Sacred Sins

by C. D. Reiss

  Once the words were out, they were out. I wouldn’t have plausible deniability. I wouldn’t be able to claim the colored rocks led somewhere else. There would only be the secret, spoken out loud.

  Will didn’t tell me I didn’t have to say it. I did, and I’d have to deal with it. The secret was a living thing I’d lose control over like an adolescent with a driver’s license, but he had me. I wasn’t alone.

  Fuck it. I tossed it the keys.

  “Jonathan is my son.”

  The kind thing to do for Will would be to pause so he could digest and ask questions, but this wasn’t about him. Today had been painful in a way I hadn’t appreciated until I needed to continue. Everything had been upended.

  “Or I thought he was.” I swirled my scotch. “Drew and I assumed he was Strat’s. He looks just like him. But today I found out the blood types aren’t a match, so now I’m not so sure. It was a crazy few months, but the timing… Jonathan should be his. And if he’s not Strat’s, is he even mine? Did I make up the whole thing?”

  “Because you’re fickle and imaginative?”

  His response was so quick and conclusive that I laughed and kept on laughing. My eyes watered. In five words, he’d validated me and taken the burden off me. When my vision cleared, I had a full glass.

  I held it up. “To… fuck if I know.”

  “To that.” We toasted and drank. He put down his glass and tapped his ring on the edge. “You know the Irish couple’s baby was stillborn?”

  “Drew had the records.”

  “And your mother’s baby? Proof?”

  “Rumor.”

  “And your baby was alive?”

  “He was beautiful. And alive.”

  “Natural birth?”

  “I was wide awake.”

  He nodded once, sharply, and gave the glass one final tap with his wife’s ring. Will cut the air with a flat hand, putting an end to doubt. “He’s Drew’s and yours. Indy… whichever.”

  “He had on a condom.”

  The argument was fake. The relief of knowing Jonathan was mine gave me a high that couldn’t be explained by scotch. I was dotting Is and crossing Ts. He was mine again. Those hours without him should have been a parting of the clouds, but they were the darkest I could remember. I’d felt as if he’d been stolen a second time.

  “Condoms in 1982?” Will said. “It broke. Slipped off. Had a hole in it. I’m not judging when I ask if there was a third guy in there somewhere?”

  I didn’t feel judged. He was a thorough PI. He was touching all the bases before running home.

  “No third.” My hand went to my chest to make sure my heart was still beating. “God, why am I relieved?”

  “Margaret Drazen.” Will picked up the bottle and put it down again. “You are the most gentle and sensitive woman I have ever met. You are complex as fuck. Hard to get through. Demanding. Bossy as a five-star fucking general. But inside? You’re just a human. I could have really fallen for you.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you.”

  “I know.”

  A bell rang through the house. The front gate.

  Drew.

  No.

  Indy. He wasn’t Drew anymore.

  I drained my glass. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Will stopped me as I reached for the doorknob. “You think your father killed Strat?”

  I opened it. “I do. I have a ton of circumstantial evidence on my counter.”

  He walked to his car as Indy parked his bike. When he got his helmet off, Indy stared at Will then me.

  “Indiana McCaffrey, you’ve met Will Santon.”

  They shook hands.

  “How’s the music blog?” Indy asked. His hackles had no business being up after so many years, but men were men.

  “Ineffective.” Will waved to me and got in the car.

  We watched him drive away—me from the top of the stairs, Indy at the bottom.

  “Should I ask if anything’s going on with that guy?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked at me. “Is anything going on with that guy?”

  “No. Did you bring a bathing suit?”

  “Bathing suits are for pussies.” He came up the steps.

  “New boots?” I asked, looking at his face, not his feet.

  “You like them?” he replied, looking back down at my eyes.

  “I told you the others would be ruined.”

  “They’re drying out. I don’t throw things away just because they see a little wear.”

  “Nothing time can’t fix?”

  “I love those boots. They’ll get all the time they need.”

  He’d forced a smile out of me. I put my hand on his arm. “Come on into my big, empty house.”

  I led him into the kitchen where two glasses and a third-empty bottle of Japanese scotch waited.

  “Can I get you a glass?” I asked.

  He leaned on a stool by the kitchen island. “Water, please.”

  Of course. Two years sober and I’d offered him a drink the minute he came in the house. I grabbed the scotch by the neck and closed it.

  “What’s this?” Indy picked up a page.

  “A money trail from my father to a dead man.” Leaning on the bottle, I nodded to him slowly, giving the moment the weight it deserved.

  “Strat?” he said.

  I flipped to the last sale. “His life was worth three hundred thousand minus closing costs.”

  He laid his hand on the last, damning paper. “I want a drink so bad I can taste it.”

  “Then you don’t need it.” I put the bottle back in the cabinet.

  “Cin,” he said, still looking down, “do you think your father’s capable of murder?”

  Did I?

  I knew a lot. Did I know everything?

