Off Season (18 page)

With far more restraint than Ben had known he possessed, he stood still and did nothing, did not even look into his accoster’s small eyes.

Then as Ashenbach moved, or was helped to move away, the son of a bitch laughed a deep, disgusting laugh.

Every muscle inside Ben hardened into rock. The only thing that stopped him from exploding was the knowledge that exploding was exactly what Ashenbach would want.

“Let’s go, Ben,” Rick said quietly.

Ben breathed a breath, trying to ignore the ache that had risen in his chest. “Give me a minute.”

In the minute that Rick gave him, Ben made a decision. He was fed up with this bullshit. He was going to regain some control over his life. Jill was right about one thing: hiding was wrong. It was not going to accomplish anything, except maybe kill him. It was time to find some courage and attack this thing head-on.

He would start with a visit to his daughter and his wimpy son-in-law.

“Where are the kids?” Ben asked Carol Ann. He stood in her kitchen in his jeans and a flannel shirt. If he’d shown up in his suit, he’d have scared the hell out of her—she’d have thought someone died.

His daughter wiped her hands on a towel. “At the school with John. Getting John, Jr.’s costume for the Thanksgiving play.”

Ben laughed because it was less painful than screaming. Or crying. “Pilgrim or Indian?” He did not mention that he had not seen the kids on Halloween, that he had not had an invitation. He did not mention they hadn’t spoken in weeks, because time flew for both of them and now, with Jill in his life, he knew Carol Ann no longer worried about him. He had liked that, he’d thought.

“We’re not sure yet who he’ll be. It depends on what sizes are left over from last year.”

In spite of his anguish, Ben smiled. “That was one of the first things you did when we came to the Vineyard. You were Priscilla Alden in the school play. Remember?”

“A little,” she answered vaguely.

Ben was struck by the sad irony of how hard some
parents strive to build memories for kids too young to remember. He supposed that real memory started around age ten, Mindy’s age. Real memory. Ha—manufactured memory was more like it. He sighed and sat down at the table. “I’ll take some coffee if you have it.”

“Sure, Dad.” She went to the sink and filled the carafe. “It’s been a long time since you dropped by for coffee after work.”

Her comment seemed one of observation, not concern. “I’ve been busy,” he said. “You, too?”

“Winding down from summer.”

She kept her back to him, busying herself at the sink. Ben was always startled by his daughter’s strong frame—strong like Ben’s had been until a few weeks ago. A sturdy build was not always desirable for a female, yet Carol Ann had never complained, at least not to him.

He looked around the small kitchen, which had not seemed small when Carol Ann and John first bought the Cape-style house when they got married. He must have been living in Jill’s house too long, his perspective skewed by its large, high-ceilinged rooms. But though Carol Ann’s kitchen was cramped, it felt like home. A good home for his grandchildren to grow up in.

He curled the edge of the woven cotton placemat. “When’s the play?”

“Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Same as always.”

He folded his arms, trying to decide where to begin, wondering what his opening line should be. His gaze drifted to the window. This had been easier when he’d practiced his lines in the car all the way across island. “How’s Emily’s cold?”

Carol Ann scowled and poured coffee into mugs. “She’s fine, Dad. She hasn’t had a cold in quite a while.”

Well, he guessed he’d known that all along. “Not according to your husband,” he said.

She looked bewildered but set the coffee down in front
of Ben and did not ask what he meant. He knew he was treading in dangerous waters—pitting the husband against the father. But it was time.

“I thought that was why he canceled dinner last month. Because Emily had a cold.”

“No,” she replied. “He said you and Jill were busy.”

So John had lied to her, too.

He stared into his mug, the black coffee a shimmering mirror to everything but his heart. “Right now Jill’s in Sturbridge,” he said, “alone.”

She pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “I know,” she said. “John told me it didn’t turn out to be a good idea for the kids to go.” She sipped her coffee.

Ben did not answer because he could not speak, afraid he would blurt out something about John that he’d regret later on.

Stirring her coffee, Carol Ann studied her father. “Why do I sense you’re angry at something? Or someone? For instance, me.”

He grasped the handle and slowly brought the mug up to his mouth. Did he hate his son-in-law now? Was forgiving everyone in the world something one needed to do or risk going to hell? Noepe would probably have advised Ben to forgive John. Then again, Noepe was dead.

He blew on the hot liquid and watched a wisp of steam curl around the mug rim, then dissipate in the air. Without taking a taste, he set the mug down. “I’m not angry at you, Carol Ann.” He closed his eyes and felt as awkward as if he were back inside John’s truck, escorted by the reluctant family member from the courthouse, freed on bail.

He felt Carol Ann’s hand on his. Opening his eyes, he looked down at her short, clipped nails. “Dad?” she asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”

He patted her hand, managing a smile, then looked
into her gray eyes that were so much like his. The back door banged open.

“Papa!” little Emily shrieked. She bounded into the kitchen, scrambled onto Ben’s lap, and planted a small wet kiss on his cheek before Ben had a chance to breathe again.

John, Jr. scurried in behind her. “Hey, Papa!” he shouted, “Wait till you see my cool costume.” He rattled a bag close to Ben’s face. “Chief Running Rain.”

Ben mustered up joy, because kids should always have that. “Wow! The chief?” Beyond John, Jr. he saw the boy’s father enter the doorway. He did not make eye contact. He did not want to be arrested for murder as well as child molestation.

“My teacher, Mrs. Galloway, wrote what the chief has to say in real penmanship, not printing,” the boy’s words rushed out. “I was the only one in the class who could read it.”

“Good for you,” Ben said. “You’re smart, like your mother.”

Emily tugged Ben’s sleeve. “I’m going to be in the play, too. I’m a pill-grin baby.”

