Searching for Cate (7 page)

The seconds ticked away and he had to be getting down to his office, but something about her made him linger just a few minutes longer. He saw no harm in telling her his discipline.

“I'm a gynecologist.”

Her mind quickly flipped through the conditions attached to his specialty. “Only two things would have
a woman as upset as Mrs. Cunningham looked even before I told her who I was. A change-of-life baby…” Her voice trailed off as something far worse occurred to her. “Oh, God, it's cancer, isn't it?”

He saw distress before she could mask it. He thought of what had to be going through her head. To find her birth mother, only to think she was losing her again. It made him want to tell her that things were being handled. But to say that, he would have had to admit that there was something wrong. And his allegiance was to his patient, not the blonde sitting beside him.

Christian shook his head. “I can't tell you.”

She hated not knowing, hated being shut out. Frustration had her fisting her hands in her lap. “What
can
you tell me?”

“That if this is on the level and for some inner peace you need to have Joan accept you as her daughter, that you take this slowly. Let her get used to the idea,” he advised.

That would be his approach, it always had been. Slow and steady. Only once in his life had he jumped in with both feet, and that was to threaten Alma's father to keep away from her.

“If Joan is your mother the way you say,” he added as he saw the protest rise to her lips, “she probably thought she'd never see you again. She certainly didn't expect you to pop up on what she undoubtedly feels is one of the darkest days of her life.”

Was he doing that on purpose, teasing her with information he wouldn't give her? No, she doubted that. Gut instincts told her that this was a man who didn't
tease.
Too bad.
The thought came from nowhere and she had no idea why it materialized in her brain. She began to entertain the thought that, just possibly, she was going a little crazy. Who could blame her?

Cate sighed, regarding him a moment in silence. Wondering what made him tick. Wondering what she could use to her advantage. He seemed nice enough, or else why would he be here, talking to her now? But his allegiance was clearly to his patient. “You won't tell me if I guess right, will you?”

“I took an oath.”

“To what, torture the bastard daughters of your patients?” This time, Cate was certain she saw a hint of a smile quirk his lips.

“No, to keep my patients' confidences just between us.” Christian debated for a moment, then decided to tell her the little that he could. “I will tell you this, though. Joan never mentioned having another daughter besides Rebecca.”

The laugh that left her lips was completely without humor. Her eyes challenged his. They were flashing with barely suppressed anger. He had to admit, the sight was compelling.

“And you would tell me if she'd filled out on her patient history form: ‘Gave away one daughter because I wasn't ready to be a mother yet.'”

In her position, he was pretty sure he would have felt the same. But he wasn't in her position. And his position was to guard Joan's privacy. “If she had, I wouldn't say anything. But since she hadn't, I can tell you. I can also tell you that maybe you should think about signing up for an anger-management class.”

And who the hell was he to tell her what to do? She could feel her temper rising dangerously close to the surface. Cate squared her shoulders. “I can manage my anger just fine, thanks.”

Instead of getting up and walking out the way she'd expected him to, her mother's doctor took her wrist and placed his fingers against her pulse. Her anger square-danced with a strange surge of warmth that washed over her.

“That's not what your pulse is saying.” His eyes held hers. “It's accelerated.”

Cate yanked away her wrist. The warm feeling stayed, but it was being smothered by a wave of anger fueled by indignation. “Maybe that's because a good-looking man is holding it.”

Christian took it as a sarcastic remark. If there was the tiniest part of him that reacted, he attributed it to a trying morning, nothing more. He'd hoped that Joan's tests would have returned negative from the lab.

“You have better control over yourself than that” was all he said. He took his cup, rinsed it out and placed it on the counter again. “I've got to go to my office.” After drying his hands, he put back the towel and saw that she was staring at him. “What?”

His comment about her having better control over herself than that left her momentarily speechless. Rallying, she searched for something plausible to say. Cate glanced at the mug draining on the counter. “I never saw a man rinse out his own cup before, that's all.”

He had a feeling she was lying, but he went along with it. “Part of being allowed to use the nurses' lounge. I remove all traces of having been here.”

“Except for the money you leave in the can.” She nodded toward it.

