Instinct told her to get up. But some deep exhausted part of her no longer cared how she appeared. All that she could manage, as Betty approached, was to stop crying.
Silent, her sister sat next to her.
For a time, Betty sifted sand through her fingers, narrowly watching the grains spill on the beach. A cool mist touched their faces.
“Please, Caroline, talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to say. Really.”
Betty was quiet. “Then I have something to tell you,” she said at last. “I think maybe I’m pregnant.”
Caroline turned to her. “How do you feel?”
“Fine, so far.” Betty smiled. “But I’m way late.”
Forcing a smile of her own, Caroline touched her shoulder. “I hope it’s true. Then I get to be ‘Aunt Caroline.’”
“You would be, wouldn’t you?” The thought seemed to give Betty sudden pleasure, and then her smile faded and she rested her fingers on Caroline’s arm. “I know we haven’t really been sisters always. But I wish you could talk with me.”
Caroline felt too drained to speak. Tears came to her eyes again.
“Please,” Betty implored. “You can’t go on like this.”
For a long time, Caroline stared at the sand. Out of wretchedness and exhaustion, she said, “His name isn’t Scott.”
The words, raw in Caroline’s throat, felt like a betrayal. Betty’s lips compressed. “Is he in trouble…?”
Caroline grasped her shoulders, “I can’t talk about this. We can’t talk about this.”
“What is it?” Betty’s fingers tightened. “Larry and I are worried sick about you, all right? And so is Father.”
Caroline swallowed. “They can’t know,” she murmured. “Just you.”
After a time, Betty nodded.
Caroline felt her eyes shut. “They’re after him—he didn’t report for induction.” She paused and then looked directly at her sister. “He’s asked me to go away with him. To Canada.”
Betty paled. “My God, Caroline.”
The hushed shock in her voice seemed to run through Caroline. Of all people, she thought, Betty might understand. “I know,” Caroline said. “It would change my whole life….”
“Then how can you even think about it?”
“Because I’ve never loved anyone like this. I never even knew I could.” Her throat felt tight. “Do you know what that’s like?”
Betty gave a first, faint smile. “The feeling you can’t get close enough, that he can’t get deep enough? That you’d dredge your soul for him?” Her voice sounded husky, rueful. “The world of a new love affair is like insanity. And part of the delusion is that you think you’re the only one it ever happened to….”
“I don’t think that,” Caroline said sharply. “It’s just that it’s happened to me.”
“Just like it happened to me—with Larry.” Betty paused. “But he never asked me to throw away my family and everything I knew. And after a few weeks or months, I wouldn’t have. Because I was able to put Larry in the context of a life I wanted and see that he was part of a whole. And that—fortunately for me—he fit.” Her hands grasped Caroline’s shoulders. “You have a whole life planned, Caroline. Scott—or whoever he is—doesn’t fit that. And this person whom I’m looking at now isn’t you.”
“But is it my life,” Caroline burst out, “or just the life our father gave me?”
Betty looked astonished. “Is Canada your life?” she retorted, and then her voice softened. “I know he feels like the love of your life. But he isn’t—if he were, he wouldn’t be asking you to change your life. Because that’s not how love is supposed to work….”
“But you have so many rules for things—how love is supposed to work; how families are supposed to work. David’s not pushing me—”
“David?”
Caroline hesitated. “Yes.”
Somehow this seemed to deflate Betty. Her voice was quiet again. “I’m so sorry, Caroline. I never imagined this happening to you.”
Caroline felt her sister’s sadness. “What do you mean?”
Betty looked down. “That you always seemed so smart and strong to me—that you’d never need anyone the way I need Larry.” She tilted her head. “Here I was wanting to help you, and now it’s me who’s shaken. I guess even more for Father than for me.” She paused, then finished quietly. “I can’t replace you for him, Caroline. No one can.”
It was a hard concession, Caroline knew. Silent, she squeezed her sister’s hand.
