When Helen found her voice again, she said, “Carolyn spoke directly to me just before the admiral pulled the trigger. The others there didn’t know she was speaking to me because they didn’t know we were sisters. I’ve always wanted to tell you about this. Now I can. Your life was more important to her than her own life. She didn’t beg me to try to save her. She saw him lift the gun and said these simple words. To me. ‘Please tell Nick I love him.’ She spoke with such urgency, I almost did. But I couldn’t. Not without letting you know how she had died.”
Another full minute passed. Helen did not know how much it hurt me to think of my mother’s final words and to think of the reason for my mother’s urgency. She knew, my mother, how badly I would need to hear those words.
“What I can’t figure out,” Helen said, her voice exhausted, “is why Carolyn did what she did. There was no reason for her to leave Charleston. She’d moved away from the rich set. Lived in a town house with a maid who was her best friend. She worked for the museum, lived a simple life, and loved you fiercely. She was so at peace with her life that I envied her.
“But on that afternoon, she threw away everything she had by demanding what she did from Gillon and Barrett and Layton, the three most ruthless men she could have ever faced. Something had driven her to want to leave Charleston in the fastest way possible. What?”
I thought of the tiny deep cut on my mother’s face. I turned away from Helen and kept my silence.
**
“I am tired,” Helen said. “When we get back to Charleston, you will find me in one of the bedrooms below. Don’t disturb me until then.”
“I don’t know how to handle a yacht.”
“It’s not on autopilot. Go to the wheelhouse. You’ll see what I mean.”
Helen left me on the back deck of the yacht and took the stairs down to the saloon.
I wanted to be alone. Desperately. I wanted to be alone and to think of nothing. I wanted to be away from Charleston and away from my memories. I wanted to be away from myself.
But I could not remain here, watching the dark waters pass by and listening to the hiss of it against the hull.
Two men were out in this vast ocean. Much as I might hope for their deaths, it would not be right to let them die as Helen intended. I could pretend I had some noble moral sense that their two murders would not make the other murders right. I want to believe that is partly true. But I also knew I did not want Helen’s carefully laid plans to succeed. She had brought me in, certain my curiosity would serve her purposes. She had played Gillon and McLean expertly, rousing their fears and then setting up this meeting on the yacht. Six months, she’d said, planning this night on the ocean for them. In truth? Helen’s schemes had destroyed so much of my life already that I knew I would find satisfaction in ending this one for her.
So, much as I would have preferred to stare at the water as the yacht plowed farther and farther out into the Atlantic, farther and farther away from Charleston, I forced myself to go to the wheelhouse.
Where I found Claire at the wheel.
**
“Mayday, Mayday.”
I had the radio microphone in my hand. I spoke on the emergency frequency, trying to raise the Coast Guard.
“Mayday, Mayday.” I had never been part of the yachting set. This phrase was all I knew.
The radio speakers crackled in response. “Report your position and situation.”
I gave them our position, ignoring Claire as I tried to make sense of the electronic readings given by the global positioning unit. I’d already ignored her for the previous minute since stepping into the wheelhouse.
“We have two men at sea in a lifeboat without power. We are circling now to look for them, but we need help.”
I confirmed our position one more time.
Then I told Claire to turn the yacht around so we could join in the search.
**
“May we talk?” Claire asked.
“I’m listening,” I said. I suppose there was little encouragement in my voice. My eyes were focused on the wide circle of white cast by the yacht’s spotlight. The waves were a couple of feet high, capped with froth.
Claire moved directly beside me. She’d been holding a folded piece of paper. She gave it to me.
“Read it out loud to me.”
In the dim light of the wheelhouse, I glanced at the first few words. “No. I know what it says.”
“Read it aloud. The day Pendleton told me you would never come back to me, he gave me that piece of paper. He’d gotten it from Helen. Both of them wanted me to marry Pendleton. They used this piece of paper to force me away from you. Read it.”
“You know what it says too.”
“Read it.”
“ ‘I, Nicholas Thomas Barrett, declare in my own handwriting and by my own free will, that I was the driver of the 1965 Plymouth Valiant that crashed on Oxbury Road the night of . . .’ ”
I refolded the paper. “I don’t want to read this.”
“Read it. Please.”
I unfolded it again. My voice faltered as I continued. “ ‘I am aware that I may be charged with manslaughter in the event of the death of Philip deMarionne, a passenger injured in the car at the time of the accident. I understand that by signing this confession, this police investigation will be considered complete and that charges will not be pressed if I follow these conditions. One, I sign a certificate declaring my marriage to Claire deMarionne null and void. Two, I leave Charleston and South Carolina indefinitely. Three, in lieu of a divorce settlement, I will receive from Helen deMarionne a monthly stipend of—’ ”
I stopped. Handed the paper back to Claire. “No more,”
I said.
I looked out at the dark waters. How difficult would it be to find the lifeboat?
“Can’t you say it out loud? To me? That you agreed if you returned to Charleston, or made any attempts to communicate with me, you would forfeit your right to the monthly deMarionne handout and that the police investigation would be reopened, with manslaughter charges immediately pressed.”
