Eden in Winter Read Free

he’d been cuckolded by his brother. By exacting the post-nuptial agreement as the price for keeping you, he kept Jack and me apart: his ultimate victory.’
    ‘Hardly,’ Adam said. ‘After that, he tormented all of us for years. I’ll never fathom why Jack stayed.’
    His mother faced him again. ‘Because he loved me. And you.’
    ‘But not enough to claim me,’ Adam retorted. ‘I should be relieved that Benjamin Blaine wasn’t my father. But now I’m the son of two masochists-for-life—’
    ‘You don’t know what it was like for me,’ his mother protested. ‘Or for Jack, waiting for whatever moments we could steal, the times he could watch your games—’
    ‘I know what it was like for your sons,’ Adam shot back. ‘I always wondered how a father could demean a boy as kind and talented as Teddy. Now I understand; that Ben’s only son was gay held up a mirror to his deepest fears.’ He stood over her, speaking with barely repressed emotion. ‘I became the “son” he wanted. I can imagine him trying to believe that my achievements came from him, not from Jack’s D.N.A. But he could never resist competing with me, just as he competed with Jack, my real father.’ He shook his head in wonder and disgust. ‘Even now, you have no idea how much damage you inflicted, or on whom. But knowing what you did, how could you stand to watch it all unfold?’
    Clarice stared at him. In a parched voice, she said, ‘I watched Ben raise you to be the person
he
wanted to be. By accident or design, he made you enough like him to be strong. So strong that you can live with even this.’
    ‘In a day or so,’ Adam responded sharply, ‘I’ll work up the requisite gratitude. But not before we talk about the night Ben died. This time, I want the truth.’
    Clarice met his eyes. ‘As I told you, Ben locked himself in his study, brooding and drinking. When he came out, he was unsteady, almost stumbling. Alcohol had never done that tohim before. But it was his words that cut me to the quick.’ She stopped abruptly, shame and humiliation graven on her face.
    Sitting beside her, Adam said more quietly, ‘Tell me about it, Mother.’
    Haltingly, she did.
    *
    Ben’s face had been ashen, his once-vigorous frame shambling and much too thin – the ravages of the cancer, Clarice now knew, which he had hidden until the autopsy that followed his sudden, shocking death. He stared at his wife as though he had never truly seen her. ‘I’m done with this farce,’ he told her bluntly. ‘Whatever time I have left, I’m planning to spend without you.’
    Facing him in the living room, Clarice had fought for calm. ‘You can’t mean that, Ben. We’ve had forty years of marriage.’
    The light in his eyes dulled. ‘God help me,’ he replied with bone-deep weariness. ‘God help us all.’
    Clarice could find no words. In a tone of utter finality, her husband continued, ‘I’m going to be with Carla. If there’s a merciful God, or any God at all, I’ll live to see our son.’
    Clarice felt her bewilderment turn to shock. ‘Carla Pacelli is pregnant?’
    Ben nodded. ‘Whatever you may think of her, she’ll be a fine mother.’
    The implied insult pierced Clarice’s soul. ‘And I wasn’t?’
    ‘You did the best you could, Clarice … when you weren’t sleeping with my brother. But please don’t claim you stayed with me for our son, or for yours. Your holy grail was money and prestige.’ His voice was etched with disdain. ‘You’ll haveto live on love now. The money goes with me, to support Carla and our son—’
    Startled, Clarice stood. ‘You can’t do that,’ she protested.
    ‘You know very well that I can. That was the price of Adam, remember? For what little good that did any of us.’ Ben slumped, as though weighed down by the past, then continued in a tone of indifference and fatigue. ‘I’m going to admire the sunset. When I return, I’ll pack up what I need. You can stick around to watch me, if you