Unable to sleep, Adam felt his thoughts drifting from Jenny to Carla Pacelli.
I followed Ben on one of his nightly jaunts, his mother had said, and saw him standing with a woman on the promontory.
In the morning, he went there, barely cognizant of a day ironic in its warmth and brightness. Again and again, his mind returned to whether Carla had known about the will and, as Teddy’s account might suggest, had come to fear that Ben might change it back. He tried to imagine his father and Carla standing here together as dusk enveloped them, Ben blurting out his misgivings, Carla facing the loss of ten million dollars-a combustible moment between a dying, weakened man and a newly desperate woman. A split second of calculated fury, with Benjamin Blaine sent hurtling into the void.
If that were true, his brother was paying for a lethal combination of ill luck and a stupid lie that rendered his story unbelievable. But in turn this thesis required Carla Pacelli to have lied about every key element of her narrative-her ignorance of the will, her refusal to enter Ben’s property, his father’s decision to live with her, her belief that he was murdered by a member of his family. Unless Adam could prove all this false, and Carla a murderer, Clarice faced losing the only life she knew, and Teddy faced a life in prison that, for him, might be worse than dying. He could not let this happen.
Reining in his emotions, he walked toward Carla’s cottage.
The sun grew warmer, the breeze light. Still, he hardly noticed this. He was too intent on forcing some telling mistake from a woman whose intelligence and self-possession seemed a match for his own.
Crossing the grassy field toward the guesthouse, Adam saw the deck, sheltered from his view by pine trees, on which Carla and his father had sat on the first night he had come to her. From this angle all that was visible was one corner, with a book and sunglasses on the railing, suggesting that she was nearby. But only when he passed the tree line did he see her.
She was lying naked on a chaise longue, sunbathing. Her eyes were closed, her robe draped on a nearby chair. Adam froze, mute. She was stunningly beautiful, her body ripe but slender save for the incongruous roundness of her belly. In the moment it took him to comprehend what he was seeing, Carla opened her eyes.
She looked startled, and then her face set, her eyes ablaze. “Don’t you ever call first?” she said with tenuous calm. “Even your father learned to do that.”
Adam willed himself to see only her face. “I apologize,” he managed to say.
“Too late for that now-or for modesty.” She got up, walking over to retrieve her robe. Adam could not make himself turn away. Then she covered herself, facing him with a cool, angry look. “What is it you want from me, Adam? Though maybe now I can guess.”
Adam could not respond to this. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Carla crossed her arms. “Would it have made any difference? Or would you have thought I was playing another card?”
Adam still felt the dullness of surprise. “I can’t answer that,” he said, then glanced at the swelling beneath the robe. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“A boy. Benjamin Blaine’s last son.”
Once again, Adam was jarred; for better or worse, he had always been the younger of Ben’s sons. Then he realized how much this new child might explain, and remembered what his father had said to Matthew Thomson: Carla has promised to make me immortal.
“Did he know?” Adam finally asked.
“Of course.” Carla sat in the chair, her tone still cool but quieter. “I found out shortly after Ben got his diagnosis. He begged me to keep the baby. And, yes, he promised to support us. Though not by cutting off your mother.”
I’ve only lied to you once, she had said, for reasons of my own, and not about Jenny or the will. Adam glanced at her stomach again. “How far along are you?”
“Four and a half months.” Carla paused, then added tonelessly, “If you’re hoping for a miscarriage, I’m sorry. My doctor in Boston says that we’re both fine.”
Adam flushed. “I’m not quite that cold-blooded. Whatever you and I feel about each other, I wish your son well. I wouldn’t have wished my father on him, or anyone. Nor would I wish a child to be without a father.”
He could read the doubt in her eyes. “I’m sure you think I tricked him,” she said in the same flat voice. “The surprise was mine-I thought I was infertile. So did my doctor in L.A.; you can call him if you like. But I don’t know when, if ever, I can have another child.”
He should have guessed, Adam thought. He recalled her asking to sit at the grave site, the loose-fitting dress she had worn to dinner, her expression as she watched the boy and girl on the swing chair. But sooner or later the will contest would have surfaced her pregnancy. Then it hit him that Carla had made every effort not to seek his sympathy, perhaps from some stubborn perversity of character, perhaps for fear of provoking his cynicism or contempt. At length, he asked, “Mind if I sit?”
Carla shrugged. “You’ve just seen me naked. I minded that a good deal more.”
Adam sat on the edge of the chaise longue. After a moment, he said, “I can only imagine what this baby meant to him. A last chance to replace two disappointing sons.”
Carla met his gaze, unflinching. “Perhaps he felt something like that,” she responded evenly. “After I learned about his will, I wondered if he were trying to redeem himself in some skewed way-through Jenny, through me, and through this child. A literary heir, and a son who would idealize his imagined father.”
Adam felt his anger return. “It’s a narcissist’s fantasy-living on in the hearts of his grateful beneficiaries while taking his revenge on those who didn’t worship him in life. A last protest against the dying of his light.”
Carla shrugged. “Have it your way. At least you understand why I’m not willing to sign away this inheritance. Though I’d have been happier if Ben hadn’t tried to make us into adversaries.” She paused, giving Adam a thin, ironic smile. “Of course, he knew you. So he must have known you’d try to dismantle all his plans.”
