Julia's mother's house was vintage Martha's Vineyard-an oversized, rehabbed barn on a lush hill within walking distance of the sea. The guesthouse where I was staying was a weathered, gray 1852 cottage that had been moved from Edgartown at the turn of the century. Wild blueberries and gooseberries and grapes grew all around the place, and the scent of sweet pepper bush filled the air.
The first couple of weeks there were Eden. Not only were Billy and Garret coming to me for advice on everything from sports to girls to careers, letting me play the good father, but Julia was combining her neediness and sensuality more magically than ever. There were evenings she wept in my arms over vivid memories of Darwin's cruelty and could be comforted by no one else. She would mix her tears with surprise caresses, the warm wetnesses mingling into a potion that leached to the center of my being. She might whisper she was scared at one moment, that she needed me inside her at the next. And when we made love, it was with such intensity that I lost the boundary between my pleasure and hers, so that I was moved equally by each. Transported.
Those days were like a drug, a drug I wished I could stay on forever. But on Sunday, July 21, just shy of three weeks after Darwin Bishop's arrest, the high ended, and everything began to crash.
The day had been my best on the Vineyard. Julia, her mother, Candace, the boys, and I had lingered over a late, gourmet brunch that drifted effortlessly into an easy day of Julia reading on the porch while I played a lazy game of catch with Garret and Billy, the three of us cooling off in waves that seemed custom-made for body surfing. As evening approached, Julia said she was feeling more herself and suggested we celebrate with her first real excursion- a sunset stroll along the cliffs at Gay Head. I agreed, and we drove there together.
The faces of the 150-foot bluffs glowed like the center of the earth in the day's last light. The tide was low, rhythmically washing the velvet sands below, leaving behind fields of iridescent bubbles.
Julia wrapped both her arms around one of mine as we walked. "For the first time in my life," she said, "I feel safe."
I stopped, turned to her, and kissed her forehead. Her emerald eyes literally sparkled. "Same here," I said.
"You do?" she said.
I nodded.
"You trust me?"
"Of course I trust you," I said.
"Then close your eyes," she said, with a sly smile.
I glanced at the edge of the cliff, three feet away. "If you're already bored with me, you can just tell me."
Julia laughed like a little girl. "You said you trusted me." She kissed me deeply and pressed herself against me, moving her hand to my crotch and moving us a foot closer to the edge. Two more steps, and I'd have been parasailing without a sail. "C'mon, close your eyes," she said, massaging me. "It'll be fun. I promise."
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes until Julia was just a shadow. One of my knees bent automatically, bracing me. An exhilarating combination of passion and fear gripped my heart. Beads of sweat ran off my chest, down the center of my abdomen. I could feel them pool in my navel, then spill over.
Julia's warm, quick tongue moved up my neck, then into my ear. "Keep them closed," she whispered. She let go of me.
I stood there several seconds in a kind of trance, listening to my own breathing and watching Julia back up several feet.
"Don't cheat," she said. She turned to run away.
I lost sight of her in the sun's glare. Fifteen, twenty seconds went by. All I could hear was the wind and rustling grass.
"Okay," Julia called to me, from a distance. "Find me."
I opened my eyes and looked around. The colors of the grass, ocean, sky, and cliffs seemed even more brilliant than before. The sun was a burning, red-orange beach ball hovering on the horizon.
Julia was nowhere in sight.
"Where are you?" I called out.
No answer.
A quarter-mile of low hills stretched before me. Julia could be lying in the wavy grass almost anywhere. I walked away from the cliffs, scanning the ground for footprints. When I'd gone about fifteen yards, I turned to face a small grove of tall, flowering sweet pepper bushes about ten, twelve yards to my right, a subtle path of matted grass leading to it. I had a feeling she was squirreled away inside. I walked toward the bushes. When I had closed to within several feet, I heard her giggle from inside the foliage. I slowly walked the rest of the way and cautiously pushed apart the screen of leafy branches. Then I stood there, staring at her.
Julia was lying on her back on a bed made of her clothes, naked, her feet planted wide apart, her knees bent and touching. She looked like a mermaid in a secret garden, resting between tides. Her silky, black hair moved in an easy breeze that rustled the branches all around her. She smiled bashfully and let her knees drift apart. "You gonna come inside?" she said.
We got back to the house just after 10:00 p.m. Garret's bodyguard, Pete Magill, was strolling around the front yard. We greeted him, then went inside.
Julia's mother, Candace, was sitting on a well-worn leather couch in the great room, reading a magazine. Beside her, a lighted curio cabinet held a sampling of each of her children's toys. An original Barbie. A GI Joe. A metal race car. A cap gun. She looked up when we walked in. "Did you two have fun?" she asked.
