Tainted (17 page)

I can tell you my secrets because you can't tell anyone so it's not like I'm breaking my promise, is it? It's a really special secret so I'm going to whisper really softly. You have to listen hard.

You know Jack and Mommy came back from the honeymoon last night. And Mommy picked me up from here and then she and Jack and I had a late supper together. Then I went to bed. But then Jack woke me up. I didn't know what time it was, but it was late and really, really dark. He had a flashlight and he told me to be quiet so I was.

I thought maybe we were going to the beach again to play catch even though it was cloudy and the moon wasn't showing. But we didn't go outside. He took my hand and put his finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh,” and we went to where the stairs go up to the attic.

I don't like the attic. It scares me. It's all dusty and there's nothing there except two old beds. I was scared to tell Jack I was scared in case he got mad again. He told me to sit down on one of the old beds and I did and then he sat down too and put the flashlight between us.

“Are you glad I'm back, princess?” he asked me and I said, “Yes.”

“You're not frightened of me, are you?” he asked and I said, “No.” I almost said I was frightened of the attic but I didn't.

“I'd hate it if you were frightened of me,” he said, so I said I wasn't.

“People can be so bloody stupid,” he said. I didn't know what to say back and then he said, “But you're not stupid.” And that made me happy. He was quiet and didn't say anything. He crossed his legs underneath him so he was sitting on them and he put his elbow on his knee and then he put his hand on his chin.

“Some people might think it's wrong that we play games.”

“It's not wrong,” I said really, really quickly because it's not. It's fun.

“I like playing games.”

“So do I,” I said again really quickly.

“I love you, princess. You're what makes the world a good place.” He smiled at me and I smiled back. It made me feel really special when he said that. Like I was really important.

“Do you want to play a game now?” he asked.

And I said, “Yes,” but I didn't know how we could play catch in the attic because the roof comes low down and a grown-up can't stand up all the way.

“Good!” He slapped his knees with his hands. “That's excellent. We'll play hide-and-seek. You close your eyes and count to ten and I'll go hide and you can come find me. But you have to be really quiet, OK?”

I didn't dare tell him I didn't want to play hide-and-seek in the attic. It was so dusty and scary and dark there and I wanted to go back downstairs but I didn't dare say so.

It's like he can tell what I'm thinking because he told me I shouldn't be afraid. He said he'd give me the flashlight and that's all I needed not to be scared.

I always want to do what he says. It's hard to explain but when we're together on our own it's like we're the only two people in the whole world and he and I are best friends. I used to have made-up friends. Mommy calls them imaginary friends. But Jack's real and that's different. I know that you're real too. And so are Mommy and Henry. But Jack is different. When he's with grown-ups he's a grown-up too but when he's with me alone, he's my age. And he makes me feel like when we're together nothing bad will ever happen. Like he has magic.

I didn't want to play hide-and-seek but I couldn't say so. I took the flashlight when he gave it to me and when he told me to close my eyes and count to ten, I did. I wanted to open them and to peek but I was afraid he'd see me open them and then it wouldn't be a real game any more and it would be my fault.

I was sitting on the bed all alone when I got to ten and opened my eyes. I didn't know where to start looking but I got up and I waved the flashlight around. I couldn't see him anywhere and there were all these scary shapes on the walls. I was more scared than I've ever been and I knew the only way to get unscared was to find Jack.

I walked around the bed and then I walked around the other bed and I waved the flashlight some more. It was so quiet and I wanted to call out his name but I knew that I wasn't supposed to. The way the roof is in the attic makes these spaces Mommy calls crawl spaces. She took me up to the attic once when she was deciding if she should put an old chair up there. She told me a cousin of hers used to come up there with her and they'd play in the crawl spaces the roof made. They're like tunnels. You get on your hands and knees and crawl inside them.

She told me her cousin used to crawl really far into the tunnels but she never did. She said boys did things like that and weren't scared and her cousin would come out looking like a ghost because he was covered by all the dust inside the tunnels. I thought maybe Jack had crawled into one of them so I went over to one and I put the flashlight on the floor and lay down so I could look inside but I couldn't see him.

