Chapter 20
Back in the car, Allison realized she hadn’t heard Roland speaking for what felt like hours.
“Roland?”
Allison took his hand in hers. He didn’t take it in return. He let her hold on to him but that was all.
“Roland?” she said again. “You’re so quiet.” He’d barely said a word in the house with Kathy. It seemed he’d lost his ability to speak.
“Sorry,” he said finally. “Just taking it all in.”
Allison pulled out of the driveway and drove aimlessly around the neighborhood, not sure where to go or if she wanted to go anywhere yet. She just wanted to move.
“I read that profile of Dad that’s on his office wall,” she said. “I thought when it said he took in kids who had problems...I thought that meant temper tantrums and attention span problems and impulse control issues. I didn’t think it meant he took in kids who’d killed other kids.” Allison realized what she was saying and who she was saying it to. “You know, killed kids on purpose. Not like with you and—”
“I know what you mean,” he said.
She smiled apologetically.
“Doesn’t it seem dangerous, bringing a kid like that into a house with other kids?”
Roland shrugged. “You heard the lady. Oliver had a brain tumor and Dad fixed it. Dad told me all kinds of horror stories about people with tumors and cysts and what it does to their behavior. One man had a tumor in his prefrontal cortex. He went from being a nice normal family man to trying to seduce his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. They took out the tumor and he went back to normal. Just like that.” Roland snapped his fingers. “And you know about his grandparents.”
“Dad’s? Yeah, lead poisoning turned a normal man into a murderer.”
“And he committed suicide after he killed his wife,” Roland said. “You can’t blame people like that for their actions. They’re sick—they aren’t doing it on purpose.”
“I know,” Allison said. She took a long breath. “At some point we have to talk about why your dad lied to me about Oliver.”
“I know,” Roland said. “I know we will. But not yet.”
At least he wasn’t trying to convince her or himself that Dr. Capello was just confused anymore. After their talk with Kathy Collins, it was apparent Dr. Capello hadn’t been truthful with her or with Roland. But why lie?
“When you’re ready,” Allison said, and squeezed his hand. It took a minute but Roland finally squeezed her hand back.
Allison found the interstate and bridge, and with Roland’s help navigating, they were soon back on their way home.
“We were supposed to stay out all night,” Allison said, noting the time on the clock. Not even nine yet, though it was already dark.
“Dad said he didn’t want to see us until morning,” Roland said. “Didn’t say we had to stay out all night.”
“Good point. We’ll just be very quiet...”
That wouldn’t be a problem for Roland. He’d been quiet at Kathy’s, quiet after, more quiet than he usually was. She wondered if he was mourning Oliver. She wondered if he was praying for him. She wondered if he was angry or scared or both.
“What are you thinking about?” Allison asked, unable to take the silence any longer.
“Ah, it doesn’t matter,” Roland said, looking out the window.
“It matters a lot. It matters to me.”
He put his hand on her thigh again.
“I’m thinking about Dad. How hard it must have been for him to save a kid’s life, and give that kid a home, and then find out that kid threw away that life he worked so hard to save.”
“Do you think it means something that Oliver shot himself in the brain?” Allison asked.
“I think it means he was very depressed,” Roland said. “But maybe he was trying to put a bullet into the thing that was causing him all his pain. I know I should be feeling bad for his mom, and I do, but I keep thinking, Poor Dad. To lose a patient is bad enough but to lose one like that...”
“Dad talked to me about the graveyard,” Allison said.
“The graveyard?”
“He said every surgeon carries a graveyard inside them. And all the patients they’ve lost are buried in it.”
“It’s a lot to carry around with you,” Roland said. “And he lived with us, too. He was Dad’s son for a few months. No wonder he didn’t tell us about Oliver. It probably broke his heart.”
“I’m sure it did,” Allison said. “He always liked things to be nice and happy at the house. He tried, anyway.”
“We all had such shitty childhoods,” Roland said. “He was just trying to make up for that. You were happy with us, right?”
“I was as happy to be with you then as I am now.”
“So...?”
She turned and gave him a quick grin. “Very happy.”
They drove on longer in silence, but the tension had disappeared and now it was a companionable sort of quiet. Roland moved his hand a little higher up her thigh.
“You can ask me what I’m thinking about again,” Roland said.
“I think I can guess.” She patted his hand and playfully took it off her thigh and placed it on his. “Driving here.”
“Sorry.”
“You are not.” She laughed, when suddenly the magnitude of the day hit her like it hadn’t before. Hit her hard. “Oliver shot himself.”
“Yes, and...?”
