Under the Moon's Shadow (29 page)

The anger was still there, but she finally gave a stiff incline of her head, accepting his words. “I understand.” She sighed and sat down in the recliner. “I can’t give you absolution, not now. Maybe not ever. Do you understand that?”

Ethan nodded. “Yeah, I do. And I’m not asking for it.” He leaned up against the end of her bed and studied his feet. “I’m taking a leave from the department.” He felt her surprise and looked up with a bitter smile. “I need to do some soul-searching, figure out how to clean up this mess I’ve made. Not just with you, but with my whole life in general. I’ve been drinking too much, and I have to take care of that first. I just wanted to tell you, let you know that I’m aware of how badly I screwed up. I know what I’ve lost. And if I could trade places with you, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

His eyes grew damp, and he had to clear his throat again. He looked toward the door, at a loss for what to say next. “So...”

“Heck of a bruise you have there.” Beth gestured to his face, where the whole left side was mottled from the pounding Chase had given him.

 “I deserved it.”

When male voices sounded in the hall, Beth cursed under her breath and stood up. To Ethan’s surprise, she moved to stand between him and the door. He straightened just as there was a perfunctory knock on the door. It opened, and Chase and his friend, the FBI agent, came through. Chase stopped in his tracks and his eyes widened in disbelief when he saw Ethan. Gordon didn’t have time to stop himself and only barely avoided knocking Chase further into the room.

“You bastard. I told you to stay away from her,” Chase snarled.

Squaring his shoulders, Ethan gently put his hands on Beth’s arms with the intention of moving her out from between them, but she wouldn’t be budged.

“Move, Beth.” Chase stalked toward them and reached out to set her aside.

“Not on your life,” she told him. Hands up, she shoved on her brother’s chest and backed up toward Ethan, hitting his chest with her back. “Back off, Chase. This isn’t your concern.”

Gordon quickly stepped up behind Chase and placed a restraining hand on his shoulder, which Chase shook off.

“The hell it isn’t!” He glared down at her, incredulous. “Have you forgotten that none of this would have happened if he hadn’t opened his big mouth to his girlfriend? For God’s sake, Beth, you lost a child because of him.”

Ethan sucked in his breath at Chase’s words. The silence in the room was deafening, no one seeming to know what to say. After a minute, Beth spoke.

“I haven’t forgotten a damned thing.” She looked past Chase to Gordon.  “Would you mind escorting my brother downstairs for a few minutes while I talk with Ethan?”

“Not at all.” This time when Gordon placed his hand on Chase’s shoulder, he tightened his grip. Chase winced but didn’t move.

“I’m not leaving.”

“Yes, you are. You owe Beth that much respect. Come on, Chase. Use your stubborn head.” Gordon kept his voice low and calm. “Let her talk to the man, okay?”

With one last hate-filled look toward Ethan, he turned and stalked out of the room. Gordon followed, and turned as he reached the door.

“Twenty minutes?” Beth nodded, and he pulled the door closed behind him.

Ethan let out the breath he had been holding and, unable to stop himself, he rested his for cheek against the back of Beth’s head.

“Is it true?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“But we - I used... It’s only been two weeks.” He stopped, shaking his head. Taking his hand, she pulled him to the edge of the bed and made him sit down. He hunched over, his head in his hands. Beth was quiet as he came to terms with the news. She sat beside him and placed her hand on his knee. After several minutes he turned his head and met her gaze, not bothering to hide his tears. “I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t going to tell you. Not now. It just was one more thing on top of so much, and entirely unnecessary.”

“Did you know? That you were pregnant?”

Beth shook her head. “I didn’t have any idea. It hadn’t been that long since we’d… It’s routine to ask if a patient might be pregnant as a matter of course, and I had to tell them there was a chance. They did a blood test.” She sighed and squeezed his hand, which he had clamped over top of hers on his leg. “It’s probably for the best, Ethan. Neither of us is equipped to be parents right now.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t really help, does it? A baby… God, it’s too much. You must hate the sight of me.” He stood and lifted his hand to touch her face, but let it fall without making contact. “I’d better head out before they come back.”

