The Homecoming Baby (8 page)

Lydia scowled. “Your appearance is deceiving, Celia Brice, did you know that? You look like a pretty little flower child, but you're really a fifty-year-old drill sergeant at heart. Always determined to make people straighten up and fly right.”

Celia didn't blink. Lydia stared back for a minute, then she shook her head and sighed. “You're not going to let this drop, are you?”

Celia shook her head, smiling.

“All right, then, sergeant.” Lydia waved a hand in surrender. “I'll let a doctor check me out. The first free minute I have.”

“Tomorrow.”

Lydia glared at her. The look would have been intimidating if Celia hadn't been so sure she was right.

“For heaven's sake. Fine. Tomorrow.” Lydia picked up her satchel and started putting papers in it. “Now may I go home and get some rest?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Celia answered sweetly. She moved toward the door, but once there she turned and gave the older woman one last searching look. She wanted to reassure herself that Lydia was steady, breathing normally, no signs of pain or confusion.

Lydia looked up. “Yes? Did you have further instructions for me, sergeant?”

“No, of course not,” Celia said. Her original mission—asking Lydia about Patrick Torrance—suddenly seemed absurd.

The Homecoming Baby was such a mythical part of Enchantment folklore. Walking in here and saying she thought she might be dating the Homecoming Baby was as ridiculous as saying she had seen Elvis at the Laundromat.

And could Lydia really give Celia any information? She might not ever have known the name of the baby's adopted parents. If she did know, her ethical code would prohibit her from revealing it.

Besides, Celia thought, even though the crisis had passed, Lydia's strong, angular face still looked exhausted. New, deeper hollows had formed in her cheeks, under her eyes. Celia would not dream of troubling her right now about anything.

Lydia's health was real. Important. Celia's love life was not.

Her curiosity would just have to wait.

W
HEN
,
JUST BEFORE
7:00
P.M
.
the next night, Celia heard noises in the reception area of her downtown office, she wasn't at all alarmed. Her only thought was that her patient must be early, which meant she wasn't going to have time to finish her cheese-and-tomato sandwich without gobbling it, and she was undoubtedly going to end up fighting heartburn all through their session.

But that would be better than conducting the session with her stomach growling. She'd worked straight through lunch, too. She was starving, but when Malcolm Glamis had called to say he really needed to talk, could Celia please stay late and work him in, she hadn't been able to say no.

So she wolfed down the last bite of sandwich and opened her door.

“Just come on in, Malcolm,” she said as she wadded up her napkin and tossed it into the trash. “I let the receptionist go ho—”

But it wasn't Malcolm. It was Tad Gallen. And he clearly was extremely drunk. His round face was very red, and she could smell the tequila all the way across the reception area.

The split second she stood there, processing the situation, was enough to let him into her inner office. He shoved the door as he passed through, banging it against the wall. “I need to talk to you, bitch.”

He was at least six feet tall, and he must weigh well over two-fifty. The forefinger he was shoving toward her face right now was nearly as thick as her wrist. From Rose's stories, Celia knew that Tad had a mean streak.

Still, she stood her ground, even though every instinct was strongly suggesting she back away from his nasty breath—and his nasty temper.

“Do you? Well, perhaps we can arrange that,” she said. “But if you really want to talk to me, Tad, you're going to have to monitor your language.”

He frowned. “Huh?”

She kept her voice level. “You're going to have to stop using words like ‘bitch.'”

“Oh, yeah?” His black eyebrows dug so low they seemed to be trying to crawl down his nose. “How about
this
word, then?
Homewrecker!
”

“Better.” She nodded, moving around to sit in the chair behind her desk, talking as she went. “Yes, that's much better. At least it begins to address your issues with some specificity. ‘Bitch' is a fairly generic term and doesn't really further the dialogue, do you think?”

He still looked angry, but he looked confused, too, and that slowed him down a little. It was as if he'd just found out that the rules of the fight had been
changed—and the new ones were written in a language he didn't understand.

Good. She had guessed right, then. She knew Tad's type. A bully, but not very smart. He was easily intimidated by authoritative people who seemed more articulate and more controlled than he was. According to Rose, Manny on the Enchantment police force had broken up many a fight at the Gallen house using a similar technique.

So she dug out every multisyllabic word in her arsenal and kept firing while she sat down. Once there, she shuffled some papers around and, at the same time, hit the speed dial feature that automatically called building security.

