CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jean-Paul.
Jared.
Quentin.
Former lover, nephew, son. And Thomas. What was he? Annette remembered when she’d thought he was everything to her.
She hoped if she could put them out of her mind she could assemble the scattered fragments of her thoughts into a coherent plan. But it was one of those things that was easier said than done, and she thought perhaps digging in the dirt—physical labor—would help. Sitting around waiting for things to happen was against her nature. She wasn’t a passive woman.
At the first break in the rain she went back out to the garden and was on her hands and knees pulling weeds in the soft, damp soil at a raised bed when she heard footsteps on the terrace behind her. Anticipating an unpleasant encounter with Jean-Paul or Quentin, she braced herself.
“Hello, Aunt Annette.”
She rolled back onto her hands and forced a smile. “Why, Jared, what a surprise.”
He was one of those rare men with the capacity to see through her subterfuges and false civilities. It was just as well he’d gone to live in San Francisco. He said skeptically, “Quentin didn’t warn you I was in town?”
“He mentioned it,” she said, rising. “I wouldn’t call it a warning.”
Jared said nothing.
Peeling off her lambskin gardening gloves, Annette wished she’d gone into her office today, after all. She’d have avoided that unpleasant confrontation with Thomas, and she’d have been around when Jared had barged into Quentin’s office. She didn’t care about protecting her son against his cousin. She simply preferred that her first encounter with her handsome nephew in more than a dozen years didn’t occur here in her garden, where she always felt so damned frumpy.
“I’m going to have to look into tighter security,” she said. “It seems my excitement these days stems from wondering who might wander onto my property. It’s been a long time, Jared. I was under the impression that you’d never come back to Boston.”
His teal eyes—his father’s eyes—bored through her. “Because you ordered me not to?”
She checked her irritation. Even as a little boy Jared had had an annoying capacity to cut through the nonsense. She feigned amusement. “As if you’ve ever listened to my or anyone else’s ‘orders.’” She climbed to her feet, noting that Jared didn’t offer her a hand. “I recall I simply expressed my concern and disappointment that you’d had an affair with a Vietnamese woman and fathered an illegitimate child with her.”
“Let’s not rehash the past,” Jared said tightly. “And let’s not pretend we’re happy to see each other.”
“As you wish.”
Annette walked across the terrace to her garden table and whisked off the plastic cover and left it to drip over one of the chairs. “So, Jared,” she said, gesturing to one of the chairs. “Sit down and let’s get caught up with one another. The sun seems to have come out for a bit, and I’m due a break.”
She sat down herself, brushing loose dirt from the knees of her khaki pants. She was dressed casually, but expensively, in a yellow cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tan poplin pants and dusty tennis shoes without socks. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and with her hair coming out of its pins, Jared saw echoes of the free-spirited woman Annette Winston Reed had been in her youth. But tragedy, the pressures and responsibilities of business and her own unyielding view of her place in the world had brought a weariness, even a hardness, to her mouth and eyes.
Jared relented and sat across from her. “I’m in town because the pictures in The Score—I assume you’ve seen them—brought the man who shot me in Saigon out of the woodwork.”
“Really? How unfortunate.” Annette gave him a sympathetic look. “But whatever would that have to do with Boston?”
So innocent. Too innocent. “You’ve known all along about Quentin’s involvement with the drug smugglers in Saigon—”
“Oh, Jared, honestly. I can’t believe you’re that naive. Quentin was a rich, vulnerable young man who allowed himself to be framed for something he didn’t do. The easiest course of action was for him to come home, which is what he did. If you think that has anything to do with this man who shot you, you’re dead wrong.”
Her directness, her confidence, her absolute certainty that she was right weren’t easy to ignore. Her tone alone was enough to make Jared wonder if he were being an idiot. Had Gerard framed Quentin?
He was about to pursue the subject when Rebecca landed on the terrace from the carriageway.
Jared went rigid at the sight of her.
Her hair, wet and tangled, hung in her face, and blood was smeared on her swollen cheek. She was pale and shaking, but her matchless eyes were blazing, fired with determination.
And Jared knew then—even as he slid to his feet to ask her what the hell had happened—that it’d be another fourteen years before he’d have the slightest hope of forgetting her.
She pulled out a chair, hard, but didn’t sit down. “Hi, there, Mrs. Reed.”
“Rebecca,” Annette said regally. “What on earth—”
“I’m fine.”
