Keep No Secrets (51 page)

"Why did she do an at-home pregnancy test?"

"She was late . . . you know."

"Did she think she might be pregnant from previous times you two were

together? Because those tests wouldn't tell her anything the very next day."

"Yeah." He mumbles so quietly Jack barely hears him.

"Does she realize that?"

"Yeah, she knows."

"Forgive me for harping on this, Mike"

—Jack's tone makes clear he couldn't care less if Michael forgives him on this next point— "but if she was so worried about getting pregnant, why the hell weren't you guys using birth control?" He knows it's useless to ask the question now, but his frustration over the whole situation makes him ask it anyway.

Michael simply stares at his phone and shrugs.

"When did her dad find out?" Because of Del Toro's testimony, Jack already knows the answers to many of his

questions, but Michael doesn't know that.

"Sometime that day, that Sunday.

That's when he searched her trash."

"He actually searches her trash?" After seeing the instant messages on the computer about checking her underwear, this shouldn't faze Jack.

"He wouldn't admit it. He said he was just emptying it. But she knows what he does."

Maybe, then, she should be more careful about
what she leaves behind
.

"And he confronted her?"

"Yeah. He barged in her room holding up the piece of paper he found and yelling at her to explain and she just made something up." Jack shakes his head, grips the steering wheel tighter. His jaw is clenched so hard it aches. He’s torn between feeling sorry for Michael and wanting to shake him. Michael must sense his reaction; he starts crying again. "She had to have some excuse, Dad!" he says, his voice higher. "She just panicked!"

"She panicked and threw me under the bus."

"It wasn't like that. He would have killed her! She knew if he found out about us that he’d send her back to Florida. You don't understand what he's like." He snorts to stop his nose from running and his face is a wet mess, so Jack reaches over and opens the glove box to show him where Claire keeps a packet of tissues. Michael pulls it out without comment.

"I think I have a good idea. If you recall, I came home that night trying to find out what was up with him. You told me I was crazy, remember?"

As if this spurs Michael on, he says,

"Because she always made me promise not to tell anyone the stuff she told me! I knew if I told you, you’d go to him. Or to the cops. Or someone. You always think your laws can fix everything!"

The last comment stuns Jack.
His
laws?

Is this what all his years as a prosecutor has meant to his kids? Is that how Michael thinks of Jack’s faith in the legal system? Not that Jack is sure he has such faith anymore, not after everything that’s happened with his case, and with Jenny’s.

He doesn’t know whether to deny his son’s accusation or to say
Is that so bad?

Michael, obviously, thinks it is.

"I don’t think I’d be out here on the highway with you in the middle of the night if I thought laws could fix everything," he says quietly.

Michael simply lowers his eyes again, as if he, too, realizes he just mocked his father’s life work.

An uneasy silence settles inside the car.

Traffic on the Illinois interstate is light at this hour, and Jack has to fight against the hypnotic effect of the reflective lane markers that fly by at a fast, rhythmic pace. He starts to watch for road signs indicating somewhere to buy a cup of coffee.

Michael’s phone vibrates. "She says she remembers the room number on the

door. 224."

So they’re on a second floor. Jack has to think about whether that will make things easier or more difficult. He almost wishes Celeste would go to sleep instead of risking her mom or Torpedo waking to see her texting.

"You didn’t tell her we’re on our way, did you?"

"No. Should I?"

"No, not yet. If one of them happened to wake up, we wouldn’t want them to see that in her text history." Although what’s already there is damning enough.

The interruption provides Jack the opening back into their previous

conversation. "So tell me the rest," he prods. "What happened after Celeste lied to her dad about why she'd taken the test?

Didn't he find it odd that she would be taking a test the very next day after the supposed rape?"

"Yeah, but she just played dumb, like she didn't know it couldn't tell her so soon. He always thinks she’s so naive, anyway. She guessed he'd buy it, and he did."

