Lake News (48 page)

“It'd be yours,” John reminded her, then quickly reached out and caught her wrist when, stung by either his bluntness or what she thought might be smugness, she started to rise. “Please,” he said humbly, desperate in his way. “Nothing you say is for public consumption. None of it will appear in print. I need my conclusions supported, that's all.”

“For Lily.”

“Yes.”

Slowly she sat down. She studied him, looking torn.

“And for me,” John added honestly. “I need to understand.”

Her eyes fell to her cup and stayed there another minute. Finally, she raised them. “Neil was the privileged child. He wasn't lying when he said he and Terry weren't close. He was only marginally aware of what was going on in that house.”

“How could he not see?” John's own excuse was distance. He had been physically gone when Donny had acted up.

Anita became the therapist, perceptive and patient. “Neil saw what he could bear to take in. The rest went past him. He's seen more in hindsight in recent years, and even more since the Rossetti scandal broke.”

“Was Rossetti the problem in the Sullivan marriage?”

“Yes. Jean—Neil's mother—knew that Rossetti
planned to enter the seminary, but she thought she could change his mind. Obviously, she couldn't. They were together for more than eight years, and then he was gone. It was like she was widowed, or jilted. Lots of conflicting emotions. Very unsettling. She turned around and married the first guy who came along.”

“On the rebound.”

“Apparently. There was little love there. James had a drinking problem and, yes, a jealousy problem. Worse, he was a devout Catholic.”

“Why worse? Wouldn't that have helped? Given them something in common?”

Anita shook her head. “It made him more conflicted. He hated Rossetti for all he was worth, but he couldn't lift a hand against Neil. Neil was going to be a priest. That made him untouchable. So James had huge amounts of negative energy that had nowhere to go, and every blessed time he looked at Neil, he thought of Rossetti.”

“Because of the priest thing?”

“And the timing. Neil was born nine months into the marriage. James was convinced he was Rossetti's son.”

Whoa!
John thought. An interesting twist. “Is he?”

“No. Absolutely not. Rossetti was out of her life two months before Jean married Neil's father. Neil was barely seven pounds at birth. No eleven-month baby, that one.”

“Why the problem then?”

“Jealousy isn't always rational. James convinced himself that the baby was Rossetti's. He even went so far as to report it to Church authorities. Fifty years ago, people didn't do DNA testing, but the math spoke for itself.
The Church dismissed it, but James didn't. And Jean? She would alternately admit it and deny it.”

“Admit
it? Why would she do that?”

“Wishful thinking. From what I gather, from what Neil said, she grew delusionary as the reality of her life and her marriage set in. Part of her
wanted
to think Neil was Rossetti's son—wanted to believe she had a little bit of him with her forever. So there you have Neil, whose presence aggravated his father, and you have the father, who wouldn't take it out on him but took it out on Jean.”

“And on Terry.”

“And on Terry,” Anita admitted, sounding resigned. “Neil coped by focusing on life outside the home. He was forever doing things at school or spending time with friends. When he left for college, he left for good.”

That sounded familiar. John left for good, too—or so he had thought. “Didn't he try to help Terry? Or his mother? Couldn't he get someone else to help? Report it to someone at school?
Demand
that his father lay off them? Physically put his body between the father and them?”

“He was a
kid,”
she said with conviction. “He wasn't God or a saint, much as Jean wanted to think it. He was a kid whose own life at home wasn't as perfect as the story sounds.”

John let out a breath. He could identify with that. He felt soothed hearing Anita say it.

But she wasn't done. “You're a guy. Imagine having a mother who made you the substitute for a lost love. Imagine the responsibility of that. Imagine the hovering and the doting. Imagine the
smothering
. There wasn't
anything sexual in it, but it was oppressive. She fawned over him. And what could he do? He knew it was sick. He wanted to rebel. But she had so little pleasure in life, and she took that belt for him. She was his mother and he loved her. So he tried to please her. Tried to be perfect. Tried to emulate Rossetti.” She took a breath and straightened. “If you don't think he resents Rossetti even a little himself, think again.”

When it was explained that way, John figured he would. “Then it didn't bother him when Terry broke the scandal.”

“Not at first. He could easily buy into the idea of Rossetti having a woman. It infuriated him that Rossetti would take up with another woman after he had broken Jean's heart, but he believed it was possible. So here's a priest doubting a Cardinal, and he felt guilty for that. Then came the official apology, and hours of soul searching and prayer for Neil. Gradually he felt sorrow, then shame.”

“Not enough to speak up when the papers kept going after Lily,” John charged, because his compassion for the man had limits. Neil led a sheltered life.

But Anita was suddenly fired up. “Wait a minute. What about the Cardinal? Did he speak up? No, he didn't. He didn't want to open himself up to speculation about lovers and illegitimate children, and with good cause. Can you imagine the field day the press would have had with that? Can you imagine the
havoc?
It would have been disproven, but the stench would have lingered, and Neil would have been right in the middle.”

John couldn't argue with that. As angry as he was at Rossetti for abandoning Lily, Anita had a point.

She grew beseeching. “So now you know. That gives you power over us. You can turn around and use what I've told you”—she held up a hand—“even though you promised not to, or you can respect Neil's privacy and the privacy of his family. He's a good man. He may not have been there for Terry, and he'll carry the guilt of that to his grave, but he's helped countless other kids who've gone through nightmares of their own.”

