Keith Ablow - Compulsion

I wish this marriage had never happened. I am bound to it by my worst qualities-fear, dependency and-pathetic as it is to admit-attachment to material things. To complicate matters further, there are the twins. Darwin is still enraged about them.

Since the day I first saw you, you have sustained me. I think constantly of our time together. What I need now is the courage to leave everything else behind, no matter how much suffering that causes in the short term. Ending everything can't be worse than what we have already lived through.

I cry every day, don't sleep, hardly eat, and often lack the will to go on…

Except when I think of seeing you. Which is enough to give me hope, for now.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life's end.

– Julia June 20, 2002

My heart was racing. A wave of nausea overshadowed the pain in my back. The most optimistic reading of the letter was that Julia had another lover. The more sober reading was that she had grown desperate enough to strike out at the twins. The last line of the letter, "Here at life's end," struck a particularly ominous note. I handed the sheet of paper to Anderson.

Anderson 's jaws worked against each other as he read. His eyes ran up and down the page a few times. Then he folded the letter back into thirds and slipped it into his shirt pocket. "What do you make of it?" he asked Claire.

"I don't know what to think," she said. "I was shocked."

"Having read it, do you think Julia attacked the twins?" he pressed. "You think she killed Brooke?"

"I can't believe she would," Claire said, "but with her depression and, now, this… I'm not sure of anything anymore."

Anderson glanced at me, then looked back at Claire. "I'll ask you again: Are you holding back any information? Did you see something important the night of Brooke's death or Tess's poisoning?"

"No," she said, rather unconvincingly.

"Okay, then," Anderson said. His cell phone began to ring, but he ignored it. "What about your relationship with Darwin Bishop? Do you feel that contributes to Julia's depression? Or don't you think she even knows what's going on?"

I looked at Anderson, unsure where he was headed.

"I don't know what you mean," Claire said. "I'm close to both the Bishops."

"Let's level with one another, Claire," Anderson said.

She squinted and shook her head as if she had no idea what he might be getting at.

"I'm talking about your romantic relationship with Darwin Bishop," he said. "The suites you've shared abroad. The expensive wine. All that."

Her face flushed. She stood up. "I think you should leave," she said. She looked at me as if I had betrayed her. "Both of you."

Anderson stayed seated. "We're not in the business of screwing up anyone's life," he said. "The secret stays with us. One interview with Garret, and we're on our way. That's all we have on our agenda."

Now I realized what he was up to. He was pushing Claire to get us face time with Garret.

Claire looked like she was barely keeping control of her anger.

I wasn't sure whether we'd get our interview with Garret or get thrown out. "You can count on us not to leak any of this to the press," I encouraged her, nodding toward Wauwinet Road. I let the veiled threat sink in a moment. "They're lined up for half a mile out there. We should just talk with Garret and be on our way."

A few seconds passed before Claire responded. "I'll tell him you're coming up to his room to see him," she said finally. "Then, I'll trust you to leave."

Anderson waited until she was gone. "With John McBride, Attorney-at-Law, on retainer and Captain O'Donnell taking over," he explained, "we may not get another shot at Garret. I think it's time to shake things up a little bit, anyhow. See if anything falls out."

I nodded, then pointed toward Julia's letter in Anderson 's pocket. "That doesn't read so good," I said. I pictured Julia seated at Tess's bedside. All of a sudden, I wished Caroline Hallissey hadn't decided to discontinue the one-to-one sitter.

"I warned you," Anderson said.

"I know," I admitted. "I should have listened."

"It's hard to hear anything but violins around a woman like that," he said. "Don't beat yourself up over it."

Claire came back and walked us to the door to Garret's room, then turned around and left again without a word. Garret was hunched over a desk covered with books, writing on a pad of white, lined paper. The walls of the room were floor-to-ceiling bookcases, overfilled with titles.

Unlike the uncreased, unread volumes in his father's study, Garret's were well worn. There were dog-eared classics by philosophers from Plato to Kerouac, scientific texts by Albert Einstein and James Watson, volumes of poetry by Eliot and Yeats, religious works by the Dalai Lama and William James and St. Thomas Aquinas. The room had none of the trappings of a seventeen-year-old boy. No model of a Porsche or Corvette could be found on any of the shelves. No poster of any teen sex goddess hung over the bed. There was no phone. And the room contained absolutely nothing to do with sports-including tennis.

"Garret," I said from the door, "It's Dr. Clevenger. I'm here with Captain Anderson."

He kept writing.

"Garret?" I said. I took a few tentative steps into the room. I felt almost dizzy from a potent cocktail of physical and emotional pain. Part of me wanted to rush back to Boston, to Julia, to get at the truth.

Garret's hand stopped moving across the paper. "Jesus. Have some respect," he said. "Did I say you could come in here?"

I backed up one step. "We won't take a lot of your time," I said.

He let out a heavy sigh and spun around in his desk chair. "What do you want?"

"Just to talk," I said.

"So, talk," he said.

I wanted to lighten the mood. "Nice collection, by the way," I said, motioning toward the walls of books.

He ignored the compliment. "If this looks like it might go long, we should move it somewhere else," he said. "I'm only allowed to stay in here two hours a day. I don't want to waste it."

"What do you mean, you're only allowed to stay in here two hours?" Anderson said. "This is your room, isn't it?"

" Darwin 's worried I'll become a recluse, a bookworm, maybe a fag," he said, sounding half-bitter, half-amused. "Even worse, I might start 'thinking too much,' as he puts it. Much better to swat a fuzzy ball back and forth over a net or ride a horse within an inch of its life, swinging a long stick."

"I take it you're no fan of polo," I said.

"Not much, lately. I used to like watching this one horse. Her name was Brandy," he said. "She was special."

"In what way?" I said.

"Her coat was unbelievable-kind of a cinnamon brown, very soft to the touch. Every muscle on her was perfectly cut. When she ran, it was like poetry. And she was sweet. She'd walk right up to me whenever I came around the stables, look at me with these big, brown eyes, almost as if she knew we were in the same tough spot."

"What spot is that?" Anderson said.

"Being ridden by Darwin," Garret said.

Garret sounded more human and vulnerable than he had the other two times we had met. "Is Brandy still around?" I asked him.

"Glued, dude." He winked. The hard edge had come back into his voice.

"She died?" Anderson said.

"She stopped winning. Then she disappeared." Garret shrugged. "It's all very Darwinian. Survival of the fittest."

He looked at me. "Are you all right?" he said. "You look like death yourself."

The muscles in my back had tightened, and I was trying to stay on my feet. "I'm fine," I managed. "Sprained muscles." I paused, shifted gears. "Captain Anderson and I are here because I haven't had the chance to speak with you since I saw you at the tennis club," I said. "That was the day before Tess was rushed to the hospital."