An Act of Love (33 page)

“You don’t have to apologize,” she said, and yet she was glad that he had. It was a wonderful relief and a terrible burden to know for certain that Emily had not lied, that Bruce had. Owen must be miserable beyond telling.

“There’s something else,” Owen was saying. “I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t know what to make of it. About Bruce.”

“Go on.” She was taking the mugs down, taking the spoons from the drawer.

“At his interview. Something happened. He lost his temper. The admissions officer, well, it was partly her fault. If she’d conducted the interview differently—”

Linda turned to face him. “What happened, Owen?”

“She didn’t give Bruce a chance. She wouldn’t let him explain himself, and she
was—this is what he told me, you understand, I wasn’t in the room—she was haughty. Smug.”

“And what did Bruce do?”

“Just yelled at her. Well, he used some profanity. And knocked some papers off her desk onto the floor.”

“Sounds to me like he was out of control.”

“Yeah, I guess he was, for a moment.” Hearing his own words, Owen sighed and admitted, “For more than a moment. We could hear him shouting in the waiting room. The admissions officer threatened to call security. I went in and got him out of there.” Owen lifted anguished eyes to Linda’s. “He was so
disturbed
. He felt so completely rejected by the woman. He kept saying she hadn’t given him a chance.”

The coffee was ready. Linda set a cup in front of him, automatically adding the spoon of sugar and drop of milk he always had.

“Drink some of this. I want to get something to show you.”

She went into her bedroom, found the cardboard box with the words
Private Papers
hastily scribbled on the side, and dug through them until she found the manila envelope she had hidden in her study not so very long ago.

Returning to the kitchen, she lay it on the table in front of Owen.

“I found this in Bruce’s closet when I went through his room, after you went through Emily’s.”

“When was this?”

“The day you went over to Celeste’s. When she called about the black bears. Read it.” Wanting to give him emotional space, Linda busied herself at the counter, fixing her own cup of coffee, and then she sat down, facing him.

Owen ripped the envelope open and took out another envelope, addressed in a childish scrawl to
Dad
.

Dear Dad, You Stupid Shit
,

I guess you’re pretty happy now that you’re sending me away to boarding school so you can be alone with your new wife and your new daughter. You think I don’t know the truth, but I do. I’ve seen the way you look at Linda. She’s the only thing you care about. And you always take her side in an argument. You just want me out of the house so you can fuck her any time
.

What I want to know is why you don’t just let me go live with my mother. I don’t believe the shit you say that she doesn’t want me to come live with her because she’s always traveling. I bet the truth is she wants me but you won’t let her near me. I bet she’s sent me lots of letters and you’ve thrown them away. I bet she’s called me lots of times and you haven’t told me
. You
couldn’t control her
, you
couldn’t keep her, and you won’t let
me
be with her because that would prove that she loves
me
but she doesn’t love you
.

You are a fake and a liar and a loser, the worst loser in the world and I hate you. I’m glad I’m going to boarding school because it means I can get away from you
.

In hate
,

Bruce McFarland

“Good God,” Owen said. He looked at Linda. “I can’t believe this.”

“I know.”

“You should have given this to me the moment you found it.”

“You’re right; I should have. But I wanted to protect you. And at the time it didn’t seem relevant. Such
venom
toward you … I thought it would only complicate things and … I knew it would break your heart. Besides, Owen, I don’t believe it. I mean, I don’t believe that Bruce hates you. Not now. Or ever, really. He was younger when he wrote that, and probably anxious about going away. You know how teenagers say things they don’t mean.”

“When were you planning to give it to me?”

“I didn’t have a plan. My first thought was to throw it away, so that you’d never find it. Then I thought, no, I should keep it … so I just hid it with my papers.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Would it have influenced you if I had shown it to you? Would you have been more inclined to believe Emily? I don’t think so. I think you would have been angry with me, for discovering it. And Bruce needed an ally. You needed to be his ally. This would have muddied everything.”

