Eden in Winter

by Richard North Patterson

  ‘Did you discuss this with Teddy?’

  ‘In a general way, yes. But the initiative for the insurance was mine.’ Her voice became clipped. ‘Are we quite done with this now? We’ve left your uncle sitting there.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Adam said. ‘Why did you call Teddy the night he died?’

  Clarice cocked her head. ‘Did I? When?’

  ‘About eight thirty.’

  ‘I really don’t remember. So it can’t have been significant.’ Clarice frowned. ‘I certainly didn’t call him to predict your father’s death. Which leaves me wondering why you seem to know more about me than I can remember.’

  ‘Because Teddy’s in trouble,’ Adam said curtly. ‘Do you recall anything else about that night? Specifically, anything that would make it harder for the police to suspect my brother?’

  ‘I know this much,’ Clarice responded firmly, ‘as a mother: no doubt Teddy feels protective toward me, but he’s the last person on earth capable of killing Ben. You’re imagining Teddy as yourself.’

  Turning, Clarice had foreclosed any further discussion, leaving Adam with still more questions, the ones George Hanley must have had. But only Adam had learned the truth.

  THREE

  When Adam reached the guesthouse, the long Vineyard night, spitting rain, was a deep black relieved only by the light glowing in Carla’s window. He felt a moment’s disbelief; the last time he had been here, the landscape had been green and verdant, and he would soon be returning to a harsh terrain he might never leave. Now there was life ahead of him, a future he could not define.

  Carrying French bread and a container of clam chowder, he knocked on the door. When Carla answered, she stood back, and for a moment they gazed at each other in silence. She was very pregnant, he saw at once; following his eyes, she lowered her gaze as though to conceal a smile, shaking her head with a kind of wonder – perhaps at herself, perhaps simply that he was here. In a gesture of mock surrender, she opened her arms and, when he reached for her, rested her face against his shoulder. Huskily, she said, ‘I’m so glad you’re back.’

  Adam could smell the womanly freshness of her. ‘Was there a question?’

  ‘I thought so. In most jobs people don’t get shot.’

  Her soft voice carried a hint of another question, perhaps the hope that he would leave the agency. But he had no answer for this, or for anything else. Instead, he kissed her gently. ‘I brought dinner,’ he said. ‘I gather you’ve lost some mobility.’

  She leaned back, her eyes much graver. ‘Teddy told you.’

  ‘Yes. I wish I’d known.’

  Once more, Carla shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to worry you. And what could you have done?’

  Softly but firmly, he answered, ‘Not the point.’

  Her expression became questioning. Do you really want to be part of my life? he imagined her wondering.

  ‘I should probably sit down,’ she told him. ‘These days I’m only good at occupying space. But all I can do is give this baby every chance.’

  She did not need to say that he might already be doomed, or how devastating that would be for her. Sitting beside him on the couch, she reached out with curled fingers and touched his shoulder. ‘How is it?’

  ‘A little tender still, but healing nicely. As wounds go, I lucked out.’

  She looked at him intently. ‘Tell me what happened – all of it. Dinner can wait.’

  With some reluctance, he complied, dwelling on Steve Branch’s courage rather than his own ordeal. He did not tell her that, in the moments of his desperation, he had imagined coming back to her.

  ‘There’s one part you’re leaving out,’ she prodded. ‘Weren’t you the least bit scared?’

  ‘Sure. When I felt the earthquake.’

  Carla gave a rueful laugh. ‘Great. I waited all this time to have dinner with John Wayne.’

  All at once, Adam needed to tell her the truth. ‘You heard my nightmares, Carla. The best I can do is try to put all that behind me. Trust that I appreciate being alive, never more than at this moment.’

  ‘Please keep that in mind,’ she said, then glanced down at her stomach with a look which told him everything. ‘I just felt the baby move,’ she added softly. ‘I never thought I’d be so grateful to be kicked by a man.’

