Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

He was exhausted by how far he had come, Adam realized, and not just in miles. When he stood, so did Teddy. As the brothers embraced, Teddy murmured, “I love you, Adam. Always did, always will.”

Adam hugged him for an extra moment. “Me too.”

Releasing his brother, Adam left. As he crossed the lawn, he saw that their mother had left the light on in his old room, a rectangle of yellow in the darkness.

Lugging his suitcase, Adam climbed the stairs, floorboards creaking under his weight.

His room was intact, a museum of the past, as though he had never left. High school trophies, a certificate acknowledging him as valedictorian of his class. A Yale coffee mug filled with pens. A family photo, four people smiling into the camera, Ben with his canine grin, Teddy standing a little separate from the others. A photograph of Ben and a marlin that the college-age Adam had labeled “Hemingway Lite.” A picture of Jenny Leigh.

The remnants of another life, Adam thought, everything but Miss Havisham’s wedding cake. Then he remembered that it was his father who, when Adam was not yet ten, had patiently read Great Expectations aloud to him from start to finish. There was something magical, he had discovered, about hearing Dickens’s words in his father’s rich baritone voice.

You broke my heart, you bastard.

For a moment Adam sat on his bed caught in the vortex of memory. Then he began to unpack, filling the old chest of drawers with the clothes of a much older man. When he took out the last shirt, all that remained in the suitcase was his handgun.

He did not know why he had packed the Luger. Habit, he supposed; the last six months had made him jumpy, no matter where he was, even more watchful and untrusting than before. One week ago, this gun had saved his life, or he would have died on the same day as his father. Now he concealed it under two pairs of slacks.

Turning out the light, he crawled between fresh-smelling sheets that his mother must have laundered for him. But his surroundings, at once familiar and strange, did not allow for sleep. Reviewing what his mother, uncle, and brother had told him, he wondered how much to believe.

At last, his mind weary, he drifted into the restless sleep that had become all that he could manage.

But the nightmare caught him, even here. He started awake, forehead damp, reaching for his gun before he realized where he was. Much of the dream was as before-though he could see himself, his body lay by the road, eviscerated by an IED. But this time his corpse had the graying hair of Benjamin Blaine the last time Adam had seen him.

The next morning, as was the family custom, Adam drove to Alley’s General Store to buy the New York Times. The headlines were grim-the Taliban had ambushed and killed seven American soldiers in Helmand Province, and the Afghan government had descended into factional squabbling that, to Adam’s jaundiced eye, reflected the corruption of all. It made the death of young Americans that much harder to accept.

Returning home, Adam passed the cemetery at Abel’s Hill. Inevitably, his gaze was drawn to his father’s grave, lit by shafts of morning sunlight, the grass around it a deepening green. Beside it, the solitary figure of a woman in a simple black dress bent to place flowers on his grave. Adam pulled over to the side of the road and got out, walking among the tombstones to reach the place where, only yesterday, his family had buried Benjamin Blaine.

The headstone was engraved BENJAMIN BLAINE, 1945–2011. HUSBAND OF CLARICE, FATHER OF EDWARD AND ADAM, Beneath this were the words Ben once had spoken in an interview: “I WROTE THE TRUTH AS I SAW IT.” Kneeling, the woman quietly recited a prayer; though she must have heard Adam behind her, she gave no sign of this. Finally, she crossed herself and, rising, turned to face him.

Tall and slender, she looked a touch older than her age, which he put at thirty-two. On television she had been striking and exotic, an Italian-American brunette with dark, intense eyes and a vitality that made her all the more memorable. Now she had the tempered beauty of a survivor. In the last photograph Adam remembered of her, taken after her arrest, her eyes were clouded by drugs and filled with shame and confusion. But the eyes that regarded him now were clear and flecked with sadness. The faint smile at one corner of her mouth did not change them.

“You could only be Adam.” Her voice was as he recalled it, smoky, with a trace of Mediterranean intensity. “Now I know how your father must have looked at your age.”

She took it for granted that he knew who she was. The strangeness of the moment left him briefly silent. Then he said, “And you’re Carla Pacelli. Or used to be.”

The veiled insult did not change her expression. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. But the only service I could hold for him is private.”

Instinctively, Adam looked toward the road. Near his car he saw a Jeep, then a woman he took to be Amanda Ferris with a photographer whose telescopic lens glinted in the sun. Facing Pacelli, Adam said, “Not too private. I think you and I just made the National Enquirer.”

Briefly, Pacelli shut her eyes. “I’m used to this,” she said wearily, “and it’s way too late to care. But I didn’t mean to inflict them on you or your family.”

Adam dismissed this. Perhaps she had staged her touching graveyard visit to cast herself as a woman in mourning. She was, after all, a performer, no doubt conscious that an image, if artfully created, could conceal avarice and calculation. Adam’s reality was this-she had been his father’s lover and the chief beneficiary of his will, heedless of the damage she inflicted on Clarice Blaine. At length, Adam said, “You were far from his only woman-just the one in the girlfriend chair when the music stopped. All I care about is what you’ve taken from my mother.”

A moment’s anger flashed in Pacelli’s eyes, then died there. In the same even tone, she said, “Then there are a few things I should say to you, as clearly as I can. Whatever you choose to think, I loved your father. Except for consideration and respect, I didn’t expect much in return. Nor did I ask for anything. I didn’t know about the will, or request him to change the one he had. From time to time, he helped me with expenses, but that was all. I’d far prefer that Ben were still alive.”

This was the defense that Adam expected, stated with the quiet command of an actress. In his estimation, Carla Pacelli had been a good one-whether feigned or real, grief was written on her face. “Nonetheless,” Adam said, “his demise has worked out nicely for you.”

She gave him a long, cool look. “Then I should be happy, shouldn’t I. Do I seem it to you?”

Adam met her eyes. “No,” he answered. “But your business is appearance, not reality, and good taste requires the appearance of sadness. I am curious, though, about the last time you saw him alive.”

Pacelli looked at him with the same directness. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this conversation. You buried him yesterday; I buried him just now. That’s hard for me. But if we’re going to talk, would you mind sitting down? I haven’t slept much lately.”

With mock gallantry, Adam gestured at a swatch of grass beside his father’s tombstone. After a moment, Pacelli sat, Adam beside her. When he looked toward the road again, the reporter and photographer were watching. Facing Pacelli, Adam asked, “Did you see him on the night he died?”

“No,” she answered. “The last time I saw him was that afternoon.”

“What did you talk about?”

She turned to him. “I’m sorry, but that’s personal to me. As is everything that happened that day.”

“But you told the police. I’m sure.”