article on the wall in Dr. Capello’s office mentioned a boy he’d treated and fostered, one who had a tumor that grew back. Was that Oliver? It made so much sense.
“Doll?”
“I know this is going to sound awful,” she said, “but I feel like a hundred pound bird flew off my shoulder. I wish I’d known this years ago.” She turned back to him and gave him a trembling smile.
“I wish I could have told you,” Dr. Capello said. “And it doesn’t sound awful. It sounds human.”
Allison wanted to laugh in her happiness and relief, but contained herself for Dr. Capello’s sake. She knew. She finally knew what had happened to her. Oliver. Poor Oliver, she couldn’t even be angry at him. He’d been ill, like Dr. Capello’s grandparents. Not evil, but sick.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said.
“You’re welcome. But please, don’t say anything to the kids about this. They don’t know and it would upset them. Oliver went back to live with his family right after you left us,” Dr. Capello said. “I don’t want them blaming him for something he couldn’t help. And they were heartbroken when you left us.”
“Is that why you never told anyone about the phone call?”
Dr. Capello smiled and started walking again in the wet sand. In Roland’s bedside note he’d left her that morning, he’d joked there were “no secrets” in this house. In one day she’d discovered three—the phone call, Rachel and now Oliver attacking her.
“You don’t have children, right?” Dr. Capello asked.
“Not yet.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You remember the day I picked you up at Whitney Allen’s group home?”
“Yeah, like yesterday,” Allison said. “Why?”
“You and another girl at the house had tussled. Or rather, she’d tussled with you and you’d gone running with your tail between your legs.”
“Yes, thank you very much for reminding me.”
He patted her face again.
“You poor little thing. You broke my heart the second I saw you. Red-cheeked and trying so hard not to cry. Miss Whitney called me to see if I could do anything for you. She said she needed a doctor to make a house call, but I knew she was hoping I’d take you home with me. Don’t be hurt by that. Whitney cared about you very much, but she had three other girls in the house—all of them older than you—and they had all finally started to get along. Then a little girl showed up who needed all of her attention and everything was chaos again. It’s not easy balancing the needs of multiple kids from different backgrounds. It’s like that old circus act—the man spinning the plates, keeping them up in the air, trying to let as few crash to the ground as possible. If I had told the kids that your fall wasn’t a fall, that there’d been a call to say there was a killer in the house...well, you can imagine what kind of chaos that would cause. I needed my kids to love each other and trust each other and trust me, too. Can you understand that?”
Allison swallowed a hard lump in her throat. She could hear the note of anguish in Dr. Capello’s voice, the note of pleading. He wanted her to understand the choice he’d made. And the thing was, she did.
“Makes sense,” she said. “If it had been Thora and not me who’d been pushed and we didn’t know who did it? I wouldn’t have slept for weeks. I would have been terrified I was next.”
“So you understand,” he said, nodding. “Oliver left right after you, and I decided to keep it quiet instead of stir up the kids. Please believe me, there hasn’t been a day that passed without me wondering if I did right by you. But I can see that you turned out better than I hoped.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said. She helped Dr. Capello take off his shoes and socks and then removed her own. “I’m not doing much with myself. Between jobs.”
“You know, a house on the ocean is a fine place to sit and think and figure out what you want to do with your life,” he said.
“You think so?”
“I know so,” Dr. Capello said. “That’s what happened to me. I came here, stood on the deck, looked at the ocean, looked at a big family with kids playing in the water and I knew that’s what I wanted. And then I went out and got it. You’ll get it, too, if you stay long enough. The water will tell you what to do.” He pulled his khaki trousers up and waded into the water up to his ankles. “Heaven,” he said with a happy sigh.
Allison followed him into the ocean, wincing at the sudden shock of cold water on her feet.
“I didn’t think you believed in heaven,” she said. “Deacon said you’re a humanist.”
“Junior’s been gossiping, huh? Not surprised. That boy’s a blabbermouth—God love him, someone has to,” he said.
“We were talking about Rachel,” she said. “And why she’s the reason Roland’s at the monastery.”
Dr. Capello winced. “Sore subject.”
“Sorry, forget I brought it up,” she said.
“No, no, no.” He waved his hand again. “Better to talk about it. I love my son. I want him to be happy. I simply would prefer he didn’t devote his life to an institution that I consider to be an enemy of human progress out of some misguided guilt for a long-ago tragedy.”
Allison’s eyes widened. “Enemy of human progress? Those are some strong words.”
