Keep No Secrets

by Julie Compton

  He finds his voice and says quietly,

  "You said 'Hypnotic, isn't it?' You were referring to the rain, the way it sounded against the window."

  "Yeah." She shrugs. "I never told you so, but I did it as a favor."

  "Really?" He sprouts a smile. "And what favor might that have been?"

  "I knew no partner wanted to walk by an associate's office to find him sleeping, even if the clock did read half past seven."

  "You could have simply pulled my door shut."

  The grin fades from her face. "I guess."

  He watches as she traces a seam in the bedspread with her finger. She seems to be considering whether to say more.

  "But?"

  She lifts her head and looks at him in doubt.

  "It's part of the deal, remember?" he reminds her.

  She starts to protest but instead nods in resignation. Why does he persist in this game with her? Honesty, in this case, isn't necessarily the best policy.

  "If I'd closed your door," she says, her voice halting, "I wouldn't have met you.

  And I wanted to meet you."

  He doesn't respond. He stares at her numbly. He tells himself nothing would have been different, even if she had closed his door. They would have eventually crossed paths. News of her arrival to Newman had already traveled the firm grapevine. By the time she stood in his doorway, he'd already heard about her beauty and her spirited personality. All that remained was to meet her.

  Yet he can’t help but wonder if there's some alternative reality, some other plane of existence where, had they met at a different time, on a different day, their relationship would have taken a different road. She would have been just another pretty woman to admire and then forget.

  They'd have never become such close friends and, for one night, lovers. Keep telling yourself that, Jack.

  At his silence, she claps her hands and abruptly stands. "You need to get home."

  He nods. He slips on his shoes and grabs his suit coat from the chair and his overcoat from the rear of the room. She meets him at the door.

  "Listen, I'm gonna head back to Brian's soon, okay?"

  "Why?" It's a ridiculous question, in light of the appellate court decision. But she threatened to leave once already and she's still here.

  "I think you've got enough problems without me making your life more

  difficult. It'll only get worse for both of us if someone finds out I'm in town."

  "Don't go," he blurts. Is this the panic the addict feels when his supply is about to dry up? He quickly adds, "I mean, not yet," and then remembers what Dog told him. "I told you I'd help you and I meant it. I'm making progress. We'll get together in a few days somehow, after this blows over, and I'll tell you about it. I have some questions for you, too."

  She narrows her eyes but her interest is clearly piqued. "What kind of progress?"

  He wonders again if her skepticism is merely a disguise for knowledge she possesses but he doesn't. The memory of what he said last night comes back to him. I believe you. Does he, or was it just exhaustion speaking?

  "A lead, maybe."

  "What kind of lead?"

  "Is it Claire you're worried about? She won't mention to anyone that you're in town. I'm telling her everything, that's all she wants."

  "Actually, you're not. She doesn't know you're here. You said it yourself. What kind of lead, Jack?" she persists.

  "She probably suspects it, if Mark didn't already tell her. If not, I'll fill her in when I get home."

  "I'm sure she'll appreciate that."

  "Look, she won't interfere. She's said as much to me. It wouldn't benefit her, either."

  "No, it wouldn't, would it?" she mutters, looking away.

  "Jen, don't go yet. I feel like you just got back."

  "There's no point using up all my savings just to sit in a motel room, you know?"

  Is that why she was ready to accept Mark's offer? "So stay at Mark's then."

  She shakes her head, and at first he thinks it's because of his flip flop on the issue. But then he remembers the night he begged her to take him home and into her bed, and he realizes that then, as now, her instinct for self-preservation kicked in long before his did. She hasn't forgotten that every day she stays in Missouri is another day she might be hauled in for questioning. Or worse.

  "I'll be here a few more days," she says,

  "and then we'll see, okay?"

  She unchains and opens the door,

  signaling the discussion is over. The cold air blows in.

  Jenny pulls back the curtains just enough to watch him walk away. He crosses the freshly plowed asphalt, navigating around ice patches as he heads in the direction of the motel office. Where is he going? She watches until he disappears around the back of the building.

  If I'd closed your door, I wouldn't have met you. And I wanted to meet you. Despite their

  "deal," as he likes to call it, she left out a few small details about the night they met. She didn’t tell him how she didn't see his wedding band until after she spoke her first words to him, and how, if she had, she would have closed the door. Nor did she tell him how many times since that night she’s wished it had happened that way.

  After a quick shower, she sits on her bed and stares at the vacant spot he left on the other one. He slept so soundly that it appears almost undisturbed. Until last night, she'd barely noticed the extra bed.

  Now, the emptiness makes his absence all the more pronounced.

  The discarded tie rests on the

  nightstand; he didn't notice she'd taken it off. She picks it up, drapes it over the palm of her hand. It smells vaguely of him, like she remembers his skin smelling.

  She calls Brian. When he answers, she warms from hearing his voice.

  "Hey, Merry Christmas," she says.

  "Same to you. I wondered why I hadn't heard from you. You sound sad."

  "I'm fine," she lies. At his silence, she says, "I had a surprise visitor. He stopped by unexpectedly last night and didn't leave until a few minutes ago." Silence still, and she realizes he misunderstood.

