Eden in Winter (34 page)

‘I’m curious about Jack,’ Charlie said. ‘Since you came back, you’ve barely mentioned him.’

The enquiry threw Adam off balance; he had just sat down in Charlie’s living room, and his thoughts were focused on Carla and Rachel. ‘Funny you should ask. We had a talk yesterday, of a kind. He seems to hope I’ll feel things I can’t.’

‘Such as?’

‘A paternal connection, for one.’

Charlie shot him a curious look. ‘Since discovering he’s your father, do you feel less warmth for him?’

Adam pondered this. ‘It’s hard to sort out,’ he said at length. ‘Growing up, I loved Jack as an uncle – he didn’t have any parental archetype to fill, and he always took what I saw as a kindly interest. But no doubt part of me internalized Ben’s contempt. Jack seemed passive; Ben was my father, voracious for life. Instinctively I wanted to be like him.’

‘And now that you know who Jack really is?’

Adam felt the same involuntary coolness. ‘His benevolence looks worse. The last thing I’d do is to give my son to Ben.’

Charlie took a contemplative sip of coffee, then looked up at Adam again. ‘In your mind, who
is
your father?’

The question surprised Adam; the answer he found depressed him. ‘It’s still Ben,’ he said in a flat tone. ‘When I was a kid, needing a father, all of them let me think that. For better or worse, when I hear the word “Father” Ben’s face appears.’

‘So it’s still not helpful that preying on Jenny wasn’t a father’s betrayal?’

Once more, Adam fought back the same vivid, shocking image. ‘No,’ he answered softly. ‘It doesn’t change how it felt to see them.’

Charlie cocked his head. ‘Memories are powerful – traumatic ones in particular. But you also have a future. So perhaps you can find a way to reinterpret the past.’

For an instant, Adam thought of Carla, redrawing her dream of the voracious bear. ‘In what sense?’

‘You feel that Jack abandoned you. But he was always there to talk with. Or to show up at your high school games whenever Ben was gone—’

‘True,’ Adam cut in harshly. ‘He also encouraged me to compete against Ben for the sailing championship that summer, knowing how psychologically loaded that was. By winning, I triggered Ben’s desire to sodomize a psychologically fragile young woman I happened to love. But, of course, no one’s to blame for any of this but Ben. No wonder he felt such contempt for Jack.’

‘Not just contempt – anger. Isn’t that what you feel for them both?’

Adam felt himself close down. ‘This is arrested, Charlie – a complete waste of time. I’m getting too old to feel anything but sadness and a sense of responsibility for people with fewer coping skills than I have. No point in snivelling about Jack.’

Charlie held up a hand. ‘Obviously, this subject isn’t welcome. But I wonder if you’re better off resenting Jack – which you clearly do – or asking him to help sort through your confusion. It can’t have been easy for him to sit by, trying to do the best he could for you. Which was the only choice your mother gave him.’

Despite his best efforts, Adam felt the unfairness of this. But Charlie did not know, and Adam could not tell him, that he was protecting Jack from a charge of murder. ‘I’ll consider it, Charlie. Let’s move on.’

‘Fine with me,’ Charlie said equably. ‘What would you like to talk about?’

Adam hesitated. ‘Do you know Rachel Ravinsky?’

Charlie raised his eyebrows. ‘Whitney Dane’s exotic, dark-haired daughter? I’ve certainly met her, and I’ve read her stories – impressive. Dare I ask why she deserves more attention than Jack?’

Adam considered his choice of words. ‘We may be involved.’

To Adam’s surprise, Charlie gave him a quizzical smile. ‘You remind me of today’s teenagers – they fuck for months, and still can’t describe their relationship. So take pity on a dinosaur, and help me out.’

‘No need. I think you’ve caught the spirit of it.’

Charlie set back, steepled fingers touching his lips. ‘My first instinct was to say that I’m surprised. On reflection, I suppose I’m not. Are you?’

‘I’m neither surprised nor unsurprised. Tell me why you’re not.’

‘Let’s start with the easy part – the reasons Rachel would appeal to any man. She’s smart, talented, and extremely attractive. As I recall her from cocktail parties, she’s charming and a bit quirky, with a certain kinetic sexiness. She’s a good age for you, with none of Carla’s baggage – Ben, this baby. All those toxins from the past.’ Charlie stopped himself abruptly. ‘Before we go further, how are you dealing with Rachel in relation to Carla?’

