied up…into the evening.”

      “Hmm.”

      Marta never bothered to hide her disapproval of Ted. She considered him neglectful as a father and selfish as a husband. “It’s a doctor-thing,” she was fond of saying. “They’ve got too much ego and you’re so attuned to everybody else’s needs that you never stop to consider your own.”

      “I don’t have any needs that go unfulfilled,” she’d disputed on the day of that conversation, “or at least none that cause me much heartburn.”

      Now, recalling her words, she felt like a complete idiot. Of course she had needs, and now that she’d been slapped in the face with her husband’s infidelity, she admitted to sensing something wrong in her marriage for quite a while. Was this the prelude to divorce? Were she and Ted destined to go their separate ways? Would Nick and Kendall wind up as part of two “blended” families one day?

      At a traffic light, she fought off a wave of despair. One thing she had decided during her soul-search on the way home—she wasn’t going to mention anything to the kids just yet. Before tearing their lives apart, she and Ted would have to talk, but it would not be tonight. She was too filled with conflicting emotions to face it tonight.

      Her cell phone rang as the light turned green. She reached for it, glancing at the number without recognition. “Hello?”

      “Is this Rachel Forrester?”

      It was a man’s voice. She frowned, trying to place it. “Yes, who is this?”

      “It’s Cameron Ford. Dinah gave me your number,” he said.

      Cameron Ford. She was momentarily speechless. Why would he be calling her? They hadn’t spoken since that distressing confrontation in her office five years ago.

      “I’m at the hospital,” he said.

      “Yes?” She waited, still in the dark.

      “It’s your mother.”

      “My mother?” Her heart stopped. “Oh, Lord. What is it? What’s wrong?”

      “She’s in the emergency room. She wanted me to let you know.”

      Two

      Cameron Ford ended the call to Rachel Forrester and stood, grim-faced, in the waiting room of the ER to wait for her. It had been a helluva shock to look out his kitchen window and see his elderly neighbor lying unconscious in her azaleas. It had been another shock—and this one almost as unpleasant—to learn that she was Rachel Forrester’s mother. Dinah Hunt had moved next door a couple of months before, but he had not made any of the usual hospitable gestures that he might have done to welcome her. He was pretty much a solitary type to begin with, plus he’d been on deadline with his book and, as always, nothing and no one got much more than momentary interest until he was done. He’d noticed the woman and felt relieved that she lived alone and would probably be a quiet, unobtrusive neighbor.

      Which was his excuse for not being more attentive. But what, he wondered, was Rachel’s excuse? He did not recall seeing her over there in the weeks since Dinah moved in. You’d think her daughter would have put in an appearance or two. Too busy sticking her nose into other people’s lives to put in time with her aging mother, he thought. But he’d heard real panic in her voice when he’d called just now. He’d been unable to give her any information since he hadn’t been told anything himself when he’d arrived at the hospital with Dinah, incoherent and pale as the white gardenias she prized. But at least she’d been conscious, sort of. When he’d reached her after spotting her lying at the edge of the flower beds separating their two houses, he had been pretty close to panic himself.

      “Sir? Excuse me, sir.”

      He turned to find a woman beckoning to him from a cubicle behind a sliding glass partition. With a last look outside, he went to her. “What’s the problem?”

      “We need some insurance information on Mrs. Hunt.”

      “I’m sorry, I can’t help you. She’s my next-door neighbor, not a relative. I happened to see her when she fainted out in the yard.”

      The clerk frowned. “I need to know how to bill this, sir.”

      “If you’ll wait a few minutes, you can probably get everything you need from her daughter, who should be here any minute. Dinah told me flat-out that she wasn’t staying. I had a heck of a time just getting her here.”

      The clerk sniffed and shuffled forms. “You should have called 911. EMTs are trained to deal with the elderly.”

      “I’ll remember that next time,” he said dryly. He glanced again at the entrance just as Rachel rushed inside looking flustered and anxious. “Here’s her daughter now.” Cameron lifted his hand, catching her eye, and she hurried over.

      “Where is she? What’s wrong? Is it a heart attack?”

      “They haven’t given me any information, but maybe the clerk here can tell you something. For what it’s worth, your mother regained consciousness in the car and did her best to talk me out of bringing her here. She claimed she wasn’t having chest pains, so I don’t think it’s a heart attack.”

      Rachel turned