They sat at the opposite ends of the swing, sheltered from view by the branches of the willow, Carla with one hand on the rope as she watched Adam’s face. Even here, her posture was straight, that of a dancer. In a low voice, she said, “I want to tell you about your father. Not the one you’ve hated for ten years, but the Ben I knew in the last months of his life.”
Adam felt bitterness seep into his speech. “There’s nothing different about cheating on my mother. What’s novel is the damage he inflicted on your behalf.”
Carla gave him a level look, her eyes somber in a slice of moonlight. “If you don’t want to listen, I can leave. We don’t need to torment each other.”
Either she meant it or, as Adam suspected, knew that he needed to hear her story for reasons of his own. “Go ahead,” he said evenly. “I’ve got a strong stomach.”
Carla ignored this. Instead, she seemed to gather herself, gazing at the grass. “We met when I was walking on the beach, alone,” she finally said. “I knew who he was, of course. I’d met men like Ben before-all that charm, all that self-involvement, though usually with much less talent. But I was lonely, and your father never lacked for interest-”
“I’ll give him that.”
Carla smiled faintly. “For several days running, we just talked. No harm in that, I told myself. So I learned a little about the history of the island, his family, his life here. But he seemed more intent on getting me to open up-”
“Of course,” Adam interrupted. “You were the only person in the world, a woman of unique value.”
Carla stared at him. “Do you think I hadn’t seen that one before? But I’d been alone for a long time, in some ways all my life. He had a gift for making me feel that I did have value, that I could get better, that I had the resources to redefine my life in whatever way I chose.
“Because of all he’d done, I believed him. This man had taken a life that was going nowhere-his own-and turned it into one of richness and accomplishment. And he had an energy and conviction that moved me more-or at least in a different way-than a year of speeches at AA.” Her tone assumed a smoky intensity. “You’ll never know what that meant to me.”
Adam paused a moment, listening to the crickets, remembering those quiet summer nights on their porch when, still a boy, he sat beside his father as Ben wove a future in which Adam would achieve great things. Pushing this away, he said, “So somewhere amid this uplift, you stumbled into an affair.”
Carla brushed back a tendril of hair from her forehead, a distracted gesture that, to Adam, was nonetheless strangely sensual. “I didn’t stumble,” she said. “The first night he wanted to make love to me he’d been drinking. I told him that was not just insensitive but insulting, and pushed him away.” Her tone softened. “I expected that would be it. Instead, he apologized and asked if I would stay with him while he sobered up in the night air. We sat on my porch for an hour, saying very little, gazing at the stars and the moon. At the end he said he had a problem with alcohol-that he’d always used it to chase away the demons, and it had led to one of the worst moments in his life.”
For a moment, Adam felt a shudder go through him. Then he saw that Carla was watching him closely. “What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing. Go on.”
Carla turned from him, staring down. “I said that I’d keep seeing him, with all that implied. But never when he was drunk, and only on certain conditions. Before he came over, he was to call-if I felt like being with him, I’d say so. But not if he wanted to show up for an hour, sleep with me, and leave. And no talk to anyone else about our relationship.” Carla paused, adding tartly, “For whatever devalued male coinage that might be worth. But when you’ve hit rock bottom, I told him, you don’t ever want to be there again. And you don’t want anyone to act as if you are.
“He just listened. At the end, he said, ‘You’re not that person anymore, and neither am I.’ Then he left. Two nights later, he returned.” She turned to Adam again. “I don’t expect my sense of ethics to impress you. I entered an affair with a married man, which I’d never done before. The rules I imposed on Ben didn’t change that. They just helped me live with myself.”
They were also clever, Adam thought. Ben would admire her core of strength-real or feigned-and the dignity she had salvaged from the ashes of her life. “What about my mother?” Adam asked. “How did you rationalize that part?”
“Not well. Although that was less about your mother than who I wanted to become. Adultery wasn’t on my checklist. And my psychoanalyst asked whether my personal stations of the cross should include stealing someone else’s husband. An excellent question.” Carla exhaled. “So I decided to break it off. The night I planned on doing that, Ben told me he had cancer.”
Adam felt the jolt of real surprise. “When?”
“The day he came back from the neurosurgeon.” She paused, her voice thickening. “He sat there, tears streaming down his face. For a long time I listened and held his hand. Then I made him walk me through his options. After he was done, I begged him to have surgery.”
Reviewing his conversation with Dr. Zell, Adam knew that this part of Carla’s story must be true. Nor was this account to Carla’s advantage-with exclusive knowledge of his fears, and of his inevitable deterioration, she was uniquely positioned to influence Ben’s decisions. Adam tried to imagine this woman occupying the role of helpmate that by rights belonged to Ben’s wife of forty years.
“How did my father respond?” he finally asked.
In the silver light, Adam saw a brief pulsing in Carla’s throat-remembered sadness, or grief mimed perfectly. “Ben was too frightened of the consequences-physical or mental incapacity. He asked me to help him live a few good months, then to have the best death he could.” Carla bowed her head, folding her hands in her lap. “I promised I would. After all, I was used to loss. And I knew now that our affair would end without me ending it. But I never imagined how he’d die.”
