The Perfect Letter (9 page)

The night he left, Jake had come to meet her, to tell her he'd be home soon. They slipped into the hayloft after dark, where he told her where he was going and when he'd be back, kissing her long and deeply. “Don't forget about me,” he said.

“Never.” Two weeks was hardly long enough for her to forget him, she wanted to say, but then they'd never been apart that long before.

“Look,” he said, pulling up one sleeve of his white T-shirt, “I had it done today.”

On the back of one arm was the small dark shape of a bat. “It's our secret. To remind us of the day in the cave, so I can carry you with me forever.”

Afterward they'd made love in the hayloft and she'd touched the tattoo gently, feeling the place where the skin was raised, the permanent reminder of the day when they'd first declared their love to each other. She'd loved it, and him, more than ever. It didn't matter where he went, she'd be with him.

Whatever their families did to keep them apart, though, Leigh and Jake weren't deterred. He called her every day he was in Kentucky, sent her letters almost by the hour. They swore their love for each other, swore they'd be together no matter what his father and her grandfather had to say about it.

All they had to do, Jake decided, was grow up. When Leigh reached the magic age of eighteen, they'd be free to do as they liked. They had to be patient, and wait, and it would turn out all right in the end. Leigh wasn't sure she could wait that long, but Jake told her to keep her grades up and her nose clean, and before long they'd be old enough
to go where they wanted, live how they wanted. “It's just a few more months,” he said.

“A year,” she wheedled. “A whole year, Jake.”

“
Just
a year,” he said. “Be strong. I know you can be.”

So Leigh did what he said: she kept her grades up, stayed out of any serious trouble. She didn't party every weekend like most of the kids she knew; if she wasn't at home doing homework or chores, she was with Chloe, maybe hanging out in Austin, seeing some live shows, watching Chloe audition for band after band. Sometimes Jake would sneak away and meet up with them. Leigh always called home to let her grandfather know where she was; she kept her curfew religiously, stopped talking back to the old man. She and Jake would come home in separate cars, at different times, as if they hadn't been together.

She would give Gene no reason to come down on her. She was respectful and courteous and did exactly what she liked when he wasn't looking, just the way her mother had done, and it worked: Gene relaxed, stopped arguing with her so much. As long as he didn't know the truth, it seemed, he was happy.

During her senior year Leigh was at the top of her high-school class. She'd already been admitted to Harvard—she'd hardly been able to believe it when the acceptance package arrived—but even before she held the letter in her hands, she'd known it would be impossible to live without Jake in Boston. She knew in her heart that she couldn't take classes and make new friends and talk to Jake once or twice a week, go months and months without seeing him, touching him.

After Christmas, Leigh started talking about going to the University of Texas instead, staying close to home. Jake didn't like that, said she was being shortsighted, that most people would give anything they had, everything, to get into the best college in the country. “I can't let you give up Harvard,” he said. “Not on my account.”

“I can't go now,” Leigh said one night not long after New Year's. The
hayloft was cool in midwinter, and she could almost see her breath in front of her face. Jake sat up and put her on his lap, wrapping them both in a heavy wool blanket. “Let's just say I go to UT. I can commute from home, or maybe get an apartment with Chloe in Austin. You can work with your dad until you get your own training business going. Then we can go anywhere we want, do anything we want.”

“You're going to Harvard. Period.”

“Now you sound like my grandfather.”

“The old man's just looking out for you.”

“Ugh. Now you
really
sound like him.”

“We will call a lot, see each other over vacations. This is your dream, your chance to get out of Burnside.”

“It won't be the same without you.” Leigh shivered, though not just from the cold. “I mean it, I think I might die if I have to go months and months without seeing you. Two weeks at Christmas last year was torture.”

Jake was thoughtful for a minute, quiet. In the time since he'd graduated high school he'd grown quieter in general, more serious. She knew he had a lot on his mind—it wasn't easy working for his dad and living on someone else's place, a position that was always in jeopardy because he was in love with the boss's granddaughter. For weeks she'd felt it: Jake had a lot on his mind. He was getting ready to make some kind of decision, and for weeks she had dreaded hearing what it might be. Moving away. Getting a job someplace, starting his own business. Leaving her behind.

