Dead Lies (28 page)

CHAPTER 31

W
EB HAD NEVER UNDERSTOOD HOW DESPERATELY HIS MOTHER YEARNED
for grandchildren until he saw the look on her face when he showed her the pictures of Violet.

“Violet,” she whispered, rubbing the photographs as if the act could somehow make the little girl materialize in front of her. “She looks exactly like Serena did at that age.” Then she burst into tears.

Web looked at the faces of his parents and his sister. They’d been shocked when he’d told them what happened, but now they just looked exhausted.

“I can’t believe Serena kept this from us,” his father said after a time. “How could none of us have known?”

“Serena was always good at hiding things,” Web reminded him, “like her depression.” Even when her illness was at its worst, she always put on a brave face. It was the reason she went undiagnosed so long.

“We called it moodiness in those days,” his mom said sadly.

“Do you think Bill knew about Violet, and about Serena’s plan to get her back?” Beth asked. Her eyes were puffy and her voice was leaden, and Web wished Gary hadn’t gone back to Boston. But he’d had to work.

“I don’t think so,” Web said. “Or else she wouldn’t have hidden the file here.”

Beth began to sob again. “So Bill didn’t have to die,” she gulped between breaths. “He was an innocent victim in all of this.”

“They were
both
innocent victims,” Web said. He was angry at Serena for keeping such a big secret and for letting it spin out of control, but the outcome could never have been anticipated. “Gordon McGrower is a sick, evil man,” he said. “He’s the only one to blame here.”

“It’s my fault, too,” his father said, his gaze focused on the soot-stained fireplace. He looked up at Web and held his gaze. “I bear some culpability in all of this, because I didn’t do something I should have done a long time ago.”

Web held his breath, remembering his father’s declaration the other night that he had something to tell him. “Dad, the worst thing we can do now is go around assigning blame,” he said in an attempt to hold things at bay. He couldn’t bear the thought of more drama today. “None of us knew anything about this, so there was nothing we could have done to stop it.”

“No, son, you don’t understand,” his father said more firmly now. “I need to tell you something that will be very difficult to hear, especially in light of everything that’s happened. I hope that after I’m done you’ll be able to forgive us.”

Web saw his mother reach out and touch his father’s arm. “Carl, I don’t think now’s the time…”

“It
is
the time,” he said sharply, cutting her off. “This is what you wanted Vivian, remember?”

His mother retracted her arm and seemed to shrink into herself. Web held his breath, and his mother started to cry.

His father took a deep breath. “When you and Serena were three weeks old, your mother and I adopted you,” he said.

Web heard the words, and it was like his father was talking in slow motion.
Your mother and I adopted you…
Each syllable was like a blow, and they made his ears ring and his head spin. He felt the heat of blood rush to his face, and he had the urge to put his hands over his ears like a three-year-old. Instead he simply looked at his father, stunned.

“We wanted a child, but we couldn’t get pregnant,” his father continued. “So, Uncle Richard helped arrange an adoption for us. That’s how we got you and Serena.”

For a few seconds, nobody spoke or even seemed to breathe. Then he heard Beth’s voice, but it was like it was coming from another room. “Am I adopted too?” she said.

Web tried to focus but the effort was so great it made him squint.

“No,” his father answered. “Your mom got pregnant after Serena and Web came along. The doctors explained it has something to do with the body’s response to the release of stress.”

The blood rushing inside Web’s head drowned out his father’s voice.
Your mother and I adopted you.
He was still stuck on those six words.

He was adopted.
Adopted.
It made sense, of course. He and Serena never looked like anyone else in their family. Serena and Web were tall while everyone else was short. The others had brown eyes while he and Serena had green ones. They.
Us.
His parents and Beth.
Serena and him.
There had always been an invisible gulf between them, and until now he’d never understood why.

Yet the knowledge wasn’t nearly as bad as the betrayal he felt at it having been kept from him all those years. He looked up at his parents and saw them as liars, imposters.

“Are you okay, Web?” said Beth. She reached out and put a hand on his arm, but he pulled it away. She felt like a stranger to him.

“Son, are you okay?” His father’s voice was faintly pleading.

“Web, say something,” his mother cried. “Please talk to us.”

He was so furious he thought he would explode. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

His mother eyed him warily, like she thought he might jump out of his seat and charge her—her big, hulking,
adopted
son. “It just never seemed like the right time,” she said haltingly. “I know that’s not a good excuse, but…”

“No, it’s not,” he snapped. “We had a right to know.”

