“Including things about Elizabeth,” I add, lest Paul think I’m just along for the ride. Everything about that night concerns me, too. If Jack’s focus is his mother, mine is Tom. With him gone, it’s now about memory. I want to correct whatever parts of that may be wrong. “There’s too much we don’t know. You handled her business affairs. You have answers we need.”
Paul looks like he’s about to object. I’m sure he’d rather be talking with me alone, perhaps explaining himself more or sharing what he wants our future to be. Hell, he may be feeling like my asking him about Elizabeth at this particular time is emotional extortion. But he does owe me.
Jack gets it going. “We know my mother’s business was on the verge of collapse. We know she had a falling out with her brother. Tom rambled about a man named Doe, likely Ronald Doe, the lawyer in Albany who handled her family trust. Doe is dead, or I’d be asking him these questions. My mother was the executor of the estate. I’ve searched her files for information connecting these things, but there’s nothing.”
“Tom talked about robbing Peter to pay Paul,” I say. “You’re the Paul. The Peter is Elizabeth’s brother, but he won’t talk with Jack. Nor will anyone else in the family.”
“Except his granddaughter,” Jack puts in. “She’s here in town for the summer. You’ve probably seen her? Looks like my mother?”
Paul is bemused. “The blonde at the funeral today? I assumed it was coincidence.”
“No. She’s working at Anne’s for the summer,” Jack says and drops the heavy part. “Her college major was investigative journalism.”
His brows knit. “Doing research? For a book, an article, an indictment?”
“We don’t know. But she can’t have gotten far if she hasn’t talked with you. You’re the one with the answers.”
Paul turns to me. “Is this why you called Sunday?”
I feel a moment’s guilt for having an ulterior motive, but the bigger picture has taken over. This isn’t about my parenthood. It’s about a broader set of events that affect us all.
“When we realized you were the Paul in ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul,’ yes, I called.” But I soften as I remember that call. “Hearing your voice brought back other things. Good things. You were always a comfortable part of our family. And you were always nice to my mom.”
A corner of his mouth quirks at the compliment.
Pressing the advantage, I say, “Elizabeth’s business meant everything to her. If she knew it was failing, what did she do?”
I’m not sure if there is an expiration date for attorney-client privilege. But Paul has to be realizing that with Dad now dead, Mom and Elizabeth both gone, and Jack and I being next of kin, secrecy is overkill.
Glancing around, he spots the long bench at the spot where the Sabathian drive forks from the circle. It is half-hidden by rangy junipers whose blue-green hue camouflages the weathered wood. A gnarled oak rises behind, offering shade.
Heading there, he waves us along, but when we reach it, he doesn’t sit. Nor does Jack. I do. Crossing my legs, I tuck my still-blowing hair under the shoulder of my black dress. Then I sit back in silent expectation.
After a minute, Paul cedes. “There was money taken—borrowed,” he adds with air quotes and eyes Jack, “from her family estate.”
“Did you advise that?” he asks.
“No. It was done before I learned of it. Your mother wasn’t proud of the company’s decline. She was hoping money from the estate would shore it up and that she could repay it with no one the wiser.” He stops short.
Jack finishes. “Only it didn’t pick up.”
“No.” Paul’s voice gentles. This is Jack’s mother he’s talking about, and Paul Schuster is nothing if not kind. “She truly did think of what she borrowed as a loan, but when the business continued to tank, she was in trouble.”
“And you suggested … what?” Jack asks in annoyance.
It is less that I feel a sudden loyalty to Paul, than that using him as a scapegoat just isn’t fair. Reaching out, I grab Jack’s fingers again, hoping to calm him.
Paul says, “She was in the process of considering various options, when the lawyer for the estate did an accounting.”
“Ronald Doe,” Jack says.
