Two days later, they flew Adam to Dubai for treatment and recuperation.
The agency put him up at the Dubai Hilton, with tall windows looking out on the phallic competition of empty high-rises thrusting toward the sky. The surroundings added to his sense of the surreal, and of himself as suspended between an escape he remembered in freeze frames and a future he could not envision. Branch had remarked on his nervelessness. Perhaps it was his training; perhaps it began when Benjamin Blaine had held out the example of Ted Williams, then drilled him in the virtues of coolness under pressure. This was another strand of his tangled legacy; in those few moments, Adam had felt nothing, and did not know how to feel now.
But his wound was clean, with no complications. A week after the shooting he could do the breaststroke in the hotel pool. This became his routine; now and then, he would leave a small trickle of blood, but no one saw it. He never spoke to anyone except to order room service.
He slept well enough. Sometimes he would wake up with a start, look around in the darkness before recalling where he was. But he began to accept that Dubai, however strange and artificial, was an island of safety. Afghanistan felt far away, fleeting glimpses in the slipstream of a car. To his surprise, he had no dreams of death.
Days passed. One morning he came back from the pool, and found an e-mail from Carla Pacelli, whose face was commingled in his mind with images of killing and flight. “It’s been awhile since you’ve written,” she said. “Are you okay?”
A good question. But at least he was alive to seek the answer.
Placing the groceries on Carla’s kitchen table, Teddy Blaine saw her mother’s rosary beads. Hesitant, he asked, “Does that really work for you?”
Carla gave him a thin smile. “We’ll find out, won’t we? As a child, I was taught that you’re not supposed to ask for God’s favors so concretely, like wanting a new dress for Christmas.” Then she recalled praying for her father’s death, and added, “But sometimes I did. Now I pray for other people—your brother, and my son.”
Teddy raised his eyebrows. “Nothing for yourself? There must be a dress you want.”
Carla shook her head. “What I want for myself can’t be hung up in a closet. For me, prayer and reflection is an end in itself.”
Teddy opened the refrigerator and began putting things away. Over his shoulder, he asked, “Did you ever discuss this with my father? A godless man if there ever was one. He insisted that any particular religion was a function of its followers’ ignorance and superstition, quickly cured by one semester in a comparative religion class.”
Carla took an apple from his hand, placing it in a bowl of pears and oranges. “It does sound familiar, actually. I did politely point out to Ben that, at its best, religion also teaches kindness, personal responsibility, and the grace not to judge people by the worst moments in their lives. And that the forgiveness of others might be something he could use.”
Teddy glanced at her. “You’ve got that right.”
Turning, Carla focused on a beam of sunlight that burnished the mahogany table. Again, she experienced the discomfort of wondering whether this man, so surprisingly considerate of her, had murdered his own father. Evenly, she said, “You still loathe him as much as Adam does, don’t you? Perhaps more.”
Teddy moved his shoulders. “Don’t forget my mother and uncle. Among the four of us, it’s a vigorous competition. Still, I suppose it’s special for his sons. You end up caught in a web of confusion between what you need from him and what he forces you to recognize. Maybe you survive, as we did, but it’s like a fish hook in your guts. Even worse, you feel infantile and guilty—never worse than at his funeral, relief warring with the childish wish that he’d really loved me. And then you realize you’re stuck with this miserable ambivalence, too deeply embedded to ever quite go away.”
His voice softened. “You weren’t there, and I guess in the final months he gave you something different. I don’t mean to stomp all over that by singing sad songs for myself—family is tough for a lot of people. But there’s no understanding Adam unless you grasp what the father of your child was like as our father.”
The ironic formulation reminded Carla of a painful truth—that Adam’s tortured relationship with Ben, whatever its causes, could damn anything they might have. Quietly, she asked, “Do you and Adam ever talk about this?”
“More lately.” Teddy’s voice held resignation and regret. “But another gift from Dad is that he made Adam a cool one. When we were kids, Adam was fundamentally sweet-natured—even though he was my kid brother, when it came to our father he did his best to stand up for me. Even now, I can feel the kindness I remember—God knows he still looks out for me. But after he broke with Dad it was like seeing that person behind protective glass, impossible to touch.”
But for fleeting moments, Carla thought, she almost had. “Do you know why he left the island? All I get from him is the sense it involved someone else than Ben.”
Closing the refrigerator, Teddy sat across from her, regarding her with kindness and perplexity. “You really do care about him, don’t you?”
Carla rested her folded hands on her stomach, a rueful reference to their circumstances. “Call me silly, if you like. My track record the last few years is pretty miserable.”
