Chapter Seventeen

The first thing Emily said when she opened the door was, "I knew Greg wasn't gay."

She was in a very-white nightgown at her very-white summer house in the tony (very-white?) Hamptons. She and Greg had bought the beach house for $18 million. Myron knew this because Win had helped with the financing.

"Where's Jeremy?" Myron asked.

"Where's your car?"

"I took a car service. Where's Jeremy?"

"His plane landed half an hour ago. He should be here soon."

"Where is he flying in from?"

"He would only tell me it was someplace overseas. You know his rules of engagement." She backed up so Myron could step inside. "So what happened?"

"I searched for Greg."

"Right, I figured that."

"The feds were tracking me. When I found him, so did they."

"And he was with a woman, right?"

"Yes."

"So my husband ran off with another woman."

Myron looked at her. "I thought you were married in name only."

"We were, but I was—am?—still his wife. Why not tell me he met someone? I would have been fine with it. Why would he just run off like that?"

"I don't know. He said something about running away and escaping."

"Do you think he killed Cecelia?"

Myron ignored the question. "I need you to think, Emily."

"About?"

"What's Greg's real connection to Cecelia Callister?"

"You asked me that on the phone. I've been racking my brain."

"And?"

"I don't think he was sleeping with her."

"Okay."

"But he might have been."

"Helpful," Myron said.

"Hey, what do you want from me? I don't know."

"If it matters, Greg told me he hadn't."

"Yeah, what else is he going to say? But…" Emily hesitated. "This is probably a big nothing."

"But?"

"But you know how everyone keeps talking about how Cecelia the supermodel was murdered?"

"Right."

"I was thinking—what about her son? Clay. Clay was killed too."

"The theory is that he was trying to defend her."

"Right, I know. And that's why I don't think this is a big deal."

"But?"

"But I'm just trying to connect all the dots," Emily said. Then, thinking better of it, she said, "I don't mean connecting. There's no connection. Just dots."

"But?" Myron tried again.

"Cecelia was married to Ben Staples. Greg and I went out with them a few times. I told you that."

"Right. And you said Greg liked him."

"Yes. Look, you're asking for something, right? Anything?"

"Go ahead."

"Cecelia and I had lunch at the Palm Court. This was, what, twenty-five years ago? She told me she'd been raped. That wasn't the word she used. I mean, being a supermodel back in that era. The shit men did to you. The shit she took."

"Who raped her?"

"She wouldn't say."

"Did you ask?"

"Of course I asked," Emily snapped. "But it was a different world back then. Cecelia was trying to move into acting. A producer invited her up to his hotel room. Now we know all about it, but back then? Me Too wasn't even a glimmer in the eye. Cecelia actually tried to laugh it off. Like it was no big deal. I remember taking her hand, telling her we should go to someone. Get her help. She shook me off. She forced up a smile on that beautiful face and insisted she was fine. But she wasn't. She withdrew. I tried to call her a few times, but she stopped talking to me. Next thing I know she's pregnant and getting divorced from Ben."

"So you think…?"

"I don't think anything," Emily said. "But you asked me to rack my brain, and I started thinking back. I should have done more for her. Why did she confide in me, Myron? We weren't all that close. It had to be because she wanted help, right? I should have made her go to the police, but the truth is, nobody would have cared. She'd have been ruined. That's what I thought too at the time: If she goes forward… I mean, they would have said she went to a man's hotel room voluntarily, what did she expect?"

Emily hugged herself then, standing there in the very-white nightgown, looking up at Myron with something he couldn't quite read in her eyes. Myron wasn't sure how to play it, so he went with the obvious straight-up question.

"Did you tell Greg about it?"

"About Cecelia being raped?"

"Yes."

"No, not a word. She told me in confidence. But when Cecelia and Ben got divorced, like I said, Greg liked Ben. We got him in the divorce, as they say. Ben couldn't believe she'd do something like this to him—divorce him while having his child."

