Cradle and All Read online

  When Kathleen put her head on his shoulder during the last dance, he could almost taste her. Jamie knew she wanted him too. There was no doubt about it.

  He could hardly believe how easy it had been to talk Kathleen into skipping the dumb party and going for a ride down near Second Beach and Sachuest Point. Now he wished to God that they had never gone there. He wished he had never laid eyes, or especially hands, on Kathleen Beavier.

  Chapter 62

  AS JAMIE HEADED OUT past Second Beach now, the high beams of his Mercedes stabbed through the thick, dreamy fog like glowing swords. He was pretty woozy, but his driving was okay. This wasn’t the first time he’d been shit-faced behind the wheel of a car.

  He was driving back to Sachuest Point — where he had taken Kathleen almost nine months before, the night that changed both of their lives.

  Something bad had happened out there. Something insane.

  He knew it.

  So did Thompson and Raleigh.

  And so did Kathleen, that phony bitch. That goddamn liar.

  The funny thing was, Jamie wasn’t exactly sure why he was going back. It seemed as if it was out of his hands. He had to go there tonight.

  As he banked the sports car around a soft S-curve, he noticed that his vision was tunneling. Strange as hell. And a dull, muzzy ache behind his left ear was moving up behind his eye.

  Oh, Jesus, not again, Jamie thought to himself.

  He looked down at the Mercedes dashboard. The car’s glowing clock read 9:54. The speedometer was at 60-plus. And the ringing was starting. That meant that soon there would be a painful pounding at the top of his skull. Simultaneous noise and pain.

  Memorial Boulevard slimmed down into a ruler-straight two-lane blacktop as it approached Sachuest Point. In his rearview mirror Jaime could see the receding lights of southeastern Newport and the glittery mansions on the coast.

  He had a sudden desire to take the car over the point. It would be so easy — like flying.

  He frowned, then shook his head painfully. That was a really stupid-ass thought. He was bulletproof, though. He was ten feet tall. He was Teflon J.J., but he knew the car couldn’t fly.

  Another unwanted thought circled, then intruded. Kathleen. And with the thought of her name, a shrill banshee wail started up in his brain.

  Just remembering made him hurt so bad. But he couldn’t turn back the clock — the day after the dance telling everyone that he’d made it with Kathleen. “I broke a vagina from Salve Regina.” He’d strutted and bragged like the asshole he could be sometimes.

  Jamie reached up and touched his head. The pain was so piercing it was making him nauseated.

  That was why he wanted to cut the wheel — cut it now — cut it into the concrete retaining wall!

  Wheels screamed. Rubber fused to asphalt.

  He put both hands on the steering wheel and forced the car back to the center of the road. He was going crazy, that was it. The top of his head wanted to blow off. The incredible pain.

  Then stop the pain, he heard. You can do it, you know. You’re in control. Besides, you know that you deserve to die. You know what you did.

  The yellow Mercedes swerved to the left and crossed the double yellow stripes again. The steering wheel didn’t feel real. He couldn’t grip it. Jamie’s hands flew off the wheel and covered his ears.

  See, you can do it! You can fly. YOU CAN FLY!

  The sports car shot out of control, just missing an oncoming Jeep with fishing tackle waving wildly from the roof, missing it by ten inches or so. God, that was close.

  Chrome yellow headlights blinded him for a second. An angry car horn trailed off into the thickening fog.

  He held on tightly as his car continued its irresistible skid on the slick black road. Suddenly he was flying up into the thick gray fog. The front wheels left the ground and shot straight out with the pull of centrifugal force.

  The car’s headlamps trained vainly on the constellation of Orion before illuminating the downward curve of the car’s trajectory.

  Jamie Jordan screamed high above the rock music playing on the radio: “I’m sorry, Kathy! Oh, God, I’m so sorry for what I did! I’m so sorrrr-eeeee!”

  Chapter 63

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG; something felt terribly wrong to Kathleen.

