Fall from Grace by Richard North Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

Clarice responded. “For whatever it’s worth, your rupture hit him hard. He seemed to flinch at the slightest mention of your name, like the hurt he felt was too deep to admit—”
    Adam’s harsh bark of laughter was involuntary. Abruptly, Clarice demanded, “Tell me what he did to you, Adam. After all this time, I have the right to know.”
    Adam met her gaze. “All he had to do was be himself. One day I’d had enough. It’s a wonder you never got there—”
    “You dropped out of law school, dammit.”
    “I dropped out of my life, Mom. And made another that belongs to me alone.”
    “Really? Is that why you’re working in a hellhole like Afghanistan? It’s exactly what Ben would have done.”
    “Not exactly,” Adam responded. “Anyhow, he’s dead. At the moment I’m more concerned with how he got that way.”
    Clarice looked at him steadily. “He was drunk, and he fell.”
    “That drunk? A man who could drink a half bottle of scotch and still sail his boat in a storm?”
    Clarice shook her head. “The man you knew also wrote between seven and five. This may sound odd, but what frightened me most was to see him struggling to write at midnight, as if he were racing to finish. I no longer knew him at all.”
    “Did you read his manuscript?”
    “He wouldn’t show it to me.” Clarice nodded toward Ben’s desk. “When he finished working for that day, he’d lock it in that drawer. I can’t find the key.”
    Adam gazed at the drawer. “Before he left that night, did he say anything?”
    “Very little.” Clarice stared fixedly past him, as though trying to recall the moment precisely. “He sat in this room with a bottle of scotch, brooding and silent. Then he announced in a slurry voice that he was walking to the promontory, to watch the sunset at summer solstice. Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.”
    “What did you say to him?”
    “Nothing. I didn’t know whether to believe him.”
    Adam took this as a tacit reference to Ben’s affair with Carla Pacelli. “And that’s what you told the police?”
    “Yes.”
    “What else did they ask you?”
    Clarice folded her arms, then answered in a brittle voice. “Among other things, whether that button on his denim shirt was missing. I said I didn’t notice—that I wasn’t in the habit of mending his shirts and sewing on his buttons.”
    As much as anything she had said before, this belated assertion of autonomy struck Adam as profoundly sad. Gently, he inquired, “I assume they also asked if you knew about Carla Pacelli.”
    “Of course. That was why I didn’t necessarily believe Ben was going to the promontory.” Her voice lowered. “For once, he was telling the truth.”
    His mother, Adam realized, seemed determined to never speak Pacelli’s name. “Did they ask about your relationship with Dad?”
    Clarice sat straighter. “Why is that of such interest to you?”
    “Because I’m interested in whatever interests the police. Please, humor me.”
    Clarice’s lips compressed. “This is painful—particularly from a mother to a son. But yes, they asked about Ben and me in considerable detail. Such as the last time Ben and I had sex. I told them it was months ago.” There was something new in her tone, Adam thought, an angry, widowed sexuality. But when she turned to him, tears glistened in her eyes. “How I wish you had at least some illusions.”
    Adam shook his head. “It wasn’t you who took them from me. Can I ask how you found out about Ms. Pacelli?”
    His mother hesitated. “Jenny told me. She saw them together on the beach.”
    “Nice of her.”
    Clarice studied his expression. In a tone of reproach, she said, “After you left, Jenny and I became good friends. She only told me when I worried aloud that Ben was going out at night, without excuses or explanation, becoming more blatant by the day. At that point she’d have had to conceal what she knew.” Her voice flattened out. “In the end, Jenny did me a