A Matter of Trust (15 page)

“You’re not at the house,” he said. “I can
only hope you’re calling to tell me you’re on your way.” His tone
was sharp, and she could hear how cross he was in his breathing as
he waited for her to respond.

“Can you tell me what this is about?” she
asked. She wasn’t a coward, but she was worried about what her
father would say to her.

“No. You’ll come here now, or I swear to God
you will not like what I do next,” he said. He had never in her
life given her an ultimatum, and she really didn’t like the
direction this was going.

“I’m on my way,” she replied.

Her father didn’t respond. He actually hung
up, and she shut her eyes as she let out a sigh of regret. The
small office was buzzing, filled with half a dozen members of the
Friends of Kit Cove. “Rex, I’ve got to go,” she said. “Can you call
me if you need me?”

“Will do, Carrie.” Rex was on the computer,
sending emails of the documents Carrie had been sent to all local,
state, and federal government officials, as well as news channels
and anyone else who could ensure this oil project would be dead and
buried.

She grabbed her purse beside the computer
and stared at the stack of papers, hard copies of all the documents
that had been emailed to her. She picked them up again, staring at
Ben Wilde’s name before folding the small stack and tucking them
into her purse. Rex didn’t miss the move, and she wondered whether
he’d ask her what she was doing.

“Have a good night, Carrie” was all he
said.

“You too, Rex,” she replied.

She left the building, taking in the
half-full parking lot. She should have been happy that they were
about to stop this oil project, one she’d been told they didn’t
have a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping, but she couldn’t be
happy, because her heart had been shattered by a man who’d played
her like a fool. Ben was a scoundrel, a thief—and he’d been her
first.

The drive to her dad’s place took no time at
all. When she pulled into the driveway, she could see her dad
waiting for her, leaning on the porch railing, both hands gripping
the rails. He didn’t have a coat on, just a dark brown plaid shirt
and his newer blue jeans, and he was standing so still it seemed he
was holding a vigil.

He said nothing to her as she climbed the
steps, but with each step she took, her heart thudded a little
more. She had to swallow, and her hands were sweating. He was
making her feel as if she’d done something wrong, but she wasn’t
the wrongdoer here, so why did she feel as if she was?

“Dad,” she said.

He nodded. “Carrie.” He moved to the door,
pulled it open, and held it for her.

He was giving nothing away, so she stepped
past him and inside. He closed the door behind them. She spotted
Alice coming down the stairs. The woman hesitated, and her gaze
went to Jack.

“I’m going to run into town,” she said.
“I’ll be gone about an hour.” She paused beside Carrie, her lips
tight as if she, too, was having trouble with something she’d done.
Then Alice reached over and patted Carrie’s arm. She started to say
something but shook her head, stepping away. She reached for her
coat, and Jack took it from her hands and leaned down to kiss her
cheek, holding her shoulders affectionately. It was the first time
it had registered for Carrie how much her dad loved Alice.

He opened the door. “Drive safe,” he said,
shutting the door behind her and holding on to the doorknob for
what felt like an hour but was really only a minute. He was
obviously trying to figure something out before he turned to her.
“Let’s go into my study.”

He started down the hall, and Carrie
followed. He took one of two easy chairs on either side of a small
table, extending his hand to the other chair. The entire time he
watched her, she couldn’t figure out whether he loved her, hated
her, or was finally done with her. And it hurt.

“Carrie, I’m going to tell you a story, and
I need you to listen to everything and to say nothing. Can you do
that?”

Now she was really confused. The shit had
just hit the fan, and she was numb. Her heart felt as if it had
been cut open with glass, and her father wanted to tell her a
story? She looked away, and he waited for her to say something.

“Dad, what’s this about?” she finally asked.
She didn’t want to hear a story—and her father had never been a
storyteller. The fact was that they’d never sat in a room alone
together for more than five minutes. He’d always been with either
Alice or her mother, and he’d never read to her or told her a
story, not ever.

