20. Tara

I woke up to find Galen standing over me the next morning with a grin on his face.

“I’ve brought you pancakes, orange juice, and a mountain of bacon. I might have to help you with that bacon.” He settled a bed tray over my lap and came to sit beside me.

“Where’s Rikki?” I took a piece of bacon and tried a bite before I looked over at him. It was the perfect level of crunchy. It could be crunchy or crispy, but never still wiggling around my plate. That just freaked me out.

“She’s with Amanda. They’ve gone for a day of girl-time, from what Amanda said.” He grinned at me as he settled back on the pillows, more at ease than I’d seen him in a long time.

“Ah, she’s taking her to get her nails done and clothes shopping I bet. Amanda adores her.”

“She’s beautiful, smart, and knows how to wrap people around her finger. Amanda can’t help but love her,” he said, snatching another piece of bacon as I cut into my pancakes.

“That’s true. What are you doing home?” I glanced over at him between bites, he had class this morning, after all.

“My TA is taking over for a few days. We have some work to do.” His arched eyebrow told me he meant more than just the bedroom fun-time kind of work.

I gave him another piece of bacon and he munched on it as I finished my pancakes off. I watched him, wondering if I should pout that he wanted to do real work instead of having sex. Would that work on Galen?

In the morning light, after a shower and shave, Galen was awake, cheerful, and too sexy for his own good. Memories of the night before played in my mind, memories I never wanted to lose. I wanted to repeat them.

I sat the tray of leftover bacon on the floor and turned to Galen, running my hand under his t-shirt, the name of the university emblazoned on the front. His skin was warm and smooth and I closed my eyes, savoring the feel of him.

“We can work, but I think I need a little encouragement. Just a little.” I scrunched my nose up and he laughed.

“I don’t think you need any encouragement at all, sweetheart. Come here.” He pulled me over his lap and I straddled him, looking into his eyes as we came face to face.

I hadn’t brushed my teeth, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t said he loved me yet, but I didn’t care. We smiled at each other, our lips brushing together softly. I felt the love between us. I knew it was there. Unspoken or not, I knew there was more to us than mere convenience, or the sex we so enjoyed. For now, I was willing to let it go.

“Look, we could have a lot of sex right now. And I do mean a lot. Tons of it. I’m down with that, but... and this is something to think about, we could spend that time looking for a way to get me out of this situation so we have a lot more time in the future. What do you think?” He’d spoken just as I’d started to explore his neck, the scented skin making my head dizzy with desire.

I didn’t respond at first, I was too busy licking at the pulse in his neck, tasting him on my tongue, a move that earned me a thrust of his hips.

“Oh yes, that’s good, more of that!” I ground down on him, wanting that intense feeling of almost pain but pure pleasure to intensify.

“Tara, baby. Seriously. We should work.” He pushed me away gently before taking my hand as he stood. “You had some kind of idea when you pulled all of those boxes out of the attic, tell me.”

“Nooooooooo! I want sex!” I felt like Rikki for a minute but let him off the hook by smiling at him teasingly. The throbbing in my body hadn’t stopped. It sat there, tormenting me as I walked behind him.

“I’ve created a monster. Later, I promise!”

We settled at the table, a cup of coffee now in front of me, and we started looking over the files once more.

“These are her medical files. You’re planning on heading to medical school, have a look at those and see what you can discover.” Galen handed me a thick folder filled with papers.

“How did you get this? Why did you get this?” I looked at the confidential file then back at Galen.

“I spent a few weeks looking for answers myself, just after her death. It was declared an accident so I put it all away. Rikki needed me, I didn’t have time to go hunting for a ghost.” He looked away but I’d seen the pain in his eyes. It tore at me and I wanted to hold him, but as he’d said, we had work to do.

“What about doctor-patient confidentiality?” I asked, concerned I might be breaking the law.

“She’s dead, Tara. Those laws no longer apply. Besides, I’m her husband, I can share them with whoever I like, right? I think. I’ll call Bill later. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, you’re part of my legal team now. Open away.” He waved at the file before he went back to his own, a stack of what appeared to be bank statements.

I started digging through the folder, feeling as though I was intruding. I’d made it through a good stack of her appointments for a variety of complaints before I got to a stack from her gynecologist. Everything had gone fine at first, and then there started to be pages stapled together, then more. I paused at those, reading over them carefully.

“Kayla had gestational diabetes?” I glanced up to see Galen nodding absently, a yellow highlighter in his hand as he occasionally swiped at a line item.

“She did, yes. Her doctor was managing it.”

I felt my brows knit as I stared down at the paper in my hand. I reached for my tablet, a gift from Galen, and did a search on the syndrome I knew only a little about. An idea was forming, but there was only one record of Kayla having seen the doctor after she gave birth to Rikki.

“Galen?” I asked, still staring at my tablet, reading another purported expert’s opinion on how long gestational diabetes lasted after the mother had given birth. I was finding that opinions varied and there was no clear conclusion on the duration. I took away the idea that gestational diabetes should be monitored far longer than a week or two after birth. Maybe even into the second year of the child’s life.

“Yes, baby?” He’d moved on to a different pile of papers, his reading glasses sliding down his nose in a way that was impossibly sexy. I smiled to myself but ignored the twinge of arousal that shot through me. It was time to work.

“Why did she stop going to her doctor?”

“What?” He glanced up at me but then what back to his papers.

