Keep No Secrets

by Julie Compton

  "At least tell me if she's in any danger.

  For her sake, at least tell me that."

  Finally, he gets a fleeting sideways glance from his son. Jack waits.

  "She's not in danger."

  It's not much; at least it buys Jack some time on the journal entry. But it certainly doesn't explain Michael's reaction to her accusations.

  "Look, I know you're mad at me about all this. I know you think somehow I'm to blame. You must, because you continue your relationship with her. But have you thought through the allegations she's made against me? I mean, really thought about them logically?"

  Michael sits in sullen silence.

  "Let's just assume something happened between us in the car that night. Do you think it would have happened because I forced myself on her?"

  Nothing.

  "Michael, you don't have to answer any other question I ask you, but I want you to answer this one. Truthfully. Do you really think I'm capable of rape?"

  Michael turns his face slightly toward the passenger side window, and to Jack's surprise, his son's eyes are glassy. He's having trouble holding it together. "Do you?" Jack persists. When Michael shakes his head, Jack's his entire body lets go of a tension that was so enduring, he'd stopped noticing it as unusual.

  "So if anything happened, it would have been consensual, right?"

  Michael gives the smallest of nods.

  "And if it was consensual, and you really believe it happened, you have every right to hate me. And I would deserve anything that happens to me. But I want you to think long and hard about what that means about her, and your

  relationship with her. Do you

  understand?"

  He's not sure if Michael follows, and he doesn't want to get any more specific.

  He'd like to list all of Celeste's other inconsistencies, starting with her claim that she can't use birth control because she's Catholic, yet she doesn't have any problem disobeying the mandate against sex before marriage. But he's afraid to push too hard. Better to let what he's said marinate in Michael's brain for a while.

  He stares at his son a bit longer, but Michael senses it and he keeps his face to the side window. As the moment

  stretches, he fidgets under Jack's scrutiny.

  Finally, in a voice devoid of emotion, he says, "Can we just go home?"

  They arrive home early enough to precede the nightly media stakeout, so Jack sends Michael across the street to retrieve Jamie from Billy's house. Jack agreed to let Jamie resume his afterschool playdates at the Edmond's only after he told Claire what Jamie said on the front porch the other night. Simply having the

  conversation was an accomplishment.

  Claire seemed skeptical that Marcia intended for Jamie to hear the television, but she tersely assured Jack that she'd ask her friend to be more careful. He wished he'd been a fly on the wall for that conversation. Or maybe not. Maybe he wouldn't want to hear what her meddling friend has to say about him.

  Once Michael leaves, Jack wants to pull the torn notebook paper out of his briefcase and re-read it right then for clues, but it will have to wait. Michael and Jamie will be back before he even gets the briefcase open.

  Instead, he decides to make dinner. He finds three large rib eye steaks in the refrigerator and a bag of Idaho potatoes on a shelf in the garage. He's no chef, but steak and potatoes he can manage. Claire, he hopes, will appreciate the gesture.

  Claire enters the kitchen, arms overloaded with her handbag, her satchel and a bag of carryout food she picked up on the way home. She stops when she sees potatoes baking in the oven and seasoned raw meat resting on a platter, ready to be taken out to the grill. The table is set, and an open bottle of wine waits on the island next to two wineglasses and a lit candle.

  Even the family room looks straightened.

  Jack stands on the far side of the island slicing a baguette. The candle bathes his face in warm light. Despite the exhaustion she knows he feels, he looks younger tonight than his forty years.

  He gives her a tentative smile.

  "Hungry?"

  "Yeah, I guess, but . . ." She lifts the bag to show him before placing it on the counter. She knows she should thank him for making dinner, but why didn't he call her? Why didn't he let her know he planned to do this? Stopping for food on the way home was the last thing she wanted to do tonight. "Did you get Michael?"

  His smile fades. He sets down the knife. "Yeah, I got Michael. Did you think I wouldn't?"