Jack's not so sure. According to the police reports, Celeste's dad never mentioned the pregnancy test when the cops interviewed him. Was he trying to protect himself by not bringing up a topic that would lead to his habit of searching his daughter's trash? It came out for the first time on the stand, but Jack is starting to think that was a slip on Del Toro’s part, especially since Walker seemed surprised by the testimony. But how could Del Toro not realize that Celeste's story didn't quite jive? Or maybe he did, but they were all so far down the road that he didn't want anyone else to realize it, too? Or maybe he was simply in denial, as so many parents are.

"Keep talking," Jack says. "Tell me how we got from there to here."

"She never thought he'd make her report it. She thought he might come to you, and you'd deny it, and he'd back off, you know, because of who you are and stuff."

Instead,
who Jack is
gave her father all the more reason to report it. Jack can't fault the man; he would have done the same.

"But that didn't happen. He made her go to the police, and then it just snowballed from there. She even thought the police would brush it off, that they'd assume she was lying and wouldn't do anything about it. But that's not what happened."

"No, that's not what happened, all right," Jack says bitterly.

"Dad, I didn't know at first," he says.

"She wouldn't talk to me, she wouldn't answer my texts or my messages. When you came home that day after they held you overnight, all I knew is what I'd heard on the news and from Mom."

Jack has to assume Claire told him the charges were ridiculous, but if she didn't, he doesn't want to know. "And you believed what you heard on the news."

"I didn't know who to believe! Not after—" He stops as if his mouth was ahead of his brain.

"After what?" He glances over and sees that the old anger has encroached on Michael’s more recent shame. "After what? After what happened with Jenny?"

Michael nods.

"Mike, it’s okay that you didn’t know what to think. All right? It’s okay. It was wrong, what I did. I hurt Mom, I hurt you and Jamie, I hurt a lot of people. It was horrible, and I understand why you could hate me for it. But . . ." He sighs, and Michael sneaks a look at him. ". . .

you realize how different that was from what Celeste accused me of, don’t you?"

"Yeah, I do now. I mean, I did then, too, once I thought about it. But when I first heard, I don’t know . . . It took Celeste a while to admit to me what really happened, and at school everyone . . ." He lets out a small, helpless grunt. "I was just mad, and upset."

For the first time it occurs to Jack that Michael might have suffered at school the same things Jack suffered at work and around town—the dirty looks, the

whispers, the snickers. He assumed that since Celeste was the purported victim, Michael, as her boyfriend, would garner the same sympathy. He realizes now how wrong this might have been.

"Okay, I get that. I do. But here’s what I don’t get: At some point you knew she made it all up, and yet you just let everything happen to me? To all of us, really, not just me. I mean, haven't you paid any attention to what's been going on outside our house? Haven't you watched the news? Haven't you noticed what it's done to—" He catches himself, because no matter what, the last thing he wants is for Michael to blame himself for what's happened to his parents. "—my career? Why didn't you come to me? I don't understand what you thought would happen. You had to know I could go to prison."

Michael sniffles and Jack thinks he might be about to start crying all over again. "I don’t know! I didn’t know what to do. She was terrified of being sent back. And she was even more afraid to tell someone
why
she didn’t want to go back because he told her—"

"Who?"

"Her mom’s boyfriend. He told her that if she ever told anyone, he’d hurt her, and he’d hurt her dad and her grandma."

"But Mike, if she told someone, or if
you’d
told
me
, even, do you really think anyone would let him hurt her again?"

Jack wonders briefly if Celeste was afraid of not being believed.

"You're not listening! You don’t understand! She did try to tell someone and look what happened!"

"What do you mean?"

"Her finger. Her pinky, like I told you.

When her mom was released, she tried to tell her what he’d done, but he claimed she came on to him, and her mom

believed him, so nothing changed. A little bit after that, he did that to her finger and made her tell everyone that it happened accidentally when they were fixing dinner."

None of this should surprise Jack—

he’s prosecuted so many cases just like it and worse—but nothing has ever hit so close to home. He’s starting to

sympathize with Claire’s desire to stay out of the fray.

"He told her it was her punishment for talking."

