The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel (22 page)

Jack’s weathered face collapsed in compassion. “Oh, God—the poor woman. And there was a child, too, wasn’t there?”

Gus nodded, thinking of the photograph of Mila Cilento in his pocket. He was haunted by her serious eyes, the way her head tilted slightly to one side as her hand gripped a pigtail.

But Sandra was sharply focussed on Gus. “And you’re going to be the prime suspect. That’s what you’re telling us here, isn’t it, Papa Gus?”

“If I’d signed my name with her blood, I couldn’t have incriminated myself more.”

“Gus, you didn’t—” Jack’s blue eyes were boyishly wide as he ran a hand through his brush of white hair.

“How could you even think that?” Sandra asked in an outraged voice. But then she spun toward Gus, her hands landing artfully on skinny hips. “Jesus Christ, Gus, answer the question. You didn’t kill her, did you?”

“
Mami!
” Julia yelled.

“Sandra, there’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain!” Jack bellowed at the same moment.

“I’m sorry, Father Jack, but if ever there was a time to get a little pissed with the man on the wall there, it’s now,” Sandra said, cocking her head toward the ever-present crucifix.

Gus pounded the coffee table to get their attention. “Excuse me, but does anyone want to hear my answer?”

“See! Papa Gus was about to tell us he didn’t do it,” Julia said. Then her voice grew small.
“Weren’t you, Gus?”

As Gus took a long, deep breath, the ticking of the clock again grew pronounced.

“The way things look, not many people are likely to believe me—even my friends in the parish,” he said, looking up at them. “But it’s important to me that you three do. No matter what you hear, remember what I’m telling you. I never had an affair with Ava Cilento. I never hit her, or hurt her in any way. And I didn’t kill her, either. But someone did. The amount of blood in that motel room left no question.”

While Julia glared in vindication at the two adults, Sandra sputtered, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Gus, I knew you didn’t do it. I was only asking because Jack wanted to know.”

“We’ve all got murder in us,” Jack said. “It’s just one of the nasty skills we humans come equipped with. We can get angry or passionate or just blind enough to kill.”

“And we can lie, too. So how do you know I’m not exercising
that
particular human skill?” Gus said.

“Because I’ve seen you do it before,” Jack smiled. “I know how you act when you lie.” He got up and refilled both his and Gus’s glasses. “And because I know you.”

“This is what I mean about common sense,” Sandra interrupted. “Give either of you some two-line reading and you can pull more meaning out of it than I can find in the whole Bible, but when it comes to regular life . . . I mean, how’s it gonna look when the cops show up to arrest you and you’re dead drunk? You and your fine pastor both?”

“We’re not drunk yet, Sandra, but we could probably use some snacks to absorb the alcohol,” Jack said.

“You hear that?
Las mujeres
have just been sent to
la cocina
,” Sandra said in the mixture of English and Spanish she used when she was angry. “Come on, Julia.”

“Have we got an avocado?” Julia asked, following behind her mother as she headed toward the kitchen. “Whenever I’m stressed, I crave guacamole.”

Gus and Jack sipped their whiskey in troubled silence while mother and daughter moved around the kitchen. They were both relieved when Julia appeared with a platter of fragrant nachos, followed by Sandra carrying a bowl of guacamole. Gus realized he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before.

The mood remained subdued as the four of them pretended to focus on their food, each privately listening for the car in the driveway, the footsteps on the walkway, a knock at the door. Happiness, Gus thought, was never so sweet as when it was threatened.

“If you all don’t mind, I think I’m going to lie down for a while,” he said when he had finished his nachos. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” He kissed each of them on the forehead before he left the room.

Though Jack usually complained loudly when Gus expressed his easy Portuguese affection, he said nothing this time.

Gus carried his plate to the kitchen and went upstairs, trailed by the dogs. The room was dark, like the motel room had been, but these shadows were familiar and hospitable. The dogs, grateful for Gus’s return, settled into their familiar spots, Jane on her mat on the floor, and Stella curled against his body while he lay on his back and waited. The whole house was sealed in an unfamiliar silence, as if the other occupants had also withdrawn to their rooms to wait for the official voices, the rush of wind from the outside that would change everything.

