TWO

Taut, Adam waited for George Hanley’s next question.

With an air of casual interest, the prosecutor asked, “Did you know that your brother had executed a new will, leaving almost everything to Carla Pacelli?”

Jack folded his hands in front of him. “I did not.”

That much was true, Adam understood—Jack had believed that a new will was a threat, not an existing fact. Had Jack known the truth, Benjamin Blaine might still be alive. But Hanley raised his eyebrows. “Then for what reason,” he inquired, “did you go looking for your brother?”

Jack seemed to steel himself, as though against the distasteful necessity of revealing family intimacies. “Clarice had called me, obviously upset. Ben had been drinking, she said—not an unusual event. Even so, it seemed that he had been unusually abusive.”

“Was Mrs. Blaine more specific?”

“She was too distraught to be entirely coherent. But as I understood her, he was flaunting his relationship with Carla Pacelli—taunting her with it, in fact. I’m very fond of my sister-in-law, always have been. I thought Ben had subjected her to enough.”

Sitting beside Adam, his mother bowed her head, a silent portrait of gratitude and shame. “In Mrs. Blaine’s account,” Hanley asked, “had her husband mentioned that Ms. Pacelli was pregnant with his child?”

Jack shook his head. “No. But Clarice’s humiliation—public and private—had gone on long enough. I knew my brother too well to truly believe that I’d persuade him. Still I could damned well try.”

Delivering this answer, in Adam’s mind Jack evoked James Stewart in a classic movie from the 1940s—a decent man befuddled by circumstance, but resolved to wage an uphill fight for goodness. With willed detachment, Adam replayed Jack’s lies in his head, listening for what another man would have taken for sincerity. In this moment, Jack was too good at it for comfort.

Perhaps sensing this, Hanley paused. “Why don’t you just tell me, in your own words, what happened that night.”

An open-ended question, Adam saw at once—verbal rope for Jack to hang himself. For a superstitious instant, he imagined Jack repeating what he had told him that night. The truth, at last.

Jack had found his brother sitting slumped on the rock, his eyes bloodshot, his gaze unfocused. With terrible effort, Ben sat straighter. “I’m taking a rest,” he said tiredly. “I can only assume she called you.”

Jack knelt by him, staring into his face. “You can’t do this to her,” he told Ben. “Not after all these years.”

Ben’s face darkened, and then he bit off a burst of laughter. “So I should leave everything to Clarice? That way you could move into my house, claim my wife, and take the fruits of all I’ve done. You may have lived for that, Jack. But by God, I did not.” Ben lowered his voice. “I’ve found someone who loves me, a woman with grace and grit who’ll give me a son that’s actually mine. They’re what my life comes down to, and where my money is going. You and Clarice can do what you please.”

Filled with anger, Jack leaned forward, his face inches from Ben’s. “This is her home, Ben. You can’t take that from her.”

Ben smiled a little. “I already have,” he answered calmly. “I gave you a home of your own, Jack—our parents’ cracker box. Ask Clarice if she wants to live there with you. But I suppose you learned her answer long ago. All these years, she preferred to live with me than in the mediocrity which is your birthright—”

Filled with hatred, Jack grabbed his shirt. “She can file for divorce, and challenge the agreement you forced on her.”

Despite the violence of Jack’s actions, Ben’s face revealed nothing but mild interest. “Not a bad idea,” he remarked. “That’s what I’d have done in her place, many moons ago.” He paused, gathering strength. “Unfortunately for you both, I’m dying. A terrible surprise, I know. Especially because she can’t divorce me fast enough. So unless she wins a will contest, which my lawyer and I believe she can’t, she’ll have nothing but the deathless love you’ve imagined sharing. She’ll be looking for a rich man by Thanksgiving.”

Overcome by rage, Jack wrenched him upright, ripping a button off Ben’s shirt. In two steps, he held his brother over the edge of the cliff, staring into the face he had always loathed. “I can kill you now,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’ve wanted to for years.”

Ben stared at him with contempt. “So did Adam. But even he couldn’t, and I don’t think you have the guts for it. He got all that from me.”

Jack thrust his brother backward, his grip all that kept Ben from falling over the precipice. Ben looked back at him, speaking with his last reserves of will. “You’re a loser, Jack. And you’re about to lose again.”

Jack held Ben’s face an inch from his. “Do you think I can’t do this, Ben?”

Smiling with disdain, Ben spat into his face.

Jack felt the spittle on his cheek. A surge of insanity seized his body and soul. He stared into his brother’s adamantine eyes, then felt his hands let go.