  “He is. No doubt he is.” I tapped the counter, staring at the webbed patterns in the marble. “What would you do if you were me?”

  “If I believed he’d killed someone I loved?”

  “Not if you believed it,” I said, crossing my arms. “If you knew it.”

  “In that case, you know what I’d do.”

  “Do I? The guy I knew, the lawyer Drew would have done one thing. But I don’t see that guy in you anymore. You’re different. Part Indy. Part something else. So seeing what you see and knowing me…”

  “Knowing how you’ve changed too?” he said.

  “Knowing that. Yes. If you were me, what would you do?”

  He stated a fact with no more urgency than a shrug. “I’d destroy him.”

  “And if you were you?”

  “Same. And I intend to.” My eyes deceived me. In the soft lights over the counter, he looked approachable and sexy, but the sound of his voice was comfortable with its own menace. “I don’t know if your PI told you this, or if he even knows. I said I was two years sober. If you count my time in prison, it’s three and a half years.”

  I nodded.

  “You knew,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “I killed a woman while I was driving drunk. She wasn’t doing anything but coming home from a party. She didn’t drink because she was responsible, and I came along and killed her.” He turned back to the counter as if he couldn’t stand to look at me. As if he had to pretend he was the only one in the room. “I was up for parole after six months, but I said nah. I couldn’t face the world. That was the bottom. Once a person hits bottom, Margie, nothing’s scary. Not death. Not prison. Nothing.”

  He looked like the only man in the world. I couldn’t let him stand there alone.

  I went to him, putting my hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for what I’ve done and what I’m about to do.”

  “Indy.” I leaned onto the counter next to him until we faced each other. “You’re not going to premeditate a murder.”

  He laughed a little. “God, no. Even a man who’s hit bottom has limits.” He tented his fingers over the folder.
“But I can hold him accountable, and I’m sorry. It’s going to be hard for you.”

  “I can’t help you.” I closed the folder and pushed it away. “I don’t know if you can do this without taking everyone else down with him. And it’s… it’s disloyal.”

  “After everything he’s done to you?”

  “He’s done nothing that hasn’t been what he thought was best for his family. He’s misguided, unevolved, conniving, and controlling, but it was all for us. And I know he’s done more harm than good, but he’s my father. I can’t pull him out of us as if he’s a discrete object. The whole thing could come down.”

  He laid his thumb on my chin. I could feel the callous.

  “I didn’t come back to hurt you, Cinnamon.”

  “What if I asked you not to?”

  “Why? Because he’s your father?”

  “Because…”

  He’s your son’s grandfather.

  I didn’t think anything could make it worse.

  I took his hand away. “Once I tell you what I’m about to tell you, you might change your mind.”

  Or make it worse.

  No going back now. He stood up straight, attention redirected from the countertop to me. We’d switched postures. I put my hands far apart, leaning into the center of the triangle as if it was the only way to hold myself up.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Like a child, I wanted to make him promise to be calm, but like an adult, I knew he couldn’t modulate his reactions with assurances.

  I wasn’t afraid of his anger. I was afraid of hurting him. But between lying to him to keep a fragile peace or telling the truth to no purpose at all, I only had one choice.

  “Jonathan can’t be Strat’s.”

  “What?” The color drained from his face.

  “The blood types.” I spoke quickly, as if I needed to get all the information in before his body decided on a final reaction. “Something with the blood types I don’t understand completely… but Strat was O and Jonathan’s AB. Os don’t make ABs. Only a couple with As and Bs can.” I swallowed. My throat was bone-dry.

  Indy was frozen in place with his brow in a knot and his lips parted.

  “I’m B. I don’t know yours.”

  “AB,” he said.

  I scanned his face for any knowledge of what that meant. Found none. “We can look it up, or we can accept what we already know is true.”

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Maybe not.”

  “He looks just like him.”

  “We saw what we wanted to see.”

  “That’s not true. No.” He slapped his hand on the counter. “Don’t tell me I didn’t want him. I wanted us. I fantasized about it every god damn night.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No but. I would have made a hundred different choices if I’d known.”

  I let him pace as he processed the information as if I’d completely digested it.

  “No,” he said. “The heart problem…”

  “Can skip a bunch of generations before it shows up again.”

  He rubbed his face. “I came here to fuck you.”

  Unable to control myself, I laughed and took his wrists, pulling down until his bloodshot eyes were visible. “And I let you in to fuck you up. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m going to destroy him. He took you from me. He took my… my son. Jesus.” He pulled his wrists away. “I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

  I reached for him again, but he stepped away as if I was one thing too many.

  “I told you I came back with something,” he said. “I knew a guy in prison, up in San Luis Obispo. He used to move money for your father, and he wanted to tell me so many things, but I didn’t know what to ask.” He pointed at the papers on the counter. “Now I do.”

  “We need to talk about this.”

  “No. I need to think. I have to go. Right now. I have to go.”

  He walked out so quickly, I couldn’t catch up to him. He was on his bike before I was at the front door, and his lights were shrinking dots in the night before I realized he’d left his helmet on the porch.