And then I heard this knocking sound. It knocked once and then stopped. And then it knocked again. I thought it was a ghost knocking, and the ghost was about to come and get me. I was so afraid I crawled inside the tunnel so the ghost couldn't find me. But I forgot to take the flashlight and the tunnel was all dark and I tried to get out but I got stuck. I couldn't move and I was breathing so hard and I was so scared I wanted to scream but I couldn't because I opened my mouth but no sound came out. And then the ghost grabbed my legs and started pulling me out of the tunnel and I kept trying to scream but no sound would come out. It just wouldn't come out no matter how much I tried and the ghost was pulling me out and I was sliding on the floor trying to kick and to scream but the ghost was holding my legs and I still couldn't make any sound come out.

And then the ghost put its hand over my mouth and was smothering me and I couldn't look. My eyes were shut because I knew the ghost was going to kill me and I didn't want to see it kill me.

“Sshhh, princess, it's all right. Ssshh. It's me,” a voice said. It was Jack's voice. His breath was all warm and clean in my ear. I opened my eyes and I saw his face right next to mine. His hand was still on my mouth.

“That wasn't a very good game, was it?” he said and he shook my head back and forth with his hand so my head was saying no. “I'm really sorry, princess. I didn't mean to frighten you. I was standing right behind the door. I thought you'd find me straight off.”

He took his hand away from my mouth. I said, “Where is the ghost? Is the ghost gone? Did you kill it?” and he said, “There wasn't any ghost, princess.”

“But I heard it knocking.”

“That was me knocking—trying to tell you where I was. Giving you a hint.”

“OK,” I said but I was still scared and I still thought there was a ghost.

“Come on.” Jack picked up the flashlight and then he picked me up in his arms and carried me back down the attic stairs. “We're going for a treat. A midnight feast.” He kept on carrying me, past my bedroom and down to the kitchen.

We sat in the kitchen and he got me chocolate ice cream. He told me when he was a boy he used to play hide-and-seek games all the time. He said he wanted me to have as much fun as he had had when he was a boy.

“Look at that funny face of yours, it's all dusty,” he said and he laughed. Then he got some paper towels and wet them and washed my face. “What are you like?” he asked. He asks that a lot when he's happy with me. “You know I'd never hurt you,” he said. “And I'm sorry I scared you, princess.”

“I thought the ghost was going to kill me,” I told him.

I started to cry—but without making any noise. Teardrops came down and I couldn't stop them.

“Princess?” Jack knelt down by my chair and grabbed my hands. I thought he was going to be mad at me but he wasn't. “I hate it that I made you cry. You've been so brave tonight.”

I put my arms around his neck and my face against his shirt and I cried more. He hugged me and patted my hair like I pat your fur and then he whispered, “You know, I really am the Explorer. I didn't tell you before because it wasn't the right time.”

I hugged his neck really, really hard.

“I'll always be your father and you'll always be my little girl.” That's what he said and it made me so happy that I didn't mind how scared I'd been before.

“But why didn't Mommy tell me?” I asked him. He took my hands away from his neck and sat me back on the chair and smiled at me. His eyes get more blue when he smiles.

“Mommy thinks you're not old enough to know yet. She wants to tell you when you're seven years old. She'll be really cross with me and angry if she knows I told you now. I don't want that—do you?”

“No,” I said.

“So it's our secret, isn't it? Because if Mommy gets really angry with me, it will be bad. So you'll keep the secret until you're seven and she tells you, won't you?”

If Mommy got really angry with him, he might go away again, I could tell.

“I'll keep it secret.”

“Good girl. And remember to act surprised when she tells you. I don't want her to guess I told you before she thought you were ready to hear.”

He picked me up and carried me back upstairs to my room and put me in bed and tucked me in. He said he'd stay sitting on my bed until I fell asleep.

“If I keep the secret, you won't leave again, will you? You promise?” I asked him.

He was brushing my hair back from my face with his fingers and he said, “I won't leave. If you keep the secret, I'll never leave you—I promise. But you have to promise me something else too. You have to promise that the hide-and-seek game we played tonight is just between us, OK?”

