Keep No Secrets (31 page)

"Did you tell him?"

She wishes. "No. He doesn't know anything, and I've decided that's how it should be. I—"

"Jenny, we talked about this."

"I know, but I've changed my mind. I can't do it."

"You can. You need to. He deserves to know."

"No, you don't understand. He's dealing with so much right now. He's—"

"I do understand. We get the national news here, too, you know."

"Then—"

"What about the letters? What if he finds out from whoever is sending the letters? You wanted to be the one to tell him. You didn't want him to find out from anyone else. You need to get it over with and get back up here, especially now that Alex gets his new trial."

"I know! But I can't. I can't do that to Jack right now."

"You don't have much of a choice. He either finds out from you, or he finds out from someone else."

"Or he doesn’t find out at all. We don't even know what those letters are about.

We don't know for sure."

"What else would they be?"

"I don't know. Someone's simply trying to scare me."

"Someone's trying to scare you, all right. You need to find out who's behind it."

"I'm trying. I'm meeting with that PI in a few days, and then I'm coming home."

"Jen—"

"And even Jack said he might have a lead, but he wouldn't tell me more. I promise I won't leave until I find out what that is, too, okay?"

"I think you'll regret this, if you don't see it to the end."

"Brian, listen to me. He's at the end of his rope. You haven't seen him. Last night, when he showed up here . . ." She swallows, suppressing the tears about to fall. "I just don't think he can take one more thing. He's about to lose it."
And so
am I
.

Her brother sighs. She thinks she got through to him.

"I see my former self in him right now, okay? He's close to the edge, and I don't want to be the one who pushes him over."

Jack's fear over what awaits him at home eases slightly when he spots Mark's car in the driveway. No matter how mad Claire might be, her anger will be tempered by his brother's presence. He ignores the news vans parked at the curb and slips past Mark's car into the garage. Let them fabricate a story about where he's been; anything they report will be better than the truth.

Just as he's about to enter the house, he hears laughter inside. It stops abruptly when he swings open the door. The aroma of baking ham washes over him.

He comes into the kitchen to find Claire, his sons, and his brother sitting at the table playing Scrabble. He sees the ham in the oven. In the dining room, he glimpses the china Claire inherited from his mother set out on the long table. The Christmas tree glows proudly, their gifts still wrapped below it. A fire blazes in the fireplace. A perfect Norman Rockwell holiday, if only Mark was Jack.

"Dad's home!" Jamie bolts from the table to the tree. "Can we open presents now?"

Claire stands. "In a minute, Jamie."

"Hey, Jack," Mark says, his voice tentative as he takes in the sight of Jack, unshaved and disheveled. He sees

something in Mark's expression—he's trying to send some sort of message—but Jack can't read it.

He glances at Claire. She wears black, brushed cotton pants and a red cashmere sweater that buttons up the front. The pants are snug like a favorite pair of jeans and the sweater is unbuttoned just enough to show a slight cleavage of her perfect, cream-colored breasts. He's always thought they were perfect—not too large, not too small—and neither their shape nor his opinion of them has diminished in the last nineteen years. For the first time since his arrest, she's let her hair down. He didn't realize it had been pulled back in one style or another every day since until he sees the blonde curls loose today.

"How'd everything go?" she asks. The words are neutral, but the cold tone is barely disguised. She fixes her large, green eyes on him, as if willing him to understand the sub-context of the question. He does. What he hears is,
I told
the kids you were gone because of work, and
please don't ruin Christmas any more than you
already have
.

"Fine. It was fine," he manages to say as he pulls off his coat. His body odor is even stronger now. He needs a shower, badly.

Claire makes no moves to take the coat from him as she usually does, but when he heads to the front hall to hang it up, she follows.

"Where have you been?" she demands in a quiet, but fierce, voice.

He doesn't answer. The way her mouth drops open tells him she's read more into his silence than he intended. In his helplessness, she reads a lie.

"I should kick you out on your ass right now," she hisses under her breath.

