A Penny for Your Thoughts (20 page)

“Cliff...” Penny had to know.

“I know, Penny.”

“Know what?”

“What you’re going to ask.”

He fell silent. Penny surreptitiously studied his profile. His light blue shirt flattered his tanned skin. Sunlight glinted on the silver strands in his hair. His bare legs were lean, muscular and athletic. His shirt heaved when he sighed once again. When it appeared as if he would say no more, Penny pressed.

“About what you said last night? I didn’t know what to think. It sounded so strange.”

“To tell you the truth, Penny, I feel pretty strange.” He kept his face averted.

“I don’t understand.”

“No, I know you don’t.” He slid a sideways glance in her direction, and then quickly looked away. Penny wasn’t sure how to proceed. She couldn’t relax the knot in her stomach.

“Why would you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“But you said--”

He held up a hand and turned a sheepish eye toward her. “I know what I said. I should have kept my mouth shut. We would all have been better off.”

“What are you talking about, Cliff?” Penny leaned forward in an effort to read his face.

“I can’t believe our paths crossed. Who would ever have thought?” Cliff returned his gaze to the sea and shook his head as if in wonder.

“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

Cliff directed a glance in her direction. His pressed lips and set jaw gave his face a distant, almost angry look. Penny regarded him with unease.

“I don’t know if you remember me telling you I went back to Michigan a few months ago?”

Penny shook her head. Her breathing grew shallow. A growing sense of dread seized her.

“Well, I saw you there. I couldn’t remember who you were when I first met you here, but I knew I had seen you. It came to me soon enough. I saw you at the funeral. You were crying then, and that’s why I didn’t recognize you the other night.”

Penny jerked away and stared at him wide eyed.

“Jerry was my brother.” Cliff turned away and fixed his eyes ahead, shifting as if he were uncomfortable.

“What?” Penny wondered if she’d heard correctly.

“Jerry--your client--was my brother.” Cliff began an almost imperceptible rocking as he clasped his hands around his knees.

Penny jumped up and stared down at him. “Cliff! H-how is that possible? I don’t understand.” She paused to drag in some air. “How can that be? The odds of running into you down here... You don’t have the same last name.”

Cliff rose slowly. He towered over her, and Penny unconsciously backed up. Anxiety, shame, remorse and guilt all played havoc with her nerves. He looked like he was going to hit her.

“Different fathers,” he murmured.

“I-I’m sorry, Cliff. I didn’t know,” she whispered. A cold sensation spread throughout her body, and she wrapped her arms around her torso.

Cliff put his hands on his hips, appearing more menacing still. He stared at her with narrowed eyes.

“No, I know you didn’t. But I knew who you were when I first met you down here.”

“Why didn’t you say something? Why did I have to tell you about Jerry as if you didn’t know?” She backed up another step.

He tightened his lips and shrugged. “I wanted to hear it firsthand. I wanted to know what you’d say.”

Penny threw a quick glance over her shoulder. The beach was wide open. She could run for it if she needed to. “You should have told me, Cliff.” She caught her breath as a thought occurred to her. “Does Matt know?” 

“No, he doesn’t know.”

“Oh,” she said, now at a loss for words.

“I just didn’t know what to say when I found out who you were. I still don’t. Jerry and I haven’t seen each other in years, but we have...had a bond...because of our past...our parents.”

She studied Cliff’s face as if seeing him for the first time, looking for a resemblance. “I’m so sorry, Cliff. What Jerry shared with me was...” Penny fought to steady her voice. Jerry’s tales of abuse and neglect still haunted her. “Horrible,” she finished inarticulately.

Cliff’s hollow chuckle held no humor. He looked away out to sea. “That’s a good word. Horrible.”

“Have you ever had counsel-- I mean have you ever been to see a therapist?”

Cliff jammed his hands in the pockets of his shorts and shook his head. “No, I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“Oh!” Penny reared back at the comment. “I’m sorry.”

“That was for Jerry, but I don’t think it ever did him any good. He killed himself, didn’t he? So what good did it do him?” The bitterness in Cliff’s voice cut her. But perhaps he was right. What good had it done Jerry? She remembered some of the hours they’d spent together in session.

“I don’t know, Cliff. He was happy sometimes. He needed someone to talk to.”

“Yeah, he probably did. Once we left that house, I never talked about the past again. Jerry wanted to talk about it, but I ignored him. Then I moved down here, he stayed in Michigan, and I didn’t see him very often.”

“I’m so sorry, Cliff.” Penny wanted to reach out and touch Cliff’s arm in a gesture of comfort, but his forbidding posture and grim face sent a chill up her spine. Where had the friendly man she’d met disappeared to?

“Thanks.” Cliff glanced at her quickly and looked away. “I blamed you, you know. Long before I met you. Before I even saw you at the funeral. The police called me. Found my address at Jerry’s apartment. I knew you were his therapist, and I blamed you. They told me Jerry was on the phone with you when he shot himself.” A muscle worked in Cliff’s cheek, and Penny wondered just how angry he could get. 

“Yes, he was,” she said quietly. “I called him after a session. I can’t even remember why now. Oh, yes, I know. He’d left something in the office. And that’s when he said he was going to kill himself. I don’t know what happened between the time and he left and when he got home. The session had gone well. He left in a fairly good mood. I called the police while he was on the phone, but it was too late.”

He turned to face her. “Why did he do it?” The raw emotion in his voice tore at her heart.

“I don’t know, Cliff. He had a lifelong history of depression. You must know that. Even when he smiled or joked, he had an underlying sadness that never went away. Medications didn’t seem to help him much in the long run. He’d talked about killing himself before, and we had him hospitalized, but this time, he took me by surprise. He hadn’t mentioned suicide in months. I thought finally...” Penny’s voice broke.

