Nantucket Nights (26 page)

“Me, too,” Raoul said. His stomach was sour and empty. The thought of bubbling cheese and a thick, doughy crust appealed to him. Plus, the normalcy of it: he and Kayla walking in together with a hot pizza. They might be able to distract the kids with food until this whole thing blew over.

Kayla drove to the Muse. She went in to order the pizza while Raoul waited in the car. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. Tomorrow, Monday, was a holiday, but he’d make an appearance at work. Fix the damaged walls himself. The lawyer thing would need to wait until Tuesday. Val had handled all Raoul and Kayla’s legal matters until now; that would have to change. She didn’t handle criminal cases, anyway.
Criminal cases
—Raoul’s heart steeled itself against the new names that would be coming his way. His son was a vandal, his wife a murder suspect, and he, Raoul, was a criminal case.

Suddenly, Kayla flung open the door. She was sniffling.

“I saw Marty Robbins in there,” she said. “Theo’s boss? He said he read about me in the paper. “What did you do to that woman?’ he asked me. “Rumor has it you poisoned her.’ ” She handed Raoul the piping hot pizza box; the car filled with the smell of the pizza, and Raoul’s stomach tensed with expectation. Kayla slammed her door shut.
“Rumor has it?
Everyone knows, Raoul.”

“Well, yeah,” Raoul said. “They know what they read, but no one knows what actually happened.”

“What actually happened doesn’t matter!” Kayla said. “Word is out.” She sped down Surfside Road toward home. “Everyone’s talking about it, Raoul. You know how when something bad happens to someone and everyone you meet whispers to you about it? And you end up knowing the gory details of someone else’s private life, someone you barely even know? That someone is me. People are gossiping about me.”

“That’s why you need to go on vacation,” Raoul said.

“So people can say I’m running away? So people can say you kicked me out of the house?”

“No one will say that, Kayla. Two weeks from now the only people who will remember this happened is us.”

“My life is ruined, Raoul.”

“Yeah, well, mine’s not looking too rosy, either.”

This made her cry. She cried until they pulled into the driveway. Raoul held his open palms against the burning bottom of the pizza box. He was ashamed to say he was glad Kayla was being punished, even if it was for the wrong crime.

Inside, Luke and Cass were sitting at the breakfast bar playing Crazy Eights. Raoul heard music coming from Theo’s room upstairs.

“I have pizza,” Raoul said. “Cassidy, will you get plates and napkins, please?”

Neither kid moved. They were watching Kayla cry. She ripped a paper towel from the roll, blew her nose, and then dropped the towel in the trash can.

Cassidy B. stared at Raoul. “What’s wrong with Mommy?”

Before Raoul could formulate a believable answer, Luke spoke up.

“Mom killed Aunt Antoinette,” he said.

“Luke!” Raoul said. He wheeled Luke into the living room, where they were alone. “What in God’s name made you say that? Did you overhear something?”

Luke eyed his father. He was a judgmental little bugger—it was
his legacy as the youngest. He’d watched the other kids screw up and he learned how to keep himself in a safe, cool place where he could do things like accuse his mother of murder and get away with it. “You told us not to answer the phone, and we didn’t,” Luke said. “But we heard the messages.”

Raoul looked at the red light on the answering machine blinking like crazy. Seventeen messages. “What have people been saying?”

Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “That they heard Mom was in trouble for killing Aunt Antoinette. And someone called Mom a lesbian.”

“Go eat your pizza,” Raoul said. “Right now.”

Luke stomped into the kitchen. A wave of exhaustion crashed over Raoul. And he was hungry. But he turned the volume down on the answering machine and listened—there were five or six hangups, but the rest of the messages lit a fiery panic in the pit of Raoul’s stomach. Ed Ogilvy from the
Inquirer and Mirror
asked Kayla for an official statement. Joyce Shanahan, Fran Dunleavy, Denise Grover—all friends of Kayla’s—called to see what was going on. Was what the paper said true? Kent van Bonner, the guidance counselor at the high school, called to say he’d heard Theo had been charged with B and E—news to Raoul. A few unidentifiable voices called saying Kayla should be sent to jail. The minister of their church, Albert Fro-man, called to see if there was anything he could do to help. And John Gluckstern called three times—in increasing states of intoxication—labeling Kayla a fraud, a lesbian, an accomplice to murder. Raoul erased every message, and when he was through, he held his head in his hands and listened to the sound of his own breathing.

