Off Season (5 page)

Ben wondered if he had suddenly developed that nervous condition, what was it called? Agoraphobia? The one where you were afraid to leave your house; when even to stick your head outside the door would make your heart race and your body sweat like all get-out, the way he was sweating now, as he stood at the window, peeking through the drapes, wondering if anyone on North Water Street had learned that Hugh Talbot had been to Menemsha and escorted him off in handcuffs.

Was it possible that he had developed agoraphobia in the few hours since his life had gone completely out of focus? Since he’d gone from Ben Niles, respected home-builder, family man, and model citizen, to Ben Niles, child molester?

“Ben?” The voice came first, followed by the slamming of the back door.

Shit. Amy was home. He let the drape fall back into place.

She rounded the corner on energetic teenage feet, tossing her corduroy jacket onto the wingback chair that had been in the room since her great-grandfather’s day.

“Guess what?” she blurted out in teenage style.

Guess what?
Oh, God, did she know? His throat and chest and gut tightened up.

“Charlie’s going to let me run the Halloween party at the tavern. I’m so psyched. It’ll be so cool.” Her dark eyes flashed—the same dark eyes that resembled her grandmother’s, the beautiful woman whose photo stood on the mantel in a small oval frame, the woman who might or might not have chattered and laughed as often as Amy.

Amy would stop laughing if she learned that her new stepfather was an accused sex offender.

He tried to smile or simply to breathe. “If you’re in charge, the party will be nothing less than cool.”

He backed up a step to put more distance between them.

She flopped onto the chair atop her corduroy and flipped back her short now-burgundy hair, which she’d recently chopped “techno-like,” as she called it. “I want the party to be totally outrageous, the latest chic.” She spoke as much to the ceiling as to Ben. “I want it to be the one Halloween party that everyone will remember. Maybe I’ll get a special guest. Hey! Elvira! Remember Elvira, Mistress of the Dark?” She jumped from the chair. “Maybe Mom can get her—wow! Funky! When’s Mom coming back?”

Ben watched Amy’s animation and marveled at the innocence of youth. Had Mindy ever been allowed such innocence, or had she been too neglected? “Tomorrow,” he said more quietly than he’d intended. “She’s coming home tomorrow.” He lightly pressed his hand against his shirt, as if that would calm his distress.

“I’ll pick her up at the airport. What time?”

“Four o’clock.” If Amy picked up Jill, Ben would not have to leave the house. He would not have to face his wife until … later. He felt relief in that.

“Great,” Amy said, heading from the room. Then she
stopped and turned. “Hey, Ben? What are you doing in here anyway? Why are you standing in the half-dark?”

She was right. The room had grown dark. He glanced at his watch. The hands pointed to nearly seven. Had he been standing there that long?

“I, ah, I just came in to look outside. I thought I heard a car door.” He snapped on the tall floor lamp that stood beside the chair.

“Are you going out tonight?” she asked.

Out? As in, among people?
He blinked. “No. What about you? Are you working?” His voice sounded surprisingly level, normal, as if he were the same man who had seen her yesterday.

Yesterday?

With Amy’s teenage coming-and-going schedule, she must not have realized he’d not been home last night, that he’d been sitting in a jail cell instead of sleeping in his bed.

“I’m off work tonight,” she chattered. “I thought I’d drive to the Costume Shack in Oak Bluffs to get some ideas for the party. There’s also a place I want to look at …” Her voice trailed off the way it always did when there was something she wanted to ask but was too hesitant. Ben had learned a lot about Jill’s daughter in three short years, almost as much as if she were his own.

Oh, God, he wondered. Will anyone think I’ve molested her, too?

He tried to loosen his collar, but the top button was already unbuttoned. “What kind of a place?”

“I’m eighteen. I want my own place. There are so many winter rentals.…” It was not the first time she’d mentioned flying from the nest.

“What do you think your mother will say?”

Amy groaned. “I want to grow up, Ben. But Mom will never let me.”

She, of course, was right. The last time she’d hinted at
independence, Jill had responded by saying perhaps when Amy turned twenty-five. Or forty.

“It’s really not fair. I have some money saved. I can pay most of my own way. If I were in college, it would cost way more.”

“I think your mother was hoping you’d change your mind and do just that.”

“Go to college? God. I only want a winter rental.”

“Did you ever hear the saying ‘You can’t go home again’?”

Amy rolled her eyes. “That’s dumb. Besides, Mom came home again. She came back here.”

Ben did not mention that Jill had waited until both her parents were dead to return to the Vineyard.

“And anyway,” Amy continued, “I think you and Mom deserve some privacy.”

Privacy?
Right now the thought of being alone with Jill made him uneasy, a feeling he never thought he’d feel, not about her, not about his wife.

“Nice try,” he said with a laugh. “But we both want you here, Amy.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like she’s ever around to see either one of us, is it?”

Standing up, he rubbed his chin. “I’ll tell you what, kiddo. I’ll go with you to the Bluffs to look at the place. No promises. But if I think it’s decent, I’ll put in a good word for you with my significant other.”

She grabbed her jacket and had it buttoned before Ben remembered he had planned to never leave the house again.
Nothing like the distraction of a family to save you from yourself
, he thought, putting on his denim coat and following her out the door.

Distraction, of course, only lasted so long: long enough for Ben to check out the pink and green gingerbread
cottage and decide it was too drafty and would cost Amy a fortune in oil heat; long enough for him to try and convince her that his objection truly was to the heat and not to her moving out; long enough to kill a few hours before it was time for bed.

Distraction, however, had not done much to help him sleep, which was why now, at five
A.M
., he was sitting on the watchful cliffs of Gay Head, wishing that Noepe would be here meditating.