“Perhaps you’re right. I don’t know. I can’t say. I’m so muddled … Jesus Christ, Linda, we’re good, intelligent, well-meaning people. How did we get into such a mess?”

“I don’t know.” She was thinking, selfishly, of how she would feel when she told Emily, when she told Dr. Travis, about Bruce’s arrest. Now there would no longer be any doubt that Bruce raped Emily.

“Would you?”

“I’m sorry, Owen, what?”

Owen cleared his throat. His face was flushed with emotion as he repeated his request. “Will you help me? Will you help us? Will you go through this with me?” He flushed and fought back tears. “Please. I don’t think I can get through it alone.”

Linda thought of Bruce, his lies, his physical and emotional cruelty to Emily. Of Bruce disregarding all the years of their family life and anything the family might have meant. She thought of Owen’s betrayal, confiding in Celeste, choosing Celeste. She thought of the contempt that awaited Bruce and anyone who stood by him, the pity and wrath and abhorrence that everyone would feel toward a boy who raped. Who would stand by him? Not the school; of course they would stand by Alison Cartwright. They would have to expel Bruce. Not his Hedden friends; the boys would not want to be guilty by association. She
could
avoid it all; she could stand exempt from the loathing Bruce was about to face. She had left Owen and Bruce and the farm. They were not legally divorced yet, but they were legally separated. They lived apart. Bruce had made it clear that he did not love her. Did not love Emily. In fact, assaulted Emily, destroyed her pride, and almost destroyed her life. What did Linda owe to this young man, then, this young man who hated her and her daughter so furiously? Was her remaining love for Owen sufficient to pull her back into this approaching maelstrom?

No. Her remaining love for Owen was not sufficient.

But together with her love for Bruce, it was.

For she still loved her stepson. It was there, the love for him, weighing in her heart like a bruise-colored stone. She still loved him, and more than that, she still
claimed
him. Whatever he had done or not done, she had been an integral part of his life for the past seven years. If she had, unwittingly, been part of his problem, or if she were purely innocent, still she would be, she would attempt with all her being to
try
to be, part of the solution.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

Chapter Twenty-six

The courthouse was
next to the police station; the McFarlands had passed it a million times. An imposing four-square edifice built of large blocks of stone with an appealing, nutmeg-like grittiness, it harbored on the first floor a disappointing warren of small rooms and offices that had been divided up again and again as the town and county government became more complicated.

Superior court was on the second floor; a guard at the door only looked at Linda and Owen as they entered. They found seats in the gallery along with a number of other people, all of whom looked as anxious and uncomfortable as Linda felt. This room was high and wide and paneled in shining oak illumined by the morning light; at another time Linda might have considered it beautiful.

Bruce entered the courtroom with a rotund man in a gray suit.

“That’s Paul Larson, Bruce’s lawyer,” Owen whispered to Linda. “Lorimer recommended him.”

Bruce was wearing a rumpled sweatsuit and, incongruously, loafers. Auburn stubble speckled his jawline, which was crisply sharp as only a young man’s can be, but he had circles beneath his eyes and his shoulders slumped. Obviously he hadn’t slept. He looked confused and nervous. He shot a quick glance at his father, and seemed surprised to find Linda there. Immediately he looked away.

Larson ushered Bruce to the front row of the courtroom seats, then went through the low railings to sit at a table facing the judge’s bench. A slender woman in her fifties, clad in a simple business suit, her gray hair short and businesslike, came down the center aisle carrying her briefcase and talking in a low voice to her younger colleague, an attractive black woman. The older woman, Linda learned when the lawyers later addressed the judge, was Donna Sylvester, the prosecuting attorney.

For a long while, it seemed, everyone waited, talking in murmurs. Then the judge entered in his black robes, and everyone stood in respect of his presence, and Linda’s heart began to batter frantically inside her chest. Suddenly everything seemed painfully vivid and helplessly real.

