The Last Secret (37 page)

“Are you all right?” Kay finally asks.

“I'm fine.”

“No, you're not. I can tell. I know you too well.”

“I guess that's the mistake we both made, isn't it?” Nora laughs. She can't help it.

“What do you mean? Tell me. Please, Nora. Please,” Kay gasps.

No, she decides in the long silence. She can't do this. What's the point? But then it erupts, her spew of accusation flattening Kay's denial. It wasn't like that. No, she never … it never … he didn't … there wasn't … nothing like that … once, just a stupidly weak and silly
thing … met him for dinner, that was all, then felt so horrible she actually got up from the table and called a cab to take her home. He kept calling. It went on for weeks, until she finally asked Oliver to tell him to stop. Afterward, Nora won't remember the words, just the same pangs of fear she felt as a child wanting to see, but scared of leaning too far as she dropped stone after stone to the bottom of the deep well behind the house where her mother and the Boston cousins gabbed inside, smoking cigarettes, then said they didn't, hadn't, wouldn't ever, even though her mother reeked of it, her one vice.

In the afternoon
the rain still falls. Nora and the children are driving home from the elegant Sea Cliff Manor in Salem, where they used to go as a family on special occasions. Today, after brunch they walked on the storm-scoured beach, in a show of good-natured hardiness, skimming rocks off the waves, scavenging for sea glass, pretending not to mind the cold as they plowed headlong into the raw, drenching wind. And now, still clinging to the tatters of family unity, they stifle yawns and endure the half-hour ride back, shivering in sodden clothes, with glazed eyes and strained conversation. Chloe sits beside her, staring out the window. In the backseat Drew pulls out one earbud of his iPod. He says he's freezing. Nora turns the heat higher. He's not the only one in the car, Chloe mutters, repositioning the vents; she's getting a headache.

Pretending to be happy takes enormous energy. For all their quick smiles, they often seem weary, drained, trying to protect what's left. She remembers one of her first interviews with an exhausted but plucky family, parents and children, working through the night to sandbag their besieged home against rising spring floodwaters. No human effort was going to stop the river's crest, but still, they had to do something, they said. And do it together. Nora notices how at night now Drew finds reasons to stay downstairs with her until she goes to bed. After that he'll study in his room for hours. Chloe got As on her last two tests, American Lit and math. Her room is perfectly neat.
Yesterday she did all the laundry. She starts dinner now without being asked, usually because Nora is sleeping, which is how she spends her days.

Max is such a jerk, Chloe announced last night, as she ripped up his nine-page e-mail, her final and ultimate rejection: dropping the pieces into the trash instead of the recycling bin. It was an article he'd written about his experiences in Costa Rica. He asked if she'd please get her father to publish it. “Work on him—the way you do,” he wrote, as if she were some bimbo, she said, equally infuriated by his next request. Would she also find out about job openings at the paper this summer, maybe set up an interview for him next month. Otherwise he'll have to spend the entire vacation working at his uncle's sawmill in Maine. When he comes home, she's breaking up with him.

“Not because of what's going on. I mean, your father and me,” Nora said, resenting Ken even more: the emotional fallout souring even his children's relationships.

“No, that's not it,” Chloe insisted, but Nora knows that's part of it. Chloe wants to be valued for who she is, rather than as someone's meal ticket into the family business. As she drives she can't help wondering if Ken ever thought that of her. But then, he had been a most avid pursuer, managing to get her assigned to him, which she soon discovered meant being at his beck and call, phoning at all hours just to talk, wondering what she was doing, she must have a lot of down time not knowing anyone in Franklin, then showing up at her apartment on Friday nights with Chinese food and ridiculously expensive bottles of wine, flowers on her birthday, party invitations, dinner invitations, finally wearing down her qualms about getting involved with someone so different from herself, easygoing, carefree, always after a good time, and one of the kindest, sweetest men she'd ever known.