He didn’t say anything. The look on his face
gave her the impression he’d wait all day, though he wouldn’t be
happy about it.

“Fine.” She shrugged, setting her purse down
on the floor at her feet.

“There was a young man who grew up in
Billings,” he began. “He was arrogant, with a mouth on him that got
him in trouble a time or two. He wanted nothing more than to be the
best, and he didn’t care who he hurt to get there. You see, to him,
succeeding and getting to the top included stepping on those close
around him, using anyone to get what he wanted.

“He also liked the ladies, and he met this
nice woman. She was gorgeous and sweet, and he got her pregnant.
When she first told him, his response was to do what he always did.
He was cruel and lashed out, accusing her of trying to trap him.
She cried, and even though he'd hurt her and left her in a fine
mess, she'd dried her eyes and walked away without another word to
him. He expected her to call him, of course, and he waited a week,
but she never did.

“Then he started to feel guilty, then
remorseful, for how he’d hurt her. She was a nice young woman, a
freshman in college, and he was just starting out in his career. He
wanted fun and good times and nothing to tie him down, but night
after night, he relived how he’d treated her. So he called her,
left a dozen messages, but she never called back. He started to
worry and panic that she’d done something she couldn’t undo, so he
went to her school, and one night he found her walking with two
girlfriends. Instead of treating him the way he deserved, she asked
him how he was.

“They went for coffee, and they talked. She
hadn’t aborted the baby but was planning on having it, so he asked
her to marry him. At first, she didn’t agree, but he convinced her
it was the right thing, and he promised he’d do right by her. A
week later, in front of a justice of the peace, they were married.
She was a woman he admired, a woman who was good and honest, a
woman he respected—but also a woman he didn’t love.

“He told himself he’d grow to love her. She
loved him, and he knew that, as she had never forgotten to tell him
so in the beginning. After his daughter was born, he realized that
he’d had no idea what love was until he held that tiny, precious
child in his hands. He didn’t deserve her, but he knew one thing:
That child of his might be the only thing he truly loved, but his
wife, who’d given him that precious bundle, was someone he loved in
a way that he hadn’t expected. It was love for giving him that
child, it was caring, but it wasn’t, and never would be, a burning,
passionate love. It was a love of friendship, companionship. It was
comfortable.

“She raised his daughter for him, as he knew
she would. He provided for his family and was faithful to them, but
he was also a man driven in his career, and he would do anything he
had to to succeed and make money. When his company asked him to
falsify documents, to bury reports, to plant evidence, and to look
the other way, he always complied. And he was good at it. He was
paid well for what he did, and he never told anyone.

“This man was smart, though, too—smart
enough to know he was responsible for the downfall of many an
innocent man. He had destroyed people’s careers, all to make the
company he worked for wealthier, all to keep the company from being
held responsible for the problems they caused. Well, he learned to
have his own safety net, so he started keeping copies of everything
he’d done, copies of memos, anything that would protect him,
because he knew that being in bed with the Devil would come back to
bite him in the ass.”

Carrie just watched her father as he spoke.
She had a sick feeling he was speaking from personal experience.
She swallowed, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly her
fingers were starting to hurt. “Dad…”

He shook his head. “Let me finish, Carrie.
You see, when you do bad things, it always comes back on you, and
always in ways you don’t expect. The man’s wife, who held their
family together, became sick, very sick. She fought her cancer
without complaining. She was sick, in pain, but she made it into
remission. The second time, when it came back, that ugly, hated,
black, miserable cancer continued to destroy a good woman. The man
knew it would take her, and he prayed for deliverance, for a
miracle, for cancer to take him instead. The woman didn’t deserve
to die, but he did. He knew this was his comeuppance for every bad,
vile thing he’d done.

