FAMILY FALLACIES (The Kate Huntington mystery series #3) (7 page)

Rob sat back against
the bench. After a pregnant pause, he said, “Okay, so tell me about her.”

“First of all,
flaky
is the last word I would use to describe this woman. She’s one of the most
down-to-earth people I’ve ever known. Her rationale for considering a lawsuit
is that she and her husband should not have to pay for the damage done by her
parents. She wants to recoup the substantial amount of money she’s already
shelled out, and will be continuing to shell out for awhile longer, on therapy.

“Secondly, having to
hide under your bed at night because your drunk father is likely to beat the
crap out of you if you show up on his radar isn’t exactly just failing to have
your needs met.”

At that moment, the
waitress appeared and deposited plates in front of them. Rob had the good sense
not to steal her pickles as he normally would.

“She didn’t tell me
that,” he said. “She just talked about her father calling her names and the
possibility of sexual abuse.”

“Well, I’m not
surprised she wasn’t more forthcoming if you approached your meeting with her
with the assumption that she was a flake.”

Rob pulled out his
handkerchief and waved it in front of him. “Can we have a cease fire, please?
I’m sorry I didn’t call you before meeting with her and I’m sorry I jumped to
conclusions. And I didn’t say any of that to her. I was gentle with her.”

Somewhat mollified,
Kate nodded. “Okay. Can you let
me
know what you find out about the case
law precedents
before
you call her back, please?”

Rob nodded. They ate in
slightly strained silence for a couple minutes.

“I really would prefer
that Audrey not pursue this, and she’s promised to wait until I say she’s ready
to handle it,” Kate finally said, putting her pickle slices on his plate as a
peace offering. “She has no idea how stressful a lawsuit will be. No doubt her
parents’ attorney will try to make her look like an hysterical nutcase with an
overactive imagination.”

Rob chose his words
carefully. “These are hard cases to present because it’s difficult to get a
judge or jury to understand, especially when you’re dealing with... what do
they call them now,
delayed
memories. It’s hard for people to understand
how you can
not
remember something horrible that’s happened to you, and
then later you do remember it. Quite frankly, Kate, I don’t really understand
myself. First, you don’t remember and then, poof, you do?”

“Rob, I guest lecture
on the subject of traumatic memory for a friend’s psych classes at Towson
University. That lecture’s an hour long, and I just barely touch on the main
points. The shortest explanation I can give you is that the human mind is
programmed with all kinds of defenses to keep us sane. When a memory’s so
emotionally overwhelming that we can’t cope with it, one of those defenses–it’s
called dissociation–can block the memory out.”

“That’s just so hard
to... grasp.” Rob had started to say
believe,
then thought better of it.

Kate put down the fork
she’d been using to poke at her salad. “Okay, I’m willing to talk about this
some more. But only on one condition. I’m
not
willing to
debate
the issue.”

Rob cocked an eyebrow
at her. There was an edge of anger in her voice again, and he thought he’d been
walking fairly softly.

Kate sighed. How could
she begin to explain to him her frustration with this topic? “Rob, as a lawyer,
you know that some things are known. They’re facts. And other things are not
known for sure, so there can be opinions or theories about them. You can debate
about theories and opinions, but not facts.”

He nodded.

“I get really tired of
debating
about the validity of something that I know
, for a fact,
is real.”

“But how do you know
that?” Rob said without thinking. When she glared at him, he held up his hands
in a gesture of surrender. Keeping his voice gentle, he said, “Why’s this such
a minefield for you, sweetheart?”

“I’m sorry, Rob. It’s
been a long, intense week... Okay, imagine for a minute what it would be like
if a bunch of people, who were
not
lawyers, kept refusing to believe you
when you told them again and again that it was illegal to marry your sister?”

Rob gave a short bark
of laughter.

“That is illegal, isn’t
it?”

“Yeah, in most states,
and I get your point, Kate. I will put skepticism aside. What’s the evidence?”

“Okay, short synopsis.
We’ve known about dissociative amnesia since Freud and his cohorts stumbled on
it around 1890. But Freud got cold feet when things got controversial, so he
back-pedaled and called the memories wish-fulfillment fantasies. That set
things back for awhile.

“We’ve had
proof
of dissociative amnesia as far back as World War I, in the form of thousands
and thousands of
documented
cases of it in combat vets, rape survivors,
and later, Holocaust survivors.”

“Holocaust survivors,”
Rob echoed, more statement than question.

“Yeah, roughly twenty
percent had amnesia for all or part of their time in the concentration camps.”

“I’m surprised that
number isn’t higher,” Rob said.

Kate nodded.
“Especially since the rate is close to sixty percent for incest survivors...
Nobody’s all that shocked by amnesia in combat vets or Holocaust survivors. But
in childhood sexual abuse cases,
that’s
when it gets controversial and
suddenly people don’t want to believe it.”

She paused to take a
sip of iced tea. “What they
really
don’t want to believe is that adults
sexually abuse children. If a combat vet says he was so overwhelmed by the
horrors of war that he blocked out all memory of a battle he was in, we’re
amazed that his mind could do that, but we don’t disbelieve that he was
in
the battle!
But an adult says that they’re now having memories of somebody
sexually abusing them, the reaction is, ‘Naw, that didn’t happen. You’re
imagining things.’”

Rob nodded as he took
another bite of his crab cake sandwich.

“And, as you pointed
out, it’s difficult to grasp because it
is
counterintuitive,” Kate said.
“Normally you can remember the bad stuff that happens to you all too clearly,
so how could it be that some of the bad stuff you can’t remember at all.”

“So how is it?” Rob asked.
“Why does some stuff get blocked out and other stuff doesn’t?”

“That we don’t know
yet. But there are several theories about it. The one I think makes the most
sense when it comes to sexual abuse is that, when it’s better for our survival
to not remember than to remember, we block it out.”

Rob looked confused.

“If you have a vicious
dog in your neighborhood, it’s beneficial to your survival to remember that and
to avoid going near that neighbor’s property,” Kate said. “But if your own
father, on whom you depend for survival, does something bad to you at night,
then tells you no one will believe you if you tell, and the next morning you
have to sit across the breakfast table from him...”

“It will make life
easier if you can forget what happened in the night,” Rob finished for her, his
voice grim. “And that would explain the lower rate for Holocaust survivors.
They
did
need to remember who and what to avoid, if possible, in the
camps.”

Kate pushed her salad
away as Rob dropped the remnants of his sandwich onto his plate. The subject of
conversation was not conducive to a good appetite. “It doesn’t help,” Rob said,
“that there have been all these false memory allegations and lawsuits in the
news the past few years.”

“Yeah, and the way the
media portrays them isn’t always accurate,” Kate said. “In one case, the jury
found that there was no
proof
of the abuse and awarded the father
only
his back pay because he’d lost his high-profile job when the abuse accusations
were made public. The jury denied punitive damages, however, because they did
not
dis
believe the daughter. There just wasn’t any concrete proof. But
the news media presented it as the jury found that the young woman’s memories
were
false and that the therapists
had
planted them in her head.”

“I remember that case,”
Rob said. “Her mother and her sisters
all
believed her, but still it
came down to her word against his in court. And her therapist, who was just
doing his job, got caught in the middle.”

“Yet another reason why
I don’t want Audrey to pursue this,” Kate said. “Taking this sensitive issue
into the adversarial arena of the courtroom has just served to make it more
controversial. Then the media makes things worse by reducing a complicated
situation into twenty-second sound bites.”

Rob nodded. “The scary
thing about the media is that it can influence us without our realizing it.
After all, that’s what advertising’s all about.”

“Yeah,” Kate agreed,
“and we’re not using as critical a filter when we watch the news as we might
when we’re watching commercials.”

“Very true.” Rob looked
at his watch. “Gotta run. Partners’ meeting this afternoon.” After pulling some
bills from his wallet to cover his half of the check, he stood and gathered up
his coat and briefcase. Then he stopped and looked down at his friend. “Are we
okay, Kate? I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions about the case until I’d
talked to you.”

