The Summer House (33 page)

“The summer Daniel was killed Josh ran away to Israel. That’s when he joined the military.”

Michael nodded. Of course he knew that. Those kinds of dates were embedded in the mind of the competition. Liz remembered that Roger had decided they should not play up the fact that Josh had fought for Israel, because Michael had not gone to Vietnam, because Michael had not fought for America, because, after Daniel’s death, Will Adams made sure that Michael was sent a continent away from Vietnam to serve his country. So Michael had spent his time in Germany, far from the jungles and the heat and the post-traumatic stress that would haunt the other soldiers, the ones with no “connections.” Roger had decided they should drop the whole issue of Josh fighting for the Jews because it could raise his sympathy vote and diminish Michael’s.

Liz closed her eyes again. “When he returned, you and I were married.”

Silence in the room was accompanied only by the concert of rain beating against the plywood on the window.

“You were in China that summer. At the young attorneys’ conference.”

Michael did not respond. It was as if somewhere deep inside him, he knew what was coming next, as if he were bracing himself for the inevitable. He did not respond, and he did not move. In fact, he barely breathed. Then, finally, he asked the most difficult question of all: “What does any of this have to do with Danny? And why do you think Danny is with Miller now?”

“God help me,” Liz answered, closing her eyes, choking on the words, “but Danny is Josh’s son, not yours.”

Evelyn had not meant to gasp as loudly as she did. In fact, if she hadn’t been so busy gasping she might have heard her husband come up behind her.

Roger grabbed Evelyn’s arm. “What are you doing?”

She put her finger to her lips. “Be quiet,” she warned. “They’ll hear you.”

Roger pulled her away from the door. “You’re listening at their door. How dare you …”

She shook his hand free and walked down the hall, not quite believing what she’d just heard, not quite believing, yet believing very much. She, of all people, should know it could be true, that Danny was Josh Miller’s son, not Michael’s.

Roger followed Evelyn into their bedroom. He latched the door behind them.

“Okay, Evelyn,” he said, “I want to know what you’re up to.”

Evelyn shook her head, her thoughts churning as they’d not done in years. If only this time she could turn this piece of knowledge to her advantage.

She sat on the deacon’s bench that was nearly three hundred years old and thought of the past, and thought of the future. “Before the election,” she said slowly to Roger, “I think you should ask Michael for the attorney general’s slot.”

Roger went to the window and stared outside. “It’s premature, Evelyn. Whatever Michael does or does not decide to do with me, with us, after he’s elected is his business. What’s more important now is winning. We’ve got to find a way to increase our lead.…”

She stood up. “Aren’t you listening to me? Don’t you ever listen to me? Do you think I’m so stupid?”

Roger turned and stared at her blankly, the way he always stared when her mind was moving faster than his. “What are you talking about?”

She knew he would be angry that she’d heard what
she’d heard, that he wouldn’t want to believe it, not of his sainted sister, Liz. She knew he’d be angry and yet some small part of her thought he deserved it. Deserved it for letting her marry him in the first place, deserved it for liking men better than her, deserved it for not being as good as Daniel had been, not ever, not even coming close. “Sit down,” she said, crossing the room and making herself comfortable on the generations-old quilt that lay atop the maple hope chest.

Roger sat down.

“You accuse me of snooping, but there is a reason. I wasn’t snooping, Roger, I was trying to protect us. To protect us and our future.” She looked down at the red-white-and-blue squares that formed the quilt. “All these years, I kept the dirty little secret about Liz and Josh. I kept the secret because I didn’t want anyone to be hurt. But something has happened now. Something that changes everything.”

She tried to act as if she were somber. She tried not to reveal the building excitement she was feeling, as each moment told her this could finally make something work to her advantage.

And then she told Roger. She told him that the night they’d caught Liz and Josh making love had only been the beginning. She told him that they had resumed the affair even after Liz and Michael were married. She told him that Danny was Josh’s son.