Beth got to her feet as he moved toward the door. He stopped, not looking at her as he spoke. “This Gordon guy - are you involved with him?”

She was stunned. “How is that any business of yours?”

“It isn’t,” he replied in a defeated tone.

At the admission, she relented a little. “No, I’m not involved with him. He’s just a friend.”

“Thanks for telling me that.” He started toward the door again, but this time Beth was the one who spoke.

“Ethan?” He turned to look back at her. “Good luck with what you were telling me - the soul searching.”

He nodded. “Thanks. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.” After giving her one last, sad smile, Ethan turned and walked out the door, out of her life.

Chapter Thirty Nine

Over the next few weeks, Beth struggled harder physically and mentally than she ever had before. Shortly after she’d been released from the hospital, Chase had cornered her and made her accept a hard reality – that she needed counseling. She’d been in her parents’ sunroom, playing checkers with her grandfather, when Chase had come in. Chase had taken a seat next to Beth on the couch, while their father stood next to her grandfather’s chair, watching the game.

“Heard the front door slam,” Sampson said. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, Jackie just needed some air. When you’re finished here, can I get your opinion on something?”

Sampson looked up and nodded. “We’ve only got a few moves left here, and we’ll be done. This young lady has me backed into a corner again.” He smiled at Beth, who gave him a half-hearted smile in return.

With one final move on the board, Sampson conceded defeat. He stood and turned to Richard. “Lead the way. What is it you need to discuss?” As the two men left the sunroom, Beth sensed her opportunity for escape and started to stand up. Chase placed a hand on her arm, stopping her.

“I’d like to talk to you.”

She stiffened when she saw the determined look on his face. “Can’t it wait? I’m very tired.” She gave him a look that was full of false regret and tried to step back, but he tightened his grip on her arm.

“Sorry, but no, this won’t wait. Sit back down. Please.” Seeing that she was going to refuse, and he continued in a very controlled voice. “If you don’t sit down, I will tie you to that chair Pop just left. One way or another, you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”

Her jaw dropped and an angry flush crawled up her cheeks. “Who the hell died and left you in charge?”

He nodded toward the chair again. With a furious glare, she sat down on the couch opposite where Chase was seated, refusing to even look at the chair he’d indicated. Arms folded, she stared at the fireplace.

Moving to where she couldn’t ignore him, he didn’t speak, deliberately provoking her further.

“What do you want?” she finally ground out in his general direction.

“I want you to admit that you need help with dealing with this, and I want you to get it,” he told her bluntly.

Her gaze shot to his face, and she started to speak, but he stopped her, continuing. “I want you to start eating, whether the food is appealing or not, and I want my sister back. Beth, do you remember what I went through when I lost Kiely? You were a teenager, but you had a pretty good head on your shoulders. Do you remember how I managed to get through that?”

She shook her head and refused to meet his eyes.

“I almost didn’t. I lost an entire semester, almost dropped out and came home. You didn’t know that, did you?”

“No,” she whispered, turning to him with a shocked expression.  “Oh, Chase.”

He waved away her sympathy. “Do you know what got me through it, got me back on my feet?”

She shook her head again, but this time didn’t take her eyes off his face.

“One of my professors saw what was happening, and she called Dad. He came down and had a talk with me, a talk a lot like the one we’re having right now. Told me to quit feeling sorry for myself and deal with things.”

She frowned. “You’d lost your girlfriend. That isn’t feeling sorry for yourself, that’s grief.”

“No, it wasn’t.  Not by then. Dad was right. I was feeling sorry for myself, and I’d given up. He saw that I wasn’t moving on, that I was stuck, and he gave me an ultimatum - get counseling or else. I decided to get counseling, mainly just to shut him up, and I learned that there’s a difference between honest grieving and giving up. One’s normal, healthy even. The other isn’t.” He waited as she absorbed his words.

“So you’re trying to tell me that I’ve been feeling sorry for myself?” She dropped her gaze to her lap.

“Not at all. I’m telling you that you need help, sis. You can’t see it from where you’re at right now, but the rest of us can. You’re sinking into a dangerous depression. I’m asking you to trust us.”