“Everyone knows.” The room was dark, but Raoul made out Kayla, perched on the back of the sofa. How long had she been there? “They think the worst because they want to think the worst, Raoul. Everyone on this island has been looking for a reason to hate us for years.”

“No,” Raoul said, shaking his head. “I don’t accept that. We’re good people.”

“That’s why they hate us,” Kayla said. “Because we’re good. Because we’re lucky.”

“Our luck has run out,” Raoul said.

“Yes.”

Cassidy and Luke went up to their rooms without baths or TV. They were bewildered. Raoul and Kayla finished the pizza in silence. When Jennifer came home, she slammed the sliding glass door so hard that the walls of the kitchen shook; the dishes rattled in the cabinets. Raoul stood up.

“What’s the big idea, young lady?”

Jennifer’s skin was dark brown from her day at the beach. Her ponytail was stiff with salt, and she had sand halfway up her calves. Raoul checked the clock; it was almost nine.

“I heard what happened,” Jennifer said. She threw Raoul and Kayla a killer look, the kind of look that could only cross the face of a fourteen-year-old girl who was angry at her parents. “It’s disgusting.”

They waited. She said nothing else. Raoul cleared his throat. “What did you hear?”

“About Theo and Aunt Antoinette
sleeping together?
And Mom poisoning Aunt Antoinette so that she fucking drowned?” Her voice
hit the work
fucking
like a hammer. “What’s going on in this family?”

Kayla cleared the pizza box from the table. “Have you eaten?”

Jennifer stared at her mother.
“Excuse
me?”

“If you want something, there’s stuff for sandwiches. We ate all the pizza. Sorry.” She opened a cabinet. “Oh, and there’s soup. New England clam chowder.” She picked up the can. “Twenty-three grams of fat. I guess not, huh?”

“Mom? Is it true?”

“Yes, yes, true. All of it true.”

“Kayla,” Raoul said. They should have thought of something to tell the kids. But now—well, they’d believe everything they heard from everyone. “Maybe we should explain.”

“Explain?” Kayla said. She turned to face them, a look in her eyes like an empty room. “What could we possibly say that would explain what has happened this weekend?”

“Wait a minute.” Jennifer dropped her straw beach bag to her feet and sand sprayed across the tile floor. Raoul watched Kayla reach instinctively for the broom. “So Theo was having sex with Aunt Antoinette? That is so gross. She’s, like, twice his age.”

“Then add ten years,” Kayla said.

“It’s your brother’s business,” Raoul said. “Who told you all this?”

“Some kids,” Jennifer said. “Everyone’s talking about it.” She put the back of her hand to her forehead in a gesture of mock distress, only Raoul could see that for Jennifer, it was real. “What am I going to do? I’m going to have to run away from home.”

“That’s a good idea,” Kayla said sincerely. “I wouldn’t want to live here with the rest of us.”

“Are you going to jail?” Jennifer asked.

“No one’s going anywhere,” Raoul said. “Except to bed.”

 “Can I sleep at Amy’s house?” Jennifer asked.

“No,” Raoul said.

“Yes,” Kayla said.

 “No,” Raoul said. He wanted all his children at home, under
his roof, where nothing else could happen to them.

 “Let her go, Raoul,” Kayla said. “If she doesn’t want to sleep in this house, she shouldn’t have to.”

Jennifer softened. “Thank you, Mommy.” She hugged and kissed her mother. “I don’t think you killed Aunt Antoinette. You didn’t, did you?”

Kayla shook her head. She was crying again.

Jennifer glanced at Raoul uneasily, like she might cry herself, but instead she picked up her beach bag and disappeared into the night.

“There you have it,” Kayla said. “Our own daughter.”

Raoul thought that Kayla might offer to sleep downstairs on the sofa, but she climbed into their bed and fell asleep almost immediately. Raoul considered sleeping on the couch himself, pretending for the kids’ sake that he fell asleep in front of the TV, but in the end, he didn’t want to sleep in the house at all, and so he went out to his truck. The moon was full again, shining like a polished pearl. Raoul wanted to drive away, but he was too tired, so he put
his seat back, gathered up all the bad news of the day, and sank with the lead weight of it to the bottom of
his dreams.

