A Necessary End (38 page)

“I didnt think so.”

Trevor thought as I did: that with him gone, with the idea of family receding, Leah would give up. But now she's gone rogue, and I've got no inside man.

O
n our way to the car, I get a text from an unknown number: “At the Pyr now. Who r u.” So Ames came through. He got my message to the Fixer, and the Fixer's curious.

If you'd asked me yesterday, I would have said that Trevor's leaving would render the Fixer unnecessary. Even with all that's happened, I still have a soft spot for Leah. She's an orphan, you know? There was no one around to teach her right from wrong. No one to even give her a hug, for fuck's sake.

But this stunt she's pulled does piss me off. Michael's my baby, too. If we don't find them soon . . .

I wonder if the Fixer is as proficient at tracking people as he is at—well, whatever else he does to them. I put the phone in my pocket, hoping I'll never need him.

From the passenger seat, Adrienne calls and texts Leah repeatedly, but it keeps going straight to voice mail. “Can I use yours?” she asks, indicating my cell.

“I'm frozen out, too.” Leah hasn't uttered a word to me since the night she announced her departure, and I haven't trusted myself to break the silence. I couldn't risk making things any worse.

“We have to try everything.” Adrienne's face is agony crossed with determination, a hybrid I've only ever seen on her.

I hand her the phone and steer us toward the park. There's a light rain falling, and as a result, it's pretty much deserted.

“Let's try the other park. The one off Prospect.” Her eyes are on my phone. After she sends the text, I notice that she holds on to it. I see her furtively scrolling up.

“What are you expecting to find?” I think quickly about whether there are any texts on there about getting fired. No, Ray hasn't been in touch yet, and I certainly haven't been volunteering the information to anyone else.

“Nothing.” She stares at me. “So who are you, Gabe?” She's quoting the Fixer.

“That's from somebody at the Pyramid.”

“I know. It says so in the text. Who are you? And who's texting you?”

I peer out through the blurry windshield. “You don't have to know everything, Wren. Sometimes it's better not to know.” I'm thinking of her videotape.

She tosses the phone on the floor and puts her head in her hands. She begins to sob. My arm shoots out awkwardly and pats her back. I feel like a stranger on a bus. “It's going to be okay,” I tell her.

“What if he's dead? What if she killed Michael and then herself?”

“You've been watching too much Summer Jackson. That's not Leah.” The rain is getting heavier. I turn on the wipers.

“How do you know?”

I don't need to keep Leah's secrets anymore. She certainly felt no compunction about keeping mine. “She's got no parents. She grew up in foster homes and then group homes. You don't think she's tougher than this? She's not going to give us the satisfaction of destroying herself.”

“What about destroying Michael?”

“I think she really loves him.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.” But she pops her head up. The squall is passing.

I drive everywhere Adrienne can think of, and the one place I can think of: the Pyramid. I idle the car outside while Adrienne runs inside. She's back a few minutes later. “What a dump,” she says. “Leah's not there.”

I feel oddly hurt. I don't know why she had to jab at me now, like that. She knows I love the place. Maybe it's about that text. She might have dropped the subject, but she hasn't forgotten it.

“If you want Leah,” Adrienne says, her eyes following the wipers, “you can have her.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I'm not going to hold you back. I'm not going to fight for you. Not anymore.”

“When have you had to fight for me?”

She stares at me. “Seriously? I've been fighting for you our whole lives. Fighting your guilt about Michael. Trying to let you know we're worth it. I'm done.”

“You're done with me?”

She faces straight ahead. The light must have turned green, because I hear honking. I don't give a shit, we're going to finish this conversation.

“Do you want me to go with Leah? Do you want me to go, period?”

“She wants you, she can have you. You can play poker all night long. Heads up, isn't that what it's called?” She makes it sound as suggestive as possible. “But I keep Michael.”

I didn't realize she even knew about the late-night poker. “You were obsessed with Michael. That's why I was with Leah. Not
with
her, not like that.” The honking intensifies. I hear cars hurriedly switching lanes to get around us. I put on my four-way flashers, like we've broken down. It's not untrue.

“You need to drive.”

“Drive where?”

“There must be other places to look. They can't just be gone.” Her voice rises at the end.

“He's all you're thinking about, huh? Even now. Even when we're talking about our entire future.”

“You need to drive the car. I can't think, sitting here.” I know what she means. The blare of the horns makes me want to jump out of my skin, too.

But we're going to settle this now. She doesn't get to dictate our whole lives. “No,” I tell her. “We're not going anywhere.”

Her eyes are wide with surprise. But she's always liked it, at least a little, when I assume command.

“I know things have changed between us,” I say. “I know that it's mostly my fault that we're in this position, that Leah is talking about taking Michael.” I see her thinking, Mostly? “Yeah, mostly. Because you made the decision to invite Trevor into our home. If you hadn't we wouldn't be here.” She can't argue with that. “But I shouldn't have told Leah the story about Michael. I should have realized she had it out for you and she'd twist it. I shouldn't have given her ammunition.”

Adrienne's face is inscrutable. The horns blare on and the rain pelts the car, heavier now, but she hasn't interrupted me yet.

“You've done some shit, too, these last two months. It's not only me. But I know that a lot of it's been me. I don't know if I didn't want to be a father, or if I was freaked out with all the memories about my brother, or if it was just that name, that goddamn name . . .” I take both her hands. “Don't give up on me, because I think I'm ready now.”

She looks gobsmacked. It's the last thing she expected to hear. So after all these years, I can still surprise her.

I find myself starting to smile, just a little. “You got to admit, it's been a confusing couple of months. But these past few days, I've started thinking differently about everything, including Michael.
See? I can even say his name.” She looks down at her hands in mine. I'm reaching her, I can tell.