“Join the party.” Teddy gazed past her, as if pondering her question. “Adam refuses to talk about why he left—all he says is that he got fed up. That’s bullshit, obviously. But all I can tell you was that the Blaines weren’t the only people Adam left behind.
“He had a girlfriend then, Jenny Leigh. In the way of any small community, most people thought they’d get married—me included. He certainly gave a pretty good impression of a twenty-three-year-old in love. But he bailed on Jenny like he did the rest of us.” Teddy refocused his troubled gaze on Carla. “The day after he left, she went to the beach below our house and tried to kill herself with pills. My father found her and rushed her to the hospital. After she recovered, she and my mother had this special bond—though she was never at the house much, they hung around a lot.
“And then, to everyone’s shock, my father left her exactly a million dollars—exactly one million more than he left our mother or me. Next to you, Jenny was the big winner. Explain that one to me, if you can—except as another act of sadism. God knows the rest of us are stumped.”
Carla felt a formless disquiet surface from her subconscious. “Is Adam?”
Teddy’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Excellent question. Adam is the original cat who walks alone, every thought a secret. God knows what he knows.”
At once, Carla thought of the reporter. “I don’t know who pushed him,” Ferris had told her. “But Adam Blaine knows.” As though seeing her troubled expression, Teddy added quickly, “We can’t blame him, Carla. He started young—when a kid can’t rely on either parent, he becomes a loner, looking out for himself. That makes it challenging to become a trusting soul.”
He could be talking about her, Carla knew too well. Perhaps this likeness was part of what she sensed in Adam, and wished that she could touch. But this very kinship meant that she, too, found it hard to wholly trust him.
Teddy, she realized, was watching her closely. In a tentative voice, he said, “On the subject of trust, there’s something I’d like you to believe. I’m not supposed to talk about this, to anyone. But I didn’t kill my father.
“I was there that night, it’s true. It’s also true that I lied to the police about that, which is part of why they were planning to indict me. But when I left him there on the promontory, he was still alive.” Teddy seemed to wince. “In the midst of his usual scorn, he almost apologized for how he’d treated me. It was the closest thing to human he’d been in years. Which made his death more painful—unresolved feelings forced to the surface, too late. But maybe being with you had done him some good.”
Carla met his eyes. He had lied then; he had every reason to lie now—especially to her. But her instinct, however foolish, was to believe him. “So how did he fall off the cliff?”
Teddy shook his head. “I don’t know. But Jack says it was an accident, and I’ve got no reason to disbelieve him.”
Once more Carla could hear Amanda Ferris—Adam Blaine, she insisted, had broken into the courthouse, stolen investigative files, and choreographed a cover-up. “I do,” Carla said flatly. “So does the district attorney, and the judge who’s rendering that report. Like you, Jack lied to the police about seeing Ben that night. He only came forward after Adam returned, and you became a suspect.”
“So why did Jack stick his nick in the noose?”
“To save you,” Carla rejoined. “Tell me this: did Adam know that Jack was there?”
Teddy hesitated, his face closing. “All I can tell you is that I didn’t do it, and that I believe what my uncle says. Jack is a completely decent man.”
And Adam’s father, Carla thought again, with whatever debt that might create. More softly, she said, “I do want to believe you, Teddy. You’re even gentle when you put away my vegetables.”
Relief stole into Teddy’s eyes. “It’s the soul of an artist. I’ve always been solicitous of broccoli.”
Carla’s telephone rang. Startled, she turned to it.
“Want me to get it?” Teddy asked.
She shook her head instinctively, pushing up from her chair and walking carefully to the kitchen counter. Seized by instinctive worry, she hesitated before picking up.
“Hello?”
A moment’s silence. “It’s Adam.” His voice was a long-distance echo. “Sorry I’ve been out of touch.”
For an instant, Carla was speechless—he had never called her before. “That’s okay,” she managed to say. “I know your life is complicated.”
As Teddy looked at her with an inquiring expression, she heard Adam briefly laugh. “A little complicated. I got shot. But don’t worry—I’m fine now. I can tell you about it when I get there.”
Carla felt a wave of surprise, relief, confusion. “You’re coming back?”
“Only for a little while, on leave. My employers are benevolent that way. Is the baby okay?”
Carla hesitated. “Fine. We both are.”
“Great. Has Teddy been watching out for you?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, he’s here right now.”
“Then say hello. I’d better go now—off for a final checkup. See you in a couple of days.”
“That’s wonderful,” she answered softly, and then Adam said goodbye.
As she put down the phone, Teddy looked at her quizzically. “‘Fine?’” he repeated. “You two really are a pair.”
True enough, she thought. “The important thing,” she told Adam’s brother, “is that he’s coming home alive. At least for now.”
An answer to her prayers, and yet so confusing and so tangled.