  The digital clock on her night table announced that it was 11:24, then 11:25, then 11:26. The numbers clicked forward inexorably. But Kathleen couldn’t sleep.

  I don’t want you to sleep, she heard the Voice say. You’ll never sleep again. And that’s not good for the babeee!

  The phone beside her bed rang.

  Her hand slid slowly out from under the warm covers that sloped down the mound of her stomach. She reached for the ringing telephone. She’d known it was going to ring. How had she known? Was she psychic? How could she be?

  “Uhm . . . hello? It’s Kathleen.”

  She heard the uncertain distant-sounding voice of her friend Sara Petrie, who’d been mostly absent from her life lately.

  “Oh, Kathy, I’m sorry to call this late. I wouldn’t have, but it’s godawful important. Something terrible happened.”

  “Sara, what is it? What’s going on?”

  “It’s horrible, Kathy. Jamie Jordan cracked up his car at Sachuest Point. I just heard it on WPRO.” Sara began to cry. She completely lost control. Then she hung up the phone.

  Dazed, crying herself, Kathleen put down the phone.

  She tugged on her jeans with the elastic front panel and struggled into a flannel shirt without opening the buttons. Bending over to put on her socks and boots made her want to heave. She was so sick. Sick to her stomach and, worse, heartsick beyond any feeling of loss she had ever felt.

  A cup of dim yellow light shimmered at the far end of the upstairs hallway. Kathleen walked down toward the inviting light, the house creaking like an old ship under her feet.

  She passed through a small, dimly lit anteroom that led to her father’s bedroom. His door was ajar and she could hear him snoring gently. His keys were in the leather case on his desk.

  She plucked them up, and as quietly as she could, Kathleen ran carefully down the stairs. She grabbed her navy blue parka off the coat hook.

  She had to go out and see about Jamie.

  She had an awful feeling that somehow this was her fault.

  Chapter 64

  KATHLEEN DROVE HER FATHER’S Lincoln down a gravel road that ran parallel to the beach, then twisted out of the beach bramble half a mile south of the main house.

  She was throbbing inside; her eyes blurred with tears as she took Ocean Avenue, now slick with rain. The beachside road was like a twisting ribbon of shiny black glass. She was doing everything she could not to become a car crash herself, but the desire to make everything go away was so incredibly intense.

  But she had more at stake here than her own life. She had the baby to think of. She had to keep the baby safe.

  So Kathleen kept both hands rigidly clasped on the steering wheel and her eyes fastened to the bold yellow center stripe of the road.

  As she drove, she began to remember what had happened that night in January.

  It was finally coming back to her. She was close to the truth. . . .

  But then she lost it again.

  Damn it! Damn it! Damn!

  She arrived at Sachuest Point a little past 11:45.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered as she took in the scene of the accident.

  The bleak, bald hillside that marked the beginning of the wildlife preserve was indirectly illuminated by the headlights of a long procession of cars that had come from town. City of Newport and Portsmouth police vehicles were parked helter-skelter all over the hill. Two shiny red fire engine pumpers were balanced on the bluff down near the accident scene.

  She didn’t need the emergency lights to tell her where to park the car. She knew exactly where to go. This was where it happened! This was where it all started in January!

  She could almost rememb
er — but it kept fading away.

  She was blocking it. She knew she was.

  Why? Why? Why?

  There was a freezing wet wind slicing up from the ocean. Waves were crashing like thunder on the rocks just beyond the roadside.

  A thick bluish gray fog lay over the entire area.

  At least a hundred people were loitering outside their cars, trying to get a better look at the accident, trying to grasp the newest twist in the story of Kathleen Beavier. She was elbowing her way past the knot of onlookers to the automobile wreck when the Newport city police chief recognized her. He shook his head no, sadly.

  “I have to go down there,” Kathleen said. “I must. I’m going.”

  Captain Walker Depew took off his black-visored cap and nervously thumped it against his leg.

  “It’s not a good idea, Ms. Beavier. It’s a terrible scene down there. He’s gone. James Jordan is dead. I’m sorry. Don’t go down there.”