  "He slept, Brian. He slept. Get your mind out of the gutter."

  He laughs. "Yeah, okay. Whatever. I won't even ask you to explain that one."

  "Listen," she says, her voice turning serious. "I'm heading home soon, I think."

  "To your house? Is that wise?"

  "No, not Lafayette Square. I mean, to Chicago."

  "Did you tell him?"

  She wishes. "No. He doesn't know anything, and I've decided that's how it should be. I—"

  "Jenny, we talked about this."

  "I know, but I've changed my mind. I can't do it."

  "You can. You need to. He deserves to know."

  "No, you don't understand. He's dealing with so much right now. He's—"

  "I do understand. We get the national news here, too, you know."

  "Then—"

  "What about the letters? What if he finds out from whoever is sending the letters? You wanted to be the one to tell him. You didn't want him to find out from anyone else. You need to get it over with and get back up here, especially now that Alex gets his new trial."

  "I know! But I can't. I can't do that to Jack right now."

  "You don't have much of a choice. He either finds out from you, or he finds out from someone else."

  "Or he doesn’t find out at all. We don't even know what those letters are about.

  We don't know for sure."

  "What else would they be?"

  "I don't know. Someone's simply trying to scare me."

  "Someone's trying to scare you, all right. You need to find out who's behind it."

  "I'm trying. I'm meeting with that PI in a few days, and then I'm coming home."

  "Jen—"

  "And even Jack said he might have a lead, but he wouldn't tell me more. I promise I won't leave until I find out what that is, too, okay?"

  "I think you'll regret this, if you don't see it to th
e end."

  "Brian, listen to me. He's at the end of his rope. You haven't seen him. Last night, when he showed up here . . ." She swallows, suppressing the tears about to fall. "I just don't think he can take one more thing. He's about to lose it." And so am I.

  Her brother sighs. She thinks she got through to him.

  "I see my former self in him right now, okay? He's close to the edge, and I don't want to be the one who pushes him over."

  Jack's fear over what awaits him at home eases slightly when he spots Mark's car in the driveway. No matter how mad Claire might be, her anger will be tempered by his brother's presence. He ignores the news vans parked at the curb and slips past Mark's car into the garage. Let them fabricate a story about where he's been; anything they report will be better than the truth.

  Just as he's about to enter the house, he hears laughter inside. It stops abruptly when he swings open the door. The aroma of baking ham washes over him.

  He comes into the kitchen to find Claire, his sons, and his brother sitting at the table playing Scrabble. He sees the ham in the oven. In the dining room, he glimpses the china Claire inherited from his mother set out on the long table. The Christmas tree glows proudly, their gifts still wrapped below it. A fire blazes in the fireplace. A perfect Norman Rockwell holiday, if only Mark was Jack.

  "Dad's home!" Jamie bolts from the table to the tree. "Can we open presents now?"

  Claire stands. "In a minute, Jamie."

  "Hey, Jack," Mark says, his voice tentative as he takes in the sight of Jack, unshaved and disheveled. He sees

  something in Mark's expression—he's trying to send some sort of message—but Jack can't read it.

  He glances at Claire. She wears black, brushed cotton pants and a red cashmere sweater that buttons up the front. The pants are snug like a favorite pair of jeans and the sweater is unbuttoned just enough to show a slight cleavage of her perfect, cream-colored breasts. He's always thought they were perfect—not too large, not too small—and neither their shape nor his opinion of them has diminished in the last nineteen years. For the first time since his arrest, she's let her hair down. He didn't realize it had been pulled back in one style or another every day since until he sees the blonde curls loose today.

  "How'd everything go?" she asks. The words are neutral, but the cold tone is barely disguised. She fixes her large, green eyes on him, as if willing him to understand the sub-context of the question. He does. What he hears is, I told the kids you were gone because of work, and please don't ruin Christmas any more than you already have.

  "Fine. It was fine," he manages to say as he pulls off his coat. His body odor is even stronger now. He needs a shower, badly.

  Claire makes no moves to take the coat from him as she usually does, but when he heads to the front hall to hang it up, she follows.

  "Where have you been?" she demands in a quiet, but fierce, voice.

  He doesn't answer. The way her mouth drops open tells him she's read more into his silence than he intended. In his helplessness, she reads a lie.

  "I should kick you out on your ass right now," she hisses under her breath.

  He notices how different her reaction is this time to what she perceives is the same offense. Something breaks open in him with this knowledge. He doesn't know what it means, but he's acutely aware of it.

  "I'm sorry. I went there only to talk to her, but I accidentally fell asleep. That's it." His voice is preternaturally calm.

  "You fell asleep?"

  "Yes, I fell asleep. I didn't mean to."

  "Really?"

  "Really. I told you that you can trust me, and you can. I didn't do anything, Claire. I went there, we spoke maybe twenty words to each other, and I fell asleep. I woke almost nineteen hours later and came home. I slept for almost nineteen hours. That's how badly I needed sleep."

  "Am I supposed to applaud you now?"

  "No. But you're supposed to believe me."

  "And you're supposed to find out who threatened her, not sleep with her."

  "I didn't sleep with her."