"I did," Julia said. "I think he did." She laughed.
"We did," I said.
"How's Tess?" Julia asked.
"Asleep," Candace said. "She was no trouble."
"Are the boys at home?" Julia asked.
"Garret is," Candace said. "Billy's at a movie with that boy he met on the beach last week. Jason…"
"Sanderson," I said. "Seems like a good kid."
"He could be Billy's first real friend," Julia said. She gave me a smile full of warmth. "Billy's turning a corner. We must have the right doctor in the house."
"I hope so," I said.
"I'm going to go check on Tess and head to bed," Julia said. She kissed my cheek, turned to her mother. "Why don't you two talk a little while? You never do."
Candace looked at me. "I didn't know she was watching us, Frank."
I winked.
"Maybe we will," Candace said to Julia.
I watched Julia walk upstairs, then I sat down in a luxuriously worn leather armchair, catty-corner to the end of the couch.
"She's come a long way," I said.
"She's tough underneath all that pretty," Candace said, her voice elegant, yet kind. Her thinning hands were folded on the magazine now. Her paper-thin skin showed the blue veins running beneath it. "She didn't have it easy growing up, you know."
"She told me a little about your husband," I said.
"That was terrible," Candace said. "Truly."
Julia had told me she had had to compete with her brothers for her lawyer-father's attention, that she hadn't been very successful winning him over. But that didn't sound catastrophic. "What was the worst of it, do you think?" I asked, fishing.
"His ignoring her," Candace said.
I nodded and stayed silent, in hopes she would say more.
She didn't need any encouragement. Maybe she had been anxious to have this discussion. "If Julia did the slightest thing that displeased him, he would stop talking to her, stop looking at her, like she didn't exist." She shook her head. "He wasn't that way with the boys. Not ever."
I glanced at the curio cabinet. A tin carousel with flying, hand-painted horses caught my eye. Next to it sat a little porcelain doll, with lifelike, blue crystal eyes. Such pretty toys. No one showcases the ugly memories. "How long would he ignore her?" I asked.
"It could go on for weeks." She started wringing her hands. "A few times, he kept it up for over a month."
No wonder winning the attention of men was so important to Julia. "You think that's the reason she chose modeling as a career?" I asked. "No one ignores the woman on the runway."
"I would think so," Candace said. "I think it's the reason she made a great many choices in her life."
"Such as?" I said.
"Her marriage, for one-staying as long as she did. I don't think someone else would have taken the abuse for so long."
Candace was right, of course. Julia had learned to tolerate marathons of abuse as a girl, when she was powerless to do anything about it.
"So, why didn't you leave?" I asked, surprised at the edge in my voice. It was a question I could have asked my own mother, which explained the anger I was feeling.
Candace looked down at her hands, shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I was wrong. I should have."
That confession was all it took to swing me back toward empathy. No doubt Candace had her own traumatic life history that explained why she would let her sadistic husband stay in the house. "Julia got out, eventually," I said. "She filed that restraining order and enforced it. That took a lot of bravery."
"I think she's on the right track now," Candace said. She nodded at me. "She found you, after all."
Candace went up to bed, and I started walking back to the guest cottage. The night was cool, about sixty degrees, with a salty breeze off the ocean. The full moon glowed so round and white that it looked like a fake-some idealized version of reality from a kid's drawing.
Halfway to the cottage, I noticed the light still on in Julia's bedroom. Her shutters were open, and I could see Julia pulling her T-shirt out of her shorts. I stopped and stared as she arched her back and pulled the shirt over her head, exposing her perfect breasts. She unbuttoned the top button of her shorts and began to unzip them, the cloth on either side of the zipper falling away from the graceful angles of her pelvis. Even after touching and tasting her again and again, I still hungered to watch her step out of those shorts and the thong she wore underneath.
Just as Julia bent her arms, moved her hands to her waistband, and arched her back, I heard footsteps behind me. I wheeled around and saw Billy standing about fifteen feet from me, half in shadows. I felt like a peeping Tom, caught red-handed. But another part of me felt like I had caught Billy peeping. Had he been lurking outside Julia's window, waiting for her to undress?
"You okay?" I said, not certain what else to say.
He didn't answer.
"Billy?"
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
He sounded so embarrassed and frightened that my worry about his voyeurism was overtaken with worry for him. "We can talk this through," I said, walking toward him. I stopped short after just a few steps. What I saw made me lightheaded. "What the hell happened?" I said.
Billy looked down and ran a trembling hand over his blue and white pinstriped shirt, the front of which was covered with blood. His fingers and palm glistened ruby red in the night.
I broke into a sweat colder than the night air. "Are you all right?" I said instinctively. I stepped closer.
