No Safe Place (27 page)

As Bridget stumbled toward Kerry, Anthony Musso aimed at him.

A woman screamed. In a sudden reflex, Kerry dived for the door, John’s hand still clasped in his.

Searing pain shot through his shoulder. His head struck the heavy door with a thud, knocking it open; dazed, Kerry heard a second thud, Bridget’s body hitting the floor as he did.

Kerry rolled on his back, John in his arms now, blinding spots before his eyes. Bridget lay beside them. More
gunshots echoed; as if struck from behind, Anthony slumped in the doorway. The last thing Kerry remembered was John Musso lying beside him, shrieking uncontrollably at the sight of Bridget’s face.

Kerry was a hero.

The sheriff’s deputy had seen him save John Musso’s life. That was what the media reported. That was what Vincent Flavio told him when, trailed by reporters, he visited Kerry’s bedside.

Kerry lay there with his right arm in a sling, his collarbone shattered by Musso’s bullet. His thoughts, shamed and solitary, were so remote from Vincent Flavio’s false solicitude that Flavio left quickly. Only Liam’s tart remark—“Vincent prefers his heroes dead; he’s less afraid they’ll take his place”—kept Kerry from confessing the truth as he remembered it. Myth, like cowardice, had its uses.

A woman was dead, a boy orphaned.

“They’re looking for the nearest relative,” Clayton told him. “There’s a great-aunt somewhere—Bridget’s mother’s sister.”

His friend sat beside him in the cool, quiet room. Kerry stared at the ceiling. “God help him,” he said at last. “God help me.”

Clayton shook his head. “There’s nothing more you could have done.”

Kerry turned to him, wincing from the pain that shot through his shoulder. “I could have saved her,” he said. “I saw the gun, and I froze.”

Clayton studied his face. “It took two seconds, Kerry. No one could expect that.”

“I did, though. From the moment I saw him.” Kerry faced the ceiling again; he could not look at his friend. “You know what I think it was? ‘Better her than me.’ The only accident was saving John.”

Clayton rose from his chair, standing over him. “You don’t know that, Kerry. You’ll never know. It was too fast.”

Kerry did not answer.

After a time, Clayton laid a hand on his arm. “You’ll never know,” he repeated. “Maybe the deputy made you into someone you’re not. But you don’t have to do that to yourself.”

Kerry looked up at him. “Just live with it, in other words.”

Clayton nodded. “You’ve got a
life
to live. Enough bad has come out of this already.”

For a long time, Kerry was silent. “I want to see John,” he said.

For two days more, Kerry healed, floating in and out of sleep. His brother called from California; reassured that Kerry would recover, Jamie quipped, “I hear you forgot to duck.”

“No,” Kerry answered. “I remembered. Just not in time.”

Thinking this a joke, Jamie laughed. “Next time, Kerry, you’ll do better.”

When Kerry put down the phone, all that he could think of was Bridget’s face, exploding into his.

Ceaselessly, he replayed those last few seconds in his memory, as he had ever since awakening to realize that Bridget’s death was not a dream but a living nightmare, for which he was responsible. Even now, he would awaken as in his former life, before Anthony Musso had pulled the gun from his pocket; for a blessed moment, Kerry was blameless, and then he would remember Bridget’s face and hear a young boy’s cry …

When he woke again, the room was dark, and Meg watched him, wordless.

There were fresh tears on her face, Kerry saw. “What’s this?” he asked.

She took his hand, answering in a muffled voice, “I could have lost you.”

Kerry managed to smile. “And then where would you be?”

“Don’t joke about it, Kerry. Please.”

Her face was shadowed with desperation. He felt compassion for her, and then wonder. “It’s over, Meg, and I’m still alive. What else can I do?”

Meg could not seem to stop crying. “That man nearly killed you,” she said with sudden vehemence. “Promise me, please, that you’ll get out of domestic violence.”

Thinking of Bridget Musso, Kerry flinched inside. “I can’t.”

“Please.”
She squeezed his hand tightly. “At least promise you’ll never take a chance like that again.”

Kerry closed his eyes. Then he sat up, wincing at the pain in
his shoulder, and his tone became as patient as a parent’s to a
child. “It was an accident, Meg. I’m a lawyer, not a policeman, and from now on there’ll be metal detectors at every door of that courthouse.”