  Kathleen began to sob at the final news about Jamie. She pushed past the flustered, red-faced police chief as if he weren’t there. Peering through the fog, she could see where the yellow Mercedes had awkwardly struck the rocks, grille first.

  Hypnotically, she put one foot in front of the other and, balancing her awkward body, began her rocky descent.

  Your lover is dead! She heard a voice screech inside her head. It’s time to admit the truth about you and Jamie. Tell the truth, you bitch!

  Kathleen wanted to do it — but she couldn’t remember what had happened.

  “I don’t know what happened!” she whispered through gritted teeth. “I don’t remember.”

  A murmur rose and spread back among the crowd that was gathering on the road.

  “It’s her! The virgin.”

  “Hail Mary, full of grace!” A woman’s voice rang out in the fog and drizzle. It almost seemed a sacrilege to Kathleen.

  “No, please,” she said and waved for the prayers to stop. “Go away. Please, just go away.”

  She walked on toward the harsh blue glow coming from two police emergency lamps set beside the overturned car.

  A Newport policeman, a young trooper in a black leather jacket, held out his bulky arm to stop her.

  “No farther there, miss.”

  She brushed past without even glancing at his face. There was no way any of them was going to stop her. Kathleen was less than thirty feet from Jamie Jordan now. She saw the whipped foam bubbling on the car’s engine, a precaution against an explosion.

  She couldn’t help thinking: Whatever happened back in January . . . it was bad. Really bad.

  Chapter 65

  LES PORTER OF the New York Daily News sat in his rented car on a hillside in the frigid New England night, and he couldn’t fully comprehend what was happening; he couldn’t believe he was here to witness it. The battery on his cell phone was low, his coffee was cold, and he was seething with unanswered questions.

  He wasn’t alone in this regard. Word had exploded from the epicenter, where the yellow Mercedes embraced the rocks, to the fringes of the crowds in microseconds. Within minutes everyone knew the up-to-the-instant details. Before you could say “Live from Newport,” television reporters and fanatics and run-of-the-mill rubberneckers with nothing better to do hied themselves to the fogged-in scene of the fatal accident.

  Then Kathleen Beavier had arrived. Porter had rarely witnessed a more dramatic scene in his years as a reporter. She approached the still-smoldering automobile wreck where the boy lay dead.

  She knelt to pray, and then a bright light suddenly appeared over the crowd. Someone in the crowd that was gathered on the shoreline began to scream, “Miracle. It’s a miracle.”

  Fanatic, Porter thought to himself. But the strange light seemed to take on a halo effect. It kept coming closer and closer, directly toward Kathleen Beavier.

  Porter switched on his radio and searched for the news — the competition. Andrew Klauk, of station WNPO in Newport, was reporting from Second Beach Road. Loud, interfering static preceded his report.

  Finally, a crisp, young male voice came on in the unmistakably self-conscious style of local radio reportage.

  “Kathleen Beavier is kneeling at the scene of James Jordan’s tragic accident. It seems a touching and moving gesture to most of us in the crowd. The young girl is approximately fifteen yards from the twisted wreckage. The Sachuest Point area is blanketed with a kind of graveyard fog, which contributes to the general eeriness of the scene.

  “A couple of people have actually begun to pray out loud with Kathleen Beavier. One can’t help thinking of the power and glory of the ancient Church, of the role religion once played in so many lives.

  “A bright light is moving right in toward the Beavier girl. Some of the people are becoming hysterical now. They seem to believe the light represents something mystical or divine.

  “But wait. It’s something else. There’s an explanation for it. . . . The light is coming from a boat out on the water. The Castle Hill Coast Guard station’s search-and-rescue boat, the Forty-one, has been drawn to shore by the noise and car lights. The fog covered her hull until she was up close. The lights we all saw were the twin revolving searchlights on the starboard side of the Forty-one’s cabin.

  “There was no miracle at Sachuest Point tonight. The light was just a boat.”

