Making Trouble (9 page)

But in the end, I knew I needed to protect him.

It was more like a country club than jail. Yes, there was a high brick wall with barbed wire scaling the top surrounding the property, but it was hidden amidst the trees framing it. Wrought iron gates opened up as I entered on the bus—the only way in or out was by the shuttle bus, even the employees had park in the lot down the street and take it. It was like something out of an old black and white movie. The lawn was as green—and well-kept—as a golf course. I felt my stomach clench as the bus took us down the winding drive, right up to the front entrance of the hospital.

There were people strolling on walking paths, some of them
in street clothes, others in gray jumpsuits. It seemed surreal, although I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was Saturday—visiting day—after all. And not everyone here was violent or in need of being locked up twenty-four seven. Even Catherine wasn’t that bad, at least according to the state of California. Catherine had a room—yes, there were bars on the windows, but there was sunlight during the day—and a bed, and had earned privileges, they told me, like the privilege of having visitors.

My hands
shook as I stepped off the bus behind an elderly couple who held hands as they went into the building. We had been through a humiliating search of our property and persons already, and I tucked my purse under my arm as I followed the old couple, wondering who they were here to see. A relative? A friend? The place was full of sad stories. Mine was just one of them.

“Hello, I’m here to see
Dr. Klein,” I said, stopping at the front desk and showing them my arm band. They had snapped that on me after the inspection but before we got on the bus. I had made the call in secret, of course, my voice shaking so much it was hard to talk, but it had been far easier than I expected. Catherine’s therapist said she was a big fan of Trouble—and she was, apparently, also a big fan of money. Rob kept an account funded for me, and I knew he would notice a check written out to her, so I just withdrew cash. They obviously didn’t pay therapists very much, and Dr. Klein was happy to accept my little bribe in exchange for a meeting with the woman who had nearly shot me to death.

She even justified it therapeutically—and said she would be there, just in case something happened.
The thing that surprised me the most was, I hadn’t realized Catherine would need to agree to see me. But in the end, Dr. Klein said she had. Maybe because she was so close to being released, I thought, as the nurse directed me down the hall, giving me instructions I knew I’d never remember. I walked on wobbly legs, hoping there would be more checkpoints on the way.

If Rob knew I was
there, he would have been livid. I knew it was a risk. But I had to talk to her. I had to try to reason with her. If they really believed she was well enough to be released, maybe we could sit down and talk like reasonable human beings. Maybe she was truly remorseful. Maybe, I thought, turning the corner and finding another nurse’s desk where I could ask for directions, we could have some closure to the whole mess.

I knew it was probably more than I could hope for.

All I really wanted was to let her know I wasn’t afraid of her, and that if she came near Rob, I would kill her myself. I just hoped she wouldn’t call my bluff, because in reality, I was afraid of her. But the last—that wasn’t a bluff. I’d die before I let anything happen to Rob.

“
Dr. Klein” I inquired at the desk.

“Room eleven
” The nurse pointed down the hallway. “Down there on the left.”

“Dr. Klein?
” I knocked on the open door. A short, stout little woman wearing a white coat looked up from her laptop. She closed it and smiled at me as she stood, holding out her hand.

“You must be Sabrina Taylor.”

Burns,
I thought, but of course, didn’t say.

I took her hand and shook it. She offered me a seat and I took that too. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and I handed over an envelope full of cash that I’d been nervous about carrying with me since I’d left the bank. And that was p
retty much it. She told me Catherine was expecting me as we headed down yet another hallway. This one was tiled, not carpeted, stark white walls and rooms with not just numbers on them, but keypad locks as well.

“Down there,” Dr. Klein
instructed. “Last door on the left. Room number twenty-seven.”

I forced myself to keep walking, although my pace slowed as
I got closer. Some doors were closed—and locked, each had a keypad entry—but some were open. Catherine’s door was open. I paused at the doorway, seeing her sitting on a small twin bed, a book in her hand. She wasn’t reading it though. She was staring out the window. There were bars on it, but still, it was a window. It looked out onto the front lawn.

She hadn’t seen me
yet and I took that moment to really study her. Gone were the stylish clothes, the perfectly cut and colored hair. Her roots were growing out dark, a good two inches at least, and I wondered who was coloring her hair blonde in there. Someone clearly was—although not as often as they should have. Her nails, usually French manicured, were ragged, bitten. She had no makeup on, and there were dark circles, faint silver half-moons, showing under her eyes.

I stood in the doorway, perfectly coiffed and dressed, th
anks to Arnie and his team, realizing just how much the tables had turned. I was Rob’s wife now. I was the woman in his life, the woman in his bed. I had my freedom, I had her ex-husband, and I had her former life. I had taken her place.

As she sensed my presence and turned her head toward me, I knew how foolish I’d been, thinking I could come here and reason with this woman. I saw it the instant our eyes met, the hatred, the rage. She hadn’t changed. No matter what she’d done to convince her doctors or any other official here that she was sane, I knew the truth. I saw the madness in her eyes.

What had I been thinking? Why would she want to talk to me in the first place, other than to try to hurt me in some way? I took an involuntary step back, knees weak, ready to run as far and as fast as I could, back down the maze of hallways, back into the bus, back home. Home to Rob, home to my little makeshift family. I didn’t belong here. This was a mistake.

“Sabrina.” Her voice was as smooth as the silk sheets we slept on every night. “Come on in.”

She would come for Rob. I saw it on her face, the way her lip twitched in a half-sneer. She covered it quickly with a smile, but it was a smile filled with malice. She hated me and, even if she had loved him once, she would take him from me before she’d let me live her life. I didn’t have to talk to her to know any of that. It was all over her face.

