New England White (13 page)

“Julia’s not a God woman,” Boris explained, as if Iris didn’t know. “She goes to church, but she’s not a God woman. Julia’s old-fashioned. She goes because her husband takes her. He’s a traditionalist Anglican. That’s a polite way of saying he likes the reactionary prayer book the rest of the civilized world has abandoned.” He took a bite, pointed at Julia. “I have some information for you.”

Iris, smiling in relief, said she would leave them to talk.

“Boris, I’m sorry. I can’t do this just now.”

“He was building a house.”

This slowed her down, as perhaps it was meant to. “He what?”

“Your Kellen was building himself a house in the Landing.” He took a huge bite. “Looked at a nice lot with a private beach, talked to a surveyor, everything.”

After the interview with Chrebet, she had trouble taking this in. “Are you telling me that Kellen Zant was moving to Tyler’s Landing?”

“Building a house at least,” he answered, very pleased with himself. “Looks like he didn’t tell you that, either.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder, and she wondered what candy stains she had just picked up. “There’s more to the story. But you’re in a hurry, so I’ll tell you the rest later.”

Laughing, Boris stalked off down the hallway. It would be much later before Julia realized that his argument with Iris was the larger clue.

(IV)

“N
OT A
G
OD WOMAN
,” she said aloud, rankled by Boris’s cruel teasing. Heading for the front entrance, trying to decide how to put to Vanessa the question that had to be put, Julia changed course and slipped into Kepler Chapel, the divinity school’s own worship space, not nearly as grand as the university chapel, but perfectly serviceable. She glanced around the vast, cool chamber, but had the peeling frescoes and flaking gold leaf and crumbling plaster cornices all to herself. She walked slowly up the aisle. There was a high altar a century old, carved with fading words from the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, and a low altar of younger and brighter wood, offering no statement whatsoever. Along the walls and in various closets were stashed sufficient chairs, crucifixes, altar cloths, chalices, thuribles, and fonts to enable nearly any denomination, saving only the most austere, to arrange matters to the comfort of its members. In a shadowed corner stood a rickety rack of votive candles in copper stands, none lit. Up above, cold afternoon sunlight sparkled through clerestory windows.

This was where she and Lemaster had married twenty years ago, the stunned families bearing the union in shared furious stoicism, each side unalterably persuaded that Julia had trapped him, for by their wedding day she had been in her fifth month, the baby growing within difficult to conceal. She had felt her mother’s mute humiliation burning into her back, and, later, insisted that all she recalled of the ceremony was grabbing Lemaster and fleeing for her life. This was a lie. In actual fact, she remembered every painful minute, even the part where she silently cursed God in the midst of her vows for getting her into this situation; for Julia, good American Protestant that she was, could not quite get her mind around the notion that her troubles might be her own fault.

Since returning to the div school three and a half years ago, Julia had developed the habit of coming here when she needed to think, because the chamber was hardly used during the workweek, and she could sit in relative peace. That is, she could sit in peace except on those occasions when Kellen would glide over from his office in the massive social-science building just across Hudson Street, sneaking into the pew beside her to share his latest woes. Or she would return to her office on the first floor only to find him lurking unhappily in the corridor: always, there was some crisis he could discuss with nobody else, because nobody else had ever understood him. When Julia told him to leave her alone, he would slink off in that affecting, soulful way that certain bearish men can achieve at the drop of a hat, only to show up again a week later, by e-mail or instant message or telephone, proposing lunch or coffee or whatever she could spare. He would wear her down. And so they would meet, and Kellen would tell her about a woman who was giving him trouble, or a colleague who had teased him about not having done much scholarship lately, or a potential client who had hired another economist despite Kellen’s greater qualifications.

You’re going to have to handle it,
she would say, quoting Granny Vee.
That’s what grown-ups do. They handle things.

I can think of things this grown-up would rather handle,
he would answer, teasing her with mellow eyes.

You can’t lead an ordered life if what matters most is desire.
She supposed she must be quoting Lemaster now.

So who wants to lead an ordered life?

Kellen was brilliant and accomplished and honored everywhere. He was also a big baby, and wanted Julia to play mommy, to offer a shoulder to cry on, the way she used to, except crying was not what he planned if he ever got his head back on her shoulder. What Kellen told Julia in a thousand little ways was the same thing Seth Zant kept saying the day of the funeral: she was the one who got away.

Mostly she had kept her distance.

Up at the mall in Norport, Kellen had said he had to spread the inventory risk because he was in trouble, that they were facing dark times, that the darkness mattered. She had dismissed it as another slimy flirtation, for Kellen had been in so many different kinds of trouble in his life that it was hard to imagine any single one could possibly be the worst.