Myron said nothing.

"Anyway, Greg was pissed off about it."

"But not so pissed off he'd carry a grudge for, what, more than two decades and then kill her?"

"Uh no. Like I said, dots. Nothing connecting them."

Myron nodded. "Thanks. I appreciate you telling me."

"Sure."

"Any idea where Ben Staples lives now?"

"I think he's in the city."

They both saw the headlights as a car pulled into the driveway. They walked together toward the front door. Emily opened it and stepped out onto the front yard. Myron followed her. They stood side by side as the back car door opened and their son stepped out. Jeremy wore a blue suit. The driver popped the trunk. Jeremy circled to the back to retrieve his duffel bag. As he did, Emily, her eyes on her son, her only son, tapped Myron's hand with hers. Myron looked at her now. There were tears in her eyes. There were tears in his too. He knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same thing. They had messed up. They had done some terrible wrongs in their life. But if they hadn't, if they had done the right thing back then, this boy, this spectacular boy, would not be here.

Jeremy thanked the driver and started up the walk. When he spotted his biological parents standing side by side in the front yard, he pulled up. First, he looked at Myron. Then he looked at Emily.

"Ooookay," Jeremy said, stretching the word out. "This is weird."

Then Jeremy's face broke into a smile, a huge smile, a smile that echoed the best part of both of his parents.

"Don't worry, guys. It's a good weird."

Myron and Emily sat on opposite ends of the couch and waited in silence while Jeremy quickly showered and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. When he was ready, he came tripping down the stairs fast. Myron watched him. His hair was military-cropped and that made his ears stick out a little. Myron's ears stuck out a little too. When Jeremy hit the bottom step, he looked straight at his mother.

"Mom, do you mind if Myron and I talk alone for a minute?"

"Oh," Emily said. "Uh, sure."

"It'll only be a second."

"Okay, no rush. You two talk."

Emily rose from the couch. She kissed her son on the cheek as she passed him. Jeremy gave her a hug in return.

"I love you," she said to him.

"I love you too, Mom."

"I'm happy you're home."

"Me too."

She headed up the stairs. Jeremy watched her until he heard her bedroom door close. Then he turned back to Myron with the hazel eyes of Al Bolitar, his paternal grandfather. Myron tried to turn it off, his constant searching for genetic echoes. He hadn't seen his biological son in three years. The rules of the relationship had been set when Jeremy first learned the truth at the tender age of thirteen:

"You're not my dad. I mean you might be my father. But you're not my dad. You know what I mean?"

Myron had managed to nod.

"But… but maybe you can still be around."

"Around?"

"Yeah." That winning smile. "Around. You know."

Age thirteen. So damn wise already.

In the present day, Jeremy said, "Myron?"

"What?"

"You're doing it again."

"Huh?"

"Giving me those googly eyes."

"Right. Sorry."

"I get it. You can't help it. It's sweet, really. Except we need to make this fast." He took the seat across from Myron and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, just like…

"You look good," Myron managed to say.

"So do you," he said. "How's Terese?"

"She's good. Busy."

Jeremy nodded. Then, as was his wont, he took over. "Tell me everything."

Myron did. Jeremy had been a sickly kid. He'd been diagnosed with Fanconi anemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. That was the reason Emily had eventually been forced to confess the truth about Jeremy's paternity—she'd been searching for a donor. For the first thirteen years of the boy's life, Emily had kept Jeremy's paternity a secret, neither telling Myron he had a son nor telling Greg the boy he was raising was biologically not. That wasn't so much a secret as a lie, but the big shock was that Greg knew the truth:

"You remember my father?" Greg had asked Myron. "Screaming on the sidelines like a lunatic?"

"Yes."

"I ended up looking just like him. Spitting image of my old man. He was my blood. And he was the cruelest son of a bitch I ever knew. Blood never meant much to me."

It was a shocking moment for Myron—and maybe the beginning of the strange bond between the two men. Greg's marriage unraveled; his role as Jeremy's father did not.