“There is nothing left to say about it. That’s my handwriting. I signed it. I left Charleston.”
“But you weren’t the driver,” Claire said. “Two nights ago, I thought you were the man who had taken money to leave our marriage. Two nights ago, I thought this confession was truth. This afternoon, Helen told me this wasn’t true. She told me to come here and ask you about it. Is it true, Nick? You were not driving?”
“No. I was not.”
“Why sign it? Why leave? Then why appear now? And why keep the truth from me once you returned?”
**
Claire badly wanted her little brother to join us at the beach house we had rented for our short honeymoon. She wanted a little wedding party to celebrate. Her younger brother was too young to drive. The only one able to bring her brother by car was Pendleton. She called Pendleton by telephone with her request and swore him to secrecy.
Pendleton arrived with her brother and with champagne and bourbon.
For that celebration, he and I set aside our hatred—he was, after all, a good friend of Claire’s. And I, after all, could afford to be magnanimous in victory, for I had finally won her hand.
I drank too much. I was not accustomed to alcohol. I was giddy with joy anyway, filled with the memories of three days alone with Claire and with what we had learned about each other.
So, much of the last hour of celebration was blurred to me. I do remember with distinctive horror, however, one significant detail.
When all of us piled into the car to return to Charleston, it was Claire behind the steering wheel.
**
“I signed it because I didn’t know Pendleton had been the driver.”
“Him?” Her voice was a long gasp of slow comprehension. “Him? Pendleton?”
“He crashed the car. He dragged me from the passenger side and sat me behind the steering wheel. Then he sat on the passenger side and fin
ished the bottle so that when the police finally arrived he would be merely a drunk passenger. Layton got there first, took photographs. The blood on the floor of the passenger side was mine, from my leg. Pendleton didn’t have a scratch on him. There was no damage on the driver’s side that would have crushed my leg. Layton knew immediately what had happened. He knew it would be worth something to him to protect Pendleton. And Pendleton paid him over the years for that.”
Claire still spoke with disbelief. “All these years, I thought you had killed my brother. Instead, I married the man who did it. I was sleeping with the man who let you take the blame, the man who used that blame against me.”
“You’ll understand my anger,” I said. “If Pendleton had gone for help, I might not have lost my leg. If your brother had reached the hospital earlier, he might have survived. Instead, Pendleton sat on the passenger side and drank himself into oblivion.”
Claire clutched my arm. “I don’t understand.” She looked upward at me. “If you knew you hadn’t been driving, why take the blame? Why leave me? Why leave our marriage?”
“I thought it was the only way to save you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Remember when we left to drive home to Charleston that night, you were driving because I’d had too much to drink? I was asleep on the passenger side. You were behind the wheel, Claire.”
“Only for the first half hour,” she said. “Until I became too sleepy. You were passed out on the passenger side. I stopped the car. Pendleton switched from the backseat and took the steering wheel. I went to sleep in the back where he’d been. The car crash must’ve knocked me out. When I awoke with the car in the marsh, I saw you behind the wheel. Pendleton must’ve moved you while I was unconscious. All these years I thought you had started driving again while I was still sleeping, before the wreck occurred.”
Claire began to cry. She lifted my hands to her face so that I could feel the tears. “You thought . . .”
“Until I received the police report two weeks ago,” I said, “I thought you had driven the car into the bridge.”
Chapter 42
The yacht’s spotlight showed nothing but waves. I had no idea if we were close to where Helen had first set the lifeboat adrift. Nor could I guess at the currents. I hoped the Coast Guard would arrive soon to search for it in a proper grid.
“I’ll divorce Pendleton,” Claire said quietly. “You and I have always belonged together.”
My eyes strained as I tried to peer beyond the spotlight.
“Nick?”
I could not look at her. This was the moment I’d
always dreamed might happened. Yet I could not look at her.
“You know who my father was,” I said. “Helen must have told you when she told you about the accident.”
Claire hesitated for too long. That in itself told me she knew.
“Yes,” she finally said.
“So you know I can now make a claim of inheritance. The money Pendleton can’t touch, I can. You know that, don’t you? Helen explained it to you, didn’t she? That now I’m a rich man and Pendleton is not.”
Longer hesitation. I didn’t give her a chance to lie to me, to tell me this was about love.
“I think,” I said, “I want to be outside.”
**
Although the storm had passed, the waves had not calmed.
The yacht lifted and fell.
I stood at the railing near the prow. The beam of the spotlight seemed to reach out from below my feet, widening in the circle empty of any sign of the lifeboat. Occasional spray from the hull banging into the ocean licked at my face and shoulders.
Although my eyes strained to see beyond the light, my mind was elsewhere.
All I needed to do was walk the few short steps back into the wheelhouse. The revenge I wanted from Pendleton would be complete. I would have taken from him everything that was important. His money. His status. And Claire. I would have a chance to begin again with Claire.