Studying her, Adam tried to sort through the kaleidoscope of inferences derived from Carla’s pregnancy, their patterns and relationships shifting by the moment, complicated by what surely was Ben’s certainty that Clarice would challenge the will. But Carla’s pregnancy provided a rational basis for Ben to revise his estate plan, refuting the idea that he was his lover’s docile tool. And it argued against Carla as a murderer, at least if she understood the law-even if Clarice invalidated the will, Adam guessed, a child born after Ben’s death was entitled to some share of his estate. Watching him, Carla asked, “What’s bothering you?”
“There’s something you’re still not telling me. Something important.”
Carla shrugged again. “If so, don’t expect to hear it. I’ve told you the truth about Ben’s will, and that’s all you need to know.”
“Not quite. What happened between the two of you that day?”
Adam imagined a trace of sadness in her eyes. “Why is that any business of yours?” she demanded. “Or do you have some prurient interest in the details?”
Adam tried to imagine his father at the promontory as Teddy had described him-barely able to stand, susceptible to changes of heart and mind, fearing death and yet fatalistic in the face of Teddy’s threat to kill him. Calmly, Adam said, “Whatever our relationship, he was my father. I’m trying to imagine the last hours of his life.”
Carla looked past him, then down, her face shadowed in the late morning sun. Finally, she said, “I told you Ben was dying. In one way, he already had.”
“Meaning?”
Still Carla did not face him. “He was very afraid of knowing, yet not knowing, that any moment could be his last. Including his moments with me.” Her voice became low, almost inaudible. “That afternoon Ben wanted to make love, perhaps for the last time. But he discovered he no longer could. So I just held him, and stroked his hair, and told him it was okay.” Looking up at Adam, she added, “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for him, or to be anything but disgusted. But to watch Ben feel the life force drain from him was unspeakably sad to me.”
“Did he say anything about it?”
Carla closed her eyes. “Only that he wanted to die here, with me.”
Again, Adam felt the stab of resentment-not because he thought she was lying, but because this sounded like truth, all the more toxic because it was so dismissive of his mother. Detaching himself, he compared this account to Teddy’s unsettling description of his father on the promontory, a chastened man indifferent to his fate. “Then why are you so sure he didn’t jump? Given how he saw himself, impotence must have been devastating.”
Carla sat straighter, pride showing in her eyes. “We were more than that,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t have done that to me, and he didn’t. Someone murdered him.”
There was no place left to go with her, Adam perceived, and he had no heart to try. “So now you’re alone, and about to become a mother.”
Her look of pride became resolve. “As I knew would happen. But this child is more than a surprise-he’s a gift. I mean to put everything I’ve learned into making my son as strong and secure as he deserves.”
After a moment, Adam nodded. “So what will you do?”
“As I told you at dinner, I’m done with acting. I keep thinking about getting an advanced degree in psychology. If I’m a decent mom, and do something useful with my life, I’ll have Ben to thank.”
Adam could not restrain himself. “Not to mention ten million dollars.”
She stood abruptly. “Damn you,” she snapped, her voice filled with an anger that startled him. “I don’t need that much money, and I didn’t ask for it. This is the last time I’ll bother telling you that. You’re obviously set on believing what you want, and I don’t know why I even care.”
Adam stood, facing her. In that wordless moment, he grasped how alike they were. She was an actress, he told himself yet again. But he had never been dispassionate about her, he realized, and was not now. Except that this time he wanted to believe her.
Still no one spoke. Carla’s smile, fleeting and enigmatic, did not change the intensity of her gaze, as though she, like he, was at last perceiving in the other something neither could say. “I know,” she said simply. A world of possible meanings in the words.
Unable to answer, Adam walked away.
Sitting back in his chair, Matthew Thomson emitted a bark of incredulous laughter. “That’s certainly a rude surprise.”
“I thought so,” Adam said. “I assume this changes things a little.”
“More than a little,” Thomson answered briskly. “This child will become what the law calls a pretermitted heir, born after execution of the will. Even if Clarice reinstitutes the prior will in her favor, your little brother-to-be is entitled to what he’d receive if there was no will: an equal share with Teddy and you in one half of Ben’s estate. Close to two million dollars, give or take.”
“To be managed by Carla Pacelli.”
“Of course. If Pacelli didn’t know that before Ben died, she certainly does now. Two million is her starting point, and she can only go up from there.”
Adam thought of Carla again, gazing back at him in a silence neither could break. “Then why conceal her pregnancy?”
“Who knows? Maybe to ward off the Enquirer, or as a tactic. Or maybe, for whatever reason, she didn’t want to further humiliate your mother. From what you say, Carla’s not an easy woman to read.”
You’re obviously set on believing what you want, Carla had said, and I don’t know why I even care. “Unless she’s extremely easy to read,” Adam replied, “and I’ve complicated her by assuming everything but the obvious-that she’s essentially honest.”
Thomson smiled. “Maybe you should have finished law school, Adam. What you’re describing is a lawyer’s syndrome.”
No, Adam thought, it’s my syndrome. Compared to me, lawyers are the kind of people who cry in movies.