The Final Judgment (12 page)

back.” Nicole’s tone was quiet with irony. “To let my parents know that he was safe.” Without knowing why, Caroline hugged herself. Her mother did not see this. She seemed hardly to know that Caroline was there. “I stayed with Catherine that night,” she went on. “But the next morning, I could not keep away. “The section in which we lived went back to medieval times—the streets were narrow and dark, cobblestone. I had turned the corner to the street before I saw a uniformed policeman, French, carrying a suitcase in each hand, and crying. I had never seen a policeman cry before. Behind him, with more policemen, were a straggling line of children and adults, dragging their suitcases with them. “At the end of the line were my father and mother and brother. I waited for them to pass. “My mother never saw me. She looked straight ahead, one hand in Bernard’s, the other in my father’s. Tears ran down her face. “As they passed, my father spotted me at the edge of the street. “I started to speak, to reach out to him. Quietly, his lips formed the word ‘no’; he stared at me a second longer, to ensure that I obeyed, and then snapped his eyes away. “It was then I understood. My mother was not French, and my father would not leave her. Nor would Bernard. “I watched until they rounded the corner and disappeared.” Nicole’s voice stopped abruptly. In the silent room, Caroline imagined her own parents—Channing and Nicole—vanishing from sight. She found it hard to breathe. In a muffled voice, she asked, “What happened to you, Mama?” In the darkness, Nicole seemed to shrug. “Catherine’s father knew someone,” she finally answered. “I was sent to Le Chambon, in the advennes region. There was a tradition of resistance there—many of the

farmers were Protestants, and their ancestors had suffered persecution. “For the rest of the war I stayed with a farmer family. They were very kind, as were the villagers. But all that time, I dreamed of my parents and Bernard. Wondered how and where they were. Prayed for them in whatever way seemed best. “After the war, I returned to Paris. “I worked as a translator for the Americans, badgered everyone I could for records of deportations, even rumors of my family. “Finally, I learned of them from a kind American legal officer. . . .” Her mother stopped abruptly. There were tears in her eyes. Frightened, Caroline clasped her hand. “What, Mama?” Only then did Nicole look at her. Quite softly, she answered, “Your grandparents died at Auschwitz. As did the boy who would have been your uncle.” By instinct, Caroline reached out to hug her. But Nicole stopped her, staring intently into Caroline’s face until her own tears had vanished. “You are Jewish, Caroline. There is no government, no person, that can ever really be trusted. Please, remember that.”

For a long time, Brett said nothing. They sat in silence, beers cupped in their hands, unnoticed. Brett seemed to study her. At length, she asked, “How was it that she married Grandfather?” Caroline collected her thoughts. “After his first wife died, having your mother, I think he was a little lost. So he left Betty with an aunt and uncle, and joined the Army Judge Advocate General Corps. In postwar Paris, his job was investigating war crimes by Germans for the Nuremberg tribunal.” Caroline finished quietly: “He was the ‘kind officer’ who told my mother about her parents. After learning that, she must have thought New Hampshire sounded quite safe. And my father had fallen in love with her.”

Brett’s face filled with sympathy. “Do you think she loved him?” Caroline gazed past her, at the mountains. “My mother died when I was fourteen,” she said simply. “Too young for me to truly know.” Brett’s look remained soft, inquiring. “That must have been terrible for you.” More &an .you will ever guess. “It was hard.” A slight smile. “But then fourteen is a difficult age.” Brett was quiet for a time. To Caroline, watching her, it was almost tangible—Brett sorting the missing pieces of her family, wondering what corners of whose hearts she did not yet understand. But Caroline was a stranger to her, and Nicole a marker in a cemetery. Only Channing Masters was real.. “When she died,” Brett finally asked, “how was it for Grandfather?” Caroline grasped the unspoken question: How was it that you could bring yourself to hurt him? As to this, at least, Caroline chose the truth. “Oh,” she said quietly, I’m quite sure it broke his heart.”

It was perhaps four; the sunlight slanted gently on the blue waters of the lake. Brett had fallen into a moody silence. But Caroline’s story seemed to have distracted her a little from the present. For this much Caroline was grateful. “Have you ever been married?” Brett asked. Caroline smiled. “Not even once.”