Adam folded his arms. ‘Not well. When I went to see Carla yesterday, she seemed much more remote. Maybe she knows or senses something; maybe I just felt guilty. Though God knows why I should – we’ve never slept together, and she has no claim on me.’

Charlie looked at him intently. ‘But you want her, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet you’re also afraid of those feelings?’

Adam found himself staring at a square of sunlight on Charlie’s Persian carpet. ‘For good reason. But you already know that.’

‘Do you think being with Rachel may be a way of destroying your relationship to Carla? Or, for that matter, that she’s a surrogate for Carla?’ When Adam did not answer, Charlie enquired, ‘May I ask how the experience we dare not name felt to you?’

Adam expelled a breath. ‘Through no fault of Rachel’s, I still felt the same detachment. Like I have ever since Jenny.’

Charlie nodded, his eyes grave. ‘Psychologically speaking, who did you think you were really with – Rachel or Carla?’

‘Rachel. She has a way of compelling your attention.’

A corner of Charlie’s mouth flickered. ‘I can imagine. But later you felt guilty about Carla?’

‘True. I also felt stupid for it.’

‘When you saw Carla after sleeping with Rachel, did you still want her?’

Adam stared out the window. ‘Yes. But even if her pregnancy didn’t make sex impossible, her manner wasn’t exactly an aphrodisiac. Neither was our conversation.’

‘Which concerned?’

‘Ben and the reasons she was drawn to him – common backgrounds, mutual understandings. Her notion that terminal illness seemed to have improved his character – including a deep regret about his family. Oh, and the fact that she was pregnant with his child.’

‘That must’ve been interesting,’ the therapist remarked dryly. ‘Who initiated this conversation?’

‘I did.’

‘That’s new,’ Charlie observed. ‘What moved you to pursue that?’

‘I don’t know.’

Charlie looked at him keenly, then chose to let this go. ‘It’s also interesting that she responded, given that she could’ve told you to go pound sand. Did any of what she said resonate with you?’

‘Intellectually, I think so. But Ben’s not like some ex-husband I say hello to when he’s dropping off the kids. Of all the men on earth, Carla chose him.’

‘As opposed to Rachel,’ the psychiatrist observed, ‘who represents all the women on earth who’ve never slept with Ben. Despite his best efforts, a considerable number – a good many of whom are potentially available to you. But let’s stick with Rachel for the moment. What do you make of her?’

Adam tried to synthesize his impressions. ‘I hardly know her. But I’d say she’s venturesome, maybe a little impulsive and high strung. One interesting thing, though she won’t quite acknowledge it, is that she both admires her mother and is jealous of her – as a novelist, and as a woman. And now she’s torturing herself to produce a novel.’

‘Unlike you,’ the therapist observed, ‘who Ben discouraged from writing. Is that why you chose law school?’

Adam gave him an ironic smile. ‘No doubt Whitney was a better parent. I’m not sure if Rachel knows who she really is. But she’s certainly not inhibited from going after what she thinks she wants …’

‘Like you?’

‘Like her idea of me. This is all about a crush she had when I was still with Jenny. She knows nothing about me, obviously, which covers some pretty important ground.’

‘Think you’ll ever be inclined to tell her?’

‘Impossible to know, and that’s contrary to my instincts. But it’s pretty clear she means to give me the chance.’

‘Believe it or not,’ the psychiatrist suggested gently, ‘Rachel’s attraction to you may be perfectly normal. And why not? As you point out, she knows so little about you.’

Uncomfortable, Adam laughed. ‘You’re quite a help, Charlie.’

Charlie smiled at this, and then grew serious again. ‘For someone who spent one night with her, you seem to have
gotten some clear impressions – a woman with hopes and needs, desires, and insecurities. Who, I surmise, also exposes what you perceive as your own coldness.’ He paused a moment. ‘You’ve acknowledged feeling guilty about Carla. Are you afraid of hurting her?’

Adam felt a renewed melancholy. ‘She’s been through too much already.’

‘Do you also worry about hurting Rachel?’

‘I sense that I could. So it bothers me, yes.’

‘Over the last ten years, how often did you dwell on the feelings of the women you were with?’

Adam stared out the window. ‘Not as much as I should have,’ he acknowledged. ‘I was too busy keeping my own secrets, or getting away.’

‘In short, protecting yourself by avoiding intimacy. But now you’re also concerned with protecting a woman
from
yourself. Carla, certainly, and perhaps Rachel.’