“I can’t believe he survived my parents only to let them win. They got their way in the end. He’s dead.” The bitterness in his voice echoed his words. “Not that they’ll ever know. They both died some years ago.”

“But you seem...” Penny trod lightly. “You seem remarkably well adjusted for having gone through what you must have, Cliff.”

He gave her an unreadable look and turned away. “Do you think so?”

“I do.”

“I got out of the house before Jerry. He had a year alone with them. I never went back...not even to help him.”

“I’m so sorry, Cliff.”

“Yeah. That might explain why I seem so ‘well adjusted’ and Jerry didn’t. It got much worse for Jerry after I left. He forgave me for leaving, but I never forgave myself. Never.”

Penny finally gathered the courage to lay a gentle hand on Cliff’s arm. He jerked at her touch and dropped his eyes to her hand before raising them to her face. Moisture pooled in his eyes, and she saw his pain.

“How can I help, Cliff?” She could feel the tension in his rigid body, his determination to maintain control of his emotions. She glanced around the festively crowded beach. It seemed incongruous for such a poignant conversation.

Before she knew it, Cliff pulled her to him in a tight embrace and buried his face in her neck. Startled, she resisted for a moment before she felt the shuddering in his body. She realized he cried silently into her hair, and she wrapped her arms around him while he grieved, whispering occasional words of comfort while they stood together on the beach.

After a few heart wrenching minutes, his grief spent, Cliff raised his head and gave her a shaky grin. He dashed the back of his hand against his red-rimmed eyes, shoved his hands back in his pockets and turned from Penny to look down the beach.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled.

“No problem,” she whispered. To give him time to compose himself, she discreetly studied the shoreline in the opposite direction. The foamy waves rolled in and out in a soothing and gentle rhythmic motion.

She heard him clear his throat and glanced at him. His red face indicated his embarrassment and the depth of his emotion. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red, the lashes still wet.

“Man, I haven’t cried in years. It doesn’t feel very good.”

Penny nodded sympathetically. “It looked painful.”

“Yeah,” he smiled crookedly. “I don’t cry much.”

“I understand.”

He shuffled his feet and grew silent.

Penny opted for a mundane comment to give him time to continue to collect his thoughts.

“So, are you off today, Cliff? It’s Monday, isn’t it? I can’t even keep track of the days anymore.”

He cleared his throat again. “No, not really. I’ve got to head into Mobile and do some stuff at the office.”

“Oh,” she replied, wondering what else she might say. She certainly had no intention of burdening him with her stalker tales, although she did wonder how his previous resentment toward her affected his decision to investigate the calls. He read her mind.

“One of those things is to call your boss as I thought about doing last night. Matt hasn’t had much luck with him over the phone and asked me to put some pressure on him to come up with a name or two of someone who might want to terrorize you.”

“Oh, I can call Tim and get him to do that.”

Cliff scratched his head. He continued to avoid direct eye contact, Penny assumed because of embarrassment over his emotional state. “Well, that’s the thing, Penny. We’re not absolutely sure he’s not involved...or someone else in your office.”  

Penny shook her head vehemently. “That’s just not possible. I know those guys.”

Cliff glanced at her quickly and looked away. “I have to tell you, Penny, I’ve been in this business for a long time. People aren’t always what they seem.”

Penny gave him an ironic look. Didn’t he realize he was one of those people who weren’t what they seemed?

She bit back a retort and sighed. “I know, Cliff, but these guys... I just can’t even imagine them doing such a thing. Or why they would.”

Cliff shrugged but remained silent. He glanced at his watch. “I’d better get going. It’s about an hour and a half to the office from here.” He stared at Penny for a moment before dropping his eyes to the sand. “I’m sorry about...you know...before,” he mumbled. “The blubbering.” His cheeks flamed.

“That’s okay, Cliff. I understand. I’m sorry for your loss.” Though Penny’s response was heartfelt, it seemed trite under the circumstances.

He glanced at her again. A muscle worked in his jaw. She couldn’t decipher the expression in his dark blue eyes.

“Yeah,” he murmured. He raised a hand in farewell and walked away, his hands shoved in his pockets as he shuffled slowly through the sand toward the parking lot.

Penny watched him for a few moments before she sank weakly back into her chair and stared out to sea with a painful knot in her throat. She had no more tears left.  

****

“Hello?”

“Hi, Tim. I’m sorry to call you at home.”

“Hey, Penny. That’s okay. So, your chief of police has been calling me. What’s his name? Matt Williams?”

“Oh, that’s what I wanted to ask you about. They say they’re having a hard time getting information from you.”

“Who’s they?” he asked sharply.

“There’s a guy from the FBI, Cliff Sutton, who’s kind of working with Matt, and I guess he’s going to give you a call.”

“I haven’t heard from him.”

“Well, I just talked to him this morning. I’m sure he’ll call you when he gets around to it.”

“I wonder why. I told that Chief Williams I don’t think anyone here had anything to do with the calls.”

Penny fell silent. Should she say something?

“Penny, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here. It’s just...” She stepped out onto the balcony. The sun had set, and it would soon be time to get down to the parade route. “Well, you know...since the phone calls have been coming from Michigan...from your number and the office...they’re thinking...” She paused then rushed in. “I know it’s silly. I tried to tell Matt it was impossible.”

She heard Tim grunt over the phone. “You mean me? They think it’s me, don’t they? I can’t believe this.”

Penny winced. “No, Tim, not you. Well, I hope they don’t.” She bit the edge of her lip. “Okay, I guess they’re thinking it might be. But
I
don’t.”

He snorted. “Well, it’s not me, so they’re wasting their time. And I don’t think it’s one of the clients here either.”