Keep No Secrets (29 page)

Claire listens with her head tilted. Her lips are pressed tight, her arms crossed.

He realizes she doesn't absorb the meaning of what he just said. "Your son was screwing his girlfriend, Claire." She's about to protest, but he cuts her off. "I heard her say, 'I think someone's coming.'

And do you know how he responded?"

"He's
your
son, too," Claire mumbles, but Jack catches the spite in the remark.

Is she even listening to him? Or does she simply want to fight? He won't take her detour this time.

"He said, 'I hope so.' That was his response to 'I think someone's coming.'

I'm willing to bet he didn't mean he hoped one of us was about to show up."

The phone on the nightstand rings.

Claire glances at it as if debating whether to answer.
Don't you dare
, Jack thinks.

You're the one who wanted to have this
conversation
.

After three rings it stops. After so many harassing calls, Jack instructed both Michael and Jamie to let them go to voicemail if they don't recognize the number.

"I made my presence known, but I gave them time to get dressed. I can't swear her bra was off, but I think it's likely.

That had to be when she picked up the hair."

"Why didn't you tell me this?" Her tone hasn't changed. He can't decide whether she believes him and is angry that she didn't know, or whether she's still skeptical. He doesn't answer because anything he might say will sound as if he's blaming her for his silence. He shrugs and raises his hands in a
what can I say
gesture.

She scoffs at his vague response. "Is it true you parked for a couple hours with her in Rockwoods?"

There it is. There's the question that, when answered, will cause her to distrust him more. Somehow, he and Claire have never even talked about where he and Celeste were while Celeste sobered up.

He may be able to explain away the physical evidence, but Jack and Celeste are the only two who will ever know with certainty what happened in the car that night. He can't prove or disprove any of it. Whatever Claire ultimately decides, it will have to be a decision based on nothing more than faith, or lack of.

"Yes." At the word, Claire's face tightens. It's slight—she tried to remain impassive—but he sees it. "She'd asked me to pull over. She said she was going to be sick. She was just stalling. When I started to leave, she begged me to wait.

She didn't want her dad to know she'd been drinking."

Claire reaches over and grabs his right wrist. She roughly yanks his arm toward her, forcing him off the windowsill. His shirtsleeves are already rolled up; she searches his arm. When she doesn't find what she's looking for—the scratch was superficial and didn't leave a scar—she pushes him away. He feels like a

specimen.

"They're saying they have pictures of your arm that prove the two of you struggled. And that your skin was under her fingernails. What are they talking about?"

"She started to panic when I said I had to tell her dad everything. She seemed terrified of him, what he might do. She went a bit crazy on me. I reached down to put the car in gear and she grabbed my arm."

"She grabbed your arm so hard that she scratched it?" The way she speaks the question, he knows what she left unsaid.

Yeah, right
.

"Yes. She didn't just grab me. She
clawed
at me."

Claire won't meet his eye. She looks past him outside the window and shakes her head. She doesn't believe him.

"Claire."

"What?" She whispers the one word, still staring at whatever has her attention in the yard.

"Are you honestly telling me there's a part of you that wonders, truly wonders, if I did something with her? Or are you just angry about the situation, and about .

. ." When he pauses, she sneaks a look at him but quickly looks away again. ". . .

Jenny."

Nothing.

"Claire, please look at me." She finally does, but reluctantly. "Look me in the eye and tell me if you believe me, no doubts.

None whatsoever." She blinks slowly, as if it's an effort to keep her eyes open. "I need to know."

Her response comes slowly, and when it finally does, she's so quiet he strains to hear her. "I can't give you an answer."

His stomach churns. He swallows to quell the bile rising in his throat. He stands, causing her to lean back slightly, nervous about what he'll do. He starts for the door, but suddenly stops and pulls the folded envelope from his pocket. He tosses it onto the bed next to her. She glances at it and then looks up at him as if waiting for explanation.

