Keep No Secrets (3 page)

Michael knows he's not supposed to be there, but Jack has enough issues to deal with tonight to bust him for that, too.

"Where'd you get the whiskey?" he asks again, coming back to the earlier question that Michael avoided.

Michael fidgets on the couch. He's no longer looking down, but he's not looking at Jack, either. He stares into space.

"Michael."

"I'm not one of your frickin'

witnesses," he mumbles.

Fed up, Jack stands quickly. Michael flinches as if he's about to be hit. Jack has never hit either of his kids and he never would. Yet Michael believes, after what he's done tonight, Jack might.

In the kitchen Jack throws his coat over a barstool. He turns on the small light over the stove and opens the cabinet where Claire keeps the liquor. He paws through the bottles—vodka, tequila, gin, the rum that she uses in recipes—most of them have been untouched for months, some even years. The only liquor Jack ever drinks, in the rare instances when he drinks something other than beer or wine, is Jack Daniel's. The bottle is gone.

He turns back toward the family room.

The kitchen and the family room form one big space, and the stove light allows Michael a clear shot of Jack.

"What? You figured we'd never notice?

Is that it?"

"No. I just didn't really care."

Jack is glad for the distance between them, because at that moment he feels as if he just might violate the "no hitting"

policy. He wants to ask Michael if he knows how lucky he is, if he realizes how many fathers would break their sons' jaw if spoken to like that, or take a belt or worse to them. But he doesn't. Michael knows. No matter how much he provokes his father, he knows Jack would never lay a finger on him.

"Well, I care." Jack returns to the family room and sits on the arm chair at the end of the couch. "And Mom will care. And she'll care even more about what's going on with Celeste." It might not matter to Michael what Jack thinks, but he most definitely cares about what Claire thinks.

Michael laughs sarcastically. "Yeah, Mom
will
care. She's gonna want to know why it took almost two hours to take Celeste home."

Celeste's resemblance to Jenny has never been directly acknowledged by any of them. Not by Jack. Not by Claire. Not by Michael. Michael's statement is the closest anyone has come to saying it out loud. If Jack takes the bait, if he tries to turn it back on Michael, match his sarcasm and ask "Why would you say that?", then he'll start down a road he's not sure he wants to travel—a road where there'd be no going back. But does Michael really think the resemblance between the two women—the woman

and the
girl
—would cause Jack to do something even more stupid than what he's already done? Because if Michael really thinks this, if he honestly thinks his dad would mess with a sixteen-year-old girl, then Jack might as well give up now.

"It took two hours because she begged me to give her time to sober up. She'd already texted her dad, told him your car had broken down and that she'd be late."

"Oh, right. And you agreed?"

Michael's skepticism is justified. Jack's still a little surprised that he agreed, too.

"Yeah, I did. You know why? Because she was deathly afraid to arrive home even a little tipsy. It wasn't just that she didn't want to get yelled at or grounded.

It was something more."

Michael's shoulders relax slightly; he believes this. Maybe he knows what Celeste wouldn't tell.

"Do you know why she's so afraid of her dad?"

"He's really strict."

"'Really strict' doesn't explain her panic when I told her I was going to talk to him. She's hiding something."

Michael shrugs, looking down. If he knows, he's not telling, either. Does he think by keeping her secrets he's protecting her somehow?

"Michael?" Jack speaks gently. It gets Michael's attention. "If he's hurting her somehow, it doesn't help her to keep silent."

He shakes his head. "You're crazy, Dad. You think everything is evidence of child abuse." Despite the apparent insult, the anger has left his voice. "He's not
hurting
her."

Either he believes what he's saying, or he's simply not giving anything away.

"Okay, fine, he's not hurting her. But I felt like something was up, so I waited a while before taking her home. We had a good talk until she thought she was okay and could deal with him."

"What did her dad say when you dropped her off?"

"I didn't talk to him." Jack hesitates.

"He thinks it was you dropping her off."