“Except for that.” It occurred to him that maybe the woman needed more time to pull herself together, although she didn't look it. But he was the first to know that the exterior didn't always give away what was happening beneath. People thought of him as stoic and he was anything but. It was only a role he took on. “You can stay here as long as you like,” he said as he began to open the door.

But Cate was already on her feet. She quickly rinsed out the cup he'd given her and was beside him in less time than he would have thought possible.

“I just took a few hours of personal time to try to resolve this.” The expression on her face was contrite. She realized that something this huge required more than “a few hours of personal time.” “I need to be getting back, too.”

Christian held the door open for her.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “For the coffee and the talk.”

“Even if it wasn't fruitful?”

“Everyone's got their own interpretation of ‘fruitful,'” she replied.

He couldn't quite read the smile on her face. He supposed that was why the word
enigmatic
was created.

They parted in the hallway. He had a feeling deep in his gut that this wasn't going to be the last time he saw her. The FBI special agent didn't strike him as the kind of woman who gave up easily. She reminded him a great deal of his sister-in-law.

Christian hadn't lied about needing to get to his of
fice. He had patients scheduled all morning. But the first up was an annual exam with Sally Jacobs, who'd had no particular complaints when she'd made the appointment with his nurse. Christian decided that the annual exam could wait a few minutes.

Instead, he went back to Joan's room to check on her. He wanted to see if the sedative had taken hold yet and if she was doing better than when he had left her.

Knocking once, he opened the door when he heard the muffled, “Come in.”

Joan was sitting up in bed, shredding a tissue into a hundred tiny pieces. Out of habit, Christian picked up the chart hanging off the edge of her bed to see if the right dosage had been given. There had never been any mistakes of major consequence at Blair Memorial, just a few minor inconveniences. Delays in lab results, a food menu lost, things of that nature. Nothing to warrant any anxiety. Checking the chart was a pretext.

His real concern was Joan.

After a beat, Christian set the chart back where it belonged and approached her. “Is the sedative helping any, Joan?”

For a moment, she didn't appear to hear him. Joan seemed lost in thought, lost in her own world. A world that, if he read the signs on her face correctly, caused her a great deal of anxiety.

And then, just as he was going to ask her something, she suddenly said, “I got pregnant at seventeen.” There were tears in her eyes when she glanced up at him. “I'd only done it that one time.”

“Once is all it takes.”

She laughed sadly as she began to shred another tissue.

“I found that out fast enough. I was so scared.” When she turned her eyes on him again, he saw the frightened girl she'd once been. “One minute you've got the whole world up before you, the next, there are all these responsibilities. A baby.” She shook her head in wonder, remembering. “I was only a baby myself.”

Her breathing grew shaky as she relived that time again. “I had to tell my mother. Had to watch the disappointment on her face. And my father…” Her voice drifted off. There were things she was just unable to put into words, even after all this time. “They didn't want me to have an abortion, so I went through it. The whole nine months.” She closed her eyes for a moment. A tear seeped through. “The checkups, the first kick, everything. Everyone said the labor would be hard, but it wasn't.”

Joan opened her eyes again, looking at him. Silently asking him to understand, to forgive the sin that seeing her daughter again reminded her she was carrying. The years had made her forget.

“Giving her away was hard. Hardest thing I ever did. But there wasn't anything I could give her. If I kept her, both our lives would have been over. I did the right thing,” she insisted.

“No one's judging you, Joan,” he said kindly. “You did what you felt was right. But why don't you admit to her that you're her mother and finally put her mind at ease? You might put your own at ease, too.”

He wasn't prepared for the fear he saw wash over her face. She shook her head from side to side. “I can't, oh, I can't.”

Was she afraid that her daughter would ultimately reject her because she'd been given away at birth? He doubted that Cate would have gone to all this trouble for that. He could be wrong, but he didn't get the feeling that the special agent was a vengeful person. “She'd forgive you in time, Joan.”

Joan looked at him in confusion, and then she realized what he was saying. “But my husband's family wouldn't.” She began to explain quickly. “It's taken me all these years to have them accept me. They never thought I was good enough for Ron, that he was marrying beneath him. If they found out that I'd had a baby before I met Ron—”

“People don't stone women for having babies out of wedlock in this country, Joan.”