“Yes. He noticed the missing money and asked your mother about it. As executor of the estate, she could explain it away, but the money was still gone. She was terrified that if Doe looked too deeply, she would be charged with embezzlement, in which case she might lose everything. She and I talked about downsizing the company, selling it, even declaring bankruptcy.” He sighs. “Well, I talked about it. She listened, but she kept insisting that if she hung in a little longer, things would improve.” He slips me a look of regret. “When things kept sliding, there was only one person she trusted enough to go to.”
“Tom,” I say. The conversation with my sisters is fresh in my mind. We were speculating, but, setting my own resentment aside, I don’t want our guesses to be true.
Paul says a quiet, “Yes.”
“What did he do?”
Glancing back, he looks at our house. He is thinking that we just buried Tom and that he doesn’t want to be saying this. I’m thinking, for the second time in as many hours, that he can’t stop now.
When he turns back to me, he is resigned. “He taught her how she could cover up what she’d done.”
“How she could,” Jack says.
“Yes, she,” Paul insists. “Tom wouldn’t do it himself.”
“Because he didn’t want to screw up his chance of a judgeship?”
“Because he had principles. Say what you want about his autocratic approach to life or his temper, but he didn’t break the law.”
“But he knew how to do it.”
The two are glaring at each other, Jack fighting for Team Elizabeth, Paul for Team Tom. Jack is the taller, more brooding and imposing of the two. But Paul has age and experience, which give him a certain gravity.
“Actually, he didn’t know himself, not this specific situation. But another of our partners did.”
That was one of the possibilities my sisters and I raised. Easier to swallow, perhaps.
“Oh, Tom was crafty.” Paul snorts, half in admiration, half disdain. “He asked so many detailed questions—all in the hypothetical, mind you—that the other fellow thought he was researching a novel, like the next John Grisham. The partner asked me about it, which is how I found out. Tom never discussed it with me himself.”
“Which makes it hearsay,” Jack argues and, pulling his hand from mine, cocks both of his on his hips.
“True,” Paul says.
“Did you ever ask him about it?”
“No. I didn’t want to know. Tom and your mother had a strange relationship. There was a tie between them that I never understood.” He eyes me. “I asked Eleanor about it once, but she dismissed it so quickly I never asked again.”
I could guess at her reasons and was just as glad. Infidelity, romantic competition, bisexuality—any one of these might muddy the waters of her relationship with Paul. As the product of that relationship, I wanted to keep it simple.
“I do know,” Paul went on, “that when the company continued to flounder, she went back to the trust. Since she now knew how to fudge the numbers, and since she hoped that a larger infusion would do the trick, she took more—basically drained the estate’s reserve.”
“And you know this how?” Jack asks, still in attack mode.
Paul answers him, glare for glare. “Tom told me in the months after the accident.”
“Accident,” Jack mocks.
“Accident,” Paul states and shifts back to me. “He agonized, Mallory. He truly didn’t know what happened that night. She was there one minute and gone the next. He did not hit her, and he sure as hell didn’t shoot her. Whether she jumped or fell, he just didn’t know.”
“But why were they out there that night at all?” I ask, reliving the frustration we all felt at the time. “The oc
ean was churned up—”
“Not when they left. Tom was firm about that, and the forensic report supports it. It was foggy, but nothing that his chart-plotter couldn’t beat. The squalls were a ways off.” He broadens his gaze to include Jack. “She begged him to take her out. She needed his ear, needed his sympathy, his advice.”
“Did he give it?” I ask.
“He told her he didn’t know what to say.”
Jack’s voice rises. “Did he advise her to kill herself?”
“Pu-leeze.”
“Or disappear?”
A chuffing sound is Paul’s response.
“How do you know?” Jack demands. His eyes are granite hard. This is the man I fled from twenty years ago. I hadn’t known how to handle him.
Paul seems to. In the face of anger, his composure grows. “Because I know Tom,” he says levelly. “I also know how difficult the last few years were for him. His mind wandered. I’d be sitting with him, and without warning he’d be back in time. Often it was to that night, and he was asking me what she’d been thinking. He kept saying there had to be another way, that nothing could be so bad to make her disappear like that. I’m not sure he knew what he was saying or remembered saying it after he had—but beneath it all, there was a method to his madness. I don’t think his illness allowed him to lie.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “Dementia guarantees the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
“Even before dementia. He was law-abiding.”
