Once it had been Adam’s, as well. Now, ten years later, he sat at his old desk, studying their photographs-his father, dead; Jenny, gazing at him from a time before she tried to end her life.
Four
Unable to sleep, Adam felt his thoughts drifting from Jenny to Carla Pacelli.
I followed Ben on one of his nightly jaunts, his mother had said, and saw him standing with a woman on the promontory.
In the morning, he went there, barely cognizant of a day ironic in its warmth and brightness. Again and again, his mind returned to whether Carla had known about the will and, as Teddy’s account might suggest, had come to fear that Ben might change it back. He tried to imagine his father and Carla standing here together as dusk enveloped them, Ben blurting out his misgivings, Carla facing the loss of ten million dollars-a combustible moment between a dying, weakened man and a newly desperate woman. A split second of calculated fury, with Benjamin Blaine sent hurtling into the void.
If that were true, his brother was paying for a lethal combination of ill luck and a stupid lie that rendered his story unbelievable. But in turn this thesis required Carla Pacelli to have lied about every key element of her narrative-her ignorance of the will, her refusal to enter Ben’s property, his father’s decision to live with her, her belief that he was murdered by a member of his family. Unless Adam could prove all this false, and Carla a murderer, Clarice faced losing the only life she knew, and Teddy faced a life in prison that, for him, might be worse than dying. He could not let this happen.
Reining in his emotions, he walked toward Carla’s cottage.
The sun grew warmer, the breeze light. Still, he hardly noticed this. He was too intent on forcing some telling mistake from a woman whose intelligence and self-possession seemed a match for his own.
Crossing the grassy field toward the guesthouse, Adam saw the deck, sheltered from his view by pine trees, on which Carla and his father had sat on the first night he had come to her. From this angle all that was visible was one corner, with a book and sunglasses on the railing, suggesting that she was nearby. But only when he passed the tree line did he see her.
She was lying naked on a chaise longue, sunbathing. Her eyes were closed, her robe draped on a nearby chair. Adam froze, mute. She was stunningly beautiful, her body ripe but slender save for the incongruous roundness of her belly. In the moment it took him to comprehend what he was seeing, Carla opened her eyes.
She looked startled, and then her face set, her eyes ablaze. “Don’t you ever call first?” she said with tenuous calm. “Even your father learned to do that.”
Adam willed himself to see only her face. “I apologize,” he managed to say.
“Too late for that now-or for modesty.” She got up, walking over to retrieve her robe. Adam could not make himself turn away. Then she covered herself, facing him with a cool, angry look. “What is it you want from me, Adam? Though maybe now I can guess.”
Adam could not respond to this. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Carla crossed her arms. “Would it have made any difference? Or would you have thought I was playing another card?”
Adam still felt the dullness of surprise. “I can’t answer that,” he said, then glanced at the swelling beneath the robe. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“A boy. Benjamin Blaine’s last son.”
Once again, Adam was jarred; for better or worse, he had always been the younger of Ben’s sons. Then he realized how much this new child might explain, and remembered what his father had said to Matthew Thomson: Carla has promised to make me immortal.
“Did he know?” Adam finally asked.
“Of course.” Carla sat in the chair, her tone still cool but quieter. “I found out shortly after Ben got his diagnosis. He begged me to keep the baby. And, yes, he promised to support us. Though not by cutting off your mother.”
I’ve only lied to you once, she had said, for reasons of my own, and not about Jenny or the will. Adam glanced at her stomach again. “How far along are you?”
“Four and a half months.” Carla paused, then added tonelessly, “If you’re hoping for a miscarriage, I’m sorry. My doctor in Boston says that we’re both fine.”
Adam flushed. “I’m not quite that cold-blooded. Whatever you and I feel about each other, I wish your son well. I wouldn’t have wished my father on him, or anyone. Nor would I wish a child to be without a father.”
He could read the doubt in her eyes. “I’m sure you think I tricked him,” she said in the same flat voice. “The surprise was mine-I thought I was infertile. So did my doctor in L.A.; you can call him if you like. But I don’t know when, if ever, I can have another child.”
He should have guessed, Adam thought. He recalled her asking to sit at the grave site, the loose-fitting dress she had worn to dinner, her expression as she watched the boy and girl on the swing chair. But sooner or later the will contest would have surfaced her pregnancy. Then it hit him that Carla had made every effort not to seek his sympathy, perhaps from some stubborn perversity of character, perhaps for fear of provoking his cynicism or contempt. At length, he asked, “Mind if I sit?”
Carla shrugged. “You’ve just seen me naked. I minded that a good deal more.”
Adam sat on the edge of the chaise longue. After a moment, he said, “I can only imagine what this baby meant to him. A last chance to replace two disappointing sons.”
Carla met his gaze, unflinching. “Perhaps he felt something like that,” she responded evenly. “After I learned about his will, I wondered if he were trying to redeem himself in some skewed way-through Jenny, through me, and through this child. A literary heir, and a son who would idealize his imagined father.”
Adam felt his anger return. “It’s a narcissist’s fantasy-living on in the hearts of his grateful beneficiaries while taking his revenge on those who didn’t worship him in life. A last protest against the dying of his light.”
Carla shrugged. “Have it your way. At least you understand why I’m not willing to sign away this inheritance. Though I’d have been happier if Ben hadn’t tried to make us into adversaries.” She paused, giving Adam a thin, ironic smile. “Of course, he knew you. So he must have known you’d try to dismantle all his plans.”
Studying her, Adam tried to sort through the kaleidoscope of inferences derived from Carla’s pregnancy, their patterns and relationships shifting by the moment, complicated by what surely was Ben’s certainty that Clarice would challenge the will. But Carla’s pregnancy provided a rational basis for Ben to revise his estate plan, refuting the idea that he was his lover’s docile tool. And it argued against Carla as a murderer, at least if she understood the law-even if Clarice invalidated the will, Adam guessed, a child born after Ben’s death was entitled to some share of his estate. Watching him, Carla asked, “What’s bothering you?”
“There’s something you’re still not telling me. Something important.”
Carla shrugged again. “If so, don’t expect to hear it. I’ve told you the truth about Ben’s will, and that’s all you need to know.”
“Not quite. What happened between the two of you that day?”
Adam imagined a trace of sadness in her eyes. “Why is that any business of yours?” she demanded. “Or do you have some prurient interest in the details?”
Adam tried to imagine his father at the promontory as Teddy had described him-barely able to stand, susceptible to changes of heart and mind, fearing death and yet fatalistic in the face of Teddy’s threat to kill him. Calmly, Adam said, “Whatever our relationship, he was my father. I’m trying to imagine the last hours of his life.”