“Since your mother died,” Betty said at last, “he’s been so alone. Sometimes I’ve thought that the hope of practicing law with you is the main thing in his life.”
It was as if, Caroline thought, David had numbed her to this painful truth. “I know,” she finally answered. “But does that mean I should do it?”
Betty looked at her again. “It hasn’t just been Father, Caroline. It’s been you. He didn’t get you into Harvard Law School—you did.” Her voice grew sharper. “You’re saying you can’t define yourself for Father. How can you define yourself by a decision made by someone who, two months ago, you didn’t even know existed. And such a bad decision.”
It was nothing more, Caroline silently acknowledged, than she had told herself.
Betty watched her face. Quietly, she said, “Talk to Father, Caroline. It’s the least you can do. For him, and for yourself.”
Caroline touched her eyes. “I can’t,” she said miserably.
“David may have a deadline. But you don’t. You can go to Canada anytime.” Once more, Betty’s voice was soft. “Let him go, then talk to Father. Because I couldn’t stand to watch what you could do to him.”
The thought of Betty, the neglected one, trying to hold the threads of their family brought tears to Caroline’s eyes.
“Please,” Betty said. “For both your sakes.”
Caroline took her sister’s hands. “What I do, and how I do it, has to be my decision. Please, promise me.”
Betty watched her, and then her gaze broke. “All right,” she said.
“I’m going to Boston,” Caroline said. “To Cambridge, really.”
In the darkness, David was quiet. “To see your old stomping grounds? Or your new ones?”
“I don’t know yet.” She touched his arm. “Part of it’s that I can’t seem to think here.”
He brought her close. A little sadly, he said, “That was the idea.”
She flew to Boston the next evening.
In the afternoon, on a crisp, fall-like day, Caroline aimlessly strolled the Harvard campus. She barely saw it.
For a time, she sat on the steps of the law school. Summer students came and went; she could almost have been one of them. But now, Caroline knew quite clearly, she might never be.
She forced herself not to call him.
That night, alone in her hotel room, Caroline slept badly. She had not eaten lunch or dinner.
In the morning, Caroline gazed out her window toward the Public Garden.
It was green and pastoral, a piece of London amidst a much younger city. The skies were darkening, Caroline saw; with the instinct of a sailor, she sensed that the Vineyard was in for stormy weather.
Caroline closed her eyes. In her mind, David sailed the catboat with the wind on his hair, smiling at her across the wheel.
She went to the phone and called him.
The phone rang, and rang again. She did not hang up.
Finally, he answered.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s me.”
“Hi.” Her spirits lifted with his voice. “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.” Caroline took a breath. “I’m ready to talk about this, okay? I’m flying back this afternoon.”
“Shall I pick you up?”
“I’ll find you.” She paused. “It’ll give me that much more time.”
There was silence for a moment. Quietly, he said, “Can you give me a preview?”
She sat on the b
ed. “I think it’s better just to talk things through. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He was trying to sound stoic. Softly, she said, “I love you, David.”
“And I love you, Caroline.”
Slowly, Caroline put down the telephone, not knowing that it was the last time she would ever hear him say this.
Eleven
Caroline flew to the Vineyard in a driving rainstorm, which buffeted the twin-engine prop plane. There was the crash of thunder, a sickening jolt; the tiny plane took a brief, vertiginous drop, and then a second bolt of lightning lit the roiling seas below. Caroline gripped the arm of her seat and tried to think of David.
As it dipped for a landing, the plane lurched from side to side. And then the wheels hit the ground, circling to a stop, and the handful of stunned passengers straggled out like refugees into the pelting storm. Caroline was last.
In front of the airport, a wooden outpost that dated from the Second World War, she found a battered taxi. Inside, she shivered; her hair and face were wet, and a sideways rain spattered the windshield like hail. Once she had given her destination, neither Caroline nor the taciturn gray-haired cabbie spoke at all.