She laughed shortly. “You don't know my in-laws. They make the townspeople in
The Scarlet Letter
look like the Muppets. If my husband found out—” She thought of Ron's face and how it would look. His disappointment would be too much for her to bear. “No, they can't find out. Nobody can.” She grabbed the doctor's hand, clutching it as she implored, “Promise me you won't tell them.”

Christian did what he could to set her mind at ease. “Joan, I'm your doctor. In this case, it's kind of like being your priest, listening to your confession. I'm not about to tell anyone anything. That's up to you. Although I think you'd feel a lot better if you did.”

There was no way she would feel better. She was too old to start over. “I never felt good poor, Doctor. I've been poor. Rich is much better.”

Money was one thing, but it was far from the answer
to everything. Joan Cunningham was a good woman. Would her conscience let her have any peace, now that her daughter had made a reappearance in her life?

“Right now, I want you to put everything out of your mind,” Christian instructed her. “I need you upbeat for the surgery.”

She'd forgotten about that for a minute. The specter of the surgery moved forward, casting its shadow over her. A firm believer in yoga, Joan closed her eyes, trying to picture herself walking along a long, winding beach. Searching for peace. Holding desperation at bay.

“I'll do my best,” she whispered.

T
he surgery went well.

Christian had lined up the best surgeon for Joan and assisted during the procedure. Sample tissues were rushed to the pathology lab while Joan was still under the anesthetic. The results were what they expected and they went ahead with the procedure that had been decided on.

Although the tumor turned out to be cancerous, it seemed to have been caught in time. Before it could begin spreading its poison. To be on the safe side, lymph nodes surrounding the area were removed. The prognosis was positive.

When he told Joan that she was going to be all right, she'd cried tears of joy. Of relief.

Her husband was in the room with her. The tall, gray-haired man had stood over her when the news was
delivered and had stoically squeezed her hand. Christian remembered thinking that there seemed to be a great deal of bottled-up emotion within the man.

Not unlike himself, he thought as he left the room.

Taking the elevator, he went down to the first floor and out to the parking lot. It was still chilly, but the rain that had been promised had slipped away. This was their rainy season and it had only done so a handful of times. Looked like another dry year, he mused.

Christian got in behind the wheel of his car. He still drove the same car he'd had in medical school, the one he'd almost single-handedly resurrected at Henry's behest. He could afford a better one now, but the car still ran and it suited his purpose of getting from here to there. Wealth and its trappings had never meant anything to him, the way they did to Joan.

Because it was Friday and he found himself needing to touch base, he drove to the private airfield instead of his small apartment.

He was going home. His real home. Where he had grown up. Where they still needed him.

As he drove, he wondered if Joan's husband would react the way she thought he would if he found out her secret. The man in the hospital room had looked relieved, even though he'd actually said nothing. Ron Cunningham had struck him as someone who cared deeply but couldn't bring himself to say it. Had probably been raised that way, to keep things bottled up. It was obvious that Joan would benefit from having some of those feelings released.

Every woman needed to hear words of endearment, words of comfort. Had he said them enough to Alma?
Had he told her he loved her enough? Had he done everything he could have to get through to her?

Would she still have killed herself if he'd talked to her more, said those words more often? He pondered this as he sat back on the commuter plane that was taking him to Mesa Roja, the closest town he could reach before the reservation. He and Lukas had a standing arrangement with Jake Anderson, the man who ran the used-car dealership in Mesa Roja. They'd rent a vehicle for the duration of their stay at the reservation. The man did it as a gesture of good will—and because he knew that neither one of the Drs. Graywolf would do anything to cause damage to his precious property.

A slight tremor went through the plane as turbulence challenged the pilot's skill. The first time it had happened, Christian remembered getting violently ill. Not so much from the swaying as from the thought of crashing. But withstanding turbulence had become so commonplace for him, Christian hardly noticed it now.

His thoughts were elsewhere.

With a girl who'd had a heart-shaped face and the saddest dark eyes he'd ever seen. Her eyes were so dark, they looked almost as black as her long, shining black hair.

He couldn't remember a time when he hadn't loved Alma. Most likely, it was love at first sight. They'd grown up together on the reservation. He with his partial family, she with hers. He used to joke that between them, they had a complete unit. Because in Alma's case, it was her mother who was no longer there. Death hadn't claimed her the way it had his father, she'd walked out.

