The Kindness of Strangers (20 page)

One was worse than all the others, though. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take it with him. He’d tried hard to pretend it had never happened, that day or any other, with or without the cameras. He thought about what it would mean if anyone saw it, and he almost chickened out. But he’d be dead, right? She’s the one who’d be ashamed, not him. He slid the disks into an envelope lying on the closet floor and put it in his backpack. He put on his parka and vowed he was never coming back when he limped out that door.

Rain pelted him. The driveway looked endless. He didn’t know how far he’d try to go or where might be safe to carry out his plan, when Sarah pulled up beside him. Of all the people, it had to be Danny’s mom. Jordan wanted to scream at her, to warn her, but he was too tired. When he was dead and gone, what happened to Danny would not be his problem.

And Sarah had insisted, “Get in.”

J
ordan?”

Jordan gasped. He was on one of the couches of the hospital lounge, curled on his side. Wendy crouched beside him. “What’s going on, sweetheart? Are you all right?”

He jerked himself upright. “I fell asleep.”

Wendy raised her eyebrows, and Jordan knew she didn’t believe him. “I think we need to call a doctor.”

He shrugged off her help and wheeled his IV stand back to his room. He shut his door, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to. He jerked his IV bag free from the stand. He crawled under the bed and balled himself up, which hurt, but the pain felt good and familiar. Dr. Ali’d said he had no business being on an unsterile floor, warning about staph infections that could kill him. Good. He wanted one. Maybe this time they’d let him die.

His mail littered the floor where he’d dropped it. He reached out and scooped it under the bed, sorting through his cards until he found Sarah Laden’s latest one. He pictured her pale skin and serious, dark eyes. The way she’d touched his forehead. The scent of shampoo from her rain-drenched black hair as she carried him into the hospital. And he remembered the backpack on the floor of her van. She must be the one who gave it to the police. So his plan had worked, in a way. Except that he was still here. He’d never made a backup plan. He’d never considered that he might not die.

Chapter Ten
Sarah

S
arah stood in the kitchen making dinner for her kids and wishing she could go anywhere but where she had to go in a few minutes. All parents with a child in the community schools had received a letter inviting them to attend an emergency meeting in the high-school gym.

Half of Sarah felt that the meeting would only fan the fire of hysteria that had taken hold of Oakhaven. What good would come of gathering all the panicked, outraged people into one place to feed off one another’s anxiety and guilt? Sarah would rather mop the entire gym on her hands and knees than listen to more of the inane talk she’d endured all weekend. But the other half of her feared not being a part of that. She needed to hear what was said. She hated that she cared what might be said of her if she didn’t go. Everyone knew she’d been Courtney’s closest friend.

Been.
Sarah still had the stunned feeling of betrayal. She’d been lied to. It felt humiliating and awful, as if Courtney had had an affair with Roy behind Sarah’s back. Sarah felt raw and exposed when she went out.

Debbie Nielson had called today and told Sarah that she’d decided to go with a different caterer for her daughter’s wedding. Sarah had been gracious and professional, but a cold knot formed in her stomach. The timing seemed so obvious that Sarah had almost blurted to Debbie, “I didn’t know! I had no idea what was happening!” Was Debbie thinking what Sarah herself continuously wondered:
How could you know her for four years and never pick up a clue?

Nothing Debbie said had actually indicated that, but it was hard to shake the feeling of being accused. Sarah tried to clear her mind and focus on slicing scallions and tomatoes.

The
Dayton Daily News
had run a profile of both Mark and Courtney today, which began on the front page and continued in a full-page spread inside. The feature wasn’t
just
about them but also about the other two couples, and three individuals, involved in the pornography “club.” The
Columbus Dispatch
and the
Cincinnati Enquirer
ran their own versions, too, and all three, as well as
People
magazine and several other bigger city papers, had called to invite Sarah to comment. After politely declining the first two requests, Sarah had let the answering machine get all the calls. She’d even instructed Nate not to answer the phone. She came home from catering a corporate lunch today and deleted six more requests.

Sarah hadn’t been prepared for the fact that this was a
national
story—a pornography ring of parents abusing and sharing their own children.

While she was out today, she’d bought all the newspapers and had pored over every word that dealt with the Kendricks, trying to patch together this new information into any semblance of recognition of the people she’d known.

Sarah learned that Courtney’s father had had sex with both Courtney and her brother, Jordan. He also made them have sex with each other.

Sarah exhaled when she read that. There was nothing to do with that information but mourn.

Courtney’s brother, Jordan Mayhew, had disclosed the abuse to a guidance counselor in high school, but Courtney and the mother denied it all. The community rallied around the dad; he was a respected and beloved pediatrician in a small town. The brother ended up looking like a liar and an idiot. He was only seventeen, but he left as soon as he graduated. The brother said that their mother knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it. Jordan Mayhew tried to stay in touch with Courtney, but they did not see each other for years. Courtney contacted him when their mother died three years ago, of cancer—that much was true after all—but Jordan Mayhew would not attend his mother’s funeral.

So although her mother really did die as Courtney told Sarah, the circumstances surrounding her father’s death were quite different. He didn’t die when she was a teenager but when she was in her late twenties—already married, already with a baby. Two girls who were patients of Courtney’s father accused him of molesting them. He was under investigation for “sexual misconduct” when he hung himself.

Sarah felt as if someone had filled her limbs with ice water.