He notices how different her reaction is this time to what she perceives is the same offense. Something breaks open in him with this knowledge. He doesn't know what it means, but he's acutely aware of it.

"I'm sorry. I went there only to talk to her, but I accidentally fell asleep. That's it." His voice is preternaturally calm.

"You
fell asleep
?"

"Yes, I fell asleep. I didn't mean to."

"Really?"

"Really. I told you that you can trust me, and you can. I didn't do anything, Claire. I went there, we spoke maybe twenty words to each other, and I fell asleep. I woke almost nineteen hours later and came home. I slept for almost nineteen hours. That's how badly I needed sleep."

"Am I supposed to applaud you now?"

"No. But you're supposed to believe me."

"And you're supposed to find out who threatened her, not sleep with her."

"I didn't sleep with her."

Claire plants her hands on her hips, and his eyes are drawn again—

inappropriately, he thinks, given everything else happening—to how

shapely she is. The slim waist giving way to the curve of her hips. He wants to place his palms on either side of that waist and pull her close, make her believe him. He wants her back. He wants what they had back.

But then he remembers what she said

—"I can't give you an answer"—and wonders for the first time if what he wants might not be possible.

He doesn't touch her, but he says, quietly, "You look beautiful today."

She shakes her head, her lips tight with fury. A tear slips down her cheek, surprising both of them, and she swipes at it quickly. He doesn't think it was something she wanted him to see.

"It's Christmas, Jack.
Christmas
."

"I know that."

"You went to her on Christmas."

"I went to her motel last night after I couldn't sleep at Mark's. I needed some air, something to take my mind off everything—"

Claire mutters something

unintelligible.

"—so I figured I'd go out there for a few hours to talk to her, see if I could learn any more about the letters. I accidentally fell asleep. She'd gone outside for a moment and I closed my eyes to rest them, and when—"

Exasperated, she tosses her hands up.

"I can't believe we're having this conversation. What, you figured if you can't sleep with her, you can still sleep near her? Is that it? Did you draw a line down the middle of the bed?"

"There are two beds. I—"

"Shut up! I don't care!" She still whispers, but Mark rounds the corner just as she says the words.

Mark takes in the sight of them—

Claire with her hands back on her hips, Jack's in his pockets. He must have heard Claire's last few words. "Uh, Claire, there's a buzzer going off."

Her face transforms for Mark. When she speaks, her voice is almost demure.

"Thank you." If Jack didn’t know better, he’d swear something was going on between them.

She walks away from Jack then, as if their conversation was just another chore she had to accomplish to get dinner on the table, but stops at the corner. "Jack, you stink, and you look like hell." Mark's eyes widen. He's never heard her talk like that to Jack. She never has. "Please think about someone else for once and clean up before you sit down at the dinner table."

Once she's out of sight, Mark whispers,

"Just so you're aware, she doesn't know."

"She doesn't know
what
, Mark?" Jack's patience is shot. He thinks about bed again, how he'd rather go upstairs and pull the covers over his head than endure the next several hours pretending for the kids' sake that everything is fine. What's the point? They know better, anyway.

Think about everyone else for once
. Is he really that selfish? He didn't think so.

Except for the luxurious nineteen hours he spent sleeping at the motel, he's felt everything he's done since the moment he stumbled across Michael and Celeste was done for others or to keep himself from going to prison—a reasonable goal in his opinion. But her words have their intended effect. He'll take his shower, and in about fifteen minutes, he'll be back downstairs at his assigned place at the head of the table.

"That I knew Jenny was in town," Mark says. Jack has to concentrate to remember the context of the words. "Claire thinks I know because she told me. She called me last night when you didn't answer your phone, and when I discovered you

weren't in the guest room and told her that, she spilled the whole story. She figured you were with Jenny."

"Okay. And?"

Both men keep their voices low.

"That's all. I just thought you'd want to know."

"Why? If you recall, I was prepared to tell her. You're the one who didn't want her to know you'd seen Jenny. That was your secret, not mine. I don't keep secrets from her anymore."

