rather than stopping to admire the brilliance of your prose.” He leaned forward, looking at Jenny with deep seriousness. “That said, you’ve written a number of passages with real clarity and grace. But there’s also a depth to the writing, a genuine grasp of character.”
Watching Jenny sag in relief, Adam felt this, too-his father would not have delivered this speech unless he meant it. In a lighter tone, Ben told her, “I particularly like the young woman in the story. She’s so uncertain of herself, yet so clear about what she sees around her.” Smiling, he added, “You probably know that girl, too.”
“As well as I can,” Jenny confessed. “Sometimes she confuses me.”
“Then try to get her figured out,” Ben urged. “The talent is there. The only question is whether that same young woman is tough enough. And only you can answer that.”
Jenny cocked her head, her eyes filling with doubt. “What do you mean?”
“Several things. Tell me when you write.”
Jenny moved her shoulders. “In spurts, I guess. When I’m feeling creative.”
“That won’t cut it, Jenny. Writing, like life, is showing up every day.” Animated by his own passion, Ben stood and began pacing, seeming to fill the room. “Make a deal with yourself-ten hours of writing, every week, or maybe five good pages. Then stick to it.” He took a deep swallow of cognac. “Life is choices. You can go to a movie or you can write a chapter. So ask yourself this: Would you rather watch someone else’s creation or create something that’s yours alone?”
Listening, Adam was struck by his father’s elemental force, seldom quite this naked. Suddenly, Ben pointed. “See that chair, Jenny? Jack made it with his own hands. It’s perfect in form, at once elegant and simple. A novel is like a chair-a tangible thing, with a distinctive shape and design.” Turning, he waved to a shelf filled with his work. “And I made these. Everything they are comes from me. And yet, unlike Jack’s chair, millions of people have held them in their hands and in their minds.”
Adam noticed Clarice look down. For the first time, a discordant note had entered the room, Ben’s denigration of his brother. But Jenny did not seem to notice. “Too many writers,” Ben went on, “lack the guts and drive to take their talent all the way. Don’t let go of a sentence or a scene until it’s the best you’ve got inside you. You have to be ruthless with the people who distract you, and even more ruthless with yourself. If you can do that, Jenny, I’ll read your second draft. Do we have a deal?”
Jenny looked stunned. Belatedly, she gave Ben her brightest smile. “Definitely.”
“Good.” Pausing, Ben seemed to step out of his own spell, then looked from Adam to Jenny with a smile that seemed to mock his own passion. “So go have fun, the two of you. You’ve spent enough time with pontificating elders.”
Adam and Jenny drove away, headed for the beach at Dogfish Bar, Jenny glowing with wine and elation. “He was so amazing,” she exclaimed. “When you’re with him, you just know why he’s so great. It’s unbelievable that he liked my story.”
Adam felt the tug of jealousy. “True enough,” he allowed. “But what’s even more unbelievable is that I’ve never read it.”
Jenny gave him a sideways look. “Don’t confuse things, okay? This is about my writing, and between me and your dad. You and I are separate.”
“Not if you’re anything like him, Jen. What he writes is all about who he is.” Adam paused, trying to unravel his emotions, then cautioned, “He’s admirable and selfish in equal measure. You don’t need to be exactly like him to succeed.”
Receding into her thoughts, Jenny did not answer. They headed down South Road toward the Gay Head cliffs, perhaps a hundred feet from the lighthouse that marked the turnoff to the beach. Suddenly, impulsively, Jenny said, “I want you, Adam. Right now.”
Adam laughed, startled by her change of mood. “Where?”
Smiling, Jenny gazed out the windshield. “Don’t you have a passkey to the lighthouse?”
“My dad does. They gave him a key for helping save it.”
“Then find the closest parking place. You and I are standing watch.”
She was pretty drunk, Adam knew, but also high on excitement, feeling reckless now and looking for an outlet. He could either resist her, deflating the moment, or go along for the ride.
Braking, Adam parked, snatching his father’s key from the glove compartment. “Come on,” Jenny urged. As they left the car, she tugged at his hand, pulling him in her wake. Together they ran across the grass to the lighthouse.
Taking out Ben’s key, Adam jerked open the metal door. They darted inside, slamming it behind them, Jenny scurrying up the twisting steps, her footsteps and laughter echoing as he followed.
Panting, he reached the top. Jenny looked out the aperture, eyes fixed on the water. Her dress was on the floor.
Adam stared at her. Still watching the sunset, Jenny unhooked her bra and stepped out of her panties, arching her back toward him. “This way,” she instructed. “Hurry.”
Astonished and aroused, Adam stripped, entranced by this new Jenny. Bracing her hips, he gently began to enter her, and discovered she was wet. As he slipped inside her, she leaned her torso out the window. “Touch my nipples,” she implored him.
He did that. “Harder,” she demanded, and then Adam was caught in the frenzy of her desire. When he placed his head beside hers, he saw the orange light spreading on blue water. Then Adam closed his eyes, his thrusts from behind her swifter, deeper. Suddenly, she cried out, the shudder consuming her body in a way he had never felt. When he joined her, Jenny laughed in delight. “Stay inside me, Adam, as long as you can. This is my favorite sunset ever.”
Once it had been Adam’s, as well. Now, ten years later, he sat at his old desk, studying their photographs-his father, dead; Jenny, gazing at him from a time before she tried to end her life.
Four
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.