Noepe had been Ben’s friend, his
best
friend, if men could or would admit to having such a thing, to needing such a thing. The old Indian had guided Ben through Louise’s cancer; through her chemotherapy, through her death. He had been there, once again, when Kyle died, when Ben had lost his hopes, his dreams, his strength.

For years, he and Noepe had met frequently at dawn out there on the cliffs. Sometimes they conversed. Sometimes they were silent, together, yet each alone amid the gentle beauty of the morning.

It was that unassuming companionship combined with Noepe’s ancient tribal wisdom that Ben had revered. And it was Noepe himself: the Wampanoag tribesman who slid with ease between his deep, ancestral heritage and his job as an accountant; who glided between the past and present on quiet moccasins.

But Noepe was dead.

He’d caught pneumonia two years ago; he’d moved on to the next life as easily as he’d traversed the one he had on earth. And Ben had been faced with yet another loss, another grief to process.

So there was no one Ben could tell. No one with whom he could share this atrocity; no one whom he trusted, who would not be judgmental, who would not be hurt. Noepe was the only one who would have been fair to Ben. For Noepe had nothing at stake.

“No one knows,” Rick had tried to convince Ben while they were waiting for the arraignment.

Sure. No one but Hugh Talbot and the woman judge and a couple of other cops and the guard and the court reporter and the D.A. and John, Ben’s son-in-law, and Rick, and, well, Ashenbach. And Mindy.

No one, really, only them.

He wanted to scream.

Instead, he tipped his face up to the awakening sky and listened to the air, hoping to hear Noepe’s wisdom float to him on the wind.

He heard a gull or two and the surf far below. He did not hear his friend.

“Goddammit,” Ben said aloud, then dropped his chin to his chest. “How the hell am I supposed to fight this? What am I supposed to do?” The morning air chilled his bones. He pulled his jacket closer against him.
And how
, he added silently,
am I supposed to tell Jill
?

But on the wind there came no answer, for even his friend Noepe could not help Ben now.

Jill couldn’t wait to get home. Two and a half weeks of living out of a suitcase, of sleeping on hotel sheets and drinking restaurant coffee had definitely run its course.

Once she had enjoyed life on the road; she had found excitement in unpredictability. But that had been before she’d found a real home, a real life. That had been before Ben—the biggest reason she knew she should say “No, thanks” to Addie Becker, and “I’ll continue to struggle somehow on my own.”

From her seat in yet another concourse at yet another gate, this one at Logan Airport, Jill tuned out the sounds of people in motion around her. As she stared out the window, her thoughts drifted to Christopher. Over the past few years she’d deftly avoided
Good Night, USA
—except
once when she was on assignment in Kennebunkport. Alone in her hotel room, she’d double-locked the door so no one would catch her, as if looking in on an old lover were a criminal offense.

She’d poised herself on the edge of the bed with the remote, then boldly selected the channel.

The first face she’d seen had been, not her ex-fiancé’s, but Lizette’s.

Lizette the blonde. Lizette the beautiful. And one of the few women in whose presence Jill felt immensely
less than
, an unsophisticated New England frump beside a sleek California girl-star.

She’d had to admit that Lizette looked good next to Christopher, who had apparently not skipped a career beat since Jill had left him for Ben. She doubted if he’d skipped any other beats, either.

For fifteen minutes of the half-hour show, Jill had watched and wondered about what could have been. Then she’d come to her senses and clicked the program off.

Gazing around the terminal now, past the bank of monitors that heralded comings and goings, Jill looked at the unknowing faces of unknown travelers. Many of them might have recognized her now, if she had moved up instead of out. But life was about much more than fame, and the days and the nights—at least
hers
—had been far better without Christopher than they would have been with him.

She wondered if he had been sleeping with Lizette, and how he would react to Addie’s asinine idea—for surely the idea had been Addie’s. Addie, after all, had set the course; she had once blazed Jill’s personal trail to become the Barbara Walters of the next generation. But that was then and this was now and it was simply out of the question. Jill would make it on her own, or she would not make it at all.

Then Ben would never have to be jealous.

And she would never be lured by what might have been.

She zipped her bag and looked up at the wall clock: fifty minutes remained until her connection to the Vineyard. She decided to find a cup of coffee. It would certainly be more productive and enjoyable than sitting and thinking about … 
them
.

Crossing the walkway to the Starbucks concession, Jill felt a light touch on her arm.

“Excuse me,” an elderly woman said. “Aren’t you Jill McPhearson?”

Jill felt both awkward and pleased. “Yes,” she replied with a smile.

“Oh, dear, we miss you on television,” the woman continued. “Is it true you’re battling breast cancer? Such a hideous disease, dear, but you do look wonderful—”

Jill frowned. “No,” she said, “I don’t know where you heard that, but I do not have breast cancer.”

The old woman grinned and patted her arm. “I understand it’s something you don’t talk about to strangers. But you do look wonderful, dear. Take courage in that.”

“But—” Jill began to protest as the woman turned and bustled down the concourse, a canvas tote bag slapping her thick hip. “But I don’t have breast cancer,” Jill murmured.
I am married again
, she wanted to add.
This time to a wonderful man
.

But as the old woman merged into the crowd, Jill realized that, of course, there would have been rumors about why she had left: she could not even discount the possibility that Addie had planted them. Realistically, such rumors might have been easy to believe. After all, why else would she have walked away from all that glamour and success and happily-ever-after nonsense?

She’d walked away because it had turned out to have no more substance than an empty scallop shell on a Vineyard
beach, picked clean of its heart by a scavenging seagull. It was an empty shell and nothing more.