Mark appeared to be clean on paper—nothing in any records, no previous charges. He’d been fingerprinted for his job, and he was not a registered sex offender. When the story broke in his hometown, though, sure enough, some kids—in college now—that Mark used to baby-sit came forward and said that he raped them. Mark baby-sat frequently when he was in high school. He had been a polite, straight-A student in student government, tennis, and debate. Nobody had recognized, until this recent discovery, that he never hung around other kids his age outside of school activities, that he was a little too eager to be with children. One of Mark’s victims—a Robert Winston, who boldly gave his name and allowed himself to be photographed, “Because I didn’t do anything wrong and have nothing to be ashamed of”—told the reporter that he
did
tell the truth about Mark when it happened, but his mother didn’t believe him. A classmate, who wouldn’t give his own name, said of Winston, “He was always in trouble. His dad was never around, and his mom worked two jobs. Everybody just thought he made up the story to get attention. He lied all the time.” Winston replied, “I did lie. But I lied to get myself
out
of trouble, not to get myself in it. Why the hell would a kid make up something like that? Everyone hated me for it.”

Mark and Courtney did meet in college, during Courtney’s undergraduate years. For a service project, their respective fraternity and sorority had volunteered time with a local Head Start program. Mark and Courtney spearheaded a Big Brother/Big Sister–type program.

Sarah’s skin tingled.

Reporters had found a former neighbor of Courtney’s mother who said that Courtney’s son—they didn’t use Jordan’s name, although what difference that made at this point was lost on Sarah—used to stay with his grandmother for long periods of time. According to the neighbor, Jordan had told his grandmother he was being abused, and even though the grandmother hadn’t protected her own kids, for some reason she tried to protect her grandson. At one point she tried to get custody of Jordan, but Mark and Courtney fought it. Shortly into the investigation, the grandmother was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer that turned out to be terminal. During her illness the investigation was dropped.

There were high-school graduation pictures of Mark and Courtney. There was their wedding photo, where they looked so . . . wholesome and naive and genuinely happy. There was a photo of Courtney, in scrubs, beaming with a newborn in her arms, a photo voluntarily given to the paper by the newborn’s grateful mother. The article was also full of quotes from people supporting both Mark and Courtney, people who still clung to the belief that
this couldn’t be true.

But they didn’t know. They didn’t know what Sarah knew about the gonorrhea and the hospital’s missing antibiotics and Dilaudid. And that’s why Sarah had refused to talk to reporters. She wasn’t ready to condemn Courtney yet, at least not publicly. After all she and Courtney had been through, she felt she owed it to her to speak to her in private first. But the very thought paralyzed Sarah. What on earth would she
say
to Courtney? Where would one begin? Sarah’s eyes stung with tears for the third time that day, but she blinked them back. She feared she might never stop if she allowed herself to give in to them.

Courtney had been quoted in the article. She’d also refused to speak to reporters, on the advice of her attorney, except to say that she was innocent and she desperately missed her son and wished she could be there to support him at this horrible time.

Sarah searched the articles for Kramble’s name but found no mention of him.

God, she didn’t want to go to this meeting at the high school. What would she do if she started to cry again? She felt fragile and barely held together, and the thought of going out in public in that state made her wary.

She scraped the scallions and tomatoes into the salad.

Nate walked into the kitchen. “What are we having?”

“Salad with grilled salmon.”

“Sweet.” He peered into the oven. Sarah felt grateful beyond words for this small compliment. Not even a compliment. Just not a condemnation for once.

“Isn’t the meeting at seven?” Nate asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’re gonna be late.”

Sarah glanced at the clock. It was 6:50. She was in no hurry to get there, and she certainly didn’t want to be early and have to make small talk with anyone. Gwinn had called and offered to pick Sarah up, but Sarah had declined, needing to keep the option of not going at all, and if she did go, of leaving whenever she liked.

Nate opened the oven. “The salmon’s almost done.” He poked a fillet with a fork. “You want me to finish? Just crumble it on top of these salads, right?”

“That would be a huge help. You sure you don’t mind?”

“I offered didn’t I?”

“Right. Well, thank you.” Was this because she’d told him he could drive again? That was one of her birthday gifts yesterday. She grabbed her purse and called up the stairs, “Danny! I’m leaving. Nate’s finishing dinner for you. It’s almost ready.”

Danny appeared at the top of the stairs. “Nate’s making dinner?” He looked skeptical.

“He’s just doing the finishing touches. I shouldn’t be gone too long, okay? I’ve got my cell phone, so call if you need anything.”

Once in the van, Sarah peeked at herself in the rearview mirror and tried to hand-comb her hair into something halfway respectable. She applied a fresh coat of lipstick before she backed out of the drive and headed to the school.

The high-school parking lot overflowed with cars, and Sarah circled twice before she gave up and parked on a residential street a block away. It was 7:10 as she jogged into the school’s front yard, and she was not alone; a steady stream still came from every direction. At the steps Sarah ran into Libby Carlisle, a funny, talented veterinarian, the mother of a girl in the grade below Danny’s. Sarah used to take Potter to Libby’s clinic. Libby was now heavily pregnant, and Sarah knew that she was a patient of Courtney’s.

“Need a hand?” Sarah asked, offering her arm.

“Oh, my God. Don’t mind if I do,” Libby said, laughing. She held Sarah’s elbow, and together they began to climb the front steps of the school. “Where are the banisters and handrails? It’s not that I can’t do it; I just have no damn balance. I feel like Humpty Dumpty! And don’t say it—I know I look like him, too.”

“Not at all,” Sarah said.

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

Sarah laughed. “When are you due? It’s getting close, right?”

“In three days.”

“Oh.”

Libby stopped, panting. “No kidding: ‘Oh.’ ‘Oh, shit,’ is more like it. What am I going to do without her?”

Sarah knew that Libby meant Courtney. Before Sarah could think of something encouraging to say, Libby went on, “She called to check on me.”