TWENTY-SIX

I awoke staring up at the antique fan. Stinging cuts covered my hands. The house was dark and silent and no one stood over me. I couldn’t remember Kris Ann’s Audi parked in the garage.

I got up.

Glass crunched beneath my first step. The step took too long. My brain was a box of light unable to send signals through its walls. Inside the box I knew someone could kill me, but my feet were stone.

I took a slow second step. My head felt melon soft.

The third step was easier, and the fourth. I got used to the numbness and to making noise that they could hear.

The living room was empty.

I stopped to let my eyes adjust. In the dining room ahead, moonlight caught the hard polish of mahogany. Its corners were stained by darkness. But when I went there nothing happened. The windows were cracked open and through the screens came cricket sounds in a chorus of rising and falling, moving like the night had moved. The lot next door, tangled and overgrown, was full of them. I realized that the shots had come from there. Still I heard no footsteps but mine.

I edged to the kitchen door, back to the wall until my head turned the corner.

Nothing. Nothing but two barstools at the counter, a coffee cup and dirty ashtray, thin shadows on the wall. Slowly, silent now, I moved to the drawers for a carving knife.

It was smooth, balanced in my hand. I began reaching for the light switch, then stopped. Light would help them.

A pen clicked behind me. I froze, heard nothing, felt nothing except fear that tricked the brain. Fear now at the base of my spine and between my shoulder blades. The sound of my own steps came to me from some great distance.

Suddenly I was tripped, falling forward, losing the knife. My palms hit as it clattered across the tile. I turned on my knees to fight.

Kris Ann’s shoes lay where I had stumbled. The knife slid against the far wall and stopped. I was dead if they heard me. I crawled sweating toward the knife, grasped it, rose again.

Still nothing.

I began up the dark staircase to the bedroom, breathing harder. Perhaps they would be there. I moved faster to the second floor, hurried down the dark hallway past empty bedrooms, toward ours. It was dark. I gripped the knife tighter, found the light switch, pushed down.

Our bed was made and inside there was no one dead or living. I went to Kris Ann’s nightstand and opened it.

The gun was missing. “Kris Ann,” my brain began chanting, faster and faster in a terrible rhythm. I went down the hallway to the stairs, holding the knife in my left hand, feeling and not feeling the smooth banister. “Kris Ann …”

Footfalls. I was trapped in mid-stairway. No trick of the nerve ends but footfalls moving from the kitchen below me toward the dining room, real as the acid in my mouth. Coming closer.

A shadow moved into the alcove. I raised the knife.

Something clicked. The lights turning on. Shock as the knife dropped from my hand. “Thank God,” I blurted. “You’re all right.”

I told them about Jason. Bast took notes. Rayfield asked questions. He seemed backed away from me, just a policeman, and his thumb stroked the pen without clicking it. I didn’t tell him about the Moorings, or Henry’s lover. Jason used a gun, I said: it had to be him.

Rayfield shrugged without comment. When I ventured that it couldn’t have been Lee, he answered coldly that I was wrong: my friend Nate Taylor had sprung Lee an hour after I had left. There wasn’t enough to hold him, Rayfield added: they’d just wanted to see what I’d do.

I stared at him. “Like get shot.”

This time it was Bast who shrugged. “If that’s what you want,” he said, and closed the notebook. Kris Ann watched in silence.

They went. A bespectacled doctor and two nurses came and went, leaving Kris Ann and me alone. Everything—the walls and sheets, even the bed frame—was white. Kris Ann still wore her white tennis dress.

“You shouldn’t have left,” I said. My voice sounded tinny. “He might have shot you.”

“I was too angry to wait.” She looked away. “And I had the revolver.”

“So you could drill Jason Cantwell at fifty paces.”

“Yes.” She didn’t smile.

I watched her. She sat against a cinder-block wall, the right strap of her dress blood-speckled from helping me to the car. “Next time,” I said, “just tell me to fuck off. Something simple.”

She said nothing. After a moment she rose and took a cool rag from the nightstand, running it across my face. Her finger gently traced the stitches beneath one eye. “What’s happened to us, Adam?”

I tried smiling. “You cheat at backgammon—”

“The baby?”

“Krissy, stop—”

“I mean it’s not just coming here and Daddy, is it?”

“Not now.” I reached up, my fingers disappearing in her hair. She closed her eyes.

“I don’t know who you are.”

