Nantucket Nights (17 page)

“I want you to have our baby,” he said. “I don’t want you to kill it.” He pounded his fist on the kitchen counter; it was granite, cold and unyielding against his hand. He felt tears rise. The thought of the little baby, his baby, helpless against Antoinette’s will drove him mad. How had he gotten here? Eighteen years old, in a dangerous love affair, things spinning so hideously out of his control?

Antoinette held the largest shard of glass out like a weapon, and Theo thought of her cheating husband and how that pain made Antoinette stronger, how it made her think she could do whatever she wanted.

“Antoinette?” he pleaded.

“Leave,” she said.

He returned later, when he knew she would be at the beach with his mother. He ripped her cottage apart. He swept her books off her shelves, he tore the clothes out of her closet and dumped the contents of her dresser drawers onto her bed. He smashed her wine goblets and snapped her fancy candles in half, like he was breaking bones. Before he left, he stole her red-handled hatchet from the woodpile and climbed in his Jeep, sweating, breathing hard, his heart pounding. God, was he angry! He drove to the Ting house. He walked into the living room where he had stood two months before with his father. The walls were up now. Theo swung the hatchet into the fresh plasterboard, leaving huge, garish holes. He could kill someone, he could! He could chop someone’s hands off with that hatchet, someone’s head! He swung the hatchet until the walls were a pile of powdery rubble and his arms were heavy and sore. And then suddenly it was as if his anger had drained, he’d expelled it, and he felt better. When he arrived home, in the minutes before his mother called from the Wauwinet, before Theo heard his father on the phone giving instructions, and before his father told him the news—Antoinette was missing—Theo had actually felt better.

“Baby, baby. Oh, my poor baby.”

His mother led him to her car, saying they would come back for the Jeep, saying they needed to get him home. The woman who was Antoinette but not Antoinette—her daughter, Theo realized—glared at him. A look of hatred. What could he think but that it was Antoinette looking at him? Hating him so much that she had disappeared.

“What am I going to do, Mom?” Theo said.

“You’ll do what the rest of us are doing,” his mother said. “You’ll wait.”

Theo crawled into the backseat of the Trooper, and miraculously, his mother produced a blanket and beach towels. She created a nest for him.

“You must be exhausted,” she said. “Try and sleep, Theo.”

Theo watched the diver surface and shake his head—no, nothing. “But my baby—”

His mother put a hand on his back.

“Lie down,” she said.

He lay down. The towels and blanket smelled faintly of fish. The engine started, and the car bounced over the sand, rocking him to sleep.

Karla

As they drove off Great Point, Lindsey asked Kayla to take her to the airport.

“I’ve seen enough,” Lindsey said.

Kayla was relieved; more than anything, she wanted Lindsey out of her car. No, not more than anything. More than anything, Kayla wanted to travel back in time. She wanted Antoinette safe; she wanted Theo erased from the picture. Theo, her own child, involved with Antoinette. Not Raoul at all, but Theo. Her baby, her first baby, having his own baby with her best friend. So this was Antoinette’s confession. Kayla wanted to vomit, scream, spitfire. She thought of Raoul smoothing the dirt in Antoinette’s driveway. Clearing Theo’s tracks. Because he knew! Kayla was ready to kill someone, but she settled for getting Lindsey Allerton out of her car. Kayla drove to the airport silently, avoiding all thought, the layers of hurt and betrayal that she would eventually have to peel back and examine.

Things at the airport had quieted. Kayla pulled right up in front of die terminal, and only when she retrieved Lindsey’s bag from the back did she see the black Jaguar squeeze in behind her. When she turned to hand Lindsey her bag, she saw John Gluckstern get out of his car. He was still wearing his shirt and tie, and a pair of dark suit pants. Val once told Kayla that the man didn’t own a single pair of jeans.
“A character flaw, right?”
Val said.
“He can’t relax.”
There was no way that John’s presence here was a coincidence. He must have followed them.

Kayla’s instinct was to get out of there as soon as she could. “Lindsey, I’m sorry,” Kayla said. The words clinked cheaply; they meant nothing in the face of all that had happened. Kayla wondered if she should offer to call Lindsey when she had news. Would she want to know if her mother was alive? Dead? Kayla couldn’t bring herself to exchange phone numbers for this purpose. If Lindsey wanted information, she would find a way to get it.

