Hidden Leaves (DeBeers 5)

When I returned to my office. Ralston was waiting for me. I closed the door behind me and he looked up.

"What's going on. Claude?" he asked. "I heard about the Montgomery woman showing up here with an attorney. Does it have anything to do with Nadine Gordon leaving so abruptly?"

I had kept the entire teddy bear incident from him, not wishing to open a

new can of worms. As far as everyone knew. Nadine had left entirely of her own accord. It was my feeling that she would have anyway, once she had seen how I had taken her actions and how I now felt about her and her work,

"No, Ralston," I replied.

"Well, then, what did they want. Claude?" he asked, "You had better sit. Ralston," I said.

He did just that.

And I told him. Willow. I told him everything.

11

A Little Invasion

.

To my surprise. Ralston wasn't all that

surprised. He had developed suspicions for some time, but, as he said, he had hoped I would come to my senses.

"Now that I see how you are taking all this and how disturbed you are. I see that you would never have come to your senses, Claude," he told me. "You're actually head over heels."

I assured him I would do even-thing possible to protect our clinic, even if it meant taking some great financial loss to myself. In turn he assured me that he wasn't as concerned about anything as he was about me.

"You're far too valuable and talented a psychiatric therapist to throw it all away. Claude. Your patients and your future patients would be the losers. I'll stand by you and do whatever we have to do." he promised.

We hugged each other. His loyalty and devotion to me only made me feel worse. Willow. I phoned Mr. Madison at his hotel and told him that Grace was pregnant, of course, and that I would sign their documents and follow their wishes. He was coming by in the morning to pick them up. Jackie Lee would not return, he said. She was too upset to see her daughter in this environment, He did say she did not want to have Grace sent back to Palm Beach until it was all over, and the veiled threat added was if she was worse, or would give Jackie Lee any new problems, he would be making another visit to the clinic to see me.

Miles took one look at me on the way home that night and saw the turmoil raging inside me. He thought it was all because of Alberta and her constant nagging about the house and her loss of social standing. She had been particularly difficult during the past two months, and our maid and cook had quit. Miles deliberately took every detour he could in the house and on the grounds to avoid her, but he wasn't deaf to the shouting and complaining. He had a bit of a dry sense of humor about it, telling me that "Mrs. De Beers took her first step toward firing another maid today. She hired her."

I was in so desperate a state of mind during our ride home that I didn't realize we were there until Miles turned off the car engine,

"You all right. Dr. De Beers?" he asked, turning to me. I was just sitting there in the rear seat staring at my thoughts.

"What? Oh. Yes, Miles, thank you," I said and stepped out. It wasn't until I was about to open the front door that the whole plan came to me. Willow. Sometimes it isn't until the final moments that we find solutions. The prospect of that great chasm before us makes us churn our brains and search our hearts with the power of the survival instinct. I guess.

Alberta was upstairs in her room. So that I would know what was happening that night, she had taped the invitation to the mayor's ball, a charity event, on the balustrade. I couldn't miss it the moment I started up the stairs. If I was ever not in the mood to go to one of her affairs, it was tonight, I thought, but with every step I took. I went farther and farther out on thin ice.

I paused at her door a moment, questioning my ability to do what I had decided. If I couldn't do this from the very beginning. I thought, I certainly couldn't carry it forward afterward, when it was most necessary to wear the masks and take on the behavior dictated by the fabrications I was about to create.

I knocked on her door, and a moment later she responded. I entered her bedroom. In her robe and slippers, she was sitting at her vanity table toying with some new way to set her hair. Her face was covered in one of those special, expensive creams she bought to keep wrinkles from forming and her skin from being anything but alabaster. I was never able to look at her when she performed these rituals to whatever goddess of beauty she worshiped and not laugh to myself at how comical she appeared. She went from mud packs, to milk and herbal coatings, ware cucumbers on her eyes, and even had a mix that included skunk ail. Alberta had her own personal complexion expert the same way some people had personal trainers, and this person always seemed to come up with same new discovery. Of course, each one was more expensive than the former.

She turned in her chair and looked at me. For once, she was able to see past herself and really read my mood. "What's wrong now, Claude?" she asked.

I closed the door slowly, dramatically, behind me and went to the dressing bench at her bed,

"My goodness, what happened now?" she cried. "Did one of your troubled patients commit suicide or something? Is there going to be a scandal in the paper? What?"

"There could be a scandal," I began. This was where my strength with her lay. This was the only way to get her to care. I thought. 'But I have a way to prevent it, I believe. I will need your full cooperation. however."

Her eyes, mere dark pools within those layers and layers of cream, somehow deepened and widened with surprise. She began to wipe off the cream.

"What happened?" she demanded.