“Yes, we’re fine.” She
smiled up at him, then mock scolded, “I forgive you for being human, just don’t
let it happen again.”

W
hen Kate got home
Friday afternoon, she couldn’t ignore the little back flip her heart did when
she walked through the door and saw Skip. He was down on all fours in the
living room, with Edie stretched across his broad back and hanging onto his collar.
He romped around in a circle then raised his head and neighed like a horse.
Edie chortled.

Skip looked Kate’s way,
his hair hanging down in his eyes, a big grin on his face. He reached up to
pluck Edie off his back. In one smooth movement he flipped over and held the
baby up in the air at arm’s length. She giggled and grinned down at him.

Skip sat up, gave Edie
a kiss on her button nose, then handed her up to Kate. Edie looked at her
mother and said, “Ma muh.”

Kate, hugging her
daughter, caught a whiff of something. “Uh oh, time for a diaper change.”

Maria appeared out of
nowhere and scooped the baby out of her mother’s arms. “I change. You talk
Señor
Skip.”

Kate hesitated. She
looked forward to caring for Edie when she was home, but changing poopy diapers
wasn’t exactly her favorite chore. Maria ignored her belated and half-hearted
protest as she bustled through the nursery door.

Skip was propped up on
his elbows on the floor, long legs stretched out in front of him. Kate sat down
in an armchair a few feet away.

“I was planning to go
to Texas, to my mom’s, for Thanksgiving,” he said. “But now I’m thinking I
should cancel that.”

“Oh, no. You don’t need
to do that. My folks are coming up from Florida. And my brother and his family
will be here. Mac and Rose are coming for dinner. We’ll be fine. I’m only
working Tuesday that week.”

“Okay, that should
work. I’m flying out Wednesday morning. Coming back Sunday evening.”

Kate had been toying
with the idea of inviting him for Thanksgiving, and introducing him to her
family... as her what? Probably just as well he wasn’t available.

It dawned on her that
she hadn’t felt the painful longing for Eddie in some time, not even when she
thought about the upcoming holidays, a time when she had missed him horribly
the year before. She still had moments of missing him, that were eased by
conversing with him in her head, but the pain had subsided to a dull ache.

From his position on
the floor, Skip looked up at Kate, wondering what the play of emotions across
her face meant. It was sheer agony, loving this woman and yet not being able to
have her. The odds were good that she would someday love him back–maybe already
did
love him–so the idea of leaving her was unthinkable. But being
around her in the intimacy of her home, then going back to his lonely apartment
was getting harder and harder to do.

He sat up, cross-legged
in front of her chair. “Kate, I know this is going to sound like I’m pushing
you, but that’s not my intention. I’m just trying to understand. I know people
have to grieve for awhile, before they can move on, and you haven’t grieved for
Ed long enough yet...”

He trailed off when
Kate started shaking her head.

“Uh, the grief, it’s
not all that strong anymore,” she said. “And what’s left is mostly just missing
Eddie at times.”

“So where does that
leave us?” Skip asked, a mixture of hope and anxiety on his face.

Kate wasn’t sure how to
respond. She swallowed the lump of fear in her throat. If he told her he
couldn’t wait any longer, she knew she would not be able to let him walk away.

“I, uh... really care
about you, Skip, but I’m still not quite ready to... but, well, I don’t think
it will be too much longer...” She trailed off.
Okay, that sounded pretty
lame.

Skip shook his head in
confusion, wondering if he had totally misread this woman. In a gentle voice,
he said, “Grief’s such a vague thing, or at least not very concrete. How will
you know when it’s not too soon anymore?”

She surprised him with
her answer. “Actually there is a concrete way that I’ll know that.” Kate leaned
forward in her chair. “Skip, you’re about to hear something that even Rob
doesn’t know.”

His eyebrows shot up.

“Indeed, I had sworn to
myself that I would never tell anyone this. And I know you’re going to think
I’m crazy, but I assure you that I’m not.”

“Hey, you’re the expert
on crazy, not me,” Skip said with a half smile.

