Everything to Lose

He called her Cordelia, from this play he’d been reading. The most beautiful and truthful. And most loyal. Now he would have only the wincing smell of chemicals and gasoline and these lonely trestles to remind him that she was ever here.

“You know we could go away.” He faced her. “College isn’t so great. We could go out west. My uncle has a ranch out in New Mexico. I was there once. It’s beautiful there. I could get a job. We could—”

“Ssshh …” She placed her finger against his lips. “No, we can’t. We just can’t. This is the way it is. Don’t spoil this. I want to remember things as happy between you and me.”

“You’ll meet someone,” he said. He felt something rise up in his blood. She would. Someone older. Cooler. Nothing will ever be the same.

“No, I won’t.” She giggled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Not someone like you.”

Yes, you will, he knew, as clear as the lights were bright. Leave. Just like his dad had left. Back when he was six. He barely remembered him now. His mother always called it his fault. That he was just too much to take. Mean Streak.

And then Mike, five years older, who enlisted in the marines and was killed in a copter crash at Camp Lejeune while still in basic training.

Like every person he had ever put his trust in had left him. The night suddenly felt so sticky it seemed to cling to him like cellophane.

Yes, you will, he said to himself, certain. Leave.

He would never let that happen again.

“What?” She cocked her head, fixing on him. “You’re looking at me funny.”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

It was that nothing would ever be the same.

“It’s late,” she finally said. She pulled up her top and arched her back to wiggle up her jeans. “You’re acting so strange tonight. Maybe we should just head back.”

“Just another minute,” he begged. He felt that tingling start to come over him. He willed it to go away. “Please.”

“Okay, just one …” Her eyes lit up mischievously. “But you know what that always leads to, silly …”

He pulled her close, stroking her soft hair over and over, pushing the demons back, back into the hole where they crawled out from, his hand suddenly coming to rest on her shoulder.

A tanker went by, arcing into a wide sweep into Port Elizabeth, a sight they’d watched together surely a hundred times.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I mean, it’s so ugly it’s somehow beautiful. There’s a word for that somewhere. Much as I want to leave, there’s something that I just can’t leave behind.”

“Yes, it’s beautiful.” His blood began to heat. But not in the way it usually did with her. In a different way. Why should someone else get to have her? Why should someone else get to feel what he felt? In a few months she would come back home. Would she even call him? The little boy from the flats she’d left behind? When he saw her with someone else, would she even look at him? If he went up to her, she probably wouldn’t even remember his name.

She was right about one thing, though, he knew. He would.

Go far.

“Streak,” she murmured, reminding him that it was time. But he just acted like he hadn’t heard her and continued to stroke her hair. The things he knew so well: the apricot scent of her shampoo; the slippery feel of his thumb against the sweat on her neck that he would run his fingers over for the last time. Wanting her more than ever, just not wanting her to go, to leave, like they had all left, never coming back.

Suddenly aware of the parched, gagging sound that came from her lips, and how her eyes stretched to twice their size, searching out his in an incredulous and kind of accusing way. Everyone he’d ever loved, everything he wanted to keep for his own just once reflected in them—those wide, scared pools.

Not even realizing that his hands had come together with a seeming will of their own and tightened, a noose of last resort, around the nape of her long, bare neck.

HILARY (#ulink_3120b21f-6387-54e7-9663-43c3e4cc8777)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_dddf6425-1f1e-5a27-9595-6b410ef8b1cf)

I read somewhere that every life is the story of a single mistake, and then what happens after.

Whether it’s brought into the light and owned up to. Or left buried in the darkness of the soul where it all just multiplies in consequences and festers into something far worse.

One wrong decision that can’t be taken back. Even the best of lives has one.

And thinking back on that night, on the backcountry road between Westchester County in New York and Greenwich, Connecticut, I felt my own life starting to come down around me like the intensifying drizzle that glared through the oncoming headlights, I could look back where I had run headfirst into mine.

Normally I wouldn’t even have driven this particular route to Jim’s, my ex of four years, who’s remarried now to Janice. It’s a winding and poorly lit stretch with turns that can come at you pretty quickly if you’re not familiar with them, or maybe distracted, as I might have been that night.

