The Last Secret (35 page)

“It's a secret. His dirty little secret—”

“Don't,” Ken groans at his son's ear. “Don't. Don't—”

“Stop it, Drew! Stop it!” Chloe screams, pounding her fists on the table as Drew shouts over her.

“Ask him who Lyra's father is. Go ahead, Mom. Ask him.” The words pour out as if he can hold them in no longer. “Because it's not Mr. Gendron. It's him. That's who it is, it's him.”

Chloe is sobbing into her hands, not with the shock of revelation, Nora realizes, but with pent-up anguish over what must happen now. Ken's arms fall away from Drew, who looks around in panting, stunned surprise. Relieved, finally, of this, their last secret. For a moment she thinks she's having a heart attack. She can't breathe. Or move or speak. And yet, this calm voice—hers.

“Leave, Ken. Please. Just leave.”

pparently, Ken has
found refuge in the huge, run-down home of his privileged childhood. So far, he hasn't called, but Oliver does from rehab. He asks if she and the children are all right. Whatever they need. His voice breaks. His speech has improved, yet when he tries explaining that he just got off the phone with Ken, he says he's just gotten off the john with Ken at FairWinds. She's not to worry, he says again. He's told his doctors he wants to be discharged. As soon as he gets home, he'll take care of everything. Everything his asinine brother is hell-bent on destroying. The paper, Stephen, but especially her and the children.

“You and the kids, Nora, that's the most important thing,” he gasps.

She's shocked, hearing him trying not to cry. He's never been sentimental or the least bit emotional with her.

“I feel so damn guilty. I should've said something. But I didn't know about that, their having a kid, I swear I didn't. I didn't!” he cries. “He never said that. Then, after that night, you at the house, after, I told him. I was sick of him, I said, sick of his bullshit, all his phony, goddamn, phony … phony …”

Her eyes close with his painful struggle for words. “Oh, Ollie, I know. I know. It's not your fault. In a million years, it's not.”

When Stephen arrives
later in the day she pretends to be surprised and pleased. He pretends to be sorry, embarrassed for just dropping in on
her like this. But he wanted to tell her in person, and privately, that if there's anything she needs, anything he can do, whatever it is, he'll be there for her. Anytime, day or night. Anything, he says, squeezing her hands, peering into her eyes with his usual withering intensity. Time to call a lawyer, she thinks, already knowing his mission, to put out another fire. As Oliver's most trusted envoy, he's surely been sent with a generous offer. She'll be well taken care of as long as she goes quietly, doesn't put up a fight, doesn't embarrass anyone. Without asking, she opens the liquor cabinet: whisky neat, as always. How lovely, she looks, absolutely lovely, especially in that sweater, he says with a sigh of relief as he follows her into the study, drink in hand. With such dark hair and fair skin, she should always wear violet. And black, too, he's always admired her in black. His mother used to wear a lot of black. He remembers that, he says, settling into the oversized leather chair by the stone hearth. She sits in the smaller chair, awaiting the terms.

“I used to think it was my father's abandonment. You know, that she felt like a widow or something. And so I asked her once. I told her I thought she'd feel so much happier if she'd only wear bright colors. ‘But I am happy’ she said. ‘And I'm sorry, to break the news to you, Stephen, but, you see, men prefer me in black,’” he explains, in a breathy imitation of his mother. His exuberant laughter is always unsettling, a surprise from such an ascetic.

They pick their way round the minefield. Pleasantries first: Chloe and Drew are doing well. And though she doesn't say so, they seem almost relieved. It's only now that they're older, Stephen admits, that he enjoys them. Not that they weren't always very well behaved, he says, but he's just never known how to talk to little ones. Well, anyway, he sighs, thank goodness for the warmer weather and longer daylight. Actually, this has been his best winter yet. Well, his least depressed one, that is. Light therapy, an hour every morning, it's been amazing, the difference.

The usual coughing, sniffling mess, he replies when she asks how Donald is. Red-nosed, wadded tissues everywhere. Allergies. As soon as the trees start to bud, his misery commences, from now until November. Of course, two farty old Labs in the bedroom don't help. They
discuss various treatments, Stephen's new car, another Audi, the paper's dwindling ad revenue, ever-shrinking circulation, her dismissal of Jessica Bond, which delights him. Right now she's doing something on the entertainment page, but if it were up to him, he'd fire the ditz. Simple as that. One more nail in the coffin. Well deserved and long overdue. “And the next head to roll, his princess in circulation,” he says with a lift of his glass, and it's a moment before she realizes he means Sheila Nedderman, Ken's old paddle tennis partner. Typical of Stephen, needing to put a vile spin on Ken's kindness. Desperate for a job after her divorce, Sheila pestered Ken for months. The calls came night and day.

“His princess? Oh, come on, Stephen, please. That's not even funny.”

“I know. I never did understand the attraction. The big poufy hair, oooh!” He cringes. “But a hound's a hound. Or so they say.”

“Stephen!” She looks at him. “I don't want to do that. I'm not going to start looking under every rock. I mean, after all, the children. He's their father. I'm trying to respect that. It's hard, but I have to.”

His mouth puckers. He is incapable of hiding his feelings. Part of the reason he was never a practicing lawyer, or heterosexual, he confided once.

“Such noble sentiment, my dear. Stay vigilant, though, and protect thyself.”

“I know, but—”

“No! No buts. Protection, that's the most important thing here. From this point on it's all about”—he rubs his fingers together—“who gets what.”