Mark's jaw tightens. "No, you just keep them from yourself."

"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means."

Jack turns for the stairs.
To hell with him
.

When Mark starts to say more, Jack cuts him off.

"Can it wait for later, Mark?

Apparently I have a shower to take before I'm allowed to eat my ham ration."

CHAPTER TWENTY

ON THE MONDAY following

Christmas weekend, Jack loads a bundled-up Jamie in the front seat of his car and a Flexible Flyer in the back and takes off for the courthouse. Jamie will spend the morning with Jack in his office. Then, after lunch in the courthouse cafeteria, the two of them will head to Forest Park for sledding on Art Hill. He warns Jamie that cameras might be pointed at them the whole time, but Jamie simply shrugs.

Jack isn’t sure whether he's grateful or disturbed by his eight-year-old’s increasing comfort with the reporters.

He invited Michael, and even Claire, to join them. Both, not surprisingly, declined.

A rare calm settles on the DA’s office during the week between Christmas and New Year's. This year is no exception.

Most of the attorneys and staff take the week off, but Beverly is there. She keeps Jamie busy with small copy jobs and easy filing.

Jack calls Dog. "Are you in the office this week?"

"Yes and no. I'm working, but I'm on the road this afternoon."

"Have you made any more progress on the letters?"

"Oh, yeah. Didn't I tell you? I worked my magic. Demetri will talk to you."

"Demetri?"

"My friend at the post office. He’s not in ‘til next week, though, and you’ll have to buy him lunch. We’ll meet you at O'Connell's. Around one next Tuesday?"

The thought of a dark pub appeals to Jack. "We? I guess I'm buying for both of you."

"You guessed right, Boss."

When Jack arrives at O'Connell's the following Tuesday, he takes a corner booth. The pub's décor, with its dim lighting and the dark woodwork

preserved from the original location in Gaslight Square, grants a level of privacy not found at the brightly lit chains that litter the metro area. The food is as authentic as the pub, although Jack’s appetite is almost non-existent.

It's nearing one, and the lunch crowd has thinned. Other than a large table in the middle of the room crowded with co-workers, and a couple in the far opposite corner, Jack is the only customer in the dining room. He spots Dog and his friend coming through the large opening from the bar side.

Dog greets Jack and then introduces Demetri Griffin, who, to Jack's surprise, is closer to his age than Dog's. He's tall, with a brawny build, and when the two of them slide onto the bench across from Jack, the wood groans from the weight.

The waitress arrives with Jack's earlier drink order—a Coke—and asks Dog and Demetri for theirs. When she returns quickly with two dark microbrews, Jack eyes the tall glasses with desire. He’s not much of a beer drinker, but the

knowledge that he can’t get any booze in prison suddenly makes it more appealing.

Once she takes their food orders and steps away, Dog leans back and says,

"Demetri is a busy guy, Boss, so shoot.

What do you want to know?"

"Malik exaggerates, Mr. Hilliard," the man says. His voice has a deep, clear timbre that reminds Jack of Barry White.

"You have me as long as you wish."

Jack decides he likes the man.

He explains how he needs to learn the identity of the woman who mailed the letters, and that if he gets a better description—crimes are often solved by the minor details—he might find out what he needs to know.

Demetri stretches an arm across the back of the booth. "May I ask what the crime is?"

"In my opinion, the letters constitute criminal threats."

"Why didn't you subpoena the tapes? I would think in your position that wouldn't be a problem."

The man is smart. Jack wonders what, exactly, his role is at the post office. He glances at Dog in hopes that somehow he'll signal Jack how much he can trust this guy. But Dog isn't paying attention.

Instead, he's watching a cute, young waitress flirt with guys at a nearby table.

"At this point, until I know more, it's simply a favor for a friend."

Demetri lifts his beer and takes a long, slow drink. He sets it down carefully and wipes the foam from his lip with his napkin.

"It was a woman," he says. "I couldn't see her face. I don't know for sure, but I suspect she was aware of the camera location and made a point of hiding her face."