She sat back and lifted her coffee cup.

That gives you power over us
. John kept hearing that sentence. It made him feel dirty. Not that he was sorry she had told him what she had. Here was motive reinforced. He couldn't wait to tell Lily. And he wouldn't put this into print.
That
would be dirty. It would be against everything he was trying to do with his life. But Anita didn't know that.

“Why have you told me all this?” he asked.

She set down the coffee cup and took a deep breath. The therapist was gone. There was a naked look in her eyes now. “Because I've watched him suffer. I've watched the secret swell up in his throat until he comes close to choking on it. I like him—okay, love him. If he weren't a priest, I might do something about that. Since he is, I'll sleep alone. But I want him happy. If this gives Lily Blake a better understanding of why Terry did what he did, some of the burden will be lifted from Neil's shoulders. That's it. That's all. That's what I want.”

Lily's muscles had ached the night before, but after one hot bath then and another in the morning, she was ready to go again. Maida was amenable. Oralee didn't blink at the change. Bub readily deferred to her. The apple pickers coming from the orchards gave her their tallies, since she was the one in the yard.

When Maida drove off that afternoon to bid at auction for a backhoe, Lily was in charge. She handled things in the cider house and, when they finished for the day, used the phone in Maida's office to track down a late shipment of plastic bottle caps.

All in all, it was a grand, proud, Sousa afternoon. No matter that the foliage color had crested and was starting to fade; the lowering sun set off sparks on the tips of diehard maples and birches. She drove home with the radio blaring and a sense of satisfaction in her bones. Her pleasure doubled when she saw John's truck parked at the cottage. She had missed him.

He was sitting on the tailgate and jumped off when
she pulled up. “You're late,” he said, but he was smiling.

She smiled back. “Lots to do at the old homestead. So?” She had to know. “How'd it go?”

“It went… great.” As they walked toward the porch, he told her about Father Neil Sullivan, the therapist Anita Monroe, and more than she had ever thought to know about Francis Rossetti.

“They thought Neil was his
son?”
she asked.

“Terry's father did. His mother sometimes did. No one else seriously believed it, but Anita was right. There'd have been hell to pay if the press had gotten wind of it. So even if he wasn't being fair to you, I can almost understand why Rossetti stayed in the background once the
Post
issued its apology. He didn't want more attention drawn to himself.”

More attention,
Lily mused. It was remarkable, really. “He was covered in such depth after his elevation. How could they not have found this?”

“Easy. Who knows about it? James and Jean Sullivan are dead. Neil wasn't talking. Terry wasn't talking. Church officials James might have talked to once are either dead or not talking.”

Lily looked out at the lake, trying to digest it all. “At least there's a reason why he's been so silent. John?”

“Hmm?”

“We can't tell.”

“I know.”

“I'm sorry. I don't mean to kill your excitement. But we can't put this in print.”

“I know. Besides, it isn't excitement.”

She studied his face. “Then what?”

He frowned, but the frown didn't hold. Brow furrows faded and smoothed. When he looked at her, his face held a startling calm. “Relief. Peace.”

“Understanding,” she added.

He nodded. “It doesn't mean we can't use the rest. None of that has to do with Neil or with Rossetti. Just Terry. Poor guy. He won't be pleased.”

“No,” Lily said and felt a germ of regret. “He wants fame. He wants a name for himself.”

“He's manipulative and possessive.”

“Controlling. Like his father?”

“Probably.”

“I can empathize,” she said. When John looked puzzled, she explained. “Needing his mother's love and going without. I had my dad, at least. Terry had neither. So he's run through three wives. Desperate for love, but can't sustain a relationship.”

“You aren't having second thoughts about exposing him, are you?”

“No,” she said without pause. In a split second, she could refocus on what Terry had done to her. “I need my name back. I need my freedom.”

John hugged her then, and she smiled. She had missed this last night—the closeness as much as the sex. She had so much more than Terry Sullivan ever would. All things considered, she was a lucky woman.

“Hungry?” he asked.

She nodded against his chest. She was ready for lightness. After a long day of work, food would do it.

“Let's go to Charlie's.”

She stopped smiling, drew back, looked up. “Us?”

John glanced around. No, no one else was there.

“Uh, I don't know,” she said, unnerved.

“You survived Gus's funeral.”

“That was different. I didn't have a choice.”

“Now you do,” he said and waited.

Thursday nights were big at Charlie's, second only to Saturday nights in terms of the crowd. The first public singing Lily had ever done outside of church had been on a Thursday night in Charlie's back room. She hadn't been there since she was sixteen, five days before she had gone in a car with Donny Kipling.

“Is it the same?” she asked John. Back then, Charlie Senior had run the show. Thursday nights, the podium had always been reserved for the new, the young, the up-and-coming.

“Pretty much,” John said.

Curious in spite of herself, she asked a cautious “Who's playing?”

“A group from Middlebury. Two guitars, a violin, and a cello. They're folk with a pop twist.”

Lily liked folk. She liked pop. With a little anonymity, she would have been game. But this was Lake Henry. Even apart from any scandal, there was no anonymity here.

“People will talk,” she said.

“Does that bother you?”

The question was absurd. Aside from Poppy, who was her sister and didn't count, John was her best friend in Lake Henry. She saw him every day, had slept with him for six of the last seven nights. He was smart, personable, and handsome. Except for his occupation, she loved
everything about him. Did she mind being seen with him?