Frozen in time, Ben filled a space above the void. Then he hurtled toward the rocks. For an instant, Jack swore that his feeble cry turned into laughter. Then a distant thud echoed in the dark, marking the death of his brother.

“I was stunned.” Jack spoke to Hanley in a monotone that seemed to echo the shock he described. “I stood there on the edge of the cliff, staring down toward the bottom. But it was night, and I couldn’t see. Ben had simply disappeared.

“I found the ladder he built down the cliffside and lowered myself to the beach. In the darkness, the eighty feet felt even longer. By the time I reached the bottom, and found him lying near some rocks, I had no doubt he was dead. A terrible accident.”

Adam kept watching George Hanley.

Facing Jack, Adam had felt his skin crawl. “You held him over a cliff,” he had managed to say, “then let him fall. Murder, plain and simple.”

Jack’s voice shook. “He’d been spitting in my face ever since he learned to walk. For that one instant, I could do what I’d imagined all my life.”

“And save my mother from penury in the bargain. Or so you thought.” Adam heard the horror in his voice mingling with despair. “Instead you helped him commit suicide and lock in the new will, putting yourself at risk. No wonder he died laughing.”

Jack closed his eyes. Watching him, Adam was overcome by the tragedy of all that he had learned, the incalculable damage to so many lives. “What does my mother know?” he asked.

“Nothing. When I came back to the house, I told her I couldn’t find him. By morning, I’d figured out a plan. Incinerate the boots I’d worn, then stumble across his body on the beach, as though his death were an accident.” Jack paused, touching his eyes. “It almost worked.”

“Not for Teddy,” Adam retorted. “They’re about to charge him with killing Ben.”

Jack stiffened. “How can that be? And how do you know?”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is that I also know you’re a murderer. But if I turn you in to the police, they may think my mother’s an accomplice. On the other hand, there’s Teddy to consider. I can’t let him take the fall for you.”

Jack straightened. “Do you think I can? After I tell Clarice what happened, I’m going to the police.”

“Don’t overdo it, Jack. There’s been heartache enough, most of it Ben’s doing.” Adam paused, finding a calmer tone. “You are my father, after all. So I’d prefer that you not pay for getting Teddy off the hook. And given that you’re a reasonably accomplished liar, why not make that work for you?”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“You’ll have to improve your story, merging it with Teddy’s. In my version, Ben never threatened my mother with disinheritance. Because he was drunk and abusive, you decided to confront him in your role as her protector.” Adam looked into his father’s eyes. “You found him here, and asked him to stop mistreating her. A quarrel ensued. Suddenly he took a swing at you and lost his balance, the victim of alcohol and disequilibrium caused by his brain tumor. When you reached for him, it was too late.”

Jack stared at the place where Ben had fallen. At last he said, “Still more lies, after so many. Do you think they’d believe me now?”

“Not really. They’ll also think you’re protecting Teddy. But I’ve become familiar with what the police know, and don’t know. They have no witnesses to the murder. And Teddy’s account will cover all the physical evidence, leaving them with nothing to refute your latest story.” Reading Jack’s doubt, he added, “Granted, telling it will take some nerve. But once you do, it creates reasonable doubt in Teddy’s favor, and he’ll do the same for you. George Hanley is nothing if not practical. He’ll see the wisdom in letting go of the death of a dying man.”

Jack studied him, then shook his head. In a tone of sadness, he asked, “When did you become so cold-blooded, I wonder?”

“The day I left here. All I’ve done since is refine my talents.” Adam paused, struggling with emotions he refused to show. “But that’s for another time—if ever. This family has one more thing it needs to settle.”

“Tragic,” Hanley said, repeating Jack’s word as Judge Carr scrutinized the witness. “Yet you didn’t report finding him until morning.”

For an instant, Jack closed his eyes. “As I said, I was in shock . . .”

“So much so that you didn’t tell the police what had happened that night.”

“I did not.”

“In fact,” Hanley said with sudden sharpness, “you told the police that you didn’t know how your brother had died.”

“True.”

“That was a lie, wasn’t it.”

“Yes.”

Hanley gave a curt nod. “On the other hand, there’s no physical evidence you were there at all. Unless it’s a partial boot print we’ve been unable to match to anyone. Did you take the boots you wore and get rid of them?”

“Of course not.”

Glancing at his mother, Adam saw her jaw line tighten, an almost imperceptible clue to her inner turmoil. Under his breath, Teddy murmured, “Jesus.”

