When Adam knocked on her door, Jenny did not answer.
He glanced at his watch. It was two fifteen; by now her shift at the gallery should be over. He tried the doorknob.
Like many people on the Vineyard, Jenny did not lock her house. Stepping inside, Adam glanced around, acting on an instinctive fear that she might have harmed herself once more. Instead, he found himself alone.
For an instant, remembering the night he had broken into the courthouse, Adam felt like an intruder. But now, as then, he had good reason to be alone here. He considered where to start, then walked into her office and began opening drawers.
He found little-no legal documents, nor anything suggesting that she had expected her bequest. The calendar on her wall, on which she had penciled in doctors’ appointments or lunches and dinners with friends, contained no mention of his father. Nothing seemed to mar the innocent surface of Jenny’s life.
All that was left was her stories.
Drafts of several were arranged neatly on her desk. The thickest stack of papers, Adam discovered, was her novel-in-progress. Like his father’s last, aborted work, Jenny’s had a title page: “No One’s Daughter.”
She had a series of unsatisfying relationships, his mother had told him, often with older men. Jenny has come to believe she’s been trying to replace her father.
Uneasy, Adam flipped the page.
“To Adam,” the dedication said.
He felt his skin tingle. Then he sat at her desk and began to read.
As with his father’s manuscript, each page increased a sense of dread that nonetheless impelled him to continue. Shortly after the hundredth page, he stopped abruptly, feeling his face go white.
“Oh, Jenny.” He said this softly, aloud. “Why did you never tell me.”
He sat back, eyes closing, beset by images he could no longer push aside.
In early September, the contest with his father won, Adam drove to New York.
His second year of law school started in two weeks. In the spring he had found a new apartment in Greenwich Village with two friends from his class; he moved his stuff-PC, television, CD player, winter coats and jackets-looking forward to another year in the city on the way to his career. His mission completed, he met up with Teddy and took in Village life.
Teddy was living with a guy, and seemed to be pretty good-Adam had missed him, and was glad they could spend time outside Ben’s shadow. But after a couple of days, he found himself looking forward to Jenny’s first visit, and then thinking about her pretty much all the time. On impulse, he decided to return to the Vineyard, intent on spending his last free days with her. His life in the law would resume soon enough.
He drove back in five unbroken hours, high on images of the time ahead. He loved the Vineyard and, he decided, loved Jenny Leigh. Whatever she struggled with, they would be okay.
This is my favorite sunset ever, he recalled her saying. Smiling to himself, Adam knew he would remember this moment for the very long life he imagined sharing with her.
Driving fast, he caught the noontime ferry from Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven, then sped down State Road toward his parents’ place. His mother was gone, visiting a cousin. But if his father were not writing, he would share with him some stories of the Village, renewing a bond frayed by competitive tension and Ben’s hatred of defeat. Then he would shower and go find Jenny.
The house was empty, including his father’s study. But Ben’s truck and car were there. Perhaps he was on the promontory, or walking the beach below. Eagerly, Adam went to look for him.
His path took him past the guesthouse. Through its open window he heard a male voice. Though he could not make out the words, they carried a rough sexual urgency that stopped Adam in his tracks.
For a moment he stayed there, torn between anger and revulsion. The man could only be his father, once again slaking his restless, relentless desire for other women. But this was a terrible violation-a betrayal of his mother committed within sight of the house she had loved since childhood, the home they now shared as husband and wife. Inexorably, Adam found himself drawn to the window, his footsteps silent on the grass.
There was a bottle of Montrachet on the bedside table, Ben’s signature. Adam turned his gaze to the bed and saw his father’s naked back, the woman beneath him lying on her stomach, moaning as he thrust into her with brutal force. Then Adam took in her long blond-brown hair and long slender legs and felt himself begin to tremble.
Harder, she had implored him.
An animal cry erupted from his throat. Wrenching open the door, he saw blood on the sheets. Not even her period would stop them.
His father turned his neck, eyes widening at the sight of him. As Adam grabbed his hips and wrested him from inside her, Jenny Leigh cried out in anguish.
With a strength born of adrenaline and primal hatred, Adam threw his father on the stone floor, the back of Ben’s skull hitting with a dull thud. Gripping the wine bottle by the neck, Adam mounted his father’s torso, knees pinning the older man’s shoulders as Ben’s eyes rolled, unfocused by shock and blinding pain. Then Adam clutched his throat with his left hand and shattered the wine bottle on stone. Holding its broken shards over Ben’s eyes, Adam saw the wine dribbling across his face like rivulets of blood.
Shuddering with each convulsive breath, Adam lowered the jagged points of glass closer to Ben’s face. His stunned eyes widened, the look of a trapped animal. Adam could smell the alcohol on his breath.
He raised his weapon in a savage jerk, prepared to blind this man for whom no punishment was enough.
“No,” Jenny cried out.
His hand froze. Beneath him, Ben began writhing in a frenzied effort to escape.
Adam dropped the bottle, glass shattering on the floor. Then he took his father’s head by the hair and smashed it savagely against the stone. The groan that escaped Ben’s lips made Adam slam his head again, the other hand pressing his Adam’s apple back into his throat.
“Please,” his father managed to whisper.
Adam forced his own breathing to slow. In his own near whisper he spat, “I could kill you now. Instead I’ll spend my life regretting that I didn’t. And you’ll spend yours remembering that I know exactly what you are.”
Legs unsteady, Adam stood. He stared at his naked father, then faced his girlfriend as she knelt on the bed, tears running down her face, hands covering her breasts as if he were a stranger.
Turning his back on both of them, Adam walked blindly from the guesthouse. By the time he heard its door closing behind him, he knew that he would never speak to his father as long as they both lived, or disclose his reasons to anyone. Only the three of them would know.
Without leaving a note for his mother, Adam left the island the way he had come-Vineyard Haven, the ferry, the long drive back to New York. But he did not go to law school; never again would he take money from Benjamin Blaine. Adam Blaine, no longer his son, would find another life.
Ten years later, Adam forced himself to keep reading until he discovered the deeper meaning of what he was never meant to see. Then he heard another door open and close, and knew that Jenny had come home.