Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

Teddy swallowed. “His eyes seemed to focus, like he’d never seen me before. Then he sort of croaked, ‘I’ll change things, Teddy. At least those things I still can help.’”

“The will?”

“Maybe,” Teddy answered. “But I didn’t know about that, and I’m sure Mom didn’t either. So what I imagined him saying was that maybe he wouldn’t leave her.

“Suddenly, I felt exhausted-not only by what happened between us, but by being in that place. Without saying another word, I left him there. I never saw my father again.” Teddy looked at Adam intently, finishing with lacerating bitterness, “For all I know, he jumped or fell. Whatever happened, the sonofabitch fucked me one more time. Instead of fixing the will, he made me the prime suspect in a murder I could only fantasize about.”

For a moment, Adam struggled to distance himself from Teddy’s story, and his desire to believe it. Finally, he asked, “Why did you call your ex-friend?”

“Jesus, Adam-wouldn’t you call someone after an experience like that? Or would you just pour yourself a drink and switch on the Red Sox game?”

“I really don’t know. But I might have told Sean Mallory what you just told me, instead of framing myself for murder. Assuming, of course, that anything you’ve told me is true.”

A moment’s anger flickered through Teddy’s eyes, and then he looked away. “You’ve met Mallory,” he said in a dispirited tone. “I took one look at him and knew he wouldn’t believe me. All I’d do is get myself and Mom in trouble.”

“Instead of just yourself,” Adam rejoined. “But now you’re right to protect her, I suppose, given what you say she doesn’t know. A sudden recollection of her phone call might not help either one of you.”

Looking up, Teddy met his brother’s gaze. “Do you believe me, Adam?”

Adam weighed his answer. Too much of Teddy’s story was implausible. But it had the virtue, at least, of accounting for the evidence Adam had siphoned to his lawyer-suggesting its essential truth, or, more likely, his brother’s considerable ingenuity. A jury might not-probably would not-believe him. But Adam could not bring himself to reject the story outright. Then it struck him that if Teddy’s account was true, and Ben had resolved to revise his will yet again, Carla Pacelli might have had reason to kill him. But this assumed that Carla had come to the promontory, and that Ben had told her. An assumption that, as of now, was as unprovable as the other indispensable assumption: that Carla had known about her inheritance.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Adam said at length. “Your story covers the evidence as I know it-except for the button. Tell me how that came off his shirt.”

“I have no idea,” Teddy insisted. “I never touched his shirt. For all I know the button was already missing.”

Adam considered this. The button had not been missing; Adam had found it at the scene, and the hair on Ben’s shirt suggested closer contact than Teddy admitted. But if his brother were telling the truth, then someone else-perhaps Nathan Wright’s elusive figure-had ripped the button off. And only Adam knew that.

Watching his face, Teddy said, “You don’t believe me, do you? I’m pretty sure my lawyer doesn’t either. I guess that’s what happens when he gives you a lie detector test and it comes out inconclusive. All I could tell him is that my fantasy was so strong that sometimes I feel like I killed him. Doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it?”

Adam did not answer. “Just keep our mother out of this,” he instructed. “Including what I know about her not-so-small lapse of memory. At least until I figure out what else to do.”

Teddy stared at him. “You sent my lawyer those documents, didn’t you?”

Adam stood. Then he smiled a little, placing a hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “What documents?” he replied, then returned to their mother’s house, his expression as he said good night to her placid and untroubled.

On the way upstairs, Adam paused in the dining room, placing a hand on the Herreshoff Cup. The name Blaine was now engraved on it ten times, with the year of triumph beside it, the last victory occurring the summer before his father’s death. Now, perhaps like the house itself, someone else would claim it. But on the long-ago night Jenny Leigh had come to dinner, the cup was on this table, Ben’s prize from the previous year, the only question which Blaine-father or son-would claim it at summer’s end.

That night, however, Adam had other worries, principally about his mother. The evening before, with his father out, he had found her on the porch. The bottle of Chassagne-Montrachet at her side was almost empty. Adam understood that, at times, his mother would dull some unspoken worry with an extra glass of wine, drifting into a space where she seemed untouchable. At these times, she spoke sparingly, careful to conceal whatever troubled thoughts were roiling beneath the genteel veneer. But tonight, she seemed almost stupefied, and her belated greeting to Adam was delivered in a slurry voice he had never heard before. This slippage, startling in a woman so self-controlled, had caused Adam to sit beside her, though tact kept him from asking questions.

Finally, she said in a low voice, “You’re a kind person, Adam. Not like Ben at all.”

To someone accustomed to hearing how much he resembled his father, this remark was troubling. Trying to delve its cause, Adam inquired, “Are you angry at him about something?”

Clarice inclined her head and propped her chin with one hand, the posture of inebriation or despair. “More angry at me,” she said haltingly. “So many compromises, so much hurt.”

Adam leaned close to her. “Maybe to you, Mom. You haven’t hurt anyone else.”

“Haven’t I?” She peered out, as though the answers existed somewhere in space. “I’ve certainly hurt myself. I only wish I could confine the damage.”

Adam waited for a moment. “Is this about Teddy?”

“Teddy?” Her laugh, though quiet, startled him. “You would think that. I wish it were so simple.”

Surely this was about his father, Adam thought, perhaps another woman. But he had not seen the restless, predatory look that suggested Ben was on the hunt, or the complacent air that went with some new conquest-this summer, Benjamin Blaine’s ego seemed preoccupied with besting his younger son in sailing. Watching Clarice in profile, Adam had the tantalizing, disturbing sense that he was closer to penetrating the inner life she tried so hard to mask. Gently, he said, “Talk to me, please. You’re the most loving mother on the planet, but I’m not always sure I know you.”

A mist appeared in her eyes. “Then I’ve succeeded, haven’t I? Who really wants to know their parents? And what ‘loving mother’ would inflict that on her children?” She faced him, her need to restore self-discipline showing in the tightness of her jawline. “I’m sorry to be so delphic. As you can see, I’m drunk, babbling about nothing. I’ll behave myself for Jenny.”

To Adam, the last phrase was freighted with meaning-not about dinner with Adam’s girlfriend, but as the credo for his mother’s life. In seconds the wall between Clarice and the world had reappeared. “Go on,” she said in a brittle voice. “I’m sure she’s waiting for you, as I once waited for him. I’m fine here by myself and fine tomorrow night.”

There was nothing he could do. Touching her hand, he left, trailed by the shattering sense of a long-ago psychic explosion, its damage concealed by a shell.

Ten years later, with his mother facing ruin, the memory seemed oddly prescient. But now, as then, its deeper meaning eluded him. And on the night Jenny had come for dinner, his father and mother were the parents he wished for.