Meg shook her head, unpersuaded, and her expression took on the cast of stubbornness. “Promise,” she repeated. “That’s not too much for a wife to ask her husband.”

Weary, Kerry lay back on the pillow, still holding her hand. “All right,” he answered, and closed his eyes again.

Mary Kilcannon came once a day, staying briefly. It was as if she sensed that Kerry was troubled by more than she knew, and that she did not wish to burden him. Her hair was steel gray now, just a few black strands remaining, and her face quite worn; thinking of all that she had suffered, Kerry felt a deep gratitude for what she had tried to give him as a child, the restraint she was showing now. Jamie might become President, he knew, but Kerry was the son Mary loved most deeply, the one in whose face she saw her care reflected. And yet she refused to worry in his presence.

What parents do for their children,
Kerry thought in wonder.
What
mothers
do …

One more time,
he had said to John,
and this will be over
.

In the doorway, Clayton touched the boy’s shoulder, then nodded toward Kerry. “You can see now, John. Kerry’s fine.”

For once, the boy could not keep his eyes off Kerry; what Kerry read there went so far beyond relief that it was painful. Tentative, the boy came to him.

Glancing up at Clayton, Kerry nodded. “I’ll be down the hall,” Clayton told them both, and vanished.

John placed his hand on the sheets, a few inches from Kerry’s arm. His eyes were sunken, his face was stunned; since John had stopped crying, the social worker had told Kerry, he had been almost mute. He had not asked about his father, or his mother. They gave him pills to sleep.

What to say,
Kerry thought,
that could make any difference?
He clasped John’s hand in his own. “Your mom loved you very much, you know. She always will.”

The boy swallowed, then looked away. Kerry sensed how little use to him a dead mother—whose love John had known
for barely a year—would be in the years to come. But all that Kerry could do was to grasp his hand still tighter. Just as he had done at the moment Bridget died.

Perhaps, Kerry thought, the same memory made the boy’s lips tremble, as if to speak.

“What is it?” Kerry asked.

John laid his face on the bed, not daring to look at Kerry. “I want to stay with you,” he whispered.

Kerry’s throat tightened. A whisper, so that Kerry might not hear him. So that John could hardly hear himself.

I want to stay with you …

Did he mean tonight, Kerry wondered, or forever? And why not—wasn’t this what Kerry owed John Musso? Who could believe that an aging woman in another city would know enough, or even live long enough, to mend the damage done to him?

Gently, Kerry touched the dark crown of John’s head. There was so much to consider, he knew—his work, his marriage, his own fitness. He recalled his last impulsive decision, so entwined with this one; how little he had known about love when he asked Meg Collins to marry him, how dimly he understood it now. Just enough to know that the reasons she could not love him must have begun, not with Pat, but in her childhood, planting the seeds of her own subconscious wish—and this Kerry felt more sure of—never to have children. Not their own, and certainly not this child.

He must not temporize, Kerry knew. If he could not save Bridget Musso, or take John’s life into his hands, nothing was left but truth.

Softly, Kerry began to explain about the boy’s new home, the great-aunt who was waiting for him. John said nothing more.
When Clayton came for him, he did not look back.

In the weeks after his release from the hospital, Kerry threw himself into his rehabilitation and his work. Had he been a split-second slower, he often thought, the bullet would have struck him in the head. Every hour since was a gift: his unspoken guilt only fueled his new intensity. Calling the office to find Kerry working past ten o’clock on a Monday night, Clayton said to him, “It’s not your fault that you’re still alive.” But Kerry would not listen. At home, there was only Meg; here, there were cases to win, causes to help him remember or, perhaps, to forget.

When he called John’s great-aunt, the boy would not speak to him.

John was so withdrawn, the woman told Kerry, that she never quite knew what to do. She seemed decent, humorless, and wholly unimaginative. Every week, John refused to come to the telephone; every week, her report was the same. Her aged voice combined helplessness with a certain fatalism: John Musso was her cross to bear, Kerry detected, and it was not for her to question the burdens God imposed. Kerry thought about flying to see them and then realized with bitter certainty that reappearing in John’s life now was the last cruelty left undone.