He breathes in, ready to tell her what her father has done, but then changes his mind—let her read it herself—and says something else entirely.

"I think you just did."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHEN JENNY OPENS the door, a

different Jack Hilliard stands before her.

In the glare of the parking lot floodlights, his face is pale. Despite the blowing snow and the frigid temperature, his cheeks lack the usual hint of pink that gives him a perpetual look of having just come out of the cold. The beginning of a beard shadows the lower half of his face. He hasn't been sleeping well, she sees that.

His normally bright eyes are bloodshot; the periwinkle blue of his irises has darkened to steel. If he's combed his hair at all recently, it's been with his fingers.

Under his coat the collar of his starched white shirt is open, the necktie loosened and hanging limply.

Except for his obvious exhaustion, she decides she prefers this scruffier look. She thinks it better suits the side of him he usually keeps hidden. She only wishes something else had caused it.

It’s eight thirty on Christmas Eve.

"I'll get my coat," she says.

He grabs her wrist, and his hand is so cold she winces. Their eyes meet and the despair on his face makes her want to embrace him. She doesn't. She knows what he's about to say and she hears the voice inside her head screaming,
No, no,
no.

"I'll come in this time."

She backs up and he steps into the warm motel room. He glances at the unused bed where her suitcase is open as if waiting for inspection.

"You want to take off your coat?"

He wriggles out of it. While she hangs it from the chrome rack near the sink, he sits next to the suitcase. The bed creaks from his weight.

"Sorry," she says when she returns, quickly zipping the lid shut and placing it against the wall. She sits on the bed opposite him, an expectant look on her face.

"It wasn't in my way."

"Why are you here, Jack?" she asks, ignoring his comment about the suitcase.

"It's Christmas Eve."

"I know."

"Perhaps I'm asking the obvious, but don't you think you should be home?"

"Yeah, you'd think so, huh?" The bitterness in his voice surprises him. "Did you turn on your TV today?"

"You're talking about the release of the evidence?"

He nods. He waits for the same

questions Claire asked, about the scratch on his arm, his hair in Celeste's bra, but instead she asks, "Who do you think leaked everything?"

"I don't
think
. I know. Claire's father was behind it."

She gasps. "Wow," she whispers.

Wow
is right, Jack thinks.

"Did Claire know?"

The question takes an instant to

register because it never even entered his mind. "No." He has to believe no. "She'd strangle him before she'd let him do that."
Wouldn't she?

Suddenly restless, he stands and goes to the window. He pulls the drapes aside to look outside and make sure he wasn't followed.

"Jack?"

He turns.

"Claire doesn't know you're here, does she?"

Jenny states the question as a

conclusion, gently, and without the sarcasm she's probably entitled to, given his smug insistence the other day that he promised to tell Claire everything.

"No." He returns to the bed. "But I didn't mention I was going to Mark's house, either. I didn't know
where
I was going when I first left home."

"I don't understand."

Neither do I
, he wants to say. Although that's not entirely true. On one level he understands; he simply doesn't want to put words to it. He doesn't want to be that cliché Claire accused him of being, when she first learned what he'd done and he tried to make excuses for it. He knows what she thought, what everyone thought:
just another middle aged man who feared the
better part of his life was behind him and sought
to forestall the inevitable in the arms of a
mistress.
He didn't believe it then, he doesn't believe it now. But by making these denials, does he make it so?

"We fought. She didn't know about some of the evidence. Not specifically.

We were going back and forth, what I'd told her and what I hadn't, and it dawned on me . . . She really thinks I could have done it. I asked her point blank if she believed me, and she wouldn't answer me.

She said she
couldn't
answer me. I was angry, so I left the house and ended up at Mark's."

"And then you came here."

"Yes. And then I came here."

Jenny looks away, and he realizes he shouldn't have shared all this with her. It wasn't the point of his visit. He
has
become that cliché, sharing his marital problems with another woman.

