Nantucket Nights (25 page)

‘I was so furious with her last night, Raoul, I could have killed her. And you. Because you knew about Theo and Antoinette. You knew and you kept it from me. I was so mad, and Jacob was just there. He was revenge on two fronts. But I regretted it as soon as it happened.” Kayla’s eyes without makeup looked very small and sad. “I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t something you can apologize for. You let Jacob fuck you.” The words were so offensive, Raoul had to lower his head and suck in some air. He needed water. “You broke your marriage vows.”

“Huh!” she said. “As if you haven’t broken them yourself.”

“I haven’t,” he said. “And believe me, there is
nothing
I would like better than to tell you right now that I
did
screw Pam Ely, but I didn’t. Because I am a married man. I believe in marriage, Kayla. At least I did until right now.”

She sat with that awhile. He could see every nuance that crossed her face.
You didn’t sleep with Pamela Ely?
Suspicion, then relief, even happiness. Then guilt, her defenses resurfacing. “You lied to me, Raoul. You lied about Theo.”

He remembered sitting across from her at Company of the Cauldron, sweating with the secret. It was an instance when he understood his two choices and he chose the easy solution over the right one. “I was trying to protect you.”

“Well, look where we are now. Theo had an affair with Antoinette and got her pregnant. He ransacked her house. Antoinette might be dead and somehow
I
am a murder suspect. Do you think
that
upsets me?”

“No one will believe it, Kayla.”

“Everyone will believe it!” she said. “I heard the messages people were leaving on the machine at home. I know there was an article in the paper.”

“The police have no evidence.”

“They have all they need: the pills, the champagne glasses, the belated phone calls. I should have called 911 right away.”

“I told you that,” Raoul said. “And there’s something else you should know. Theo destroyed the living room of the Tings’ house with an axe.”

“There was an axe in the Jeep,” Kayla said.

They were both quiet for a while, watching the violent waves.

“Where
is
Antoinette?” Raoul said.

“I wish I knew,” Kayla said. Her voice softened. “She was carrying our
grandchild,
Raoul.”

Raoul stared at the beach. He could picture the freckles across Kayla’s nose that first summer, the white straps of her bikini crossing her back in an
X.
Suddenly, his stomach didn’t feel so good.

“I can’t deal with this thing about Jacob,” Raoul said. “Maybe I’m being macho, maybe I’m being overly sensitive, but I can’t have Jacob hanging around in our marriage. The idea of Jacob, I mean. I’m thinking
… about separation.” Raoul couldn’t bring himself to say the word
divorce.
Divorce, as far as Raoul understood it, was something that happened to other people—people who thought it was okay to give up, walk out, try their luck elsewhere. It didn’t happen to Raoul and Kayla.

“How can I blame you?” Kayla said. She buried her face in her hands. “I ruined everything.” She sniffled. “These last two days have been awful. And now I’ve contributed to the mess. I wanted to contribute! I wanted to be as bad, as lawless, as everybody else.”

“You succeeded,” he said.“I’m going to need some time and space to think about this, Kayla. Time alone.”

“So you want me to move out?” Kayla said.

“No,” Raoul said. “Yes. Maybe. A vacation, maybe. You could go on vacation.”

“I don’t deserve a vacation,” Kayla said. “You should go on vacation.”

“I have work,” Raoul said.

“I don’t want to go on vacation,” Kayla said.

“We don’t have to decide right now,” Raoul said. “Let’s just go home.” He had to believe that dealing with this would be easier under his roof, within the walls that he himself had constructed. “Let’s go home and help our son.”

At home, Kayla went upstairs to check on Theo. Raoul poured himself a tall glass of water and found Luke and Cassidy in the living room, parked in front of the TV. A show about hot-air ballooning.

“Where’s Jennifer?” Raoul asked.

“Beach,” Luke said.

“Did anyone call?” Raoul asked.

“The phone rang,” Cassidy B. said. “But we didn’t answer.”

“Thank you. You two can go outside and play.”

 “Do we have to?” Luke said.

 “Yes.”

 Reluctantly, they picked themselves up off the floor. Raoul shut off the TV.

Kayla yelled down from upstairs. “Kids, where’s Theo?”

Luke and Cassidy B. were quiet. Luke scratched a mosquito bite. Raoul checked the driveway—all the cars were there.

“Tell us where he went,” Raoul said.

