JACKS HEARD THE BUZZING from her cell phone, but she let it be. They were on the porch that looked out at the Pacific, enjoying their morning coffee. The kids were playing on the beach with the nanny. The day was just beginning, and Jacks wanted to spend it like the others that had passed. Busy and distracted.
David sat beside her with the paper on his lap. It was his excuse not to talk, though she could tell he hadn’t read a single word, because the page had not been turned for over twenty minutes. Still, he was there, he was present and, as always, playful with the children. He’d gone on the roller coasters at Disneyland, walked through the entire San Diego Zoo, and explored most of Legoland. Yesterday, he’d gone with the big kids for a surf lesson. Jeff the surfer with the lean, tan body and nipple piercings had found them waves and pushed them into shore, and David had crashed over and over, each time getting up with a smile on his face. It was so uncanny, this ability to fake life, that Jacks had begun to believe that he wasn’t faking it at all—that everything was as fine as Kelly seemed to think. The case against him was over and that meeting with the Mafia lawyer was no longer of any consequence. There had been no phone calls, no ominous signs of doom that Jacks had begun to read into everything back home. So now, she had decided to sit back and try like hell to get on the same ride they all seemed to be on.
“I’ll get more coffee,” she said, smiling at her sister, who was watching the kids play. As she got up, she casually grabbed the phone from her purse and slipped inside.
Ducking into the bathroom when she saw the Barlows’ number appear, she called for her messages. It was not like him to call like this, when he knew she was with David, but the voice she heard was not his. It was Rosalyn’s. As she heard the news, she sank to the floor. Cait, the accident, the drugs. She thought about Barlow there, alone with his grief and worry. Rosalyn would be struggling in her own way, but Jacks knew them both too well to think they would find any lasting comfort in each other. This would have to be managed, and that would be Rosalyn’s job. Barlow wouldn’t have a job, and that was precisely why he would be such a mess. That, and the fact that he had been sleeping with his wife’s best friend instead of tending to their daughter.
“We’re all fine. I just wanted you to know so you wouldn’t worry.” Rosalyn’s last words were painful to hear. There was not a chance that she was feeling as stoic as she sounded, but the affair with Barlow would now keep Jacks from reaching out to either of them.
She held the phone in her hands as she sat on the bathroom floor, thinking. Then she got up and headed for the porch. “I’m going for a walk on the beach. Can you watch the kids?”
David looked up and smiled. “Sure, honey. Go for a walk.”
She leaned down and kissed him, catching his eyes as she pulled away. Something was in there, something alive that breathed air and spoke words. But it was not her husband. She was sure of it.
Kelly got up then, grabbing her sunglasses. “I’ll come,” she said.
“Great. You two have fun.”
He was being too nice, too formal. It was eerie, and Jacks could tell that Kelly had sensed it as well. There was no other reason for her to come on the walk. Kelly didn’t like exercise in any form, especially if it meant leaving her coffee behind.
They stopped to tell the nanny, say good-bye to the kids, then they were on their way.
“Was that Barlow?” It was the first thing Kelly said when the house disappeared from sight.
“Rosalyn, actually. Their daughter had an accident.”
Kelly stopped and faced her sister. “Is she . . .”
“She’s fine. Maybe I should I call him?” Jacks pulled out the phone, but Kelly grabbed her arm.
“Wait. Just wait a minute.”
But Jacks didn’t want to wait, she didn’t want to stop or even slow down, for that matter. She needed to tend to one thing at a time, one crisis, one man, one day. And at the moment, that meant deciding what to do about the Barlows.
“Barlow can wait. He knows you’re with your family. Besides, you said Rosalyn called.”
“He’s probably too afraid.”
Kelly held her arm. “Just wait and see. See if he calls you.”
Jacks put the phone away and started to walk again.
Kelly chased after her sister, who was moving fast. “Hold on!” she called.
Stopping suddenly, Jacks could no longer contain the anxiety that had been coming all week.