“Why did Kayla stop going to her doctor?”

“She didn’t, she had several appointments after she had Rikki. Quite a few, in fact. It seemed she was going once a week or more at times!” He looked up at me now with confusion.

“There aren’t any more papers after her first appointment after Rikki was born. Are you missing some or did she change doctors without telling you?” I held up the paper I’d mentioned, waving it at him. “That’s the last appointment.”

“I’ll give the office a call.” He went to make his phone call and I made more coffee for us. When he came back into the room he didn’t look pleased.

“They said they sent me everything in her files. That she stopped coming without an explanation after her last appointment. Who was she seeing then?”

I looked up at him, not able to give him any kind of answer. “It’s hard to say, maybe her insurance records will show that?” It was the only answer I could think of.

“I’ll find those then. There has to be an explanation for this.”

Galen dug through another folder and gave a loud sigh a few minutes later.

“Found him.” He didn’t look overly happy about his discovery.

“What is it?”

“He’s a psychiatrist. She was seeing a psychiatrist several times a week just before her accident.” A thoughtful look crossed his face and he put his head in his hands.

“That’s a good thing.” I reached over to touch his hand but he pulled away as though I’d burned him.

“No. I didn’t know she was seeing a psychiatrist. She was hiding it. That means I was the problem, right? She felt like she couldn’t tell me.” I could see the torment he felt in the way he clenched his jaw.

“No, Galen!” I began to reassure him, but he gave me a look so I stopped.

“Come on, Tara! Why would she hide something like that from me?” His head went back in his hands, clasping at the back of his neck like the world was falling down on him.

“I don’t, I wouldn’t...”

“No,” his words muffled against the table as he leaned down to it for support. “You wouldn’t, unless it was me that was the problem. Unless it was me that had sent you over the edge.”

He stood, gathering up a few things as he went, and walked out of the room, leaving without a word.

“Galen? Where are you going?” I ran after him, worried now.

“I’m going... I just need to clear my head, Tara. I’ll be back soon.”

I couldn’t stop him, but the thought flew through my head that maybe those were Kayla’s last words to Galen. He wasn’t... no, he couldn’t be.

“Galen!” I called out and he paused, the door open now.

“Yes, Tara?” He didn’t look back, he just stood there, his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Rikki and I, we need you, you know? Don’t forget to come home, okay?” I didn’t want to declare that I loved him, not yet. Not without knowing for sure that he loved me and by his walking out I wasn’t feeling assured of it.

“I know, babe. I’ll be back.” He left then, closing the door quietly.

I stared after him, my heart breaking for him, breaking for all of us.

I went back to the table, looking down at the papers. For a moment I resented the woman that had come before me. I felt like an ass, but there it was. It felt like she was ruining my life from the grave.

I sank into a chair, calling myself a million different names. Kayla had not done this to us on purpose, I knew that. It was her parents, it was Galen. Kayla had only tried to escape. Whether her death was an accident or suicide, she’d been trying to leave Rikki and Galen behind. She couldn’t handle whatever was happening to her and she’d run away.

Just as Galen was doing now.

I sighed and grabbed the papers Galen had been looking over.

Kayla could have been seeing the doctor for any number of reasons, maybe she’d realized she needed help and was trying to protect her family, maybe that’s why she’d left them? It was so irrational to think of a woman leaving her baby, to even consider it, but I knew personally it happened. Not every mother is cut out to be a mom. My mother knew that and left. It would seem Kayla had known that as well. That’s why she’d left Rikki with Galen rather than take her baby with her.

My eyes kept going back to the last report with her gynecologist, something tingling in my brain, but I wasn’t sure what. I picked up my tablet, wondering what diabetes did to a person. I felt confused when I saw Type 1 and Type 2 were different from gestational diabetes. In today’s world, it’s hard to not watch television without seeing some kind of information about diabetes, or catching glimpses about the rise in Type 2 diabetes in America and how obesity caused it. Kayla hadn’t been overweight, though. I glanced back at the report and saw she’d actually lost weight.

That’s when my eyes saw it at last, the thing that had been screaming at me, but my brain had refused to see. Under the diagnosis section, the term for her diabetes had changed from gestational to Type 2. I looked back at my tablet and saw that there was a difference, and that women that had gestational diabetes could sometimes develop Type 2. It would appear Kayla had not only developed it but developed it far earlier than was usual. While gestational diabetes can be asymptomatic, Type 2 diabetes could present in a number of ways with a variety of symptoms. Without care it would only get worse. Over and over again we’re told that Type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity, but according to the research I was reading, that wasn’t always the case.

I froze when I saw the word fainting. What if Kayla had been avoiding proper treatment for her diabetes, thinking her weight loss had cured the problem? Could she have passed out in the car while driving, her emotional state exacerbating the problem? I stared off into space, my brain running far too fast.

“There were no skid marks on the road.” John’s words came back to me, replaying in my head.

If she’d passed out, she wouldn’t have known she was about to die. She wouldn’t have reacted with panic, she’d have just driven into a light pole without a clue of what was about to happen. It all made sense!

I ran around the room, looking for my phone to call Galen home. I couldn’t find it and John pulled up into the driveway just as I was about to scream, Amanda not far behind him. They came in, laughing and carefree, but all I could do was stare at them with an odd mixture of horror and excitement.

“I think I know why Kayla died!”