The next morning, as was the family custom, Adam drove to Alley’s General Store to buy the New York Times. The headlines were grim-the Taliban had ambushed and killed seven American soldiers in Helmand Province, and the Afghan government had descended into factional squabbling that, to Adam’s jaundiced eye, reflected the corruption of all. It made the death of young Americans that much harder to accept.
Returning home, Adam passed the cemetery at Abel’s Hill. Inevitably, his gaze was drawn to his father’s grave, lit by shafts of morning sunlight, the grass around it a deepening green. Beside it, the solitary figure of a woman in a simple black dress bent to place flowers on his grave. Adam pulled over to the side of the road and got out, walking among the tombstones to reach the place where, only yesterday, his family had buried Benjamin Blaine.
The headstone was engraved BENJAMIN BLAINE, 1945–2011. HUSBAND OF CLARICE, FATHER OF EDWARD AND ADAM, Beneath this were the words Ben once had spoken in an interview: “I WROTE THE TRUTH AS I SAW IT.” Kneeling, the woman quietly recited a prayer; though she must have heard Adam behind her, she gave no sign of this. Finally, she crossed herself and, rising, turned to face him.
Tall and slender, she looked a touch older than her age, which he put at thirty-two. On television she had been striking and exotic, an Italian-American brunette with dark, intense eyes and a vitality that made her all the more memorable. Now she had the tempered beauty of a survivor. In the last photograph Adam remembered of her, taken after her arrest, her eyes were clouded by drugs and filled with shame and confusion. But the eyes that regarded him now were clear and flecked with sadness. The faint smile at one corner of her mouth did not change them.
“You could only be Adam.” Her voice was as he recalled it, smoky, with a trace of Mediterranean intensity. “Now I know how your father must have looked at your age.”
She took it for granted that he knew who she was. The strangeness of the moment left him briefly silent. Then he said, “And you’re Carla Pacelli. Or used to be.”
The veiled insult did not change her expression. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. But the only service I could hold for him is private.”
Instinctively, Adam looked toward the road. Near his car he saw a Jeep, then a woman he took to be Amanda Ferris with a photographer whose telescopic lens glinted in the sun. Facing Pacelli, Adam said, “Not too private. I think you and I just made the National Enquirer.”
Briefly, Pacelli shut her eyes. “I’m used to this,” she said wearily, “and it’s way too late to care. But I didn’t mean to inflict them on you or your family.”
Adam dismissed this. Perhaps she had staged her touching graveyard visit to cast herself as a woman in mourning. She was, after all, a performer, no doubt conscious that an image, if artfully created, could conceal avarice and calculation. Adam’s reality was this-she had been his father’s lover and the chief beneficiary of his will, heedless of the damage she inflicted on Clarice Blaine. At length, Adam said, “You were far from his only woman-just the one in the girlfriend chair when the music stopped. All I care about is what you’ve taken from my mother.”
A moment’s anger flashed in Pacelli’s eyes, then died there. In the same even tone, she said, “Then there are a few things I should say to you, as clearly as I can. Whatever you choose to think, I loved your father. Except for consideration and respect, I didn’t expect much in return. Nor did I ask for anything. I didn’t know about the will, or request him to change the one he had. From time to time, he helped me with expenses, but that was all. I’d far prefer that Ben were still alive.”
This was the defense that Adam expected, stated with the quiet command of an actress. In his estimation, Carla Pacelli had been a good one-whether feigned or real, grief was written on her face. “Nonetheless,” Adam said, “his demise has worked out nicely for you.”
She gave him a long, cool look. “Then I should be happy, shouldn’t I. Do I seem it to you?”
Adam met her eyes. “No,” he answered. “But your business is appearance, not reality, and good taste requires the appearance of sadness. I am curious, though, about the last time you saw him alive.”
Pacelli looked at him with the same directness. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this conversation. You buried him yesterday; I buried him just now. That’s hard for me. But if we’re going to talk, would you mind sitting down? I haven’t slept much lately.”