I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t be a coward. I had to do this. For Rob.

“Catherine.” I tried out my voice, proud it didn’t tremble, giving her what I hoped was a short, cool nod. I took a step into the room. She waved me toward a white plastic chair in the corner. It was the kind you found out on patios in the suburbs. I perched on the edge, as prim as an old-fashioned schoolmarm, clutching my purse on my knees.

“So what brings you here?” She put her book on the bed.
I saw man on the cover—Dr. Phil—and glimpsed the word “relationship.” Her sheets were bleached white—I could smell it, the scent permeated the place and made me wonder if they washed the inmates in the stuff—a long cry from the silk she used to sleep on. The silk I now slept on.

“I think you know.” I kept my gaze steady.

“So… you finally want to know the truth.” That smile spread, like a disease, across her face. There was acne sprouting over her dark, unplucked brows. The food here must have been a far cry from her usual organic, vegan fare. The fifteen pounds I’d lost, Catherine had gained. We had truly switched places. “I thought you might come to me, some day, asking for the real story.”

I blinked at her, too surprised to respond. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. Was this some part of her crazy ramblings? Had her mind completely snapped? She seemed to know who I was, so she wasn’t that far gone.

“Did he leave you?” The sheer delight on her face made me feel sick to my stomach. “Is that why you came?”

“No.” My voice hardened and I clutched my purse so hard my knuckles
turned white. “Rob and I are…”

Married.

I almost said it. But it wouldn’t do me any good to tell her, when we hadn’t told anyone else.

“We’re fine,” I finished.

“Oh no, I don’t think so.” She laughed. It was soft, almost a chuckle, far more menacing than any maniacal laugh I’d ever heard. “You wouldn’t be here if everything was
fine
, now would you?”

“You’re wrong.” My spine straightened, stiffened. “Rob and I are great. We’re very much in love. In fact, we—”

“You don’t know, do you?” she studied my face, incredulous. “You still don’t know.”

I blinked at her, shaking my head slowly, my chest fil
led with fire. There was nothing, not really, I knew she was just trying to rattle me. But still, I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t refute her words. I just sat there and listened to her talk as if my own vocal cords had gone suddenly numb.

“He pretends to be such a Boy Scout.” Catherine sneered, no longer trying to hide it with the covering smile. “But
he’s no angel. Hell, even I didn’t actually kill anyone—unless you count that abortion of yours, ha!—but
he’s
out there, and
I’m
in here?”

My hands clenched into fists. I had to keep from launching at her, nails
wielded at her face like claws, but I didn’t. I sat still, listening, barely breathing at all.

“Where’s the justice in that?” she wondered aloud. “I don’t care how
old he was when it happened.”

“Rob?” His name came out as a croak. My brain wanted to make connections my heart found too painful to contain.

“The bastard.” Catherine leaned forward, conspiratorial. “He got away with it.”

“With… what?”

“Murder.” She sneered.

“
There was a… a shooting…?” Her words didn’t want to sink in. They stayed on the surface of my consciousness like an oil slick on a lake.

“The thing is, no one knows. They sealed the records because he was a
juvenile.
” Another sneer wrenched across her face. “But I know. His mother knows. His brother and sister, they know.”

The brother and sister
who had been taken into foster care when Rob was twelve? Could this possibly be true? Could this have been the real reason all the siblings were separated and taken into custody? I didn’t want to believe it.

“
Everyone protects him like he’s some china doll.” She snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Catherine, what are you talking about?”

“You really don’t know him at all, do you?” she asked the question, sounding incredulous, like it was impossible. How could I have spent so much time with him, how could I be his girlfriend, his lover, his wife, and not know any of this? That was the question in her eyes, and it was the question in my heart.

You don’t really know him at all, do you?

Did I?

“Tyler
and Rob are brothers,” Catherine stated flatly. “And that bitch sister of his, I should have kicked her out of my damned house from the start. I don’t know why everyone had to live with
us
!”

Sarah.

“Sarah.” I choked out her name, but Catherine didn’t seem to notice. She was too lost in her own inner world. There were fires raging there that would never be put out. I could tell just by looking at her. There was something burning in me too. Things were falling into place for the first time and they were falling right on me. It was like being buried in cement.

“Tak
e my advice, steer clear of her,” she warned me. “She’s a conniving little dyke who only cares about herself.”

“Who? Who…?” I sounded like an owl.
I couldn’t get the question out. “Who… who did… he… kill?”

I felt faint. I told myself I wasn’t going to pass out. Not here, not now.
If I could withstand being shot, if I could withstand holding my dying child in my bare hands, I could stand anything. I could stand the answer to a simple question.

“His father, of course.”

His father.

My heart sank.
The father he claimed he never knew?

“You’re lying.”

“Go home and ask
your boyfriend
to tell you the truth.” That smile again. So soft, so menacing. “Look into his eyes. He can’t meet your eyes when he’s lying. You know that, right, Sabrina? You’ve known him, oh, a year now, two, maybe? You know him so well?”

“S
hut up,” I snapped.

“I’ve known hi
m since I was fifteen years old,” she hissed. “You think you know him
? I know him.
I know everything about him, everything that’s ever happened to him,
everything.
And I loved him anyway, through all of it. He’s
mine
, Sabrina. He’ll
always
be mine. I don’t care if you have a thousand more brats, you can have a litter of them at a time, it won’t matter. He will always belong to me. I know things about him you’ll never understand.
Things he’ll never tell you.
”