Fall from Grace (24 page)

“What, exactly?”

“My own dignity.”

Adam regarded her, unsure of what to say. “Sit with me,” she said. “Please.”

He sat on the couch. Jenny settled beside him, neither too close nor too far away. For an odd moment he thought of Carla Pacelli, regarding him gravely from the other end of a chair swing. “Tell me how you are, Jen.”

“I’m all right.” Smiling briefly at herself, she amended this. “You could say I’m even. At whatever cost to artistic inspiration, the meds seem to level me out.” Her tone was factual and resigned. “With lithium, they tell me, I’ve got a better than fifty-fifty chance of remaining stable. But I’ll be on it for the rest of my life.”

Or my life may be shorter, she did not need to add. Tentative, Adam remarked, “It’s quiet here. That must help your writing.”

She seemed to read his expression. Adam, whose work rewarded inscrutability, realized that he had not become opaque to Jenny Leigh. In the same flat voice, she said, “If I don’t try it again, you mean.”

“The thought struck me, yes. It seems lonely here.”

Jenny shook her head. “To me, it seems peaceful. And safe. I’ve come to realize that I’m better at perceiving life than living it. I’m afraid my stories reflect that.”

Between them, Adam knew, was a constraint she felt as deeply as he. But she also seemed more self-aware, less prone to moods. Watching him closely, she said, “Your mom says you’re working in Afghanistan.”

“Yes. As an agricultural consultant.”

“For which crops? Is there anything there besides opium?”

“Not much. Taken all in all, it’s the worst job in the firm. But I’m single, and someone had to go.”

Jenny’s eyes became questioning and a little sad. “You were going to be a lawyer, Adam.”

He did not wish to pursue this. “And you were going to be a writer—and are. I’ve read some of your stories.”

“You have?”

“Uh-huh. Once you began to be published, you couldn’t hide them from me. They’re good.”

Jenny gave him the same ghost of a smile, probing his eyes for the truth. “‘Good’?” she repeated.

Adam marshaled his thoughts. “I think you have great talent. The stories are observant and precisely written, with every word the right one.” He paused. “Also a little detached. Like you’re holding back from expressing pain.”

To his surprise, Jenny nodded. “So my therapist tells me. But he seems to think I’m creeping forward—in art and in life. So I’m trying to integrate all that into a novel.”

“Your first?”

“And maybe my last.” She paused, then added, “This one hurts.”

The way she said this made him wonder why. “But you’re keeping at it.”

“I have to,” she said with quiet resolve. “In that sense your father’s advice had value. One key to writing is to show up every day. A good reason to stay alive.”

Adam felt a stab of pain. Softly, he said, “I hate what happened. To both of us.”

To his distress, Jenny’s mouth trembled, and then tears sprung to her eyes. She looked away, mutely shaking her head.

He moved closer. “You’re doing better, Jen. I can see that.”

Crossing her arms, she gained control of herself again. “Then I’m glad.”

For several moments Adam was silent, still sitting beside her on the couch. In a reluctant voice, he asked, “There’s something I need to ask you, Jenny.”

Still unable to look at him, she said miserably, “What?”

“Did you know about his bequest to you?”

Silent, Jenny shook her head again.

“Do you have any idea why my father did that?”

With seeming effort, she straightened her body. In a voice etched with irony, she said, “He liked my story, remember?”

“I remember it well. Now he’s left me with another poisoned chalice.” Adam’s tone grew firmer. “This isn’t about you—or us. But if I can help my mom and Teddy break that will, I have to.”

She squared her shoulders. “I know. What he did to your mother was incredibly cruel.”

“And so perfectly in character,” he responded bitterly. “His final touch was pitting you against my mother with me in the middle. This particular act of cruelty has a certain geometric elegance.”

Jenny closed her eyes, speaking in a near whisper. “After I tried to kill myself, Clarice treated me like a daughter. But for her—”

She could not finish. For one moment, a reflex, Adam wanted to take her hand. Then he recalled his mother’s warning that he still occupied psychic space in Jenny’s life—too much, he alone knew, given all that had happened to them. She had come this far without him; whatever affection he still felt, he could not, would not, act on it. Instead, he fell back on the distance that had become his last defense. “I know how terrible this must be—”

“You can’t.” Fresh tears sprang to her eyes. “You’ll never know how sorry I am. And how ashamed.”