Turning, Adam gave the psychiatrist a bleak smile. ‘Nice to know I’m making progress.’

‘You may be joking. I’m not. For the first time, I hear you saying “I want to love, and live life more fully. I want to be a better partner and father than Benjamin Blaine.” But you’re still afraid you can’t be – true?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see that as a good thing, Adam.’ Charlie’s voice softened. ‘You’re changing, and don’t want to live with hurting either woman. But hurting them both could be even worse – especially for you. A good thing to consider.’

Adam bent forward, briefly closing his eyes. ‘I know that,’ he answered. ‘Let’s call it a day, all right?’

*

Sitting by a window that filtered the faint winter sunlight, Carla studied her photograph of Benjamin Blaine.

Ben had asked her to take this picture, before the ravages of brain cancer did their worst. But his face was already gaunt, as though he were collapsing from the inside out. ‘I could give you a book jacket photo,’ he had told her, ‘from when I was younger and better looking. But I didn’t know you then, and you’ve stayed with me as I am. I want our son to know what I looked like, and that I didn’t want to leave him.’

He had said this not in his usual baritone rasp, but gently, a world of regret in his voice – that he had failed so utterly with Teddy and Adam, his own doing. But gratitude, also, that Carla would be with him until the end. She had no heart to tell him that only his end had made this possible.

What had she wanted from Adam, she asked herself now, when she could not even trust him? Why, knowing about Rachel, had she willed herself to explain her relationship to Ben? Did she still imagine breaking through to him, for her own sake as well as his? Or was she simply tired of all that remained unspoken, and so decided to tell the truth?

At least as far as it went.

But she did not owe Adam even that. Though she had given him the chance, he had said nothing about Rachel. Which made him no worse than many men she had known, but perhaps no better. Adam Blaine had told her more, she guessed, than he told most women in his life. But he still held his secrets close. Perhaps if she knew them, she would wish that she did not.

The telephone rang.

For a moment she was hopeful, though she did not know
why. She stood slowly, afraid of causing a premature labour that might keep her from delivering in Boston. But there was another reason for her caution, she acknowledged as she reached for the phone: until she delivered, she could imagine holding her baby, pink and healthy and alive.

‘This is Amanda Ferris,’ her caller said.

Carla felt her stomach clench. ‘How did you get this number?’

The reporter ignored this. ‘I’m wondering if you’re ready to talk about Adam Blaine.’

Carla considered hanging up, then hesitated. ‘I don’t know anything about Adam Blaine,’ she snapped.

‘But don’t you wonder?’ Ferris asked. ‘I’ve told you about his activities on this island. You must suspect that he knows who killed his father – your baby’s father – and is covering it up. Which means that the murderer, a member of his family, is walking around this island loose with Adam’s blessing.

‘You’re the one he talks to. I’d like your help, and so would the district attorney.’ The reporter paused, then added in a softly insinuating tone, ‘Unless you’ve transferred your affections from father to son. If so, it’s too bad that Adam tried to pin Ben’s murder on you. Just ask George Hanley …’

This time Carla hung up, more slowly than she should have, certain that this last was true – or, at least, once was.

What has Adam learned?
she wondered. The truth about his paternity struck her yet again. She no longer thought Teddy capable of murder. But the years of hatred spawned by Adam’s birth might cause one brother to kill another.

Outside the Blaine family, only Carla knew this. A closed circle, except for her, which might conceal a murderer.

Inexorably, she felt herself drawn back to the photograph of Ben. For a long time she gazed at it, sickened and confused, then placed it on the kitchen table where she could see him.

Why could you never tell me?
she asked him.
What happened between you and Adam?

On the first Saturday morning in his new home, Adam awakened to a heavy snowfall blanketing the meadow outside his window. Shortly thereafter, Rachel called.

‘What do the natives do with this?’ she enquired. ‘You seem to be missing a ski slope.’

Adam smiled at this. ‘We’re missing a lot of things in winter, except for alcoholism and spousal abuse. But you can always ski cross-country.’

‘Such drudgery; so boring. I miss the sensation of speed.’

This triggered a memory from Adam’s youth. ‘Too bad you’re not a kid. On days like this, my father would pack up sleds and take us to the third hole at Farm Neck. The tee is at the top of a hill – not a big one, but when you’re five or six the trip down feels exhilarating.’