She was going straight to the boathouse.
Her life might be about to change, she thought. How foolish to wish for better weather.
The cab turned down the road to Eel Pond.
Caroline tried to compose herself. In the darkness, all that she could see was the cabbie’s fleshy neck, the low shrubs and trees of the moorlike fields as the headlights caught them. And then they passed the Rubins’ place, and the terrain opened to the bluff above a black, pounding sea.
The cab stopped. Hastily, Caroline fumbled loose some bills from her purse and got out with her suitcase into the rain.
She stood atop the bluff for a moment, gazing at the silhouette of her father’s house, perhaps two hundred feet away. A bolt of lightning struck nearby. Caroline started: as the thunder exploded, she imagined in her mind’s eye that she had seen the outline of her father’s car. But this could not be.
Turning, Caroline ran down the bluff and across the beach.
Her boots labored in the wet, heavy sand; by the time she clambered to the pier, suitcase still in hand, she was panting, half blind from rain. She ran for his door, footsteps hammering the wooden planks.
His light was on, Caroline saw. He was waiting for her.
She sprinted the last four steps and burst through the unlocked door.
She stopped, blinking in the light. David’s clothes were pulled from drawers and strewn near his suitcase on the floor.
Caroline turned, stunned and frightened, looking for him.
He stood in the passage to the porch, white-faced. The tension building inside her drove Caroline across the room to him. She clutched the front of his shirt. “What happened to you, David?”
He stared down at her. “Your friend came to warn me,” he said tersely. “Frank Mannion. He didn’t like draft dodgers much, he told me, but he didn’t want you hurt anymore.” He paused. “The FBI’s coming tomorrow, Caroline. Someone turned me in.”
Caroline felt herself freeze.
David watched her face. “You were the only one I told. The only one, including my own mother, who even knew that I was here.”
Caroline’s eyes shut. Silent, she laid her head against his chest. He did not move, or hold her. Quietly, David asked, “Who did you tell?”
Miserably, she whispered, “Only my sister.”
Gently, firmly, David pushed her away. When he knelt to close the suitcase, his face was taut and his eyes were narrow slits.
Caroline trembled with cold. “She wouldn’t do that.”
Snapping the final latch, David looked up. Voice still soft, he answered, “But your father would, wouldn’t he?” He paused. “The rich are different, after all.”
All at once, Caroline went numb. “His car…”
“Oh, he’s back.” His tone was bitter now. “I’m sure to ‘inspect his holdings,’ as you once put it. Of which you’re one.”
Tears came to Caroline’s eyes, and then the weight of betrayal overwhelmed her—her betrayal of David, Betty’s betrayal of her. Her father’s…
“But I was going with you.” Her voice filled with anguish. “After we talked, if you still wanted me, I was going with you.”
David turned pale. “Don’t do this. Please. You never would have gone, not really. You’re much too tied to all of them.”
His voice was flat, final.
Caroline folded her arms, staring at the floor. In a few terrible moments, she realized, her life had changed forever. Despairing, she asked only, “What are you going to do?”
He looked at her and then gave a faint sardonic smile in which, Caroline hoped, she might have seen a glimmer of affection. “Think you can keep a secret?”
“Tell me, damn it.”
There was another flash of lightning. David glanced out the window, then said, “I’m stealing your boat.”
Caroline stared at him. “That’s crazy.”
“Is it?” David pulled on his jacket. “The only other ways off this island are the airport and the boat from Vineyard Haven. Both places will be watching for me. The only ticket they’ll give me is to prison. And I refuse to go there on account of your family.”
Caroline was seized by despair. “You’ll never make it. Not in a catboat.”
He looked at her steadily. “I’ve sailed through much worse. And once I do, I’m halfway to Canada. Just a pleasant sail up the coast of Maine.”
Wordless, Caroline clutched the front of his jacket, shaking her head.