Jared didn’t take his eyes off her. She was breathing hard and obviously in pain, but he held back.
“Don’t look so grim,” she told the chairman of Winston & Reed. “If you hadn’t had Quentin fire me, I’d be so busy working on your company’s new graphic identity I wouldn’t have time to poke around in the library, get beat up, come around and pester you—stuff like that.”
Annette inhaled. “That’s unfair.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You can answer some questions.” She didn’t look at Jared. “Let’s begin with 1963. A man—a mercenary who’d been with the Foreign Legion—was driving the Jeep the day of the ambush. Know anything about him?”
“Why should I? Rebecca—”
“He’s French. Vietnam was a French colony for a hundred years. You have a house in France.”
“Let’s get some ice for that bruise,” Annette said. “I recall hearing something about the French driver, but as for knowing him…no, I don’t think so. Yes, I have a house on the Riviera and spent some time in Vietnam myself, but I hardly know every Frenchman who was there. Jared—the refrigerator’s in the same place as always. Would you mind?”
He didn’t move. Something had happened, and he had to get Rebecca out of there—but carefully. She looked ready to explode. “Sure,” he said, going easy.
“I don’t need ice,” Rebecca said.
“R.J.—”
“I’m not sure what people around here aren’t telling me or why, or whether it’d make any difference if I knew what it was. But something’s not right here, and never has been, and I’m going to keep digging and pissing people off until I find out what really happened to my father and then to Tam. And if there’s anything that needs to be fixed in the record, I’m going to fix it.”
Bravo for you, sweetheart, Jared thought, surprising himself, when Rebecca, white-faced and hoarse, finished.
Annette regarded the younger woman with placid amusement. Jared had always believed his aunt blamed not just Thomas Blackburn for the ambush that killed her husband, but Stephen Blackburn, as well, for having been Benjamin’s friend, for having invited him along that day—just for being a Blackburn.
“Rebecca,” she said, “I have no idea what’s happened to you or what you’re hinting at, but there’s no conspiracy of silence. Nevertheless—do what you have to do. The Blackburns always do, you know.” Her gaze turned cold. “And it’s the innocents like myself who suffer.”
“If it’s one thing you aren’t,” Rebecca said, rising, “it’s innocent.”
“Cheeky words from Thomas Blackburn’s granddaughter. Frankly, I don’t know how you can stand to be around him knowing he as much as killed your own father.” Annette drank some lemonade, adding coolly, “Of course, that’s none of my affair.”
“That’s enough,” Jared said in a low voice.
His aunt’s fierce gaze landed on him. “I’ll not be told what to do in my own house. I suggest you take Rebecca home and see to her.”
Without a word, Rebecca about-faced, going out the way she’d come.
Jared caught up with her jumping down from the carriageway’s picturesque wrought-iron gate, the quickest way off his aunt’s property. They used to have races climbing over it when they were kids. She landed neatly on her feet.
“R.J., wait for me—I’ll be right over.”
She pretended not to hear him. She hit the sidewalk and picked up her pace.
Jared hoisted himself up and over the fence, not with the abandon and speed he had at ten. He was so busy trying to keep Rebecca in sight that he landed awkwardly and subjected quiet Mt. Vernon Street to a string of blunt curses.
Rebecca had reached the intersection of West Cedar Street when he grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her around to face him. “Whoa, there,” he said. “Come on, R.J., what’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes were shining and the swelling on her cheek and lip looked sore, if not as bad as he’d originally thought. He touched a spot of dried blood with one finger. “R.J.—” He tried to stop himself but couldn’t—didn’t want to. He dropped his hand from her arm to her fingers, catching them in his, squeezing them lightly. “I’m not your enemy, R.J. Who hit you?”
She shut her eyes. She didn’t trust herself. Jared seemed so solid and strong that suddenly all she wanted was for him to hold her. She was sick of being alone, sick of wandering, sick of a lifetime of half truths and secrets.
“R.J.,” Jared repeated, “who hit you?”
She looked at him. “The man from Saigon. The Frenchman.”
He could feel his expression hardening. “I should have shot him when I had the chance.”
“No, it’s more complicated than that. His name’s Jean-Paul Gerard. God knows what all he’s done, but he didn’t just shoot you in Saigon in 1975. I thought you saw everything. All these years I thought you knew.”
Jared froze. “Knew what?”
“He saved my life. And Mai’s.”