“That’s Pilgrim, Emily,” her father corrected. Ben still did not acknowledge John, even when he stepped well inside the room, even when the son of a bitch eased Emily from Ben’s lap.

“Speaking of Thanksgiving,” he said boldly, “any plans this year?” They’d had it together every year. Even since he’d met Jill, they’d had holidays together.

His daughter looked to John, then back to Ben. “I thought John told you,” she said. “We’re going to Maine to see his folks this year.”

John did not elaborate, and Ben did not ask. He stood up. “Well, maybe I’ll see you at the play.” It was clear the time had passed to confide in his daughter. He had tried; he had failed. “Guess I’d better be going. Work to do.”

“Can’t you stay for supper, Dad?” Carol Ann asked.

He did not look at his son-in-law. “Thanks, honey, but I promised Amy I’d have dinner with her.” Then he moved his eyes to John in a long, steady glare, as if to say not everyone was afraid of him. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said. He kissed the kids and his daughter and left, hoping she wouldn’t notice that his coffee was untouched.

Finally Jill cried. She had made it through over forty-eight hours in Sturbridge, mechanically taping her interviews, mechanically conversing with yet another videographer who thankfully had shown up but was disappointingly mediocre, mechanically taking her meals in her room so she would not break down in public once she stopped working.

She sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel room now, and finally she cried. But her tears were neither for her husband nor for a “misguided” little girl. They were for her. For Jill Randall McPhearson Niles, the intelligent, glamorous, have-it-all woman who suddenly had nothing, who suddenly was exhausted from trying so damn hard.

I need to do this myself
, Ben had said. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have bet he’d arranged the date for the pretrial conference, scheduled it for a day when she’d be out of town.

Alone.

Without him again.

It might be easier if he were dead, instead of at this place in between, this coma of will-he-or-won’t-he survive this ordeal. Or will-she-or-won’t-she.

Through her tears, she turned to the one thing, God help her, that right now made any sense, that made her
feel connected to something positive and worthwhile. The hotel television was showing
Good Night, USA
.

But it only deepened her sorrow to watch the picture-perfect hosts Christopher and Lizette, the untouchable darlings who did not have to deal with things like child molestation. Even if they did, Addie would have found a way to make it go away.

To make matters worse, Christopher’s tan now made him even more attractive, his tawny hair blonder from the California sun, his straight white teeth straighter and whiter. He was not sensuous: his edges were too sharp, his image too perfect. Yet underlying his veneer of the sweet-talking gentleman was an authoritative, power-hungry persona that Jill had often found enticing and sometimes intimidating.

She wondered to whom he made power-love now.

As she turned down the volume, the “talking heads” become mouthing heads, smiling, sincere, making all America believe that what they said was true and that their lives were together.

What had been so wrong with that life: and why had Jill expected more? And more what? Love? That was, after all, why she’d relinquished the spotlight and stepped into this hellhole where she was now.

She used to try to avoid arguments. Whenever she and Richard, her ex-husband, had argued, she had simply gone to bed. The two fought frequently. Morning, afternoon, her escape had no time clock. She had hoped that upon waking, all dissension would be gone, magically disintegrated during that time between sleep and wake. Rarely had that happened.

With Ben, avoidance worked only for him. Avoidance and excuses.

Rick says we can’t be sure what Ashenbach would do if he learned I left the island
.

People who made excuses, she’d found, often had something to hide.

She grabbed the edge of the mattress and dug her fingernails into the covers. She squeezed her eyes and refused to let herself think that thought again, to even begin to think that.…

She heard a long, low cry, a moan of sorrow, a wail of hurt.

And then she realized that the noise had come from deep within her. And from the one question she’d been denying:

Was Ben really innocent?

Outside her room, the wind spun eddies of autumn leaves. The room had grown so still that Jill could hear them now, small tornadoes “dancing in the dark,” Rita used to say back when they were girls and Jill was afraid to walk home alone. “Nothing will hurt you,” Rita had reassured her. “The sounds are just leaves having a party, like the toys in the
Nutcracker
after everyone is asleep.”

Jill had believed her because she had wanted to, and because, after all, they were only girls. Girls who maybe were … Mindy’s age.

Nine. Or ten. The same ungrown-up, imaginative age that thought sex must be like being in the dark—exciting or frightening or a little of both.

And then she remembered the old corner store and the penny candy and the shelves in the back where she and Rita had stood and filled tiny paper bags with fireballs and root beer barrels and pink and yellow candy dots on white paper strips.

And that made her think of Mr. Blanchette.

He was as old as Jill’s father but thin and white-haired, and he always wore the same blue-and-black-checked wool shirt in winter and a sleeveless undershirt in summer. He never spoke but sat behind the counter
turning pages of small magazines that Rita said had pictures of naked women and sometimes of girls like them.

They nicknamed him Mr. Creepy, which well described how Jill felt when she looked in the dusty window and saw him sitting there, even though she’d never seen inside the magazines and did not know for sure if he was a pervert as Rita claimed.

Whether the accusation was true or false, just or unjust, when Mr. Blanchette was in the store, the girls did not go in.

Did Mindy and her friends now look at Ben the same way? Did they call him Mr. Creepy?

And could the first Mr. Creepy’s reputation have been saved if he’d had a wife who’d pulled a few strings?

On the TV screen, the credits rolled. Behind the type, Jill watched Christopher remove his microphone, say some soundless words to Lizette, and smile for the camera that he knew was still set on him. Jill knew because she’d been there. And in a matter of weeks, she’d be there again. Away from the pressure. Where nothing bad happened.

Did Christopher know she’d signed the contract?

Was he pleased?