  "Where is he?" she asks instead of answering his question. "Was it okay?"

  "He's upstairs, as usual. And yes, it was okay. We made it home without killing each other, if that's what you mean."

  She sets her satchel and handbag on the kitchen table. "I'm heading up to change. You choose which meal we eat."

  Her foot barely touches the first step when he says, "Claire? Are you okay? Did I do something wrong?"

  She thinks of the reporter she dodged in the parking lot outside the law school, of the way the Dean avoids her eye in meetings, of her son who can barely stand to be in the same room with his father.

  She fears what will happen if Jack is convicted. She thinks of the woman who caused all this and wonders when he plans to see her next. She hates that she cares, yet she loves that he tries so hard to convince her that she doesn't need to worry. She loves him, and that's the problem. She knows if she loves him, she should forgive him, and she's just not sure she has. Or can.

  "I'm peachy, Jack. Just peachy."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, in the

  acceleration lane for I-70, Jack gives the Porsche gas and the two-seater explodes onto the interstate like a horse out of the gate. He turns on the radio and searches for music, but all he finds are morning talk shows and traffic and weather reports. He flips it off. He doesn't want to discover they're talking about him.

  He tries not to think about where he's heading, or why. Last week, when Claire asked if he planned to see Jenny again, his answer was honest. He hadn't made up his mind about what to do, whether to help her. Even whether he'd listen to her anymore. Part of him fears Claire might be right about Jenny being a drug.

  He wonders briefly whether to find a pay phone and call Jenny to let her know he might come by. He doesn't remember the name of her motel, but she gave him a cell phone number to reach her. He didn't want anything connecting them, so when he programmed the number into his phone, he identified its owner by naming it, simply, ABC.

  Who was he hiding the number from anyway, he wonders, when he did that?

  Not Claire. Claire knew what he might do. Claire would say that she knew all along what he would do, and as he crosses the Blanchette Bridge into St.

  Charles, he realizes he is already doing it.

  He knocks on the motel room door. It's the metal kind, hard, and cold from the freezing air.

  It seems he's stood there a while. His watch reads nine fifteen. He's about to knock again and give up if there's no answer the second time when, at the edge of the drapes, he sees a light turn on. The silence is dense; he doesn't even hear footsteps. He notices the peephole and looks down. And then he hears the chain being unhooked, the deadbolt being unlocked.

  The door opens and she stands there in gold Mizzou sweatpants that ride low on her hips and a white T-shirt, sans bra, just short enough to give him a glimpse of her brown belly. She rubs at her face and then combs through tousled hair with her fingers. She's barefoot. When she looks at him with lazy eyes and gives him a crooked smile, he almost collapses on the threshold. Suddenly he knows that Claire is right, because the sight of Jenny this way weakens his knees and sends a wave of heat through his body like an addict's first hit after a long abstinence. Showered and dressed and made up, she's beautiful, striking. But this way, sleepy and vulnerable and warm—he imagines that her naked skin, fresh from bed, is still warm under the clothes—it's all he can do not to scoop her up and carry her back to it. And then climb in beside her.

>   "I woke—" His voice is a bit hoarse, as if he's been smoking. He clears his throat and swallows, starts again. "I woke you.

  I'm sorry."

  She shrugs, a "no worries" shrug. She stares at him and he stares back. Last week, he felt so in control; she needed him.

  Suddenly, it seems, the tables have turned.

  "So," she says, tilting her head slightly, rubbing sleep from one eye, "does this mean you decided?"

  She immediately sees the desire in his tired eyes. Desire so strong that he appears to be in pain from the effort of resisting it. He's trying to hide it—she sees that, too. She knows she could take a step closer, touch her lips to his, and though he might resist as he did in the tunnel, he'd eventually relent. If she put her mind to it, she could coax him into her bed, even. But she understands the power she has over him, and she has no intention of abusing it. It might satisfy her short-term desires, but it wouldn't serve either of their long-term needs.

  "I'd like to see the letters," he says.

