Matter of Trust (49 page)

David gave the slightest sigh at his question. ‘I can try,' he said.

Arthur nodded. ‘Then go to Connor – maybe he can help but . . . if he doesn't . . . you need to consider an alternative strategy that's best for your client. That's your responsibility, son – that's your job.'

David knew exactly what Arthur was saying.

‘Two days. Give me two days, Arthur – and then if I turn up nothing . . .' He shook his head. ‘I'll consider the alternative you're suggesting.'

Arthur nodded, finally offering his protégé a slight smile of understanding. ‘Then I hope Connor Kincaid is the solution, David, for your client's sake – and for yours.'

*

Later that night, as the smells from his mother's kitchen drifted comfortingly up from below, as Lauren lay sleeping safely next door and Sara's head lay softly against his chest, David stroked her hair until she finally drifted off.

And then he lay there, exhausted, motionless, thinking of nothing bar how he might reach the young man named Connor Kincaid.

He tried hard to imagine himself at a similar time – with high school behind him and his life on the precipice of the great unknown. And it came to him then, like an old friend in the dark – a distant memory he had either blocked out or locked away in some secret place where it would be kept safe until it was needed.

And he needed it now, more than anything. And so he closed his eyes, and slowed his breathing, until the moment returned.

Newark, New Jersey; 1985

‘When I was a little girl, my mom – before she died, used to say to me, that all it takes is one.'

It was late, the stars were bright, the only sound coming from the water that lapped softly at their feet and the bonfire that crackled soothingly behind them. They had come to Cape May as a sort of last hurrah – before Chris went off to Princeton, David to Boston and Rebecca to some secretarial school in nearby Jersey City. Mike had taken a job at his cousin's tile manufacturing plant but had no specific plans bar drinking beer and getting laid, and Marilyn had signed some contract with a talent scout named Joe Kapitsky, who claimed that if she paid him five hundred dollars to cover the cost of creating a portfolio, he would turn her into the next Christie Brinkley.

‘I'm not so sure what you mean,' said David. It was a rare moment. In all the years they had known each other, David could probably count on one hand the times that he and Marilyn had been alone together. They were always with Chris or Rebecca or Mike or, more often than not, with the whole lot of them at once. And David found sitting next to her, his friend, like this, looking out upon the expanse of white wash and blackness, strangely comforting.

‘What I mean to say is,' she said, still staring straight ahead, ‘that there's something special about you, Rob. Always has been. You're one of those people who change other people's lives.'

David was not sure how to respond. Marilyn craned her neck to take in a beer swill – Chris and Mike now tackling each other a good fifty yards up the beach, a cold-looking Rebecca jogging slowly in their wake – before turning toward him to meet his eye.

‘You look at me differently,' she said.

‘I do?' he managed.

‘You look at me like nobody else does. Chris loves me,' she went on, ‘I know that, but every now and then, I see his mother in his eyes. It's usually when I say something stupid or express the wrong opinion or push something too far or too hard. But it's there – that look that tells me I'll never be good enough.'

‘Marilyn,' said David. ‘Chris thinks the world of you.'

‘No Rob, you're going away soon and I'm going to miss you, so you really need to let me finish.'

David nodded, half embarrassed, half sorrowful at the things she needed to say.

‘Mike, he loves me too. Perhaps just as much as Chris does and maybe even more.' It was the first time she'd voiced it. ‘And he will always forgive me – everything – even when I don't deserve it, but he will never be man enough to tell me how he feels – and for that I feel both sad and grateful.'

She looked at him and smiled. ‘Rebecca, she worships me of course, and I like to think I've been a good friend to her. But one day she'll wake up and see me for what I am – a hopeless cause in a pretty package, and she'll eventually find the courage to move on and make her own way, one way or another.'

‘Marilyn,' he said, looking straight at her now. ‘You shouldn't say these things about yourself.'

But then she lifted her hand and placed her right pointer finger softly against his lips – the small grains of sand falling silently from her skin before resting softly in his lap.

‘You've only ever looked at me one way, Rob – with respect. You saw past my eyes and my hair and my body. You looked beyond my drunken father and my shithole of an apartment and you saw what my dead mom saw all those years ago.

‘She thought I'd be the one to change people's lives, Rob – and she was
right – but not in the way she anticipated. I do change people – but not in a good way. I walk in and cause trouble and turn people's lives upside down without ever intending to. But while I cause chaos, Rob, you make a difference. You see and listen and you act out of compassion. And my mom – when she talked about it only taking one – she was talking about you.'

They were silent for a while, until, ‘I'm going to miss you, Marilyn.'

‘Me too,' she smiled, now looking back toward the blackness as her hand covered his. ‘But you'll be back all the time to check up on me,' she said, as if needing to reassure herself. ‘And even if you can't, I'll know you would do, if you could.'

D
avid found him in the park. He was sitting by the lake watching the fountain in its centre pumping a geyser of water into the air, the bulk of it catching in the wind, the spray forming a mist that drifted across the landscape like a ghost.

‘You know,' said David, hitching his pants as he took a seat on the dew-covered grass next to the tired-faced young man, ‘when I was a kid, my big brother dared me to swim out to the middle of the lake and put my hand against the base of that geyser.'

Connor Kincaid didn't flinch. It was almost as if the boy was expecting him.

‘Did you do it?' he asked.

‘Yeah, I did,' David managed a smile. ‘The water was freezing and the geyser cut my fingers to shreds.'

‘What did your brother do?'

‘He called me an idiot for taking the dare, then he pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it around my hand and made me swear I wouldn't tell our dad when we got home.'

‘And did you?' asked Connor, still facing the lake. ‘Tell your dad, I mean.'

‘No,' said David.

