Hold Tight
“I wasn’t worried about my friends,” Adam said. “But they were going to put it on my dad. He’d lose his license, for sure.”
Mike felt his breathing go funny. “Adam?”
He turned toward his father.
“Just tell the truth. Don’t worry about me.”
Adam shook his head.
Betsy reached out and touched Adam’s hand. “We have proof.”
Adam looked confused.
Ron Hill moved forward. “When Spencer died I went through his room. I found . . .” He stopped, swallowed, looked at the ceiling again. “I didn’t want to tell Betsy. She was going through enough and I fig- ured, what difference did it make? He was dead. Why put her through any more? You were thinking something like that too, weren’t you, Adam?”
Adam said nothing.
“So I didn’t say anything. But the night he died . . . I went through his room. Under his bed, I found eight thousand dollars in cash—and these.”
Ron tossed a prescription pad onto the table. For a moment, everyone just stared at it.
“You didn’t steal your father’s prescription pads,” Betsy said. “Spencer did. He stole them from your house, didn’t he?”
Adam had his head down.
“And the night he killed himself, you found out. You confronted him. You were furious. You two fought. That’s when you hit him. When he called you back, you didn’t want to hear his apologies. He had gone too far this time. So you let his calls go into voice mail.”
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. “I should have answered it. I hit him. I called him names and said I never wanted to speak to him again. Then I left him alone and when he called for help . . .”
The room pretty much exploded then. There were tears, of course. Hugs. Apologies. Wounds were ripped open and closed. Hester worked it. She grabbed LeCrue and Duncan. They all saw what happened here. No one wanted to prosecute the Bayes. Adam would cooperate and help send Rosemary and Carson to prison.
But that was for another day.
Later that night, after Adam had gotten home and had his cell phone back, Betsy Hill came over.
“I want to hear,” she said to him.
And together they listened to Spencer’s very last message before ending his own life:
“This isn’t on you, Adam. Okay, man. Just try to understand. It’s not on anyone. It’s just too hard. It’s always been too hard. . . .”
ONE week later, Susan Loriman knocked on the door of Joe Lewis- ton’s house.
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Lewiston? It’s Susan Loriman.”
“I’m pretty busy.”
“Please open up. It’s very important.”
There were a few seconds of silence before Joe Lewiston did as she asked. He was unshaven and in a gray T-shirt. His hair jutted up in different directions and there was still sleep in his eyes.
“Mrs. Loriman, this isn’t really a good time.”
“It’s not a good time for me either.”
“I’ve been dismissed from my teaching post.”
“I know. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“So if this is about your son’s donor drive . . .”
“It is.”
“You can’t possibly think I’m the one to lead this anymore.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I do.”
“Mrs. Loriman . . .”
“Has anyone close to you ever died?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mind telling me who?”
The question was an odd one. Lewiston sighed and looked into Susan Loriman’s eyes. Her son was dying and for some reason this question seemed very important to her. “There was my sister, Cassie. She was an angel. You never believed anything could happen to her.”
Susan knew all about it, of course. The news had been full of stories on Cassandra Lewiston’s widowed husband and the murders.
“Anyone else?”
“My brother Curtis.”
“Was he an angel too?”
“No. Just the opposite. I look like him. They say we’re the spitting image. But he was troubled his whole life.”
“How did he die?”
“Murdered. Probably in a robbery.”
“I have the donor nurse right here.” Susan looked behind her. A woman came out of the car and moved toward them. “She can take your blood right now.”
“I don’t see the point.”
“You really didn’t do anything that terrible, Mr. Lewiston. You even called the police when you realized what your former brother-in-law was doing. You need to start thinking about rebuilding. And this step, your willingness to help here, to try to save my child even when you have all of this going on in your real life, I think that will matter to people. Please, Mr. Lewiston. Won’t you try to help my son?”
He looked as though he was about to protest. Susan hoped that he wouldn’t. But she was ready if he did. She was ready to tell him that her son, Lucas, was ten years old. She was ready to remind him that his brother Curtis had died eleven years ago—or nine months before Lucas’s birth. She would tell Joe Lewiston that the best odds now of finding a good donor was via a genetic uncle. Susan hoped that it wouldn’t come to that. But she was willing to go that far now. She had to be.
“Please,” she said again.
The nurse kept approaching. Joe Lewiston looked at Susan’s face again and must have seen the desperation.
“Sure, okay,” he said. “Why don’t you come inside so we can do this?”
IT amazed Tia how quickly life went back to normal.
Hester had been good to her word. No second chances, professionally speaking. So Tia handed in her resignation and was currently looking for another job. Mike and Ilene Goldfarb were off the hook for any crimes involving their prescriptions. The medical board was doing a for-show investigation, but in the meantime, their practice continued on as before. There were rumors that they had found a good match for Lucas Loriman, but Mike didn’t want to talk about it and so she didn’t push.
During those first few emotional days, Tia figured that Adam would turn his life around and be the sweet, kind boy . . . well, that he never really was. But a boy doesn’t work like a light switch. Adam was better, no question about it. Right now he was outside in the driveway playing goalie while his father took shots on him. When Mike got one past him, he would yell, “Score!” and start singing the Rangers goal-scoring music. The sound was comforting and familiar, but in the old days, she would hear Adam too. Now, today, not a sound came from him. He played in silence, while there was something strange in Mike’s voice, a blend of joy and desperation.