  *

  After dinner, Adam started a fire with logs and kindling from the covered porch outside. They sat on the couch watching the orange yellow flames spit and flicker in the darkness, Carla sitting between his legs with her back against his chest, her hair grazing his face. She should not like this too much, she told herself, or imagine other nights with him.

  ‘I really enjoyed your emails,’ Adam told her, then added more softly, ‘Actually, they meant a lot.’

  Carla smiled to herself. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. I worried that they were exhibit A in the annals of narcissism – first, last, and always about me.’

  ‘Only because I asked. Anyhow, I’ve seen true narcissism at first hand. Along with the damage to other people, the casualties include honesty and self-reflection. You’re more than capable of both.’

  Carla chose to avoid the clear reference to Benjamin Blaine. ‘If so, it’s only because I learned the hard way. There were countless times when I wish I had known myself earlier and better.’

  She felt him pause again. ‘Including with men?’

  He was asking about Ben, she was now quite certain. But that was a hard conversation, to be reserved for another time that might never arrive. ‘The subject of men,’ she finally answered, ‘begins with my father. You know the essence of it – he was physically and verbally abusive. Not to mention frighteningly unpredictable, especially on the all too frequent evenings when he was drunk. Just for fun, throw in harshly judgmental: if I got an A, I was great; if I got Bs or Cs, I was worthless.

  ‘When there’s no in-between, you don’t know how to feel about yourself. Are you a bad person, or good one? And what to make of it when your strict Catholic father and mother marinate you in the evils of sex outside marriage – and then you find out he’s cheating on the woman to whom marriage brings so much suffering that all she can do is cast her eyes to God?’

  ‘Makes for a confusing childhood, I imagine.’

  He was also speaking about himself, Carla sensed, though he could not admit this without mentioning Ben. ‘And a confused adult,’ she replied. ‘I was ambitious, driven, assertive, and able to fight through adversity and rejection. But I didn’t know how to value myself as a woman. Nothing good comes from that kind of emotional whipsaw. Including my choice of men.’

  She would have been happy to stop there – though honesty had become her touchstone, she was still a woman, and she felt too keenly her own desire not to diminish herself in the eyes of Adam Blaine. Perhaps she should forgive herself for this – trust still did not come easily to her, and the man who held her remained an enigma. Then he said quietly, ‘I’d really like to understand that, Carla – for my own sake. Not the names or details, more the feeling of it.’

  Was he also wondering about himself? Carla mused in silence. After Jenny Leigh, she knew from Teddy, there had been no one important in Adam’s life. But his reasons must be different than her own. At length, she answered, ‘I did what I thought any sensible woman would do – pick men who were different from my father. I certainly can’t fault my success in that way. Not once did anyone hit me.

  ‘Too bad, in a sense – the first time would’ve been the last. Instead, I picked men who were “gentle”. I failed to notice that they were also weak or adolescent or passive aggressive or disengaged or narcissistic – more often than not, most of the above. But all of them had one overriding virtue: because they couldn’t see inside me, I didn’t have to deal with my own psychological baggage, the need to hide, which fit so perfectly with my career. The attention I craved – to me as a person – also scared the hell out of me. So “Carla Pacelli” became just another role, as unreal as the rest.’

&n
bsp; ‘The success you had was real enough.’

  For a time, Carla gazed at the fire, caught between her present and her past. ‘And never enough,’ she amended. ‘All the attention I got wasn’t for me – assuming that I could’ve told you who I was. The most pathetic part was when I got the lead in Deep Cover. Maybe, I told myself, Dad will be proud of me at last. Instead he felt threatened by my success; all he could do was tear down the show, and me for doing it. That I was devastated tells you how empty I was, how completely unable to reach out for what I truly needed in a man.’

  ‘Which is?’