"She told you all this?"

"Yeah."

"Mike, don’t get mad at me for asking this, okay, but how do you know it’s true?

How do you know she’s not making it up?"
Like she’s made up so many other things
.

Michael looks over at him. In the red glow of the dashboard, Jack sees the wet remnants of tears on his cheeks. His lips contort as if he just ate something foul tasting, and his brows sit low over the blue eyes that match Jack’s own. He regards Jack warily, as if he’s not sure whether the man next to him is really his father.

"Because I
know
her, Dad," he says, and his quiet voice sounds so young and innocent, and yet so wise. Jack suddenly understands that he and Claire had it wrong. Jenny or no Jenny, Michael would have fallen for Celeste either way. "I know her, so I believe her."

As they drive through the night, past cornfields and pastures whose existences are marked at this late hour by nothing more than distant farmhouse porch lights or barbed wire fences alongside the road, Jack thinks about everything Michael told him. As a prosecutor, he and his family have always been exposed to threats from the criminals he prosecutes. Both he and Claire knew from the start it came with the package and they accepted it as one of the prices they’d have to pay for Jack to pursue a career he loved. They took the standard precautions: having an unlisted number, keeping their address out of the neighborhood and school buzz books, and once Jack was elected as DA, keeping the kids out of the spotlight. They received a few threats over the years, but none ever rose to a level that required genuine concern for their safety.

Now some guy from halfway across the country comes along, with a tie to Jack so tenuous that Jack shouldn’t have to worry about whether he poses a danger to his family. And yet he does, and the danger is a very real and distinct one, but instead of doing what Claire suggested, Jack barrels closer and closer to making himself—and Michael—the bull's-eye for Torpedo’s target practice. What the hell is he thinking?

And then he looks at Michael, dozing restlessly in the seat next to him, his mussed hair clinging to his sweaty forehead and his right hand clutching his phone, the only lifeline he has to a girl he loves, and he knows.

"Are you going to move out?"

Michael's question startles Jack, more for its content than the way it pierces the bubble of his thoughts. Thoughts that surface only when you're alone in the middle of the night.

He looks over. Michael's still curled against the door, his head still rests on the pillow he brought, but his eyes are open and staring at Jack. "You're awake."

"Are you?"

"I don't know. I mean, yeah, eventually, but not until my case gets worked out."

He's not even sure what that means.

"Are you going to live with Jenny?"

The question feels like a punch to the chest. "No. I—"

"That's why you're leaving Mom, right?

Because of Jenny?" He's relentless. Very matter of fact, but relentless.

"No, not because of Jenny . . . I mean, I'm not leaving to live with Jenny."

Nothing is coming out right. "I'm not
leaving
, okay? Yes, I'll be living somewhere else, but not with Jenny. And I'm not abandoning you or Jamie. I don't want you to think that."

"You will no longer live at our house because you're splitting up with Mom.

That's
leaving
."

Jack sighs. An attorney in the making.

"Okay. Yeah, okay. But I’m not leaving to live with Jenny. In fact, wherever I end up, you and Jamie can spend as much time with me there as you want, as much time as Mom is comfortable with."

"Then why are you moving out?"

"Mike . . ." Jack isn't so naïve to think Michael doesn't understand on some level. "What happened with Jenny really hurt Mom, and we haven't been able to get past it. We tried, but we haven't. I don't know how else to explain it. Your mom deserves to be happy, and—"

"But she doesn't want you to leave."

"No, you're right, she doesn't. Not now. She's scared, you know? But I think, with time, she'll understand, and she'll be happier."

"Or you will be."

The dig hits Jack just as Michael intended. His first instinct is to defend his decision, but no defense he might raise would placate Michael. Nor should it.

Instead, he breathes deep, tries to beat back the pain that's just as relentless as his son, and quietly acknowledges the truth. "I hope so. I hope we both are."

Michael falls silent and closes his eyes.

Just outside of Eddyville, Kentucky, Michael stirs. He sits up, disoriented, and looks around. The phone in his palm reminds him.