Raoul woke the next morning to the sound of his cell phone ringing. Groggily, Raoul reached for it, and when his arm hit the gear shift he remembered where he was. In
his truck. His legs were cramped and his back hurt and his mind was heavy with the question of what to do about Kayla. She had to go away, for a while at least. It would give him a chance to breathe, to think, without having her around when he got home.
Please forgive me, everyone hates me, I ruined everything.
Raoul had to admit, though, he had a hard time imagining her on vacation by herself, without the kids. He couldn’t picture her existing anywhere except for in this house.

Raoul snatched up the phone. The sun wasn’t even completely up yet, and no one in the neighborhood had started to stir, which was a good thing. He hated to imagine the rumors if someone saw
him sleeping in his truck.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Montero?”

Raoul wished he’d checked the clock. The only person who addressed
him as Mr. Montero on his cell phone was Pierre Ting.

“Hello, Pierre.”

“Mr. Montero, we have a problem.” Pierre Ting’s voice sounded distant and manufactured. Ting was in the construction business himself; he brokered scaffolding. He’d provided scaffolding for the Statue of Liberty, the Bank of Hong Kong, the Arc de Triomphe. He could be calling from anywhere.

“What kind of problem?” Raoul said.

“My name in the newspaper connected with some woman’s disappearance? And today I’m looking at ruined walls in the living room. They tell me your son did this damage. What’s going on, Mr. Montero?”

“You’re
here?”
Raoul said. The beauty of working for the Tings was that they had never shown up to check on his work. Not once all summer. Raoul had Micky snap photos with a digital camera and they sent pictures of their progress to Ting’s e-mail address.

“I flew in last night,” Ting said. He sounded a thousand miles away. “And I’ve been bombarded with dismaying news since I arrived.”

“Okay. I’ll be right there. Give me five—”

“Don’t bother,” Ting said. “I’m replacing you. You’re fired.”

“Wait a second,” Raoul said. “Pierre, please.” There was silence on the other end. What should Raoul say? He was a grown man who had spent the night in his truck. Raoul fidgeted with the spare change he kept in the console, then the keys to the Doyle house that they’d finished in May, then the bottle of Advil, the contents of which Raoul would empty into his mouth as soon as he got off the phone. “Pierre, you can’t fire me. We have a contract.”

“I’m breaking the contract. I’ll pay what I owe you for the work you’ve done so far, but no more. I’m hiring someone else.” Raoul could hear Ting’s footsteps against the wooden floors of the empty house. He wondered if anyone from
his crew was there listening. He wondered who had called Ting to alert him in die first place. Micky, presumably.

“You won’t be able to find anyone else,” Raoul said, hoping this was true. “Besides, Pierre, that house is my design. Those are my plans. No one else will know how to execute them.”

Ting laughed. “Ha! We’ll see.”

Raoul nearly wept at the thought of his cathedral being built by a crew of hackers, dope smokers, these guys who flew over from Hyanms each morning with no regard for the architectural integrity of Nantucket. “Please don’t do this, Pierre.”

“Are you going to fight me?” Ting asked.

“No,” Raoul said. He didn’t want to fight anyone else. He shut off the phone and stared at the front of the house, which caught an orange glow from the rising sun. What waited for him inside? Nothing anymore. A wife who cheated on him, the job of a lifetime ruined. He began then to understand how Theo must feel—the most important things in
his life gone, washed away, irretrievable.

Theo

He didn’t manage to make it back to school until Friday, and by then it was too late. Sara Poncheau, summer cab driver and best friend of Gillian Bergey, told everyone that she had seen Theo at Antoinette Riley’s house. This was the story as Theo finally heard it: Ms. Riley had been a frequent fare for Sara, a huge tipper, and Sara wondered about her. A beautiful black woman with a ton of cash living back in the woods off Polpis; it was intriguing. Then, on Friday afternoon, she saw Theo standing in the doorway of Ms. Riley’s house; she saw Mm grab her arm like he owned her or something. Sara assumed they were sleeping together. Which she reported to Gillian Bergey ASAP—and then two days later it hit the newspaper that the woman, Ms. Riley, was
missing
and Theo’s mother was somehow involved. Covering up for Theo, maybe. Theo confessed to two counts of vandalism, which meant Theo probably killed the woman, probably hacked her to bits with an axe and buried her body parts in the woods. And his mother took the blame. Everyone knew Theo’s parents spoiled him—his own Jeep, for starters, and spending money from
his father who made all kinds of sick cash building huge houses for Chinese people. Yes, Theo was guilty of murder. Why else would anybody miss the
first three days
of senior year? That was insane, social suicide, and so there had to be a good reason.