“I’m taking the boat,” he repeated. “You can help me, or say goodbye here.”
Caroline fought back tears. In a muffled voice, she said, “I’ll help you.”
Gently, David removed her hands from his jacket.
He went to the doorway. Standing there, irresolute, Caroline saw his guitar in the corner.
She walked across the room to get it.
Caroline turned to him, guitar in hand. Framed in the doorway, he looked at the guitar, then at her, and a second faint smile crossed his face.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They walked down the pier in the driving rain, David carrying his suitcase, Caroline his guitar. Not looking at each other, and yet not hurrying. Struggling across the beach, they left twin trails of footprints.
At the end of the Masterses’ dock, the catboat bobbed in the storm. Caroline stopped abruptly.
“I never fixed the dinghy,” she said. “Or the rib.”
“I know.”
David paused for a moment, gazing at the boat, and then kept walking.
Slowly, she followed him. Beneath the wind and rain, his footsteps sounded hollow.
Turning, David looked at her, and then he tossed his suitcase onto the catboat.
As Caroline leapt onto the boat, guitar in hand, the rain came down in sheets.
She went below. Carefully, she placed his guitar in one corner.
Above, David had begun to unfurl the canvas. His curly hair was rain-soaked.
Caroline went to help him, a catch in her throat. Together, they raised the sail aloft, flapping in the punishing wind.
Numb, Caroline moved from one task to the next. Just as they had done in so many days of summer—silent, knowing their routine so well that there was no need to speak.
In the rain, Caroline’s tears were nothing.
David had turned to her. Softly, he said, “I think we’re ready, Caroline.”
She could not seem to move.
He came to her then, taking her face in his hands. “No,” he said. “You can’t.”
The boat lurched violently beneath them. Tears ran down Caroline’s face.
David placed both hands on her waist and looked intently into her eyes. It was as if, Caroline thought for a moment, he wanted to remember them.
Perhaps he would change his mind.
&n
bsp; Gently, he lifted her over the side and placed her on the dock. She started to reach out, realized she could no longer touch him.
“Think you can toss me the line?” he asked.
Caroline knelt, freeing the line from the spile that secured it. For a last moment, she held it in her hand. And then, underhand, she tossed it to him as he had asked.
“Please,” she said, “at least let me know that you’ve made it. Somehow.”
Silent, he gazed at her and seemed to force a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll remember Joshua Slocum.”
Wind flapped in the sails above him. David gave her a last long look and then turned quickly to his task.
Caroline watched, hands in her pockets, as the catboat slipped into the storm.
Soon it began to merge with the dark. Caroline strained to see him. He was a slim figure at the helm; perhaps in her imagination, in the last moment before he vanished, David turned to wave.
As far as Caroline knew, they never found him. She never heard from him again.
Later, when she came to California, Caroline tried to find his parents. But she could not. Perhaps it was best; she was not sure what she would have said.
She made her own life. At odd times, Caroline the defense lawyer imagined a man named David Stern, in Canada. She hoped he had forgiven her, for she had so much to tell him.
Part VI
The Hearing
One
Amidst a throng of reporters, Caroline Masters ascended the steps of the Connaughton County Courthouse.
The crowd—the outthrust microphones, the cameras, the reporters jockeying for position—was largely Caroline’s doing. Two days before the hearing, she had told the Patriot-Ledger that she would expose weaknesses in the prosecution case and singled out Megan Race by name. She repeated this challenge on television, to ensure that Megan would not miss it. Now the hearing had become an event, its centerpiece Megan’s testimony, perhaps three days away.
“Do you expect to vindicate Brett Allen?” a woman reporter called out.
Caroline paused, gazing straight into a hand-held camera. She had sacrificed sleep to preparation, and the circles beneath her eyes had required more work than usual. But in her sleekly tailored blue suit, with her hair freshly cut, she looked crisp and in command.
The Final Judgment Page 32