“Jack will be all right,” Adam assured him. He said this calmly, concealing the tension he felt as the author of a cover-up—which, in protecting Teddy, jeopardized his mother, father, and himself.

“And yet,” Hanley bored in, “two weeks after your brother’s death, you concealed your supposed eyewitness knowledge of the circumstances.”

Jack grimaced. “I was protecting myself,” he said—only the second truth, however incomplete, he had spoken in several minutes. “I was afraid that the police might think I’d killed Ben—everyone knew how deeply we disliked each other. Instead, it became apparent that they suspected Teddy. That’s when I came forward.” He looked down, then fixed Hanley with a look of shamed candor. “I should’ve told the truth to begin with. Instead, through silence, I put my nephew in danger.”

This was another line that Adam himself had crafted. Rehearsal had helped; his father’s delivery had improved, though he was not yet as good a liar as Adam had become to survive his secret life abroad.

“You can practice your story on my mother,” Adam had told Jack on the way to the house.

As the first light came through the window, he had watched her face as she listened to Jack’s carefully crafted falsehoods. In rapid sequence, her expressions betrayed surprise, bewilderment, anger, horror, and, at length, deep anxiety. Unless she and Jack were extraordinarily accomplished actors, Adam concluded to his relief, their unrehearsed interaction suggested that Clarice knew nothing about Ben’s death. That Jack had planted another lie at the heart of their relationship was the price of saving him.

Clarice took Jack’s hand, shedding the pretense of years. Worriedly, she asked, “Do you really have to tell them?”

“He does,” Adam broke in flatly. “What the police have on Teddy could convict him of a murder he didn’t commit.”

Clarice turned to him. “How can you possibly know all that?”

“Just trust me that I do.” He paused, then said, “Like you, Teddy lied to the police about your phone call. That was your idea, wasn’t it?”

Slowly, Clarice nodded.

“I assume you were trying to protect him,” Adam continued, “and not just yourself and Jack. But I know that Teddy was protecting you.” Turning to Jack, he finished, “I’m sure that Avi Gold would represent you, and work with Teddy’s lawyer. That’ll help everyone keep their lines straight.”

“So,” Hanley interrogated Jack in an acidic tone, “your nephew Teddy also lied to you, concealing that he had confronted his father on the promontory.”

“Teddy didn’t lie,” Jack amended gently. “He simply kept his own encounter with Ben to himself . . .”

“Even when the police identified the boot print he’d left in the mud that night.”

Jack gave a helpless shrug. “All of us had a painful relationship with Benjamin Blaine—his wife, his sons, and his brother. Because of Ben’s affair with Carla Pacelli, the media descended—especially the tabloids—making the wounds in our family that much more raw. However wrongly, our instinct was for privacy, not truth.”

Tense, Adam could only hope that George Hanley never knew how true this statement was, and the role Adam’s own paternity played in the Blaines’ hidden tragedy. Or for that matter, Sean Mallory, watching Jack with the bleak, pitiless look of a bitter saint.

Hanley crossed his arms, saying coldly, “Even though a man had died.”

“Even so,” Jack answered softly. “A death is not a murder. But once the police thought it might be, I had to tell the truth. That my nephew Teddy knew nothing about his father’s death.”

Hanley shook his head in wonder. “Yet there are all these lies—not only Teddy’s but yours. And now you tell us that none of you knew that Benjamin Blaine had changed his will to favor Ms. Pacelli. Or even that he was thinking about this change.”

“I didn’t know.” Jack’s tone was weary but firm. “I’m confident that none of us did. In any event, the business of the will is done with now.”

Staring at her son, Clarice had said, “This is just too much for me.” Reading his expression, she added softly, “For all of us, I suppose.”

“Then brace yourself, Mother. Because there’s more.” He sat back, speaking in the same clipped tone. “The will contest has become more complex than you know. Thanks to me, you won’t get caught trying to pass off the postnup Ben forced you to sign as misplaced self-actualization. On the other hand, I’m now aware of the truth—that you got plenty of ‘consideration’ for signing it, from continuing to live here to concealing the messy facts surrounding my birth. And I suspect that Carla Pacelli knows that, too.”

Clarice looked stricken. “Ben told her?”

“I’m pretty sure he did. So, if you contest his bequest to Carla, I can’t lie about that. Right now you’ve got a decent shot at overturning Ben’s will. But between Carla and me, you could wind up with nothing. So here’s what you’re going do.

“First, your lawyer will offer Carla a settlement of three million dollars, on which you’re also paying the estate taxes—”

“No,” Clarice protested. “I refuse to treat her as an equal.”