Before Lindsey could respond, John Gluckstern was upon them. He took Lindsey’s elbow. “Can I have a word with you before you go?” he said.

“What do you want to tell her, John?” Kayla asked.

“None of your business.”

“How can you say that?”

“Antoinette is my client, Kayla. This woman is Antoinette’s daughter. There are some things she ought to know.”

“Like what?”

John smirked. “Once again … ” he said. Then to Lindsey, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

Lindsey looked from Kayla to John. “I just want to get home.”

“Let the girl go home, John,” Kayla said. “She’s been through enough.”

“I’ll walk you to your plane,” John said.

“God, John, give it up.”

John led Lindsey toward the terminal. “If I were you, Kayla; I’d get myself a lawyer.”

Kayla stood by the side of her car and watched them walk away. From the back, especially, Lindsey looked like Antoinette, and Kayla was glad that Theo was asleep and did not see.

On her way home from the airport, Kayla listened to Theo’s soft snoring. She drove home through the state forest—thick blue-green pine trees on both sides of the road. She passed Barbara Diedrich from her quilting class, who waved. Kayla waved back automatically. She was on her island, on streets she’d driven hundreds of times, but now she felt like her surroundings had transformed. Theo and Antoinette together. The image struck her as so horribly
wrong
that the whole world seemed out of whack. And running into John Gluckstern didn’t make her feel any better; God only knew what kind of trouble he could drum up. For a minute Kayla wished that she lived in Kansas, or Nebraska, where it would be possible to drive along indefinitely—the car a kind of womb where she could keep Theo safe.

He was eighteen, though. An adult, technically. Old enough to vote, old enough to go to war, old enough to have sex and father a child. Since his ugly behavior started, Kayla had been reminiscing about Theo when he was little. The year he got mono he was eight years old. Jennifer was four and Cassidy B. eighteen months, and when Theo got sick, Kayla enrolled them in a play group three days a week so she would have time to care for Theo. They played endless games of Crazy Eights and Battleship— Theo in his pajamas in bed, his eyes glazed over, his face pink with fever. He slept for hours at a time, and Kayla checked on him every fifteen minutes. She read to him from Hardy Boys mysteries; she helped him with the math homework his teachers sent home. Long division. It was the math, though, that held Theo back. Three months of school missed due to mononucleosis, and Theo couldn’t make up the math. His teachers recommended that he repeat third grade. Theo screamed and said all the kids would call him a dummy, a retard. He didn’t want to be separated from his friends, he didn’t want anybody to think he’d “flunked.” What to do? In the end, Kayla and Raoul sided with his teachers—boys needed more time to mature, anyway; Theo could only benefit from another year—and he repeated third grade.

The idea of the Midwest intrigued Kayla. Maybe this island was the problem. Nantucket had always seemed like a refuge, but if she lived in a place that had a mall, a cineplex, an arcade, would this have happened? Maybe she was to blame for cloistering Theo away on this gray island where there was nothing to do but cruise the cobblestone streets.

How did parents survive their children? It was all so painful. Far, far more painful than growing up herself, Kayla thought, watching her children grow up.

When Kayla got home, Raoul’s red truck was in the driveway, and next to it, a blue-and-white Bronco: Jacob Anderson. Cassidy B. and Luke were in the side yard throwing a Frisbee, the picture of normality. Kayla forced herself to check the backseat. Theo was curled up in the fetal position, sound asleep among the beach towels. The poor kid. But now things were starting to make sense: Theo’s behavior of the last few weeks was due to this mess.

Kayla put down the windows and shut off the engine. She would let Theo sleep.

She stood in the yard watching Cassidy B. and Luke toss the Frisbee. They knew she was watching, and so they tried extra hard. Luke furrowed his brow and concentrated on holding the Frisbee just so before he sent it sailing through the air with a slight wobble. Cassidy B. caught it flat between her palms, a trick. Two children, as Theo had once been a child. And so, Luke and Cassidy B., too, would have to face adulthood and all its dirty surprises. That made Kayla sadder than anything else. She had no power to protect them, just as she’d had no power to protect Theo from Antoinette.

What were you doing, Antoinette?
Kayla thought. Sleeping with Theo. Pregnant with his baby.

Kayla couldn’t think of a better reason to disappear.

…

Inside, Raoul, Jacob Anderson, and Val were at the dining table eating nacho chips and drinking Coronas with limes. They stopped talking when Kayla came in. Kayla just stared. She hated them.