  Les Porter stared down the hill and watched Kathleen Beavier walk slowly away from the smoldering wreck of the boy’s car. Was all this a hoax? he thought. Of course it was; it had to be.

  Chapter 66

  I SAW KATHLEEN’S GIRLFRIENDS as we arrived at the accident scene near the ocean. Francesca, Sara, and Chuck looked grief-stricken as well as petrified. Once again, they were caught behind police barricades and couldn’t get anywhere near Kathleen.

  I walked past the girls on my way down to see about Kathy. I was sure she would be destroyed by what had happened to Jamie Jordan.

  “You guys all right?” I asked the girls.

  “This is so awful!” Francesca said, and tears filled her eyes. Car accidents involving young people were the saddest tragedies. It always seemed so pointless and absurd, especially this one.

  “I’ll tell Kathy you’re here,” I said.

  “He’d never kill himself,” Chuck told me. “He loved his ass too much. He’d never do this.”

  I continued down the steep hill toward the wreck. What was Chuck intimating to me? Was it that Jamie Jordan had somehow been murdered?

  “I’m Kathleen’s guardian,” I said before anyone tried to stop me on the way down. I felt that I had a right to be here.

  Behind me on the path, Justin kept close; his story was that he was with the Archdiocese of Boston and staying with the Beaviers.

  Kathleen saw us coming and she climbed the rocks toward me. I was suddenly afraid for her. The two of us hugged tightly and I could feel how upset she was. She was shivering. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she looked as if she’d been crying for hours.

  “Something really bad happened here, Anne. Not just tonight — back in January. I can’t remember! I’m trying with all my might, but I can’t. It’s why Jamie died, though. Oh, Anne, Anne, it’s all my fault. I’m not a holy person. I’m a little whore! What is happening to me?”

  Chapter 67

  AS IF IT WERE a large ferocious dog, dread took Kathleen Beavier in its teeth and shook her out of the deepest sleep the next morning. She nearly always woke up with a sense that she had done something wrong and that she was going to be punished for it. But today, she knew it was true.

  Jamie Jordan was dead. She still couldn’t accept it, couldn’t believe it, but she knew it was so. She’d felt Jamie’s sagging weight in the body bag almost as if she were part of the EMS crew that staggered up the rocks with him. And she felt drained by the certainty that he was gone.

  Outside Kathleen’s window, the air shifted in the aftermath of the previous night’s blustering storm. Leaves had been stripped from the trees and the tossing ocean had been dis
turbed.

  There was a faint and dirty odor under everything which was hard to describe. Like a refrigerator that needed cleaning. Or old laundry left in a car trunk over the summer.

  Like something was rotting.

  Kathleen wondered if the odor was coming from her. She felt hopelessly displaced and confused.

  Climbing stiff-legged and lopsided from her bed, she went to her bathroom.

  She used the toilet, brushed her teeth; and while staring at her sleep-swollen face in the mirror, Kathleen was assailed by a recurring, guilt-ridden vision.

  She imagined her baby with a grotesque and twisted body, a misshapen skull. When it cried, its voice would be like a calf’s being torn from its mother, being dragged off to slaughter. It was a cruel fantasy, and Kathleen believed it was just that; but because the thoughts came regularly, it was a hard fantasy to shake.

  Kathleen had other doubts, too, practical concerns about what she would do after her baby was born, about what her life would be like once she had her child.

  The crowds of leering onlookers last night! They acted as if they owned her. They had jeered at her when the lights had turned out to be a Coast Guard cutter. Some had called her names.

  How could she live a normal life ever again? She hadn’t asked for this. She hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

  She wanted to tell everything about that night — the twenty-third of January. Just put it out there. If only she could remember.

  Last night was the first time some things had begun to come back to her. There was an image of herself in the prom dress. A lot of men were gathering around her out at Sachuest Point. It didn’t seem likely, but that was what she remembered. A lot of men circling her, not letting her get away. And then what had happened?

  Kathleen heard the pine floorboards creak sharply across her bedroom.