Lifelines: Kate's Story (38 page)

No
one but his wife?

She
couldn’t feel her feet or her legs; sensation seemed to end at her waist. She
got the filing drawer open and realized her fingers were numb, too.
Rachel
Hardesty.
Pages of notes pinned together on a binding post. Kate flipped
through them, all the way down to the client information form Rachel filled out
the first day.

Spouse/partner’s
name: Richard McGregor.

Mac
with marital problems: Rachel, whose husband wouldn’t forgive the abortion.
This should never have happened. She’d had all the pieces. They both went to
relationship counseling. Why hadn’t she asked his wife’s name? How could she
have been so stupid?

What
was she going to do now?

A
ll
Richard’s promises were garbage, just like her father’s. She’d wasted her time
in counseling. He would never change his mind. Fucking liar. Men were all
liars. Hadn’t her father promised her a wonderful education, and in the end he
left her nothing but debts. Richard was no different. When it came to the
crunch, only one person could be trusted to look after Rachel.

“Richard
Fucking McGregor will regret laughing at me while he plays the holier than
thou, moralistic bastard adulterer. Nobody screws Rachel Hardesty over and gets
away with it.”

She
just needed to do some research, to find the best way.

T
hursday
morning, Kate set the cruise control to sixty within a mile of merging onto the
Interstate. She needed to be careful, because death on the Interstate would
certainly save her from the repercussions of an affair with her most difficult
client’s husband.

She
didn’t know how she’d got through yesterday afternoon’s appointments, but she’d
lasted until five before she burst into Sarah’s office.

“I
have really messed up,” she’d announced, and Sarah put aside the notes she was
writing. “I don’t know what to do. I need to figure out how I’m going to get
myself out of this mess. I need to talk it out so I can think how I can deal
with it.”

Slowly,
as she explained, things began to sort themselves out a little bit.

“What
I need to do is refer my client.” Her heart began to palpitate. “I’ll have to
call her, but what can I say? Help me out, Sarah. What words do I use?”

Sarah’s
voice exuded calm as she suggested, “I’ve discovered something really
important, and I need to see you.”

Kate’s
heart chattered like a Geiger counter. “OK, and then—then I’ll say I’ve
realized there’s a conflict—not on the phone, but when I see her. I’ve
recognized her partner’s name in another context. But she won’t accept that.
She’ll say we’ve been seeing each other for months, and why is there a problem
now? She’ll want to know how I know Ma—Richard—how I suddenly ... shit.”

“You
don’t need to give her details. It’s your private life.”

“She
doesn’t recognize personal boundaries.”

“But
you do. So you’ll reply—?”

“—that
it’s not about her, it’s about me. Then she’ll try to get around me ... God,
Sarah, what I’ve done is so ethically wrong, such a frigging mess. I need to be
as tough, as hard as I can with her. I need—I need to do it now, before I lose
my nerve.”

“R
achel?
It’s Kate Taylor.” Her voice sounded like someone with tuberculosis. “Could you
come in to my office tomorrow at nine? I need to see you.”

“That’s
not a good time,” said Rachel abruptly. Unforgiving, after Kate’s abrupt end to
their earlier conversation?

Kate’s
heart hammered in her throat. “It’s important for us to talk. What time would
be good for you?”

“I’m
busy tomorrow.”

“What
about Friday? It’s a holiday, but I could see you. I need to talk to you in
person. What time would be good for you?”

“I’m
busy Friday.”

“It’s
important.” She didn’t know what else to say. She’d lost her balance, and
desperately needed to clean up this mess.

You
have to do it on the phone. Tell her now.

“Rachel,
this is important.”

“I
guess I could come next Wednesday, around two.”

Kate’s
body started to shake when she put the phone down, even her teeth chattered.
She was a wreck, and she had almost a week to wait before she faced Rachel. No
confidence left. The therapist had boiled away this afternoon, and left Kate
adrift.

Go
home, Kate.

No,
have to call clients first. Make new appointments.

Mac
...

I
have to talk to him, have to tell him—can’t tell him. Can’t break
confidentiality. If he guesses, ethically I can’t even confirm a guess.

Sarah
knocked on Kate’s door. “Did you get her?”

“She’ll
come next Wednesday.” She rubbed her hands on her heated face. “I need to
cancel tomorrow’s clients, and I need to tell Mac I can’t see him, don’t I? I
can’t see a man when I’m counseling his wife. I—I can’t even tell him why. He’s
going to be all kinds of hurt and I wish—Oh, God. I wish I could run away.”

“If
you cancel tomorrow, you’ve got a five day weekend.”

Five
days she would have spent with Mac, if it weren’t for Rachel. Five days. She
would get in the car and drive. Push her foot down until the noise of the
wheels and the motion of the car drowned out everything else.

No.

She
phoned Thursday’s clients. At five-thirty, most of them were in transit between
office and home, so she left messages. The last client she phoned was home, and
said, “Perfect. An old friend of mine called to ask if I could do a long lunch
tomorrow. I’ll call her back and accept.”

Now
Mac. Whatever happened, she didn’t want to hurt Mac.

She’d
asked Sarah, “What is this about? What lesson am I supposed to be learning from
this mess?”

“What
you’re learning is how to set your boundaries, how to belong to yourself. Your
whole life has been giving yourself away in all kinds of ways. When you talk to
Mac, you need to approach him in a way that is clear and does what you need to
do, but doesn’t take care of him.”

