beaches, and then in vast subdivisions wherever there was enough land for building. Soon the weedy fields where I’d caught garter snakes became a grid of neocolonial homes and impossibly green lawns. Woods where Wabanaki Indians had once hunted deer were cleared to make way for “Indian Woods Estates.”
As a teenager, I fought the future as best I could. Rather than taking up soccer or skateboarding, I cast for striped bass in the Spurwink River. Instead of playing video games I read
My mother had received a call from my father, and she was in a panic. She didn’t want to go into the details over the phone. “I need you here,” she said.
It was a brilliant morning. The blue of the sky and the green of the leaves looked like colors from a child’s picture book. After two hours on the road, I pulled into the driveway of my mother’s beautiful new house. Next door, a rainbow haze drifted across the lawn from the neighbor’s sprinkler system.
I rang the bell and waited. After a while, I had the sense of someone on the other side of the door, studying me through the peephole, and then it opened and there was my stepfather. Neil Turner was a tall, flat-stomached man with a full head of dark hair going silver at the temples. He wore a lime-colored polo shirt and khakis and was clutching his cell phone. He smiled awkwardly and extended a hand for me to shake. “You really didn’t have to drive all the way down here.”
“It’s OK,” I said.
“Is that Michael?” my mother called from the second floor.
“It’s me,” I said.
She appeared at the top of the steps. She was barefoot, and she was wearing white shorts and a striped blue cotton shirt. A small gold crucifix hung at the base of her throat. She hurried downstairs to embrace me. “It’s so good to see you.”
I smelled shampoo in her hair as she hugged me. “It’s good to see you, too, Mom.”
She held me at arm’s length. There were dark circles under her eyes. As she studied me, her forehead became wrinkled, the only lines in an otherwise perfect oval face. She touched my cheek. “Michael, what happened to your chin?”
“I scratched myself going through some bushes. I want to hear about the call you got from Dad.”
She glanced at Neil, who was now standing against the relocked door.
“Why don’t we go out into the living room,” he said.
They sat together on a couch holding hands, and I sat across from them. It was a cream-colored room with Scandinavian furniture, and sheer curtains that let in some gauzy sunlight. On the coffee table was a book of Matisse paintings and a framed picture of Neil with his daughter from his previous marriage. They’d redecorated since Sarah and I were last here at Christmastime.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” said my mother. “Neil told me not to, but I was in a panic.” The slight French- Canadian accent in her speech seemed more pronounced than usual: a sign of stress I’d learned to recognize.
“Tell me about the phone call,” I said.
She glanced at Neil, and he squeezed her hand. “He called early. It must have been eight o’clock. It sounded like he was on a cell phone. There was a lot of static.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t kill those men. He said he’d asked for your help, but that you wouldn’t help him.”
I felt a tightening in my chest. “Did he say where he was?”
“Canada somewhere. He wanted to talk with Neil.”
I met my stepfather’s eyes. “About what?”
“He wanted me to represent him.” Neil smiled a mirthless smile and shook his head. “Can you believe that? I’m a tax attorney.”
When I’d suggested my dad find a lawyer, he’d laughed at me. I guess he’d had a change of heart. But did he really want Neil’s legal advice? The two men hated each other. Then again, how many lawyers did my dad know? “So what did you say?”
“I hung up on him, of course, and I called the police. I spoke with that detective-Soctomah.”
“What if he wanted to surrender? How do you know he wasn’t looking to give himself up?”
“The man’s a murderer,” said Neil.
“He was asking for your help,” I said.
Neil laughed sharply. “It was probably some sort of ploy to find out if we were home. When I heard his voice, I was scared for my life.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Neil looked at me as if he could not believe how slow-witted I was. “I thought he might come here. If he killed those two men, who knows what else he might do.”
“We don’t know he killed anybody. He says he’s been framed.”
Neil waved his hand as if to drive off a bad smell. “The evidence-”
“What evidence? Did Soctomah tell you what proof they have?”
“I was worried for your mother’s safety.”
I was about to interject something about his selfless concern for my mother’s welfare, but she spoke first. “He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, shaking her head.
Neil said, “You don’t know that, Marie.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said again.
“Well, there’s nothing to stop him from hurting
My mom glanced at the window as if she hadn’t heard him.
Neil was looking at me now. “It was after your mother and I got engaged. He was waiting for me one night in the parking lot outside my office. He was drunk. He told me he would kill me unless I broke it off.”
“He wouldn’t have killed you,” said my mother softly.
“He showed me the gun!”
“Jack says things when he gets drunk,” said my mother. “It’s just talk.”
“Why are you still making excuses for him?” He glanced back at me again. “The man’s a murderer. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
“You don’t know the first thing about him,” I said.
“I know the type of man he is.” Neil rose to his feet, smoothing the front of his shirt. “I can’t believe how naive you both are. He’s still manipulating you, and you don’t even see it. I’m going to finish packing.”
He left us there in that sunlit room. “Why is he packing?”
“We’re going to Long Beach-to visit Jessica. Neil’s afraid of Jack showing up here. We’ve had reporters calling. I just want to forget all this has happened. It’s like a nightmare.” She removed a wadded tissue from her pocket and dabbed it at her eyes.
So that was it. They were getting out of Dodge, leaving my dad to his fate. And if he had been thinking of giving himself up, Neil’s reaction would almost certainly have made him think twice about contacting another lawyer. “I can’t believe the bastard hung up on him.”
“Michael!”
I knew I was being too hard on Neil, who had been a decent guardian to me for much of my life. It was all so perverse. Until four days ago, I’d pretty much stopped even thinking of my real dad, and yet now that he was back in my life, I felt compelled to side with him. “I still don’t understand why he called you after all this time. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He still calls me,” she said. “He never stopped over all these years.”
The admission shocked me. “What do you mean he still calls you?”
“When he’s been drinking.”
“But Neil-”
“Neil doesn’t know. It’s my secret.”
It was a revelation that left me just about speechless. I had been certain my parents never communicated except through me. “What do you-what do you say to each other?”