I looked away. “When my father died I stopped thinking about that. My mother needed someone and I was there. Then she wanted a lawyer—someone who wouldn’t desert her by being killed—and I became one. I don’t know—I don’t like talking this way.”

“But why?”

“Because words don’t make any difference. You string them all together and in the end people define themselves by what they do.”

She shook her head. “Word games, Adam. There’s too much we never say.”

I looked up again. “Like what happened between you and Jason Cantwell?”

She stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“The way you avoided him at our engagement party, how afraid you are. Roland giving you that gun and how desperate you were to keep it. You’ve been trying to tell me ever since Lydia was murdered, and I haven’t listened.”

“He killed Lydia—”

“What happened in the garden, Krissy?”

She looked startled. In a muted voice, she said, “It doesn’t matter now.”

“Krissy, you’ve been threatened and now I’ve been pistol-whipped and shot at. It matters.”

She stared at a spot beside my head. “All right.” She said it bluntly, angrily. “He tried to rape me.”

“How?”

“How do you suppose?” When I didn’t answer, she spoke hurriedly, getting it over. “One Sunday when I was sixteen Daddy took me by to visit after church. Sometimes he’d do that. That day Henry and Lydia got to talking with Daddy, and Jason said why didn’t we go out back. He was talking too fast and wouldn’t look at me but I thought it was mostly shyness. I didn’t know until it was too late.”

“Easy,” I said. “I know that. Just tell me what happened.”

Her eyes were wide with memory. “Is this really necessary?”

I took her hand. “Yes. It is.”

“If you want, then.” Her voice was harsh. “We were walking across the lawn toward the back. I was chattering on about people we knew, anything because he was so awkward. We got away from the house and then he stops and turns to me with his hands in his pockets. His face is contorted and then he starts talking so fast to the ground that at first I hardly heard him. It was insane, things he’d dreamed up. We’re close, he keeps saying, he knows I must feel it, too. He looks so twisted up and lonely that I feel sorry for him, as if I’m his mother or something. I begin telling him it’s all right, sure, we’re friends and can talk. ‘But I love you,’ he says, and begins coming toward me with this strange expression. His eyes were so dark.

“I knew before he touched me. I looked around but couldn’t see the house for the pine grove we were in, like he’d wanted. He began kissing me. I said, no, it wasn’t like that. He just shakes his head and then he’s pushing me against a pine tree. He’s too strong. His hands are up my skirt and I start wriggling and begging him not to. Then his fingers came inside me. I began screaming.” Her voice fell off. “No one had done that before.”

“It would matter anytime—”

“I was still screaming when he got my pants down. I hurt inside and no one could hear me. He kept panting, ‘Fuck me,’ and pushing his fingers deeper in me with the other hand on my throat. I began punching and kicking and then suddenly his fingers came out and he was bent over holding his groin and looking up at me wide-eyed like I’d hurt his feelings. I was bleeding where he’d touched me. ‘Kris Ann,’ he moaned, and reached out for me. I ran into the house.”

I felt sick and angry. “What happened then?”

She breathed out and her voice became less strained. “I told Daddy I didn’t feel well and wanted to go home. Lydia looked at me strangely but Henry got me some soda water and then I left with Daddy. On the way home, I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. All the way home he stared straight ahead. It was his face.” She looked down at me. “It’s the same face you have for him sometimes: so filled with hate that I almost believe you could kill him. His eyes were like diamonds. And the quiet. The way he was quiet scared me almost worse than Jason. It was like he felt too much to speak.

“When we got home he sat me down across from him and began asking questions in a voice that never changed no matter what I told him. He made me tell him everything. I don’t remember him even blinking. He must have seen the way he frightened me because suddenly his face changed and he put his arms around me and began telling me things would be all right, that he’d take care of it.”

I reached up. There were chill marks on her arms. “You frighten me now,” she murmured.

“No need. It’s just that it still matters. It matters to you.”

She shook her head. “I learned better, with you. It wasn’t like that and mostly I forgot.”

“What did Roland do?”

“He sent me away for a couple of weeks, but he never really said what else. I do know that the Cantwells never brought Jason by again and that somehow he was kept pretty much out of my way. I saw him once or twice a year; Birmingham’s a small place and sometimes you have to get by. But he always looked away. It just died.”

But now I knew it hadn’t. “Does Henry know?”