  She's surprised that he came, given everything that has happened since she last saw him. But she doesn't mention it.

  She simply nods and motions him in.

  "It'll only take a second for me to get ready."

  "No. I'll wait for you in the car."

  "Jack, it's not necessary to keep—"

  "I told Claire."

  She shifts her weight to the other foot.

  This news surprises her, too; she didn't think he'd be so upfront with Claire. It also makes things a bit more difficult.

  "Okay." She crosses her arms, tucks in her hands to ward off the cold coming in through the open door.

  "I told her how you stopped me in the underpass, and how I came out here, and that we went up to Hannibal and talked."

  "Look, why don't you just come in?

  You can tell me all of this where it's warm. I'm freezing." She quickly scans the parking lot. "I don't feel too comfortable standing here, anyway." He has to realize, doesn't he, that she's watched the news, that she knows her own name has been pulled into the story about Michael's girlfriend?

  "She said for me to do what I have to do, to learn the truth about you. But she asked me to tell her everything, and I promised I would."

  She wants to say, Oh, yeah? Well, good for her. But she remains quiet, her lips tight.

  "I don't want to have to tell her I was in your motel room as you got dressed, okay? So I'll wait in my car."

  He starts to turn, but halts when she says, "So that's what this is all about? You asked me to tell you the truth, and I did, but you don't believe me and so now you'll help me only because you want to learn the truth about me?" She says the last words with heavy sarcasm.

  He doesn't answer. He just stands there, looking at the ground, and then into the room behind her, at the two double beds. Her open suitcase rests on the one that hasn't been slept in. The black coat is next to it, and beyond that, her purse. The jeans, the sweater and the boots she wore to Hannibal are piled on the floor at the end of the bed. He must wonder if she left the room at all since he dropped her off last week. On the nightstand is a half glass of water, a prescription bottle, her watch, a soda cup from Steak 'n Shake. She watches his eyes sweep the room until they return to the nightstand, and she finally realizes what has caught his attention so intently.

  "What's in the prescription bottle?" he asks.

  "None of your goddamned business."

  He almost smiles, and she remembers he always liked this about her, her smart mouth.

  "It's part of the deal."

  "What is?"

  "If you want my help, you have to answer any question I ask you.

  Truthfully."

  She marches over to the nightstand, grabs the bottle and flings it at him. He catches it in mid-air, surprising her with his quick reflexes. He glances at her a moment and then looks at the label on the bottle.

  "Happy now, Jack?"

  She pretends to be angry, but instead she's embarrassed. Like her smart mouth, she knows he also liked her apparent strength, and she's ashamed to admit to the emotional weakness she believes is evidenced by the pills in the bottle.

  He meets her eye and his expression visibly softens. "Jen."

  She hasn't heard him say her nickname in a long, long time. The unexpected change in his tone threatens to

  overwhelm her. She suddenly has an urge to tell him everything right then. But she's imagined the various reactions he might have if he knew, and if she's not careful, she'll just end up hurting him more.

  She stands straighter and fights not to look away. "Give me twenty minutes."

  He holds her eyes a bit longer, but still, she feels a small victory when he turns away.

  He tosses the bottle onto the bed. "I'll be in the car."

  "So whose car is this?" she asks. They've ridden for ten minutes in silence. He hasn't considered where to go today. He's too busy trying to ignore the musky scent that wafted in his direction when she entered the car.

  "Mark's. I borrowed it."

  Thanks to Claire's early attempts at matchmaking, and long before Jenny became a persona non grata in their lives, Jenny briefly dated Mark. Only much later did Jack realize his wife had sensed Jenny's threat early on and tried to dilute it by finding a facsimile for her.

  Jenny's gaze lingers on Jack's face after he answers. When he can no longer bear it, he says, "I assume you've seen the news lately."

  "Yes."