She was seized with fear. She could not bear to imagine Bruce found guilty, incarcerated, with all his life cut short. Put among criminals and bullies; locked up with murderers and monsters. How would he endure it? How would Owen? How would she? Was this what she wanted? She was horrified at what he’d done to Alison, and still angry with him for what he had done to Emily, for what he had done to all their lives, but he was not a
bad
boy. He was not a
criminal. This
was never what she wanted, this seemed too much, it was not right, and with all the force of her female strength, with whatever powers of prayer and the primitive feminine might of witchcraft she possessed, she prayed that Bruce might go free, be saved, be given over to her custody and Owen’s so that they could help him, heal him, bring him home into the good young man she knew waited in his deepest heart.

The clerk of the court read in a clear voice: “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is bringing a charge of rape and sexual assault against Bruce McFarland, a seventeen-year-old student at Hedden Academy.”

“How do you plead?” the judge asked.

It was Paul Larson who stood and replied. “Your honor, my client pleads not guilty.”

“Your honor,” Donna Sylvester said, “we’d like to see this tried as soon as possible.”

The judge looked over at his clerk. “With the holidays coming, it looks like the earliest date we can give you is January fifteenth.”

“Until then, your honor,” Paul Larson said, “we ask that the defendant be released into his father’s custody without bail. This young man has no previous record.”

“The prosecution has no problem with that,” Sylvester said.

“Very well,” the judge said. “The court releases you, Bruce McFarland, into your father’s custody, without bail. Court date, January fifteenth.”

Larson and Bruce rose and came back down the aisle. Owen and Linda followed and they all clustered together in the hall.

“Come to my office,” Larson said. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.”

The lawyer’s office
was on Main Street in Basingstoke, in a pretty clapboard building that had once been a barber shop. A secretary greeted them with a neutral smile
and immediately ushered them down the hall and into Larson’s inner sanctum. Paul Larson settled them around a small conference table. He opened his briefcase and took out a folder.

“All right,” he said, “we’ve got some work to do. Why don’t I tell you where we go from here?”

“Fine,” Owen replied.

“We’ve got a rape charge to deal with here. Let me start with what the prosecuting attorney will have.” He opened the folder. “An incident report has been filed by Officer Stakovsky, stating that at one-thirty-six
A.M.
December nineteenth he was called to the emergency room of the Basingstoke Hospital. There he met with the victim, Alison Cartwright, who had come to the hospital with the school nurse of Hedden Academy. Also accompanied by her friend Rebecca Cooper.

“At that time the officer noted that he observed a swelling on the left side of the victim’s face as well as bruise marks on her neck.

“He interviewed Ms. Cartwright, who charged that Bruce McFarland had raped her at about midnight in the music room at Hedden Academy. Ms. Cartwright signed a victim’s statement, under penalty of perjury. The examining physician, Dr. Gable, stated that the victim had signs of recent sexual intercourse, including semen in her vagina.”

“We had sex, but I didn’t rape her!” Bruce blurted out.

“Also,” Larson continued smoothly, “Dr. Gable found minor lacerations and bleeding in the vaginal area, which would indicate the use of force.”

“
I didn’t
—” Bruce began, but Owen shot a look at his son, and Bruce didn’t finish.

“Furthermore, the officer took a statement from Rebecca Cooper, stating that Alison returned to their dorm room around midnight, crying hysterically, claiming that she had just come from the music practice room where Bruce had raped her. Rebecca stated that Alison could not stop weeping, could not stop shaking, and vomited several times, until she brought up only bile. Alison said she did not want to get Bruce in trouble, but Rebecca insisted she see the school nurse, and went with her to the nurse’s office. They woke her; there’s an emergency button at the door to the nurse’s quarters. After Mrs. Guera talked with Alison, she insisted they go to the police, and she drove the young women to the emergency room and waited with them while Alison was treated. The statements of Mrs. Guera and Rebecca Cooper will be admissible as ‘fresh
complaints,’ testifying to the victim’s state of mind at that time.