She looked thoughtful. “He must. I’m sure Lydia did, because for a while she seemed embarrassed, almost oversolicitous. But no one ever mentioned it. I knew it wasn’t their fault, and if anything they were kinder to me than before. It seemed better to pretend it hadn’t happened.”

“But it did.” I shook my head. “Why didn’t you tell me—at least after Lydia was killed?”

She gazed at me steadily. “Because I was afraid of what you’d do.”

“Jesus—”

“Adam, look what you’ve done without knowing.”

“Yes. Get shot at. Ever since I found Lydia I’ve heard nothing but lies and secrets and half-truths, and now it’s you and your father. I’m sick of it.”

Her eyes still held mine. “I’m sorry, Adam. I thought it was best.”

I realized that my feet and legs felt numb, disconnected from my nervous system. I closed my eyes, almost floating. More softly, I said, “I’m sorry, too. For everything.”

She took my hand again. A nurse appeared with something to swallow. Kris Ann promised to stay. In five minutes I was asleep.

I dreamed, but not of Jason. We were in Paris, four years prior. It was spring and Kris Ann sat on the porch of the pensione with a view of the Tuilleries up a narrow side street of small shops, a patisserie, sidewalk cafes. Her dress was white and simple. She still held herself carefully from the baby, as if her body were strange to her. In the dream I knew that later she would exercise and her shape would return, but now she was pale and thin and stretched and emptied out.

I brought our breakfast, black coffee and croissants. The croissants were flaky and soft. When I told her that, she nodded but took nothing. Sun crept down the side street as she stared out and beyond to where tourists walked at a relaxed, almost ceremonious, pace among the hedges of the Tuilleries, as though it were Sunday even for them. Coming down the alley a plump Frenchman with a poodle and newspaper whistled to himself. She watched it all gravely, disinterestedly. “What will happen,” she asked, “in time?”

Her face hadn’t moved from the street and her monotone made the question no question at all. “Nothing,” I answered. “Or the same things. We’ll have the same quarrels and joys and disappointments, and food will cost too much and I’ll keep on loving you. I’ll still like sex in the morning, you’ll like it at night, and sometimes I’ll come home at noon to work out a compromise—”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, I didn’t marry you to provide an heir.”

Her voice was still flat. “Then why did you?”

“Because I love you. It’s that simple.”

“But you wanted a son.” She said it accusingly, or self-accusingly.

“I did, Krissy. So did you.”

“But he was the only chance we’ll ever have.” She turned to me in wonderment. “When they told us that I watched your face before I even thought of me. It was like you were listening to a weather report. I spent three days crying. You never cried.”

“I can’t cry, Krissy. I never could.”

Her eyes blazed. “Damn you,” she said fiercely. “Damn your father for getting shot.”

I reached her as she started sobbing and held her to me, face buried in my shoulder. “Too early,” I said softly. “It’s okay, baby, it’s all right. I brought you here too early, that’s all.” Her shoulders shook with sobbing. “It’s all right,” I wanted to say now. “A son just has to be a boy. There’s no magic in being our boy.” But when I awoke, Kris Ann was gone.

She returned in the morning with two books I liked. I didn’t tell her about the dream.

They weren’t allowing visitors, she said, just her and the police. But friends called and some of my partners. Nora Culhane called, trying to sound angry about being stood up, trying more seriously for a story: I referred her to the police, and did that with all the reporters who called after. The Kells called. Cade called saying he’d hired private police to guard our house; I didn’t thank him and he didn’t ask how I was. Nate Taylor called, but when I asked him where Lee had been last night he didn’t know.

Then Henry called.

He sounded tense. “They won’t let me visit.”

“They’re like that. I’m no worse than when you saw me.”

He paused. “What I said, about going on: I want you to stop.”

“I’m not sure I have that choice anymore.”

“Adam, this is my responsibility. It always was. I realize I never should have involved you. Please, believe this is for your own good.”

“Not until we’ve talked.”

“We’ll have time. Just take care of yourself and Kris Ann.”

“Henry, there’s something I have to know—”

“Goodbye, Adam. Rest.” He hung up.

I held the phone for a long time after.

Kris Ann returned with the doctor. There was no fracture, he said: I could go home Monday if I remembered that a second blow to the head could cause brain damage. Kris Ann promised to remind me.

I kept wondering about Henry, and Jason.

But Rayfield had Jason now and I was hurt, fearful of the wounds and hatreds I felt reaching from the past toward Kris Ann and me. They gave me another pill.

Then Rayfield called to say Jason was out free.