“Too strong, I know,” he said with a sigh. “But I’m a scientist. We can’t count on the pie-in-the-sky man to fix our problems. Mankind causes its own problems. It’s up to mankind to solve them.”
“Maybe it helps Roland feel more at peace about Rachel.”
“He’s not going to bring her back into the world by taking himself out of it.”
“He says he needs God,” she told him.
“What he needs is a damn girlfriend,” Dr. Capello said.
“Be nice,” she said, chiding him as though she was the parent now and he the child. “You have to admit there’s good reason for believing in God and heaven and hell, even if they aren’t strictly real.”
“Give me one good reason to believe in heaven or hell, I dare you.”
“Evil?” she said. “Surely Hitler deserves to burn in hell, right? Rapists? Child abusers? Nobody wants them to get off scot-free.”
“Spoken like a poet,” he said. “Not a scientist. There is no such thing as evil.”
Allison boggled at him.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“There are evil acts, yes. I grant you that. Murder. Rape. Child abuse. Absolutely those are evil acts if by evil we mean ‘harmful to the human race.’ But they aren’t caused by a red man with a pitchfork sitting on our shoulder. Take Oliver, for instance. He harmed animals, harmed children, lied about it without compunction or remorse. All the hallmarks of classic psychopathy. Was he evil? No, ma’am. He was sick. That’s all.”
“Is that what causes people to be psychopaths?” she asked. “Brain tumors?”
“Sometimes a tumor in the frontal lobe can profoundly affect the personality. Or lead poisoning in my grandparents’ case. Most people who fit the criteria for psychopathy are simply born with it. They have atrophy in key areas of the brain—the limbic region, the hippocampus, et cetera. In layman’s terms, they are born with broken brains. That’s the worst hand any child can be dealt.”
“So not actually evil, then?”
“Not evil. Sick. He was sick, and I tried to cure him. Didn’t work but give it a couple decades and we’ll have it all figured out.”
“A cure for evil?”
“A cure for evil is possible,” he said, nodding. “Mark my words.”
“I’ll mark them,” she said. “And if you love me, you’ll live long enough to tell me ‘I told you so.’”
“I’ll do my best, doll. Count on it.”
He took her arm in his and they strolled side by side into deeper waters. The ocean was cool enough to make her wince but not cold enough to send her running.
Dr. Capello looked happy, contented, but there were moments, little ones, when she saw the fe
ar hiding behind his mask. Once, he stopped, simply stopped, and let the water swirl around his feet while he stared and stared and stared out into the water. Side by side they watched the waves roll in and break, roll out and break again. His shoulders sagged.
“Is it hard?” Allison asked. “Dying?”
“It is,” he said, nodding. “I wish I could say otherwise. But you’ve never heard of a happy person committing suicide, have you? I love my life. I love my children. I love my house. I love this ocean. I love every grain of sand under my feet. What’s that old poem? Only a happy heart can break?”
“Almost,” Allison said, and then recited the poem to him from memory.
“It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.”
When she finished, Dr. Capello applauded. She gave him a little curtsy.
“Sara Teasdale,” she said.
“The world needs people who can recite poetry from memory. My mother could, too. Kubla Khan was her favorite to recite. She loved those lines—‘Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man...’”
“‘Down to a sunless sea,’” Allison said, finishing the quotation for him.
“Ah, sweet memories. A thousand of them came running back to me with those words.” He patted her face tenderly. “You are staying, aren’t you? I know a very nice young man who’d be thrilled if you did,” he said with a wink.
“You want me to stay so I can seduce Roland out of the monastery?”
“If you don’t mind,” he said. “I’d appreciate it.”
“I do mind,” she said. “That’s terrible.” She laughed despite herself.
“I love my son,” he said. “And if I have to play dirty pool to make sure he’s happy and healthy and living a good life, you bet I’ll do it.”
“What if he’s happy in the monastery?”
“He’s hiding in the monastery, punishing himself, and it kills me to know it. You really want that for him?”
“Well...no. Not unless that’s—”
“You said you remember the day I met you at Miss Whitney’s, right?”
“Right.”
“You remember that you asked me to take you home with me?”
“I remember,” she said, nodding.
“And I did, didn’t I?”
“You did, yes.”
“Well, now I’m asking you to return the favor. Stay here with us. A few more days, a week, a month.”
“You’re playing matchmaker. It’s not going to work.”