“Something’s wrong. I know it,” she said, almost pleading with Kelly to see what it was she was missing. Kelly had always been her beacon of reality. Kelly had seen far more.
“Can’t you see how different he is? He’s not himself, Kel. It’s not my husband in that house.”
Kelly sighed and looked out at the ocean. The view was indescribable compared with the decay she saw from every window of her own life. Real or not, she wanted to hold on to it for as long as she could. But Jacks was waiting for an answer.
“Please . . . tell me you see it.”
Kelly closed her eyes, shutting out the surroundings that were tempting her to place reality on hold, even for a few more days.
“I see it,” she said finally. “I see it.”
It was their past that was now captured on David’s face, in the pleasant but vacant expression it held and the absence of a human essence, the demarcations of a personality. He was in hiding within himself, and whether it was a conscious covering up of worry or a sign of a mental break mattered little to Kelly, because both scenarios pointed down the same road.
But it did matter to Jacks. This was her husband. “Tell me what it is, Kel. What has happened to him?”
“I don’t know. I’ve told you everything I can about the investigation. Red is a little piece-of-shit drunk, and he could only do so much. There are no more letters, no more phone calls. Whatever is going on, we’re not going to find it.”
Jacks began to pace, running her hands through her hair, which was blowing wildly in the wind.
“He hasn’t been the same since that day. But nothing has happened. If something happened, I could deal with it. This is like fighting with a ghost,” she said, struggling now to keep her hair out of her face. “I’m really scared this time.”
“Stop it!” Kelly’s face was flushed as she grabbed her sister’s arms. “Just stop it. I won’t be scared with you, do you hear me?”
Jacks looked at her, surprised by her outburst. “It’s getting to you, too, isn’t it? It was one thing when he was just in financial trouble. But this is different, isn’t it? I told you. Something is wrong.”
Kelly closed her eyes again, this time to block out the face of her sister and to try to stop the thoughts that were once again in her mind. But it was not possible. It was all coming back, the past was now here, in the present in spite of everything they had done to keep it at bay. “I can see it, Jacks. I can see Daddy, the way he would disappear like that until he came back and then broke before our eyes. I can see it. Does that make you happy?”
Jacks reached out and grabbed Kelly, squeezing her tight. She had taken on the worst of it, holding their father like he were the child, letting him crawl into bed beside her and hold on to her through the night. Jacks had seen them in the mornings, their father asleep, wrapped up in the fetal position and clinging to a little girl who just lay there quietly and without expression. By the time Kelly finally left, Jacks had learned where to hide, and their father had learned how to drink to numb whatever it was he was feeling. Neither of them had forgotten.
Shaking it all off, Kelly pulled away. “Listen to me, now,” she said. Her voice was unsteady. “You have to get away. Get the money from Barlow, take the kids, and leave.”
Jacks thought about what she was asking. Taking the kids would destroy David.
“What if I can help him? I’m not a little girl anymore. I can get him help. Somewhere inside that man is my husband.”
Kelly was shaking her head, her face determined as though she had just made a decision that would alter her forever. “I’ve been so selfish. I should have told you to leave that first day you came to my house with those letters. I didn’t want it to end, I wanted the school for my kids and these trips together, and everything we’ve had all these years. I’m so sorry, Jacks. I should have told you then. I knew. . . .” She was off now, traveling down some oneway road, the only road she could see in the future.
But Jacks was not giving up. “Kelly, I can help him! Didn’t you hear me?”
“No. Don’t say that. Don’t say you can help him. You can’t. No one can.”
They stood there, side by side, staring at each other as though they were the only two people in the world.
“I can help him,” Jacks said again, and Kelly could see that she believed it. But there had been a time when she had believed things as well.
“You can’t. And you have three daughters in that house.”
Jacks had no response that would satisfy her sister. She would never abandon her girls with a sick man the way their mother had. Still, there were enough parallels.
The phone began to buzz again in Jacks’s pocket. She pulled it out and checked the number calling. Then she looked up at Kelly.
“It’s Barlow. What should I do?”
Kelly didn’t hesitate. “Answer it.”