A Conflict of Interest Read online

“My God.”

  Neither of them moved. He heard his daughter breathing. Now was the moment to fix things.

  “How long have you been doing this to yourself?”

  “You are blind, Dad.”

  “My girl.” The words escaped him. For the first time in his life, in Leila’s life, he couldn’t stop first to make sure he wasn’t saying something wrong.

  Panic had him by the throat.

  “Leila.” He cried out for the lost little one who’d trusted him all those years ago with her secrets and her fears and the anger she’d since learned to turn inward. He reached for her, but she yanked her sleeve down and turned away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?” He’d heard her tone before, when kids were desperate and afraid and grasped at defiance in a last attempt to save their secrets.

  “I—” He couldn’t think. All those years he’d tried to do the right thing for Leila. Apparently, he’d made everything worse.

  “Tell you what, Dad?”

  He could let her push him away emotionally, as well as physically, or he could wade in and try to drag his daughter to shore. “I don’t know.” He rubbed his mouth. “But I want to know. I’d like to help you.”

  She whirled away from him, her hair clinging to her face and her throat.

  He’d been passive. She’d moved out after the divorce, refusing to talk. He’d tried to give her space, to help her by not forcing her to accept their new life until she was ready. Now he had to act, even if he only put his arms around her. He had to make her see how much he loved her.

  “Help me?” Her voice was harsh. “You took away the one person who’s been able to help me.”

  “Maria.” He cleared his throat. “How did I take her away from you?”

  “You did the wrong thing. Like always, Dad.”

  He tightened his hand on her arm but immediately loosened his hold, too aware of those scars beneath her sleeve.

  “I didn’t do anything.” He touched her hair. “I didn’t even call the review board.”

  Leila eased his hand away. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  “I should have,” he said. “I’ve been telling myself every day that I ought to, but I didn’t.”

  “You actually gave Maria a break?” Her wide eyes pushed the years away.

  “Tell me why you’ve been cutting yourself.”

  “I don’t anymore.” She faced him, toe to toe. The last time they’d really talked had been the day he and Kate had told her they were splitting up. “I wanted to hurt you, Dad. And Mom.”

  “Because of the divorce?”

  Some of his incredulity must have seeped into his voice. She yanked free of him again. “So I’m nineteen. Old enough to handle my parents’ divorce. Only I haven’t.”

  Eighteen months yawned between them. Eighteen months of surface chatter and saying nothing that mattered.

  “Your mother and I both thought you were okay.”

  She grabbed at her sleeves with her fingers and pulled them half over her hands. “You thought what you wanted to think.”

  And his daughter had been left with nowhere to take her pain, except to the privacy of her own room, then her house, where she’d sawed at her skin because no one could make anything better for her anymore.

  “Leila,” he said, choking, “can I put my arms around you?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “Then prepare yourself to stand here and talk for the rest of the day, because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  “When was the last time you really saw me? I’ve worn long sleeves for two summers and you never even noticed.”

  “Maybe I’m an asshole.” There couldn’t be much doubt. “But I love you, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.” He went blank for a second. “Not even you. Or me.”

  “I always have something sharp, Dad.”

  His first instinct was to say, “Don’t threaten me,” but just in time, he came to his senses. “I won’t let you hurt yourself ever again.”

  Her eyes closed. “This is pointless and juvenile, and I can see you’re appalled.” She began to breathe harder, as if she’d been running.

  He touched her tentatively again. “I’m ashamed of myself for not…” Knowing you at all wouldn’t comfort her. “Knowing what you needed.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” She jerked away. “But Maria is the one who helped me, and I told her you were the one who set the shrink cops on her.”

  Leila should have been his only concern, but he couldn’t forget Maria’s desperate grip on his hands on the courthouse steps, her disillusionment when he couldn’t give in to her pleas on Griff’s behalf. His daughter needed him. He didn’t want to care that Maria must hate him. “I didn’t do that, Leila.”

