Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

the job. He was a careful man, not one to leave someone around who knew he’d committed a crime, someone who might one day need to soothe his own guilty mind by confessing all to the appropriate authorities.
    Had Celia convinced Bechman that they had to manage their finances another way, a way that one day they wouldn’t be ashamed to tell their daughter about? Or had it been the doctor’s idea to stop cold? Had he simply asked himself what on earth he’d been thinking, getting involved in the illegal trafficking of controlled substances? Had he come to his senses, not knowing it was all too late, and had he wondered what I’d been wondering while waiting for the detectives to arrive, how he’d become the man he now was and what had happened to the man he once was? How he’d forgotten the oath he’d taken years before? In those last days, perhaps seeing clearly for the first time in years, had he asked himself the question that was now on my mind: what the hell had happened to first do no harm ?
    It was dark out, as dark as it ever gets in New York City. I felt a wave of sadness, the kind I felt when my own mother disappeared and I didn’t know for what seemed like ages if I’d ever see her again. I didn’t think it was true that time healed all wounds. But somehow most people found a way to live despite them.
    I was halfway home when my phone rang.
    “Alexander,” I said.
    There was no response, only eloquent silence. I was passing the Bleecker Street playground. I found an empty bench and sat, Dash hopping up next to me, my arm around him, the line open, the phone to my ear, waiting.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    Kudos and gratitude to Stephen Joubert for designing and maintaining my Web site and making it an informative and fun place to visit, www.CarolLeaBenjamin.com , just in case you find yourself in front of a computer one day with a little time on your hands.
    Boundless gratitude is due my agent, Gail Hochman, who goes to the ends of the earth for her authors. And for careful attention to detail and taking good care of her authors—and this author’s dog, Flash—my thanks to my editor, Sarah Durand, and to Diana Tynan in publicity.
    And since even on bad days I always get great reviews from my dogs, I thank Eugene Sheninger for two of my three, Flash and Peep. I’m not sure whom to thank for Dexter. Someone left him on the side of the road when he was a wee lad and a few weeks later we found each other at the ASPCA and since then have been making sure no one would leave either of us on the side of the road again.