Luke stared at his father, cold and calm. “He went to the police station.”

“The police station?”

“He called them,” Cassidy B. said. “They came and picked him up.”

“He called
them?“
Raoul said. “You’re sure about that?”

Cassidy B. put her index finger to the corner of her mouth as though she had to scan the far reaches of her memory. “He called to see if they’d found Aunt Antoinette. And when they said no, he asked if they could come get him. He said he had things to tell.”

“They came in a squad car,” Luke said. “We saw. But no lights.”

Kayla descended the stairs, looking pale. “You two go outside,” she said. “I’ll be out in a minute to throw the Frisbee.”

“I’m sick of Frisbee,” Luke said. But he and Cassidy obediently tied their sneakers and left the house through the sliding glass door.

“I’ll get Theo,” Raoul said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

“Thank you,” Kayla said. “I can’t deal with that detective again.”

Raoul’s cell phone rang. The phone was there on the coffee table where he’d left it. He and Kayla stared at it.

“Leave it be,” Raoul said. “I’m going.”

At first, the police officer who sat behind the glass at the front desk wouldn’t tell Raoul whether Theo was there.

“Listen, I’m his father. I don’t know how much more plainly I can put it to you. Do you want me to bribe you?” Raoul slid some money underneath the glass. “Here, take this. It’s all yours if I can see my son.”

The officer eyed the money disdainfully. He stopped filling out his piddly, unimportant form, smoothed the front of his blue uniform shirt, and disappeared into the back.

Raoul took a deep breath, looked around. The place was a dungeon. They should remodel. Put in some windows.

A door clanked open, and Paul Henry stuck his head into the waiting room. “Raoul?” he said. “Follow me.”

Raoul trailed Paul Henry down the hall. It smelled medicinal, like Ben Gay. Or maybe that smell was coming from Paul Henry. Raoul wished he hadn’t drunk so much the night before. He wished he’d never hired Jacob Anderson. The thought of Jacob made Raoul’s stomach swoop.
Jacob inside his wife. Theo,
he thought,
what have you done?

Behind a door marked PRIVATE, Theo sat at a long table, wiping his eyes with balled-up tissues. When he saw Raoul, he cried harder. It embarrassed Raoul to watch Theo cry in front of the other men.
Buck up,
Raoul wanted to say.
Be strong.
Except that wasn’t how he and Kayla had raised Theo at all; they’d raised him to express his emotions honestly. Raoul put his hands on Theo’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, buddy,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“This is all my fault,” Theo said.

The detective sat across from Theo, writing on a yellow legal pad. He raised his head, pushed his glasses up his nose. The guy who had yelled at Raoul for kicking dirt around in Antoinette’s driveway. The guy who had bullied Kayla. There wasn’t an ounce of emotion in the guy’s face. But that wasn’t exactly true—the detective looked interested. This was just one hell of an interesting day at work for him. Raoul narrowed his eyes.

“What’s going on?”

The detective leaned back in his chair, scratched his head with a pencil. “Theo, here, was explaining a few things.”

“Such as?”

“He admitted to ransacking Ms. Riley’s cottage. He admitted to vandalizing a work site out in Monomoy with a hatchet.” The detective paused. “You know about that? It’s your work site.”

Raoul nodded.

“Yes,” the detective said. “One of your crew called to report it. Theo also told us that Ms. Riley was in fact pregnant and that she had an appointment to get an abortion on … Tuesday, right, Theo? This coming Tuesday?”

Theo put his hands over his face. He broke into high-pitched, breathless sobs and for a minute, the men listened to the sound of Theo’s crying. Raoul closed his eyes, tightened his grip on Theo’s shoulders.

The detective cleared his throat. “Theo told us that he was against Ms. Riley getting an abortion, and he thinks she may have disappeared on purpose—to carry out her plans without any interference from him.”

“She wanted to get away from me,” Theo said. “Because she knew I would do anything to keep her from killing our baby.” Theo looked at Raoul, and Raoul remembered him vividly as a little boy. Tough, funny, afraid of nothing. When he was only a year old, he used to sit inside his toy box and row it like a dinghy. When he was learning to talk, he repeated words again and again, and one week he said nothing but “backhoe loader.” As the oldest, Theo had taught Raoul everything he knew about being a parent. He broke all the new ground. Even now.