It was always better to have backup. Tad was blinking and bewildered right now, but drunken bullies were unpredictable, and she wasn't foolish enough to take dumb chances.

“Sit down, Tad,” she said. “I'm sure we can evaluate the dimensions of the dilemma here, but only if you'll lower the temperature and outline for me the specifics of your complaint.”

She almost had to laugh when, with a mutter of frustration, he tossed his huge body into her little chair. She could almost picture Tad Gallen at ten, or sixteen, wearing that same sullen, mulish face, plopping into the chair in the principal's office.

“Listen, bitch,” he said, obviously trying to reestablish control over the conversation by using the forbidden word. “I know you told Rose to leave me. I want to know what goddamn right you think you
have to butt into my marriage. I want to know who the eff-ing hell you think you are.”

She folded her hands on the desk. “I think you misunderstand the role between a psychologist and her patient, Tad. Therapists rarely instruct their patients to do anything. Instead we try to clarify the issues and let the patients discover their own answers.”

His face seemed to swell and redden right in front of her eyes. Maybe she had overdone it.
Careful, careful…
She needed to gauge exactly where his confused submission would explode into unendurable frustration—and that was tricky. She knew Tad's type, but she didn't really know
him
very well.

“Bullshit,” he said, spitting onto the desk with the force of his emotion. “You damn well did tell Rose to leave me. She wouldn't ever have done that on her own. She's taken the money, too. I know damn well that was your idea. Rose wouldn't even think of it on her own.”

So that was what this was about. Celia should have realized Tad didn't care whether Rose stayed in the home they'd shared or not. He had another girlfriend—had been living with the new girl for a month now. What he did care about was the joint bank account.

“Tad, I'm sorry, but I'm not able to discuss with you what Rose and I have said in our sessions. I'm sure you can understand that our talks are private, and—”

Suddenly he was out of his chair in a lunging rage.
“
Private?
I'll tell you what's private, you bitch. A man's marriage is private!” He swept her papers to the floor. The phone went, too, clattering and emitting a false ring, like a mechanical whimper. “A man's wife is private! A man's money is private!”

For a minute she thought he might climb onto the table so that he could get his fat hands around her throat. She'd underestimated how drunk he was. He wavered on his feet, and his eyes seemed half-crossed with fury and liquor.

She realized she already had the letter opener in her hand, her subconscious having identified it as her best weapon even while she talked on so calmly and pompously, trying to defuse the situation with words.

She was ready. And, while he kept bellowing obscenities, he didn't seem clear-headed enough to figure out how to overcome the obstacle of the desk between them. But still—she was very glad to hear the front door open and realize that the security guard had arrived.

The guard wasn't alone. Patrick Torrance was with him, leading the way. He didn't say a word to Celia. He merely advanced into the room slowly, his eyes locked on Tad. The guard was right behind him.

Patrick was every bit as tall as Tad, and ten times as fit. Tad's extra weight, which had made him appear so huge and dominating compared to Celia, now just made him seem bloated, weak and unwieldy.

But he was too drunk to assess the situation very clearly. He didn't even seem to notice the security guard. He turned his red face toward Patrick and said,
“You stay out of this. Miss Brice and I are having a
private
conversation.”

Patrick didn't stop coming. “Then it's too bad everyone can hear you clear out to the street. Three people have already called the cops, including me. So frankly, bud, I think you can assume this conversation is over.”

And it was.

Before Celia could quite absorb what was happening, the office was teeming with people. Patrick, Ken the security guard, two of Enchantment's finest—and of course Tad, who raged around like a stuck bull for a couple of minutes before they managed to get the handcuffs on him and lead him away.

Apparently he'd rammed his truck into Rose's car—which was parked outside her mother's house—and sideswiped two others before he had made his way to Celia's office. The police had already been looking for him.

Finally, though, it was all settled. Celia gave her statement, they took Tad to jail, the security guard went to answer a double-parking complaint and now she and Patrick were alone in the office.

And it wasn't quite eight o'clock—the hour at which Malcolm Glamis was due to arrive for his session.

She saw that she was still holding the letter opener. Her fingers shaking, she set it down on the ransacked desk and looked up at Patrick.

“I can't imagine what I thought I'd do with that,” she said with a sheepish smile.

“I hope, if we hadn't shown up, that you would have stabbed him with it,” Patrick said. “The man's a maniac.”

She shivered a little and shook her head. “He's just drunk. I don't think he really would have hurt me. He's a bully. Mostly noise.”