"What?" It's difficult to tell if he's angry or just surprised by this, too. "I thought for sure you'd—"

"Look, I hope it wasn't the wrong thing to do, but once I decided to cover for her . . ." Jack shakes his head, wondering all over again if she snookered him. Part of him doesn't think so; her fear was real. But deciding to go along with her story protected Michael, too; Jack is well aware of that. Is that why he so easily agreed to her request? "I don't know. It just seemed worse to talk to the man and have to lie outright to him, you know?

Because it was either that, or tell him everything. And if my instincts are right and I
did
tell him everything . . . well, I didn't want to risk it."

Thank you for downloading from dpgroup.org.

Michael nods slightly. "Dad?" His voice is smaller, reminiscent of the little boy he used to be. "I'm sorry. I’m sorry we put you in this position."

The tension in Jack's shoulders melts upon hearing Michael's apology. Despite how young he sounded when he made it, it's the most mature thing he's ever done.

Jack stares at him for a long time, even though Michael can't bring himself to meet his eye. It's not just tonight's tension that begins to dissolve, but four years'

worth.

"Okay. I appreciate that. I do. But it doesn't let you off the hook."

"I know."

"I can't punish her, and maybe because of what I did she's getting off scot free, but you’re my son and I'm still

responsible for what you do." Michael doesn't respond, just continues to nod—

more with his eyes than his head—and listens. Jack breathes deep, not wanting to ask the next question. "Do you at least use birth control?"

Michael shifts on the couch and pushes hair out of his face.

"Oh, Jesus, Michael." It doesn't occur to Jack that, in his own moment of stupidity, he didn't think about birth control either. And really, the potential consequences were much more

devastating. "What are you thinking?"

"She says she can't, you know, because she's Catholic. But we make sure—"

Jack grunts in disbelief. "Yeah?" he interrupts angrily. "Well, then she's
also
not supposed to be" —he almost says
fucking around
— "having sex, either, is she?" Jack can't believe he's having this conversation with his son. He can't believe Michael would let some girl convince him
not
to use birth control.

"What about STDs? Did it ever occur to you that if she's sleeping with you, she might have slept with others?"

The sound of creaking floorboards above their heads interrupts the

conversation.

"Jack?" Claire's sleepy voice floats down the stairs. "Is that you?"

"Please don't tell her about Celeste, Dad," Michael whispers. "Please." His desperate tone is similar to Celeste's in the car.

"Yeah, it's me and Michael."

"Michael?" She flips on the hall light at the top of the stairs and starts down.

"What's Michael doing up?"

"Dad, please. Tell her about the drinking if you have to, but not about the other.
Please
."

When Claire reaches the bottom, she's still fussing with the tie of her robe. She stops when she sees them. "What's going on? Why are you guys down here so late?"

Michael looks at Jack, wide-eyed and scared. Suddenly, he's eleven again. He'd been playing with a Nerf gun and had accidently knocked over a porcelain figurine heirloom of Claire's. There'd been some historical significance to it.

Had it been snuck out of a European country by her ancestors during some war? Jack can't remember. But he knew how devastated she'd be. Even though Michael didn't fully grasp the importance of the heirloom, he understood it meant a lot to her. He became hysterical at the thought of her knowing what he'd done.

Everything he did, every achievement, he did for his mother. He couldn't bear the thought of disappointing her. It broke Jack's heart, seeing his son so upset. He hadn't planned it, but when Claire walked into the room, asking "What's going on?"

just as she did tonight, Jack stepped up and took the blame. Before Michael could confess, Jack claimed they'd been roughhousing and he'd been the guilty one. She didn't doubt his explanation; there was no reason to. She simply assumed Michael cried out of sympathy.

Jack became Michael's partner in crime that day, and by extension, his hero.

A little over a year later, he'd become Michael's villain.

Jack turns to Claire. And this is when he makes his third mistake. "I heard him come in. He broke curfew," he glares at Michael, "by about three hours."

Claire sinks into a chair. She holds her body close, her shoulders hunched a little, her hands in her lap, as if she's cold.