“He was fine at the house with us.”
“Or he was pretending to be,” Roland said. “Brain surgery can have some odd outcomes. Dad says issues can pop up years after operations. Maybe something like that happened with Oliver.”
“I guess so. But now I want to talk to Kendra and Antonio even more.”
“Kendra and Antonio?” Roland sat up straighter in the seat. “What about them?”
“I asked McQueen to get me their addresses, too.”
Roland shook his head and she didn’t know why.
“What?” she asked.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk to her.”
“Why not? I always liked her. I think she liked me.”
Roland went quiet for a few seconds before answering.
“Remember when I told you that you were my second?” Roland said. “She was my first.”
Allison almost ran off the road.
“Kendra? She was your girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Sort of. I mean, we didn’t really date. You don’t have to date when you’re living in the same house.”
“When did this happen?”
“A few months after you left. I was seventeen. She was fifteen. I’d feel weird about it if you saw her. Kendra probably would, too.”
Allison would, too, but that didn’t matter. The timing, that was what mattered.
“A few months after I left... Any chance she was in love with you while I was there?” Allison asked.
“Allison, Kendra wouldn’t push you down the stairs because of you and me.”
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
Roland said nothing. Then Allison thought of something.
“Did you tell her what happened that day? On the beach?” Allison asked.
Slowly Roland nodded.
“Why did you tell her?”
“I didn’t mean to but she knew something was wrong. She’s very intuitive. She could tell I felt guilty. This was the day after it happened and you were acting so weird and I guess I was acting weird, too. I had to tell someone or I’d go nuts.”
“What did she say about it?” Allison asked.
“It was thirteen years ago,” he said.
“Was she upset?”
“No, not with me.”
“But she was upset with me?” Allison asked. “Angry?”
“Scared,” Roland said. “But not mad. Although I think she said we were being ‘stupid.’”
“If she was half as in love with you as I was,” Allison said, “and you told her that you and I had fooled around, what do you think she would feel?”
“I don’t think she was in love with me at the time,” he said. “She never said she was.”
“I never said I was, either,” Allison said. They drove a few more miles before she could speak again.
“What exactly did she say when you told her?” Allison asked.
“She reminded me of Dad’s rule about us, you know, not doing that sort of thing with each other.”
“I remember that rule,” Allison said.
“Kendra said that was the sort of thing that got kids kicked out of group homes. Dad wasn’t going to kick me out—I was adopted—but he might kick you out, she thought. She was worried about you, not me.”
“Is that all she said?”
“She told me to make sure it never happened again. That’s all.”
“And you’re just telling me this now?” Allison asked.
“Trust me, if you knew Kendra the way I did, you would know she wouldn’t push you or anyone else down the stairs. Or call your aunt and terrify her. That’s not like her at all.”
“Was it like Oliver to kill himself?”
Roland didn’t answer.
“Do you know where she is?” Allison asked.
“I don’t know her address. Long time ago I asked Dad if he ever heard from her, and he said as far as he knew she was fine and well and living in Olympia. Works at home doing something in computer programming. There’s really no reason to bother her.”
Allison wasn’t sure about that.
“Now you’re being too quiet,” Roland said after they’d driven for about another fifteen minutes in silence. “What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about that day. You told Kendra but nobody else, right?”
“Right...”
“And Dad didn’t tell you Oliver killed himself. No one told me about your sister, Rachel, until Deacon did a few days ago. And Dad didn’t tell you all about that phone call to my aunt. And he didn’t tell you all that my fall might not have been an accident. On top of all that, Deacon and Thora said they were together when my fall happened, but Deacon said they were outside and Thora said they were inside, which means one of them or both of them aren’t telling me the whole truth. That’s a lot of secrets in one house, isn’t it?”
Roland said nothing.
“Just has me wondering,” Allison said.
“What?”
“What else are you all hiding from each other? And from me?”
“You don’t have to sound so suspicious,” Roland said. “There’s a big difference between keeping secrets and wanting your privacy. None of us—me, Deac, Thor—we don’t ask each other about what happened to us in BC times.”
“BC?”
“Before Capello,” he said. “We don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to pry. None of it is secret. It’s just...private.”
“I respect your right to privacy, but I think there are some things I deserve to know.”
“You’re right, you do. If I thought for one second Kendra did it, I’d tell you. We broke Dad’s rules, me and her, and so we’ve never told anyone we were a couple. That’s private,” he said. “Not some deep dark secret.”
“What if Dr. Capello knew?”
“What?”
“What if he knew about you and Kendra? Possible?”