She’d
talked with Mac in ways she’d never known with a man before. Different from
David, and she’d begun to think they could have a relationship with the kind of
depth and comfort they both yearned for. But now she’d fucked up so badly,
trying to rescue Rachel. Now she had yet another relationship to mourn.

Couldn’t
she keep him ... somehow, keep him? If she told him they had to stop seeing each
other for a while ... if she ... but afterwards, when she told him why—

She
couldn’t tell him why. Not ethically.

She
needed to see Mac, needed to go home, needed to get away.

Stalling
won’t give you a reason not to tell Mac goodbye.

They
hadn’t planned to meet tonight, because Kate wanted to be home for Jennifer,
and she wasn’t ready to bring Mac, her lover, into the house she’d shared with
David. So Mac was supposed to call her at seven, but it was already
seven-thirty. She dialed his cell phone and pain grabbed her throat when she
heard his voice. She couldn’t get the right words out, so greeted him with,
“Where are you?”

“The
Taylor Road house.” He sounded odd, too. Stressed.

Of
course he was stressed. He’d been to relationship counseling with Rachel today,
the same session that prompted Rachel to phone Kate. Relationship counseling.
Prompted. Such rational words. Married to Rachel with her demands, her rages,
her skewed view of the world. A woman like Rachel could make mincemeat of a
well-intentioned man like Mac.

Jacob
Richard McGregor.

“I’m
just leaving the office, Mac. I’ll come to you.” She hung up quickly, before he
could ask questions.

She
drove home first, and snapped on Socrates’ leash. With the dog walking slowly
in front of her, she felt grounded for the first time in hours. At the end of
the road, she found Mac in the rocking chair on the front veranda. Neither of
them spoke until she stood in front of him.

“What’s
wrong, Kate?”

I
don’t want to hurt you.
They hadn’t spent much time telling each other
deep secrets, or life stories, but until now, everything between them had been
honest. Tonight, honesty wasn’t possible. Socrates leaned against her, telling
her that time wouldn’t change what she needed to do.

“There’s
something I need to say, Mac, and I don’t quite know how, so can you not say
anything until I get it out?”

He
looked wary. “Okay.”

“This—these
last few months have meant a lot to me.” She saw his hands grip the arms of the
rocker. “Your friendship helped me keep my sanity through the worst winter of
my life. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“Kate—”

“Please,
let me finish.” She got her breath under control and went on. “A lot of pieces
went into my journey back to life after David died. Clay. Work. You.” She
couldn’t tell the whole truth, but she could give honesty. “When we made love
last night, I knew I’d come alive again. Fully alive.”

He
stood and crammed his hands in his pockets. “This is sounding a lot like
goodbye.”

“I
want to be able to explain why, but I can’t.”

He
didn’t move, but she heard the need to prowl in his voice. “Your daughter was
upset about me. She’ll get over it. People get over these things.”

“It’s
not Jennifer.” Oh, God, wasn’t there a way to keep him without breaking all her
rules? Tears ran down her face as she said, “Please don’t ask me to explain.”
She sounded like some soap opera character. “I’ll always hold you in my heart
as a dear ... a dear friend, and I—I can’t see you any more.”

Socrates
waddled over to Mac and leaned against him, but Mac didn’t reach down to fondle
his ears.

“Can
I talk now?”

Kate
nodded, but for a moment he said nothing at all. Then: “Last night when I was
waiting for you, I wanted to tell you we can take as much time as you need. I
should have said it; we could have talked last night, gone out for coffee. It
didn’t have to be sex. Don’t throw us away because I went too fast again.”

“You
didn’t go too fast. I wanted to make love. I had a wonderful time, and I wish—I
wish we could do it again, but I—but we can’t.”

“This
doesn’t make any sense.”

“I
know. I can’t explain. I’m so—I’m so damned sorry.”

He
took one step toward her, froze and jammed his fists back into his pockets.
“Damn it, Kate. I don’t know what the hell is going on here. I want to grab,
tell you not to leave. That’s what my wife would do—she’d try to force ... I
can’t force you, I know I can’t, if you’ve decided. But you’ve always been so
straight with me until now. I don’t get it.”

Did
ethics really matter so much when Mac stood staring at her like that? Couldn’t
she tell him, swear him to secrecy?

And
break hundreds of promises, because she had promised every one of her clients
confidentiality. Their words, their secrets, even the fact that they were
clients was protected until the law dictated otherwise. Socrates didn’t have to
say a word; she couldn’t wiggle out of this one and live with herself as a
counselor.

“Mac,
I can’t come here any more, and you can’t come to my house.”

He
stared at her a long time before he said, “You can’t tell me why?”

“No,
I can’t.”

“Later?”

“Mac,
it’s...complicated.” She had Mac to grieve, and almost a week to wait for the
meeting with Rachel. If she spent the time pacing her house, she’d end up
heading for her car at two in the morning. She needed to do something. “I’ll be
going away for a few days.”

“Can
you tell me where?”

It
was a relief to answer at least one of his questions. “I’m driving to Seattle
to see Jennifer. If she’ll come with me, we might drive to Canada—I got my
father’s address from the insurance company.”

“You
found him? ... and if Jennifer won’t come?”