Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

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 will: 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.

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.”

His father’s smile was tighter. “Live and learn,” he replied, and filled their tumblers again. Raising his glass, he said, “To fathers and sons.”

“And mothers and brothers and uncles,” Adam parried. “The kinder, gentler Blaines.” But he had already begun matching his father drink for drink.

By the end of a rich dinner-with the fifth half-gone, the Meursault consumed-Adam vaguely perceived that Ben might have preempted their competition with a contest he could not win. “Have some Calvados,” Ben prompted. “It’ll cut through all this food.”

His voice seemed to come from some great distance. Rashly, defiantly, Adam said, “Pour away.”

He could not remember the ride home. As he climbed the stairs, he heard his father say, “Good night, son,” the trace of a chuckle in his voice. Adam’s first stark moment of clarity was spent vomiting into the toilet. He imagined his father laughing in the darkness.

The next morning, Adam’s temples throbbed. He rose unsteadily, dressed with clumsy fingers, and sat drinking black coffee at the dining room table, transfixed by the Herreshoff Cup. Ambling in from breakfast on the porch, Ben gave him a small, appraising smile. “Ready for our race?”

Unable to look at him, Adam shrugged. Then he forced himself to put on shorts and tennis shoes, and ran ten miles along South Road to sweat the poisons out. Returning home, he took a cold shower and dressed for the race, refusing Ben’s offer of a ride.

Driving to Menemsha, Adam smiled grimly to himself. He had let Ben seize the advantage, a costly and stupid error. But there was one thing about their final contest his father did not yet know.

When Adam sailed out onto the pond, Jack was already in the boat he had borrowed from Charlie Glazer.

Together, uncle and nephew ran wind shots in Folie a Un and Sisyphus, repeatedly turning their bows to gauge patterns of gusts and breezes. Today the wind was tricky, shifting as much as 25 degrees from south to southeast and back again. To seize the advantage from Ben, Adam must anticipate the timing of each shift, tacking into a wind that propelled him toward the next marker. Gliding across his stern, Jack called out, “Which side of the course?”