Now she was not so sure.

Not a flirtation. A message.

Boris was right, of course. Julia did not believe in God, not really. Twenty years ago, she and Lemaster had moved in together and dropped out of div school, Lemaster because what he was learning made him fear that it might all be false, Julia because what she was learning made her fear that it might all be true. With time, both had overcome their fears, and reverted to type. Father Freed at Saint Matthias spoke, often, of Heaven. Lemaster listened keenly. Julia indulged him. But when in her secret heart she looked toward the future, two, three, perhaps four decades hence, she saw herself in an uncaring hospital, surrounded by soulless machines, a child or two to hold her hand, her husband long dead, and she herself waiting for the dark curtain to come down, and, on the other side, only blankness.

Time to go. Reaching into her pocket for the car keys, she found the IT memo. She unfolded the single short page, read it once, quickly, then a second time, more closely, key phrases jumping out:
…riddled with spyware…more sophisticated than the usual commercial…not a product by amateurs…escaped the antivirus software…spoofed Task Manager…follow every keystroke…every Web site or e-mail…of a quality used by federal government, usually with a warrant…

And Kellen had said he had the goods on a major political figure. And had left the evidence to her.

Julia Carlyle was still, as she had always been, a dedicated agnostic. Nevertheless, sitting alone in the empty, dying chapel, she bowed her head and prayed.

CHAPTER 13

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
AND FRIEND

(I)

“C
AN
I
TALK TO YOU
, honey?” said Julia, stepping into her second-eldest child’s room.

Vanessa, hunched over the computer with her friend Smith, shrugged her shoulders, but also clicked away the instant messages that popped up all over the screen whenever she was online. It was natural, her mother knew, for a teenager, caught in these invented years between the freedom of a child and the burdens of an adult, to protect a private sphere. Still, she worried about the friends her daughter made online and the secrets she shared or discovered. Rainbow Coalition, curled on Vanessa’s lap, glared at Julia as she might at an intruder. Smith, pierced nearly everyplace her ghostly-pale flesh showed around her heavy black outfit, did not even look up. Outside the windows, the night sky was clear and beautiful, but more snow was in the forecast for morning.

“Vanessa?”

“Uh-huh.” Laconic, even vaguely disrespectful, as she always was around Smith, who had been, a couple of years ago, a mousy white thing named Janine Goldsmith. Her close-cropped head was bobbing as she examined some object held in her lap. Julia wondered if she might be stoned.

“I’m talking to you, Vanessa.”

“I hear you.”

Julia moved closer, her gown brushing the floor because she had kicked off her heels the instant she and Lemaster had walked in the door. It was Friday, and another fancy dinner, this time a fund-raiser for a college fund for minority students. Julia had mostly danced while Lemaster had mostly worked the room.

“Vanessa,” said Julia again. “Vanessa, would you mind turning around? And turning the music down?” For the incomprehensible sounds were surprisingly loud in the room, even if nearly undetectable in the hall.

“Nope.” Vanessa swiveled in her chair, grinning at her mother as Smith continued to toy with what Julia could now see was some sort of electronic thing that probably had not even been invented a month ago and would be all the rage a month hence, for her indulgent parents, angrily divorced, believed that they could purchase their way back into their daughter’s good graces. Vanessa winked. She wore glasses instead of contacts, as she often did late at night. A robe covered loose pajamas. Her feet were stuffed into bunny-rabbit slippers so ancient and floppy that Julia wondered how she could walk without stumbling. She had asked this afternoon if she could have her eyes lasered. It was Friday, and Smith was sleeping over, but, despite the hour, she showed no signs of readiness for bed.

Julia said, “Hello, Janine. How are you?”

Smith did not budge. Kids today.

To Vanessa: “I’d like to talk to you.”

“Kay.”

“You’re a woman of few words tonight.”

“Yep.”

This was Vanessa’s New England Yankee persona, one of several identities from which she selected when protecting a vulnerability near her core. Vincent Brady had warned them not to be distracted by what their daughter showed on the surface.

“Is everything okay, honey?”

“Uh-huh.” Idly stroking Rainbow Coalition’s pudgy neck.

“Can we talk privately?” Wanting to put Rick Chrebet’s question without Rick Chrebet; but also furious at herself for asking permission. Yet she had no clear way to relate to her daughter. They still had reached no agreement on whether Vanessa would be attending the Orange and White Cotillion after Christmas, and Julia was reluctant to order her to go. She also was no longer sure her orders would be obeyed.

Oh, God, what was wrong with her child?

“Smith
is
private,” said Vanessa. Her hand trembled, but she was able to make it stop. “I tell her everything anyway.”