  Leila stared at the dark wood floor. Her mouth moved as if she were trying to speak, but she couldn’t get the words out.

  “You can’t talk to me?” he asked.

  She half smiled, but her eyes filled with tears.

  “You still look like my Leila.” The second he said it, he knew he’d made another mistake.

  Her smile was gone. “I’m not your Leila. I’m my own woman.”

  “But I am still your father, and I’d do anything to keep you safe.” He rubbed his own arm.

  She refused to look at him, but her hesitation offered hope, as she seemed caught between running away and needing to stay. “What happened with you and Mom?”

  He couldn’t tell her that her mother had only one hobby—other men. When Leila was forty-five, protecting her would still be his responsibility. “I want to give you something that makes sense, but we stopped loving each other. I don’t know how that happens.” And even pretending it had been that simple made him feel like an idiot.

  “You fell out of love, so a divorce was my high school graduation present.”

  Actually, it had been Kate’s. The day he’d come home and found Kate and her latest in his bed, he’d wanted to throw her and her skinny-assed lover through the nearest window. The only thing that had kept Kate out of a windshield and him out of prison was the inescapable fact that Leila would have had to learn the truth about her mother.

  He and Kate had stuck together for several more foul months, thinking Leila didn’t need the added stress of a divorce before she graduated, and that after, she’d be mature enough to take a version of the truth. By unspoken agreement, they’d never explained her mother was a serial cheater.

  “We couldn’t live together any longer.” Nothing he’d ever said to her was more true.

  “Mom stopped loving you because you stopped coming home.”

  “Did she?” Any man would defend himself, but he couldn’t. He’d accept all the blame. Whatever it took to stop Leila from hurting herself and keep her talking. “I had a responsible job,” he said. “People depended on me.”

  “Try to convince yourself, Dad.”

  “Tell me what you think.”

  “You and Mom made my life a lie for years. You said you loved each other every day. In the car, over dinner, when Mom talked to you at the office. And they were lies. Every time, for how many years?”

  All he knew was that those words meant nothing anymore except when he said them to Leila. “We thought once you were eighteen—”

  She nodded. “Old enough to vote, but not old enough to drink or get over a divorce. I still don’t get it.”

  “Then talk to me. We’ll sort it out. You can’t ask me not to try, honey. You’re my daughter. I took you to kindergarten. I bandaged your skinned knees. I made you mac and cheese when you wanted comfort food.” From scratch, because he’d been sure those little boxes her mother favored would preserve her till Earth men colonized Pluto.

  She stared at him as if he were a poisonous snake who’d reared up to strike. “Did Maria talk to you about me?”

  “What?” Did she know about his attraction to Maria? If she knew how much he wanted her doctor, how would that help her handle the divorce that still obvious
ly tortured her?

  “She keeps telling me—” Her eyes filled with tears. She whirled and ran down the stairs. “Never freakin’ mind.”

  He caught her at the front door. “Wait, Leila. We can find someone else.”

  “Don’t you understand? I can’t talk to someone else, and if Maria said you should persuade me, forget it. Let me go.”

  “Okay, but listen a second. I’m still only a few streets away from your house. Call me and I’ll be at your door.”

  “I don’t want your help. I don’t want to hear what a great life Mom has in D.C. I want to know the truth about my own life, and I’m tired of feeling like a fool for not knowing.” She grabbed the door. “I can’t get over it, just because you and Mom have put it behind you.”

  “There’s nothing more to say. Our marriage just ended.” He couldn’t make himself give her what she thought she wanted. Young women might want to hurt themselves more after they discovered the truth about a serial-cheating mom.

  “Yeah. Thanks for that. Thanks for convincing me that ‘I love you’ are the last words a woman can ever trust.” She stopped on the threshold, half in and half out. “And thanks for thinking you could walk out on me because I was eighteen.”

