Tara Taylor Quinn - Just Around The Corner

Matt looked up at her, his eyes wary, questioning.

“Cassie Montford knows you’re the father—it seemed necessary that someone know in case something happens—but she’s been sworn to secrecy. I don’t want anyone else knowing.”

He seemed to consider that for several moments. “It would probably make things easier on both of us,” he said at last.

Phyllis stood, satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Well, send me the bills.” Tossing the paper clip, he stood, too.

“I will.”

“Okay, see ya.” He’d followed her to the door.

“Goodbye.” Phyllis spoke with finality.

If she had her way, they’d never see each other again.

He made her tremble. He made her crazy and just a little angry. She absolutely refused to let him become part of her life.

She didn’t want or need his financial contributions.

This time it was the bills and not the check that would get mysteriously lost in the mail.

THE KICKING BAG went down. And came back up. Then went down again. Turning, Matt caught it with a perfectly placed side kick, knocking it into the corner of the wall. And, with hands properly angled in front of him, he turned and landed another perfect blow with the opposite foot.

Sweat dripped down the sides of his face. He didn’t bother wiping it off. It burned his eyes, but he ignored the pain, which was only the minutest portion of the punishment he deserved.

After more than an hour in his home gym, he wasn’t even close to the worn-out state he was working toward.

How could he have done it? He of all people?

Had life taught him nothing? The time he’d never be able to recapture. The humiliation and abuse. The lost dreams. Lost innocence. Had it all been for nothing?

Another smack on the bag, and the sand-weighted bottom scooted along the floor.

He just couldn’t believe what was happening. Couldn’t have imagined a worse day than the one he’d just had.

He’d made a woman pregnant. A perfectly respectable doctor of psychology was facing a complete and permanent upheaval in her life because of him.

Forgetting himself to the point of lost discipline, Matt hauled off and slugged the kicking bag with both fists, over and over, like a novice and completely unskilled boxer, rather than the Tae Kwon Do black belt he was. Logically he knew he was solving nothing. That he was probably going to hurt himself.

But he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t harness the anger, the despair and disappointment coursing through him. Didn’t know what to do next, except wear himself out, force himself into complete exhaustion. How was he going to live with himself?

He’d just begun to find a measure of internal peace. Maybe even forgiveness. And in the span of a ten-minute office visit, years of hard work, of unrelenting self-control and mental promises, had been shot to hell.

He’d been in Shelter Valley for four years. Pretending to himself that he was building a new life, becoming the man he’d always expected himself to be.

When instead, he was exactly what he’d been before Will Parsons had been kind enough to give him this job, this chance.

A man who’d spent years in prison. He hadn’t been guilty of the statutory rape of which he’d been convicted. But he hadn’t been entirely blameless, either. He’d allowed that girl—a student—to think he found her desirable. He hadn’t intended to; he’d only meant to offer a confused young girl a measure of confidence, a sense of approval. In his own idealistic ignorance, he’d tried to help someone and had only confused her more.

Slumping to the carpet, sweat dripping down his back and chest beneath the soaked T-shirt he was wearing, Matt grabbed his aching head between both fists.

The tears, when they dripped slowly from beneath tightly closed lids, mixed in with the sweat. Fell unnoticed. Forgotten. Allowing no forgiveness for a sin not committed—and then committed six years after the fact.

This was the second time he’d contributed to the ruin of a perfectly lovely woman’s life.

He deserved to rot in hell.

And that was just what he feared would happen to him. Only it would be a hell of his own making, right here on earth, in this place of shelter where everyone else had family and friends and knew the comforts afforded by love. It was going to be his own private hell. Even in this journey of everlasting destruction, he would be all alone.

IT WAS LATE on the first Tuesday night in November, and Phyllis had just arrived home from Phoenix when the phone rang. She’d been at a pet-therapy session with Cassie and a woman who’d been brutally raped by a colleague while working in a nursing home.

Sighing, she picked up the phone, a portable. “Surely you’ve seen a doctor by now.” The voice didn’t bother with introductions or hellos.

She considered lying, but that wasn’t her style.

“I have.”

“When? Today? Is that where you’ve been all evening?”

If he’d sounded like someone who was checking up on her—instead of like someone who was driving himself crazy with frustration—Phyllis would’ve been able to handle the conversation a lot more effectively.

“I went last week,” she admitted. “Today I’ve been in Phoenix with Cassie Montford, helping her with her pet therapy. We went to see a woman in Phoenix who’s crawled so deeply inside herself that she’ll respond to nothing but one of Cassie’s dogs. We’re using the dog Angel to help her learn how to trust enough to interact with human beings again. If we don’t succeed, she’s going to live the rest of her life shut away in an institution.”

Phyllis wasn’t usually a babbler, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she didn’t want to give Matt a chance to say what he’d called to say. She’d managed to put him out of her mind for hours at a time this past week. She didn’t need him back there.

“Have you had any success?” he asked when her words finally stopped.

Sinking into the couch in her tiny living room, Phyllis leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah, just tonight,” she told him, feeling strangely comforted.

Cassie had Sam at home, waiting to hear all about it. Phyllis had no one.

“She’s been petting Angel for weeks without reacting at all. Tonight, for the first time, she looked at her and there were tears in her eyes.”

“And that’s good?”

“It means she’s in there—and that she’s starting to come out. She’s going to need a whole lot of reassurance before that can happen, though.”

“She didn’t cry before?”

Phyllis said no, started a technical explanation of hysterical amnesia and paralysis, and her own understanding of the things she’d read in the abused woman’s eyes, and then abruptly stopped herself. She’d learned long ago that people didn’t want to hear any of these things. She must be more tired than she’d thought.

“And you could tell she was searching for reassurance just from that one look at a dog?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Phyllis said softly. “Her mind’s been protecting her for a long time. She’s lived inside a place that exists only in her own head, and she’s afraid to come out. She’s going to need constant reassurance that when she does, there’s a safe, protected environment waiting for her.”

“And you can provide that in weekly visits?”

“Of course not.” Kicking off her shoes, Phyllis pulled her feet onto the sofa, tucking them beneath her. “We’re just the door through which she’s going to travel. The environment is right there waiting for her. She has a team of counselors working with her. People who’ve been around her, speaking with her, for months. At least one of them is with her twenty-four hours a day.”