When Adam arrived home, no one was there.
Tiredly, he climbed the stairs, his thoughts jumbled, certain only that he had reached the end of his string. It was safe to sleep, he realized; this was not Afghanistan. Stripping to his shorts, he took a trazodone and fell into a darkness that, for once, was dreamless.
A knock on the door awakened him. He sat up, disoriented, unsure of where he was until he looked out the window. It must be morning, he realized; the sunlight was gentle, and dew glistened on the grass. And Benjamin Blaine was not his father.
“Adam,” his brother called. “Are you all right?”
They could be boys, Adam thought in his confusion, Teddy come to get him for an early morning sail. At once, the pieces of his new reality fell into place.
“Just tired,” he answered, and went to open the door.
Teddy looked at him, and then comprehension stole into his eyes. “You must have heard about Jack.”
“I have. A lot to take in, isn’t it?”
His brother closed the door behind him. Quietly, he asked, “Do you really think it was an accident?”
Adam shrugged, then wiped the sleep from his eyes and sat on the edge of his bed. “To me, the important thing is that you’re off the hook. So I guess I don’t much care. One way or the other, our father was a dead man. All Jack did is advance the date.”
Teddy sat in his brother’s desk chair, regarding Adam with deep curiosity. “Mind telling me what you had to do with all this? I’m already sure that you’re not who you say you are.”
Adam managed to laugh. “Who in this family is?”
Though Teddy smiled a little, his eyes were still grave. For a moment, Adam considered telling him that they were half brothers, and half cousins. But Teddy had always been his brother, and always would be. He thought of Carla, deciding that, for Adam, the truth was not hers to tell. It would do Teddy no good, he reasoned, to know that he was Ben’s only son, or that, despite this, his father had chosen to claim Adam as his own. And the burden of protecting Jack was Adam’s to bear, not Teddy’s. Some family secrets needed to be kept.
“Anyhow,” Adam said. “It’s done.”
“Not for me.” Leaning forward, Teddy regarded his brother with new intensity. “Ever since you got here, you’ve been looking out for me. How did you find out all the stuff about the police?”
Adam considered his answer. “As a favor to me, please be a little less curious about what I’ve been up to, and focus more on what our uncle did for you. He couldn’t stay quiet with you in trouble-”
“I understand,” Teddy interrupted. “Now tell me what you had to do with that.”
“Next to nothing. All Jack did was use me as a sounding board. So leave it there, all right? Just remember that there are few surprises in life as good as avoiding indictment.” Briefly, Adam smiled. “Or escaping homelessness.”
Teddy studied him. Then, at length, he nodded his assent. “Life feels different this morning, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, and no. You’re still my brother, and there’s no one in the world I love more. Now that our father is gone, it’s really just the two of us. That suits me just fine.”
“Me too.” Teddy glanced at Adam’s open suitcase. “Does that mean you’re leaving?”
“Yup. Frankly, I’m a little burned out. I hope our next reunion bores us all to death.”
Even as he said this, Adam wondered how coming back would feel. Lonely, he realized. The pathology of the Blaines would persist in all that Adam must conceal from Teddy, the person to whom he felt closest-that Ben was not Adam’s father, that their mother’s poise concealed tragedy and deceit, that ignorance of a murder separated Teddy from Adam and his parents. However deeply he wished otherwise, there was nothing Adam could do to change this. Whenever their family was together, Adam, like his mother and father, would become an actor in a play whose author was a dead man.
He could say none of this to Teddy. Instead, reaching out, he held his brother close, mutely apologizing for the silence that would always lie between them.
Suitcase in hand, Adam found his parents on the porch.
Lines of pain and weariness were etched in his mother’s face. Halfheartedly, she asked, “Do you really have to go?”
To his own surprise, Adam emitted a joyless laugh. Not unkindly, he said, “It’s not the time for party manners, Mother. There’s no etiquette for this one.”
Jack reached for his mother’s hand, a gesture meant to comfort. As their fingers intertwined, Clarice smiled wanly. “I suppose not.”
“So I’m off. I’ve done what I needed to do, and all of us need some distance from that.” He paused, looking from one parent to the other. “In a while, maybe this will seem better. But I’ve been too busy dealing with the consequences of what happened years ago to absorb how it’s affected me. Only time can help.”
Suddenly, Clarice fought back tears. “I’m sorry, Adam-for everything. Please know how much we love you.”
“And I love you.” Turning to Jack, he said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever stop seeing you as my uncle. Whatever comes to me, I suspect, will happen far away from here. There’s really nothing you can do.”
There was a brief silence, then both of his parents stood. Adam kissed his mother’s forehead, then gave Jack an awkward hug. “Will you be all right?” Adam asked him.
Jack gave him a wan smile. “So Avi tells me.” Except, Adam supposed, in his heart.
Saying good-bye, he picked up his suitcase and left, walking toward the taxi parked beside his father’s-his uncle’s-truck.
In time, Adam reflected, Clarice and Jack might marry. It depended on whether they could live with what they knew, and still live with each other. But they lived for years with everything but murder, and perhaps Jack could deal with even that. Adam himself had lived with worse.
Climbing into the taxi, he asked the cabbie to head for Menemsha Harbor.
Together, Adam and Charlie Glazer sailed out onto the pond, Charlie at the helm.
