“And?”
“Max asked me what was wrong with Paul. He could see his son dying before his eyes. Killing himself. He said he didn’t blame me, but he wondered why we hadn’t had any kids. He said Paul refused to talk to him about it.”
“So you told Max the truth.”
Jet nods. “He listened. He didn’t say anything for a while. I just sat there, drunk, wondering what the endpoint of all this was. I was very near getting in my car and driving away from that family. I think Max knew that. Sally certainly did. She’d already begged me not to go.”
At last, I realize, I’m hearing the truth.
“Max just threw it out there,” she says suddenly. “I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘Hell, if the problem’s that you can’t get pregnant, we can solve that easily enough. No use anybody dying over that.’ I just stared at him, trying to understand what he meant. I know it sounds sleazy, but . . . it wasn’t like you think. Max wasn’t creepy or lechy about it or anything. Not back then. It was a calculated solution. A transaction. Like, ‘If this is what needs to happen to give Paul a chance, then let’s make it happen.’”
I can’t believe how reasonable it sounds. Maybe from the outside, someone would think she was crazy. But when I put myself in her place, I can almost understand it. “Go on,” I say gently. “I’m not judging you. Seriously. Did you sleep with him that night?”
“No. I thought about it for twenty-four hours. The truth is, I’d considered desperate options before. I’d thought about going to New Orleans and picking up some stranger in a bar. Telling him a different name and having sex with him. But the risks of that just seemed insane.”
Compared to sleeping with your father-in-law? I ask silently.
“I’d also considered asking a male friend to help me. But I didn’t have any male friends I could ask that of. You, maybe. But you weren’t exactly a friend.”
“No. And there’s the resemblance factor.”
Her eyes flash. “Exactly. Any resemblance to you, Paul would have seen in a minute. I think that’s what settled my decision. Because if the baby looked like Max, there’d be no problem. Everybody would simply say he looked like his grandfather, which is the most natural thing in the world. From a logistical point of view, the plan was perfect.”
“But from a psychological one, a nightmare.”
She sighs deeply. “I know that now. The thing is, Marshall . . . it worked. For the first nine or ten years. Max wasn’t weird about it at all. He was a sperm donor, that’s it. Once I was pregnant, he played his role perfectly. And as I told you last night, Kevin was Paul’s salvation. The whole family’s, really.”
“Until Max started getting older?”
“Right. And Sally. We went through all this last night. Kevin started turning into the boy Paul never quite was, at least in Max’s eyes—”
“And Max wants him. God, this is bad. If Paul ever learns the truth, it’ll end in violence. No question.”
Jet gives me a sickly smile. “Do you think anything else would have brought me here like this? The explosive vest, remember? Max has his hand on the detonator. And there are a lot of people standing close to me.”
Me, for one. “He won’t keep your secret forever, Jet. Max wants that boy. And he wants you.”
“I know.” Her eyes close again. “All I can do now is try to postpone that day.”
“Or hope Max dies.”
Her eyes open. There’s a burning light in them that wasn’t there before. “I did what I could in that direction last night. But the bastard lived.”
I’ve got a much deeper appreciation than I did last night of why she wanted Max dead on Parnassus Hill. Very gently, I ask, “Did he really try to rape you last night?”
“He did.”
“And six weeks ago? When you stabbed him?”
She looks away. “Not that time, no. That was the first time he threatened to tell Paul and Kevin the truth. He told me he loved me, that we were meant to be together, and Kevin was the proof. I lost my shit. I couldn’t stand to listen anymore. I grabbed a knife off the counter and aimed for his stomach, but he jerked left and caught the blade in his side.”
“Dr. Lacey must have patched him up that time, too.”
“I guess. But last night was worse, Marshall. He told me if I didn’t break it off with you and divorce Paul, he was going to ask Paul to step aside. He repeated that when he called me today, from the hospital.”
The colloquial syntax sends a chill through me. “What does ‘step aside’ mean in that context?”
“Set Paul up in Dallas or Atlanta—in theory expanding their business. Once Paul was committed, Max would tell him the truth about Kevin. Threaten to cut him off completely if he resisted. No job, no inheritance, nothing. Then make sure my divorce went smoothly and I got custody.”
“That’s delusional,” I whisper. “Paul wouldn’t go for that, no matter how much money Max gave him. In fact, Paul would blow his brains out.”
“Max’s?” she asks. “Or his own?”
I think about this. “Max’s first, then his own. That’s my bet.”
Jet slides her chair back and stands, then begins pacing between the table and the back window. “I think Max believes Paul would kill himself, leaving no obstacle between Max and a life with Kevin and me.”
“Except me,” I remind her. “And he sent you here to end that.”
She nods but says nothing. Reflecting on Max’s desire to remove me from his life makes me miss Nadine’s pistol, which I slipped into the rag drawer by the refrigerator before Jet arrived. If Max were not bedridden in University Hospital in Jackson, I wouldn’t risk being even that far from the gun. As I look into Jet’s tired face, Tallulah Williams’s description of the “funny time” in the Matheson home comes back to me.
“Jet, I get that you basically used Max as a sperm donor. But it’s not like you used a turkey baster.”
Her head turns sharply, and I see a warning in her eyes.
“I have to ask you something,” I say in a low voice.
“Please don’t,” she says, reading my mind.
“How many times, Jet?”
She raises her hand to her face, covers her eyes.
“Jet . . . ?”
“Three, okay? I checked to be sure I was ovulating. Then I did it.”
“Where?”
“Don’t.”
I wish I could save her the pain of this. But I can’t. “I hate myself for asking, but I need to know.”
She blows out a rush of air, trying to bleed off anger or guilt. “Once at their house. In the guest room, like I told you last night.”
Only in a very different way than you described. “And the other two times?”
“At the spring.”
This takes me aback. “Delphi Springs? On Parnassus Hill?”
She nods, looking at the curtained window.
“Where we used to go,” I say softly. The awful symmetry of this makes me hate her for an instant. The thought of Max plunging into Jet’s willing body beside that pool gives me vertigo—
“It was the most secluded place we could think of,” she says, still refusing to look at me.
“Not Max. He manages thousands of acres of timber. Even you could have found some other place.”
She turns back to me in desolation. “Does it matter what patch of grass my naked ass lay on? I did it, Marshall. I gave myself to him. Surely that’s the only relevant fact.”