  "I've tried to dodge the press, but it's becoming impossible. Mark and I traded cars yesterday, but it's only a matter of time before they figure it out. I went into work at four thirty this morning to avoid them. I knew if I waited for daylight they'd be lying in wait." He shrugs. "I'm not really sleeping, anyway, and I get more work done when I'm there alone."

  "You're not worried they followed you here?"

  "I'm being careful. I came while I still can."

  Another minute passes before she asks,

  "What do you think her motivation is?" It doesn't escape his notice that she hasn't asked if it's true. Unlike Claire, Jenny knows for certain it's not. But then, Claire has more reasons to mistrust him, doesn't she?

  "I don't know. That's what I keep asking myself, because I just don't get it.

  That night, the night she claims it happened, I caught her and Michael fooling around in our family room, and they'd been drinking. So I drove her home. I was leery of doing it, but not because I didn't trust her. I was afraid of appearances if someone happened to see us. And the thing is, we actually had a really good talk, you know? I never thought. . ." He takes a deep breath and sighs. Should he tell her what he found on the computer and in the notebook? He decides against it.

  He feels her continued gaze and finally steals a glance. "I'm sorry," she says softly.

  He hears her honesty. Is she thinking what Claire thought, that it would have never happened but for what the two of them did?

  A few miles later she asks, "Do you enjoy it?"

  "What's that?" He keeps his eyes on the road.

  "Being DA."

  That's right. He'd been on the job less than two weeks when she was arrested for Maxine's murder. It was another four or five months before his life returned to normal, if he could call it that, and by then, she was long gone.

  The question reminds him that she was the one who first suggested he run for DA. And she's the one who supported his decision from the beginning, and

  encouraged him. Unlike Claire, who really only gave him her blessing, finally, on the morning of Election Day.

  He shifts in the driver's seat, feeling as if he's betrayed his wife again merely by acknowledging that truth.

  "I love it," he says, speaking another truth aloud. "I really love it."

  "Good." She nods like a proud mother.

  "That makes me happy, knowing that."

  She turns and looks out the window.

  When he sneaks a peek at her, she wears a small, contented smile on her face.r />
  "What's it for?" he asks.

  "What?" She still faces the window.

  "The medicine."

  "You don't know what it is?"

  He's at a stoplight now, still on 94, heading toward 40. It's been a long time since he's been out this way. He's surprised by the number of stoplights, by the proliferation of strip malls and new neighborhoods. He wonders what

  happened to the families who used to farm this land.

  "I know what it is. Why are you taking it?"

  She cuts her eyes in his direction.

  Raises her right arm and tugs on the sleeve of her coat to display her wrist.

  And the scar he noticed in Hannibal.

  He reaches across and opens his hand, palm up, an invitation to give him her arm, to let him see. She has to turn in her seat, facing him, to do so. She complies, but slowly. Maybe she doesn’t trust him anymore, either.

  Her wrist is small, like he remembers, and warm. He wraps his hand around it easily and gently rubs the scar with his thumb. It's parallel to the length of her arm. She meant to be successful.

  The car on his left moves forward and he realizes the light has changed to green.

  Reluctantly, he lets go of her arm and directs his attention back to the road.

  After he's pulled onto 40, heading northwest, he asks, "When did you do it?"

  She doesn't answer at first. Finally,

  "About a year after I'd been at Brian's."

  "How did . . ." He's not sure how to phrase the question. "I mean, what—"

  "Why I am still here?"

  He nods, and says quietly, "Yeah."

  "Brian thought something was up with me that morning. He said I was acting odd. He called home not long after he got to work, and when I didn't answer, he came home on his lunch hour to check on me. My mistake was in not answering the phone. I should have answered the phone.

  "I was unconscious when he got there.

  He was afraid to call 911 because he didn't want them to come to his condo.

  He thought they might be able to track me that way. He knew I was worried they'd come looking for me there once they found out about Maxine." Jack notices she doesn't say "once they found out about my connection to Maxine." She leaves vague what, exactly, they might have found out. Is Jack reading too much into things? "He drove me to the ER."