“So you see?” she finished, speaking to the now white-faced Roger who seemed to have aged at least twenty years right there in the bedroom in the last fifteen minutes. “Do you see why it is so important now to our future?”

He shook his head. “No, Evelyn. If what you’re saying is true, I don’t see that it has anything to do with us. It’s between Liz and Michael.”

Evelyn smiled. “And Danny and Josh Miller. Oh, yes,
and your sister, BeBe. Apparently she’s known all along.” She held up her fingers and ticked off the names: “Liz. Michael. Danny. Josh. BeBe … oh, yes, and the rest of the world if the news gets out.”

Roger scowled. “I’m sure Miller wouldn’t want it to leak any more than Michael.”

“Only if he wants to show the world how unbalanced the potential First Lady is. And who would want her husband in office if she went with the job?”

Roger paced the floor, the wide-boarded, uneven, damn Yankee floor. “Well, I know Miller doesn’t play dirty. I doubt if he’d do anything so blatant to hurt Danny. And if we’re the only ones who know, it’s not going to leak.” Then he was quiet and she was quiet and slowly he raised his gaze to hers. “It’s not going to leak, Evelyn. Is it?”

A loud banging sounded on their door.

“Roger!” called Liz’s frantic voice. “Hurry. Sheriff Talbot is here. Oh, God, they’ve found the van.”

“It’s on Lobsterville Road. Across from Menemsha. Looks like it’s been there awhile.”

Images raced through Liz’s mind, as she tried to envision where Hugh Talbot meant, as she tried to figure out why Danny and Josh had gone there, if Josh had gone at all, if they had been together. They stood in a semicircle: Liz and Michael and Roger and Evelyn and Clay and Keith and Joe, curved around the front door where Sheriff Hugh Talbot stood, rain dripping from his hat down his shoulders, making his announcement.

“I don’t understand, Hugh,” Michael said, composed as ever, as if he had not, just moments ago, learned that his wife had been lovers with his opponent and that his son was not his son after all. “If the van is there but Danny isn’t, where is he?”

Liz’s stomach tumbled. She wanted to slide into Michael’s arms, to feel him hold her upright, to lean on his strength, but felt it was no longer her right.

“We think the bike ferry is a clue,” the sheriff continued. “It’s on the other side.”

“You think Danny took the bike ferry across the water to Menemsha?” Liz asked, then added, because she had to know, “Was he alone?”

“There’s no evidence that anyone else was around.”

Her heart sank.

The sheriff continued. “But the good news is, the van looks clean.”

In other words, Liz wanted to blurt out, no one’s bludgeoned him. No one’s murdered my son the way BeBe supposedly had murdered Ruiz. The fact that her thoughts could be so dark sent shivers down her back.

“There’s something else,” the sheriff said. “Did Danny know the Watsons?”

“Watson?” Michael asked. He turned to Liz.

She shook her head. “Not that I know of.” Once again she was embarrassed that she—that they—had been too busy to know something important in Danny’s life—this time, the names of his friends. She searched her memory for someone named Watson … from college? From prep school? “No,” she repeated. “No one named Watson.”

Hugh Talbot scratched his day-old beard growth. “Too bad. I thought there might be some connection, because their catamaran is gone. We tried to figure if anyone saw them leave, but everyone’s been so busy with the hurricane coming and all …”

Evelyn stepped forward, breaking the line of the semicircle. “Wait a minute,” she said. “They’re a couple of kids, aren’t they? The Watsons? Don’t they charter a boat?”

“Yeah,” Hugh replied. “Well, they’re not hardly kids anymore. A brother and sister. Reggie and LeeAnn. They charter the
Annabella
.”

“I remember their father,” Evelyn said, “from when we were kids.”

“I’ve heard those names,” Liz suddenly recalled.

“Me, too,” Michael added. “They came to see Danny when he was in the hospital. I remember now. They came up from the Vineyard.”

Liz turned back to Hugh. “So where is the boat?”