“Does anyone know where Theo is?” she asked.

Raoul remained cool, but Val’s face fell. Kayla’s mind flashed back to:
Antoinette, why don’t you tell us about your sex life these days? What’s been going on with you?
Raoul and Val talking in the front seat of Raoul’s truck. They all knew. Even Jacob Anderson knew, when Kayla saw him at the Tings’, when he almost kissed her. They all knew that her best friend was fucking her son and no one had told her.

“He’s at work, isn’t he?” Raoul said.

“He’s asleep in the Trooper,” Kayla said. “I found him up at Great Point. What do you suppose he was doing there?”

“Kayla—” Raoul stood up.

“Stay away from me!” she said. “You lied to me, Raoul.”

“I didn’t lie,” he said. “It was better that you didn’t know.”

“We didn’t want to hurt you,” Val said.

“You!” Kayla said, pointing at Val. She looked gorgeous, radiant with her adultery, in a sundress of red, crinkled cotton. Her gold chains glinted at her neck. “You lied, too. And what’s worse, Val, is that you’re a woman. You are my female friend. You, I should be able to trust.”

“Kayla, calm down,” Raoul said.

Kayla pulled the pregnancy test out of her purse. “Did you know Antoinette is pregnant?” she said. “Pregnant!”

“I didn’t know until last night,” Raoul said. “Val told me on the way to Antoinette’s house.”

“And who told you?” Kayla asked Val.

Val bowed her head; under the table, she and Jacob Anderson were holding hands. “Antoinette.”

“Antoinette told you? When did she tell you?”

Val shrugged. “Last week. Remember when I told you that we had lunch? Well, it was more than just lunch. Antoinette came into the office to take care of some business. We talked about things, and she told me about Theo, she told me she was pregnant. She signed a new will.”

“She signed a will?” Kayla said. This seemed like important information, something Val might have mentioned the night before. “What did it say?”

“It’s confidential,” Val said.

“I don’t care. I want to know. Did she leave everything to Theo?”

“No,” Val said. “She put everything into a trust.”

“You set up the trust?”

Val twirled her beer bottle by the neck. “I’m the attorney.”

Jacob munched a chip.

“Was she going to keep the baby?” Kayla asked. “Was the trust for the baby?”

“She said she had an appointment for an abortion,” Val said.

“What about the vandalism?” Kayla said. “It was Theo?”

Raoul led Kayla to the table. He opened a beer for her and squeezed a tiny wedge of lime into the top. “Probably,” he said. “You need to try to relax. We’re going to sort through this.”

“We just called the fire department,” Val said. “The divers didn’t find anything.”

The sliding door opened, and Kayla heard a shriek. “Mommy!”

They all turned around. Jennifer was standing in the kitchen, her face bright red.

Kayla did a mother’s scan: no bleeding, no obvious injury to her daughter’s person. Her thoughts zipped to Cassidy and Luke outside, to Theo in the car.

“What’s wrong?” Kayla said. How long had it been since Jennifer had called her
Mommy?
Three, four years? “Jennifer?”

“A phone call came to the Ogilvys,” Jennifer said, “while I was baby-sitting.”

Ed Ogilvy was the publisher of the
Inquirer and Mirror,
the island newspaper. More than once, Jennifer had come home with a story before it broke because she had heard it at the Ogilvys’ house.

“What kind of phone call?” Kayla asked, though she feared she knew.

“Someone saying Aunt Antoinette is dead. Someone saying you and Aunt Val killed her.”

“Who
said that?” Raoul asked. “Did you get a name?”

Jennifer shook her head so that her long ponytail swayed. “Anonymous.”

“Did Ed Ogilvy hear the message?” Kayla asked.

“Is Aunt Antoinette dead?” Jennifer demanded. “Did you kill her?”

“Jennifer!” Raoul said. “What kind of question is that?”

“The caller said it happened at Great Point last night,” Jennifer said. “He said you made it look like an accident, you and Aunt Val. He said you and Aunt Val were after her money.”

Val snatched her hand from Jacob’s. “Don’t worry,” Val said. “It was my husband who called. And I guarantee you he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Is Aunt Antoinette dead?” Jennifer asked.

“We don’t know, sweetie,” Kayla said. “She got lost in the water, and they haven’t been able to find her.”