24. Confessions #3
Doc says nothing, but starts moving his hand in slow circles on my stomach.
“I started figuring out the pieces too late,” I say. “Not all of it, but enough to start asking questions. Enough to feel sick when I looked at the numbers he waved away. Enough to know if I said the wrong thing out loud, I’d have to admit the man I loved might be robbing people blind.”
My voice stays calm. That’s old training.
Hospital training.
“The project collapsed,” I say. “Ian disappeared before the consequences could catch him, and took the money with him. People were furious, scared, and needed something tangible to claw at. That became me.”
Anger begins to spread quietly over Doc’s face.
“I didn’t steal money. I didn’t know he was siphoning funds or cutting corners or using cheap materials. I didn’t know contractors were getting stiffed. I didn’t know families were putting life savings into an illusion he was already draining dry.”
Doc shifts and moves his hand up, caressing my jaw..
“They investigated me,” I say.
His eyes sharpen.
“Not arrested. Not charged. Investigated. Questions. Records. Emails. Meetings. What did I know? When did I know it? Who did I talk to? How could I not know? I lived with him. Why did I support him?”
My throat tightens.
“Because you loved him,” Doc whispers.
“I was a grown woman. Don’t make me sound young and helpless,” I say a little too sharply. “I’m not.”
I turn my head and look at him.
He means it.
“I was cleared. Eventually.”
“Eventually?” he says.
This is the part no one ever really understands unless shame has had its hand around their throat before.
“Eventually, it was three painful months of co-workers treating me like I had the plague. Being recognized, pointed at, and shunned out in public. Long after it mattered socially. Long after people had decided I was either a liar or an idiot.”
“You weren’t either.” He tries to pull my chin to look at him, but I look away.
“No. I was useful.”
He brushes the backs of his fingers across my cheek. “Annie.”
“No.” I lift a hand. “Let me get it all out first, please.”
He stops and listens.
“A month after I was cleared, my parents died.”
The tide of old grief moves through me. Familiar now. Not smaller, exactly.
“When I thought I could not get any lower. It was horrific,” I say and bite my lower lip.
”Oh, Annie.” Doc’s breath changes, and he wraps his arm around me.
“It’s okay. It brought me home. While Portland was still whispering behind my back, I came home to deal with the estate. And suddenly, the wreckage of my life started to sort itself out.”
“Art offered me a job. Coupeville gave me a community who knew my parents and watched me grow up. And they wrapped their arms around me and welcomed me home.”
“The me that existed before Ian.”
I roll onto my side to face him. “Doc, you have to see. This house isn’t just a house. The clinic isn’t just a clinic. Coupeville isn’t just where I landed. It’s where my roots are where I rebuilt my life and found Annie again.”
I put my arm over his waist and bury my head in his chest.
“And now Ian's back,” I sigh. “Same script, same promises. And the same ruin on its way.”
“The cannery,” Doc says.
“Yes.”
“Ian made me useful in Portland,” I say. “He weaponized me. That’s what he came to the clinic to do again. To my town.”
Doc’s voice lowers. “He needs your credibility.”
“He did.” I pull the sheet tighter around me. “Now he needs to ruin it.”
Doc understands the difference. I see it in his face. I sit up, taking the sheet with me. I need to be upright for this part, the truth has a spine, and so do I now.
Doc sits too, slower, taking my hand.
“I won’t be able to live through that. Coupeville ruined and I could have stopped it.”
“The cannery isn’t just some old building on the waterfront,” I say. “It’s where I make my stand.”
Doc’s eyes stay on mine.
“I’m going to stop him,” I say. “Once and for all.”
“Okay.” He nods. “Tell me what you need.”
Not a rescue. Just a question.
“Help me keep things straight?”
“Absolutely.”
“I have all my notes and files from before but it won’t be enough. I have to catch him red-handed before the first dollar flows to him. I’ll need to bring in Alvarez eventually, but I need to dig up some concrete information first.”
Doc smiles. “I think I know someone who can help with that.”
For the first time since Ian walked into the clinic, I’m not scared.
I’m going to take him down.
“And, the town is going to need to hear it from me before Ian gets to make me look cornered.”
Doc’s face hardens.
“I can’t let him whisper Portland into Coupeville’s ears like it’s a disease I brought home,” I say. “If the truth is coming out, it comes out of my mouth.”
That’s the hardest part.
The public part. The part Ian always counted on me fearing.
I still fear it.
But fear isn’t the only thing in the room anymore.
“I’m with you,” Doc says.
“I know.”
And I really do.
Outside my window, somewhere in town, Ian is lurking, wearing his lies and waiting for shame to make me obedient.
He thinks I’m alone.
He thinks he's in control.
I close my hand tighter around Doc’s.
Ian’s wrong.