“And we don’t know how ithappened,but do you seriously think he wanted her dead?”
He opens his mouth to argue but stops.
“Right,” I repeat, relieved that he is listening. “Think of his behavior when he returned to shore that night. Think of what Paul said about his recent visits. We know he was tormented—because, I’m sorry, Jack, even apart from the principles, Tom wasn’t much of an actor. If he had been, he might have treated me better all those years, which is neither here nor there right now. We do know that your mother’s death tormented him. We even know it tore his own marriage apart.” I lift a quick hand. “And yes, there was reason for that totally apart from her, but what happened that night and the scandal in the days after clinched it. I’m not taking sides. I’m just trying to make sense of this.”
His voice lowers in defeat. “How can I do that? I’ll never know what happened. Any answers there might have been are buried with Tom.”
“I’m saying,” I beg, with a hand on his chest, “that maybe he didn’t have the answers, and that maybe wedon’tget them in life. And that maybe we can talk things through this time instead of walking away.”
With the ocean flowing and ebbing somewhere below the bluff, Jack studies me. He knows I’m right. I can see the sadness in his eyes. But his jaw remains taut. Good intentions aside, a habit of twenty years is hard to break.
Blowing out a long breath, he looks over his shoulder at his own house, as if debating whether to head there or back with me. Suddenly, a visible tension pulls at his shoulders and spine. At the top of his front steps, hidden in a far right corner on the porch, is the image of his mother.
It’s Lily, of course. But given our discussion, if the sight of her jolts me, I can only imagine what it does to Jack.
With a guttural WTF, he takes a step toward her before spinning back. His finger gestures me to Paul, then straightens in promise.We aren’t done.
Understanding that he needs to talk with Lily alone, I do everything I can not to look back as I return to the bench. Paul is sitting now, bent forward with his elbows on his knees and hands clasped between. He looks up when I lower myself to the other end.
“That’s her?” he asks softly.
I nod. “Weird timing.”
“What do you think she wants?”
Beats me,I say in a grimace.
“What doyouwant?” he asks more gently.
“For Jack and Lily?”
“For you and me.”
With a mildly hysterical laugh, I lift a bewildered look to the drifting clouds. “Everything, nothing, time, memory, experience, talk—I don’t know.” Back at his face, I scowl. “How can we not know so much about the most important things in our lives?”
He should be as puzzled as me. The question is a cosmic one, and I’ve asked it rhetorically. But his eyes warm in the way of one who is older and wiser preparing to lecture. I’m thinking that I’m not ready for a lecture from this particular man, when I see empathy in that warmth.
“Because life isn’t static,” he says. “It keeps changing. We think we know where we are, then something happens and we’re somewhere else, and we have to find our way all over again. Sometimes, like with Jack’s mother, there just aren’t answers.”
Haven’t I just said the equivalent to Jack? I’m gratified to hear it from Paul. He is wise in ways I’ve always appreciated, and what he says makes too much sense to reject the words simply because of who he is. Besides, this doesn’t sound like a lecture or even advice. It sounds like a discussion.
“All those memories—” I recall frightening times with Tom, frustrating times with Mom, family times with Paul always on the sidelines, “—should they be ditched for being wrong?”
“Not ditched, just amended. And what about new ones?”
New ones,I think.
“You and I are both alive and well,” he says. “It’s an opportunity.”
Well, it was. But I say nothing. Truth is, Tom’s antipathy toward me notwithstanding, I feel traitorous declaring affinity for another father so soon. How can I simply negate a lifetime of memories in favor of new ones, even amended ones?
“This is sudden,” Paul acknowledges. “My timing stinks. I’m sorry.” He sits back. “Trust me, I didn’t plan this. But could I keep quiet after what Tina Aiello said? Of all the times I anticipated my confession,” he adds in self-derision, “the day of Tom’s funeral wasn’t one.”
“Would you have told me—ever—while he lived?”
He studies a distant point. “Probably not. Tom was one of my best friends, and still I hid this from him. I didn’t see that I had a choice. What good would it have done to tell him?” His eyes find mine again. “For what it’s worth, it never occurred to him to ask. He never dreamed it would be me, for which I feel all the more guilty, mind you. I never lied. But I did tell only half-truths. Like Tom with the police. Like somanyof us. So, are we just taking the easy way out? Or are we choosing the lesser of the evils?”
He’s asking me? Like I’d know? I kept secrets from my sisters about having non-Aldiss thoughts, failed to ask personal questions of a woman I called my best friend, stayed away from the man I loved for twenty years—all in the name of keeping peace. Was any of it the lesser of the evils?