At times Kerry thought of Jamie. Striving for the Democratic nomination, Jamie had fought his opponent—a former Vice President—to a virtual draw. Then, to Kerry’s astonishment, Jamie made public his involvement with Stacey Tarrant; that a potential President was involved with a rock singer—however intelligent and socially aware—was deeply controversial. With a fervor that surprised him, Kerry hoped this candor marked a change in Jamie, a willingness to love at any cost, and not a mere recalculation of political advantage. But all that Jamie
told him in their one brief conversation was “If you were reckless enough to take a bullet, the least I can do is date in public.”

It was the last time they ever spoke.

On a warm April night, Kerry worked late. Once more, he had called John Musso’s aunt; John was much the same, she told him. Hanging up, Kerry vainly wished that the damage of childhood were not so hard to heal. To his surprise, these reflections brought him back to Jamie.

He was in California now, campaigning, so the media said, to the point of exhaustion. Unless Jamie won the primary, the nomination would slip from his grasp; on a film clip two nights before, Jamie had looked so depleted that Kerry was shocked. Perhaps, at eleven, he would switch on the news …

The telephone rang.

Meg’s voice was stunned, hollow. “Your mother called,” she told him. “It’s your brother. He’s been shot.”

Kerry felt numb. It was a moment before he could ask, “How bad is it?”

“They’re not sure yet. It just came on the television.”

“Go to Mom’s,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

Like an automaton, Kerry walked down the bleak corridors to Vincent Flavio’s office, footsteps echoing on the worn tile floors.

The television was in a corner, atop an antique hutch. Kerry pushed the button; in the darkness, the picture flickered to life.

Jamie stood on a concert stage, fingers touching Stacey’s. The crowd was frenzied; the arena echoed with his name.

“Kil-cannon …”

With a dazzling smile, Stacey turned to him. They stood at the intersection of two spotlights, as if suspended in darkness. The crowd blessed them with its cry.

“Kil-cannon …”

Smiling, Jamie stood taller. All sign of fatigue was gone. Stacey stood aside, giving him the crowd.

Jamie raised his hand.

From one corner of the stage, a slender man stepped forward.

Watching, Kerry flinched.

As if in a trance, the man raised his gun. Only Kerry seemed
to see him.

Amidst the chant, Kerry saw Stacey Tarrant’s mouth open in a silent scream …

The gunman took one last step, and fired.

Still facing the crowd, Jamie froze. The hair on his crown seemed to rise.

He crumpled, falling on his side, then his back. Stumbling forward, Stacey dived across his body. Then the Secret Service agents surrounded them, the TV camera searching for Jamie between their arms and legs.

When they found him, Jamie’s lips were moving. Blood glistened beneath his head.

As the television cast a glow on Vincent Flavio’s Persian rug and vanity photographs, Kerry stood motionless, watching his brother die.

They brought him home to Newark.

At Mary’s request, Niall Callahan, the funeral director, prepared Jamie to be buried. Mary was stoic, tearless, sustained by prayer and Kerry’s presence. When Niall was finished, she insisted on seeing her oldest son.

“Let me go see Niall,” Kerry said. “Then I’ll bring you.”

Mary nodded. He did not need to explain.

With a few soft words, Niall led Kerry to the room where Jamie lay and left him there.

Alone, Kerry gazed into his brother’s face.

In death, Jamie was waxen, and the crown of his head was missing. By now Kerry understood too well the wreckage an autopsy left; he knew that the lean body beneath the senatorial pinstripe was hollow and riddled with stitches. The man who had been his brother was gone.

My God, Jamie. What was it all for?

For a long time, Kerry stayed with him, tears in his eyes, fists balled in the pockets of his suit coat.

I hear you forgot to duck.

I remembered. Just not in time.

So much death,
Kerry thought.
And now you. How much I wish that I had known you or, God help me, loved you. How much I wanted never to be like you when, all the while, part of me hurt that I was your younger, lesser, brother. How much, I wonder, did any of that ever matter to you?

“But you mattered to me,” Kerry told him. “Always.”

It was hard, Kerry found, to turn his back and leave.

When he returned with his mother, Mary leaned against Kerry’s shoulder, staring at her older son. “It’s not what he would want them to remember,” Mary said simply. Beneath the hushed words, Kerry heard another sadness—that long ago, James Kilcannon had ceased to belong to his family.