By the time they get home Drew's teeth are chattering. Cold and wet, they scramble out of the car, peeling off their wet things as they run inside. She forgot to turn the heat up before they left so the house feels damp and chilly. Hearing the quick thud of pipes up in Drew's bathroom, she smiles. One way to get the boy into the shower. In the family room she searches everywhere for the remote for the gas logs, finally
finds it wedged between the sofa cushions. The house is messy, has been ever since Ken left, especially here and in the kitchen where most of their time is spent. Soda cans, coffee mugs, magazines, newspapers, cast-off sweaters and jackets, it doesn't bother her anymore; if anything, it seems a validation of some hard-earned ownership, like strips of ribbon and pieces of string birds leave in their nests. She even canceled the cleaning lady these last few weeks, couldn't bear the intrusion. All that matters is being with her children. Her compulsive neatness has given way to this newfound negligence, and it's liberating, if not a little crazy. But so what? She's entitled to a touch of madness. Instead of a nervous breakdown, she has rings in the toilet bowls and dust kitties in all the corners. If he doesn't care, why should she? Because it's the dailiness, all the work, effort, and attention to detail, that keep people together. Duty, responsibility, values they once shared. She aims the remote at the fireplace and the gas logs ignite with a bursting whoosh of flames that always startles her. She is remembering her mother's pronouncement of their neighbors, the Kemptons' rundown, weed-choked house around the corner from them. “Marriage on the rocks.” Surface blight, the first sign. Or message, the harm that's been done. Pain made visible. Evidence of how fast they're sinking.

She's on her way into the kitchen to light those logs next when she realizes she forgot to close the garage door. So what, who cares, she decides with perverse pleasure. Turning, she notices the blinking light on the answering machine. Four messages, the first, snappishly frantic, is from Carol, saying she just got off the phone with Ken. She's been so worried, not hearing anything from Nora that she finally called the paper Friday and left a message for him. He just got back to her this morning, and what he had to say was shocking. “Absolutely shocking. What on earth is going on there? It's one thing not to be upfront with me, but an out-and-out lie? How could you—” With a little cry Nora deletes Carol's querulous voice mid-rebuke. Once again she's met her sister's very low expectations. The next three messages are all from Ken. Each the same, terse, urgent. “Nora, call me.” Not once asking for his children, or wondering how they're doing, or do they need anything, just
call me.
“Sure. When hell freezes over, that's when,”
she hisses, jamming the erase button so hard the machine slides off the little blue table. “Selfish bastard!” she mutters, picking it up from the floor.

“Maybe something's wrong,” Chloe says from the doorway, and for a split second it's all Nora can do to keep from spitting back,
Maybe? Maybe
something's wrong?

“Don't be so concerned about your father. I'm sure he's doing just fine.” Without us, she almost says, but seeing Chloe's pinched face, doesn't.

“Can I call him? Is that all right? Do you mind?” Chloe asks in a small voice, and Nora realizes she's trying not to cry.

“Oh, honey. Come here,” she says, pulling her close. Of course she can call him, anytime she wants, anytime she needs to, and she certainly doesn't have to ask permission or apologize. “He's your father, that's the most important thing. And it has nothing to do with whatever's going on between us.”

Chloe nods, limp in Nora's embrace. “It's just I … I miss him … I miss him so much it hurts,” she whimpers.

“I know. Of course you do. He's been a good father.”
If nothing else.

“No!” Chloe sobs. “If he was, then none of this would've happened, and we'd still be—” The ringing phone cuts her off “It's Dad,” she says, checking the number. She stares back desperately, a grown child needing assurance that all the myths in her life are really true.

“Well, then answer it. Of course.” She starts up the stairs.

“Hi, Dad.” The anticipation in Chloe's voice follows Nora down the hallway. She's trying to sound natural, as if her father might only be away on a business trip. “I know. We just got in … the beach … well, first, we had brunch at the Sea Cliff Manor, which was great, and then we … Oh, okay. Mom!” Chloe calls up and Nora leans over the railing. “Dad wants to talk to you.”

… the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul …
Nora sits on the edge of her bed, phone pressed to her ear, eyes closed. He wants to come home, she thinks in a swell of irrational elation, in spite of everything, wanting him back, desperately, hungrily. That explains the terse message, the urgency, the coldness. He doesn't want to get the children's
hopes up. Or his own. He's finally realizing his family is too important, they've been together too long for it to end this way. If he really wanted to be with Robin and Lyra, he would have done it long before this. He feels responsible, trapped. Trapped by Robin. Tricked, the same way Robin used her, manipulating everyone and everything to get what she wants. Never has she despised another human being as much. And that includes Stephen and his vicious version of events, claiming Ken stayed with her out of loyalty to the family business, because of some far-fetched, byzantine promise supposedly exacted by poor Oliver, who can barely string a sentence together, much less recall details of a conversation he had three years ago. No, that's just more of Stephen's vindictive pettiness. Somehow, they'll get through this. They will.