  * * *

  I had a piano. The house was too big to not have one. The maids dusted it and sometimes I had it tuned. I didn’t look at it or touch it on the way to bed, but I felt it there as I remembered one Christmas in Malibu.

  Jonathan had been thirteen. One recital away from never having to touch a piano again. Two years after we realized he was mine.

  Drew sat next to him on the piano bench. My brother was slouched and sullen. He wanted to be outside with his cousins, but Daddy had said he needed an hour of practice and Drew had slipped in next to him when no one was looking but me.

  “This is a hard piece,” Drew said, running his fingers over Chopin. “Do you like it?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Jon sat on his hands. “I hate playing it.”

  “Why?” Drew ran his fingers over the keys as he read the notes, fucking up, doing it again.

  “See?” Jonathan’s eyes were wide. “When you play, it sounds good.”

  “I’m messing it up.”

  “Even your mess-ups sound good. Do it again.”

  “You do it.”

  Jonathan took an exasperated breath and played. I never knew much about music, but I knew enough to hear that even though the notes were there, it sounded like shit.

  We were back in New York by the time Jon had his recital. Good chance that—even after Drew sat with him for ninety minutes—Chopin still sounded like an arrhythmic cacophony under my baby brother’s fingers.

  Once the recital was over, Jonathan never played again.

  But after that, whenever Drew was around, Jonathan asked him to play. Drew would put his drink on a coaster and pluck at the keys. They’d tell stories while my boyfriend added music to the narration, laughing like family.

  19

  “A heart,” Sheila said. “There’s a heart.”

  It was three in the morning and I’d been playacting at sleep when the phone rang. I stopped pretending when she said the word “heart.”

  “How do you know?” I turned on the light.

  “You keep asking that and I keep saying I have people.”

  “Is it for Jonathan?” Grabbing whatever clothes were handy, I got dressed. “Are they prepping him for surgery?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need better people.”

  * * *

  The 10. The parking lot. The elevator. The hallways. The private waiting room.

  My sisters. My mother. The shared news. The love. The hope.

  A familiar pattern with a familiar next stage.

  “We haven’t been called,” the night nurse said from the other side of Jonathan’s bed. She was in her twenties. Peach complexion. Black glasses. From the minute she rolled in her little diagnostic cart, she’d had the disposition of a phone tree that—after twenty minutes on hold—says your call is important to her.

  “Is it possible there’s a heart somewhere?” I demanded.

  “It’s possible.” She checked tubes then typed with two fingers.

  “Is it possible anyone could need it more?” Sheila growled.

  “Yes.” Tip tap tap. “Did the doctors explain the list to you?”

  That list. Everything revolved around it.

  “You fucking—” Sheila had her finger out, ready to point threats at a nurse who had no power, no knowledge, nothing to offer but a call to security.

  “Thank you,” I said over my sister, grabbing her wrist. “We’ll take it from here.”

  * * *

  Morning.

  No heart.

  Three defibrillations.

  Dr. Emerson.

  Another day.

  It was getting worse.

  Hours. His time was measured in hours.

  It was so bad, I called Carrie.

  Six fourteen in the morning.

  I didn’t call Carrie for life or death.

&nb
sp; Another defibrillation.

  I called for death.

  The list was a dead weight. The stakes of Jonathan’s life in code.

  I had my own list. I juggled it like a clown at a birthday party.

  A heart. The papers. Strat. Drew. The list. Will. Indy. The list. A donor. The proof. Declan. Will. Indy. The list. A donor. Jonathan. The proof. Will. The FBI. The list.

  I couldn’t think. I weighed the phone in my hand, trying to put together the pieces of an impossible puzzle. There had to be a way. There was always a way.

  But the list was locked down. It couldn’t be changed. I talked to a state senator and an assistant to the Surgeon General, hoping to call in favors.

  There was no way to affect the list. It was locked down, just like me.

  Jonathan was going to die. His father—his real father—deserved a chance to see him.

  “Indy?” I said when he picked up the phone. I was in the stairwell, huddled in the corner behind a fire extinguisher.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m here. Where are you?”

  * * *

  Breathless, I arrived at the waiting room. Indy’s shirt was stretched over his back and I realized it was because he was hugging my mother.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said into his shoulder. “So good.”

  My sisters encircled them. Fiona had a hand on Mom’s back. Deirdre’s hands were folded in prayer. Sheila approached and put her arms around both of them.

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  “He always shows up in a crisis,” Dad said from a few paces away. He may have been invited into the room, but he was left outside the embrace.

  “I’m so sorry,” Indy said, pulling back to look my mother in the face. “Truly.”

  “Will you stay?”

  Indy looked at me, then back at my mother. He held out his hand to me, and I took it in both of mine.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll stay.”

  * * *

  No one ate lunch. Our stomachs were twisted. When he was strong enough, we took turns seeing Jonathan. I brought Indy in.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.