Smith let out a small grunt that might have been sorrow or glee, disagreement or excitement or even a snore. The device in her lap had a small screen. A DVD player?

Julia said, “May I see you outside for a second, please, honey?”

Vanessa nodded grimly, as if to say duty called, but Smith looked up briefly, her pallid face sharp and disapproving, as if manners were out of fashion.

When they were in the gallery, the wide balcony between Vanessa’s bedroom and the bridge to the master suite, Julia leaned close and said, “Is she okay? Janine?”

“She’s under a vow of silence. Until the violence stops.”

Oh, well, that explained everything. “Ah, honey, listen. I won’t take long. I’ve been wanting to ask you—”

“Four.”

“What?”

“The number of times I ran into Kellen Zant.” Grinning. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”

(II)

J
ULIA SHIFTED HER WEIGHT
on aching feet. She had allowed herself a full day to cool down before raising the question, because, had she pressed Vanessa in the first hours after Chrebet’s visit, she would have been fiery indeed, and her relationship with her elder daughter was difficult enough. Lemaster was downstairs talking to Flew, who had met them on their arrival, fulfilling some undisclosed errand. “Excuse me a sec,” she told Vanessa, because she had noticed that Jeannie’s door, decorated with her perfect little poems, was open a perfect little crack. Julia crossed the wide landing and knocked. The only response was scampering feet. “Go to sleep, Jeannie.”

Julia waited for the muffled acknowledgment, then turned back to Vanessa, drawing her down onto the sofa because standing hurt too much. “Do you want to tell me about what happened with Kellen Zant?”

“I’m
willing
to tell you.”

With an effort, Julia withheld a cranky response, refusing to imitate, as she too often did, her own impulsive and short-tempered mother. “Please stop, Vanessa. Tell me.”

“If you want.” She rubbed her eyes, then cast a glance of almost passionate longing at the door to her room. Julia wondered whether her daughter was thinking of Janine—no, Smith now—or of the computer. It occurred to Julia that her daughter was awfully tired and should probably be in bed. But Vanessa and Smith would stay up until dawn, doing whatever it was that they did. “The first time I ran into him was at the div school library, I think like November. A year ago. I think.”

Julia, who could never recall her daughter suffering such memory problems before, was still at the first hurdle. “You ran into Kellen…in Kepler?”

“Uh-huh. When I was doing research for my term paper. I was coming out of the archives, and he was in the reading room—”

“Wait, honey. Wait. Are you sure?”

“No, Moms. I’m making it all up.” She made a sound. Distress? Anger? “Yes, Moms, I’m sure. I was even kind of surprised, because I figured, you know, he’s the big economist, the big bad corporate consultant, and Dads is always talking about how he doesn’t really do any scholarship, so what was he doing in the library? Especially the div school library? But there he was. And after that, um, like January. Then maybe in the summer. And then this fall. September or something. One more time at the div school, and one time at the Historical Society—”

“The Harbor County Historical Society?”

“Yes. And I saw him after school one day, too.”

“He came to the high school?”

“He was, like, passing by in his car when I came out. He asked if I wanted to get a cup of coffee or something.”

“That bastard,” said Julia before she could stop herself, wishing afresh for the chance to kill him all over again. “Honey, what…what did you two talk about?”

“You know. School. The weather. How good my hair looked today.”

“He talked about your hair?” said Julia, sinking fast.

“Uh-huh. And how I was the spitten image of my mother. Only Kellen said
spitting.
Got it wrong.” A shy smile danced over her lips and was gone. “How he liked my taste in clothes. How smart I was. Word games. He liked word games. He pestered me, Moms.” Shuddering. “He’d e-mail me and IM me and call me up. It got kind of creepy. He was too old to be calling me.”

“Oh, honey, he didn’t…I mean, the two of you…Please tell me…”

“I didn’t sleep with him, if that’s what you mean! That’s too gross for words!” Vanessa’s head tipped forward and she covered her eyes. She rubbed her temples. She had to be sick by now of answering questions all the time, and here was her mother making it worse. Already Julia almost regretted trying.

Except that she needed to protect her daughter from…whatever.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, honey.”

“Me, too. It was like he was stalking me. Like I said. Creepy.”

“I wish you’d told me or your father. We’d have handled it.”

“Well, it’s been handled, hasn’t it?” said the teenager tartly.

A pause while they thought this through together. Vanessa’s face slowly fell as the implications of her own comment sank in, and a wave of revulsion swept over Julia, as a wicked little voice assured her that Kellen had deserved his fate. Then Julia asked the question that had been rolling around in her head ever since Rick Chrebet’s visit.

“Honey, did he ask you about your paper?”

“My paper?”

“The one on Gina Joule.”