“It’s not your mother’s fault, Web,” his father interjected. “I was the one who didn’t want to tell you. I asked your mother not to say anything. Over the years, she pleaded with me to tell you, but I refused. If you want to blame someone, blame
me.
”

“Don’t tell me how to feel, Dad.” He realized he was yelling when his father’s head snapped back like he’d been hit. Web lowered the volume a bit. “Mom’s never had problems speaking her mind, so I’m not buying that.” He watched a look of guilt spread across his mother’s face and ran his fingers through his hair. Why was
he
starting to feel like the bad guy here? “I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell us. “What’s so bad about being adopted?”

“Nothing, but you have to understand that times were different when you were born. Today being adopted is socially acceptable, fashionable even. But back then… We didn’t want you and Serena to feel different, to be marked out amongst your peers. We didn’t want you to feel like… there was something wrong with you.”

“Or maybe you just didn’t want people whispering about
you
,” he said, shaking his head at their selfishness. “You
lied
to us.”

“We didn’t lie!” said his mother. “You never asked us.”

He looked at her incredulously. “Withholding the truth is the same as lying. Don’t fucking turn this around and put it on me.”

She looked stricken. “You’re right, Web,” she said quietly, playing with the string of pearls at her neck and fighting to retain her dignity. He wished she would throw herself onto the floor and beg for his forgiveness, make some sort of show to prove she understood the magnitude of what she’d done. But he knew she’d never do that. It wasn’t her way. “We lied to you, and we shouldn’t have,” she continued. “But we did it because… maybe we were a little ashamed.” She glanced at Web’s father. “I felt like such a failure when I couldn’t get pregnant. You have to understand it was all I was raised to do.”

Her admission disarmed him. He realized his father hadn’t withheld the truth because he thought he and Serena were inferior in some way; he’d done it to protect his wife.

But protect her from what? Maybe the same thing McGrower feared? That somehow their children would be taken away? It was too much for him to think about, so he pushed McGrower out of his mind. “Do you know who my parents are?” he asked.

His father winced. “It was a closed adoption, but we know a little about them. They were both seventeen years old, and still in high school when your… birth mother got pregnant.”

“Where were they from? What did they look like?” Suddenly he was profoundly curious.

“They were from the New York area. We weren’t told exactly where, for confidentiality reasons. We also know your father was six and a half feet tall and played basketball. Your mother had blond hair and green eyes, and she was interested in swimming and music. That’s really all we know.”

Music and basketball. So that’s where his interests had come from. From his
real
parents.

“Web, can you ever forgive us?” cried his mom. She got up from the couch and came over to kneel in front of him.

He had the urge to flee.
No, I will never forgive you for this,
he thought.
You betrayed me in the worst way possible.

He pulled his mother to her feet as he rose too. “I’m so angry I can’t talk about this anymore,” he said, stepping around her in the direction of the hall. “But this discussion is nowhere near finished. I have a lot more questions, and I’m going to ask them when I’m ready. For now, I’m going upstairs, and I don’t want to be disturbed.”

He walked toward the hall and turned around. His parents were both wearing expressions of grief mingled with regret.

“Did Serena know?” he asked.

“No,” his father said, looking like he was just about to crack in two. “But God knows I wish I’d told her.”

Web let his father’s words hang in the air; then he turned silently around and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He undressed and removed his leg with practiced precision, trying not to think, trying not to feel. It was just too much. Then he slipped under the covers and slept for sixteen hours straight.

CHAPTER 32

W
HEN WEB WOKE UP THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, THE FIRST THING HE DID
was look out the window to confirm that it had, indeed, snowed overnight. He’d heard the scraping of plows in the wee hours of the morning and incorporated the sound into his dreams, but as he pulled himself from slumber and opened his eyes to the sight of the startlingly bright winter sun streaming in the window, he knew what he’d heard was real, and he experienced the same feeling he used to have as a kid when he learned that school had been cancelled and a whole day of freedom stretched before him. A fresh powdery blanket was covering the yard, and piles of snow lined the edges of the street where the plows had pushed it. He could tell that the snow was already starting to melt because it glistened icily on the branches of the trees, and every few seconds drops fell and widened the dents that had formed on the ground underneath. He surveyed the beautiful scene and was surprised to realize that in spite of everything he’d been through, he actually felt happy, light.

Of course it flew in the face of everything he knew he was supposed to feel. His sister was dead, her murderer was still walking free, and on top of it all he’d found out that he was adopted. He should have been angry. And yet all he felt was relief.

It was just so good to finally
know
.

He heard a knock at the door and saw it begin to open, and then a face appeared in the crack. It was Beth. When she saw that he was awake, she opened the door wider. “Can I talk to you?” she said.

“Of course. Come on in,” he said, glad he was wearing his boxers.