“You’ve got no choice,” Adam said coldly. “So feel grateful to get by with that. Carla’s got a real chance of walking off with everything: at a minimum, she’ll get almost two million for her son. Who, by the way, is Teddy’s brother, Jack’s nephew, and my cousin. All of us need to see to his well-being. This family has inflicted enough misery on its own.”

He paused a moment, allowing Clarice time to absorb this, then looked from his mother to Jack. “The two of you will have more than enough to live here. Though if I were you, I’d sell this place. The karma leaves a lot to be desired.”

Clarice seemed to blanch. “How do you know that Carla will agree?”

“Because I’m developing a sense of her. In fact, despite my best efforts, I may have a better grasp of Carla Pacelli than of either one of you. That’ll give me food for thought on the flight back to Afghanistan.” Briefly, he paused, watching the stunned look in his parents’ eyes. “If she consents to this, as I think she will, we’re settling Ben’s estate. Are all of us agreed?”

Clarice looked at Jack, who nodded. Facing Adam, his mother retrieved some of her composure, accenting the sadness in her eyes. “I still look at you, Adam, and see him. The same iron will, the same belief that you can bend the world to your ends.”

Despite himself, Adam discovered, comparisons to Benjamin Blaine still pierced him. “Better ends, I hope—especially yours and Jack’s. But I’d appreciate it if both of you disappeared for the next few hours. I really do need to be alone.”

At ten o’clock that morning, Adam had gone to see Carla Pacelli.

She was waiting for him on the deck, a light breeze rippling her hair. Pregnancy had done nothing to diminish her beauty, that of an Italian-American brunette with dark, intense eyes, tempered by hardship, giving her an aura of sadness and self-knowledge. Smiling a little, she said, “Thanks for calling. It gave me time to dress.”

Then I regret that, Adam might have said in another life. But he felt way too tired, and even more confused. At length, he said, “I had to see you.”

It came out sounding wrong, not as he intended. Carla regarded him gravely. “You really do look awful.”

“And feel worse,” he admitted. “How long have you known that I wasn’t Ben’s son?”

Briefly she looked down, then met his eyes with new directness. “For months now.”

Adam shook his head in disbelief. “And yet you had the grace not to tell me. Even though Ben’s will had made us enemies.”

“It wasn’t my place,” she answered in a level tone. “And you were never quite my enemy. It was a little more complex between us, I thought.”

This was true, Adam realized. “Still, you could have warned me off anytime you wanted to. All you needed was to tell the truth.”

“And tamper with your life?” Carla asked with quiet compassion. “It was clear that you loved your family, despite all you’d gone through. I couldn’t know how revealing the truth might change that. Once I realized that you knew nothing, it seemed best to keep Ben’s secret. At least for as long as I could.

“But there’s something else I can say now. Whatever her reasons, the affair between Clarice and his brother caused Ben terrible anguish. That’s why I never considered his marriage sacred ground.” She paused again. “At least that’s my excuse.”

“No help for it now,” Adam said wearily. “I came here to resolve the future.” He paused, searching for the proper words. “There needs to be an end to all this sadness. If I can guarantee you three million dollars, would you take it? That would spare you a will contest, and help both of you quite a lot.”

A moment’s surprise appeared in Carla’s eyes, and then she gazed down at the deck with veiled lids. “More than ‘a lot,’” she finally answered. “My lawyer won’t like this, I’m sure. But if your mother can accept that, so will I. I don’t have the heart for any more of this.” She gave him an ironic smile. “As if I’m being so beneficent. I grew up without a dime, made millions as an actress, and blew it all because of my own failings. Now I can give my son the security I lost. That’s what Clarice must have thought before you were born.”

The comparison—and Carla’s honesty—gave Adam pause. “Maybe so,” he replied. “But she was also in love with someone else.”

“Then accepting this money is easier for me, isn’t it?” Carla looked into his eyes. “You persuaded her, I know. But why?”

Adam managed a shrug. “It’s simple, really. As I recalculate my genealogy, you’re carrying my cousin.”

For another moment, Carla gazed at him, then patted her stomach. “Actually, I thought I felt him move this morning. A mother’s imagination, probably. But at least I’m not sick anymore.”

Adam shoved his hands in his pockets, quiet for a time. “I’m not sure how to say this without sounding stupid. But you’re a far better person than I took you for.”

Another smile surfaced in her eyes. “I suppose I could return your backhanded compliment. But you’re exactly who I took you for, though you did your damnedest to conceal that.” Carla paused, then said in a reticent tone, “You’re leaving soon, I know. But once you’re back, you can come to see us if you’d like.”

