CHAPTER 49
Tuesday, May 2
12:35 P.M.
LATITUDE 33°10'0''
LONGITUDE 118°11'15''
NELSON FLETCHER stood on the deck of the trawler formerly known as the Elisa and gazed out at a beautiful day, which, as it so happened, was also the most miserable of his life.
From here, looking off the stern, he could see Santa Catalina Island behind him. San Clemente Island lay ahead to starboard, the coast of northern San Diego County to port.
Dexter had called him at five this morning. Nelson had pretended it was a business call. Pretended he was being called out of town for a few days. By the time he dressed, his wife, Elisa, had fallen back to sleep. Her skin was soft and warm when he kissed her good-bye, half-waking her.
He nearly screwed it all up then and there, because he almost broke down and held her close, almost made too big a deal out of leaving.
Then he thought about how much she was going to hate him by the end of the day, and held himself in check.
Dexter had warned him almost a week ago that Giles was up to something that was going to cause too much trouble for everyone. He had finally given in then and arranged for the trawler to be surreptitiously renamed and docked elsewhere. It would need to be painted later.
When Nelson first became involved in Giles’s plans, almost seven years ago, Dexter had taken him aside and talked to him about the importance of having a plan to leave the country.
No use thinking of going back in time, he told himself. No use thinking of what he would have done differently. Shame, guilt, regret-they were constant companions now. And yet…
And yet he had married Elisa. Without Giles’s plan, would that have come about? No.
They might have married once, long ago. He met her, and dated her, and was crazy about her from the start. He was awkward around Mason, who was never impressed by anything Nelson tried to do to win him over.
Whatever mistakes he made with Mason were nothing compared to his biggest blunder: He introduced Elisa to his charming brother Richard.
Richard and Elisa had forgotten everyone else from the moment they were introduced. Oh, at some point Richard asked him if he would mind…if he would mind! But Nelson had been hurt by what seemed to him a double betrayal, and his pride had been injured. Richard and Elisa had been blissfully unaware of how much it cost him to keep up his act of nonchalance.
Giles had seen it. Dexter and Roy, too. They saw that over the years, the pain of it ate at him.
He worked hard to stay in Richard and Elisa’s lives, just so he could be around her, help her. They maintained contact with him and no other member of the family.
Nearly fifteen years passed in this way. He kept waiting for some other woman to draw his eye. For his desire for her to lessen. But no one else could ever appeal to him.
He told people he was married to his work. In some ways, that was true. He was sure that with the exception of Giles, Dex, and Roy, he had succeeded in deceiving everyone.
Then one day Richard put an end to that delusion.
“Of all my brothers,” Richard said, “you’re the one who has always been the kindest to me. That makes this especially difficult, because I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t see any way around it. You’ll have to spend less time with my family, Nelson.”
“What do you mean?” Nelson asked in disbelief.
“I’m sorry. I know this hurts you. But even Mason has noticed that you’re still…” He seemed to search for a word. “You’re still enamored of Elisa.”
“Mason! He doesn’t show either of you an ounce of respect. The things you let him say to Elisa! He makes her so unhappy-”
“It won’t work, Nelson. This time you won’t sidetrack me, especially not by complaining about Mason. Mason’s fine. He’ll outgrow all this rebellion. He’s bright and talented and good-hearted.” He sighed. “You see, it almost worked again. Mason’s right this time, as it turns out, and he had the guts to confront me about it. I kept hoping, kept wanting to believe you’d accept the fact that Elisa and I are happily married, but I think I’ve only done you a disservice by not facing this earlier on. It’s only a matter of time before the other children become aware of it. Caleb already has, I think, on some level. At his age, it won’t be long before he can name the reason he keeps wanting weekends with ‘just our own family.’”
Nelson tried to protest, but Richard interrupted him and said, “Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t in love with my wife.”
When the silence stretched between them, Richard said, in that gentle way of his, “I think, Nelson, it will be better for all of us if you limit your visits to my home to once or twice a year. You can visit me any time at my office, but-”
“Has Elisa asked you to say this to me?”
“No, right now this is between the two of us,” Richard said. “Do you want me to discuss this with her?”
“No,” he said quickly. That would have been the final mortification. “I would ask,” he added, not quite steadily, “that you never mention this to her. It would make her so…uncomfortable.”
Richard agreed and thanked him for understanding.
THE banishment. That’s how Nelson thought of that awful day. He acknowledged now that long before the banishment, he had been thinking that it would be convenient for Richard to die. He had not brought himself to think of murdering him. He just wanted him to have a fatal car wreck, a drowning accident, or a heart attack. Something quick.
The banishment made it easier to listen to Giles, as he talked of bringing the best and the brightest into the family sphere of influence, of taking children-who would never be allowed to otherwise reach their full potential-away from the parents who hindered them. To think differently of Richard, think of him as hard-hearted and misguided. To believe that Giles’s plans could give Nelson what he wanted. He convinced himself that it would give Elisa a better life, too. He could love her better, give her more.
His part, too, was so simple. Take the child, Jenny, with him. Jenny knew him, trusted him. He had already taken her to visit Roy and Victoria, and she adored Victoria’s little girl, Carrie. That day he simply did what he had done on three other mornings. Because he wasn’t coming to the house, Richard had no objection to his brief visits to the office. He had missed Nelson, he said. Jenny clearly was happy to see him. And it did make it easier for Richard to get work done if Nelson entertained Jenny.
So when Nelson arrived that last morning and asked Jenny if she wanted to come with him, she didn’t hesitate.
Two business clients who had been referred to him by Nelson found Richard’s body-as Nelson had known they would-so when police arrived, the clients asked the police to contact Nelson, just as Giles had predicted.
The grisly murder scene had nearly made Nelson faint. He had not expected it to be so bloody, for Richard to be so…damaged. A single thought repeated itself over and over:
What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?
He had not expected this horror. He discovered that the anger he had felt toward Richard seemed petty and misplaced. He thought of the child Richard, whom he had always protected and cared for as an older brother should, and a sudden upwelling of great and genuine grief overcame him.
IN his rosily imagined versions of how it would go, before it actually happened, he could pursue Elisa by comforting her, and go on from there. Mason, who tormented her, would be in prison, at least for a time. Jenny, adorable as she was, would have made it difficult for them to have the kind of honeymoon-forever lifestyle he envisioned. He knew Elisa would miss her child, but that child would have a wonderful upbringing, with more advantages than Richard could have provided, and other children to play with as she grew up.
Jenny was hardly more than a toddler, and would eventually accept what she had been told-her parents were dead, Roy and Victoria were her new mommy and daddy. To Jenny, Uncle Nelson would still be Uncle Nelson-although Nelson would ensure that Elisa remained aloof from the Fletchers, and if she did have contact, she would never be at Graydon Fletcher’s home at the same time Roy’s family was there.