She smiled sadly. ‘If you had learned David was married, would it have changed anything?’
‘Of course it would – ’
‘Really? Be honest with yourself, Laura.’
Laura tried to push the allegation to the side and read on, but it remained there, swaying occasionally but never fully leaving.
April 17, 1960
My life is coming to an end. The sun no longer rises. The flowers no longer bloom. Something has taken away my Sinclair. More than that, something has begun to destroy him. I approached him today in the hopes he would confide in me. He has been acting strangely for two weeks now, ever since our visit to my parents’ house. I asked him what was wrong.
‘Nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘There are problems.’
‘Problems?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘I think we have to end this.’
My heart disintegrated then, right in his stuffy, book-congested office, right in front of the works of Keats and Browning and Shakespeare and Dante.
I think we have to end this.
Seven words. Seven words destroyed my life. I of all people should not be amazed by that. Words, I know, can be all-powerful tools. That is all well and good on an analytical front, but the heart is an object that knows merely emotion and feeling. First James was taken away from me and now I am losing Sinclair.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked stupidly.
Sinclair was very upset. He was chain-smoking. His hair was all over the place. He had not shaved in a week. His eyes were bloodshot. ‘It’s over,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t want you to come around here anymore. I have a wife, kids.’
‘That bastard,’ Laura said.
‘Keep reading.’
For the next month or so Judy delved into her depression. Nothing she tried could make her forget Sinclair Baskin. What could have changed him? Judy wondered. Could she have been so wrong about his feelings for her? Could Sinclair have been lying to her this whole time? She thought not. Young Judy kept blaming something else. Something ‘alien,’ she said, had twisted his perception. Eventually, Sinclair would see the light. She would just have to wait. Sinclair would come back to her if she remained patient. Judy settled into a comfortable unhappiness, secure in the knowledge that one day she and Sinclair would be together for all eternity. Love would, in the end, conquer all.
Then something happened in late May that altered her outlook, something that made Judy react in a way that changed their lives forever:
May 27, 1960
My whole body is still numb. Even picking up this pen to write to you is an arduous, unfeeling task. I cannot comment on what happened today. I can only replay the events as they happened.
This morning, Mary called me in a panic. ‘Can I come over? I really need to talk to you.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll be there in an hour.’
I spent the hour straightening up my closet of a dorm room and taking some notes for my new short story. At exactly ten a.m., Mary knocked on the door. When she entered, I was struck anew by her beauty. I had lived with her all my life but her stunning looks still held me in awe. I knew that her beauty was a dangerous weapon. I just had no idea that it could also be lethal.
‘I think I’m pregnant,’ she said, her eyes tainted with fear.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I naively replied. ‘Gloria will have a little baby brother or sister.’
‘You don’t understand. The baby…’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s not James’s.’
I gasped. ‘What? How can that be?’
She began to cry. Oh what a devastating weapon even her tears were. ‘I’m having an affair.’
‘You?’
Mary nodded. ‘I never meant for it to happen. I was alone all the time with Gloria. James works so hard and he’s never home. Along came this charming man…’
She went on and on, making excuses for her carelessness and putting the blame on everything but herself.
‘Have you told this man?’ I asked.
‘He wants me to get a test to make sure.’
‘Sounds like good advice to me.’
Mary shook her head. ‘I’ll take the stupid test, Judy, but I know the truth. I know I’m pregnant. I can feel it.’
I poured us both a cup of tea and asked a casual question that came more from being nosy than concerned. ‘Do I know the man?’
Mary’s head shot up. ‘My God, I forgot. You don’t know…’
‘Of course not,’ I said with my smile still on my face. ‘How should I know?’
‘I thought maybe he told you.’
‘Who?’
‘Sinclair.’
I don’t remember what else was said. My mind froze from that moment until the present. Everything around me collapsed when she said Sinclair’s name and yet everything around me became clear. Mary’s beauty. That was the alien force that had taken away first James and now my Sinclair. Why didn’t I stop her long ago? Why didn’t I destroy her ravishing beauty in its infancy? I slept beside it as a child, befriended it, and watched it grow. Now it was destroying me…
Laura read about the next day. Then she read it again and again, hoping that the words would eventually change. They did not.
‘Laura?’ Gloria called out.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s it say? Read it to me.’
But Laura did not have the strength. She handed the book to her sister.
There were some habits of David Baskin’s that Mark Seidman could not get out of his system. Early morning basketball was one of them. David had loved to go to the Boston Garden first thing in the morning, enter through a side entrance, and shoot baskets by himself for a few hours. It relaxed him, made him forget, let him remember.
No one else was around this early. Joe, the Garden’s head custodian for twenty-some-odd years, did not come in until eight-thirty, so David was truly left alone with his thoughts and the legends that surrounded him. He took the basketball out of his bag and began to dribble on the parquet floor. The sound echoed throughout the arena, from the court to the rafters where the championship flags hung. Fifteen thousand empty seats watched him move up court, the ball dancing between his legs and around his back.
He stopped and jumped. His fingers gently lofted the ball into the air. It went through the hoop with a swish. His jumpshot. Having a unique jumpshot may be effective on the court, but it was a severe handicap in maintaining a new identity. According to Mike Logan of the Boston Globe, only one man had truly been able to duplicate David’s jumpshot:
Mark Seidman.
David shook his head. If Logan only knew the truth. If they all only knew the truth. But the fact remained that they would never guess because there was no reason to suspect that David Baskin might still be alive. Only someone who understood his situation would have any chance of figuring out the truth. For that person, David’s unique jumpshot had led not only to danger but death.
Judy’s death.
Like other sports fans, Judy had seen the similarity between David Baskin’s shooting style and Mark Seidman’s. Unlike everyone else, she knew enough about the past to realize that they were one and the same, that David had not really drowned in Australia, that he had faked his own death and taken on a new identity. From the beginning, David had recognized that there was a chance that she would figure out his secret. He had accepted that risk. After all, Judy knew that David and Laura were brother and sister. She would realize why he had pretended to die. She would not interfere.
‘You don’t understand anything, do you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that you think you know what you’re doing, but you don’t. There are things about this whole situation that have been kept from you.’
Judy had been murdered, he was sure of it. But why? Was someone trying to prevent her from telling the truth, from exposing what had happened? Had Mary been afraid she might tell Laura the truth? Perhaps. But murder? Could Mary murder her own sister?