And left her daughter with her husband. The man, he later learned, quickly turned to his daughter for comfort. From the time she was seven years old she'd been used by Alan Three Feathers as his surrogate wife. Scarring her forever.

When she had finally confided in him what her father was doing, Christian had been filled with such rage, he could barely see. Going to him, he'd threatened to kill the man if he ever laid so much as a finger on her again. As it happened, Uncle Henry had overheard the exchange and had his own talk with the man. Shortly thereafter, a very bruised-and-battered Alan Three Feathers disappeared off the reservation. Permanently.

Because he'd begged her, his mother took Alma in. He'd hoped that with a loving home around her, Alma would bury the past and the damage it had done. She'd fooled them all into believing she was getting better. Only sometimes, when the two of them were alone and talking, he'd see that look in her eyes. That look that belonged to a whipped dog who had no hope, no inner resources to draw on. It made him feel powerless. He tried harder to make it all up to her, to love her with every fiber of his being.

He went to college close by, but medical school was another story. He had to go where he was accepted. He remembered how terrified Alma had been when she found out he would be going away. She'd begged him to take her with him. To get her away from the reservation because she was afraid that someday, her father would come back for her.

Christian could never say no to her. They lived together in a little one-room flat close to the campus.

For a time, she worked as a waitress in the same restaurant where he tended bar nights and he thought they were happy. He knew he was happy, despite all the hard work and the long hours. But long hours at night by herself made Alma sink further into the abyss she'd created. Further into the bottle she chose for comfort.

He'd married her his last year in medical school, praying that the official piece of paper would make a difference to her, would somehow pick up her self-esteem. He tried every way he could to show her what she meant to him. Again, things were good for a time. But then she began slipping back.

And then she became pregnant. The day she told him the news, she swore that she would be the world's best mother. That things would be different from now on. He believed her because he wanted to. He felt his life was perfect. The girl he'd loved since childhood was bearing his child. All was right in the world.

His world, not hers.

As a doctor, he should have realized that. As a man, he hadn't. And because he hadn't, because he hadn't insisted that she get counseling, hadn't found a way to reach in and slay the demons Alma was always wrestling, the demons killed her.

And she killed their baby.

How could he have been so blind?

A hand was on his shoulder, shaking him. Bringing him back to the inside of the small passenger plane and the present. Bill Preston, the pilot who ferried his brother and him back and forth from Bedford to Mesa Roja, was standing over him, looking befuddled.

“Hey, Doc, you thinking of taking the trip back?”

Christian shook himself free of the memories that were dragging him down. “What?”

Bill pointed out the window beside him. “We've landed. You're usually the first one off the plane. Something wrong?”

After unbuckling, he quickly rose to his feet. Bill stepped back to get out of his way. The other passengers had already disembarked. He hadn't even heard them. Christian picked up his luggage. “No, just lost in thought.”

“Oh.” Bill followed him down the narrow path to the door. “Happens to me sometimes. When I got a thought to get lost in,” the man chuckled, pushing his hat back on his head. “Sunday night or Monday morning?” he asked.

Christian got off the plane. “Make it Sunday night.”

“Right. Sunday,” the pilot called after him.

Turning back around, he left the field and walked to Anderson's A-1 Cars. He'd called the used-car dealer from the plane to tell him he was coming. A car was waiting for him in front of the lot. Like clockwork. The key was in the left rear wheel well. Christian unlocked the driver's door, threw in the small suitcase he'd brought with him and got into the vehicle. As he turned on the ignition, he blew out a long, cleansing breath. He had to stop doing this to himself. Had to stop reliving everything. There was no sense to it, no changing anything no matter how many times he did it. It had been three years since Alma had died. Three years. He needed to move on.

Easier said than done.

 

It always seemed that whenever he, his brother or one of their physician friends from Blair came to the clinic, the amount of patients doubled or tripled the second word was out. It got so bad that at times patients literally poured out the front door and down the path.

He'd gone to the clinic at seven, and patients were already waiting for him. The first in line said he'd seen a “strange car parked in front of Juanita's house,” so he knew one of her doctor sons was here. Christian took it as a compliment and ushered the man in.