As he lay on his bed, Jane snoring peacefully on the floor beside him, Gus thought back on the first night Ava had come to him and the terrible petal-like beauty of those purple thumbprints on her throat. Had it really been only hours since he’d spoken to her? Her voice had been so small, as if it was already vanishing. He had risked everything to save her, and he had lost. But worst of all, he had
failed.
As he waited in his room, “Gaivota,” the half-forgotten fado song about a seagull, ran through his head. The knock at the door, when it came, was almost a relief.

PART FOUR

THORNE HOUSE

{ 2001–2009 }

Chapter 21

T
he sign outside Thorne House announced
the fate of Nick Costa’s legendary medical practice, his wife’s unfulfilled dreams, and Hallie’s lost childhood:
SOLD BY RODERICK REALTY
. Hallie pulled the sign from the ground and leaned it against the fence, face in. Did they have to scream it in such bold colors? Felicia’s brother, Hugo, had handwritten the second sign in purple Magic Marker the day before:
ESTATE SALE TOMORROW: Everything Must GO!!!
The exclamation points annoyed Hallie so much she was tempted to uproot that sign, too, but she resisted. She could dig out all the signs she wanted, but the truth would remain: the buyers were closing on the house in three days and she was contractually bound to deliver it clean and empty.

The day she’d signed on for the service Hugo called “cleaning and disposition of assets,” he had handed her a business card that proclaimed him a “professional antiques dealer.”

Hallie had confessed in Felicia’s kitchen that there weren’t many antiques in the house. But her old friend just licked the cream out of the middle of the Oreo like she used to as a child and laughed out loud. “You really think Hugo knows his ass from an antique? My brother’s got a wallet full of those cards, and he’s a serious drunk. It’s not too late to change your mind—”

“I’m sure Hugo will do a fine job, and I’d rather give the business to someone local.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re just like your father?” Felicia said with a familiar eye roll.

It was something Hallie had heard countless times in her life, but it felt different now.

Felicia stopped and hugged her. “I’m sorry . . . I’ve walked by that empty house so many times, I kind of got used to it, but this is the first time you’ve been home, right?”

“Since the funeral.” Though he’d always claimed he wanted to be cremated, at the end, Nick had asked to be buried in St. Peter’s—where Liz Cooper was interred with the Costas.

H
allie closed the gate behind her.
Damn it, Sam should be with me
, she thought, but she hadn’t pressed the issue at home. She knew how Sam felt about Provincetown. A single afternoon walking the streets and beaches she loved left him sullen, derailed by memories he refused to share with anyone, not even his wife.

She paused, threw back her shoulders, and loped up the brick walkway. It was something she’d done thousands of times, sometimes running, other times sauntering, distracted by an argument with Gus, barely thinking about the home she was entering. How she’d taken her life with Nick for granted.

She hesitated as she inserted the key in the lock, thinking of her husband’s words.
It’s just a house
, Sam had said gently when he urged her to sell it.
No matter how long you hang on to it, your father will never come home.
However, it wasn’t until she stood at the front door that she felt that truth in her bones. The bitterness of
never.
Her father would never again stand at the stove, cooking macaroni and cheese with chorizo; she’d never find him sitting in his worn chair in the study, poring over a difficult case, or listening to Dizzy Gillespie, or reading an astronomy book.

When she pushed the door open, Hallie was assaulted by the odor of rotting flowers. At first, she was spooked by the scent, recalling her father’s wake. But then she saw the vase of dead blossoms on the kitchen table and smiled briefly.
Of course.
Cindy Roderick had bought them for the open house, hoping to cover the mildewy scent that had accumulated in every corner, and to remind prospective buyers of the former elegance of the old Victorian. The realtor wanted them to see it as Liz Cooper had envisioned, not what it had become under Nick’s neglectful care.

Hallie grabbed the bouquet and looked for some place to throw it away. When she found the trash pail in the same closet where it had always been, she dropped the flowers and wept. Later, she would laugh to think that it was a trash pail that had finally broken her. She hadn’t been able to cry since the day Nick died—not even at the wake, when she stood stiffly between her husband and Stuart. Aunt Del, Buddy, and the cousins who’d come home from around the country were lined up beside them. Hallie had shaken what felt like a thousand hands, accepted even more hugs, and listened to endless stories about Nick, all while numbly
absorbing
nothing. As for the corpse beside her, it clearly
wasn’t
him. It was a pale old man with pursed lips, disdainful of the world in a way her father had never been.