Patrick must have seen the shiver, though she'd tried to hide it. He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. “You're cold. Let's lock up, and I'll take you home.”

She looked at him, incredulous. “I can't go home. I have a patient coming any minute.”

Patrick didn't even seem to hear her. He had started picking papers up off the floor and stacking them as neatly as possible back onto the desk. “You can make sense of these later. They told me at The Birth Place that most days you work here, so I was coming by to see if I could take you to dinner.”

“Dinner?” She thought of the rushed sandwich and sighed. It would have been so nice.

“Yes, but dinner doesn't seem like a priority right now. Right now we just need to get you home.”

He put the phone on the desk. “You probably still need something to eat, but we'll bring something in. You need a long, hot bath—and then plenty of sleep.”

He was like some kind of admiral, laying out the master plan without considering the possibility of a mutiny. He hardly even looked at her, intent on restoring order so that they could leave.

She put her hand out and stopped his arm. “I can't
go home,” she repeated. “I have to stay. I have a patient.”

He frowned, as if she were talking gibberish. “For heaven's sake, Celia. You're shaking. Tell whoever it is you've had an emergency, and you'll have to see them another time.”

She stiffened. “No,” she said. “I'm sorry, but I can't do that.”

He heard the change in her voice, obviously, because he didn't jump back with an automatic contradiction. He just looked at her.

After a minute, he said, “Tell me you're kidding.”

“Of course I'm not,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Patrick, I very much appreciate your help with Tad—and I am very grateful for your concern. But I'm a professional. This is what I do. I promised this patient that I would see him tonight. He expects me to be here. He
needs
me to be here.”

She took off his jacket and held it out. “And I am
going
to be here.”

He didn't take the jacket. “Alone?”

“Alone.”

“I could wait in the front room—”

“My patients expect privacy,” she said. “Thank you, Patrick. But no.”

He finally accepted his jacket. He folded it over his arm.

“All right,” he said. “It's your decision, of course.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you for respecting that.”

And then, with only a simple, polite goodbye, he was gone.

For a minute she fiddled with the chaotic stacks of papers. But she couldn't read anything. It was as if her vision were blurred. Did adrenaline do that?

Finally she sank onto her chair, trying not to give into the waves of cold confusion that seemed to sweep through her body like an unseen tide of emotion.

She wondered if Patrick might have been right after all. Maybe she was too shaken to help any patient tonight.

No.
She
was right. She had a commitment, and she had to honor it. She was strong. She could do it.

But…why had she been so brusque? She might be right, but couldn't she have been softer, sweeter, more feminine about it all? Did she always have to prove to everyone that she was more competent, more courageous, more independent, than her blond, elfin image might imply?

Oh, why did any hint of a domineering male bring out the worst in her? Patrick had only been trying to help. He came in like a knight in shining armor, and she knocked him off his horse and showed him the door.

Brilliant. Had she forgotten that this was the guy she was trying to seduce? Had she forgotten that she'd spent the past two days imagining what might have happened if Trish hadn't interrupted them in the courtyard? Imagining what his kiss would have been like?

Way to go, Celia.
She shoved her letter opener in her drawer and slammed it shut.
You'll never find out now.

 

“I
HEAR YOU HAD SOME
excitement at your office last night.”

Celia, who had been standing by the reception desk at The Birth Place, reviewing her notes for her next patient, looked up and saw Mitch Dixon standing in front of her. He held two large, flat packages wrapped in brown paper, one under each arm.

“Yeah, it was pretty wild,” she said. She put down the notes and gave him a hello hug, though he was too encumbered to return it. “I guess I'm going to have to stop offering evening hours. Trish is all over me about how stupid it was.”

Mitch smiled. “She would be. But this time she's right, you know.”

“I know.” Celia eyed the packages. “What have you got there?”

Mitch shifted his burden self-consciously. “Presents. Well, not really presents, nothing all that special. Kind of ‘thank you's', really. For you and Trish, for all those times you've helped out over at the Eagle.” He looked around the room. “Is she here?”

“She went to lunch.”

Mitch's smile faded. “Already? It's only eleven-thirty. I was sure I'd catch her. I thought I might take her to lunch myself.”

Poor Mitch. “Apparently it's going to be busy around here later. You know how she is. She went
when it was convenient to everyone else. Maybe you could come back at closing time and give it to her then. Maybe ask her to dinner.”