“Yes, and Ken and I will—”

“Ken's an ass. Start with that and the rest'll be easy.”

“Stephen,” she warns, looking toward the door: her children.

“Nora,” he says, in the same intonation. “This is more than a marriage on the rocks. It's not just you and Ken, it's Oliver and me, it's the paper.”

“Well, those are things Ken and I have to work out. I know it's complicated,
and I appreciate Oliver's concern, but it's not going to be like that. Believe me.”

Stephen finishes his drink and sits back, his lean face grooved in shadows. He begins by saying that he doesn't want to hurt her. He's here because there are things she has to know, certain facts that Oliver is unable to articulate. Three years ago Ken asked his brother to buy out his share in the paper. He wanted to get a divorce and marry Robin, and he needed money to support the two families. Oliver refused, so Ken took the same offer to Stephen, who also turned him down. A few weeks later, Ken returned with another proposal. Or threat, as Oliver saw it. If they wouldn't buy him out, then he intended to file a lawsuit contesting their father's trust that prevented him from selling his share to anyone but his brother or cousin. Oliver laughed him out of the office and then called Robin Gendron to tell her in no uncertain terms what he thought of her. This caused a breach between the brothers for months. It was right around that time that Nora returned to work at the paper. A good move, Stephen says, because it forced the brothers to at least be civil to each other. And also because Oliver was counting on her presence to keep Ken on the straight and narrow. But Ken persisted in wanting to be bought out. It was Stephen who finally got them to agree that at the end of two years a sale would be negotiated. In the meantime, though, Ken had to do the right thing: a promise Oliver thought Ken had kept.

“What do you mean, a promise?” Nora asks. She feels short of breath.

“That he'd stay with you.”

Stephen's voice plays like a recording, deaf, blind, heedless.

“Oliver figured by that time he'd be over Robin, that it'd be just one more affair.”

“One more?”

“Oh, come on, Nora.” He leans closer, his sibilant whisper, little whips lashing her face. “You can't be serious.”

Stop it! she wants to scream. Why are you telling me this? It's too much. I can't do this anymore.

“Oh my God, you are, aren't you? I can't believe this. Some kind of detective! Where do I start? I mean, it'd be quicker telling who he didn't f—” He catches himself.

She stares as he lists the affairs, wondering how many times this practiced little riff's been recited at parties, all the friends, women at the paper, names she's never heard before. Bibbi Bond. “Annette even. One time she was here doing the kids' portraits and he came on to her. Kay, your friend. She finally had to sic Oliver on him. But what'd she expect? I mean, she let it go—”

“Don't.” She holds out her hands. “Please.”

“Well, probably won't make you feel any better, but that kind of crap's been over for a while now.”

Because through the years of Ken's forced union with Nora, he stayed faithful to Robin by not sleeping with other women. Actually, the ideal arrangement, Stephen says, for spineless Kenny who couldn't bear confrontations. His family was intact and he still had Robin, who had little choice except to wait it out. But it was becoming an increasingly expensive arrangement for Ken with Bob's chronic unemployment. At the end of the two years, Robin wanted out of limbo. She began putting pressure on him. Back he went to Oliver with the same proposal, still never mentioning the child. However, with profits at the paper slipping, his brother managed to put him off, for almost another year. Apparently, though, Robin had had enough. She didn't care about money or shares in the paper, and if Ken still couldn't bring himself to tell his wife, then she would.

“And then came the stroke, so what could Ken do, he had no choice but step up to the plate. Brilliant move, though, the detective.” He winks at her. “Because that's when Kenny's dark little world started spinning out of control. Finally, somebody had to do something.”

Everything makes
sense now And nothing does. So much that never will. The phone rings. She's afraid to answer. Afraid of Eddie Hawkins, afraid of friends, neighbors, her own sister, who keeps leaving messages: she really wants to come visit, why won't Nora call, is
something wrong? There is, isn't there? In her bathrobe for days, blinds drawn, sleeping while the children are in school, claiming she has the flu, she can barely go through the motions when they get home. Chloe steeps bay leaves in mugs of broth, carries up dry toast points. Her miasma ends this afternoon with Drew and Chloe, arguing. She runs downstairs to find him screaming at his sister. Over nothing, really. Chloe told him to stop complaining he was out of clean underwear and wash his own damn clothes. He punched the laundry room door, stands there now holding his hand. He can't stop crying. Chloe is hysterical. Get away, he warns them both. Leave him alone. Just leave him alone. She won't, she can't, she says, holding him.

An examined life, Father Gendron said. How could she have been so blind for so long? That her own children knew the truth about Lyra devastates her, not because they kept it from her. She understands their reluctance to see her hurt and, probably, even more compelling, their fear of breaking up the family. But what she can never forgive Ken for is the painful weight of their guilty burden, entangling them in his secret. It tears her apart now as Drew finally tells her how he found out.

“Ask your dad. Go ahead, ask him,” Clay growled in his ear, pummeling his own shame and rage into his childhood friend, who didn't believe him.

Days later, Drew confided in Chloe. She said he was crazy. Clay Gendron was sick, a liar, she declared, a sadistic asshole. Of course, it wasn't true. It couldn't be, she insisted. Whatever had happened between Dad and Mrs. Gendron (Chloe no longer calls her Robin) was bad enough, but there was no way Dad was Lyra's father. It had been the night Nora went out with Kay that Drew finally confronted Ken, with Chloe looking on in disbelief Ken refused to answer his son. He didn't admit or deny it.