"Where were you?" she asks Michael. For now, she's more confused and

disappointed than angry.

Michael hesitates. "I, um—"

"He told me he had trouble with his car," Jack says, "but when I pressed for details, he finally admitted that after he and Celeste left Jason's party, they hung out on the trail with some friends for a few hours before he took her home."

He sees the flicker of a question cross Claire's face as she takes in the fact that Jack is fully dressed.

"Michael, you know you're not supposed to be on the trail at night," she says, apparently deciding that the explanation for Jack's attire can wait until later. "And my God, with Celeste? Who knows what kind of creeps hang out there at night?" When he starts to say something, she cuts him off. "I don't know what bothers me more: that you think you can wander home whenever the mood strikes you, or that you put Celeste at risk like that."

"Mom, it's just other kids like us.

There's never—"

She interrupts him again, turning to Jack. "I can't believe her dad didn't call here looking for her."

Jack stares at Michael, letting him know that he's protected him from the big stuff, but the rest is up to him.

Michael gets it.

"She texted him and told him my car had trouble and she'd be late," he says.

Claire's mouth falls open. It's not breaking curfew, it's not being in the woods. It's the lying that bothers her most, and Jack suddenly wishes he could do it over, because, like Celeste, he's now exacerbated the situation.
Why am I taking
the fall for him?

"I think we need to talk to Celeste's dad tomorrow."

"Mom, no! Please! Punish me all you want, ground me, take away my car, but please don't get her in trouble."

She stands. "If anyone got her trouble, Michael, it's you." To Jack she says, "Why don't we all get to bed and talk about this in the morning?" He nods slightly, certain by morning she'll soften towards Michael.

She always does.

CHAPTER THREE

ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Claire

sits at her desk at the law school and stares at a photo of Michael and Jamie standing at the top of Art Hill in Forest Park. The Art Museum in the background frames the boys. Both are bundled in parkas and ski pants, mittens on their hands and snow boots on their feet.

Michael holds the sled between them.

Their cheeks are bubblegum pink; they've already been down the hill a few times and are anxious to do it again. They stood still for the picture only after she threatened to leave right then if they didn't. Sometimes she looks at the picture and thinks,
Where's Jack?
She knows the answer, of course, but she thinks it nevertheless because it's the question she sees on her sons' faces.

Jack has always loved sledding on Art Hill. When he was a kid, he did it every winter with his own dad. It's one of the few memories of the man he shares with them. He continued the tradition with Michael and Jamie. The year this picture was taken, the winter she forced his four-month exile from their home, is the only winter he missed.

He's never said so, but she knows he doesn't like that she displays the picture on her desk. She's not sure why she does.

She turns her attention back to the student papers in front of her. The assignment had been to write a summary judgment motion along with the

argument to support it. Grading the papers of first year law students is difficult enough on a good day—for some reason, even those who'd attended the best universities for undergraduate school have difficulty structuring a coherent argument on paper—but today she finds her task particularly hard. It's the weekend and she'd rather be home.

The incident with Michael the night before has been on her mind. If he simply broke curfew by fifteen minutes or a half hour, she could understand Jack's desire to go easy on him. But three hours, followed by the news that he'd spent those three hours on the trail and then lied to Celeste's dad about it? To brush it off as typical teenager stuff, as Jack convinced her to do this morning, seems a bit too lax, and she's perturbed with herself for letting him convince her. She's also a bit confused, because usually the slightest misbehavior on Michael's part ignites Jack like flint ignites a fire. It's Claire who usually argues for letting things go.

She keeps glancing at the clock on the opposite wall. She thinks,
Where's Jack?

Why hasn't he returned her calls? She wants to talk to him about reconsidering Michael's punishment, or really, the lack thereof. Taking away his car for a few days, in her opinion, isn't much of a consequence.

She knows the answers to these

questions, too. The police chief called their house earlier to inform Jack that they'd picked up the suspect in a recent murder case and to ask him if he wanted to be there to watch the interrogation.