“It’s done, Jen. There’s nothing left but to let it go.”

Jenny bit her lip, a wet sheen in her eyes. “Can you?”

Adam felt a constriction in his chest. “No.”

Turning, she looked into his face and then, gently, put her hand behind his neck, pulling his mouth to hers. For Adam, that summer became yesterday, before everything changed, and the warmth of Jenny’s lips was once again a preface—not just to their lovemaking, but to a life. Then he pulled a few inches back, resting his forehead against hers.

“We can’t,” he murmured. “You know that.”

Her throat pulsed. “Will I see you again?”

“Yes. At least before I go.”

Gently he withdrew, then left, wishing it were not so.

When he got to the car, Adam found a message on his cell, relayed through a ghost phone no one could trace.

Stopping at the foot of Jenny’s driveway, he tried to shake off the last hour, then listened to the message. The voice belonged to Amanda Ferris. She was making headway with her new source, she told him, though it was clear that the man had no access to the coroner’s report. But she had learned that the report was crucial to a web of evidence—including the crime scene report and statements extracted from Adam’s family—that could lead to Teddy’s indictment for the murder of Benjamin Blaine.

Struggling to detach himself, Adam weighed his choices. He could walk away from this, hoping that Jack was right. But if he wanted to warn Teddy of the case against him, then work to alter the course of events, he must place himself at risk. His advantage was that no one on this island knew what he was capable of doing. In many ways, if not all, this was still an innocent place.

He started driving again. By the time he reached his family’s home, his plan was fully formed. But then, he had started on it the day he saw George Hanley.

Seventeen

To assure his solitude, at dusk Adam took the stairs down to the beach below the promontory. Pulling out his cell phone, he called a former colleague for the second time that week.

“Other than you,” Adam said, “I’m out of answers. How do you get me in?”

“Not sure I can,” Jason Lew replied laconically. “Even the standard system you describe is difficult to beat. Cut the power, you trigger the alarm. And you’re also dealing with cameras, right?”

“Yes. I’ve got the locations memorized. I also know where the control panel is—a room just off the entrance.”

“That’s what I need.” Lew paused, signaling his reluctance, then said more slowly, “I’d have to pose as a service guy and insert a receiver. That will connect to a switch that shuts the system down from the outside. Pushing the switch is your job.”

“How long do you need on your end?”

“Two days to build the receiver, then a day trip to the Vineyard. Say three nights from now you can go in. Assuming they don’t spot me as an imposter and arrest me on the spot.” Lew’s chuckle became the phlegmy rumble of a smoker. “Funny work for an old guy. But fifteen thousand in cash would send me to Costa Brava.”

Adam felt the night envelop him. “I’ll have it for you by tomorrow.”

“Deal.” Lew’s speech slowed again. “This kind of service doesn’t come with warranties. You could hit the switch and find yourself on candid camera, with a shriek alarm for a laugh track. Instead of Afghanistan, you’d wind up in jail.”

How had he gotten here? Adam wondered again. “If you’d screwed up on the job,” he said, “the guys relying on you could have been killed. They tell me no one was.”

“Different times,” Lew said. “The obstacles are greater now. We’ll see if I still have it. Otherwise, you’re fucked.”

That night, Adam twisted fitfully in bed, unable to find sleep.

Again and again, he saw the Afghan reach for the gun hidden beneath his robes. For a split second, Adam imagined the consequences of failing to react—instant death or, more likely, kidnapping followed by torture no normal man could endure. At the end he would become a mutilated body by the side of the road, or the centerpiece of a videotaped beheading he prayed his family would never see. The lies he had told them would cause suffering enough.

He jerked the wheel abruptly, throwing Messud sideways as he pulled the gun concealed beneath his seat.

Righting himself, the Afghan perceived that he was speeding down an empty road at night with an American who was exactly what the Taliban suspected, and knew Messud’s true loyalties very well.

“I never trusted you,” Adam told Messud in Pashto, and shot the Afghan between the eyes.

For fifty miles, Adam drove with Messud’s body slumped beside him. Dumping it by the road, Adam hoped that someone would blame an Afghan. Then he drove to Kandahar and learned that Benjamin Blaine was dead.