  The answers, Carla knew, were much easier listed than found. Self–awareness counted. And empathy. Intelligence, of course. Fidelity, thank you very much. Sobriety. Openness. A companion who could love her as she was, with all her flaws and weaknesses and complications. Someone to support her in a recovery which would continue as long as she lived. A bond of mind and spirit, where each made the other better. The ability to laugh at his own quirks, and hers. A man who could love her son, should he live, as much as he did her. Oh, yes, God – don’t forget never quite getting enough of him; the spontaneous, irrational desire to drag this man off to bed. Which reminded her that, more than likely, Adam possessed at least some of what she wanted most. But his capacity to be the other things she craved was obscure enough to worry her, and she did not know him well enough to hope. Above all, she doubted that he could ever forgive her relationship with Benjamin Blaine.

  ‘The specifications are many,’ she said demurely. ‘And I like to keep them a surprise. Do you know Puccini’s opera Turandot?’

  Adam laughed. ‘I saw it once at the Met. As I recall, the story involves a Chinese princess who’ll only marry the man who guesses the secret word that unlocks her heart. The losers got beheaded.’

  ‘You’ve caught the essence of it. But the music is beautiful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Incomparable. Fortunately, all I had at risk was the cost of a seat in the rear balcony. So when did you develop these rigorous standards?’

  For a moment, Carla watched the crackling flames cast shadows in the room. ‘It began at Betty Ford. The first step was the obvious: to realize that I had no examples of a healthy relationship, and that my own confusion started with my mother and, especially, my father. Trying to escape him, I kept picking men who couldn’t love me – just as he couldn’t. No surprise that the result was an emotional life as empty as I was. To change that, I had to change how I understood that life.’

  ‘How did you go about that?’

  ‘I’ll spare you,’ Carla demurred. ‘Too long, too boring, too self-referential. But, if you like, I can tell you a story about dreams.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Adam responded softly. ‘Somehow I think I can relate to that.’

  Though his embrace was gentle, Carla could feel the warmth of his chest, the strength of his arms. Settling back against him, she began, ‘I started having it after I’d been in therapy for a while. It was always the same. I was a small child again, running across a barren field – terrified, because a carnivorous bear with red eyes and bloody teeth and claws was chasing me.

  ‘I’m trying to get to a chain-link fence, to escape to a meadow on the other side. But it’s too high – when I get there, I can’t climb it. I can hear the bear coming closer. I look around desperately, and suddenly see a house. But there’s no one looking out the window, no one to hear my cries. As the bear reaches out for me, I wake up sweating.’

  ‘How often did you have it?’

  ‘All the time.’ Recalling the dream, Carla found, still left her feeling exhausted and alone. ‘So tell me what you think it means.’

  ‘Some of it’s plain enough, I guess. The bear is your father.’ He paused a moment. ‘In the dream, do you think the house is empty?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then the person who doesn’t hear you would most likely be your mother.’

  Slowly, Carla felt herself relax. ‘You win, Adam – there’ll be no beheadings tonight. Foolish as this sounds, my therapist at Betty Ford handed me coloured pencils and asked me to redraw the dream as I would have wanted it to be. In my picture I’m feeding the bear, who’s now benign, and my mother is riding on its back. It sounds silly, I know. But I stopped having the dream. The larger lesson, of course, was that I had to transform my inner life before I could change my life in the world.’

  She could sense him forming questions. After a time, he asked, ‘Did your parents ever come to visit you?’

  ‘Only my mother. Dad was too disgusted with having such a weakling for a daughter. But Mom did her best to encourage me. My recovery came first, she said – alcohol was a curse to my father, and she didn’t want that for me.’ Carla hesitated. ‘Toward the end, when I was due to get out, she said wistfully, “I only wish you had a man in your life.”

  ‘The answer was on the tip of my tongue: “That depends on what kind of man.” But all I said was, “I’ll be okay, Mom.” It’s so pointless to blame her, or even him. As I said to you before, every parent was a child once.’ Including Benjamin Blaine, she did not feel safe in adding.

  ‘Still,’ Adam ventured, ‘when you came home, you must’ve felt pretty lonely. Especially because you were giving up your career.’