Kate took a deep
breath, then blurted out, “I talk to Eddie, and he talks back.”

Whoa!
Skip
thought,
Didn’t see
that
comin’.

“It started about two weeks
after he died,” Kate was saying. “I was just making up conversations in my head
at first, scripting his answers for him, but then it actually started to feel
like
he
was talking back. And sometimes he starts the conversation. It’s
usually only one or two exchanges. I think something and he answers me, or he
says something and I answer him.”

Skip remained quiet,
his eyes on her face.

“These conversations,
they’re what kept me sane after he died, because I still felt connected to him.
He was still with me in a way. And they’ve helped me get through the grief more
quickly than I ever thought I would... I never imagined that I would ever date
again, or at least not for many years. But here it is, not quite two years
later, and I’m dating. And not just casual dating, mind you.”

Skip couldn’t help
smiling at that.

“I never hear him in my
head when I’m around you, or when I’m thinking about you. That’s what’s made it
possible for me to spend time with you, while I’ve still been grieving. At any
given time, I’m
either
connected to him
or
to you. So I don’t
feel conflicted, or like I’m being disloyal to either of you. Is this making
any sense?”

“Yeah, I think I get
it. But how does all this relate to how you will know–”

“I’m getting there. I
know this is a rather long-winded explanation.”

“You, long-winded? Naw,
never,” he gently teased.

She smiled. “Oh, be
serious, you! This is the important part. I know that it is too soon
now,
because I still have those conversations with him. So if I let myself... be with
you completely...”

“Is that a euphemism
for letting me make love to you?” he asked.

“Yes, but may I point
out that the phrase ‘making love’ is also a euphemism. Are you going to let me
finish?”

“Yes, I believe you
were discussing the possibility of eventually trading in some euphemisms for
the real thing,” Skip said with a grin.

Kate tried to scowl at
him but couldn’t quite pull it off.

“
If
I let myself
be with you completely,” she continued, “I’d feel like I was cheating on him.
And then when I talked to him in my head, I would feel like I was cheating on
you
.”

“And then you would
feel conflicted,” he said.

“Yes, and I’m afraid
that would somehow come between us... tarnish what we feel for each other.” She
paused. “But I’ve been hearing from Eddie less often lately. So, here it is.
How I will know when it is no longer
too soon
.”

“Drum roll, please.” He
smiled at her again.

“It will no longer be
too soon when I stop hearing from him completely.”

Skip digested that for
a few seconds, then said, “So how long will you have to go without hearing from
him, before you will know that he’s... that it’s stopped completely?” He was
trying to avoid saying, “you’ll know he’s gone”–words he knew would cause her
pain.

“I was afraid you were
going to ask that. That answer’s not quite so concrete. I think I’ll just
know.”

Skip laughed out loud.
“Kate,
that’s
the answer I expected you to give me fifteen minutes ago!”
He pushed himself to his feet and started to lean down to take her hand, then
caught himself.
Ah, screw the rule!
He grabbed both of her hands and
pulled her out of her chair. They were less than a foot apart. He still felt
the urge to kiss her but resisting it was bearable.

Quickly, before he gave
in to the impulse, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head instead, then
stepped back and put his hands in his pockets.