Pulling himself to a seated position, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for the sock that went over his stump. Beth plopped down in the easy chair and watched wordlessly as he put on his prosthetic leg. She had seen him do it countless times before and was entirely unfazed by the process. It hadn’t always been that way, though. Beth was thirteen when he lost his leg to a drunk driver—along with his promising basketball career. Like the rest of his family, Beth was devastated by the accident. But like many young girls, she was also squeamish. She had visited him every day in the hospital after his amputation and also in rehab when he’d learned to walk again, but it had taken her years before she was even able to look at his naked stump.

Serena, on the other hand, had asked to touch it a few days after the amputation, when the bandages were first removed.

Serena, who’d felt his pain like it was her own.

Beth waited until Web snapped the prosthesis into place before she spoke. “How’d you sleep?” she asked.

Web noticed her eyes were puffy and rimmed with red. She must have been crying all night again. “Great,” he said truthfully. “But I’m guessing you did not?”

“I’m lucky if I got an hour,” she said wearily. She fidgeted in her chair, and he watched her eyes wander across the room. They landed first on his desk and then climbed to the trophy shelf above it, where all his basketball memorabilia still stood. They swung around to the wall of windows facing the backyard and finally swept over the bookshelf in the corner, where he’d stacked every copy of
Sports Illustrated
he’d received during junior high and high school. Beth seemed to study his bedroom as if she hadn’t been there for a long time and wanted to familiarize herself with it. Eventually her gaze slid back to his face, but her eyes didn’t meet his, and Web wondered why his little sister looked so uncomfortable.

“Big night, huh?” she said, finally meeting his gaze.

He uttered a rueful chuckle. “I’ll say.”

She turned to face him squarely. “Are you okay?”

He hesitated. He didn’t really want to talk about it now. The news was still so fresh, and he needed time to sort everything out. But he knew Beth was only asking because she cared about him, not because she wanted to pry. He decided to answer her question as honestly as he could but to keep things light. “I think so,” he said. “I still can’t quite believe what happened, and I’m still really pissed at Mom and Dad. I know I’m a grown man, but I feel like a sulky eight-year-old.”

“I’m pissed at them too, if that makes you feel any better,” she said.

“It does.”

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive them?”

He considered her question then nodded slowly. “Yes.” Then he winked at her. “But don’t tell them just yet, will you? The eight-year-old inside wants to let them stew for a while.” Beth smiled, but Web could see she was deeply troubled. Obviously this wasn’t what she’d come to talk to him about. “All right, spill it,” he said. “Clearly you have something else on your mind.”

Beth stared at him for a moment then burst into tears. She put her hands over her face, bent over and cried into her lap.

“Woah, woah,” Web said, shocked. “What’s this all about?”

For a moment her sobs were long and deep and then she raised her head and sniffled a few times. Eventually the tears stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, wiping away the wetness on her cheeks with the backs of her hands. She wiped her nose with the edge of her sweat shirt, and when she put her hand down, the snot glistened in the sunlight. “I just feel so guilty,” she said.

“Guilty about what?” he asked incredulously. “Not the adoption thing? Why would you? You knew nothing about it!”

“Not about that,” she said. “I feel guilty about something I used to think when we were kids.”

“Tell me,” he urged.

She began to cry again, but she remained composed even as the tears slid down her face. “When we were little, I was always so jealous of you and Serena,” she said, furiously wiping at her eyes again as if they were likely to cause a stain. “You were so close, and I often felt left out. It was like you guys were a team and nothing could get between you. Definitely not me.”

“We didn’t mean to hurt you,” Web said, recalling the conversation he’d had with his father the other night. He conjured an image of Beth standing in the front yard, clutching her baby blanket and crying, while he and Serena ran off to do something together. It was a scene that had been repeated many times over the years.

“I know you didn’t,” Beth said. “Even back then I understood that, as twins, you had a unique and powerful bond. But I was jealous. I wanted what you had. I used to pray to God that he’d send me a twin too.”

“That’s sweet,” Web said. But he was confused. “I’m still unclear why you’re feeling guilty,” he said.

Beth turned her head to avoid his gaze. She was silent for awhile and after a few moments she said, in a tortured voice, “When I was a teenager and I realized God wasn’t ever going to send me a twin, I sometimes used to wish that Serena would die. If she did, I’d be able to fill the spot she vacated.”

Web held his breath and felt pain stab his gut. But it quickly went away. “But, Beth, that was just kid’s stuff. All children think stupid stuff like that. You can’t actually think that you caused Serena’s death by something you wished twenty years ago, can you? C’mon, tell me what’s really bugging you.”

Beth looked down and her voice dropped to a whisper. “As horribly as I miss Serena,” she said, “a very small part of me is glad I don’t have to compete for attention anymore.” She looked up at him again, and her expression was pleading. “Oh God, Web, am I a horrible person?” she asked.

Web got up and went over to give her a hug, having to bend over to do it. His parents’ confession had clearly kicked off this confession of Beth’s. He hoped it was the last one he would have to hear.