But while the illness was purportedly gone, Fanconi anemia never fully leaves. There was still some paleness to Jeremy's skin. He had to frequently screen for new cancers, and part of the kid's wisdom and insight, Myron didn't doubt, came with living his entire life under this mortality umbrella. So far, the bone marrow transplant had held. It might hold forever. But no one knew for sure.

When Myron finished filling him in, Jeremy had follow-up questions, drilling deeper into some of the crazier details. When he was done with that, Jeremy asked, "So what's our next step?"

"There is no next step. Greg doesn't want to see me."

"Forget that. He'll see us." Then he called up. "Mom?"

Emily appeared at the top of the stairs. "Everything okay?"

"Can Myron stay tonight in the guest room?"

"I guess so, sure."

"Great. You can borrow some of my clothes. We'll head in to see Dad in the morning."

Emily had a guest wing more than a guest room. Right now it was too dark to see the ocean out the window, the moon barely a slit, but Myron could hear the waves crashing. He lay on his back and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, he heard the light knock on the door and before he could say, "Come in," Emily opened it. The hall light was still behind her, so she stood in the doorway in perfect silhouette.

"Hey," she whispered.

"Hey."

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Tired."

Emily stepped into the room and sat on the bed. "It's lonely out here," she said. "This big house."

"I imagine you have a lot of guests."

"Oh, I have my friends. And sure, I go on a lot of dates. But it's been a long time since I felt a connection."

She still wore the very-white nightgown. She looked down at him.

Myron said, "Emily."

"I know." She smiled. "It wouldn't be cheating, you know."

"Yeah, it would."

"It would just be something between you and me."

"I'm not sure Terese would see it that way."

"She might. We have something. Apart from her. You know this."

"No, I don't."

"I hurt you."

"A long time ago."

"I loved you. I don't think I ever loved anyone as much as you."

"We were in college. It was a long time ago."

"Does it feel that long ago to you?"

Myron said nothing.

"That's the funny thing, isn't it? I read a line once: ‘You are always seventeen waiting for your life to begin.' It's true, don't you think?"

"In some ways."

"You were just…" Emily looked up, blinked away the wetness in her eyes. "Back then, you were so sure of what you wanted. Like you had it all figured out. I was your first real girlfriend. We'd get married. We'd buy a house in the suburbs and have two-point-six kids and a barbecue in the yard and a basketball hoop in the driveway. Just like your family. You had it all planned out, but to me, it felt…"

"Claustrophobic," Myron said, knowing there was truth in her words. "Suffocating."

"In part, I suppose. But it was more like I'd won the audition to play this part in your life."

Myron shook his head.

"You don't agree," she said.

"I loved you, Em. I may have been young. I may have been romantically immature. But I loved you."

She swallowed, looked off. "Do you remember the last time we had sex?"

The night before her wedding. The night they conceived Jeremy. "It would be hard to forget."

"It changed everything, didn't it? Do you feel shame?"

"I feel a lot of things."

"I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had said yes when you proposed. I would have been too much drama for you, but you'd never have left me. That's not how you're built. Do you want to hear something?"

"Can I say no?"

She smiled and lay down on the bed next to Myron. Her back was to him so he couldn't see her face. She curled her knees up.

"If I could go back in time to the moment you asked me, I'd still say no."

Myron stayed on his back, staring at the ceiling. He could feel the heat coming from her body.

"Because if I had said yes, we wouldn't have slept together the night before my wedding. And we wouldn't have had Jeremy. Oh, I'm sure we would have great kids. Wonderful adults now. We'd be proud as all hell of them. But there'd be no Jeremy. Think about that."

Myron closed his eyes. Emily rolled over and put her hand on his chest. Myron didn't move. She leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. Then she rolled away so that her back was to him again.

"Is it okay if I just stay here and sleep? I won't—"

"Yeah," Myron said, his voice thick. "You can stay."