Keep No Secrets (17 page)

backpacks scattered on the lowest two benches below him. Each girl who stops digs inside her bag and checks the screen of a cell phone. As the last of the group turns the corner and enters the gym, Jack spots Celeste and the volleyball coach at the back of the bunch. He scoots back farther, pressing his back harder against the wall as if he can disappear into it, but his fears about being seen by Celeste are unwarranted. She walks past the

backpacks and focuses on the basketball team. Michael's attention to his game lapses, and he waves to her. Jack doesn’t hear him, but the coach must chastise Michael, because he quickly turns back to the game.

Jack relaxes only after the last of the volleyball team has disappeared into the locker room. Minutes later, the boys take off in the same direction and vanish into the boys' side. The two coaches chat as they bring up the rear and then part to follow their respective teams. Except for the distant laughing and shouting coming from the locker rooms, the gym falls silent. Jack is left alone with the backpacks. He wastes no time moving to the bottom of the bleachers. He scans the backpacks quickly. If Celeste's bag is here, he'll recognize it.

The emerald green ribbon she ties to a strap helps him locate it easily. Despite his rapid pulse that warns against doing this, he unzips the largest compartment.

A clean conscience won't save him from being locked up; what he finds inside might.

He pushes past textbooks to the spiral notebooks. She has several, each a different color, and each titled by subject: Pre-Calc, History, LA, Chem, CW,

Spanish, Psych. He figures it's a long shot to find anything helpful with her schoolwork, but he pulls out the LA notebook anyway and flips through a few pages. He sees pages and pages of vocabulary words and literature notes.

Nothing, though, that appears to be her own creation.

Next up, the Psych notebook. But he finds more of the same: class notes about Freud, Jung, Adler, Skinner and others Jack has never heard of or forgot as soon as he graduated. He wishes he had the time to peruse the notes closely; he'd love to see what gems she's picked up from her studies. She could probably write her own psychology how-to manual:
How to
Play Mind Games with the Men in Your Life
.

He has no idea what CW stands for, but he chooses it next. On the inside, he discovers the answer: CW is the acronym for Creative Writing. He finds page after page of stories, journal entries and poems.

He scans the gym. He's still alone, but he knows someone could walk in at any time. He has three choices: leave and never know what she's written, read the journal now and hope no one sees him, or take the whole thing with him. He doesn't like any of the options, but after he scans the gym one more time, he chooses one anyway.

Unlike the other notebooks in her backpack, the Creative Writing notebook has nothing to do with school. Instead, it appears to be a journal for her eyes only.

Much of it reads like the musings of a melancholy amateur poet, but one post, if he assumes memoir instead of fiction, tells him immediately that
someone
has messed with her.

He came at me from behind.

He tugged roughly on my hair,

like I was a horse and my hair

was the reins. It hurt. And

afterwards, he wouldn't even

look at me. Even when I started

crying. He just zipped up his

jeans, told me how great I was,

and started the engine. He didn't say anything else, not even

when he dropped me off in front

of my house.

It wasn't like that at first. He

started out by just kissing me.

His lips were rough, and I could

smel whiskey on his breath. I

didn't like it, but he looked me

right in the eye and told me I

was beautiful, so I didn't think

he'd hurt me. I thought if I just let him kiss me a minute, he'd

feel like he gotten something

and would leave me alone. But

that's not what happened.

Instead, he started to unbutton

my shirt, and I tried to scoot

away. Al of a sudden he

changed. It was like he became

a different person. Al of a

sudden his fingers were digging

into my arms and he was

pushing me against the seat. I

turned my head side to side so

he couldn't kiss me again, but

that's when he grabbed my hair.

He twisted it, wrapped it around

his hand so I couldn't get away.

He yanked it, pul ing my head

back, and told me to look at him.

I wouldn't at first, but he said

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way" and that

scared me, so I final y did what

he said. I looked at him. He

smiled and said, "That's better."

He finished unbuttoning my

shirt, and then he used a pocket

knife to cut my bra. He asked

me how it felt when he caressed

the sides of my breasts, and if I liked it when he touched his

tongue to them. I think I

whimpered, I was so scared, but

he liked that, when I made

noise, because he encouraged

me to make more. If I didn't

answer his questions, or do

what he said, he would start to

get angry again. He stuck his

finger in my mouth and told me

to suck on it. It tasted salty. I'd heard that guys liked that sort of thing, and I think he did

because he grinned at me, and

then he grabbed one of my

hands and jammed it between

his legs.

But then he slipped his hands

up my skirt and asked me in a

strange voice if I was ready for

him. Without waiting for an

answer, he slipped his finger

under my panties to find out for

himself, I guess. I told him no,

but he wouldn't listen. His

actions became faster, and his

touch even rougher as he

pushed my skirt up and pul ed

my panties off. He rol ed me

over and issued instructions for

how I should position myself. I

told him I didn't want to do it, but he kept on, and threatened me.

After that, I gave up. I just gave up and let him do what he

wanted.

Jesus
. Jack rereads it, searching for some evidence, some assurance, that the piece is nothing more than the overactive

imagination of a hormonal teenage girl.

But a hormonal teenage girl with an overactive imagination would, he hopes, write about consensual sex, not rape.

Because if he's sure of anything, he's sure the words in front of him describe a rape.

He's not sure why, but Jack doesn't think what he just read is about Celeste's dad, the man he originally feared was hurting her. But nothing in the journal suggests who it might be. She neglected to date the entries. Without more information, it's impossible for him to determine whether she wrote it before or after she moved to St. Louis. Even worse, it's impossible to determine whether she wrote it before or after the night he drove her home.

His first instinct, his prosecutor's instinct, is to call the abuse hotline immediately. Self-preservation kicks in, though, and he quickly understands the hotline is not an option, not yet.