“Possible, maybe,” Roland said. “We didn’t tell him, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t figure it out. We were sleeping together sometimes while he was one floor above us. Deacon could have found out and blabbed. Or Thora even. Why?”
“Follow me here,” she said, excited because the pieces were clicking into place. “The day after I came here, I told your dad I didn’t feel safe staying at the house because I didn’t know who’d hurt me. He wants me to stay for, you know, reasons.”
“Me,” Roland said.
“You.”
“And because he loves you and missed you.”
“That, too,” Allison said. “So he needs to tell me something to get me to stay. He says it was Oliver. Why? Oliver’s dead. Not like we can get a dead person into trouble. It’s safe to blame Oliver. And your dad wouldn’t want to tell me it’s Kendra because I’d ask why she did it and then he’d have to tell me about you and her. He knows she hurt me out of jealousy, but he doesn’t want me to go after your ex-girlfriend for something that happened so long ago. Does that make any kind of sense to you?”
“I suppose,” he said. “It’s logical.”
“And my aunt thought it was me calling her. That means it was very likely a girl. So that leaves Kendra or Thora.”
“It wasn’t Thora,” Roland said. “It’s just so hard to picture Kendra doing that.” He rubbed his forehead as if the very idea of it gave him a headache.
“She was a young girl in love. Girls in love do dumb, risky things—for example, kiss your big brother on the beach even though you’re twelve and he’s almost seventeen.”
“You have a point there,” Roland said.
He sounded resigned, as if the force of her reasoning had finally overwhelmed his objections.
“I do get why Dad would keep it a secret from me,” Roland said at last. “I mean, if Kendra did do it, I would go and talk her about it. But Dad, he wants us to move on, to heal, to let go of the bad stuff we can’t change. Sometimes there’s just...too much bad stuff to ignore.” His voice sounded more bitter than she’d ever heard it. They drove in silence again for a few minutes before Allison asked a question that had been on her mind since learning Roland and Kendra had once been together.
“Will you answer one more question for me, please?” Allison said, trying not to sound as frustrated as she felt. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me? Anything at all I should know that you’re keeping from me?”
For a painfully long moment, Roland said nothing. Allison lived and died in that silence.
“Yes,” Roland finally said.
Allison’s heart jumped in her chest a little. Her hands gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“Do you really want to know? It’ll change things between us. Really change them.”
“Yes,” she said. “I want to know.”
The long terrible silence came and went again.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” Roland said.
Allison took a long hard breath.
“Yeah, that does kind of change things.”
“Told you so.”
“When were you planning on telling me this?” Allison asked.
“I wasn’t,” he said, almost laughing, though it was clear he found none of it funny. “You asked.”
“True,” she said, and blew out a long breath. “I asked.”
By ten they arrived back home at The Dragon and in the dark it looked even more like its namesake than it did by day. The uneven outline of the house loomed tall, strange and humpbacked in the moonlight. The Dragon seemed sad to Allison, slumped almost, like the poor thing had heard about Oliver and bowed his old head in sorrow and in respect.
She and Roland had said almost nothing to each other since his declaration of—well, not of love but of almost-love. What could she say? She’d been in a relationship for six years before she came home. Could she trust her feelings for Roland? She adored him. Every time she looked at him with his father she felt a deep and deepening tenderness for him. She loved bringing him tea at night when he was reading to Dr. Capello. She even liked folding his underwear, especially when she had to fight Brien over them. These were all novel experiences for her. As an adult, she’d never been a girlfriend, only a mistress. She’d never folded McQueen’s underwear. She never brought him chamomile tea at bedtime. With Roland she felt love, but was it love for him? Or for the idea of him and home and family? If that love was real, was there any difference?
Allison thought about the moment McQueen had left her two weeks ago, the moment he’d finally walked out the door and out of her life. She remembered the sorrow and the panic. Then she tried to imagine Roland leaving her, walking out the door to return to his old life at the monastery. She couldn’t. If there was leaving to do, he would let her do it first. And for a girl who’d been left behind more times than she could count, that felt like real love to her.
Roland started to go into the house and she reached out to stop him, touching his arm, holding him by his sleeve.
“Roland,” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m falling in love with you, too.”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Let’s see... I’ve been home, oh, nine days? No, of course I’m not sure. I’m insane and so are you.”
He laughed, which she appreciated.
“It’s not like we’re strangers,” he said.
“No, but it’s not like we know each other, either. But I do know this...when I was here as a little girl, I would pray for rain, because that was my excuse to go crawling into bed with you. I’m twenty-five now and I don’t need an excuse. But I still keep hoping it rains. Does that mean I’m in love with you?”