“So the cops got the whole truth? Did he tell them any of what led up to that night?”
Losing a tad of his composure, Paul lashes out, “Would you have wanted him to tell the police that she stole from her family’s estate and then covered it up? Or that she planned her disappearance so the problem would go away? Because he did think that. For years, he held onto that hope. But the fact is, Jack, he didn’t know. He didn’t know the whole truth.”
Jack wraps a hand around the back of his neck and says nothing. Wanting to bring him back, I grab onto the edge of his pants pocket and give a little tug, but he seems unaware.
“Look at it this way,” Paul argues. “Everything I’ve told you makes sense. When it came to money, the company was a sieve. There’s no hearsay about that. I saw the figures firsthand. Then your uncle suffered a personal crisis, and the estate was unable to help. Elizabeth told me this. She was horrified. She couldn’t sell the company. There were no buyers. So she had to watch her brother lose his business, his home, his wife and kids. He became a broken man, and she blamed herself.”
“And therefore committed suicide?” Jack asks. He and I have discussed this. We all did, back when it happened, albeit bewildered, since we lacked this background information. I tug at his pocket to remind him of earlier conversations we’ve had on this vein, but he is lost in the thick of it.
“I don’t know,” Paul says. “Tom didn’t know.”
Jack snorts. “Tom knew.”
But Paul is sharp. “It’s haunted him these last twenty years. He blamed himself for taking her out on the boat that night.”
“He should,” Jack declares. “If you know a person is suicidal, or just suspect or even just fear it, you do not give them opportunity. If you care about a person the way he supposedly cared about my mother, you do not take them out on a foggy night with warnings of micro-bursts on the marine channel, and if you find yourself in the middle of one, you put on a fucking life jacket.” Tossing both hands in the air, he stalks off down the drive toward his house.
“Jack,” I call, twisting to watch.
His head is downcast, eyes refusing to see more. In the sole indication that he has heard my voice, he raises a palm halfway, let me be, you have nothing to say that I want to hear, you’re on the wrong side. And there we are, twenty years back.
Only we aren’t. We’re twenty years older, twenty years wiser, and, regardless of where our relationship is headed, I’m not letting words come between us. I may be an inveterate peacemaker. But making peace won’t work just now.
Bolting after him across the gravel, I shout, “Wait.” But his long stride doesn’t falter. Finally catching up, I grab his arm. “Walking away accomplishes nothing.”
He turns on me. The glasses on his head do little to tame his chestnut hair, which is nearly as wild as his eyes. “It makes me feel better.” His voice is dark. “He was your father. She was my mother. Nothing has changed.”
“It has so.” Ignoring everything else in the air around us, I hold his gaze. “We’re all brilliant in hindsight. Of course, he shouldn’t have taken her out if he thought she was suicidal, but did he think that?”
“You’re defending him.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“He never defended you.”
“Right, and we now know why. So that was a flaw of his, but the issue here isn’t me. It’s your mother. I don’t believe there was anything malicious in what he did with her that night.”
“She died.”
“And we don’t know how it happened, but do you seriously think he wanted her dead?”
He opens his mouth to argue but stops.
“Right,” I repeat, relieved that he is listening. “Think of his behavior when he returned to shore that night. Think of what Paul said about his recent visits. We know he was tormented—because, I’m sorry, Jack, even apart from the principles, Tom wasn’t much of an actor. If he had been, he might have treated me better all those years, which is neither here nor there right now. We do know that your mother’s death tormented him. We even know it tore his own marriage apart.” I lift a quick hand. “And yes, there was reason for that totally apart from her, but what happened that night and the scandal in the days after clinched it. I’m not taking sides. I’m just trying to make sense of this.”