Finally he said, “Let's get married.”

For a minute Leigh wasn't sure she'd heard him right. “What?”

“You and me, kid. What do you say?”

“You aren't serious.”

“As a heart attack. I've always known I was going to marry you one day. Why should we wait? We'll get married and go to Boston together.”

“My grandfather will cut me off, for one thing.”

“I don't care.”

“I can't pay for school on my own. Pop's money is the only reason I can afford Harvard.”

“We won't tell him. You can live off campus. We'll get an apartment. You tell him you got a roommate.”

“You think no one's going to notice you're gone?”

“I'll tell my dad I'm going back to Kentucky to live with some friends.”

“We won't be able to keep it up for long.”

“Sure we will. Long enough to get settled, anyway. After that it won't matter. You think your granddad will shoot me if we're married? No way. Not when it's all legal.”

Leigh imagined her grandfather doing exactly that, showing up unannounced in Boston one day, just dropping in. Wanted to see how you're doing, Leela. Making sure you're okay. And then what he would do if he found Jake there, if he saw that they were living together. She imagined police sirens and ambulances and Jake in a body bag, and she wasn't entirely sure she was exaggerating.

But maybe Jake was right—if they were already married, if they were respectably and legally wed, maybe her grandfather would manage to live with it eventually. He was old-fashioned; he believed in going to church on Sunday, in holy matrimony, in babies born in wedlock. He might not like it, but he wouldn't punish Leigh after the deed was done. Her mother had come home pregnant and unmarried—that was what had galled Gene, that she'd had a child without a father. Leigh started to think Jake was right, that marriage was their only way out of this mess. She'd have college and Jake and her grandfather's grudging approval. In time he'd learn to accept Jake. He'd have to.

Jake flung the blanket off his shoulders and got down on one knee,
taking her hand in his. “I love you, Leigh Elizabeth Merrill. Will you marry me? Will you please be my wife?”

Leigh could hardly breathe, but she choked out a yes. Jake gave a yelp of joy and caught her in a tight embrace, and they made love in the darkness of the hayloft with the moon shining through the window, secure in the knowledge that they would now be together forever, that there would be no force the world could muster that would keep them apart.

It all had to be done quickly, but legally. A few days after she turned eighteen, at the end of June, they'd go on down to the courthouse and get married. That summer Jake would tell his father that a couple of his friends back in Lexington had invited him to share an apartment with them, that he'd get a job at one of the stables there, start making his own way. Then he'd pack up his old Ford truck, drive up to Boston, and meet Leigh. They'd find an apartment. Jake would find a job. Leigh had some money she'd saved up—not a lot, but enough to live on for a few months until her college fund from Gene came through. So simple.

Afterward it was all they could do to keep their plans a secret. Nearly every night Jake would come to her window, tossing his little pebbles on the glass—
tap, tap—
and she'd climb out to him, kissing him fiercely in the darkness. They'd go to their place in the hayloft, lie on the blanket in the soft straw, and make love eagerly, struggling to keep their voices down, keep from getting caught. They clung to each other in a haze of sex and sweat, Jake's mouth devouring her neck, her breasts, Jake's hands pinning her down while she writhed beneath him and came so hard she thought she might faint. Her cries were so loud that Jake often had to hold his hand over her mouth to keep her grandfather from hearing a quarter mile off.

When it was over they would talk about their plans, the kind of apartment they'd look for in Boston, the classes Leigh would take, the kind of job Jake might find. Leigh said there'd be plenty of places near
the city where he could look for a stable-hand job, but Jake didn't want to, said he didn't want to trade on his father's name, or Gene's, not after they were married. It was just like him to be too proud, to try to prove himself. The Honorable Jacob Rhodes, Chloe always called him. Instead he wanted to learn a trade, maybe take some classes himself at the community college. “Maybe I'll try tending bar,” he'd say. “That might be fun. Get to meet a lot of girls that way.”