Adam closed his eyes, and tried again to sleep.

Early the next morning, he took a flight to Washington, D.C.

There was a Vineyard sunrise of heartbreaking beauty. Looking out the window as the plane climbed higher, he saw Cuttyhunk Island on the edge of the blue horizon, and thought of his last sail with Jenny Leigh.

They had rented a sailboat. Though not an experienced sailor, Jenny was eager to learn. She took the helm, holding the tiller in one hand and the mainsheet in the other. Adam sat beside her, noting subtle shifts in the wind. A stiff breeze blew the blond strands of hair across her smiling face.

“Good,” Adam said. “Now let out the mainsheet a little.”

She did this, tentative at first, then grinning as the mainsail caught the wind. The sailboat gained speed. Satisfied, Adam slid forward on the port side, balancing the boat to help her. Even when sea spray splashed her face, Jenny’s eyes were bright. Adam could feel her exhilaration.

After an hour, her mood still elevated, Jenny began to talk about her writing. “For me,” she explained, “it’s partly about why we are the way we are. But it also means I feel safe.” Hand on the tiller, she gazed ahead, face solemn now. “In my stories, I control what happens. There’s no experience I can’t use. But it can’t hurt me anymore. Instead, I can understand it, then change it to be more the way I want.”

As more often lately, Adam sensed that Jenny was dealing with a pain she refused to reveal, perhaps did not fully understand. “So do you write for other people, Jen, or for yourself?”

“Both.” Suddenly, she was animated again. “I don’t just want to be a writer, but a great one. I want to be on an airplane, or on a beach, and see someone so enthralled by what I wrote they don’t notice me at all.”

This was Jenny at her emotional peak, her ambitions boundless and romantic. To Adam, three years older, she seemed touchingly, almost heartbreakingly, young. He hoped that life would not give her more hurt than she could endure. “I like the part of being anonymous,” she explained, “where the reader’s only idea of me comes from what I write. Did it ever feel strange to read your father’s books?”

“In a way.” Adam paused, trying to express what he had never told anyone. “I admired his talent, and also felt sad. The man who wrote those books was larger in spirit than the dad Teddy and I knew. ‘If you can be that way on the page,’ I wanted to say, ‘why not with us?’”

As Jenny adjusted the tiller, Adam felt her mood change. Pensively, she said, “Maybe I’m like that, too.” Heading for Cuttyhunk, the idea seemed to consume her, rendering both of them silent.

On the way back, a fierce current along the Elizabeth Islands caught them up.

Adam took the tiller, fighting stiff and erratic winds as the current increased to twenty knots. The jib became snagged. When Jenny scrambled to free it, a sudden wave knocked the boat sideways.

Adam saw Jenny lose her balance, suspended in slow motion above the side before pitching into the chill waves of the Vineyard Sound. Turning, he spotted her bobbing in the water as the current swept him away.

She was not a strong swimmer, Adam knew. Quickly, he wrenched the boat in a circle back toward her. Jenny’s arms began thrashing, her eyes wide with fright. Only the life jacket kept her head above water. He fought the wind, his progress toward her agonizingly slow.

Minutes passed. Her face was waxen now, her mouth shut tight. Desperate, Adam tacked to reach her. At last, he came close enough to toss her a line knotted at the end.

She clutched the line with both hands, hope and panic etched in her face. The wind shifted. Abruptly, the mainsail filled, propelling the boat forward at startling speed. The rope snapped taut in Jenny’s hands, the forward motion of the boat dragging her through rough waters like a rag doll. Adam heard her scream. In seconds, she would release the line, falling back as the boat sped away, or keep swallowing water through her mouth and nose until the sensation of drowning forced her to let go.

Jerking the tiller, Adam steered into the wind. The boat slowed abruptly, forging back toward Jenny. At last, the line went slack, and Jenny began bobbing again. Tiller in one hand, Adam pulled her toward him with the rope. As she came close, he reached out, risking his own tumble into the water. The instant his hand clasped hers the boat rocked again. The fierceness of her grip was all that linked them.

With desperate haste, Adam pulled her into the boat. Still gripping the tiller, he hugged her. He felt her trembling with relief and fear.

“Strange,” she murmured after a time. “Suddenly, I was just so scared of dying.”