The day was warm, the breeze fitful, the water dotted with sailboats and powerboats and kayaks. For an hour, as Charlie piloted Folie a Un, Adam told him everything he had learned and done. All that he omitted was that an accident was murder.
When he finished, Charlie bent his head, stroking the bridge of his nose as he somberly regarded Adam. “That’s a lot to do,” he said softly. “And even more to endure.”
Adam felt the salt spray on his skin. “So how do I live with this?”
Reflective, Glazer considered him. “Here’s where I suggest you start. Whatever your methods, you seem to have restored some semblance of moral order. You kept Ben from disinheriting your mother and brother. You protected his unborn son, and his bequest to Jenny Leigh. You kept your brother out of prison. And you were strong enough to do all that despite discovering some very hard truths most people would find crushing. All in all, a decent two weeks’ work. Forgive yourself for feeling tired.”
As Glazer must have intended, the laconic understatement drew a smile from Adam. “Still,” the psychiatrist continued in a serious tone, “there’s Ben, the father who wasn’t yours. The man who exploited Jenny’s weaknesses, and drove you from the island. And Jack, who never acknowledged you as his son, but deployed you in their rivalry. And Clarice-” Pausing, Glazer asked, “Would you prefer never having learned all this?”
Adam pondered the question. “In some ways. But by bringing me back here, Ben forced me to understand the past, and enabled me to limit its impact on the future. I guess that’s something.”
Glazer adjusted the tiller, fighting headwinds. “It may not feel this way, Adam. But in a certain sense, you were lucky. Of all the members of your family, you were the one who got the resilience gene, while Teddy got the shaft. Jack loved you as his son; Ben wished you were his son. All that helped give you the strength to break away.” Glazer shot him a keen look. “On that subject, would you mind telling me what the hell you do in Afghanistan? Last time I checked, Johnny Appleseed didn’t specialize in burglarizing courthouses.”
Despite his mood, Adam laughed. Watching a young boy piloting a Sunfish, he weighed how much to say. “I’ll skip the details,” he said at length. “But the short is that I work for the government, recruiting double agents among the Taliban in the most treacherous part of the country. The goal is to identify their key military leaders, then target them for assassination.”
The psychiatrist stared at him. “Dangerous work, it sounds like.”
“Dangerous enough. If you misjudge someone, he may well kill you. Then your best hope is dying quickly. Knowing that makes you watchful, resourceful, duplicitous, and accustomed to working outside the rules. Useful skills on Martha’s Vineyard, I discovered. At least if you’re a Blaine.” Adam caught himself; for once, he would not try to conceal his feelings. “Know what’s funny?” he asked. “Three weeks ago I killed a man while driving at warp speed down some godforsaken road. I had no choice-he was about to shoot me. But the worst part is that I still don’t know how I feel about it, except in nightmares where I wake up sweating.” He stopped, shaking his head. “What am I becoming? I wonder.”
Glazer regarded him gravely. “And yet you’re going back.”
“That’s the life I chose when I left here. Maybe I had a death wish. But for the next six months, Afghanistan is part of that commitment.”
Glazer sat in a deck chair beside the tiller, deliberately allowing the Herreshoff to lose speed. “What will you do if you get out of there alive?”
“A pretty thought.” Adam paused, trying to imagine a future beyond survival. “Who knows, Charlie? Maybe I can reclaim my life-whatever that is.” He laughed without much humor. “I could even go to law school, I suppose. Though I’ve lost count of all the laws I’ve broken in the last two weeks.”
“A trifle,” Charlie replied. “At least you’re not a tax evader.” Once more his tone became gentle. “And Carla?”
Adam shook his head. “She was his lover, Charlie, and this family is incestuous enough. Like it or not, I’m drawn to her, for reasons I can’t yet explain. But I’d always remind her of him, and vice versa. It’s all too weird.”
“You could certainly argue that,” Charlie replied with a trace of arid humor. “I suppose it depends on how weird you want it to be. She was only your uncle’s girlfriend, after all, and the boy is only your cousin. Though I grant you that a Blaine family Thanksgiving might be a little fraught.” He paused, adding mildly, “But then it would be anyhow, wouldn’t it?”
Adam faced him, trying to gauge what this man was saying. “Weird,” Glazer continued in an emphatic tone, “is using Carla as a way of getting back at Ben. If it’s anything like that, please don’t go near her. But if you genuinely care for her, then other questions arise. Is it best to deny your feelings, as your mother did? Or to ask if Benjamin Blaine is still making choices for you, and instead find out what you and she can offer each other. Assuming, of course, that you can also care about her son.” Glazer paused, then finished, “Whatever the case, Adam, this may be important to you and others. Take your time to sort it out.”
Silent, Adam gazed out at the pond where he, Jack’s son, had raced against Ben, ignorant of what this had meant to both of them. There was something terribly wrong, he knew, when sons paid for the sins of their fathers. “I’ll hold the thought,” he told Glazer. “Right now, it’s time to get off the water. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
That night, Adam flew to Boston, as he had told his family he would. But before returning to Afghanistan, he caught another plane to Washington, D.C., then headed for the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. No doubt, he reflected, his gift for keeping secrets-even from his employers-was hereditary.
Alone in his car, he pondered this. He could live in the past, he concluded, or outrun it. Perhaps when he got to Kandahar, he would call her.