Shame

you’ll be writing about this?”
    “I expect so. But I don’t want you to think I’m coercing you into signing the release form. Even if you choose to not sign it, I still intend to help you. I made that promise to your husband, and I intend to keep it. I want you to be comfortable in my presence. I can’t promise much, but I swear I won’t stab you in the back. I may upset you, though, because I do write what I perceive to be the truth, and sometimes that is upsetting.”
    Anna touched the piece of paper, then drew her hand back. “I’ll read it later,” she said.
    “Good.”
    “And I’d like to thank you for all you’ve done.”
    “I’m glad I could help.”
    Both women concentrated on their coffee for a minute. Finally Anna cleared her throat.
    “I’m thinking of sending the children to stay with my mother,” she said.
    Elizabeth sighed inwardly and wondered if she’d ever have any good news to offer Anna. “I’d advise against that. If your goal is to spare them from the media, that won’t work. When the reporters don’t find you, they’ll take to dogging your friends and relatives. If they’re not on your mother’s doorstep today, they’ll be there tomorrow. You also don’t want your children to think you’ve abandoned them. What they need now more than anything else is a parent staying close to them, someone who can explain what’s going on.”
    Anna’s head shook again. “As if I could explain what’s going on.”
    Elizabeth nodded.
    “It’s so bizarre. And it’s my fault.”
    “Your fault?”
    She avoided answering the question directly, choosing to approach it in a roundabout way. “Those detectives are so wrong about Caleb.”
    “In what way?”
    “In how they’re thinking.”
    Anna’s eyes strayed to the back room, then returned to Elizabeth. She lowered her voice. “Did you hear, did they tell you...”
    “That you were involved with Dr. Jennings?”
    Anna looked relieved that she didn’t have to explain. “I guess Donald and I deluded ourselves into thinking that no one knew,” she said. “It seems that everyone did.”
    She bit her lip, again made sure her children couldn’t possibly hear, and said, “They think Cal took revenge on Donald’s daughter because he found out what was going on between us.”
    “I know.”
    “I asked them how that explained the other murders, and they said it was Cal’s suppressed rage coming out, that his dam just broke, and that he copied his father. But Cal would never, ever murder.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    “Cal doesn’t get angry, or if he does, he doesn’t show it. I think he’s always been afraid of his emotions. When he can’t deal with a situation, he just withdraws and gets quiet. In all our years together, he’s never raised his voice or gotten physical. He was afraid of any kind of confrontation, afraid, I think, of being that involved with anyone.
    “I suppose that’s how...Donald and I...that’s why we came together. I hungered for someone to talk to, someone open, warm, and communicative. But I know that Donald and I shouldn’t have become involved. It was wrong. I’d never done anything like that before—”
    Elizabeth interrupted to stop the woman’s self-recrimination. “Anna, how did you and Caleb meet?”
    The memory brought a fleeting smile to Anna’s face. “We first saw each other in an emergency room. Caleb came in with a nasty gash on his arm. He was really stoic about it, said that it was his fault because he never should have trusted the branch that gave out under him in the first place.
    “I remember thinking that he was the handsomest man I had ever seen. I expected him to be stuck-up, but instead he was shy. I had trouble getting him to say much, but while I was dressing his wound I got him to tell me a little bit about his job. Working with trees sounded romantic to me. He probably could have told me he was a used-car salesman and I would have found something wonderful about that. I told him how much I loved the lookand feel of sycamore leaves, and he did a lot of nodding like he felt the same. I got the impression he wanted to talk to me, but I also sensed reluctance. When he left the ER without even saying good-bye, I figured he probably had a girlfriend, and that was that. Two days later, though, I received a huge manila envelope in the mail. Inside was a gigantic sycamore leaf. On it he’d written a thank-you note and his phone number.”
    Elizabeth didn’t