  The door banged shut, seeming to shake the whole house. Jake yanked it open again. “You can do anything you want, Leila, except pretend this conversation is over.”

  “Watch it, Dad.” Her anger mocked him. “The neighbors will see us.”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets while frustration beat a tattoo in his temples. “I didn’t walk out on you.”

  “Years ago, Dad. You were invisible every time Mom and I needed you.”

  “When you say you need me, I’m there. I held you at the E.R. when you had stitches from that bike crash. I taught you how to cut a sandwich in sailboats.” He grabbed at anything that might convince her. “I was in the audience when you caught your bow in your hair at your first violin recital. I ran all the way from the courthouse square to the hospital E.R. the day your mother’s crazy dog bit your hand.”

  “Another trip down memory lane.” She gathered herself with a tight laugh that reminded him of Kate at her angriest. “If you want to see me again, leave me alone. I’ll come back when I’m ready.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “You’re great at pretending everything’s okay. Now you can learn how it feels to wait and hope your life starts feeling normal again.” She started down the sidewalk toward the house she shared with three other college kids. “You and Dr. Keaton and I—we’ll all be doing that. Thanks to you.”

  “I didn’t report Maria.”

  Leila turned, her eyes widening. “I just noticed the way you say her name.”

  If he could ever pretend to feel nothing, now was the time. Maria was the only person who could help his child. “You haven’t wanted me in your life for the past eighteen months, and I finally know why. How am I supposed to sound?”

  “Bye, Dad.”

  Her satisfaction gave him a sick kind of hope. She must hate him to be glad she was hurting him. She still felt something. She sauntered away, her boots grinding up snow on the sidewalk. He let her round the corner before he tore into the house.

  He had to get to Maria.

  MARIA OPENED her door reluctantly. Indecision showed in her narrowed gaze as she peered through the sidelight, then in the annoyance with which she turned the dead bolt.

  “Refusing to help wasn’t enough for you?” she asked.

  “I didn’t report you.”

  Her wide, agony-filled eyes called him a liar.

  “If you’ve been treating my daughter, you know I don’t lie,” he said.

  “You and I will never discuss Leila. Don’t come back here.”

  She closed the door, and he had no choice. He couldn’t wrap his arms around her and make her see he’d never hurt her or Leila. And he couldn’t explain that he’d betrayed himself by not reporting her.

  As he walked back to his car, Leila’s accusation rang in his ears. He’d done the wrong thing. Like always.

  MARIA WOKE EARLY on Saturday morning after a restless night. That was nothing new; she hadn’t had decent sleep since the trial.

  But last night had been different. Dreams of Jake standing on her doorstep, proclaiming his innocence, had haunted her. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe there were at least a few people in Honesty who didn’t think she was a monster. But she couldn’t. He had been the judge in the case. He was always objective. He would have done what the law required.

  And it broke her heart.

  Sighing, she threw off the blankets. She couldn’t lie in bed all day, feeling sorry for herself. She had a full day of cheerful distractions planned.

  First, she baked the sweet-potato soufflé. Then she picked up the basket she’d made for her little sister. Maybe she couldn’t be with her own sister and mom today, but she’d long been making a semblance of family in this town.

  She’d joined Big Brothers Big Sisters soon after arriving, and she’d been matched with Carly Dane. Carly’s mother worked crazy hours, and her father lived for most of the week in D.C., where he found more work as a plasterer than Honesty could provide. Carly loved surprises, and Maria often brought her a small gift.

  Looking harried, with her hair escaping from a loose knot and her hands covered in flour, Leah Dane opened her front door but kept it only wide enough to lean through. “You’re not welcome here anymore.”

  Maria stepped back, gripping the basket. “What do you mean, Leah?” Even as she asked the question, she knew. Leah was another person who couldn’t find a way to give Maria the benefit of the doubt.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t hear?” Leah asked in a harsh whisper.