"I think… I might have killed somebody," he said. He started to cry.
I stopped moving. "Killed… Who?" I said. My eyes frantically searched Billy's other hand for a weapon. I didn't spot one. "Tell me what happened."
He looked at his own bloodied hand.
"What happened?" I shouted.
"I can't remember," he said.
I had to pull Billy toward the cottage. He stared ahead with vacant eyes, occasionally stumbling, nearly collapsing at the threshold. I caught him and helped him to the couch, then unbuttoned his blood-soaked shirt and peeled it off him. He was shaking badly. I was still shocked to see the scars Darwin Bishop's belt had left across his back. I wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. "Tell me what you do remember," I said.
He hung his head. "I messed up."
"Messed up, how? C'mon, Billy. Tell me."
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
I picked up the phone. "Tell me every single thing you remember, or I'll call the police, and you can tell them," I said.
He took a deep breath, let it out. He opened his eyes, but kept looking at the floor. "I was with my friend Jason," he said. "We went to the movies. When we got out, three guys from his school were waiting for him. They started bugging him, calling him names. Faggot, pussy, wimp, stupid shit like that. I should have just walked away."
"But you didn't," I said.
"I warned them." He shook his head, gritted his teeth. "I told them, 'Get the fuck away from us. Or I'll…" "
"Or you'd-what?"
His upper lip started to tremble. "Kill them." He looked straight at me.
"Then what happened?"
"One of them came right up to me." A tear escaped his eye, ran down his cheek. "He spit in my face."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I hit him. Then, I'm not sure. Everything just… went black."
I wish I had a thousand dollars for every assailant who claims amnesia for the attack. "How did you make it back home?" I asked.
"I guess I was, like, on autopilot. I don't remember much of anything, until I saw you."
I didn't want to call the police unless I absolutely had to. I needed to know what had actually happened. "Can you tell me Jason's phone number?" I asked Billy.
"508-931-1107."
That was quick recall, for somebody struggling with his memory. I picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hello?" a woman answered after a single ring, her voice thick with pretension-lingering too long on the l's, underpronouncing the o. Hellllleeew?
"This is Dr. Frank Clevenger," I said. "Is this Ms. Sanderson? Jason's mother?"
"It is," she said, tentatively.
"I'm a close friend of Julia Bishop and her mother, Candace," I said. "Billy's with me right now."
"Oh," she said. Her voice was chilly.
"He's pretty shaken up," I said. "I was hoping you could fill me in on what happened tonight."
"All I can tell you is what Jason told me."
Had I asked for more? "Please," I said.
Sanderson sighed, as if I were asking the world of her. "We've had a continuing problem with a group of boys at Jason's school. We're year-round here, you know, and they've teased him for an eternity-all the way back to second grade. Jason isn't a slight boy, but he has the habit of retreating when confronted."
I had a sneaking suspicion Jason had gotten into that habit at home, backing down from Mommy. "Children can be very cruel," I said. "And, tonight? What happened tonight?"
"More of the same, apparently. Just name-calling."
More of the same. Sanderson wasn't being very helpful. "Billy came home with blood on his shirt," I said, hoping to shift her mind into gear. "Did Jason mention a fight?"
"A fight. Well, yes, of course. If you want to call it that. Billy attacked the three boys," she said. "Bloodied noses. Split lips. Apparently, a broken arm."
Relief washed over me. At least it didn't sound like Billy had killed anyone. "Is Jason all right?" I asked.
"He's frightened. He said Billy flew into a terrible rage." She paused. "He was actually foaming at the mouth."
"Did Jason mention that one of the boys had spit at Billy first?"
"No," she said. "As I understood it, name-calling seems to have been the extent of it, until Billy-"
"Billy can't stomach bullies," I said. I glanced at the scars across his back.
"I understand," Sanderson said. Her tone suggested otherwise. She was silent a few moments. "I am glad you called, on another front," she said finally, her voice descending into an almost comical mixture of pretension and gravity, like William F. Buckley stammering that you had cancer and your situation was utterly hopeless.
"Oh?" I said.
"We had a very distressing thing happen with Billy before the boys went out for their movie tonight," she said.
A pregnant pause. "Would it be more appropriate to discuss it with Julia?"
"Julia's still a little under the weather," I said. "I'll certainly share whatever you tell me with her."
"Very well, then," she said. "My husband and I have started something of a second family. We have a new baby. Two months old."
"Congratulations," I said, not sure exactly where she was going, but not feeling good about the general direction. Not enough time had passed since Brooke's murder for infants to be linked with anything but with death in my mind. I looked over at Billy, who was trying to wipe the blood off his chest.
"Before the boys left, Jason had a few chores to finish up around the house-nothing major, picking up his belongings in the yard, and so forth."