“Doesn’t that ever get lonely?” Caroline considered her. Part of this curiosity must be Brett working out answers for herself: how much, Caroline wondered, does she talk to Betty now? “Not really,” she told Brett. “You get used to being your own companion. Of course, there’s still this idea that single women are supposed to feel barren, literally and figuratively. Especially,” she added with a sardonic twist, “if they compound their misery by being successful.”

Brett tilted her head. “Then you never wanted children?” Caroline shrugged. “As a friend of mine once said, ‘I love my children too much already to give them a mother like me.”“ She stopped herself; Brett deserved better. “Perhaps I would have liked that, Brett. But the things that you can’t help, you put out of your mind. It’s better that way.” Brett nodded, watching her more closely. It was clear she would ask nothing more.

There was a first coolness in the air, sun dying. Caroline pulled a windbreaker over her shoulders. “Once this is over,” she asked, “what will you do?” The question seemed to startle Brett. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing’s real to me now. Before, I wanted to write. Short stories, novels.” It might be good, Caroline thought, to get her talking about a future, something outside James Case. “Why writing?”

“Because I seem to have talent—at least my teachers think I do. And getting a straight job, like in a company, is nothing I can see right now. Though I’ve thought about getting a master’s so I can teach writing.” Brett’s voice warmed. “Writing seems like the only job where what you think and feel really matters.” Caroline nodded. “Have you written much?”

“A lot.” A small smile. “I always have. Even when I was small I made stories up all the time—imagining people, places, things I’d never seen in life. My dad used to say I didn’t know real from unreal—” Brett glanced quickly at Caroline. Caroline pretended not to notice. “How did your parents feel?” Brett was quiet for a moment. “About that they were fine—especially Dad. And Granddad always said a writer needed a place—like Faulkner in Yoknapatawpha County. And that I had a place. Right here.”

“Well,” Caroline said mildly, “it’s certainly convenient. For everyone.”

Brett smiled a little. “I understood that part of it—wanting me here—all too well. But then my grandfather helped raise me: hiking, or homework, or just talking about books or writing. Most afternoons, when I came home, Granddad would be waiting. To do something, or just to hear about my day.” Her smile faded. “I understand that, still, even if it’s not convenient. It was like I was the one who was left for him.” Caroline felt surprise; without warning, Brett could move from ingenuous to acute. “What do you mean?” Brett’s gaze was direct now. “That my mother was never his favorite, Caroline. You were.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it ever was.” Brett shook her head. “Once, when we were hiking, I asked him about you. He looked so sad that I never asked again.” Brett hesitated. “Is that why you came back? For him.”?”

“The world is not about ‘him.”“ Caroline paused, softening her tone. “Truth to tell, I came back for you.” Brett looked surprised, then skeptical. “Why?”

“We are related, you know.” Caroline drew a breath. I’ m a lawyer, and I want to help you. My issues with my family aren’t yours.” I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to piss you off.” Caroline waved a hand. “You didn’t. Really.” Her voice softened to curiosity. “Tell me, though, where your dad fit in all of this.” Brett leaned back. “Dad and you were friends, weren’t you?”

“Yes. We were.” Brett nodded. “Dad’s an enigma sometimes ... he more or less left raising me to Mom.” Brett’s voice became sardonic. “It’s a case of the parent with the deepest emotions winning. With the way my room is, it was no contest—and Dad didn’t want the aggravation she’d give him if he tried to make it one.” As if ashamed, Brett paused; Caroline felt once more the quicksilver of her emotions. “Really, I shouldn’t say that. Dad loves me, I know, and he can be so

sweet. It’s just that he hates conflict, and I think Mom feels things so intensely that it scares him. Sometimes it seemed like Granddad—who, if anything, intimidates Mom—was more my father than he was.” Caroline remembered Larry of the gentle eyes and slow, warm smile, who first had named her “Caro,” who still could talk to her when she and Betty could no longer talk at all. Remembered him holding the infant Brett, gazing from Caroline to the sleeping baby with the wonder of sudden fatherhood. Felt sadness and anger that he had receded to a corner of this girl’s life, supplanted by Betty’s and Caroline’s own father. “Did you ever rebel?” Caroline asked. A faint smile, and then Brett’s voice became ironic. “Did you see the satellite dish behind the house? That was my rebellion. I threatened him—if I couldn’t keep up with the outside world, like Beverly Hills 90210, I’d go away to boarding school.” Children do not always live to please their parents’, he had said as Caroline left for school, or parents to please themselves. Softly, Caroline queried, “He didn’t send you away to school?” Neither of them, she realized, had defined “he”; there was no need. “No,” Brett answered in the same tone. “He bought me the dish instead.”