His voice lowers in defeat. “How can I do that? I’ll never know what happened. Any answers there might have been are buried with Tom.”
“I’m saying,” I beg, with a hand on his chest, “that maybe he didn’t have the answers, and that maybe we don’t get them in life. And that maybe we can talk things through this time instead of walking away.”
With the ocean flowing and ebbing somewhere below the bluff, Jack studies me. He knows I’m right. I can see the sadness in his eyes. But his jaw remains taut. Good intentions aside, a habit of twenty years is hard to break.
Blowing out a long breath, he looks over his shoulder at his own house, as if debating whether to head there or back with me. Suddenly, a visible tension pulls at his shoulders and spine. At the top of his front steps, hidden in a far right corner on the porch, is the image of his mother.
It’s Lily, of course. But given our discussion, if the sight of her jolts me, I can only imagine what it does to Jack.
With a guttural WTF, he takes a step toward her before spinning back. His finger gestures me to Paul, then straightens in promise. We aren’t done.
Understanding that he needs to talk with Lily alone, I do everything I can not to look back as I return to the bench. Paul is sitting now, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and hands clasped between. He looks up when I lower myself to the other end.
“That’s her?” he asks softly.
I nod. “Weird timing.”
“What do you think she wants?”
Beats me, I say in a grimace.
“What do you want?” he asks more gently.
“For Jack and Lily?”
“For you and me.”
With a mildly hysterical laugh, I lift a bewildered look to the drifting clouds. “Everything, nothing, time, memory, experience, talk—I don’t know.” Back at his face, I scowl. “How can we not know so much about the most important things in our lives?”
He should be as puzzled as me. The question is a cosmic one, and I’ve asked it rhetorically. But his eyes warm in the way of one who is older and wiser preparing to lecture. I’m thinking that I’m not ready for a lecture from this particular man, when I see empathy in that warmth.
“Because life isn’t static,” he says. “It keeps changing. We think we know where we are, then something happens and we’re somewhere else, and we have to find our way all over again. Sometimes, like with Jack’s mother, there just aren’t answers.”
Haven’t I just said the equivalent to Jack? I’m gratified to hear it from Paul. He is wise in ways I’ve always appreciated, and what he says makes too much sense to reject the words simply because of who he is. Besides, this doesn’t sound like a lecture or even advice. It sounds like a discussion.
“All those memories—” I recall frightening times with Tom, frustrating times with Mom, family times with Paul always on the sidelines, “—should they be ditched for being wrong?”
“Not ditched, just amended. And what about new ones?”
New ones, I think.
“You and I are both alive and well,” he says. “It’s an opportunity.”
Well, it was. But I say nothing. Truth is, Tom’s antipathy toward me notwithstanding, I feel traitorous declaring affinity for another father so soon. How can I simply negate a lifetime of memories in favor of new ones, even amended ones?
“This is sudden,” Paul acknowledges. “My timing stinks. I’m sorry.” He sits back. “Trust me, I didn’t plan this. But could I keep quiet after what Tina Aiello said? Of all the times I anticipated my confession,” he adds in self-derision, “the day of Tom’s funeral wasn’t one.”
“Would you have told me—ever—while he lived?”
He studies a distant point. “Probably not. Tom was one of my best friends, and still I hid this from him. I didn’t see that I had a choice. What good would it have done to tell him?” His eyes find mine again. “For what it’s worth, it never occurred to him to ask. He never dreamed it would be me, for which I feel all the more guilty, mind you. I never lied. But I did tell only half-truths. Like Tom with the police. Like so many of us. So, are we just taking the easy way out? Or are we choosing the lesser of the evils?”
He’s asking me? Like I’d know? I kept secrets from my sisters about having non-Aldiss thoughts, failed to ask personal questions of a woman I called my best friend, stayed away from the man I loved for twenty years—all in the name of keeping peace. Was any of it the lesser of the evils?
A Week at the Shore Page 34