“It’s working already,” he said. “And yes, I am. Shamelessly. Allison, I do not want to die knowing my son is going to spend the rest of his life in that prison of his own making. It makes me sick to my very bones to think of it. He had a childhood that broke his heart and mine, and I’m not about to let him spend the rest of his life punishing himself for something he did as a child. This is my final wish, doll. Will you help me?”
Allison swallowed a hard lump in her throat at the sight of the tears in Dr. Capello’s eyes. He meant it. It did kill him that Roland had left the world for the monastery. How could she say no to this man, this dear old dying man who’d brought her home with him to his children’s paradise? And now she knew who’d hurt her, so there was no reason not to, right?
“This is dirty pool,” she said.
“I have no shame,” he said. “I’ll beg if I have to.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll stay for a few days. But just for you.”
He pulled her into his arms for a long hug.
“Just for me?” he said, his tone teasing.
“And Roland. Just a little tiny bit for Roland.”
“Just for me and Roland?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, finally giving in. “Maybe for me, too.”
Chapter 15
A name. She finally had a name, and it was such a relief. Oliver. And now that she thought about it, really thought about it, it did make a little bit of sense. She and Oliver had never been close, not the way she was close with Roland or Thora or Kendra. Even she and Deacon played together. But Oliver... He’d come here right after Christmas her last year at The Dragon, and they’d never bonded. While sweet, he was a solitary sort. He’d sit in the same room with her and Roland as they worked on homework or watched TV, but he never interacted much with her, never joked around. When she remembered him, what she remembered was his silence, his self-imposed solitude. Lonesome even in a house full of children. At the time she thought he was merely homesick, but depression often masked itself as anger and vice versa. Was he sad when he watched her and Roland talking? Or was he seething? Oliver had been smart, very smart, always bringing home A’s from school. She could believe he was capable of planning a prank as elaborate as calling her aunt and faking her voice. It wouldn’t be hard. Cry a lot, pant and scream. Make the call quick and hang up without answering questions.
So Allison had her answer.
Mystery solved. And now she had one very good reason to stay here—she wanted to—and no reason at all to leave. She had nothing to be afraid of anymore.
So why was she still scared?
Roland, of course. She wasn’t close to being ready for another relationship. She’d been dumped all of three days ago. Staying here was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake. But it was an honest mistake because she honestly wanted to stay, especially now that she knew she was safe at her old home. At least her body was safe. When Roland smiled at her when she came back into the house on Dr. Capello’s arm, she knew her heart was in mortal peril.
For lunch Roland served comfort food—tomato soup and grilled cheese—and she let herself enjoy every bite. She was a kid again for a few minutes, safe at home with her family with nothing to worry about. Deacon skipped lunch because of work, he said. Thora, he said, desperately needed him at the glass shop.
“Can I go with you?” Allison asked him as he made a quick pass through the kitchen to steal the sandwich crust off his father’s plate.
“You want to see the shop?” Deacon asked, downing the toast in one bite.
“If no one minds,” Allison said.
“Go,” Roland said. “It’s Dad’s nap time, anyway.” He was already steering Dr. Capello out of the kitchen, his large hand on his father’s too-thin shoulder.
“See, doll?” Dr. Capello said. “That used to be my line. Never get old, Allison. Never get old.”
“I won’t, I promise,” she said, watching as Roland followed Dr. Capello up the stairs.
“Did she let you skinny-dip?” she heard Roland ask his father.
“She didn’t, damn her,” Dr. Capello said.
“Good. If you get arrested for indecent exposure, we’re leaving you in jail,” Roland said. “I love you, but nobody needs to see that.”
“You go skinny-dip,” Dr. Capello said to him. “Since I can’t.”
“I’m trying to impress Allison,” Roland said. “Cold water is no man’s friend.”
“Youth is wasted on the young.”
“And wisdom is wasted on the old since you’re clearly not using yours.”
The back-and-forth continued all the way up to the third floor. Allison’s eyes burned with unshed tears as she listened to the gruff and tender bickering between father and son. She was in danger in this house, but not from violence—unless it was the violence of her own feelings. This was a family, the one she’d wanted all her life. This was love in the rough—the coal, not the diamond. There was nothing pretty about a dying man leaning on a son who can’t save him though he’d give his right arm to do so. Allison felt warmth all the way to her core. This moment was everything she ever wanted from McQueen but never got because she’d never asked. Allison hastily wiped a tear from her cheek but it was too late. She’d been caught in the act.