“Close enough,” he said, and moved to kiss her. She put her hands on his chest.
“You’re a monk,” she said. “You do remember you’re supposed to go back to the monastery, right?”
“Not tonight,” he said.
He took her in his arms then and kissed her in The Dragon’s long shadow. It was a passionate kiss, hard and hot and sensual. He paused and whispered against her lips, “Maybe not ever.”
Allison took his hand and led him into the house and up the stairs, quietly, very quietly so no one would know they were home yet and dare to interrupt them.
Inside the bedroom that had once been his, then hers and now was theirs, Roland shut the door behind them and locked it. Allison was already undressed by the time they reached the bed, and Roland was already inside her by the time her head hit the pillow. Before, all the times they’d been together, it had felt like they were making love. And that’s what she would have called it, and that’s what it was. But now they’d admitted they did love each other, or almost did, and for the first time it felt like Roland was fucking her. He held her down on the bed, hands on her wrists, which he’d pinned over her head. His thrusts were rough and she had to work to keep up with him, and what delicious work it was. She came faster than she’d known she could and even came a second time when he let go inside of her. She understood the difference between the times that had come before and this one. Before there was always the chance Roland would go back to the monastery. He’d been holding back with her because he knew it would end eventually, and he didn’t want to risk doing anything he regretted. He’d been on his best behavior. Not anymore.
Truth was, she liked this Roland even better than the other one.
And she told him.
His chest moved in silent laughter as she lay across his body. They were both sweating together, breathing together, dripping wet together.
“When the beautiful girl you’re crazy about tells you she might be in love with you, it makes you a little wild,” he said. “Not too wild?”
“The perfect amount of wild. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“I believe, technically, you had it in you.”
She grinned and kissed his chest.
“I love it in me,” she said. “Feel free to have it in me again anytime. Or right now.”
“Thirty-minute nap,” he said. “Then we go for episode two of Wild Kingdom.”
“Take your nap. I’ll wake you.”
He kissed her forehead and rolled over. She went to the bathroom, and by the time she came back, he was already breathing the rhythmic breaths of deep sleep. Men.
She looked at him and his long muscular back and remembered how she’d seen it, as if for the very first time, that day at the ocean’s edge when they’d crossed a line a foster brother and sister shouldn’t cross. Maybe it was for the best, really, that she’d left and gone to live with her aunt. Maybe it was for the best that years passed between that day and this one. Instead of her thirteen years away from this place acting as a wall between them, the time apart had become a bridge, the path from what they had been to what they could be.
The room was stuffy from the day’s heat and fragrant with the scent of sex. She cracked the window, and when Roland didn’t wake from the sound, she pushed it all the way up.
Not tired enough to sleep, Allison sat in the window bench. She thought about reading but there wasn’t quite enough moonlight to read by and she hated reading on her phone, but that was fine by her. She watched the water instead, watched it shimmering in the glowing deck lights. She wondered at the strangeness of the day, how it had begun with death and ended with sex. But was it that strange? Her best night with McQueen, the one night she cherished most in her memories, had come when she’d returned home after attending her aunt’s funeral. McQueen had surprised her with his kindnesses during that difficult time, hiring a car to take her there and bring her back, sending a spray of roses, orchids and lilies to cover her aunt’s casket. He’d even been waiting at her apartment when she arrived. He’d wanted sex from her, of course, but that night she’d wanted it from him even more. She’d spent three days in the company of death. And sex was almost the opposite of a funeral. A funeral said “life ends.” Sex said “life goes on.” No wonder she and Roland had fallen on each other like wild animals tonight. After learning one of their own had taken his life, they’d needed the reminder they were still alive.
Allison was almost asleep in the window seat when she thought she saw something moving on the beach. People? An animal? She took the old binoculars off the hook and trained them on the patch of beach just beyond the deck. She didn’t see anything at first, but then the binoculars picked up a red flame. A bonfire on the beach. Someone was having a cookout. This late at night? Well, why not? It was a nice night, warm and dry. She saw the burning logs. She saw the dancing sparks. She saw a square beach blanket next to the fire and one person lying on it.
Her eyes adjusted to the dim light. No, it wasn’t one person on the blanket but two. Two people, one on top of the other. Allison knew she shouldn’t be looking but there was something about the couple that made it impossible for her to look away.
The woman on top had hair the same color as the fire.
The man underneath her had black tattoos on his naked arms and chest.
Allison slowly lowered the binoculars and turned her head from the scene as if she could still see it.
Now she knew one more secret hiding in this house.