Because without proof that the words he just read came first, the journal entry has the power to seal the State's case against him.

Hands trembling and sensing the

opportunity is about to expire, he rips the incriminating page from its home, replaces the notebook in Celeste's backpack, and slips out the rear door.

Michael stops short as soon as he comes out of the gym and sees his uncle's car instead of Claire's minivan. To Jack's relief, Celeste isn't with Michael. He wonders why not.

"Hey," Jack says when Michael opens the door and tosses his gym bag and backpack on the floor. He plops into the passenger seat and buckles the seatbelt. "I thought you were Uncle Mark," is all Michael says, reminding Jack he still wears his brother's clothes. Michael took a shower—his hair is wet, his skin is dry and he's dressed now in jeans and a sweatshirt—but the sour odor of male, teenage sweat leaks from the gym bag and fills the Porsche. "How was practice?"

Michael pulls his phone from his back pocket and gives his full attention to the screen.

"You played—" Jack catches himself.

He was about to comment on Michael's performance, but since Jack is confident no one saw him, he thinks it's best not to tell his son he was there. It will be the first thing that comes to his mind if Celeste notices the page missing and shares the discovery with Michael, which Jack is sure she will.

"I played what?" Michael practically grunts the question with looking at Jack.

His fingers rapidly work the small touchpad.

Jack can't come up with a cover fast enough, so he lets it die. Instead, he says,

"Mom had a late meeting so she couldn't pick you up."

If this information interests Michael, he doesn't show it.

The ride home is short—ten minutes at most—and the closer they get, the nearer the questions Jack wants to ask come to leaving his tongue. He doesn't know when he'll next have Michael as a captive audience.

"Mike, can you put the phone down for a minute?"

Michael gives a teenage sigh, but he complies. He then reaches over, turns the radio up loud and punches at buttons to find a song he likes. Jack turns it off from the controls on the steering wheel.

Another grunt from Michael.

"I want to ask you something," Jack says.

Michael simply stares forward. Jack decides he can't do this while the car's in motion, so he pulls into a small

playground parking lot near their house.

It's vacant; at this time of day, all the stay-at-home moms and their children are home for naps or dinner.

"Is there something you know that you're not telling me? About Celeste?"

Even as he questions Michael, he thinks of Earl's warning about how his

communications with his son won't be privileged.

Michael lowers his eyes.

"Remember when I asked you whether her dad was hurting her? If you knew something, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?"

"I told you, he's not hurting her." He still won't look at Jack, but at least he answered.

"Is someone else hurting her, then? Or
has
her dad or someone else hurt her?"

Michael crosses his arms.

"At least tell me if she's in any danger.

For her sake, at least tell me that."

Finally, he gets a fleeting sideways glance from his son. Jack waits.

"She's
not
in danger."

It's not much; at least it buys Jack some time on the journal entry. But it certainly doesn't explain Michael's reaction to her accusations.

"Look, I know you're mad at me about all this. I know you think somehow I'm to blame. You must, because you continue your relationship with her. But have you thought through the allegations she's made against me? I mean, really thought about them logically?"

Michael sits in sullen silence.

"Let's just assume something happened between us in the car that night. Do you think it would have happened because I forced myself on her?"

Nothing.

"Michael, you don't have to answer any other question I ask you, but I want you to answer this one. Truthfully. Do you really think I'm capable of rape?"

Michael turns his face slightly toward the passenger side window, and to Jack's surprise, his son's eyes are glassy. He's having trouble holding it together. "Do you?" Jack persists. When Michael shakes his head, Jack's his entire body lets go of a tension that was so enduring, he'd stopped noticing it as unusual.

"So if anything happened, it would have been consensual, right?"

Michael gives the smallest of nods.

"And if it was consensual, and you
really
believe it happened, you have every right to hate me. And I would deserve anything that happens to me. But I want you to think long and hard about what that means about her, and your

relationship with her. Do you

understand?"

He's not sure if Michael follows, and he doesn't want to get any more specific.

He'd like to list all of Celeste's other inconsistencies, starting with her claim that she can't use birth control because she's Catholic, yet she doesn't have any problem disobeying the mandate against sex before marriage. But he's afraid to push too hard. Better to let what he's said marinate in Michael's brain for a while.

He stares at his son a bit longer, but Michael senses it and he keeps his face to the side window. As the moment

stretches, he fidgets under Jack's scrutiny.

Finally, in a voice devoid of emotion, he says, "Can we just go home?"

They arrive home early enough to precede the nightly media stakeout, so Jack sends Michael across the street to retrieve Jamie from Billy's house. Jack agreed to let Jamie resume his afterschool playdates at the Edmond's only after he told Claire what Jamie said on the front porch the other night. Simply having the

conversation was an accomplishment.

Claire seemed skeptical that Marcia intended for Jamie to hear the television, but she tersely assured Jack that she'd ask her friend to be more careful. He wished he'd been a fly on the wall for that conversation. Or maybe not. Maybe he wouldn't want to hear what her meddling friend has to say about him.

Once Michael leaves, Jack wants to pull the torn notebook paper out of his briefcase and re-read it right then for clues, but it will have to wait. Michael and Jamie will be back before he even gets the briefcase open.

Instead, he decides to make dinner. He finds three large rib eye steaks in the refrigerator and a bag of Idaho potatoes on a shelf in the garage. He's no chef, but steak and potatoes he can manage. Claire, he hopes, will appreciate the gesture.

Claire enters the kitchen, arms overloaded with her handbag, her satchel and a bag of carryout food she picked up on the way home. She stops when she sees potatoes baking in the oven and seasoned raw meat resting on a platter, ready to be taken out to the grill. The table is set, and an open bottle of wine waits on the island next to two wineglasses and a lit candle.