He was right—a year after that, she made it to the majors and the Boston Globe.
Which is where Dr. Felix Browner, her mother’s OB/GYN, found her. The subject line of his e-mail was “Old Friend of Your Mom’s,” but once she responded to it, it became clear he was less a friend than someone Elizabeth Childs had utilized for medical purposes. Dr. Browner was also not the gynecologist her mother had been using by the time Rachel had knowledge of such things. When Rachel reached adolescence, Elizabeth had introduced her to Dr. Veena Rao, whom most of the women and young girls Rachel knew also used. She’d never heard of Felix Browner. But he assured her he had been her mother’s doctor when Elizabeth first came to western Massachusetts and had, in fact, introduced Rachel herself to her first taste of oxygen. You were a squirmy one, he wrote.
In a subsequent e-mail he wrote that he possessed important information he’d like to share regarding her mother but he only felt comfortable sharing it face-to-face. They agreed to meet halfway between Boston and Springfield, where he lived, and settled on a diner in Millbury.
Before the meeting, she researched Dr. Browner and the picture was, as her instincts had been telling her since his first e-mail, not a flattering one. The year before, in 2006, he’d been barred from practicing medicine due to multiple allegations of sexual assault or sexual misconduct by female patients, the earliest dating back to 1976, when the good doctor was only a week out of med school.
Dr. Browner brought two rolling file cases to the diner with him. At sixty-two or so, he wore his thick silver hair in the almost mullet, almost shag style of someone who drove a sports car and patronized Jimmy Buffett concerts. He wore light blue jeans, penny loafers without socks, and a Hawaiian shirt under a black linen blazer. He carried an extra thirty pounds around his middle like a statement of success and had an easy way with the waitress and the busboys. He struck her as the kind of man who is well liked by strangers but baffled if someone doesn’t laugh at his jokes.
After he’d expressed his sympathies for the death of Rachel’s mother, he reminded her what a squirmy little newborn she’d been—“Like you were dipped in Palmolive.” He then somewhat breathlessly revealed that his first accuser—“We’ll call her Lianne and not just because it sounds like Lyin’, okay?”—knew several of the other accusers. He ticked off their names and Rachel immediately wondered if he was using aliases or if he was violating the women’s right to privacy with cavalier indifference: Tonya, Marie, Ursula, Jane, and Patty, he said, all knew one another.
“Well, it’s a small region,” Rachel said. “People know each other.”
“Do they?” He shook a sugar packet before opening it and shot her a cold smile. “Do they?” He drizzled the sugar into his coffee, then reached into one of his file cases. “Lyin’ Lianne, I’ve discovered, has had numerous lovers. She’s been divorced twice and—”
“Doctor—”
He held up a hand to silence her. “And was named as the ‘other woman’ in a divorce. Patty drinks alone. Marie and Ursula have substance abuse issues, and Tonya—woo-hoo-hoo—Tonya sued another doctor for sexual assault.” He bulged his eyeballs in mock outrage. “Apparently there’s an epidemic of predatory doctors in the Berkshires. Heavens!”
Rachel had known a Tonya in the Berkshires. Tonya Fletcher. Managed the Minute Man Inn. Always seemed distracted and a bit perturbed.
Dr. Browner dropped a stack of paper the size of a cinder block on the table between them. Arched a triumphant eyebrow at her.
“What,” Rachel said, “you don’t believe in thumb drives?”
He didn’t acknowledge that. “I have the goods on all of them, you see. You see?”
“I see,” Rachel said. “And what would you like me to do with that?”
“Help me,” he said, as if it were the only answer in the world.
“And why would I do that?”
“Because I’m innocent. Because I didn’t do a single wrong thing.” He turned his palms over and extended them across the table. “These hands bring life into the world. They brought you into the world, Rachel. These hands were the first that ever held you. These hands.” He stared at them like they were his two great loves. “Those women took my name.” He folded his hands together and looked down at them. “I lost my family over all the stress and discord. I lost my practice.” Tears glistened in his lower eyelids. “And I didn’t deserve it. I did not.”
Rachel gave him what she hoped would be a sympathetic smile but suspected looked merely sickly. “I’m not sure what you’re asking of me.”
He leaned back from the table. “Write about these women. Show that they had an agenda, that they chose me to advance that agenda. That they set out to destroy me and now they have. They need to atone. They need to recant. They need to be exposed. Now they’re suing me in civil court. Do you know, young lady, that the average civil case costs a quarter million to defend. Just to defend. Win or lose, you’re out two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Did you know that?”
Rachel was still stuck on “young lady,” but she nodded.
“So, so, so, this coven has raped me. What other word could apply? They have wrecked my good name and destroyed my relationships with my family and my friends. But that’s not enough, is it? No. Now they want to pick my bones. They want what little money I have left. So I can spend my remaining years destitute. So I can die on a cot in a shelter somewhere, a friendless nothing.” He splayed his fingers over the stack of paper. “In these pages are all the dirty facts about these dirty women. Write about them. Show the world who they are. I’m handing you your Pulitzer, Rachel.”
“I’m not here for a Pulitzer,” Rachel said.
His eyes grew small. “Then why are you here?”
“You said you had information regarding my mother.”
He nodded. “After.”
“After what?”
“After you do the story.”
“That’s not how I work,” Rachel said. “If you have information about my mother, just tell me and we’ll see—”
“It’s not about your mother. It’s about your father.” His eyes flashed. “As you yourself said, it’s a small region. People talk. And the story about you, my dear, was that Elizabeth refused to tell you who your father was. We pitied you, you know, all the good townspeople. We wanted to tell you but none of us could. Well, I could have. I knew your father quite well. But doctor-patient confidentiality laws being what they are, I couldn’t reveal his identity against your mother’s wishes. But now she’s dead. And I’m no longer allowed to practice.” He sipped his coffee. “So, Rachel, would you like to know who your daddy is?”
It took Rachel a moment to find her voice. “Yes.”
“What’s that?”
“Yes.”
He acknowledged that with a downward flick of his eyelids. “Then write the fucking story, sweetheart.”
3
JJ