CHAPTER

thirty-one

My toe caught on a riser near the bottom of the flight. I fell hard, then scrambled to my feet, hands stinging, and raced through beach grass onto the harsh-grained sand. My central nervous system ignited; badly wired impulses blinked on and off like tiny neon signs in a crazed video arcade. The clanging pulse of terror shrieked through my veins and demanded escape, but the faster my legs pumped, the slower my progress seemed and the more I flailed in the deepening sand. My knotted sneakers swung from my shoulder, pounding my chest and back with each propulsive step. Panic seized me, and none of my remedies were at hand. My Xanax was locked with my purse in the trunk of the car, along with my recorder and notebook. In my apartment, I’d have grabbed a paper bag from the drawer next to the sink, sunk to the floor, breathed into the bag. Here, the unfamiliar landscape, the terrible immensity of ocean, belonged to an alien planet that offered no relief.

Ten minutes, ten minutes, ten, ten, ten. The number became a refrain. Ten, ten, ten. Panic attacks last only ten minutes, most of them, but this one, I knew, I knew, I knew, was timeless, this one would be the last, the one that killed me, the one that drove me howling into the sea. I glanced behind me, slipped, and almost stumbled to my knees. Yes, I’d remembered to shut the beach shack’s door. I’d left Pierce uncovered, but it was better that way. How shaming to wake tucked in like a drooling infant, to realize an unknown hand had covered your nakedness.

Clouds formed a layer over the sea, the sky darkened eerily, and I ran. It was like a scene in a horror movie; there should have been cameras arranged along the shoreline, a production assistant shouting the number of the take. I felt nauseated, dizzy, I couldn’t swallow or breathe, and still I ran, ran as though old Hamlet’s Ghost snapped at my heels, demanding that I swear, swear, swear my promise of revenge.

“O villain, villain, smiling damned villain.” But wait: Couldn’t Pierce be the villain of the piece instead of Malcolm? Why trust the word of an alcoholic? Maybe you hadn’t interviewed Pierce after all; maybe there was no missing tape. Malcolm would still be a liar, yes, for not telling me that Pierce had taken up residence at the beach shack. But the omission could have been Pierce’s idea, to keep secret his presence on the Cape. Malcolm might simply have kept his word to a guest. If I could believe that …

Maybe Pierce was at the shack as part of a detox program, here to kick his alcohol demon. Malcolm could be aiding a friend rather than trying to dupe me out of an interview. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust me. It wasn’t that he was treating me with less respect than he’d treated you.

If Malcolm had invited you for a drink, you’d have accepted, no doubt about it. How bitterly I regretted my decision to refuse. Which foster mother had dictated the terms of my hasty retreat? The one who foretold I’d never be pretty enough to date, much less wed a man?

On ran my thoughts till they came up against Hamlet’s dilemma: Was the Ghost a heavenly messenger sent to tell the truth, or a deceitful vision from hell? How do you interpret the evidence of your own eyes? Fact: Brooklyn Pierce lay drunk on the floor of the beach shack. Everything else was speculation. Except the manuscript, the new Ben Justice screenplay. Was that the secret of the tape, Teddy? Was that the revelation Pierce wanted to retract?

How far, how far, had I run? Should I turn away from the shore, strike across the dunes, up and over the gentle hills? Spiders crawled through my veins, numbing my legs. Where was the barn, the parking lot, the car?

“What in hell do you think you’re doing?”

The voice came from behind me, but at first I didn’t know if it was inside my head or outside it, real or imaginary, separate from or part of my terror.

“I said you could interview me, not spy on me. Where the hell have you been? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

With no breath I couldn’t form any words, let alone the right ones.

Garrett Malcolm looked as full of wrath as any angry stepfather. I wanted to warn him—that Brooklyn Pierce was lying on the floor, drunk and vulnerable, that a man named Glenn McKenna had a nasty habit of photographing Brooklyn’s refuge—but my tongue was a dead, twisted stump that had withered in my mouth.

“What are you holding? What have you got there?”

Not till he asked did I realize I had tucked the new Ben Justice manuscript under my arm, carried it away from the shack like a prize. In an instant, I felt my skin go clammy and cold. I would be accused of stealing. I hadn’t stolen it, not really, not intentionally. I’d only wanted to keep it safe. Really I hadn’t thought. I didn’t know. I couldn’t speak.

“Give it to me.”

My arms were pegs glued to the sides of a wooden statue. I tried to move them, to give the towering, raging man what he wanted, whatever he wanted. He grabbed at me, at the manuscript, and I heard it, felt it rip, saw the pages spew onto the ground, scatter with the wind.

He swore at me. He stormed. Words were at the center of the cyclone, dimly heard and slowly perceived, heard as if from a great distance, and they said I was incompetent and a fool. They said the project was over, cancelled, that this was the end of the line.