Vanessa dropped her eyes and laughed harshly. “Oh, Moms, come on. He didn’t care about my term paper. He cared about getting in my pants.”

“Oh, honey—”

“Creepy pervert. He was like forty-nine or something, flirting with a teenager. Wanted me to have
coffee
with him.”

Still Julia fought to keep her head above water, not missing the forest for the trees, and as many other metaphors as she could mix, as long as she got her answer. “So he never…ah, he didn’t ask you about what really happened to Gina that night?”

Vanessa’s head snapped up, braids flying. “Nothing
really
happened to Gina, Moms. Didn’t you read my paper? It was DeShaun Moton who killed her. Remember?” Retelling the story anyway, another habit she shared with her father. “Gina had this big fight with her mom, she went storming out of the house, she walked around. DeShaun stole the BMW, he spotted this cute white girl near the Green on his way out of town, he pulled over, he flirted a little bit, and Gina, stupid little thing that she was, got in. Probably because she was mad at her mom. Girls do stupid things when their moms make them mad. I mean, no girls we know, but, um, generically. Anyway, DeShaun drove her over to the beach, tried to do what guys do, they fought, she drowned. And DeShaun, well, he got the hell out of Dodge. Only he was stupid, too. Five, six days later he’s back, he steals another car, the cops chase him, bang, he’s dead. Okay, right, I know, they shouldn’t have done that, but he was guilty as sin, Moms. I mean, come on. The evidence was clear. Sure, people wanted DeShaun not to be guilty, because he was black and Gina was white, and, you know, black men getting lynched for killing white girls, that’s a pattern as old as—” Vanessa did not seem to be able to decide what the pattern was as old as, and, for a moment, her mouth worked soundlessly. This time Julia had the good sense to let her daughter fight her own way out of it. “Go back and read the paper, Moms. I’ve seen the records of the case. It wasn’t even close. Open and shut. They had witnesses. They had his past record. They had everything. Sure, there was a riot, but the rioters were wrong. I wanted them to be right. That’s why I wrote the paper, to prove DeShaun was innocent. But he wasn’t innocent.” Vanessa stopped again, and brushed at her arms and chest, as if to wipe away the remnants of her tirade. She smiled as if the rest had never happened, and spoke calmly. “Anyway, he shouldn’t have been bothering me. Kellen. It was creepy.”

“I know. I’m sorry, honey.”

“And I honestly don’t know what Kellen was working on, Moms. He didn’t tell me. But if by some chance he really was looking into what happened to Gina? Well, if he decided it wasn’t DeShaun who did it, and told the world? He’d be lying, Moms.”

“You’re very sure?”

“Hey, remember what Dads told me, before I sat down to write my paper? He said a student who does a research paper is supposed to become like one of the world’s leading experts on his subject. Her subject. Well, here I am. I’m the world’s leading expert on Gina Joule. And, yes, Moms, I’m very sure it was DeShaun Moton. So was the family, I guess, because they dropped their lawsuit against the Landing. Didn’t even get a settlement.”

“Did you tell Kellen?”

“Of course not.” Eyes wide with disbelief. “We never talked about it. I told you. Kellen didn’t care who killed Gina. He cared about looking at my legs. It was creepy.”

“So those phone calls—”

“He kept wanting to get together. He was a sicko.” Calm again. Like throwing a switch. “Don’t tell Dads, okay? He’ll have a fit. I mean, the guy’s dead. Let him rest in peace.”

Julia had been thinking much the same thing. “And that was it? The sum total of your relationship?”

Vanessa’s head snapped up again, and Julia knew she had chosen the wrong words. “We didn’t have a relationship! I just told you! I mean, come on! That’s gross!”

Janine poked her head out the door as if to see if her buddy needed defense. Julia stared at her until, pierces and all, she vanished again. Vanessa, meanwhile, had never stopped reciting: “We weren’t even friends, Moms. We weren’t anything. I was minding my own business, and he came along and bothered me, okay? Guys do that sometimes, even older guys. I’m sure that happened to you, too.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, honey. Honestly.”

Children, but especially teenaged girls, own a variety of disdainful stares, and Vanessa favored her mother with one of the best. “Sure, Moms.”

“Honey—”

“And, see, now that I know you guys were an item? It makes sense. He was bothering me because he figured it would bother you.”

Julia was stunned by the profundity of this insight—and its likely truth.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that, honey. Truly sorry. Oh, honey.” Offering a hug, which Vanessa, still as a statue, neither accepted nor refused. “He was a terrible man. He was.” She wondered whom she was trying to persuade. “He had no business doing any of that. I’m so proud of you, the way you handled it—”

Vanessa’s quiet reply withered her. “Oh, Moms, you don’t have any idea how I handled it.”