he full force of the danger to my brother and his family hit me when I was alone with Stephen at the end of the evening. Delia had chased the children off to bed and we were sitting in the study. Unlike Clara and Alden, who had a whole town house, we rented a single floor and a basement kitchen on a side street in Hyde Park.
“You didn’t tell Clara about Kathlyn Williams?” Stephen asked.
“I couldn’t, I can’t believe it myself. How could I tell her? You don’t believe it, do you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t seen Alden much this past year.”
“He couldn’t be that cruel to Clara. And what about Penny and Ollie?”
Stephen frowned. “It certainly is unfortunate, if it’s true.”
“Unfortunate? It’s a catastrophe. If he’s done this, Clara should throw him out. I’m just glad our mother’s not here to see this. Stephen, what are we going to do? What if he really did this?”
“What, became involved with an actress, or shot a man?”
“Why would he murder that man?”
“If you don’t believe he’d do such a thing, do you believe he’d betray his wife?”
“I don’t know what to believe. He’s always been unpredictable, even unreliable, but this?”
“Emily, what will Whitbread do?”
I looked at Stephen sitting back in the worn armchair where he usually spent late evenings reading. His eyes were in shadow and I thought he looked tired. Even more than me, he needed the refreshing summer breezes of Cape Cod. I felt a knot tightening in my throat. “Whitbread won’t stop until he gets at the truth of what happened,” I said.
“What if he finds out that Alden did shoot the man?”
“In a fit of rage? In a careless act of anger?” I asked. I remem-bered Alden as a child grabbing a doll from our sister, Rose. As he ran away, he swung it carelessly, smashing it against a door and breaking off a chunk of its porcelain head. Rose was devastated. He did it to retaliate when she told a lie about him, but he never meant to destroy her doll. He only wanted some kind of revenge. Sorry and ashamed, he came to me, desperate for help in making it right with her. I don’t think she ever forgave him. It was his recklessness that I found myself afraid of.
“What if Whitbread proves he did it?” Stephen asked, again. “What if it was self-defense? Or to protect someone else? I could see Alden doing that.”
“Whitbread wouldn’t let it go,” I said, shaking my head. “No matter the excuse, he wouldn’t let it go.”
“I thought that. But what will you do then?”
I hated to admit that Alden might be guilty and that Whitbread would find a way to prove it. I bit my lip.
Stephen looked sad. “He’s your brother, Emily. No matter how angry you may be with him, he’s still your brother. I know you. I know you’ll try to defend him. But what if he is guilty? He’s not your child, Emily. He’s your brother, but he’s not your child.”
What if it was Jack? Or, more likely, Tommy? I was staring into space, thinking hard about this. Alden was not my child that I needed to protect. He was my brother, but he was a grown man. He had to be responsible for his own actions. I knew if our mother was still alive, she’d want to defend him. I felt as if I were at the edge of a sand dune watching the earth swirling away at my feet, each second moving closer to the moment when I would be caught and pulled down. I couldn’t act but I had to.
I felt Stephen’s hand on my shoulder. It slid to my neck and he gently raised my chin so that I would look in his eyes. He looked sorry. “Emily, maybe it would be best if we left for Woods Hole and let Whitbread deal with this.”
Tears blurred my eyes. I took a big breath and straightened my shoulders. “No. I can’t leave him. You and Clara should go. Take the children. I have to see this through, however it ends.”