"I'm sorry, I didn't come here to—"

"It must really hurt," she says, meeting his eye, "not being believed by the one person you desperately need to believe you."

He opens his mouth but no words

come. She holds his gaze, waiting, forcing a response. Softly, he says, "You're right.

It does."

Suddenly, Jenny stands as if she has an urgent task across the room. "Did you have dinner?" she asks, apropos of nothing.

"Mark fed me." He grabs her wrist.

"Jenny, don't walk away."

"I need to go outside a minute. I need some air." She tugs, but when he doesn't let go, she reluctantly turns to him again.

In the dim light, her eyes shine like black onyx and the look she gives him is just as hard.

"I believe you," he says. When she only blinks, he adds, "I would have led them straight to your door if I didn't believe you. Don't you realize that? I've risked everything because I believe you."

Despite his protests that it's too cold, she steps outside onto the small walkway without a coat or shoes. She sucks in the fresh air. The wind has died down and the snowfall has settled into a silent shower.

It can't be much past nine, but it feels like midnight. She can't see the road. The only sign of life is a snowplow she hears in the distance. The small banker's lamp in the motel office is on, but no one sits at the desk. The three cars in the parking lot wear a blanket of snow and any tire or foot tracks from earlier have disappeared.

None of the cars belong to Jack. Or his brother, for that matter. Did he park far away and walk? Is that why his hand was so cold?

She leans against the doorjamb and closes her eyes. It's so cold on her back, it almost burns, but she doesn't move away.

She tries to gather her thoughts. If she's ever going to tell him the full truth, now would be the time. He's vulnerable, feeling alone, and therefore more likely to understand the actions she took when she found herself in a similar situation. Yet how can she? Her confession might be the burden that finally breaks him.

She hears him switch on the television.

He's torturing himself, she knows, watching the media recast his life until it becomes unrecognizable. She did the same thing, back then. She wishes she could tell him what it took her a few years to learn: if he's not careful, he'll start to believe he's the man they say he is.

When she can no longer bear the cold, she steps back into the room. He's lying on top of the bedspread with his right hand on his stomach, the remote under his hand. He propped two pillows behind his shoulders. The television is still on, but his head is tilted slightly to the side and his eyes are closed. He's not snoring, but his breathing is so deep and regular that she knows he's sound asleep.

His phone rings several times while he sleeps. The first time, she retrieves it from the breast pocket of his overcoat and turns down the volume. She sees that it's Claire trying to reach him. She wants so badly to answer and say, "He's with me."

But of course she doesn't. She doesn't hate Claire, although sometimes she thinks she should.

She studies his face in the blue glow of television light. She wonders if Claire still watches him sleep, if she's still fascinated with the shape of his eyebrows, the curve of his upper lip, or the scar on his chin.

Or is that something a couple stops doing after they've been together as long as Jack and Claire?

He rolls onto his right side and rests his left hand on the edge of the bed closest to her. His wedding ring, a simple gold band, circles his ring finger. Her eyes well. She remembers how it felt when he touched her with that hand, how her resistance dissolved when he first slipped it under her blouse and placed his palm against her spine. And then later, when both hands traveled her body as if they owned it. Does he realize they do?

They're strong hands, with the veins and tendons visible on the back, and she craves their touch on her bare skin again.

She returns her gaze to his face. His eyes move slightly under his lids as if he's dreaming. She suspects the only time he ever fully relaxes is during deep sleep.

She stared at his face like this only once before. Then, he forced her to look at him. Even when her body began to

respond without any conscious direction from her brain, he held her head and insisted she keep her eyes open, insisted she meet his stare.

But that time was different. His

expression had been all man, and the intensity of it scared her. Now, during his brief respite from the world, it's all boy.

It still scares her, but this time she intends to fight the fear.

Around eleven she tries to wake him. She speaks his name, and when he fails to respond, she says it louder, sharper.