“We don’t know where the boat is, Mrs. Barton. We’ve tried to raise it on the shortwave, but didn’t get a response. We can’t find the kids, either.”

“Where’s their father?”

“He’s dead, ma’am. The kids own the boat now.”

“Dead?”

“Yes. He was killed … well … he was lost at sea some years ago. In a bad storm.”

“A hurricane?” Liz asked.

“Well,” Hugh stuttered, “yes, ma’am. I believe that it was.”

Danny huddled under the coarse Red Cross blanket that the Cuttyhunk Historical Society had on hand for emergencies like this. The smell of ham and baked beans wafted through the large room where it seemed that almost all the island’s people—except those “too stupid or too stubborn,” according to the harbormaster—had gathered to weather out the storm. Living here year-round apparently had its advantages: Cuttyhunk was self-sufficient and self-contained, with its own underground municipal power system, which meant folks here could wait out the hurricane in well-lit style, and look across the sound to the Vineyard, which could be in total
darkness. On Cuttyhunk, the only thing they had to worry about was being washed or blown away. But even if that happened, the lights would still blaze.

LeeAnn walked toward Danny in the corner. She juggled two plates, and handed him one. He smiled at the beans and ham, the added coleslaw, carrots, and fresh-baked roll. “Nice place,” he said. “Think I’ll stick around.”

She pulled up a metal folding chair and sat down beside him. “How are you doing, anyway, Danny?” she asked, digging a red plastic fork into her meal.

He shrugged. “Okay. I suppose I’ve had better lifetimes but I can’t remember them.”

“That’s the beauty of past lives,” LeeAnn said. “We don’t know all the stuff we screwed up.”

“Or all the stuff that we got right,” Danny added, chewing on what had to be the best piece of ham he’d had in ages, certainly a far cry from the fodder of the campaign circuit. “Assuming, of course, that we got anything right.”

LeeAnn laughed. Outside the wind seemed to pick up speed. Inside the harmony of neighbors’ voices blended in sweet repose. All were music to Danny’s ears—the kind of fairy-tale music that indicated all was well, and that all was happy, or, at least, happy enough.

“So when are you going to tell me the truth?” LeeAnn asked.

He wanted to pretend he didn’t know what she meant. He wanted to pretend there was absolutely nothing wrong, that life was grand and he’d just happened to be in the neighborhood when he’d come to see them in Menemsha in the middle of a storm. He did not want to lie to LeeAnn, but he did not think he could tell her the truth. He was not yet ready to admit—maybe even to himself—what the facts he had learned really did
mean, and what ramifications they would hold for the future, his and others; oh, yes, and the nation’s, too.

He gulped another spoonful of beans and tried once again to assimilate the reality that his truth could affect an entire nation and become a chapter in the history books. He wanted to think these things through before he put them into words, if he decided to put them into words at all. But LeeAnn was sitting across from him, staring at him, waiting for an answer.

“Some stuff is wrong, yeah, you’re right,” he said. “But I don’t think I can talk about it yet. Part of it, I know, has to do with me being trapped inside this lovely motorized chair. The rest of it …” He shrugged. “Too soon to tell. Too much heaviness.”

“Is it about the election? God, Danny, I can’t imagine being in the spotlight.”

He eyed LeeAnn, in her T-shirt and her jeans, with her hair combed by the wind and her skin tinted by the sun. No, he was sure she couldn’t imagine such a thing.
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose
 … he remembered from an old Janis Joplin song. And LeeAnn, above all else, was free, would always be free.

He pushed his dinner around on the plate. “Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have been born to … nobody,” he said. “Well, not nobody, of course, but to parents who had regular jobs, who took two weeks’ vacation in the summer, who always knew where each other was at night because they were under the same roof.”

“But I always thought your family was close,” LeeAnn said.

“Close. Yeah. Close as long as we were where my grandfather expected. I wonder what’s going to happen now that he’s dead. You know, Lee, he was the axle that kept us all in motion. Without him here … poof. We may just scatter in a hundred million directions.”