“He’s… not… your… friend,” Meredith said.
“Meredith,” Tripp said. The squeezed-out voice was parental-exasperated, long-suffering-but not unloving.
“For crissake, Mere,” Chip said.
“He… was… fucking her,” Meredith said.
Tripp flinched. Chip’s face reddened.
“He was fucking me,” she said in a rush. “Since I was fourteen and he came in my room at one of those big parties.”
The silence in the room was stifling. No one moved. Meredith was rigid, her hands at her sides, a look of shock on her face.
“Jesus,” Chip said. “Mere, why didn’t you…?”
“Dr. Faye says I was getting even with Mommy, and I wanted Daddy to…” She put both her hands suddenly over her mouth and pressed them, palm open, hard against her face, and slowly slid her back down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, her legs splayed in front of her. Chip looked at his father, who seemed frozen in time, then he went suddenly to his knees beside his sister and put his arms around her and pressed her head against his chest. She let him hold her there.
Loudon Tripp stared for a moment at both of them, and then, without looking at anyone else, he walked across my office and out the door and down the corridor past the two guys in their London Fogs. They looked in the office uncertainly. Farrell shook his head at them and they stepped away from the door.
Stratton continued to sit in his chair with his head down, staring at the floor, contemplating his ruin.
Human voices wake us, and we drown.
chapter forty-six
ON A BRIGHT Sunday morning, Susan and I took Pearl over to Harvard Stadium to let her run. We sat in the first row of the stands while Pearl coursed the football field alert for game birds, or Twinkie wrappers. Her nose was down, her tail was up, and her whole self seemed attenuated, as she raced back and forth over the field where generations of young Harvard men had so fiercely fought.
“Your name was in the paper this morning,” Susan said.
She was wearing a black and lavender warm-up suit, and her dark hair shone in the sunshine.
“Did you cut it out and put it up on the refrigerator with a little magnet?”
“Most of the story was the Senator Stratton indictment. Detective Farrell is quoted extensively.”
Pearl spotted a covey of pigeons near the thirty-yard line and went into her low stalk. The closer she got, the slower she went, until finally the pigeons flew up and Pearl dashed to where they had been and wagged her tail.
“He did the work,” I said. “And he did it even though he wasn’t feeling too swell.”
“How are you feeling?” Susan said. “You did some work too.”
“Not enough,” I said.
“You’re worrying about the Tripps,” Susan said.
“Wouldn’t you?” I said.
“Up to a point,” Susan said. “You didn’t get them into this dysfunctional mess. You have done something to start getting them out of it.”
“By pulling the lid off,” I said.
Susan nodded. “By pulling the lid off. Someone had to. If it could have happened more gently, and more gradually, that would have been better. But you didn’t control that.”
I nodded.
Pearl finished hunting the stadium, and came up into the stands, and sat in front of us with her mouth open and her tongue hanging out.
“Dr. Faye is a well-respected and experienced therapist,” Susan said.
I nodded again. We were near the open end of the stadium. Across Soldiers Field Road, the river moved its oblivious way toward Boston Harbor.
Susan put her cheek against my shoulder.
“And,” she said, “you’re kind of cute.”
“There’s consolation in that,” I said.
I put Pearl’s leash on, and we stood and started out of the stands. Susan took my hand and we strolled back through the Harvard Athletic Complex toward the Larz Anderson Bridge. There was a red light at the pedestrian crossing. We stopped.
“What are you going to do about the murder?” Susan said.
“When Jefferson told me the truth that night,” I said, “there were six or eight dogs sleeping in the atrium.”
The light changed and we started across. “I think I’ll let them lie.”