She raised her chin. “So what does ‘everyone’ think I should do?”

“We’d like you to go talk to a counselor, a therapist here in Leroy. Sharon Jenkins. Her offices are up by the hospital in one of those renovated houses.”

 “When?”

“Tuesday morning.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to her. “I’ve made an appointment for you at ten o’clock.”

Beth snorted and rolled her eyes. She read the information on the card. “You were awfully sure of yourself.” She didn’t bother hiding the resentment in her tone.

 “No, not really. I figured it would go one of two ways. Either you would agree to go, or you’d tell me to go to hell.”

“I could still tell you to go to hell. I haven’t agreed to anything. What would you do then? Hog tie me and take me in?” She met Chase’s gaze defiantly, almost hoping he would try just so she could fight him.

He shrugged. “If you say no, then I’ll get the rest of the family to come in here and tell them that you refuse to get help, and I’ll let you watch Mom’s face when she hears that. How do you think this is affecting her? After what she went through with Grandma growing up, watching you fade away has to be her worst nightmare.” He saw that he had hit a nerve and waited.

After a minute she relented, throwing her hands up. “Fine, I’ll go talk to the counselor if it’ll get you off my back. Am I free to go now?” Chase nodded, and she shot out of the sunroom as though pursued by the hounds of hell. She hadn’t spoken to him for a week after that.

Between the strain of physical therapy and the emotional drain of her counseling sessions with Sharon, she was nearly ready to cry “uncle.” She was learning to deal with the fact that she had been kidnapped from her own home and shot, had lost a child and been betrayed by its father, and was trying to accept the changes all those events had wrought, but it was difficult. The homework Sharon had given her after their first session played through her mind like a mantra.

“Right now you’re still reeling, still reacting to what has happened to you. That’s perfectly normal, Beth. If you’ll pardon the phrase, you have shots coming at you from all directions - emotionally, physically, perhaps even spiritually. Until you can get into a place mentally where you can defend yourself from those shots, you aren’t going to be able to make sense of everything that’s happened. Why don’t we try to take it one thing at a time, starting with the smaller traumas, and go from there? If you can deal with the little things, you can deal with the big things.”

The words had made sense. Going back inside her apartment had been a big challenge. It had brought back memories she would rather have forgotten. She had been in the middle of a session with Sharon when the topic came up, and to her surprise, Sharon had suggested they drive over to the apartment at that moment.

“What about your other appointments?”

“I’m clear the rest of the afternoon. If you really aren’t comfortable going, we won’t, but I think you need to. I’m assuming you aren’t going to stay with your parents indefinitely, since you’ve been living independently for several years now.”

Beth had fallen silent, and her heart raced at the thought. It had to be done, sooner or later. “No time like the present, I guess,” she joked grimly.

Sharon had driven them so she would have access to a vehicle if Beth froze and couldn’t function, and as they approached the building, she could feel her stomach muscles clench. It had been just over a month since she had been shot, and going back inside her apartment was something she had been putting off for a couple of weeks now. She used her key to let them in the front door of the building, and once inside, she walked into the foyer and paused, taking in the look and smell of the building she had lived in happily for over three years, feeling as though she had never seen it before. Shaking the odd mood off, she led Sharon to the elevators and hit the button. They waited silently for the car to arrive. As they got on, she pushed the button for her floor with a shaking hand.

“Are you okay?”

Beth nodded, unable to speak around the tightness in her throat. As they reached her floor, she swallowed and took a deep breath before she stepped out into the hall. Sharon followed her to her front door, where Beth paused and ran her hand over the glossy black paint.

“Somehow I expected it would look different.” She unlocked the door and flipped the light switch on, disarming the alarm. Opening the door wide, she gestured with her chin. “Come on in.”

Sharon stepped inside, and Beth closed the door behind her, locking it. The doctor stood back and waited while she walked down the hall, stopping at the office door to peer inside before moving on to the open living room. Silently, she moved from room to room, sometimes touching an object or running her hand over a surface, glancing around, but not saying a word.