“You’re not horrible at all,” he told her. “I think it’s natural that a trauma—first Serena’s death and then what happened last night—would bring up old feelings. We all need time to sort things out.” He paused. “Besides, I keep having twisted thoughts myself. I can’t help but wonder which one of us—he pointed first to her and then to himself—is going to die first. Selfishly, I hope it’s me. I couldn’t bear losing another sister.”

“Oh, Web,” she said, reaching out and squeezing his hand.

“Thanks for listening, Web” she said, rising from her seat. “I feel so much better. I just needed to get that off my chest.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

After Beth left, Web sat on his bed for a few minutes without moving. He’d already beaten himself up for every way he’d ever failed Serena, and now he fervently wished he could go back in time and do things differently with Beth. Her pain was old and deep. But he wouldn’t allow himself another martyr moment. His rational mind understood that he hadn’t done anything wrong for all those years; he’d only done what was natural at the time. And all he could do now was try harder with her in the future. He would start by calling and e-mailing her more regularly. Maybe he’d join her on her next writing trip, too. She was always asking him to come.

Half an hour later he was showered and dressed. He went downstairs to make coffee and saw his mom folding laundry at the kitchen table. When she noticed him she came around the table and stood awkwardly in front of him, unsure whether it was okay to hug him. She apparently decided it wasn’t. “How are you doing, honey?” she asked tentatively.

He bent down and hugged her and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Okay. I slept well.”

She smiled shyly. “Good.”

His father had come into the room from the direction of his study, and he removed his reading glasses and patted his son’s back awkwardly. “We left the coffee on for you,” he said nervously.

“Thanks,” said Web, walking over to the machine and pouring himself a cup. He added milk from the refrigerator and stirred it, putting the spoon in the sink with a clank. He took a sip—the first sip of the day was always the best, even if it was in the afternoon—and sighed deeply.

“Are you hungry, honey?” his mom asked. “I’d be happy to fix you something to eat.”

“Starved. Whatcha got?”

Web was keenly aware of his parents’ discomfort, and part of him enjoyed it. Overnight the balance of power in the family had shifted. The adoption story was
his
story now, not theirs, and he’d bring the subject up again when he was good and ready.

“Depends on whether you want breakfast or lunch,” his mom said.

He didn’t have to think for long. “Breakfast.” It had always been his favorite meal. “I think I’ll make some pancakes.” He headed to the cabinet where his mom kept the mix.

“Let me make them for you, honey,” said his mom, scurrying to his side and reaching for the box in his hands.

He let her take it. “You sure, Mom? I can make my own.” He knew his mom wanted to do something for him, and he knew he was going to let her, but he thought he’d make a polite show of protest anyway.

“I’m sure,” she said, making a scooting gesture with her hands. “You go read the paper and relax. Carl, where’s the paper?”

“It’s in the study. I’ll go get it.”

“Don’t bother, Dad,” he said as his father made a move to retrieve his beloved
New York Times.
“I want to make a few calls before the entire day gets away from me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I have to check my work voice mail. I’m sure I have a hundred messages waiting for me.”

“I’ll call you when the food’s ready,” his mom called out brightly as Web left the kitchen. Her cheeriness was manufactured, of course—his mom had always had a gift for that—but Web appreciated the effort.

He carried his mug back upstairs. He retrieved his cell phone from his pants pocket and sat down on the bed. Work could wait a few moments. He had a few personal calls to make first.

He called Danny first. “It’s Web,” he said when his friend picked up.

There were a few seconds of silence before Danny said, “Uh, Web, hi. How are you?” He sounded slightly flustered.

“Much better today,” Web said. “Thanks. But I have a lot to tell you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, but it can wait. Listen, I was hoping you were still planning to have us all over tomorrow to watch the game.” The Jets were playing their last game of the season on New Year’s Eve, vying with the Patriots for a spot in the playoffs. Given all that Web had been through during the past week, there was nothing he would have liked better than to hang out watching the game and quietly ring in the New Year with his oldest pals.

More silence. “The game? Uh, Web, I don’t know…” His friend’s voice trailed off.

“Is everything okay?” Web asked, recalling Anna’s suggestion Danny’s eldest son was doing drugs.

“Yes, no… Um, look, Web, is there somewhere else you can go? I don’t think we’re really up to having people over…”

Impatience flared inside Web. Was everyone having problems today? He doubted whatever Danny was feeling could compete with his own. But he suppressed his annoyance. “Danny, what’s going on? Is something wrong with Tanya?” He paused. “Or Casey?”

“Yes, no,” stammered Danny. “Listen, Web, now’s not really a good time to talk…” Web heard some strangled sighs on the other end of the line, and he wondered if Danny was crying.

What the hell was going on?

“Danny, tell me what’s wrong. I’m starting to get worried here.”