Connor nodded. ‘How did you know I was here?' he asked after a time.

‘Your mom said you and your friend Jack had been coming here of late – watching the kids play baseball.'

Connor didn't reply.

‘I know what it's like, Connor,' David continued. ‘Watching your father suffer but not knowing what the hell to do about it. I came from a good home, my mom was devoted and my father was fair. But when he died about ten years ago, I realised he never really seemed happy. Maybe he never got what he wanted out of life – maybe he never asked for enough.'

‘My father asked for too much,' said Connor.

‘Maybe, but not out of greed.'

‘Same result.'

‘Different intent.'

There was silence once again, and David realised just how troubled this kid had turned out to be.

‘Your dad didn't kill Marilyn,' said David after a time, knowing he may not get another chance to speak to this boy like this. ‘He made mistakes, maybe a lot of them, but he is not guilty of murder. Someone else killed her, Connor,' he took the plunge, ‘someone who was after something, knew where it was, and took advantage of a window of opportunity to—'

‘When I was a kid, I hated Sundays,' Connor interrupted then, his comment coming completely out of left field. ‘Father Mike used to say Sundays were for family, but my dad took Sundays as an opportunity to entertain other people's families. He'd have his politician friends around for barbeques, and he'd wear this stupid apron that said “King of the Grill”, and the politicians' kids would tear up our back lawn playing football, and cover their sausages with ketchup, and take sips out of the grown-ups' beers.

‘But later, after everyone had gone, he would sit on the back verandah with a cold beer in his hand and gesture for me to join him so we could watch the sun go down. And that was when I stopped hating Sundays and starting loving them – just for that moment or two.'

David nodded, finally understanding just how much Chris had lost in his determination to have it all.

‘And then he would tell me how important it is to value your friends. He'd say a good friend is someone who protects you, someone who champions your talents and hides your secrets all at the very same time.

‘And it's the secret part I can't get past, Mr Cavanaugh,' said the boy, as he finally turned toward David. ‘I am my father's son, I've made mistakes too – big ones – but as much as I want to ease my conscience, I won't betray the people I care for. This isn't just about me or my dad. This is about friends and what they'll do to protect one another.'

David realised that this poor desperate kid had reached a point where secrecy had made way for candour – or rather, candour would be applied to his secrecy, his devotion to his friend now clear.

‘Friends aren't always what they seem, Connor.'

‘I didn't think so either – but then I was proven wrong.'

‘You think you can live with your decisions?'

‘You think I have a choice?'

‘You always have a choice, Connor.'

But while Connor opened his mouth to answer, he soon hesitated, and closed it once again.

‘In years to come you'll realise the mistake you are making, Connor,' said David after a time. ‘When you go to Princeton and make new friends and look back on this time and your old friend from Newark with a whole new perspective.'

Connor met his eye once again. ‘If that's true, then answer me this. If my dad was here with you now, and he said his life depended on your swimming out to that geyser and holding your hand against it, would you do it, despite knowing that your hand would be cut to shreds?'

The boy had him – David hesitated only slightly before answering Connor with a yes.

‘I'll do whatever I can to save him, Connor,' said David after a pause, but even as he said it, he did not know if it was a promise or a threat.

‘I know,' said Connor, a slight smile of understanding on his young, handsome face. ‘He's your friend, Mr Cavanaugh, and in the end, he deserves nothing less.'

T
he following morning, the day before the trial was to begin, Sara woke to find the bed empty beside her. It was early, the sun barely up, and so she went down to the kitchen to look for her husband. When he wasn't there, she poured them both a coffee before heading back upstairs, knowing exactly where she would find him. And there he was, standing over his only child, the illumination from Lauren's Cinderella's Castle night-light turning Lisa's old bedroom pink.

‘I thought I'd find you here,' she whispered as she handed him his coffee and joined him to look down at their sleeping daughter. Lauren's mouth was open, her blanket thrown off as if she had travelled a million miles in her dreams. Her fair hair was soft against her pillow, her tiny fingers spread, and as David reached over the cot to touch her cheek, Sara wrapped her arm around him, and softly pulled him close.

‘She may not know it yet, but she is proud of you,' she said.

‘I don't want to let her down, Sara.'

‘You won't.'

Silence.

‘You did your best, David,' she said after a time. ‘Connor Kincaid has to live with his own decisions, whatever the reasons behind them.'

But she could tell by the look on David's face that he blamed himself
for his failure to reach the boy.

‘You could approach Jack Delgado,' she offered after a pause.

‘No,' he replied softly. ‘Delgado is even tighter with Cusack than Connor. These boys are loyal to one another, Sara. Jack Delgado will tell Will Cusack if we start asking questions about him – of that much I am sure.'

She nodded, pulling him that much closer.

‘Do you think I was wrong to come back?' he asked after a time. ‘Maybe Chris should have stuck with Fisk, maybe the plea was his best option?'

‘You don't believe that,' she said.

But David said nothing.

‘The other night,' he continued after a time, ‘I remembered something Marilyn once said to me. She told me I was special – that I had the ability to change people's lives.'

‘She was a smart woman,' said Sara as she rested her head on his shoulder.

‘I'm going to have to betray her, aren't I?' he asked then, plain and simple.

‘Helping Chris will not betray Marilyn, David. You told me she loved him more than anything. So maybe, if she could speak to you, she would tell you to do whatever was necessary to save him.'

‘Even if it means destroying her reputation?'

‘I didn't know her, but from what you told me about her, Marilyn was above gossip and speculation.'

David nodded. ‘She was wrong about one thing,' he said then.

‘What's that?'

‘She told me she changed people's lives too, but always for the worse. She said she created chaos and disaster without realising it. But even if there was some truth to that part, just knowing her was worth it.'