Adam searched her face, trying to read what he saw there. “Perhaps I will,” he told her. “After all, every boy could use a man who cares for him. No matter who.”

“Then we’ll look forward to it.” She hesitated, then added, “Be safe, Adam. Despite everything, Ben worried for you. Now I do, too.”

Adam fell silent, unsure of what else he wished to say. Then he felt the weight of what he could never tell her: that his father had killed the father of her child. “I’ll be fine,” he promised. “Take care, Carla.”

Turning from the doubt he saw in her eyes, he left without looking back, still followed by the shadow of Benjamin Blaine.

When Jack’s testimony was at last concluded, the four Blaines emerged from the courtroom with Avi Gold, each silent and preoccupied.

Though the inquest was over, nothing was decided; the death of Benjamin Blaine, and the doubts of the authorities, could yet ensnare one or more of them. To Adam’s eye, only Teddy showed a modicum of relief. The merciful result, he supposed, of knowing far less than anyone else—not how Ben had died, or who had killed him, or that Adam was his half brother, half cousin. Or how many lies had been told today in this courtroom, all of Adam’s invention. Teddy had believed Jack, and Adam envied his innocence.

Shadowed by these thoughts, Adam saw her.

Carla Pacelli paused in the corridor, her level gaze taking in each member of Adam’s family—briefly lingering on Clarice, who turned away in scorn and anger. Then her eyes met Adam’s. Touching his mother’s elbow, he murmured, “Wait for me in the car,” and walked over to Carla.

For a moment they faced each other, quiet. “Sorry for this,” she said. “I came to see the district attorney, not your family. I thought the hearing would be over.”

Adam grasped her dilemma. At the end of his life, she was the one who had cared for a dying man—knowing nothing about the change in his will to favor her—and by her lights, had found the good in him. But she was not family; only Benjamin Blaine’s family, who despised him, was allowed inside the courtroom. And so Carla, who suspected that one of the Blaines had killed him, was forced to glean from George Hanley whatever he chose to tell her. Not much, Adam guessed, leaving doubt to gnaw at Carla’s mind and heart.

Looking around them, he saw no one; the sheriff’s deputies had kept the media outside. “The hearing ran late,” he said with an ease he did not feel. “Jack was on the stand for a good while.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what he said.”

“What you’ve already heard once he went to the police. That Ben’s death was an accident.”

Her deep brown eyes were flecked with doubt. Burdened with his own deceit, Adam wondered why, of all the deceptions he had crafted, it pained him most to deceive Carla Pacelli. Perhaps because, as he had belatedly discovered, she was the only person involved with Benjamin Blaine who—unlike his mother, uncle, and brother—had always told him the truth.

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

“Consider the circumstances, Carla. There’s no evidence that Jack killed him—or, as I understand it, to even place him at the scene. He risked putting his head in the noose in order to save Teddy.”

“Which means he’s innocent?” For an instant she eyed him closely, the intensity of her gaze fading to a fleeting half smile of skepticism. “I suppose I’ll have to wait for the judge’s report. For now, you’re the person I most want to believe.”

Adam had trained his face to show nothing; only another professional, he supposed, might take its studied blankness for what it was. “Whatever the case,” she added, “I appreciate all you’ve done.”

He shrugged this away. “How’s the baby?”

Carla touched her stomach. “Fine, as far as I know. I have another checkup in two weeks. Ask me then.”

“By then I may be back in Afghanistan.” Adam hesitated, then heard himself ask, “Can I see you tonight?”

Briefly, she looked surprised, then smiled a little. “Of course.” Lightly, she added, “How will you explain this to your mother? Or to anyone, for that matter?”

“I won’t. It’s like Ben told me, back when I thought he was my father: ‘Never complain, never explain.’ Truly words to live by.”

“Only sometimes,” Carla responded. “My life left me with a great deal to explain, if only to the people I choose to care about. But in that spirit, I’ll cook dinner for us. I’d rather not have the two of us sitting in a public restaurant, drawing gasps and incredulous stares. There’s been too much unwholesome interest in my life, and in my involvement with Ben. I don’t want it to bleed into your life any more than it already has.”

Adam simply nodded, a tacit acknowledgment of how difficult their relationship was. Whatever it was.

“Seven o’clock, then?” she asked.

“I’ll look forward to it,” he answered, and went to face whatever waited outside, feeling the conflict within him, guilt at war with kinship.