“I've got it,” she tells Chloe. “You can hang up now.” She thinks she hears a click, can't be sure. She takes a deep breath. “Yes, what is it?” Coldly, to hide her relief.

“Listen to me. Listen to every word I say.” The hateful sting of his rage burns like lye in her ear. Interrupting, she tells Chloe again to hang up the phone. She already did, he growls, his last words about his child before launching into a diatribe so bizarre that she freezes, listening with a rising hysteria and confusion that border on giddiness. At first, his bitter demand that she call off her private investigator strikes her as pathetically funny, a sick joke, until she realizes that must be what Stephen meant by her “detective.” Stephen, pretending to be her confidant and playing both sides. And if she doesn't, Ken's crazed rant continues, then he'll be forced to take matters into his own hands. Which, given the delicate nature of the circumstances, he's reluctant to do, since making this a police matter will only embarrass everyone concerned.

“Imagine! Embarrassing us!” she says, pressing down on the top of her throbbing head. “As if it could be any worse.” She can't help laughing. A police matter! So, it's all starting to catch up with him, that rampant paranoia that always seems to affect the most guilty. Finally. Now it's his turn to twist in the wind. His turn to panic, his turn to feel watched and judged. Humiliated.

“You hired him, Nora, now you get rid of him.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you do. You not only hired him, you set him up to come on to Robin, and how sick is that?”

“You can't be serious.” She swallows hard. “That's crazy.”

“I'll say it's crazy.
He's
crazy, and that's why, that's why you hired him. To hunt down Robin. To harass her, to scare her and the children, and not just them, but her mother. Emily, I mean, of all people. You've got to do something, you'd better. And if you won't, then goddamnit, I will.”

“I haven't hired anyone to do anything!” she shouts back.

“You paid him! I already know that!”

“No! That's not—”

“The money for your sister, but poor Carol, she never got it, though, did she? Not a penny of it, because it was for him. You had to pay him!”

“What're you … you … Eddie Hawkins?” she stammers. “Is that who you mean? He's not an investigator. I told you before, he's just someone … I don't even know who he is, really, or what he does. He's just … just this guy. It was the picture in
Newsweek.
He looked me up. That's all. I never hired him to do anything. And that's the truth.”

“Nora, I've got proof You withdrew money. You paid him! Thousands of dollars. He told Emily. He even tried giving it to her. He was irrational, he—”

“You're the one that's irrational!” she screams, then hangs up. Her heart is beating too fast. She sits on the edge of the bed, rocking back and forth. He's jealous, and he wants her to get rid of his rival. He better get used to it, because that's what his life will be like with Robin. Adorable Robin, pretending to care, probably doing everything in her power to make Eddie worship her, so what did she expect, always toying with people, a sickness really, her toxic need to be the center of everyone's universe. Well, once again, she's made her own careless bed and now she can damn well lie in it. They both can, for all she cares. And besides, there's nothing she can do. After all that's happened
she doesn't even care anymore who he tells, and who would ever believe him?

She keeps trying to undo the same button on her damp shirt, but can't. Her hands shake violently, her fingers limp and gripless. She tries the next button, same thing, same shameful panic, frantic to get out of the red sailor dress because they're all down there waiting, waiting to see what she'll do, but she won't give them that, the satisfaction of seeing her hurting, seeing her cry. If she does, then it will all be real. He will be gone, he is gone, leaving her trapped in her own wet skin, so cold she can't stop shivering, and nobody cares. Nobody at all, which is the hardest reality to face, so afraid of being alone, being left behind, that in begging her mother's forgiveness for running away she had to confess everything, quitting her job, wasting the money she'd earned, drinking and sleeping with Eddie Hawkins, but couldn't bring herself to tell about the man with the mutilated face, and so perhaps to make up for that gaping omission, to at least come close to decency, and because her mother still hadn't moved, censorious in her abiding silence, she finally blurted out what she needed to be the worst, most damnable secret, admitting that the poor banished teacher had never touched her, never come near her or anyone else, and she welcomed the outraged cry that came with her slap, the hard, knuckled slap, that resplit her still-healing lip and finally dulled her shame.