"Right," I said, hungry for the punch line.
"While he completed them, he left Billy alone in his bedroom. Jason has a new Nintendo game the boys have enjoyed."
"Okay."
"And when Jason had finished up outside, he asked my husband to let Billy know to come downstairs, so the boys could be off."
My patience had worn thin. "So what happened?" I said, more pointedly.
"Just this: My husband found Billy in the nursery, next to Naomi's bassinet, staring at her. She was napping. I had put her down about an hour earlier."
Despite the fact that Darwin had been charged with Brooke's murder, it couldn't have been comforting for Mr. Sanderson to find the former lead suspect in the case eyeing his infant daughter. "What did Billy say he was doing?" I asked.
"My husband asked him that. He didn't respond. He seemed like he was-away, in some sort of trance. Nicholas had to lay hands on him-jostle him a bit-to bring him back to the moment."
She could have said Billy seemed dazed or in a fog. Trance is one of those code words people reserve for psychopaths. "You were worried about him harming your daughter?" I said, to cut to the chase.
Billy looked at me, his eyes sharpening.
"I'm not saying that, exactly," Sanderson said. She paused. "Friends of ours on Nantucket have told us that Billy had problems, long before the tragedy with his sister, Brooke. I'm speaking of his stealing. Hurting animals."
"That's true," I said. It didn't look like Martha's Vineyard was going to offer Billy a second chance.
"And one never knows what to believe these days," she said. "About anything. It seems that there's always another shoe waiting to drop. Another bit of intrigue."
Translation: The police could have screwed up and wrongly accused Darwin Bishop of infanticide when his crazed, Russian adoptee son was really the guilty one. Maybe Darwin even sacrificed himself to shield the boy from prosecution. "I understand completely," I said.
"So we-my husband and I-talked it over. We'd prefer Billy not visit our home, anymore. It's best he not spend time with Jason, either."
I felt in my own gut what I knew Billy would be feeling: disappointment, isolation, abandonment. Losing a friend can be tough for anyone, but for an orphan like Billy who has just lost a sister… "I'll certainly let him know," I said. "And I'll make sure he abides by your wishes."
"Thank you so much," she said. "It's a difficult thing to speak about."
"Have a nice night," I said, as kindly as I could manage. "I hope Billy taught those boys a lesson. Maybe they'll stop torturing your son."
"Yes, well. Good night, then," she said.
I sat down on the couch next to Billy. He started to weep. "Listen to me," I said. "You didn't kill anyone. But you did hurt those boys who were picking on Jason. The way it sounds, you hurt them pretty badly-maybe even broke a bone or two."
He nodded somberly, getting control of himself again. "I lost it," he said.
"There's something else," I said.
Billy had overheard enough of my phone conversation to know I was referring to the Sandersons' baby. "I was just standing there, trying to imagine what Brooke went through," he said. "I haven't let myself. Not once. But when I walked past Jason's sister's room and saw her sleeping, I couldn't stop imagining it." He squinted at the floor. "So I just went in there and watched her. I mean, think about it: Waking up and not being able to breathe. Suffocating in a little bed with your mother downstairs, while your father watches you die."
As much as I welcomed Billy empathizing with the suffering of others, I was worried he missed how inappropriate his behavior had been. "Mr. Sanderson had trouble getting your attention. He had to shake you."
"I was staring at her, but I saw Brooke."
When he looked at me, his eyes were filled with sadness, but I also thought I saw (Did I, though?) the slightest hint of morbid curiosity-something close to excitement. "You lost control with those boys," I said. "And it was wrong to go into Jason's sister's room without permission."
Billy nodded.
I looked out the cottage window, at the full moon, gathering the will to tell him the consequences. "The Sandersons are going to need time to feel comfortable with you again. They don't want you to visit the house-or to spend time with Jason."
Billy's eyes thinned. "Why not?"
"You worried them," I said.
"I stood up for Jason," he said.
"No. You went beyond standing up for him. You also wandered around the Sandersons' home, into the nursery and…"
"What are they saying?" he said, indignantly. "They think I killed Brooke?"
"The Sandersons are thinking about their baby," I said, dodging the question. "The long and short of it is that you probably remind them that life is fragile. And they don't want to be reminded of that right now. They're new parents."
"Bullshit," he said. "They think I did it." His lip curled. No more trembling. No more tears. "Fuck them. They can all go straight to hell." He stood up. "I'm not going to stop hanging out with Jason, just because his parents are uptight assholes." He took a step toward the door.
I stood and held up a hand, hoping to coax him to talk through his anger. But before I could say a word, he shoved me out of the way and stormed out.
"Billy!" I called after him.
He broke into a jog and disappeared in the direction of the house.