With mock gallantry, Adam gestured at a swatch of grass beside his father’s tombstone. After a moment, Pacelli sat, Adam beside her. When he looked toward the road again, the reporter and photographer were watching. Facing Pacelli, Adam asked, “Did you see him on the night he died?”
“No,” she answered. “The last time I saw him was that afternoon.”
“What did you talk about?”
She turned to him. “I’m sorry, but that’s personal to me. As is everything that happened that day.”
“But you told the police. I’m sure.”
“Only because I had to.” She hesitated, then added in a lower voice, “For obvious reasons, they were easier to talk to. Even looking at you is painful.”
Were she not who she was, Adam might almost have believed her sorrow-if not her claim to be ignorant of the will. Bluntly, he asked, “Did you know my father was failing?”
Studying him, she seemed to weigh her answer. “Do you mean physically or mentally?”
“Both.”
She turned away from him, regarding a patch of grass in front of them. Then she said, “It won’t surprise you to know that while you were burying your father, I was consulting a lawyer. Call that cold, if you like, but the requirements of ‘good taste’ left me with a free afternoon. Right now, for various reasons, I’m not prepared to take this any further.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t, in time. You’re free to try me later. We’ll see how things stand then.”
Carefully, Pacelli got to her feet, her face suddenly pale. She began to leave, then looked back at him again. “There are two more things I should say to you. Whatever happened between you and your father, he deeply regretted that. And whatever happened with Ben and your mother, I’m sorry for how she must feel.”
Left unspoken was whether Pacelli meant his father’s affair, his death, or the loss of his estate. The nerve of this expression of sympathy left Adam briefly silent, even as he rejected the notion of his father mired in regret. Then he asked, “Did he tell you why I left?”
Pacelli shook her head. “I asked him, several times. But he could never talk about it.”
“That much I believe.”
Pacelli looked into his face. Then he turned from her and walked away. The image of her last expression, curious and intent, lingered in his mind.
Walking toward the road, he saw the reporter waiting by his car. When he reached it, she stood in front of the door, her voice and manner so feral that Adam wanted to push her aside. “Mr. Blaine,” she said, “tell me what you and Carla were talking about.”
For an instant, Adam felt a reflexive sympathy for Carla Pacelli. Then he looked at the reporter so coldly that she seemed to recoil. “When I want to see you,” he told her, “I’ll let you know.”
He got in the car. The original reason for this trip, the newspaper, lay forgotten on the passenger seat. Looking back at the cemetery, Adam saw Pacelli, her head bowed, her hand resting on his father’s tombstone. No doubt she thought that the Enquirer could use another photograph.
When Adam came through the door, his mother was in the living room. “Where were you?” she asked.
“I decided to stop at his grave.”
Her mouth parted, as if to form a question, and then the telephone rang.
Clarice answered. “Hello, George,” she said, her tone pleasant but reserved. “Yes, I’m all right, thank you. Please, tell me.”
For a moment, she listened intently. Then her face froze, save for the bewilderment in her eyes. “I had no idea,” she managed to say. “Are you sure?”
As she listened, Adam saw, she placed a hand on the chair as if to retain her balance. With great civility, she said, “Thank you, George. It was kind of you to call.”
Putting down the phone, she gazed past Adam as if he were not there. “Was that the DA?” he asked.
She blinked, aware of him again. “Yes. He called about the cause of death.”
“Is there something more?”
Clarice drew a breath. “Yes. Your father had brain cancer. A massive tumor, apparently.”
The words hit Adam with a jolt. “Did he know?”
Clarice sat down. “If so, he chose not to tell me.”
Looking away, she held a hand to her face. Another betrayal, Adam sensed her thinking, another secret. Then a further thought struck him: that on the night he died, Benjamin Blaine was looking at the last summer solstice of his life and, perhaps, knew that. A host of implications started running through Adam’s mind, complicating or explaining his father’s last few months, the shocking suddenness of his death.
Who might have known? he wondered, and thought again of Carla Pacelli.