I think of coming clean with everything, telling her I lost my job but if she'll believe in me again, I could get it together. But that's for later. I'm pressing my luck as hard as I can. Ironic that I can still see the Pyramid's neon sign from here.

She takes her hands away. “I can't think about any of this right now. I just have to think about Michael.”

They say you can get used to anything—you get sensitized, acculturated, something. It's true, I can barely hear the horns through the roar in my ears. A pitch like that and she just rejects it out of hand? That's cold.

“You're only thinking about Michael now?” I sneer. “Like you were thinking about him twenty years ago? When he made you an offer you didn't refuse?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The videotape. Michael said he'd share you with me, and then you had sex with him.”

She sits back against the seat, visibly stunned for the second time in five minutes. “I didn't think there really was a videotape. Well, I mean, at first I believed there was, but then . . .” She seems unable to continue.

“Why didn't you ever tell me?”

“Why didn't you tell me you knew about it?”

“Knew about it? I've watched it. I own it.”

At that, the blood drains from her face.

“What I don't get is how you could have done that to him,” I say. “Given him hope like that. I don't get how you could be so heartless.”

“If you think I'm heartless, why are you telling me you want us to be a family? That's always been your problem, Gabe. You're wishy-washy.”

I know her so well. She's throwing daggers to avoid having to answer questions and take responsibility. “You let me take the blame
all these years, but the date on that video—it was pretty close to Michael's suicide. That hope you gave him, and then the disappointment that must have come after . . . I bet it crushed him.”

“I never ‘let you' take the blame. I don't think either of us is to blame. That's what I've always said.” She's silent a long minute. “I tried to protect you. I guess it backfired.”

“Protect me how?”

“Michael wasn't some fragile little waif like you believed. He was an angry, manipulative, disturbed person.”

I shake my head. “That's not my brother.”

“Would the brother you think you knew have recorded that videotape on purpose so he could blackmail me? So he could force me to have sex with him again and again?” I wait for her to go on—needing to hear, not wanting to listen. “He knew I was in love with you and not him. He guilted me into sleeping with him and he taped it. Then he threatened to tell you unless I kept sleeping with him. I hated it, Gabe. I hated him. All I wanted was to be with you, and he knew that. What he wanted was to ruin it for us. He wanted to get back at you so badly for a lifetime of wrongs, things he never even told you about. He hated you, Gabe. I never wanted you to know that.”

I slam back into the seat. “You're lying.”

“You know I'm not. He was controlling me with that tape, and he enjoyed it. It was like getting raped every night. I went along because I couldn't lose you.”

“You should have told me.”

She pauses. “Yeah, I should have. If I had . . .” It dangles there, the thought of what could have been, an alternate reality in which Michael had lived. “I thought the only way out was to turn the tables on him. To seem like I was doing what he wanted, but in little ways, letting him know what I really thought of him. That he didn't compare at all to the man you were.”

“You were trying to break him.”

“I was trying to get away from him. But yes, I was pissed off. Wouldn't you be, if someone blackmailed you? And in the ugliest, dirtiest way, where you had to give yourself to that person night after night. All to hang on to the love you really wanted.” She leans in, forcing me to look into her face. “Think about it. What kind of human being would do something like that to another? Is that the work of an innocent victim?”

“I don't know,” I say finally. “I just don't know.”

“You don't know if you believe me, or you don't know what kind of person would do that?”

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I don't know which), I do believe her.

“Michael wasn't some sweet sensitive artist. Or at least, that wasn't all of him. He was already jealous of you, and the thing with me just sent him over the top. But that's not your fault. You couldn't have known. You tried to be a good brother. I know you did.” I turn my head but she grabs my face, forcing me back. “I never wanted you to know how he felt about you and what he was capable of. I never wanted you to see him for what he really was. But maybe if I had, you would have let yourself off the hook. Then you could have loved our baby right from the start.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, but a tear finds its way free.

“I'm sorry, Gabe. I really am. Look at me, Gabe.”

I finally do, but it hurts. It's agony. I can see that she understands, for the first time.

“I am so sorry. I never should have done what I did. I never should have used your brother to get to you. It's not enough to say I was young and I loved you. If it meant destroying another person, destroying your brother, I shouldn't have done it. There are some means you just don't use, regardless of the ends.”

I twist away again, and this time, she doesn't pull me back.

“I get why you don't want to look at me,” she says quietly. “But I'm not Patty.” Then again, in a true whisper, “I'm not Patty.”

I want to believe her epiphany. It's the first time she's ever ceased
to defend herself, the first unvarnished remorse she's ever expressed for what happened to Michael instead of a generalized regret. But it's so damn convenient.

“You say it's not worth it to destroy someone in order to get what you want,” I say. “Does that hold for Leah, too? You'll let her have Michael?”

“I'm sorry,” she says, “but I can't answer that. Not yet.”

Then when? I want to ask, but I'm startled by a knock on the window. I roll it down and see an officer in a rain slicker. “Is there a problem with your car, sir?”

“It overheated,” Adrienne says, wiping at her eyes. “We needed to give it a few minutes to cool down. We can try to start it up again.”

The cop looks back and forth between us. It's obvious something's not quite right, but he's not sure if it's the kind of domestic drama that falls within his purview. “Everything all right here, ma'am?” He's asking Adrienne, as if she's some abused woman who might need help.

I start to laugh. It's high-pitched, hysterical, exhausted. I sound like I've flown over the cuckoo's nest.

The cop gives me a stony stare. “Ma'am?” he repeats.

Adrienne starts to laugh herself. “We're fine, Officer. It's just been a hell of a day.”

He considers us both and then decides to extricate himself as quickly as possible. I don't blame him. “Try starting your car, sir.”

I oblige.