Twenty-Four
Sometimes people try to make decisions for you because they feel they know what’s best. I have an issue with this kind of thinking.
For instance, two weeks later, when Susan Reid wanted me to go with her to the hospital to see Caleb, Sam and Dane made a decision not to tell me.
Unfortunately for them, Gwen called me and told me what her mother wanted, and I went alone to meet her at the psychiatric hospital in Evanston.
We sat together, Susan and me, in the area just outside the heavy metal door and talked.
I apologized for thinking she was crazy.
I told her I would have sent her a card, but Hallmark didn’t make one for mistakenly assuming someone was a homicidal maniac.
There was no flower that conveyed that sentiment either.
She gave me a trace of a smile.
“Why did you do it?” I asked her gently.
“Cover for him, you mean?”
I nodded.
She took a settling breath, tears welling in her eyes. “I’d already lost Dane and my husband… I couldn’t lose anyone else.”
“But Caleb…He could have killed again. If not me, then eventually Dane.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Jory. I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m still not… I just… I lost my life when I gave Dane up, I just didn’t know it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was obsessed with getting him back, making him a Reid… I didn’t think of what it would do to Daniel. Or to Caleb.”
“Sure.”
“Caleb was always the most sensitive, so attuned to me, and when I told him… I think he felt like I’d been lying to him all those years.”
I wanted to ask about Jeremy or Gwen, but she seemed like she was in shock.
It looked like she’d aged years. Her face, the worry lines around her eyes and the shadows under them…
She didn’t look at all like the happy, vibrant woman I’d first met.
She looked completely drained, the weight of the world just crushing her.
“And Daniel…he’s asked me for a divorce. After so long, he can’t even bear to look at me anymore. And I know it’s my fault. If I had never given Dane up, or if I’d kept the fact that I did to myself, taken it to my grave…none of this would have ever happened.”
That was true, though her having an affair with Mr. Haddock did nothing to help her marriage either.
“Dane didn’t want us, and that made Caleb angry… I just had no idea that he had it inside of him to kill people. I never knew.”
“They told Sam he has two complete and separate personalities, which is apparently very rare,” I replied.
“Yes. When he was killing those poor men…thinking he was me… It’s horrible.”
I had no doubt it was. “I wish I could help.”
“I know you do,” she said softly. “I just don’t understand. I mean, when he’s Caleb, he could never do that. The part of him that is your friend, Jory—he truly loves you.”
I knew that. The problem was that the other guy in his head, who had the personality of his mother, wanted my brains splattered all over a wall.
“They don’t expect him to ever make a recovery. He’s been this way far too long.”
“Meaning what?”
“He’ll spend the rest of his life in a facility like this one.”
“He could get better, realize what he’s done.”
“To then spend the rest of his life in prison,” she said sadly. “He killed six people.”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather have him in a place like this.”
Of course she would. I felt the same. “You should…talk to someone for yourself. This is a lot; you need help too.”
“I’ve already started. I want to try and heal things with Jeremy and Gwen as well.”
“That sounds like a really good plan,” I told her.
We were quiet a moment.
“May I ask why we’re here?”
“To talk to Caleb. He asked for you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t do anything.”
“My goodness, Jory, I covered for him, which allowed him to be free to come after you. That was a—”
“But you did it out of love for your son. I get that. And you never believed he could hurt anyone, just like I didn’t.”
She nodded as she began to tear up. “I should have seen something, noticed something.”
“No. How could you?” I said, leaning over to take her hand, and she gripped mine tight. “Caleb was always the sweetest guy.”
“Yes. Yes, he was.”
“So what were you supposed to see?”
“Well, I will never stop feeling responsible, but at least I know that with him here, he’ll never hurt anyone else.”
I took a breath. “May I ask you something else?”
“Of course.”
“Why were your fingerprints on the knife they found in Caleb’s apartment?”
“He showed it to me once, had me hold it… I had no idea I was being set up at the time. Just like the pictures you found in Campbell’s apartment that Caleb hung there. He framed me and I never suspected he would. It’s not a place your mind goes to when you’re chatting with your child.”
“Of course not.” I nodded.
“Something else?”