“Then he met a lovely, good woman, who
became his wife’s friend and was there by her side day in and day
out right up to the end. She loved his wife, and, in all his sick,
twisted, fucked-up life, he knew he’d just met the one woman he
would truly love. And it was wrong, but, you see, his wife knew.
She saw something in the two of them, that they were soulmates, and
before she passed over, she called them both to her bedside and all
but handed him to her friend.

“He was outraged, of course. He wouldn’t
hear of such a thing, but his wife told him that she understood.
She confessed that she, too, had walked away from a man she loved
deeply. She had already been married at the time, and her child had
been young, and she’d already made a commitment. She confessed to
her husband that if she could go back, though, it would be
different. She would have left him and run as fast as she could for
that love, and she pleaded with him not to waste any more of his
life but to marry this woman as soon as she was gone and then live
every day in love, not regret.”

Her dad stopped talking, and Carrie was
stiff with shock. Her eyes ached. “You’re telling me Mom told you
to marry Alice?”

A tear slipped from her father’s eye. She’d
never seen him cry, even after her mother died. “Your mother was a
gem,” he said. “I wish every day she was still here and she had the
chance for the love I was given. She deserved it, but I got it. I
carry her death as if I’m responsible. She knew Alice was—is--the
love of my life. I’ve never felt for any woman what I do for
Alice.”

Carrie’s throat was so thick with emotion
that she had to clear it twice before she could speak. “You’re
telling me my mother had an affair, and then she just handed you to
Alice?”

“Don’t talk about your mother like that,”
Jack said. “She never cheated. I wish she had, though, so she could
have had some of the happiness she allowed to walk out of her life.
We made a commitment to each other, for you, because we loved
you.”

“I didn’t realize that I was an accident,”
Carrie said. She didn’t think her heart could take any more.

Her dad was shaking his head. “Carrie, half
the human population is an accident. I would never go back and undo
meeting your mother and having you, even if I could. You two are
the best thing that’s happened to me…but I want to talk about Ben
Wilde. He’s not the bad guy you made him out to be.”

Carrie started shaking her head. “You’re
wrong, Dad. He came in here to cheat us. He diverted funds, he
committed fraud, he lied—”

“No, he didn’t!” her father yelled, cutting
her off, and it shocked her, because her father had never raised
his voice to her, not like this. “Ben Wilde was set up.”

“How can you sit there and say that after
seeing all the evidence, the documents, everything that was sent to
me?”

“Because I used to be the man Ben is accused
of being.”

She stared at her father as an icy chill
raced through her. Her ears were ringing, and she couldn’t get her
mind around what he was saying. “I don’t understand?”

“You think I want you to know what a bad man
I was? I worked for one of the largest oil companies around.
Reports are falsified all the time. People in positions of power
are bought. It’s about who you know, and it’s all in the sales
pitch. Evidence of misconduct, of possible problems, is buried. Big
Oil owns this country, the world, the governments. They can silence
who they want, but when a disaster happens—which is not surprising,
considering all of the shortcuts taken by oil companies day in and
day out—there will always be someone who has to take the fall. I
was the guy who made sure all the evidence pointed to whoever was
chosen. Your Ben was set up, because a smart oilman who’s scamming
and really lying and cheating and funneling money to some offshore
account…well, he knows how to cover his tracks.”

“But…”

Her father was shaking his head again.
“Carrie, you’re so young. Give yourself a second to understand what
I’m saying. If Ben is guilty of doing all this, then why were we
sent all these documents that could easily convict him? Have you
asked yourself what the person who sent them to you, whoever he is,
has to gain from this?”

She swallowed again as a sick feeling came
over her. “Dad, if you’re right, then I’m responsible for
destroying the only man I’ve ever loved.”

As her father sat across from her, she saw
the first time real understanding for her filled his eyes, as well
as sympathy and sorrow. “Yes, you are, but that doesn’t mean it’s
too late. You can still help him.”

“How? If what you say is true, how can I
help? All I have is what—” She stopped and reached down into her
purse, pulling out the printed documents. “These are the papers I
was emailed. They’re just copies, Dad.”