Without saying more, he turned and walked toward the cabin where Carla Pacelli lived.
Listening, Adam wondered whether to believe her. But the story had the same quality of regret Carla ascribed to him, and it was just strange enough to be true. Finishing, Jenny said, “He was trying to live with what he’d done to us.”
“He was trying to buy you,” Adam retorted curtly. “For a million dollars, he hoped you’d keep his secrets. Even from beyond the grave he cares about how people see him.”
Doubt clouded Jenny’s eyes. “I don’t pretend to understand him. Then or now.”
“You’re not twisted enough. Did he also mention he was cutting off my mother?”
“No. Or anything about Carla.”
Pausing, Adam reviewed his memory of Sean Mallory’s interview notes. “You never told the police about this meeting, did you? Let alone about what my father did to you.”
Shaking her head, Jenny turned away. “What I couldn’t conceal, I lied about. I couldn’t destroy my relationship with Clarice.”
But there was more to it, Adam perceived-once again, he was caught in his father’s vise. The sexually avaricious writer in the manuscript was unmistakably Benjamin Blaine, and his mistreatment of Jenny could serve as a motive for murder, especially in light of her instability. Given what Adam knew, the best way to divert suspicion from Teddy was by exposing her lies to the police. And should George Hanley indict his brother, a good defense lawyer would surely exploit her trauma: even if a jury did not think Jenny a murderer, Ben’s actions might render him so despicable that no one would care who killed him.
But his betrayal could destroy her, Adam knew, and devastate his mother. And on a coldly practical level, casting Jenny as a potential murderer would not help Clarice at all. Her problem was Carla Pacelli, not Jenny Leigh.
“What are you thinking?” Jenny asked.
“That I forgive you,” he said. “And that you may have killed my father.”
Jenny flinched. “Are you going to the police?”
Adam could not answer. Instead, he touched her face with curled fingers and left.
Eight
Too much had hit him too quickly.
Shaken, Adam parked at the side of the road, sorting the lies and deceptions that bound them all-Jenny, Clarice, Teddy, and himself-to a man who, even in death, continued to control their lives. He did not yet know how, if at all, Ben’s will was linked to his murder, and what truths about his family he had yet to grasp. The only person he credited with candor, however tentatively, was Carla Pacelli.
I’ve only lied to you once, for reasons of my own, and not about Jenny or the will.
Whatever it was must concern his father, and perhaps his mother.
So many compromises, Clarice had said to him long ago, so much hurt.
Which compromises, he wondered now, and whose hurt? The more threads he pulled, the more Adam sensed that the damage Ben inflicted, including Jenny’s and his own, stemmed from something still concealed from him. More deeply than before, he had begun to fear the truth. And yet he had to know it.
I thought Grandfather went bankrupt before I was born.
No, his mother had replied. After.
Switching on the ignition, Adam headed for Edgartown.
It was a quarter to five, near closing time at the Registry of Deeds. But a jovial gray-haired woman who recalled Adam from high school pointed him to the index that listed buyers and sellers of real estate back two centuries and more. Clarice’s father and his own were linked by a single line.
It took forty minutes more, the clerk waiting patiently. At last, Adam found the deed that passed title to his mother’s childhood home to Benjamin Blaine. The document which, combined with the postnuptial agreement, had empowered Ben to give it to his lover.
Pensive, Adam stared at the date: February 16, 1974. A schism in the lives of his family, capping the financial ruin that had stripped Clarice’s father of everything. A date three years before Adam was born.
Adam thanked his helper for her patience and drove to Matthew Thomson’s office.
The lawyer was still at his desk, scanning computerized time sheets he would turn into billings. “I hate this part,” he told Adam. “Measuring my time in tenths of hours. Makes me feel like a damned accountant.” He paused, gauging Adam’s expression. “This is your second visit of the day, and you’re looking even grimmer than before.”
“Just curious. I’m wondering if you have the postnuptial agreement at hand.”
Thomson’s expression became probing. “Ordinarily, something that old would be in a warehouse. But your mother’s will contest with Ms. Pacelli has given it fresh currency. Still, I’m wondering why you need it. You’re well aware of its parlous effects on Clarice, and I’m sure she has a copy at home.”
“True. But it’s a sensitive subject with her. I’d rather review it in the serenity of your office.”
Thomson raised his eyebrows, then took a file from a desk drawer and handed it to Adam. “My proudest moment in the law,” he said wearily. “Let me show you to the conference room.”
They went there, Thomson closing the door behind his visitor. Sitting at a mahogany table, Adam began to read.
Thomson had done the job Benjamin Blaine had paid him for. The document was detailed, precise, and draconian, destroying his mother’s rights with chilling thoroughness. None of this surprised him. Nor, to Adam’s profound unease, did the date-October 11, 1976. Over two years after his father had bought their house.
There’s something else I’d like to be clear about, Adam had told his mother. When you signed the postnup, you believed you’d still inherit from your father.
Yes, she had said brusquely. As I recall, this is the third time you’ve asked that.
And each time Clarice had lied.
Chin propped on balled fist, Adam stared at the table.
I asked Ben, Thomson had told him, why the hell she’d sign a document consigning her to economic serfdom, and why he’d want her to. His response-delivered in his most mordant tone-was that this was personal between husband and wife.
Between February 1974 and October 1976, something had happened.
Standing, Adam returned to Thomson’s office, placing the document on his desk. “Satisfied?” Thomson asked.
“Completely. As I read this, Carla Pacelli has every reason to be grateful for your efforts.”
Thomson considered this with a frown. “An odd thought,” he replied. “Considering that she probably wasn’t born yet.” His frown deepened. “I remember thinking this was a time bomb I devoutly hoped would never go off. Thirty-four years later, it has.”
Troubled, Adam drove home for dinner with the mother and brother who had lied to him, pursued by thoughts of Jenny.
The dinner hour was subdued. Adam had little to say, less he could tell them, and too many questions it was not yet time to ask. The unspoken knowledge he shared with Teddy, withheld from their mother, burdened them both.
At length, she looked from Teddy to Adam. In a sharp tone that hinted at her tension, she said, “What is it with you two?”
Teddy’s belated smile was more a tic. “It’s just hard, Mom. Both of us miss Dad such a lot.”
And maybe you killed him, Adam thought. Then Teddy caught his eye, and Adam understood that there was something his brother wished to say to him alone.
“I wish his death were that amusing,” Clarice rebuked her sons. “You can’t imagine how it feels to begin a family with such hope, then see it deteriorate so horribly, with Ben delivering his final judgment on us all.”
But why? Adam wanted to ask, and could not.
Afterward, the two brothers sat on the porch gazing at the woods and grass, a soft green in twilight. It reminded Adam of their youth, the many days and hours when, chary of their parents, they had taken refuge in each other’s company. But by this time next year the house might be Carla Pacelli’s, and Teddy might be in prison.