Gus’s trial had followed mercilessly soon after. She had faced it in the same spirit, strangely absent from her own body. At times, she wondered if she’d ever feel anything again. And then came the miracle that brought her back to life.

Hallie remained frozen before the closet, but in her heart she raced through the house and into the office, her tread light and free, the way it had been when she was a girl and she had news.
Nick! I got an A on my English paper . . . Nick, I’ve been invited to a birthday party . . . I jumped the farthest in the broad jump at school . . . I got a part in the play! Nick, oh God, Nick, I’m in love with Gus Silva.
Though she never told him that last, he had known almost from the first day.

However, now when she had her biggest announcement of all, Nick was not there to hear it.
I’m pregnant, Nick!
Pregnant, do you hear me? You’re finally going to be a grandfather!
And it’s a girl.
She didn’t even say the part that would have brought her father a bittersweet happiness. The baby girl would be named for her mother: Elizabeth Cooper Costa Maddox.

She opened all the windows and admitted the unforgiving east wind and the briny scent of the bay. Then she climbed the two flights of stairs that led to the roof and took her old perch on the chimney.
Nick, how could you leave me? And where, where did you go?
she wept, looking out over the implacable waters. The only answer was the thrum of the tides.

She cried hard, but not long. That was one of Nick’s rules. You could weep—
of course you could.
In fact, Nick believed that there were things so grievous in life that if you didn’t cry for them, it indicated a serious defect of character. But though the world’s sorrows were endless, tears had limits—at least in this house. For Nick Costa, and for his daughter after him,
to live
was an action verb. Hallie wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting on the roof when she imagined her father’s voice:
Enough, Pie. Now get up and wash your face.

And so she did. Not just because it was what her father would have wanted her to do, but because Felicia was right: she
was
like him. Like him in both the good and the most maddening ways. She took comfort in the realization that as long as she was alive, and her child after her, Nick would never truly be gone.

There was soap in the dish, a hand towel on the rung—almost as if a family still lived there, though no one but realtors and prospective buyers had entered the house since Nick moved out to the dunes.

Looking in the bathroom mirror, she thought of the day when she had caught Gus studying his face at the house on Point of Pines. That was little more than a year earlier, but everything had changed for both of them. Though Hallie had girded herself for the jury’s verdict, she still felt weak whenever she thought of the foreman’s words: “Guilty on the charge of murder in the first degree.”

She wanted to visit him, though she’d heard that, like his father before him, he had shut down in prison. Refused to see the many parishioners and hospital workers who had supported him throughout the trial. Even Sandra and Jack had been turned away, their letters and packages sent back unopened. In the end, it was only the miracle that had stopped her. Her own unexpected happiness. The child.

T
wo only children, Hallie and Sam
had wanted babies right away.
Want
wasn’t even the right word. It was more elemental than that. It was a hunger, a fever that never abated. On one of their earliest dates, Hallie was embarrassed when Sam caught her looking longingly at the beautiful children on the street, pointing at them, giving in to the inevitable clichés.
Did you see that one in the stroller? So cute. And that little girl in her bright leggings. Adorable.
But then she realized Sam was smiling, too, smiling and repeating after her.
Yes, cute. Incredibly sweet.

Hallie, who had always believed she would conceive as easily as Liz Cooper had, was shocked when it didn’t happen. After two years of trying, she and Sam had sought help. What followed was five years of studying calendars and taking temperatures, of futile fertility treatments and a persistent stalemate over adoption. (“I want our child,” Sam insisted. “A little girl with your beauty and my, um, common sense.” Invariably, Hallie countered, “It
will
be ours.”)

But when she finally got pregnant, it felt like a vicious joke. Nick’s death and the long trial had strained her marriage nearly to the breaking point.

