Carla looked past him, then down, her face shadowed in the late morning sun. Finally, she said, “I told you Ben was dying. In one way, he already had.”
“Meaning?”
Still Carla did not face him. “He was very afraid of knowing, yet not knowing, that any moment could be his last. Including his moments with me.” Her voice became low, almost inaudible. “That afternoon Ben wanted to make love, perhaps for the last time. But he discovered he no longer could. So I just held him, and stroked his hair, and told him it was okay.” Looking up at Adam, she added, “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for him, or to be anything but disgusted. But to watch Ben feel the life force drain from him was unspeakably sad to me.”
“Did he say anything about it?”
Carla closed her eyes. “Only that he wanted to die here, with me.”
Again, Adam felt the stab of resentment-not because he thought she was lying, but because this sounded like truth, all the more toxic because it was so dismissive of his mother. Detaching himself, he compared this account to Teddy’s unsettling description of his father on the promontory, a chastened man indifferent to his fate. “Then why are you so sure he didn’t jump? Given how he saw himself, impotence must have been devastating.”
Carla sat straighter, pride showing in her eyes. “We were more than that,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t have done that to me, and he didn’t. Someone murdered him.”
There was no place left to go with her, Adam perceived, and he had no heart to try. “So now you’re alone, and about to become a mother.”
Her look of pride became resolve. “As I knew would happen. But this child is more than a surprise-he’s a gift. I mean to put everything I’ve learned into making my son as strong and secure as he deserves.”
After a moment, Adam nodded. “So what will you do?”
“As I told you at dinner, I’m done with acting. I keep thinking about getting an advanced degree in psychology. If I’m a decent mom, and do something useful with my life, I’ll have Ben to thank.”
Adam could not restrain himself. “Not to mention ten million dollars.”
She stood abruptly. “Damn you,” she snapped, her voice filled with an anger that startled him. “I don’t need that much money, and I didn’t ask for it. This is the last time I’ll bother telling you that. You’re obviously set on believing what you want, and I don’t know why I even care.”
Adam stood, facing her. In that wordless moment, he grasped how alike they were. She was an actress, he told himself yet again. But he had never been dispassionate about her, he realized, and was not now. Except that this time he wanted to believe her.
Still no one spoke. Carla’s smile, fleeting and enigmatic, did not change the intensity of her gaze, as though she, like he, was at last perceiving in the other something neither could say. “I know,” she said simply. A world of possible meanings in the words.
Unable to answer, Adam walked away.
Sitting back in his chair, Matthew Thomson emitted a bark of incredulous laughter. “That’s certainly a rude surprise.”
“I thought so,” Adam said. “I assume this changes things a little.”
“More than a little,” Thomson answered briskly. “This child will become what the law calls a pretermitted heir, born after execution of the will. Even if Clarice reinstitutes the prior will in her favor, your little brother-to-be is entitled to what he’d receive if there was no wilclass="underline" an equal share with Teddy and you in one half of Ben’s estate. Close to two million dollars, give or take.”
“To be managed by Carla Pacelli.”
“Of course. If Pacelli didn’t know that before Ben died, she certainly does now. Two million is her starting point, and she can only go up from there.”
Adam thought of Carla again, gazing back at him in a silence neither could break. “Then why conceal her pregnancy?”
“Who knows? Maybe to ward off the Enquirer, or as a tactic. Or maybe, for whatever reason, she didn’t want to further humiliate your mother. From what you say, Carla’s not an easy woman to read.”
You’re obviously set on believing what you want, Carla had said, and I don’t know why I even care. “Unless she’s extremely easy to read,” Adam replied, “and I’ve complicated her by assuming everything but the obvious-that she’s essentially honest.”
Thomson smiled. “Maybe you should have finished law school, Adam. What you’re describing is a lawyer’s syndrome.”
No, Adam thought, it’s my syndrome. Compared to me, lawyers are the kind of people who cry in movies.
Five
Driving away from the lawyer’s office, Adam wrestled with an image he could not shake-Teddy pushing their father off the cliff; Nathan Wright hearing Ben scream as he fell, then seeing his attacker vanish in the darkness. Whoever the shadow had been, Adam now believed, it was not Carla Pacelli.
He headed up-island, without a destination, testing assumptions based on stories he did not wholly accept. Though he doubted his mother’s claim to have seen a woman on the promontory, he had thought that-were this true-Clarice had seen Ben with Carla. Now he considered that both his mother and Carla might have told the truth. Given what Carla had said, Adam doubted that Ben had pursued other women on the eve of his death. But there was another woman on the island who knew his father well.
So long ago, Adam thought, yet like yesterday. Inexorably, he headed toward the dock on Menemsha Pond where Ben had kept his sailboat. Within an hour, he was sailing in the sunlight of early afternoon as though into another such afternoon, its twin, and a son’s final race against his father.
The night before, against his better judgment, Adam had allowed Ben to buy him dinner at the Beach Plum Inn.
They sat at an outside table overlooking the pond, the site of their climactic contest. After fifteen races, Ben led Adam by a single point; to win the cup, Adam had to beat him by two spots. Given his father’s skills, he could not imagine Ben coming in worse than third. This meant that Adam must finish first: even at that, he was hard-pressed to name another sailor-including Charlie Glazer-who could surpass Ben on a day so central to his need for mastery.
The summer season was at its height, the restaurant packed. Though Menemsha was dry by law, diners could bring their own liquor, and Ben had supplied a full bar-a fifth of single malt scotch, a bottle of excellent Meursault, and several snifters’ worth of Calvados. Content, he filled two tumblers of scotch on ice, and settled back to survey the gentle evening sunlight on the lawn, the grassy hillside, the softening blue of the pond. “The best of all possible worlds,” he remarked, “for the most worthy of competitions-men pitted against one another and the caprice of wind and water. I pity anyone who’ll never know the feeling.”
“Can I quote you?” Adam inquired. “I’m thinking about an article for the National Geographic. Something about primitive folkways among the residents of provincial flyspecks.”
Ben laughed aloud, eyes glinting. “Already discounting its significance, are you, so that losing won’t matter quite so much? Then why bother borrowing Jack’s boat, instead of letting my brother fail on his own?” He took a deep swallow of scotch, adopting a tone of mock nostalgia. “It takes me back thirteen years-Jack and me, the last race, his one great chance to wrest the cup from my grasp. Two boat lengths ahead, the final leg, and then he judged the wind wrong. It was over before he knew it. Guess that still must fester.”
Adam grinned across the table. “You know, Dad, you really are a prick.”
Ben gave another whoop of laughter. “Takes one to know one, Adam. But you’re still on a journey of self-discovery.” His tone became consoling. “It’s no disgrace to finish second, son. Jack did it his whole life. You can draw on his experience.”
“Not my plan,” Adam countered evenly. “You’re out of lobster pots.”