  Claire plants her hands on her hips, and his eyes are drawn again—

  inappropriately, he thinks, given everything else happening—to how

  shapely she is. The slim waist giving way to the curve of her hips. He wants to place his palms on either side of that waist and pull her close, make her believe him. He wants her back. He wants what they had back.

  But then he remembers what she said

  —"I can't give you an answer"—and wonders for the first time if what he wants might not be possible.

  He doesn't touch her, but he says, quietly, "You look beautiful today."

  She shakes her head, her lips tight with fury. A tear slips down her cheek, surprising both of them, and she swipes at it quickly. He doesn't think it was something she wanted him to see.

  "It's Christmas, Jack. Christmas."

  "I know that."

  "You went to her on Christmas."

  "I went to her motel last night after I couldn't sleep at Mark's. I needed some air, something to take my mind off everything—"

  Claire mutters something

  unintelligible.

  "—so I figured I'd go out there for a few hours to talk to her, see if I could learn any more about the letters. I accidentally fell asleep. She'd gone outside for a moment and I closed my eyes to rest them, and when—"

  Exasperated, she tosses her hands up.

  "I can't believe we're having this conversation. What, you figured if you can't sleep with her, you can still sleep near her? Is that it? Did you draw a line down the middle of the bed?"

  "There are two beds. I—"

  "Shut up! I don't care!" She still whispers, but Mark rounds the corner just as she says the words.

  Mark takes in the sight of them—

  Claire with her hands back on her hips, Jack's in his pockets. He must have heard Claire's last few words. "Uh, Claire, there's a buzzer going off."

  Her face transforms for Mark. When she speaks, her voice is almost demure.

  "Thank you." If Jack didn’t know better, he’d swear something was going on between them.

  She walks away from Jack then, as if their conversation was just another chore she had to accomplish to get dinner on the table, but stops at the corner. "Jack, you stink, and you look like hell." Mark's eyes widen. He's never heard her talk like that to Jack. She never has. "Please think about someone else for once and clean up before you sit down at the dinner table."

  Once she's out of sight, Mark whispers,

  "Just so you're aware, she doesn't know."

  "She doesn't know what, Mark?" Jack's patience is shot. He thinks about bed again, how he'd rather go upstairs and pull the covers over his head than endure the next several hours pretending for the kids' sake that everything is fine. What's the point? They know better, anyway.

  Think about everyone else for once. Is he really that selfish? He didn't think so.

  Except for the luxurious nineteen hours he spent sleeping at the motel, he's felt everything he's done since the moment he stumbled across Michael and Celeste was done for others or to keep himself from going to prison—a reasonable goal in his opinion. But her words have their intended effect. He'll take his shower, and in about fifteen minutes, he'll be back downstairs at his assigned place at the head of the table.

  "That I knew Jenny was in town," Mark says. Jack has to concentrate to remember the context of the words. "Claire thinks I know because she told me. She called me last night when you didn't answer your phone, and when I discovered you

  weren't in the guest room and told her that, she spilled the whole story. She figured you were with Jenny."

  "Okay. And?"

  Both men keep their voices low.

  "That's all. I just thought you'd want to know."

  "Why? If you recall, I was prepared to tell her. You're the one who didn't want her to know you'd seen Jenny. That was your secret, not mine. I don't keep secrets from her
anymore."

  Mark's jaw tightens. "No, you just keep them from yourself."

  "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

  "You know what it means."

  Jack turns for the stairs. To hell with him.

  When Mark starts to say more, Jack cuts him off.

  "Can it wait for later, Mark?

  Apparently I have a shower to take before I'm allowed to eat my ham ration."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ON THE MONDAY following

  Christmas weekend, Jack loads a bundled-up Jamie in the front seat of his car and a Flexible Flyer in the back and takes off for the courthouse. Jamie will spend the morning with Jack in his office. Then, after lunch in the courthouse cafeteria, the two of them will head to Forest Park for sledding on Art Hill. He warns Jamie that cameras might be pointed at them the whole time, but Jamie simply shrugs.

  Jack isn’t sure whether he's grateful or disturbed by his eight-year-old’s increasing comfort with the reporters.

  He invited Michael, and even Claire, to join them. Both, not surprisingly, declined.

  A rare calm settles on the DA’s office during the week between Christmas and New Year's. This year is no exception.

  Most of the attorneys and staff take the week off, but Beverly is there. She keeps Jamie busy with small copy jobs and easy filing.

  Jack calls Dog. "Are you in the office this week?"

  "Yes and no. I'm working, but I'm on the road this afternoon."

  "Have you made any more progress on the letters?"

  "Oh, yeah. Didn't I tell you? I worked my magic. Demetri will talk to you."

  "Demetri?"

  "My friend at the post office. He’s not in ‘til next week, though, and you’ll have to buy him lunch. We’ll meet you at O'Connell's. Around one next Tuesday?"

  The thought of a dark pub appeals to Jack. "We? I guess I'm buying for both of you."

  "You guessed right, Boss."

  When Jack arrives at O'Connell's the following Tuesday, he takes a corner booth. The pub's décor, with its dim lighting and the dark woodwork