“Not much, as rebellions go.”

“Don’t I know it. I even let them send me to Chase College, where my dad teaches, so I could go for a lot less. My mother implied there was trouble with money, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask Grandfather. So instead of being like Mom, going off to Smith, I stayed right in the neighborhood.” Brett paused, as if in remembered anger. “Of course, she said to me that James was a rebellion. Especially after they found out about the drug dealing.” Caroline fell quiet, caught between her image of the crosscurrents of her estranged family and her own doubts

about Brett’s innocence. And then, to her surprise, she saw tears running down Brett’s face. Softly, Caroline asked, “What is it?”

“What you asked me before. About whether I’d have gone with him.” Brett paused, fighting to control her voice. “What I didn’t tell you was that now I lie awake wishing I had gone, no matter how many doubts I had. Just walked to the Jeep with him and started west that night.” Brett’s eyes shut, and then she finished: “Because we’d have gotten to California today, and James would be alive.”

Caroline did not reach her room until eleven. In the car, Brett had fallen asleep. Caroline had driven steadily, glancing at the girl’s face against the headrest. Even had Brett awakened, Caroline could not have brought herself to ask about the knife. Now she stared at the message in her hand—Walter Farris, from the White House. Next to her on the night-stand, the Manchester Patriot-Ledger was opened to an article quoting Caroline. Why, she asked herself, hadn’t she called Farris this morning? A chill breeze blew about the window sash. Caroline stood, pushing down the window—only a crack now, enough coolness to help her sleep. Caroline reviewed Brett’s expressions, her voice, the way she had said things. Caroline the lawyer knew that no one could read guilt or innocence on the face of a stranger. Another Caroline, whose existence the lawyer scorned, pleaded with her to believe that Brett was truthful—that the Brett she had spent today with could not have sliced her lover’s throat to the windpipe, no matter how intoxicated. But there was no way, Jackson Watts had told her, that anyone else had been there. Tomorrow, she would call Walter Farris. And then, to satisfy both parts of her, she would telephone Jackson Watts and ask if she could see the crime scene, the lot her father once had meant for her.

What Caroline heard first was the new reserve in Farris’s tone. “I should have called you,” Caroline said. “It’s just that things have happened so quickly. As you can imagine, it’s extremely trying for Brett, and for the family.”

“I understand that, Caroline. But what wasn’t clear, precisely, is whether you’re acting as your niece’s lawyer here.” Caroline paused a moment. “More as an aunt ...”

“Because this meeting with the Attorney General’s Office troubles me. Whatever your intention, it could create the appearance that our appointee to the federal bench is trying to use her prospective influence on behalf of a relative. And, even worse, to affect the course of a homicide investigation.” Caroline felt on edge now. “Please know, Walter, that it hardly feels like that from here. As for being a lawyer, I’ll continue to practice law until the Senate confirms me. That’s standard procedure.”

“Of course it is.” His voice aspired to patience. “But what isn’t is to represent a member of your family in a brand-new, potentially high-profile murder case. Even without this nomination, it’s hardly wise—you can’t help but be emotionally involved, which is what no counsel should be. If your niece needs a lawyer, the best thing you can do is help her find one.” It was, Caroline knew, exactly what she herself would say. “If Brett should be indicted, that’s certainly my intention. We’re all hoping that she won’t be.”

“And even if she isn’t,” Farris retorted, “your confirmation hearing may involve questions none of us wants.” His voice became crisp. “We live in a brave new world, Caroline. Republicans control the Senate now, and—although we have great latitude in our appointments—feminist defense lawyers are not the flavor of the year. All we need is someone like Jesse Helms using this ‘appearance of impropriety’ as an excuse to scuttle you. What I’m saying, to be plain, is that the President has only so much political capital to spend on this. So anything you do up there, other than hold this girl’s hand, you do on your own.”

“Of course,” Caroline said with a calm she did not feel. “And I’ll be prudent. As I told the President, this nomination means more to me than I can easily express. As does his confidence.” She paused. “And yours.”