John Saul: The Manhattan Hunt Club

Don't you even care what happens to Jeff ? the look would say as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud.

It wouldn't do any good to try to tell her how much he cared about their son. She'd made up her mind, and he had given up trying to argue with her months ago.

"It's God's will," she'd sighed when he first told her that Jeff had been arrested.

God's will.

Keith no longer knew how many times he'd heard that phrase in the last few years. It had become Mary's rationale for refusing to discuss every problem that came up between them.

He knew its origin, knew as well as she did where it had started. After all, they'd both gone to St. Mary's School, both grown up dutifully going to mass every Sunday at St. Barnabas Church.

When they were young, Mary had seemed just as relaxed about the Church as he was. But that began to change after the first night they made love, when Jeff was conceived. A thick blanket of Catholic guilt had fallen over Mary the moment she found out she was pregnant.

Keith assumed it would ease off as soon as they got married, and he'd seen to it that they did so right away. Eight months later, when Jeff was born, they told everyone he was premature, and since he'd been a small baby anyway, everyone accepted the lie.

Except Mary.

When she was withdrawn after Jeff was born, Keith hadn't been concerned. He thought it was because she was busy with the baby. But then Jeff was a toddler, and her withdrawn attitude only got worse. By the time Jeff was in school, they were making love no more than once a month, if you could even call it making love. Then it was more like once a year, and when Jeff was in high school, Keith had almost forgotten what sleeping with Mary was like. Still, in other ways she'd been a good wife to him. She'd kept their house immaculate, and taken good care of all of them. Yet every year, she seemed to withdraw even further into herself, spending more and more time praying.

And every time something bad happened, she said it was God's will.

Said they were being punished for having sinned.

That had hurt-hurt a lot. It was like saying they shouldn't have had Jeff.

Keith had wondered if he should have insisted they go to some kind of counseling. But the one time he suggested it, the only person Mary had been willing to talk to was their priest, and Keith hadn't seen how that would help. So he'd kept silent, concentrated on building up his contracting business, and hoped things would get better. When Jeff went off to college, Mary announced that she was leaving him.

"It's God's will," she'd told him. "We committed a terrible sin, but I've done my penance and God has forgiven me."

As usual, there hadn't been any discussion. Keith knew he might be able to argue with his suppliers, his subcontractors, and his customers, but he couldn't argue with Mary.

He couldn't argue with God's will.

So she moved out, and he rattled around in the little house in Bridgehampton that suddenly seemed way too big and way too empty, and tried to get used to having both his son and his wife gone.

It wasn't easy, but he got through it. Since Jeff had been arrested, though, it had gotten much worse.

When Jeff had first called him, Keith was certain it had to be a terrible mistake. Jeff had been a good kid-never even gotten into the kind of trouble most kids did. And then they'd arrested him, and charged him with things Keith knew his son couldn't possibly have done.

All through the fall, Keith's faith in Jeff had never wavered, even as he and Mary listened to the victim's testimony. He would pick Mary up and they'd go to the trial together. Keith knew the woman had to be mistaken, even though she sounded absolutely certain about what had happened.

Even though the victim pointed to Jeff in the courtroom and said, "That's the man who attacked me. I'll never forget that face as long as I live."

When the jury convicted Jeff, Keith had still been certain it was a mistake. He'd been sure it would be all right-the case would be appealed and Jeff would be released, and they would all go on with their lives.

But Jeff hadn't been released.

And Keith, despite himself, had started blaming Mary for what had happened.

Now, as the traffic on the Long Island Expressway came to a complete halt, he glanced at her.

"We're going to be late."

Mary sighed. "I suppose that's my fault, too."

Keith's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "I didn't say it was your fault. Why do you have to take everything so personal?"

"Personally," Mary corrected.

Don't say anything , Keith told himself. It won't matter if we're late anyway. It won't change anything . But it would matter to Jeff. "I should've come in last night," he muttered. "I should have been there all along."

Mary Converse saw no point in responding to her husband's words. Indeed, she was weary of trying to talk to Keith at all. If he only had the same strength that she had-

She cut her thought short, knowing that Keith didn't share her faith, and never would. At first, like Keith, she assumed that her son was innocent, too. But since then, she'd come to grips with what had happened to Jeff. For a while she'd blamed herself, believing that if she and Keith hadn't sinned all those years ago, none of this would have happened.

Jeff wouldn't have gotten himself into trouble.

After he'd been convicted, she felt so guilty, she almost wished she could just die. But she'd talked it over with Father Noonan, who had explained that she wasn't responsible for anything Jeff had done, and that her role now was to let Jeff know she forgave him.

Forgave him, and loved him, just as God forgave and loved him.

In her faith, she'd been able to find peace and acceptance.

Keith, however, kept right on denying Jeff's guilt, insisting it had to be a mistake, utterly refusing to accept that all things are God's will. Deep in her heart, Mary knew better: Jeff had been conceived in sin, his soul corrupted from the very moment she had been weak enough to give in to Keith Converse's basest desires. The sins of the father were now being visited upon the son, and there was nothing she could do but accept it and pray-not only for her own soul, but for Jeff's as well.

Now, as the traffic jam evaporated as suddenly as it had started and they headed west on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Mary's fingers began to move over the beads of her rosary as she once more began to pray.

God's will be done , she silently prayed. God's will be done …

For Jeff Converse, mornings had taken on a terrible sameness. Each dawn that had broken over the last several months had brought with it a fleeting hope that he was finally awakening from the terrible nightmare his life had become. But as the comforting fingers of sleep released him from their touch, the hope that he was waking up from a bad dream always slipped away. The knot of fear that formed in his stomach when he'd been arrested pulled steadily tighter as he pondered the horrors the new day might bring.

At first he'd assumed it would be over within a few minutes- maybe an hour or two at the outside. As they locked him in the cell in the detectives' squad room at the police station on West One hundredth Street, he'd looked around with more curiosity than fear. After all, what had happened to him was obviously a mistake.

All he'd been trying to do was help the woman in the subway.

He had barely seen her at first-he'd been starting up the stairs from the platform when he heard something that made him pause.

If he'd just ignored it and kept going, if he'd paid no more attention to the muffled scream than he did to the car alarms that were always going off on the streets, he'd have been fine.