Other patients quickly followed. The clinic's one retired nurse and midwife, the only other staff, showed up at nine.

He put in far longer hours here than he did at the hospital, starting early, staying late, pausing only to grab a bite to eat when he remembered. His only compensation was a strong handshake and a show of gratitude. It was more than enough. Enough to know he was doing some good.

Although, there were times he wondered if he was really getting through to some of the patients.

He put down the new file he was reviewing, the one that had been filled out by his new patient, Lily Wind-walker. His mother had sent the girl to him, insisting that she come.

Lily had sauntered into the tiny office, a palpitating cross between sullen and seductive. She was all of fifteen going on trouble. His mother had been blunt with him, saying that she was afraid Lily might have contracted something. It was no secret that girl had been sexually active for a while now.

He ran a preliminary test and conducted an exam, then gave Lily the results after she'd gotten dressed.

“You're lucky, you know.”

“You want to get lucky, Doc?” Lily moved forward on her chair, her skirt barely covered the legs that were parted invitingly.

Trouble, he thought, any way you spelled it. Before he'd had her disrobe for the exam, Christian had made sure that not only the nurse who ordinarily assisted him with these exams was present but the midwife as well. He could see that Lily was unpredictable and he wasn't about to take any chances.

“I meant that you haven't contracted any sexually transmitted diseases so far. But you keep this up the way you are and you're just playing a game of Russian roulette.” He could see he wasn't getting through to her. “You know what Russian roulette is?”

“Couldn't care less,” Lily informed him. And then her smile grew wicked. “I bet I wouldn't ‘contract' anything from you, Doctor. You're squeaky clean.”

He wondered how many men and boys had fallen victim to that smile. There was no denying that Lily was beautiful, with the body of a woman ten years older. Another ten years like this, and she'd look like a burnt-out shell. He'd seen it before.

“Don't do that, Lily,” he told her angrily. “You're worth more than that.”

“How would you know what I'm worth?” she smiled wickedly. “Oh, I forgot. You saw me naked. Whet your appetite, Doctor? Did you like what you saw?”

She reached out to touch him, but he stopped her
with a look. Lily slid back in her chair. “Stop it, Lily, I'm your doctor.”

“You're also a man.” She tossed her head, sending her hair over her shoulder. He wondered how long she'd practiced that in the mirror. “You can't separate the two.”

“You can if you take an oath and believe in it.”

He rose from his desk and walked over to the cabinet he and the others always kept locked, except when they were in the office. Reaching in, he took out a handful of samples that had been donated to the clinic. That had been Alix DuCane's work. The pediatrician knew which drug companies to approach and she approached them tirelessly. The result was a good size supply of almost every medication needed to treat patients at the clinic.

“If you're going to continue what you're doing, I want you to at least exercise some common sense.” He placed several small boxes in front of her. It was a three-month supply.

She looked at the boxes, making no effort to take one. “What's that?”

“Birth control pills.”

She snorted, waving a hand at the boxes. “I'm not going to have a baby.”

“Not if you use these, you're not.”

Lily stuck out her lower lip. “Why would you care if I do or not? My mother doesn't.”

His mother had filled him in about that, too. Lily's mother worked two jobs, trying to provide for herself and her daughter. Any free time she had was spent in the company of prospective husbands. She was rarely
home. “Is your mother even aware of what you're doing?”

There was contempt on Lily's face.

“Not since the day I was born. Look, Doc, I'm only here because your mom said she wouldn't let me come back to class until you gave me a note. She's pretty hard-assed, if you ask me.”

He might have entertained similar thoughts in his time, although not quite in those terms. There was no denying that in her career, Juanita had set more than just his brother straight. “She knows her way around kids.”

Lily waved away the words. “Yeah well, am I getting my note?”

He'd already written it out. He held it now, just out of her reach. “Will you take the pills?”

Opening her purse, she leaned forward and with one sweep of her arm, brushed the stack off his desk and into the black bag. “Consider them taken.”

He let her have the note. “You might try abstaining, too.”

She grabbed it from his hand before he changed his mind. The look in her eyes was enticing. “And you might try not.”