I said I didn't understand what that meant.

“It means Mommy would be angry at me too if she knew we played a scary game so late at night and so we have to keep that a secret too. I think Henry would be angry as well, so we won't tell him either. You know, princess, fathers and daughters have secrets,” he said. And then he said, “That's part of what is special. That it's just us two who know things together. You promise not to tell anyone anything about tonight?”

I nodded my head and said, “I promise.”

He kissed me on top of my head then and I was all warm and cozy and happy with him there like that. It wasn't hard at all to fall asleep.

I have a father. I have a father like everybody else and he's here, with me. Forever. So it's all right now, Bones. You can play with Jack and go up to him and let him pat you and everything. He's not going away, ever again. He promised.

People changed. Henry had seen it before. Some of the boys who started their stint in the Marines as scared, insecure weaklings, came out strong, secure men. Others who thought they were God's gift to the world had had the shit kicked out of them and were humbled. Over the course of seventy-five years, he'd seen many people change in many different ways, but he hadn't been prepared for the change he saw in Holly when she arrived back from the honeymoon. It wasn't only the way her beauty, which had been hiding for so many years, now shone like a bright light—he'd already noticed how she had grown into her looks with the advent of a man who loved her. No—it was the way she held herself. There was a certainty to her which translated into her posture and the way she walked. Her shoulders weren't hunched, her stride was purposeful.

Marriage, the honeymoon, having time on her own with Jack for a few days—Henry wasn't sure what it was, but something had given Holly a new confidence.

Nevertheless, he was going to have a talk with her. And he needed to do that as soon as possible. Obviously he hadn't said anything when she and Jack had picked up Katy the night before—but now he was sitting with her on the porch and Katy was with Bones in the living room and Jack was in town getting groceries. This was his chance; yet he found himself hesitating.

“We were so lucky with the weather for the wedding, weren't we?” She smiled. “Look, the clouds have come in with a vengeance.”

“Mmm.”

“Are you all right, Henry? You seem preoccupied.”

“What do you say to a walk on the beach? You must want to stretch your legs after all that driving.”

“Sounds like a good idea. Katy,” she called out. “We're all going for a walk. Bring Bones out with you.”

“OK,” Katy yelled back. “Just a second.”

“I'll tell you all about Vermont. The inn was beautiful. But not too quaint if you know what I mean. It wasn't up itself.”

“Shit, sweetie. You're talking like a Brit now. I bet you'll have the accent soon too.”

“No, I won't. I tried once. Jack was rolling on the floor laughing at me.”

Katy came out, followed by Bones, and they set off for the beach.

“You're being preternaturally quiet, Henry.”

“Preternaturally?”

“Jack and I have a competiton going for who can use the best big words. He's winning so I have to practice.”

“Right. I have a feeling you stole it from me, but that's certainly a good one.”

“Henry?” She stopped. “You sound strange. What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Katy, when we get to the beach, why don't you go look for shells?”

“Which shells?”

“I don't know, bumblebee—pretty shells.”

“Is there a hidden agenda for this walk?” Holly asked.

“I want to have a talk with you, that's all.”

“Katy.” She frowned. “Go see if you can find any angel's wings shells, OK?”

“OK.” Katy ran off to the shoreline and Holly turned to Henry. “What's this about? What's so important that you need to talk to me alone? Is something wrong with Katy? Did something happen while I was away? What's going on?”

“Let's sit down.” He took off his jacket, spread it on the sand, sat down on it and motioned for her to sit beside him. When she did, he said, “I'm worried, sweetie. Katy fell and hurt herself the other night.”

“Is she all right? Is she—”

“She's fine. No harm done. But when she fell and hurt herself she was terrified of crying. She said that Jack hates it when she cries and that he leaves when she cries. You should have seen how frightened she was. It wasn't right.”

“Jack doesn't like noise. He has to get used to her crying, but he will. It's not a problem, Henry.”

“It seemed like a very big problem.”

“It's not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.”

The confidence with which she said this surprised him. The new Holly, the certain Holly. He put his arm around her shoulder.

