The question was a hard one. Asked in the gentlest way.
“What if she really can’t stand the stress of worrying about Caleb every day?”
He knew better, but he didn’t expect Chantel to believe that.
“Women who are abused...they’ve experienced something that none of the rest of us will ever understand, Max. The aftermath, a lot of times it’s worse than the actual beatings. Paranoia is a very real, very painful consequence. Its real power comes from the fact that, for abuse victims, it’s based in truth. In having experienced the horror which everyone fears most—being betrayed in the most heinous ways by the one person in the world you thought you could trust.”
Meri had said things like that before. But her words had been less concise, mixed with example and emotion and tears, all things he’d had to contend with at the same time she was delivering her message. He’d needed to comfort as well as understand.
Hearing those same words from Chantel—they took on new meaning. Frightening meaning. And then something else occurred to him.
“How do you know this?” Meri had told him that one in four women suffer from domestic violence. He’d found the statistic staggering. And kind of hard to believe.
He’d carefully watched the mothers coming into his exam rooms with their children. If he saw eight kids a day that meant eight mothers. Statistically, two of every eight had been or were currently being abused.
“The Las Sendas P.D. required every one of us to take a course on domestic violence.”
“The women you mean?”
“No, I mean all of us. Every single officer on the force, no matter how junior, has had training to recognize and deal with potential DV-related situations. Every one of us has to respond to a DV call at some point.”
It made a sickening kind of sense.
“I’m just saying, Max....” Chantel was closer to him, leaning toward him. “It’s possible that Meri knew her paranoia was out of hand, getting the better of her. It’s possible that she knew she couldn’t control it anymore and saw that it was already starting to have an effect on Caleb. The way you describe her, as devoted as she was and as committed to serving others...I just think you need to consider that she’s done exactly what she told you in the note. She’s loving you and Caleb the best way she knows how. By removing herself from your home before Caleb is infected with her paranoia.”
He didn’t want to consider anything of the kind.
He was a doctor; he understood that mental issues were medical issues. He knew that they could be treated, and that sometimes treatments failed.
But he also knew Meri. She talked to him about her fears. About Steve’s ability to hunt her down. His tenacity and patience with undercover work. But she’d been through counseling and knew how to control her fear.
“If she’d come to you, would you have let her go?” Chantel’s voice was too close now. Softly working its way in when he just wanted to be alone with Meri.
“Or would you have promised to support her, tend to her, help her back into counseling, stand by her....”
“Of course I would have supported her, stood by her, tended to her, helped her in any way I could.” It’s what a spouse did. Which was why marriage vows said “for better or worse” and “in sickness and in health” and...
“Exactly. She’d have known that. So maybe she’d reached a place where she knew that none of the above was going to work anymore. She knew what you did not, that the treatments didn’t work....”
No. He was not going to listen to this. Not now. Not ever.
He stood up. “Steve’s behind this, Chantel,” he said, while doubts pressed in on him from all sides. “I won’t turn my back on her. I won’t give up. I’m going to find this fiend. Somehow. Some way. Either with you or without you.”
He hoped to God it would be with her. He didn’t know if he could do it on his own.
“I understand.” She stood, too, toe-to-toe with him, not backing down. “I just need you to know that when we find him, it might not be what you think.”
The panic eating up his insides let go. “Fair enough.”
“Okay.” Turning, she reached down to the floor, slinging her bag up over shoulder.
“So—” just to be clear “—you’re still in?”
“Of course. I was never out. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Without another word, she turned and made her way down the hall. Max was still standing in the living room, right as she’d left him, when the door to the guest bedroom closed quietly behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN