The Summer House (38 page)

“It’s doesn’t matter, Liz. Maybe this should have come out years ago. But now we know the truth, and Josh knows the truth. I can’t take the risk that he’ll use it against us. I don’t want to destroy the kids. Or you.”

“I can’t believe Josh would use this against you.”

Silence a moment. A long, draining moment. “How well do you really know him, Liz?”

The truthful answer was one she cared not to admit. She had known him one summer, or part of one summer. She had known him one week, when Danny had been conceived. And she’d known him one day and one night, last night or the night before. Not how she knew Michael. Liz had known Josh far better in fantasy than she had in real life. She wiped a small corner of the window.

“Why?” she asked.

Michael did not answer right away. “You said Josh saw it on the news, about Danny being missing. Well, there’s a good chance it was Josh who told them.”

She shook her head and looked at her husband. “No. It couldn’t have been him. Josh is the one who called me. He told me …”

Michael shook his head. “I’m sorry, Liz. But Roger checked with CNN. The story didn’t break until half an hour
after
Josh called. He knew the story before it was aired.”

She frowned. She tried to fit the pieces together. She could not. “But, Michael …”

“Please don’t be naive, Liz. Politics is about getting ahead. With emotional costs never considered.”

“But …”

He shook his head again. “I’m not going to wake up some morning and find that the media has revealed that Danny is not my son, that my wife had cheated on me with a member of the opposite party … excuse me, that would be
the
member of the opposite party. I’m not going to have the children held up to that kind of ridicule. I’m withdrawing as soon as Danny is back. And there is nothing you can say to change my mind.”

“My guess is your sister-in-law is trying to switch sides,” Keith said. They were still in the car, slowly picking their way across the island, as if they could outwit the storm.

No one seemed to care that they were with BeBe—an accused murderer. When BeBe had mentioned it, Roger had said, “You? Come on, BeBe. You didn’t kill anyone.” She’d taken comfort from that, thank God for Roger. She fidgeted with the seat belt now. “There’s only one problem,” she said. “Why would Evelyn switch sides?”

“Think about it. She’s always been jealous of you and Liz. But she’s played the martyr role, probably hoping to still cash in on some childhood dream. That would explain why she’s stayed married to Roger even though, well, sorry, Roger …”

Roger nodded. “Evelyn has said many times she doesn’t care if I have sex with a horse. I am her husband and she will not allow her birthright to be taken from her.”

“Her birthright,” BeBe muttered. “How asinine.”

“Not to her,” Keith retorted. “Anyway, now that this business about Liz and Josh and Danny is out, she’s probably terrified the family will collapse and she’ll go down with it. Unless she finds another route out.”

“With Josh Miller?”

“Precisely. He’s as close as she can still come to all those things she believes she deserves. If the information she’s passed on to him can help him get elected, he may feel indebted to her.”

“How?”

“Who knows? But don’t forget, Evelyn comes from a grandfather whose life revolved around giving favors and cashing in on them.”

“Favors,” BeBe said. “I am sick to death of that word. Evelyn told me it had all been arranged for her to marry Daniel. One favor for another. Her grandfather to my father.”

Roger scowled. “When did she tell you that?”

“The night I told her I knew all about Daniel. That I’d always known that Grandfather made sure Daniel’s orders were for Vietnam.” There. She had said it. She had told Roger the secret she’d held in for so long. “I’m sorry, bro. I seem to be saying a lot of things I shouldn’t these days.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Keith said from the backseat. “Because you’re wrong.”

BeBe turned. “No. I confronted Father. He did not deny it.”

Keith shook his head. “It wasn’t your father’s idea,” he said. “It was Daniel’s. And it wasn’t Evelyn’s grandfather who pulled the strings. It was Evelyn.”

He paused for a moment, as if to make sure he had BeBe’s attention. He did. Then he continued.

“Evelyn’s grandfather had had a stroke. He was fairly out of it. So she pretended to be him. She wrote letters on his letterhead. She made phone calls on his behalf, without
telling anyone he had no idea what she was doing, or that he was nearly dead. It was Evelyn who made it all happen so Daniel would go.”

BeBe interrupted. “But why? Why did he want to go to Vietnam so badly?”

“Because he wanted to be a war hero. He wanted to make your father happy. He thought that then he would feel as if he deserved to be president.” The rain on the windshield did not drown out his words. “It was Daniel,” he added. “Your father never even knew. Until it was too late.”

The wipers squeaked. BeBe and Roger stared straight ahead.

Whispering now, BeBe asked, “How do you know?”

“Daniel told me,” Keith replied. “The night he was killed. He explained that he’d needed Evelyn to get what he wanted. In return, I guess he really was planning to marry her.”

BeBe closed her eyes. “I told her I knew,” she said. “I told her I knew that Daniel wouldn’t have been killed if it hadn’t been for favor-swapping. I always thought it was Father … I hated him so much. And he hated me …”

Roger looked at her in surprise. “He didn’t hate you, Beebs. If anything, he was afraid of you.”

BeBe laughed. “For godsake, Roger, you know better than that.”

“Think what you like, but Father was afraid of you. You reminded him of his sister, Ruth. She killed herself, you know.”

BeBe snapped her head around. “She what?”

“She killed herself. Father caught her with a boy one night. She and Father had a fight. She went down to the dock and got into the boat and rowed out to the ocean and jumped. She couldn’t swim. Her body washed up on the Cape.”

BeBe could not say a word, for her mouth had dropped open and her brain had stopped working.

“He told me you look just like her,” Roger continued. “He also said you acted like her. Stubborn. Independent.”

“So he was afraid of me.”

“He always felt guilty about his sister’s death. That’s why he never ran for president. He was afraid people would ask about her.”

“I can’t vouch for all that,” Keith said, “But I know your father told Daniel you had accused him. Daniel intended to tell you the truth right after boot camp, before he shipped out. But then he was killed, and he never had the chance.”

“Father could have told me.”

Roger spoke up. “Would you have believed him?”

BeBe shook her head.

“By not telling you—by not telling any of us—Father kept Daniel’s image intact.”

“Untainted,” BeBe added. “Perfect even in death.” Both men were silent.

They were quiet for a long time, until they reached Tisbury. BeBe now wondered if the only secret left to tell was the one about the night before West Point graduation when Michael had been drunk and she had been, well, there. She decided that some things were best left alone, to keep in the scrapbook of the mind. With any luck.

“What do we do now?” BeBe asked as they at last pulled into the debris-strewn parking lot of the community center.

“Nothing,” Keith said. “Leave everything to me.” Then, as BeBe opened the car door, Keith stopped her. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Did you say that Evelyn knew that you knew about Daniel?”

BeBe thought for a moment. “I used the term ‘favor-swapping.’ I don’t know if I specifically told her I thought it was Father …”

“So she could have thought you knew she had done it. That she’d been the one to arrange Daniel’s orders.”

“Well, yes, I guess …”

“Great,” Keith said, then added, “We won’t be able to do anything about her until after the storm. So when you see her inside, keep your distance. Both of you. And tell Liz and Michael to do the same. Something tells me Evelyn is highly dangerous right now.”

Evelyn tried to keep busy in the kitchen, pouring milk into pitchers, setting boxes of cereal on long tables set up in the back of the room, pretending that she was not looking out one small, unboarded window at Michael and Liz, that she was not aware they had been sitting in the car way too long and must be discussing something really important, like the fact that their son was not
theirs
and that their marriage was a ruse.

She smiled, smug in the knowledge that, indeed, there was a God after all, one who was throwing Evelyn a life preserver just as the Adams/Barton boat was about to sink: a life preserver named Josh Miller.

Josh, of course, now owed her big-time and she had every intention of cashing in her chips. Maybe an ambassadorship of her own—
hers
, not Roger’s.
Hers
, well earned.

She had, of course, at one point, wanted Michael to win. At
every
point she’d wanted him to win, until that bitch BeBe had to interfere. Until Evelyn learned that BeBe had known all along.

“Isn’t it a federal offense to impersonate a congressman?” Daniel had asked when he’d learned what Evelyn had done for him … for
them
.

Evelyn spilled a dab of milk, then wiped it with a sponge, thinking, knowing that it should have been BeBe
who’d wound up dead. Dead and unable ever to reveal to the world the things she knew about Daniel’s demise. But by the time Evelyn had a plan, BeBe had left Florida for the Vineyard. So she tracked down BeBe’s boyfriend. It hadn’t been difficult. In fact, it had been even easier when BeBe’s assistant said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Arroyo no longer works for French Country.”

