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.
Seven
Starting at the sounds of his footsteps, Jenny whirled to see Adam emerging from her den. “What are you doing here?” she blurted.
He paused in the doorway. “I read your manuscript.”
It took Jenny a moment to grasp this, and then Adam saw her blanch. “All of it?”
“Every word,” he answered softly. “Is that what happened to you?”
Drawing a breath, Jenny briefly closed her eyes. “Yes.”
He crossed the room, standing in front of her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“When?” she demanded. “Even if I could have faced you, I couldn’t find you. And why make excuses?”
“What about the part when she was a child? If it’s true, that’s much more than an excuse.”
Without looking at him, Jenny walked over to the couch and sat, staring into space. “That girl is me,” she said in a lifeless voice. “From when I was nine until he left, my dad molested me.”
Adam felt a moment of sickened anger, then only sadness. “Like you describe in the manuscript?”
In profile, Jenny nodded. “When it was happening,” she managed to say, “all I could do was dissociate. At least that’s how I understand it now. But I couldn’t talk about it then.”
Adam sat beside her. “Not even to me?”
“I didn’t want you knowing I was defective.” She hesitated, her eyes lowered in shame. “As a child, I discovered that my body was a source of power-if my father wanted these things, so would other men. But it scared me, and I was completely helpless. To survive him I just numbed out.” She hunched forward, tears wetting her lashes. “The numbness kept on happening, no matter who I slept with. But it was so good with you, and I loved you so much. Instead I let your father destroy us.”
Once more, Adam tasted ashes in his mouth. With quiet bitterness, he said, “He didn’t destroy us, Jen. All he did was transform our lives.”
Jenny’s throat pulsed. At length, she asked, “Do you care why it happened?”
Silent, Adam fought to erase the image that filled his mind, two bodies glimpsed through a window. “I don’t see how it matters now.”
“It does to me.”
He did not want to relive this, but had no right to stop her. In his silence, she spoke in the same bereft tone. “After I came to dinner, I worked so hard to make that short story better. I was afraid to have him see it, but even more anxious to know what he thought. So I brought it to him.” She closed her eyes again, voice drained of feeling. “You were gone, and so was Clarice. But we needed our own workplace, he told me. Then he took me and a bottle of wine to the guesthouse, saying he’d take the time to read each sentence carefully, and that a little wine would help me feel less anxious.”
Adam felt a visceral hatred for his father, and for Jenny in her naivete. As though in a trance, she continued, “He sat beside me on the couch, reading my story in utter silence. By the time he was done I had drunk half the bottle, trying not to become a nervous wreck. When he took my hand, I thought it was out of compassion. Then he smiled and said, ‘You really did listen to me, didn’t you?’
“‘Of course,’ I insisted. Suddenly I was grinning like an idiot, filled with this crazy kind of joy. With persistence and a little help, he said, I could make it as a writer. Then he poured us another glass and went over my story with me, line by line, until his face and voice seemed to fill my consciousness.”
He had a gift, Carla had said, for making me feel I did have value.
“Didn’t you wonder about him?” Adam asked sharply.
“What I remember is feeling mesmerized.” Looking down, she shook her head. “Suddenly, he was staring into my face like he’d just discovered who I was. ‘It’s so hard to believe,’ he told me, ‘because you’re so young. But I’ve never shared writing like I have with you-’”
Do you think I hadn’t seen that one before? Adam remembered Carla asking. But Jenny’s experience was of her father, who had violated her, and of Adam, who had loved her. “I was just so stunned,” she said in a broken voice. “It was the recognition I’d always wanted from my father, this time from a man who was all I ever wanted to be. When he began to undress me, I just went somewhere else, like always. The next day I came back, and the next.” Abruptly, her speech became dispassionate, almost clinical. “After I was institutionalized, a psychiatrist said I was replicating what happened with my father, hoping I could master it. This time I’d be in control; this time I wouldn’t be hurt. I thought I could walk away from him. But I couldn’t.” Her tone changed yet again, etched with quiet horror. “Before you found us, he’d taken me in the normal way. But I’d left my body, as always, and this time he must have felt it. He looked into my eyes and asked if sex with him was as good as it was with you-”
“Jesus Christ-”