Why then did I remain here at the railing of the yacht? In the cold of the night air. Alone.
It struck me that I had long been martyred to the memory of Claire. Not for Claire herself, for she was no longer the woman I had left behind. Time and circumstances had changed her, as they had changed me.
Why had I clung so stubbornly to that memory, using it to push aside any chance at any other relationship? Was it because I didn’t feel I deserved love? After driving my mother away, did a part buried deep within me recoil from the chance at fully committing my soul to vulnerability once again?
Since my leaving Charleston, Claire had always been unattainable, making it simple for me to fool myself into believing if I could not be reunited with her, then I wanted no one.
And now.
I had that excuse no longer. She was attainable. I was reluctant.
Perhaps, however, all of my self-analysis was merely psychobabble. Maybe I could not reconcile myself to begin again with a woman who found it more convenient to be with me now that I was in a position to inherit. Yesterday, when she didn’t know, she hadn’t offered to divorce Pendleton.
Did I love Claire? Or did I love a memory?
**
I remembered a brief conversation I’d had once with an English instructor at the community college in Santa Fe. He’d been very drunk during this conversation; it took place in a bar where students and profs often went in the evenings. This English instructor had left his wife of fifteen years for a young coed. He’d even moved in with the coed, and as he told me in drunken tears, regretted it immensely.
“I can tell you what love isn’t,” he’d told me, clutching the edge of the table with one hand and his seventh gin and tonic with the other. “It isn’t that big beautiful spark. Sure, that starts it. But it’s the finish that matters.”
He’d gulped back his entire drink, determined to hurt himself badly with the poison.
“Say there ever comes a day you want out,” he slurred. “Like the way I had wanted out. You start seeing someone else. She’s younger than you. Always had a couple hours to primp and get ready before you go on your dates. All you do is go to upscale restaurants before you sneak away to high-priced hotels with twenty-four-hour room service. Well, let me tell you something. That’s not love. Don’t let it fool you.”
He’d tried waving for the barmaid’s attention, but I pulled his hand down. He hardly seemed to notice.
“I’ll tell you what love is,” he said. “It’s when you hug her while she’s crying and her face is splotchy and red. It’s when you drive a twenty-hour trip together to the in-laws and fight all the way. When you hold her hand while she’s throwing up with morning sickness. When you stay with her during the agony of giving birth. When you become the one person in this world she depends on as a best friend through everything good and bad.”
He’d stood. A lanky man with a goatee. Immaculately dressed. Always well spoken. And now falling-over drunk.
“I miss my wife,” he’d said. “I miss her so badly. And I can’t go back.”
I heard later he’d tried to hang himself that night in the coed’s apartment. He’d been too drunk to succeed. Shortly after, when the relationship with the college student tore apart, she’d lodged a sexual harassment complaint and he’d lost his job.
Where he moved after that, no one really cared.
**
I had to ask myself if this was what it was with Claire. If I’d been able to keep her memory idealized because I hadn’t grown with her, held her while she cried, fought with her on long drives, gone through a birth with her.
Perhaps the first love lost truly was a perfume as subtle and unpredictable as a dancing breeze. But perfume has no substance. And a first love lost will never have the chance to grow beyond the idealized, untarnished, undecayed memories.
Or was it even worse? Had I wanted her so that I would be an accepted part of the Charleston life?
I’d come a long way to ask myself those qu
estions.
While I was still tempted to turn around to go into the wheelhouse and take Claire in my arms, I knew in my heart that I could not do it and still keep my soul.
This realization was like stepping out of a prison.
I pondered this sensation of freedom.
And found myself thinking of Amelia. Remembering the current we’d shared when our eyes met. Regretting how and why she’d walked away from me earlier in the day.
I made a decision. To risk rejection. To call Amelia as soon as I returned to Charleston. There was something there, and I wasn’t going to let it slip away because of fear.
Almost in the same moment as I made this decision, Claire appeared beside me at the railing.
Wordlessly, she knelt at my feet and clutched my legs. For a moment, I thought she was going to beg.
But I was wrong.
It wouldn’t have taken her much strength. Her position gave her good leverage, and I was totally unprepared, already leaning over the railing as I strained to see ahead of the yacht.
Claire lifted, and before I could comprehend why, she flipped me forward.
Away from the railing. Toward the black of the ocean.
Chapter 43
The impact and coldness of the water was such a shock that any shout or scream was sucked from my lungs. I fought for the surface, churning my arms and legs. When I reached air again, the wake of the yacht tumbled me sideways, and I had to fight again to get my head above the water.
The yacht’s lights receded from me.
Waves threw me from one side to the other, and I kicked frantically to stay on the surface. I paddled with my arms, fighting the weight of my wet clothing.
And still the yacht’s lights receded.
Had I any thoughts that Claire’s actions were somehow an accident or that she felt sudden remorse, those thoughts ended when the lights finally disappeared.
I was alone in the cold, dark ocean.
My greatest danger was not in drowning. Farther south, in the gulf currents, I might have the hope of staying afloat long enough to drift to shore.
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