“I don't mean to be an interfering old grandfather, sweetie. But there's something else, too. The other night I came down to the beach to fish and I saw Jack and Katy playing catch. It was midnight. He said she'd woken up and he didn't want you to wake up, so he brought her down here to practice. Don't you think that's a little odd?”

She pulled away from him, away from his arm.

“What the fuck are you trying to say here?”

“Sweetie. Calm down.” Her eyes were on him, accusing, enraged. “I'm the one who swears, remember? You're the prim and proper Bostonian.”

“It's not funny, Henry. Just what are you implying? Tell me right now. Jesus Christ, I can't believe this.”

“There's nothing to believe, Holly. I'm not saying anything—only that it's an odd time to play catch on the beach with a five-year-old.”

“He's getting to know her. He's her stepfather. If he wants to play catch with her on the beach, he can. You're making something innocent and sweet really, really ugly. It's sick. You're being perverse and sick and twisted.”

He stood up and strode away, heading straight toward the long grass where the ashes of John and Julia were buried. He wasn't too old to cry. The anger with which she'd said that, the words she'd used, had wounded him deeply.

Why aren't you here? You'd know what to do. You've left it to me and I can't manage any more. I don't know this Holly. My Holly would never have spoken like that to me. I was wrong, obviously. But how else could I have put it? Wasn't it incumbent on me to bring it up? Didn't she need to know?

“Henry!” She had run up beside him and was panting. “Stop. I'm sorry.” She took his hand in hers. “I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. Come on. Let's go over to Katy and Bones.”

They walked a few yards in silence.

“Henry, please. I didn't mean what I said. It's just that no one understands Jack, no one knows what he's been through or how good a person he is. But I thought you did. I mean, I thought you were on his team and then suddenly you come out with all this stuff. You don't know him, Henry. He'd never hurt Katy.”

He knew he had to collect himself; he had to shake the hurt off and keep going as best he could.

“No, I guess I don't know him. That's part of my point, sweetie. We don't know about his background, really. He doesn't seem to have any friends. I'm not saying anything against him, you know I'm not. Has he told you about his sister dying?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “He told me. It's awful. That's
my
point, Henry. He's been through hell and you of all people should understand that. I trust him completely. And if you love me, you'll trust him too. There are things I can't—Just trust me and trust him. Please.”

There used to be mussels on the rocks that jutted from the dike. Picking them was back-breaking and the process of cleaning them and pulling off their beards exhausting, but it was all worth it once they had been steamed open. Isabella had had a special mussel recipe: after they opened, she'd take them from their shells and fry them in butter and sherry; then they'd sit out on the porch together, devour them in huge spoonfuls and laugh at how so much work went into so little eating time. A decade or so ago, they'd disappeared. The clams remained but the mussels had vanished. He could order them in a restaurant, but they'd be farmed mussels, fattened up with flour so the taste was in whatever sauce they were cooked in, not in the mussels themselves. Farmed mussels, farmed salmon—there was something inherently wrong in making creatures of the water into cows.

But the mussels weren't going to reappear magically, no matter how often he searched the rocks for traces of them.

“Henry?”

“Yes, sweetie. Of course I trust you. I'm sorry if you thought I didn't. Tell you what, I'll take Jack out fishing before dinner tonight—he's not working, is he?”

“No, he starts again tomorrow night.”

“Good.” He squeezed her hand. “It might take me longer than it should to make adjustments, you know. Old men get set in their ways.”

“You're not old, Henry.”

“As we used to say in my youth, tell it to the fucking Marines.”

With all his worrying, Henry had almost forgotten how easy it was to have Jack around, what a pleasure he was to have on a fishing trip. They'd set out from the dock at five and meandered around fairly aimlessly, searching for gulls. Neither of them could see any, so they headed for the end of the dike. Going on a normal trip like this, with Jack being the same comfortable companion he'd always been, was reassuring. Perhaps he shouldn't have approached Holly first with his concerns: he should have gone straight to Jack.

Looking back on it, telling a wife just back from her honeymoon that her new husband might have been behaving in an inappropriate manner with her child was not a very smart idea. A man-to-man talk with Jack out on the water would clear the air. Why hadn't he thought of that to begin with? He could have avoided all that unpleasantness on the walk with Holly.

