H I G H P R O F I L E
“No,” she said. “We never sought medical advice. I guess we were each more comfortable assuming the other one was at fault.”
“Have you had any since?”
“Three,” she said.
“So you figured it was his, ah, fault,” Jesse said.
“I know, fault isn’t the right word, and by the time I was having my children, I wasn’t really thinking much about Walton—but yes, one would have assumed that he was the infertile one in our marriage.”
“Apparently neither of you were,” Jesse said.
“He never had children in either of his other marriages,”
Ellen said.
“Maybe this time he got medical help.”
“That would not be the Walton Weeks I knew,” Ellen said.
“People change,” Jesse said.
“Not without help,” Ellen said.
“Psychiatric help?”
“Yes. And Walton would never consider it.”
Jesse smiled.
“Sometimes people change,” he said.
Ellen shrugged slightly.
“Or circumstances do,” she said.
“You think he needed shrink help,” Jesse said.
“The infertility thing bothered him,” she said. “And that distance-around-him thing, and . . . the womanizing. Yes, he needed help.”
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R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Do you know the other wives?” Jesse said.
“I’ve met them. I don’t really know them.”
“Do you know why he was in Boston?”
“No.”
“Do you know of any connection with Paradise.”
“Of course,” she said. “You don’t know?”
Jesse shook his head.
“He used to come here as a boy. His parents would rent a place every summer. He and his mother would spend the summers here. His father would come on the weekends.”
“Where was the house?” Jesse said.