  Carly appeared, leaning around her mother. “Maria, I knew you’d come. You said you would. I told you, Mommy. Maria never breaks a promise.”

  “I have this.” Maria held up the basket, eyeing Carly’s mother. She cleared her throat. “It’s just a plush turkey for Thanksgiving and some fruit and nuts. And a kids’ movie.”

  Leah snatched the DVD out as if she expected porn. Maria’s face burned. She felt as if her friend had splashed her with a flamethrower.

  “Okay. I’ll look through the basket first, Carly. You go back inside. I want to talk to Maria.”

  “Mommy, it’s mine, and besides, I want to talk to her, too.”

  Maria forced a smile. Leah turned her daughter, gently, by the shoulder. “Go ahead, baby. I’ll be there in a minute.” She waited until Carly was out of earshot. “I heard what you did. I don’t want you around my girl.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Buck Collier says different.”

  “Buck?” Attorneys weren’t supposed to get personal. An errant, pointless thought brought her hope. Leila might have been wrong about Jake turning her in. “Mr. Collier called you?”

  “He came to my house, and that’s already got the neighbors chattering at top speed. People in this town assume the worst if a man’s only home when he can be and a woman’s got to work till late at night. They know what you did to Griff. It might make them wonder about Carly, too.”

  A vise threatened to close around Maria’s chest. “You know me. Carly really is like my little sister. I’d never hurt her.”

  “That’s not what Buck said, and I can’t take a chance. We don’t leave her alone because we don’t love her. We work hard so she can go to college and have an easier life.” Leah came out and shut the door behind her. “I’d kill you if I thought you hurt my baby. I’d kill you with my bare hands.”

  “Any mom would.” Maria could barely see through half angry, half sad tears. There was nothing to say. Leah’s neighbors would love a report of the exiled big sister boo-hooing on the stoop. She wiped her nose and her mouth, blinking hard. Then she held out the basket. “I didn’t put in anything that would hurt Carly.”


  Carly’s mother stared at the basket, of two minds. “Okay.” She tucked it against her side, still planted in front of the doorway in case she had to repel Maria.

  She didn’t. Maria turned away. She was halfway down the stairs when Leah apparently had second thoughts.

  “Maybe we’ll call you when this is all settled.”

  Just in time, righteous anger rolled back. Maria didn’t have to put up with these ridiculous lies. “Have I ever done anything to make you think I’d hurt Carly?”

  Leah looked as if she regretted speaking up. At last she shook her head. “But what would you do if she was your daughter?”

  “That’s a point.” It didn’t make Maria feel any better. “But I’m going to clear my name. I hope you’ll believe I’m innocent afterward.”

  Her bravado didn’t impress Leah. The other woman opened her door and slipped through it. Through the thin wood, Maria heard the rattle of one of those old-fashioned chains sliding closed.

  Maria made a living by her insight. She tried to be a reasonable person, but she was starting to get mad.

  LATER THAT DAY, as she drove to Beth’s house, Maria searched for a way to fix this mess.

  Leah had reminded her that any parent would be wise to take precautions, and their children were more important than a stranger’s right to practice. But in the meantime, Maria refused to wear a scarlet letter on her chest. She could answer the questions when the board got around to asking them, but she’d be a long way down on their witness list. And what would anyone in this town think of her even after she was cleared? If they were all like Leah, she could forget a second chance.

  After dealing with Leah, she was dismayed to find herself parking behind several other cars in front of Beth’s lodge. Even though she might feel like a walking sore thumb, Beth ran a fishing lodge. None of her guests would know Maria, and they wouldn’t have heard the stories. Unless, of course, they watched the more salacious tabloid programs.

  Maria stared at the house, bemused about whether to run or face it. She’d faced plenty of stink eye since the trial.

  Her body answered for her. Without letting herself overanalyze, she locked her car and marched up the stacked stone steps to Beth’s rustic door. Beth answered the bell, already reaching for Maria as she opened up.