“Not a gull in sight.” He looked over at Jack, who was still searching for signs of them. “We can cast toward the rocks, though—sometimes you get lucky and catch a striped bass that's lurking in them. There's no point in trying to find gulls when there aren't any. Plus, I brought a nice bottle of red wine. We can settle down and have a drink and cast when we feel like it.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

Jack was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt and a windbreaker. He seemed slightly distracted, but then he'd been concentrating hard because Henry had given him total control of the boat. He'd managed to start it, guide it out of its berth and take it to the dike with no problems whatsoever, but even when Henry told him to cut the engine and relax, he looked tense.

“So . . .” Uncorking the bottle, Henry poured the wine into two plastic glasses. “Holly looks wonderful. I assume it was a terrific honeymoon.”

“It was.” Jack nodded, taking the glass Henry proffered. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

They sipped the wine as the boat drifted slowly with the tide.

“The inn was nice?”

“Very. But I prefer it here. I prefer the sea to lakes.”

“I'm the same. A lake is like a suburb—neither one thing nor another. Too safe.”

“Exactly.”

The rain hadn't come, but it was still a cloud-covered sky. Jack kept scanning the horizon as he drank, while Henry debated when he should bring up the subject of Katy and her crying.

Do it. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner we can all return to normal.

“It must be hard having a five-year-old in your life—becoming an instant stepfather.”

“No, actually.” Jack stopped scanning, looked directly at Henry. “It's easy. You know Katy—it couldn't be easier.”

“I know Katy, yes. But I also know children can be a pain in the ass. Especially when they cry. Katy told me you get angry when she cries. I can understand that, but I'm worried that you may be overreacting because you're not used to things like that, to children crying.”

“What are you trying to say, Henry?”

“Exactly what I did say. That you might be overreacting. Katy's frightened of crying now because she doesn't want you to get angry.”

“This is a joke.” He took a big slug of wine. “You know how well Katy and I get along. Why are you getting on my case like this?”

“I'm not getting on your case, Jack. I'm pointing out that Katy feels very anxious about crying because of your reaction to her.”

“Fantastic.” He reached out, took the wine bottle from its holder on the boat's dashboard and poured himself more. “I can't do anything right, can I? OK, I don't like it when she cries. Big deal. What am I supposed to do? Say, ‘Great, Katy, cry some more, I love it when you cry?'
She
doesn't like it when she cries either. She's not a moaner. She's a good girl and we have a good relationship. You're taking the piss. You and everyone else.”

“There's no need to be so defensive. I'm making an observation, that's all.”

“Well, cheers to you.” Raising his glass, he put it to his mouth and emptied it. “So you've teamed up with Billy now, have you? What's this foreign waiter doing with Holly Barrett and her child? He hasn't gone to some fuck-off university so he must be a nasty piece of work?”

Here we go again. But it's not as if I shouldn't have been expecting it. Life lesson number one: no one likes criticism. The first reaction is almost always to defend, the second to lash out at the critic.

“You know I'd never think such a thing. And I'm not teaming up with Billy Madison. Not in the least. I don't have any time for him—you should know that. I think he's a pain in the ass.”

“He's evil, that's what he is. A sneaky evil little bastard. He's been asking around about me—you know, he tried to get information on me from Charlie Thurlow. And he got hold of my cellphone somehow. Is that legal? Snooping like that? I'd call it harassment. The guy should be in jail—he sure as hell shouldn't be a lawyer. The sooner that nutter goes back to Boston and stays in Boston, the better.”

“I'm with you there.”

Billy lambastes Jack, Jack lambastes Billy. I suspect this is a dynamic that will never change.

Jack got up, walked to the stern, picked up a fishing rod and started to cast toward the rocks.

“It pisses me off, Henry. It fucking pisses me off. People should mind their own business.”

“I agree. But part of
my
business is Katy, Jack. I want to make sure she's happy.”

“Yeah. I get it.” He was reeling the line in quickly. “But I'm tired of all this shit.”

“All what shit?”