But I’d thrown a few bills to mail in the car and driven north on I-684, just to get out of the house and think, so I came back down and cut across from Bedford, which seemed the fastest way. These past four years had become a bit of a struggle to keep things together for Brandon and me. I’d never asked for much in the settlement, even when my lawyers were pushing me to rip the coat off Jim’s back, which in his case meant the condo in Costa Rica where he went with his pals to go bonefishing and surf; whatever was left of his construction business, which by that time was on fumes and down to mostly house painting and a few remodeling jobs; and of course his perfectly restored ’70 Porsche Targa, which, if he were ever honest, was the true love of his life.

I’d just wanted out, as quickly and painlessly as possible.

And four years back Brandon was the sweetest, slightly nonverbal three-year-old with soft blue eyes and a mop of sun-blond hair.

And also the healthiest.

Ahead, the brake lights flashed from the vehicle about fifty yards in front of me, the driver taking a curve a bit wide. I slowed my Acura SUV, staying several car lengths behind.

He was three when we first started noticing it. At least when we started admitting it. He’d always been slow to talk. When other kids were gushing phrases and cuteness, Brandon mostly stared distractedly and pointed at things he wanted. We had him in a Montessori Stepping Stones program and one day his teachers called me in and said he seemed to be having trouble interacting with the other kids.

What made me concerned was that the head of school, Ms. Roby, was at the meeting too.

“Well, he’s always been a bit high-strung,” I said. “He was high-strung in the womb. In our house, when you want to know the temperature, you can just check Brandon.”

Their laugh was brief and polite.

They mentioned that he had difficulty writing—which we’d seen, of course—and completing his tasks. Switching from one activity to another, he would even throw fits. There were times, they said, when he became downright defiant.

They suggested that maybe he should see a specialist in this kind of thing.

What I was praying was just a heavy dose of ADHD was diagnosed as Asperger’s syndrome, and not a mild case either. Though they claimed that Brandon’s IQ, especially on the creative side, was sky high. They just weren’t sure how to reach him. Clearly they didn’t think they could do the job for him there, in such an open learning environment.

So I found a school, Milton Farms, in Greenwich, which specialized in severe learning difficulties. It was expensive, close to fifty grand a year. I went back to work to help with the costs. Not as the rising magazine executive I’d been before I left to start a family. Assistant publisher of Modern Lifestyle in New York. But as the comptroller for a small marketing firm in Westport, Connecticut. Not exactly the glamour job—the recession was in full throttle and publications were shutting down left and right or going digital, in any case, not exactly hiring. But it was reliable—Cesta Pharmaceuticals had been the backbone of their client list for the past twelve years. More important, it allowed me to stay close to home for Brandon.

I brought in just enough to make sure he could stay in school—which after a year or two was really starting to show results—and pay my share of the mortgage and the real estate taxes.

Which soon became all the mortgage and real estate taxes, as by then no one was really interested in Jim’s eight-thousand-square-foot McMansions and his construction business was floundering. And Janice, the blond Greenwich divorcée Jim had taken up with barely a month after our divorce became final and married a year later, finally said enough to bankrolling the operations.

Not to mention the two perfectly preppy and healthy boys he’d inherited from her who now seemed to take up all of his attention. I also paid for Elena, who cleaned the house and picked Brandon up from school most days until I got home. And the weekly behavioral and language tutoring at $150 an hour. And the day camp Brandon went to in the summer for kids with disabilities.

Or the rare times we actually got away these days. Which soon became what time to get away …

For a while, my folks helped out as much as they could from their teachers’ pensions. My aunt and uncle, actually. My birth parents were killed in an auto accident when I was eight, and Uncle Neil and Aunt Judy took me in, as they didn’t have children, and I never felt for a second that I wasn’t theirs. I even called them Mom and Pop. They’d bought a small boatyard on Long Beach Island and the recession had hit that even harder than the home building business. My dad’s health wasn’t what it once was and there were boats to pay off that hadn’t sold, that they were paying interest on top of interest on to some finance company. Thank God I’d always kept a little savings separate from Jim from my working days. But now that was just about gone.