  Another probe about Ben, Carla thought – however elliptical. But she chose to answer the question as he asked it. ‘Backing off from celebrity wasn’t so hard. That was always a burden, and the notoriety around crashing and burning became a nightmare. What was hard to let go of was acting. Since I‘d decided to become an actress, I never once considered quitting. Sometimes I used anger to keep me going – “Why not me?” But I was so determined that I backed myself into a corner, deliberately acquiring no other skills I could fall back on. If I had no choice but to push forward until I succeeded, I told myself, then I would.’

  ‘Sounds familiar,’ Adam responded. ‘In the last few years, I’ve made myself do things I’d never imagined, by forcing myself into situations where I had no choice. A hard way to live, but hard to give up. It’s like violating your deepest superstition.’

  For a moment, Carla allowed herself to hope that he could find another path. ‘It was like that for me,’ she acknowledged. ‘Every fibre of my being screamed “Don’t quit.” Deep down I believed that I’d be no one if I did.

  ‘But that’s the challenge, isn’t it? To change how you see yourself, and find other reasons for being that are healthier and more fulfilling.’ Saying this, she felt a tinge of fear. ‘For me, the baby has been the biggest one. It’s frightening to think I may never know him, to lie awake wondering, night after night. But if he lives, the point is not to lean on him, but to be good for him.

  ‘So I need something else to do in the world. As a therapist I could reach out to other people – like acting, I suppose, but in a much more intimate way, where I can see a person in front of me, and know whether I’ve been helpful.’

  Adam held her a little closer. ‘I think you’ll be very good at it, Carla. Some things I simply know about you. That’s one.’

  To her surprise, she felt a rush of gratitude. ‘Believe it or not, that means a lot to me. So thank you.’

  The other man to whom she felt grateful in this way, Carla knew, was Benjamin Blaine. Yet to say this might spoil the moment. No doubt she had good reason to fear that. But there was no doubt that, at least with Adam, she remained the former Carla Pacelli – slow to trust; afraid to place herself at risk.

  It was way too soon to admit this, or to even know if she should. Nor had she admitted the deepest truth about her choice of men – knowing that they could never meet her needs, she had also known that each relationship would end. Even with Ben, her only man after becoming stronger, they both knew that he would die. As terrible as this had been, she could see her way out.

  But Adam Blaine unsettled her. For months she had feared, yet anticipated, his death. Now he had survived. She wanted him to be free of the past, just as she was trying to be. But Adam’
s hatred for the father of the child she bore might tear them apart. Another man, another exit. She did not know whether it was right to want him, or to fear him.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m just sleepy.’

  ‘There are other nights,’ he said easily. ‘I forgot that you’re sleeping for two.’

  Perhaps she only imagined that he was as troubled, and as questioning, as she. Because of her, or Ben, or himself. And perhaps because of things he did not want her to know.

  ‘I missed you,’ he said at last.

  ‘And I, you.’

  He kissed her gently, and was gone.

  FOUR

  Driving home, Adam reflected on what he could not tell anyone – Carla least of all – including that he had believed Teddy guilty of murder, and had tried to offer Carla in his place. A piercing memory came to him then, another turning point in the maze he could not seem to escape.

  *

  It was just after his final meeting with Amanda Ferris. Walking to the guesthouse that night, Adam had seen Teddy through the window, seated at his easel with a glass of red wine beside him. The stillness of his posture suggested a trance.

  When Adam entered, pulling up a stool at Teddy’s shoulder, his brother’s only movement was to pick up a brush. This canvas was abstract, with garish colours to which Teddy began adding slashes of bright red. He worked with what seemed a terrible intensity, the sheen of sweat on his forehead; but for the obstinacy of his brother’s concentration, Adam might have believed that Teddy did not notice him. For an instant, he had recalled watching Teddy as he painted – Adam at twelve, Teddy at fourteen or fifteen – and how magical it was to see his brother fill a blank canvass with such startling images. Calmly, he said, ‘Any time you’re ready, Ted.’