“Yeah. Were Caleb and Greg friends?”
“Great friends. I loved Greg too. If Caleb ever comes to realize that he himself killed Greg, that will probably end him.”
I wanted to comfort her, I just didn’t know how.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Oh, Jory, the way you’re looking at me… My God, the capacity for love you have, for kindness. You’re such a good boy, Jory. Your mother did such a good job with you.”
I didn’t tell her it was all my grandmother’s doing.
Marlene Keyes had loved me fiercely and desperately with everything she had up until the day she died.
My mother had been gone; the only person she’d had left to love was me.
I still missed my grandmother, and I wished she had been able to meet Sam and Dane.
She would have been crazy about both of them, especially Sam.
Stubborn and gruff was her favorite kind.
“Jory?”
“Sorry.” I smiled at Susan Reid. “I zone out a lot.”
She sighed, curling her fingers around mine. “It’s scary in there. I need to let you know that.”
“It’s okay,” I assured her, patting her hand with my other before I eased free. She was comforted, and when were finally called in a few minutes later, we rose at the same time to go to the door.
I had to empty my pockets, and when the door locked behind me after we were buzzed in, I had a moment of uncertainty.
There were orderlies everywhere, huge muscle-bound guys who squinted at us as we walked by.
The guards at the nurses’ station were armed with batons, and the nurses moved nowhere without an escort.
After we checked in, an orderly took us to Caleb’s room.
I was expecting a big room with a bay window; the reality was a tiny room with bars across a sealed pane of glass.
There was no escape to be had that way. A breeze on his face would be a luxury for Caleb.
The only thing that comforted me was that he was under observation at the moment.
Eventually he’d be moved to the facility where he would stay, which wouldn’t be in constant lockdown.
There would be sun and wind for him again.
He was sitting in a chair when we walked in.
On the desk in front of him was one of those sixty-four packs of crayons and lots of paper.
My guess was that a pen was out of the question for the immediate future.
There were books, the thick ones that most people said they would read before they died.
But Caleb had time now to take on all the great Russian novelists. In fact, time was all he had.
“Jory,” he said, and I moved quickly into the room. My name was slurred, and that broke my heart.
“Hey.” I smiled at him, moving to kneel beside the chair so he wouldn’t have to look up at me.
His hand went instantly to my cheek, but it was like he didn’t have complete control over the limb.
It trembled, and he moved it robotically, poking at me, rather than the smooth glide of his skin over mine.
They had told us that they were working out the meds he’d be taking and the process was a long one.
“Jory, what did I do?”
The look in his eyes… Helpless, lost, forsaken. I couldn’t breathe. I stood up, and he grabbed my hand with both of his, his face imploring me for an answer.
“I’m not sure, buddy, but they’ll figure it out.”
“Don’t go, okay? Stay here and talk to me.”
Talk about what? How I still felt one way about him but feared him at the very same time?
How Greg had made the car bomb that had blown up Sam’s car, but that Caleb had been the one to plant it, since Greg was already dead?
Everyone was amazed that I could separate the Caleb I liked from the murderous man who had nearly killed the love of my life…
but I could. I had never actually seen Caleb try to hurt Sam, I had only seen him try to hurt me, and hurting me I could forgive.
And it was funny that I could, but my brother could not.
Dane had completely shut himself off from the Reids, dealing with his father through his lawyer, paperwork being the only contact the two men had.
Dane, as well as Aja, had a standing restraining order against Susan Reid.
Her giving him up at birth he couldn’t have cared less about.
The fact that she had lied to protect Caleb and he had come after me, that was unforgivable.
What was worse was that Caleb might have eventually come for him, thus putting his wife in the line of fire.
He would never see her, or any Reid, again.
I had consoled Susan with the promise that someday he would thaw. I had a feeling that when he had his own children, when he felt that bond, he might turn to her or his father and look for reconciliation. But until that time, they would both have to wait and hope.
“Jory?”
Zoned out again; it was troubling, that. I looked down at Caleb. “I gotta go, buddy—but I’ll come back.”
He nodded and gave my hand a tug to get me close to him. But I couldn’t hug him, I wasn’t that strong. I patted his shoulder instead, and sigh rose up out of him.