“Theo wants us to place him under arrest,” Paul Henry said quietly. “He feels he needs to be punished.”

“I wish I were dead,” Theo said.

Raoul squeezed Theo’s shoulders. Nausea overcame him, an urgent sense of personal shame. He was going to vomit. “Is he arrested?”

“No,” Paul Henry said. “In fact, I think you should take him home right now. We’ll deal with the vandalism charges later.”

Theo started crying again. “They’re not even going to look for her, Dad. They’re not even going to try.”

“We’re looking for her, son,” Paul Henry said.

“The divers are going back out this afternoon,” the detective said.

Theo shot up. “She’s not in the water!” he said. “I know she’s not. She’s not dead and my baby
is not dead!”

Raoul backed away; the other two men were quiet. Raoul studied the detective’s face. It was strained, and Raoul realized that the guy was trying to suppress a smile.

“You think this is funny?” Raoul said. “You’re looking at an eighteen-year-old kid crying over a woman who’s pregnant with his child and that
amuses
you?”

The detective let out a giggle, and the giggle turned into a laugh.

Paul Henry tried, but he could not contain Raoul. No, not Raoul who had woken up that morning to find that his wife had cheated on him, his son had vandalized his workplace, and the whole island thought his wife was a murderer. Raoul jumped over the table, and before he could think better of it he had the detective jacked up against the wall, his glasses half-cocked, his face blanching. Raoul held him there a minute—this was the time to say something meaningful—but Raoul had nothing to say. Raoul hit the detective as hard as he could. It was an odd, sick feeling, connecting with another human being in that way. The detective’s face gave like a piece of overripe fruit. It caved in, smashed, smooshed, soft and wet. There was blood everywhere, but before Raoul could truly appreciate the damage, and before he could pull his arm back to hit the motherfucker again, there were other officers in the room, and Raoul was facedown on the table, hands pinned behind him. There was a lot of shouting, and the cold steel of handcuffs pinching his wrists.

Raoul raised his head. Theo was standing against the wall watching the men shackle Raoul. But he wasn’t crying. He was shaking his head in disbelief, admiration even, and Raoul smiled at him. A real smile. Raoul was crazy—this wasn’t a good example for his son at all, this wasn’t the way he’d brought his children up to act. But hitting the detective had felt honest, and Raoul smiled.

Theo smiled back.
Thank you,
he mouthed.
Thank you.

…

They put Raoul in the holding cell and let him sit there for hours, or so it seemed. Raoul vomited— finally, gratefully—into the toilet. The blasted cream horn. He lay down on the cot and drifted in and out of consciousness. In his mind he hit the detective over and over again. He wondered what would happen to him. Would he have to go to court? Probably. The prick detective would press charges; Raoul’s name would be smeared across the police blotter of the
Inquirer and Mirror
on Thursday. This was a downward spiral, worse following bad. How would it end?

The sound of Kayla’s voice roused Raoul from his dream-sleep.

“Raoul?”

Raoul lifted his head from the dirty mattress, which had probably absorbed the bodily fluids of dozens of drunks. Kayla stood on the other side of the bars, her blond hair glowing in the faint light of the hallway. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going.”

Raoul signed papers at the reception desk, papers diligently typed by the officer behind the glass barrier. Kayla had paid $105 to spring Raoul from the cell; he had a court date in six weeks. He needed a lawyer.

Before they left the police station, the detective appeared on the other side of the glass. His nose was mottled and misshapen; he had half a black eye. He pointed at Raoul, and when he spoke, it sounded like he had a bad cold.

“You, sir, are going to pay for this.”

“Feel safer behind glass, Detective?” Raoul asked.

The detective sneered at him and Kayla. He touched his nose gingerly and shook his head. “You two are quite a pair,” he said. “You two deserve each other.”

“I’m sorry,” Raoul said when they got in the Trooper. “I was out of line. None of us needed that.”

“I’m glad you hit him,” Kayla said. “I hate that man.”

Well, it won’t look very good. I’m going to need a lawyer.”

“You’ll get a lawyer.”

Raoul noticed she said
you
instead of
we.

“Should we stop for pizza or something?” he said. “For the kids?”

“Sure,” Kayla said. “Theo won’t eat. He’s locked himself in his room again. Jennifer was still at the beach when I left. But Cass and Luke will like pizza. I’d like pizza.”