Leigh had swatted him on his bare ass. “Like hell. After we're married, no more girls for you, mister. Besides, you're not old enough yet to tend bar.”

“They won't know that.” He pulled out the fake ID, the one he'd used a bunch of times to sneak into bars in Austin. “Got me a little insurance.”

“Oh good. I'm sure they won't do a background check.”

“I'll just use my considerable charm.”

“Or you'll sound like a talking ass.”

“Won't be the first time,” he said, and stopped her from replying with a kiss.

The stress on both of them, the waiting, was palpable. Leigh was impatient with her grandfather again, started talking back in ways she had never before dared. The good sense of their plan, the safety she felt now being so close to her goal, made her reckless. She called Gene a snob, an elitist, whenever Jake's name came up, said there was nothing wrong with Jake except his lack of money, and for long periods of time she and Gene would go through the house without speaking, barely acknowledging each other's presence.

Jake started arguing with his father more often, too. She'd find the two of them in the barn from time to time, coming around the corner to hear Ben's voice raised to a furious whisper.
You'll do what I tell you to do, and that's that,
he'd say, and Jake would answer,
You know it's wrong. You know, but you won't stop it.
The two of them would fall silent when
they saw Leigh approaching, and she'd give Jake a poignant look, as if to say,
This will all be worth it later. It will all be worth it, I swear.

Of course it wasn't Leigh that Jake and his father were arguing about, but she wouldn't know that until later, until the trial. When she found out what they were really fighting over, she'd felt foolish, even duped.

The truth was that Ben and his partner, Dale Tucker, had been doping her grandfather's horses for years, using injections of steroids to cover up limps caused by training injuries, to cover up their own mistakes. They'd started to pull Jake into their secret, too—all those trips he'd taken for his father, Leigh would find out later, were to pick up the drugs for them, to hide what they were up to.

Jake had argued with them that it was wrong, that it was Gene Merrill's reputation on the line as well as their own. That the horses would suffer for their mistakes. But he hadn't stopped, had he? He'd kept right on going, picking up the steroids, helping Dale and his father break the rules. He hadn't told anyone about the doping, not even Leigh, not once in all the nights they spent together. He lied to her about his trips out of state, the work he did for his father. The delivery of the horses was always a pretext, a way for Ben and Dale to keep their noses clean. Ben could have sent anyone to deliver horses, but he sent his own son to make sure that the secret stayed hidden.

It wasn't until later, at the trial, that details of the doping scheme came out. Jake pleaded guilty to the drug charges and was sentenced to four years on that count. Afterward, at the murder trial, he would take the stand and admit what he and Dale Tucker had been up to, admit his own role in the scheme, although he never mentioned his father's involvement. Jake put the whole thing on Dale. It was Dale Tucker whom he had gone to see in the barn the night of the shooting, he said. Not a lame horse, the way he and Leigh had first said.

“And why were you wanting to meet with Dale Tucker when you got back to the ranch?” asked Jake's lawyer.

“Dale was anxious to get his hands on the steroids,” Jake said. “I'd just come from Florida with a shipment. He needed them for the farm's best colt, which had come up lame in practice earlier in the week. He was racing in less than a week, and if he didn't improve in a hurry he was going to miss the whole season. There was hundreds of thousands in breeding fees on the line. Millions, probably.”

“So you fetched the drugs, and brought them back to give to Dale?”

“I did. I got back late and met Dale in the barn.”

“Then why did you argue? If you picked up the steroids as requested, and you were planning to give them to him, why didn't you simply hand them over and walk away?”

Jake raised his head to look at Leigh, just for a moment. “I told Dale I wouldn't do it anymore, fetching the dope for him. That I was done lying. That's why he went after me, because I told him I was going to tell Leigh everything. He said he'd kill me before he'd let that happen.”