Unless you pushed him, Adam thought. With a slight edge in his voice, he said, “When did you last see him?”
Carla turned to him, her tone suddenly resistant. “That afternoon-as I told you at his grave. I also told you that what we said and did is personal to me.” Her voice changed again. “He was dying, and knew it. In weeks, or even days.”
“And you were helping him make a graceful exit.”
“Actually,” Carla rejoined with a trace of anger, “I felt cheated. But I also thought I’d become strong enough to face whatever came once he was gone. Thanks in part to him.” She paused, then spoke with calm and directness. “You may think he’d lost it, but that’s not true. To the end he was a source of strength, tenderness, and advice. And painfully lucid. Ben admitted that he’d lived a careless life, not caring about the broken china he’d left behind-”
“Broken people,” Adam corrected sharply.
“He knew that. However it happened, he had deep regrets about losing you.”
“A little late. As for his so-called lucidity, you never saw any symptoms of the disease?”
This was a critical point, Adam knew-Clarice, Teddy, and the neurologist could offer a persuasive catalog. “Some,” Carla answered. “Ben would stumble, or slur his speech, or grope for the word he wanted. He said that he was butchering his novel, that the language wouldn’t come to him-”
“Did he tell you it was about hatred between a father and son?”
Carla lowered her eyes. “I’m not surprised,” she said at last. “It would have been kinder if his mind was going. Instead, Ben saw himself with merciless clarity-his present and his past.” She smoothed her dress, an absent, nervous gesture. “I hadn’t planned on telling you this. But that last afternoon he asked if he could live with me. Even though he was dying, I knew it was a lot for Ben to leave his home and marriage. But I said that he could come to me. Instead, I never saw him again.”
“Never?”
“Meaning never. This may sound like a funny scruple. But I never set foot on your parents’ property, because I knew it had been your mother’s home since birth.” Carla’s tone hardened. “You’d like me to have pushed him, I know. That would cure your mother’s financial problems, and end the police investigation of your family. But why would I kill Ben? And why would he ask to live with me, then leap to his death hours later?” She looked Adam in the face. “Someone took a dying man, unable to defend himself, and threw him off the cliff. Maybe someone in your family. No matter what else you feel, I hope that makes you as sick as it makes me.”
With startling suddenness, Adam saw another building block of Sean Mallory’s case against Teddy: Carla’s account, if believable, made suicide seem far less likely. And it undermined Clarice’s claim to have seen a woman standing on the promontory with Ben on an earlier evening-or, at least, the inference that it was Carla Pacelli. “Let me get this straight,” he rejoined. “My father told you he was dying, but failed to mention that he was leaving you ten million dollars.”
Carla nodded. “Ben said that he’d take care of me. But he didn’t say what that involved, and I didn’t feel like interrogating a dying man.”
Adam leaned forward. “Then how do you explain his bequest?”
“I don’t try,” Carla snapped. “At least not to you. I’ve told you I’m uneasy with Ben’s will, and that the rest is for the lawyers to sort out. But you know better than most that their marriage was a sham.”
Abruptly, Adam stood. “Not to my mother,” he said with suppressed fury. “All my life I heard about my father. Right up until I left, she was worried about him and other women. And she was right to worry.”
Impassive, Carla gazed up at him. “You were there. I wasn’t. I apologize for insulting her.” She stood to face him, placing a light hand on his arm. “I don’t know how or when the court will resolve her petition. But if she fails, she can stay in the house for as long as she needs. I don’t cherish the idea of being her landlord, or serving up eviction notices.”
“But that’s where my father put you.”
“Not because I asked him to, or because he was insane.” She paused, then finished in the same even tone. “If you’d still been speaking to him, you’d understand that the last few months were the sanest of his life. Cancer allowed Ben to see himself whole, and hope that some good lived after him. Whether or not you think that I bewitched him, how else do you explain his gift to Jenny Leigh?”
“I have no idea,” Adam retorted. “Do you?”
“I think so. Ben read me one of her short stories in a literary magazine, and told me she had talent. His career had been a lucky one, he said-these days a writer’s life is even harder. Especially for a young woman from the Vineyard who’d had even fewer breaks than him.” Carla’s voice softened. “I thought he might do something to help her. Maybe he imagined that a piece of him would live through her. But if that impulse was in any way selfish, Jenny was the beneficiary.”
A crosscurrent of emotions silenced Adam. One clear, cool thought emerged-this account of his father’s generosity, the act of a sane and compassionate man, strengthened Carla’s case for upholding the will. And the intensity of her gaze, the light touch of her fingers on his arm, suggested how deeply she wanted him to believe this.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she told him. “But I’ve only lied to you once, for reasons of my own, and not about Jenny or the will. Even by the standards of a ‘fearless moral inventory’ I can live with that.” She removed her hand, drawing back a step, still looking into his eyes. “Good night, Adam. Thank you for dinner.”
For a moment, he was frozen there. Before he could respond, Carla turned and left.