Sam had accompanied her to the courthouse on the day she was to testify, but Hallie forgot his presence as Lunes Oliveira drew her back into the colorful streets of Provincetown where she had fallen in love with a boy with a troubled past and the kindest, saddest eyes she had ever seen. Before she had finished her testimony, Sam walked out. She never knew how much he saw or heard as she was forced to publicly relive her relationship with Gus and the accident that had altered their lives.

But it didn’t matter. She carried the trial and all it had dredged up home with her. It was there in her quiet preoccupation, when she turned away from Sam in bed, and in the nights when she hardly seemed to come to bed at all. Like the sand of Provincetown, it had infiltrated the house, and no one could sweep it all away.

Sam responded by avoiding their condo that overlooked Boston Common. At first, he called to say he wasn’t coming home for dinner, but eventually, it was just understood. She ate salads and baked potatoes, sardines on crackers—what her friend Abby called “spinster food.” Usually, she was asleep by the time his key turned in the lock. Hallie knew she should worry, probably even “talk about it,” but she was privately relieved by his absence. All she could think about was the trial, her own role in it, and Gus’s face when they announced the sentence.

Alone in the condo, she folded her arms and paced, obsessed with guilt over her testimony and the question she could never ask out loud:
Had Gus done it? Had he killed the woman in the motel that day after he’d left her father’s shack?
She would have given anything to be sure of him, but her doubts lingered. There was simply too much evidence that was impossible to explain away, not the least of which was memory itself. She recalled Neil Gallagher’s body slamming against the Jeep and the moment when she realized Gus
couldn’t stop
, that he just might kill Neil. And then she felt herself awakening from the coma in the hospital, her mouth unbearably dry, voice tiny—but already calling for Gus.

She’d always been so sure that he never intended to hurt her, but now? She was no longer certain of anything.

She used up almost an entire notebook of lined paper, attempting to write to him, but never got past his name. The typical questions felt like a mockery.
How are you? What’s new?
Was there an etiquette for writing to prisoners that she hadn’t yet learned? The only thing more cruel would be to tell him about her own life. The bright mornings she raced through, the satisfaction of using herself up as she tackled her patients’ problems, and sometimes even solved them, the friendly greetings she got at the hospital. The
respect.
And all the while Gus was there. In a cell with an open toilet, and the person he’d loved and trusted above all others doubting his innocence.

She didn’t even hear Sam the night he slipped into the kitchen and found her hunched over her notebook. He tore the letter from the table and read the name out loud, imbuing it with more disgust than the prosecutor had. “So this is how you spend your nights?” he asked. He ripped the unwritten letter to shreds with the same efficiency that he did everything.

“We should talk about this tomorrow,” Hallie said. She attempted to angle past him and into the bedroom, surprised to catch a whiff of whiskey.

He stepped into her path, blocking her with his wide frame. “No, not tomorrow, Hallie. I want that murderer out of my house now. But most of all I want him out of my wife’s heart.” Up close in the still bright light of the kitchen, Hallie saw past the anger in Sam’s eyes to the hurt. Abruptly, he kissed her. It was a harsh kiss that contained all the contaminated emotion between them. Hallie was amazed by how much she wanted it.

In the morning, Sam didn’t wake her up to say goodbye before he left. The sex they’d had the night before couldn’t erase the tension between them, but in the end, it accomplished something far more significant: it produced the miracle.

“I’m pregnant, Sam,” Hallie had said into the phone when she knew for sure, her voice hushed and bewildered and shot through with questions.

First she imagined his silence as shock or disappointment, perhaps even dismay. A child—
now
? But then she realized that he was crying. “I love you, Hallie. If that means anything, maybe we can still make this work.”

Hallie knew she should say that she loved him, too—and the truth was, she
did.
But she wasn’t sure if he believed her anymore. Instead, she whispered, “We can, Sam. I know we can.”

N
ow, two transformative months later, she
was alone in her father’s house—and famished. She went instinctively to the refrigerator and was startled by its pristine emptiness. The cell phone rang just as the fridge door slammed shut.

“Look out the window,” Sam said on the other end of the line. “A veggie pizza with extra artichokes and a carton of organic milk are being delivered to the house right this moment. It was no easy task to convince the driver to stop for that milk, so you better drink it.”