“I can’t take this,” Jet whispers, clenching my hand hard enough to cut off circulation. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
At the last moment I slide up in my seat, just high enough to see a sleek red car glide silently across my field of vision.
“Did you see that?” I ask. “I know that car. A Tesla Model S. Bright red. There’s only one in the whole town.”
“Warren Lacey,” she says, sliding up in her seat.
So much for Max dying quietly on the hill. Lacey is the doctor whose license Jet got suspended for a year. He’s also a certified Poker Club member. “Max called him,” I tell her. “That’s the only explanation. He’s definitely got another phone up there.”
“Damn it! What do we do now?”
“We can’t do much. But Max calling Lacey is a good sign. He could have called the sheriff, and he didn’t.”
“He could still be dead, right?” she asks. “He could have died after calling Lacey?”
“Absolutely. But we can’t count on that.”
“Marshall, can we please get the hell out of here? If Max leaves with Lacey and they lock the gate, we’ll be stuck.”
“No, we won’t. We can push down some fence posts with this SUV if we have to.”
“What if there are more people on the way? You want Russo and his thugs out here hunting us?”
“No. You’re right. It’s time.”
I pull the parking brake release, wrench the wheel right, and let the Ford roll down onto the road. Then I crank the engine and press the gas pedal harder than I should. The wheels spin in the dirt, then catch and throw us forward.
Squinting through the dark, I start down the perpetual curve that circles the dark hill in its slow descent. Beneath the overhanging trees I can hardly track the left edge of the road, but I can’t hold myself to a crawl. After ten seconds we’re going thirty-five, and in twenty we’re careening down the hill like two kids in a teenage death anthem.
“You want me to slow down?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“No!” she cries, bracing her arms against the dash as we fly through the dark.
She lets out a sigh of relief as we land on level ground. On the flats there’s enough moonlight to see, and I push the Explorer to sixty, then seventy-five across the bean field. Jet rocks forward and back as though willing the vehicle faster. When we finally shoot through the gate, which is standing open, it feels like blessed deliverance.
“My God,” she gasps. “My God, my God, my God. We made it!”
I click on my headlights and turn hard right onto the dark line of Cemetery Road, headed toward Bienville. After thirty seconds, something lets go in Jet. She shudders and sobs beside me. I reach out and take her hand, trying to calm myself as much as her. I haven’t felt this shaken since Iraq, and no one has even fired a gun tonight. What can she be going through? The prospect of telling me this secret has probably terrified her since before we got back together. Now she’s done it. I should leave her in peace, no question. But nearly everything she told me has raised a question. One flashes like a tower beacon above all the others.
“Jet, can I ask you one more thing? Just one. It’s a tough one.”
She’s still rocking in her seat. “You might as well. We’ll see where we stand.”
“Why did you keep the baby? Were you sure it was Max’s?”
She closes her eyes, and her mouth makes what looks like a painful smile, but she’s still weeping.
“Take your time,” I tell her.
“How can I explain it so that you’ll understand? Paul and I had been trying for so long to have a child. He’d tried suicide, twice. Pills. I found him. You don’t know how he was after that mess in Iraq. Your book ended up making him a hero to a lot of people, but the government barred him from the country. He lost everything that was his, you know? And that broke him. Working for Max is hell for Paul. And not being able to father a child . . . that was the last straw.”
I drive steadily, my eyes on the faded white lines, trying to understand. “Did you know from the start that it was Max who got you pregnant?”
“No. Early on, I didn’t think the baby was his. He’d only been in me that one time. Paul had . . . managed to finish in me three times that month. So the math was on his side. I clung to that. But the further along I got, the more afraid I became. I tried to tell myself I was being irrational, that everything would be okay.” She reaches out and taps the dash with her forefinger. “But some part of me knew.”
I feel her watching my face, searching for the slightest judgment. I do all I can to watch the road without reaction.
“At that point,” she says, “I had two choices. Stay and try to make the best of things, or abort the baby and quit. And when I thought about quitting . . . Marshall, I had so much guilt.”
“Over the rape?”
“No. Over marrying Paul.”
This takes me aback. “What do you mean?”
“I’d married a man I didn’t love. Not really. Not the way I knew love could be. But I’d done it anyway.”
I know where this is going, but I’m not going to challenge her tonight.
She turns in her seat, facing me full-on. “And when I thought about leaving, I’d think, ‘What am I going to do? Start over single at some big law firm? At thirty-three?’ In my mind, you were my refuge. But you’d just gotten married.”
“Please don’t try to put this on me,” I say, despite my intention to remain silent.
“I’m not putting it on you. I’m just saying, what was I supposed to do? Abandon Paul in the state he was in? Let him drink and drug himself to death, so I could have an abortion and go somewhere else to start over from scratch?”
There it is. Max’s crime had been terrible, yet to Jet, living with the result of it had ultimately seemed the sanest path. Was it the lesser of two evils? I wonder. Or simply the path of least resistance? Especially as long as she could keep her doubt alive.
“Do you know for sure that Max is the father? Like, DNA sure?”
She nods once. “I didn’t intend to get a test. I’d have been perfectly happy never knowing beyond a shadow of doubt. But Max got one done.”
“How’d he manage that?”
“He stole some hairs from a baseball cap he’d given Kevin on his first birthday. He had them tested in secret. That’s what he told me, anyway.”
“You never saw a report? Max could be lying.”
“He tried to show me the test results, but I refused to look. I didn’t need to, Marshall. I’ve seen Max in Kevin’s face and body ten thousand times. A hundred thousand. And it kills me every time. I think it’s driven me close to crazy.”
“No one else saw the resemblance?”
“Of course they did.” Exasperation has entered her voice. “But why should that bother anybody? To other people, Max is Kevin’s grandfather by blood.”
A pair of headlights appears in the distance. Totally normal, yet the sight of them nudges up my stress level.
“And Sally? She never suspected?”
“No, thank God.”
This I find hard to believe. “She never said anything to you. That’s all you know for sure.”