His voice soft, he
said, “Kate, I started this conversation because I needed something to hang
onto, and you’ve given me that. I can be patient awhile longer.”

~~~~~~~~

O
n Tuesday, as Kate was
ushering her last morning client out of her office, she was debating what to do
with her longer than usual lunch break. Her one o’clock client had the flu and
had called to cancel.

The decision was taken
out of her hands when Pauline beckoned her over to the reception desk. Nodding
toward a nondescript man sitting hunched in a chair, Pauline whispered, “He
wanted me to knock on your door and interrupt your session.” She rolled her
eyes. Interrupting a therapy session for anything less than the news that the
building was on fire was just not done. “Wouldn’t tell me what he wanted but
he’s got some papers in his hand. He insisted he would wait.”

Kate had a bad feeling
as she turned to the man, the only person in the waiting area at the moment,
fortunately. “I’m Kate Huntington. You wanted to see me?”

The man jumped up,
thrusting the papers at her. “I’m here to serve you with these.” Kate took them
reluctantly and glanced down at the legal jargon on the first page, as the man
headed out the door at warp speed.

“Are those what I think
they are?” Pauline asked, dread in her voice.

Kate could only nod. It
was a health professional’s worst nightmare. She was being sued for
malpractice.

She raced down the hall
to Rob’s law firm, praying that he hadn’t already left for lunch. He was
walking across the reception area when she rushed through the door.

“Whoa, sweetheart!” Rob
said, smiling at her. “Where’s the fire?”

Kate just waved the
papers in the air and kept walking toward his office. The smile faded abruptly.
He followed her in and closed the door.

Kate flopped into a
chair and threw the papers on his desk. Rob sat down in his chair. He picked
them up and started reading.

“Who the hell is it?”
Kate asked.

“You didn’t recognize
the name?”

“No, I only looked at
the first page. I don’t remember ever having a client named Wells.”

Rob read a little
further, then said, with a sigh, “They’re Audrey Spaulding’s parents.”

“Shit!”

Rob didn’t even glance
up. “They’re suing you for putting false memories in their little girl’s head,”
he continued, still reading. “Interesting. Their attorney has the same last
name.”

“Probably the
sleazeball uncle. I seem to remember Audrey saying he was a lawyer.”

“Hey,” Rob said, with
mock offense in his voice, “just because he’s a lawyer, doesn’t make him a
sleazeball.”

His attempt to lighten
the mood failed. “No,” Kate said, “he was already a sleazeball long before
attending law school.”

Rob glanced at his desk
calendar. “What’s your schedule look like this afternoon? I’m free at four.”

Kate thought about her
afternoon schedule. Her four o’clock client was doing quite well lately. “I can
cancel my appointment for that hour. Then my next client isn’t until
five-thirty... Actually I may cancel the rest of the day. Suddenly I don’t feel
so good.” She slumped even further down in her chair.

Her words didn’t fully
register as Rob scanned the document again to make sure he hadn’t missed
anything. Without looking up, he said, “Okay, here’s what I’d like to do. I
want to have a strategy session. You, me, Sally if she’s available, and Audrey.
Can you call her and see if she can come in at four? She’s going to be your
star witness.”

“Wait, you’re going too
fast for me.” Kate sat up. “The center’s malpractice insurance company will
provide a lawyer. And I guess it’s up to them to decide whether to take it to
court.”

Rob looked up at her.
“Not entirely. You have a right to have your own outside counsel as well, and
if they want to settle but you don’t, you can still defend yourself in court.
But they’re likely to cap whatever they will pay at what the plaintiff had
agreed to settle for.”

“How much are they
suing for?”

“Not all that much.
$200,000.”

“Why so low, I wonder.”

“I have a theory about
that, but I’d like to save it for the strategy session. Can you see if Audrey
can come?”

“Rob, I’m not real
comfortable with involving her. The therapeutic relationship is, by definition,
one way. I can’t ask her to testify on my behalf.”

“Even when her crazy
parents are suing you?”

“Even then.”

“Look, Kate, I have
some ideas swimming around in my brain. Can’t we at least meet with her and let
me present my plan, and then see what she says?”

Kate thought for a
moment. “I guess, but if she’s the least bit hesitant, I don’t want her testifying.”
She called Pauline to get Audrey’s number.

“Is she who’s suing?”
Pauline said, incredulous.

“No, her parents are.
What’s Sally’s schedule look like at four?”

“She’s got a client
then.”

“Okay, I’ll have to
catch up with her between clients at some point this afternoon. Don’t let on
that we’ve been served. It will just drive her crazy until she can hear the
details from me.”

Kate disconnected, then
punched in Audrey’s number. As gently as possible she broke the bad news.

“That son of a bitch!” Audrey
seethed. “Why can’t he leave me the hell alone.”

Technically her parents
weren’t going after Audrey, they were coming after her, but Kate understood
what Audrey meant. Her control freak of a father was going to jerk his daughter
around anyway he could think of.