Evelyn found him, driving the silver Mercedes. Then, with one of the guns from her grandfather’s collection, she’d blown him away, tossed the gun into the Atlantic, and made one simple call to the police—all while Michael was making one of those god-awful speeches.

“I’m worried about my son,” she’d told the desk sergeant, affecting a strong Cuban accent. She said that her son and his lover—a very rich woman—had a violent argument. The lover was outraged and spoke of revenge.

The rest, Evelyn thought now with another wry smile, was history. And the only back she’d had to scratch was her own. No favors required. Only her own common sense.

Liz sat in the car after Michael had gone back into the shelter. She needed to digest his words, their impact, and the effects it would have on her family. She no longer cared about the effects on the world.

Once, she had thought Josh would make a fine president. Once, when she’d thought she’d known him. But Michael was right. She’d not known him at all. Clearly Michael thought Josh had an inside connection to have learned of Danny’s disappearance long before the media. An inside connection … a traitor on Michael’s side? One of
theirs?

Now, in addition to her shame over Danny’s birth, in addition to her humiliation that the truth had come out,
Liz felt equally duped. She wondered just how much of Josh’s appearance on the Vineyard was a coincidence, and how much had been planned. She also wondered if, when BeBe had blurted out to Josh that Danny was his son, maybe BeBe had been telling Josh something he already knew …

Which meant that Liz had some decisions to make. And she needed to start by repairing the damage between her and her sister. BeBe, who was …

Just as Liz began got out of the car, she noticed BeBe crossing the parking lot of the community center. Roger and Keith were at each of her arms—a trio of support against the still-blowing rain.
BeBe
, Liz thought, her sister, who should have been in jail.

“Not exactly Palm Beach, is it?” Liz asked BeBe, who shook the water from her yellow slicker and hung it on a rack with dozens of others.

BeBe turned to her sister. “Nope,” she replied.

Liz put her hand on BeBe’s shoulder. “We found him, Beebs. Danny’s on Cuttyhunk. He’s okay. He’s with his friends.”

They stood there, looking at one another, Liz hardly knowing her own thoughts, let alone BeBe’s. She only knew that she wished they were children again, innocent children who stuck together, defending one another from enemies of their kingdom. Once, perhaps, they had thought those enemies were external—that they were people like Father. Perhaps they’d both learned that enemies can also come from within, those self-inflicted beasties brought on by ourselves.

“You didn’t kill that man, did you?” Liz asked.

“No. But I would have if it could have brought Danny back, or if it could have changed what I did.”

Liz held out her arms. They embraced, they cried.

“Oh, God, Lizzie, can you ever forgive me?”

“You? I’m the one who was such a fool, Beebs. I’ve been a fool and a liar and …”

“Stop,” BeBe demanded, pulling away from Liz and wiping eyes—first her own, then her sister’s. “We’re not going to name-call and we’re not going to point fingers. Deal?”

Liz laughed. “Deal. How’s your jaw?”

“I’ll survive.”

“We’re going to get the best lawyer for you, Beebs.”

“Don’t worry about me. Tell me about Danny. When’s he coming home?”

A smile, a look of hope, a touch of anxiety all passed over Liz’s face. “It’ll be a day or so before the sea quiets down enough for the trip back.”

“Why the hell did he go there? Christ. When I get my hands on him …”

“When you get your hands on him a lot is going to be different,” Liz said. “Michael knows he’s not Danny’s real father. I told him. He has decided to drop out of the race.”

BeBe stared at her and blinked. “He can’t do that.”

Liz shrugged. “I don’t know what’s right anymore, Beebs. It seems that since Father died …”

“Father was an ordinary human being,” BeBe said, “just like the rest of us.”

Liz took off her slicker and hung it on the coatrack beside BeBe’s. The thought of anything about Father being ordinary seemed as unreal as these last hours had been.

BeBe took a deep breath. “All these years I thought it was Father’s fault that Daniel was killed,” BeBe said. “I was wrong. It was Evelyn’s. And Daniel’s. Evelyn did it, but Daniel let her. Together they arranged for his orders to Vietnam. Together they concocted the whole thing.” She ran her finger along the windowsill.