Chapter Twenty-Five
TWENTY-FIVE
NATHAN paced the aging Turkish carpet in the soaring two-level library of Dr. Jonah Kauffman’s brownstone.
Outside, and two dozen stories down, New York was sweltering under a massive heat wave.
Here in the dignified penthouse all was cool and polished and worlds away from the bump and grind of the streets.
It never felt like New York inside Kauffman’s realm. Whenever Nathan walked into the grand foyer with its golden woods and quiet colors, he thought of English squires and country houses.
One of Nathan’s earliest commissions had been to design the library, to shift walls and ceilings to accommodate Kauffman’s enormous collection of books in the understated and traditional style that suited one of the top neurologists in the country.
The warm chestnut wood, the wide, intricately carved moldings, the tall sweep of triple windows set back to form a cozy alcove had been Nathan’s choices.
Kauffman had left it all up to him, chuckling whenever Nathan would ask for an opinion.
You’re the doctor on this case, Nathan. Don’t ask me to collaborate on the choice of structural beams, and I won’t ask you to assist in brain surgery.
Now Nathan struggled to compose himself as he waited. This time around, Kauffman was the doctor, and Nathan’s present, his future, every choice, large or small, that he would ever make were in Kauffman’s skilled hands.
It had been six days since he’d left Desire. Six desperately long days.
Kauffman strode in, slid the thick pocket doors shut behind him. “Sorry to make you wait, Nathan. You should have helped yourself to a brandy. But brandy’s not your drink, is it? Well, I’ll have one and you can pretend to join me.”
“I appreciate your seeing me here, Doctor. And your doing all ... this yourself.”
“Come now, you’re part of the family.” Kauffman lifted a Baccarat decanter from a sideboard to pour two snifters.
He was tall, nearly six five, an imposing man both straight and trim after seventy years of living.
His hair remained thick, and he allowed himself the vanity of wearing it brushed back like a flowing white mane.
He sported a neat beard and moustache that surrounded his somewhat thin mouth.
He preferred the no-nonsense lines of British suits, the elegance of Italian shoes, and he never failed to appear perfectly and elegantly turned out.
But it was his eyes that drew the onlooker’s attention first, and most often held it.
They were dark and keen under heavy lids and sweeping black brows.
Those eyes warmed as he offered Nathan a snifter.
“Sit down, Nathan, and relax. It won’t be necessary to drill into your brain anytime in the foreseeable future. ”
Nathan’s stomach did a long, slow turn. “The tests?”
“All of them, and you requested—rather, you insisted on—quite an extensive battery of tests, are negative. I’ve gone over the results myself, as you asked. You have no tumors, no shadows, no abnormalities whatsoever. What you have, Nathan, is a very healthy brain and neuro system. Now sit down.”
“I will.” His legs gave way easily enough, and he sank into the buttery-soft leather of a wingback, man-size chair. “Thank you for all the time and trouble, but I wonder if I shouldn’t get a second opinion.”
Kauffman raised those dramatic black brows. As he sat down across from Nathan, he automatically lifted the pleats of his trousers so they would fall correctly. “I consulted with one of my associates on your tests. His opinion corroborates with mine. You’re welcome, of course, to go elsewhere.”
“No.” Though he didn’t care for brandy, Nathan took a quick swallow and let it slide through his system. “I’m sure you covered all the bases.”
“More than. The CT and the MRI scans were both perfectly normal. The physical you underwent, the blood work and so forth, only served to prove that you’re a thirty-year-old man in excellent health and physical condition.
” Kauffman swirled his snifter, brought it to his lips.
“Now, it’s time you told me why you felt the need to put yourself through such intensive testing. ”
“I wanted to be sure there wasn’t anything physically wrong. I thought I might be having blackouts.”
“Have you lost time?”
“No. Well, how would I know? There’s a possibility that I’ve been blanking out, doing ... something during—what would you call it—a fugue state.”
Kauffman pursed his lips. He’d known Nathan too long to consider him an alarmist. “Have you any evidence of that? Finding yourself in places without remembering how you got there?”
“No. No, I haven’t.” Nathan allowed the relief to trickle through, slowly. “I’m all right, then, physically.”
“You’re in excellent, even enviable physical condition.
Your emotional condition is another matter.
You’ve had a hideous year, Nathan. The loss of your family is bound to have taken its toll on you.
A divorce not long before that. So much loss, so much change.
I miss David and Beth so much myself. They were very dear to me. ”
“I know.” Nathan stared into those dark, compelling eyes. Did you know? he wondered. Did you suspect? But all he saw on Kauffman’s face was sympathy and regret. “I know they were.”
“And Kyle.” Kauffman sighed deeply. “So young, his death so unnecessary.”
“I’ve had time to cope, to start to accept that my parents are gone.” Even to thank God for it, Nathan thought. “As for Kyle, we hadn’t been close in a long time. Their deaths didn’t change that.”
“And you feel guilty that you don’t grieve for him as you do for them.”
“Maybe.” Nathan set the snifter aside, rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m not sure where the guilt’s rooted anymore. Doctor Kauffman, you were friends with my father for thirty years, you knew him before I was born.”
“And your mother.” Kauffman smiled. “As a man who has three ex-wives, I admired their dedication to each other and their marriage. To their sons. You were a lovely family. I hope you can find comfort in the memory of that.”
And that, Nathan thought with a sinking heart, was the crux of it. There could be no comfort in the memories now, and never would be again. “What would make a man, a seemingly normal man living a perfectly normal life, plan and commit an obscene act? An unspeakable act.”
The pressure on his chest forced Nathan’s heart to beat too hard, too thickly. He picked up the snifter again, but without any desire to drink. “Would he be insane, would he be ill? Would there be some physical cause?”
“I couldn’t say, Nathan, on such general speculation. Do you believe your father committed an unspeakable act?”
“I know he did.” Before Kauffman could speak, Nathan shook his head and rose to pace again. “I can’t—I’m not free to explain it to you. There are others I have to talk to first.”
“Nathan, David Delaney was a loyal friend, a loving husband, and a devoted father. You can rest your mind on that.”
“I haven’t been able to rest my mind on that since the month after he was killed.” Emotions swirled in his eyes, turning them to smoke. “I buried him, Doctor Kauffman, him and my mother. And I’m very tempted to bury the rest. If I could be sure,” he said softly, “that it’s not happening again.”
Kauffman leaned forward. He’d been treating the human condition for half a century and knew there was no healing of the body or the brain without healing of the heart. “Whatever it is you believe he did, you can’t bear the weight of it.”
“Who else can? Who else will? I’m the only one left.”
“Nathan.” Kauffman let out a little sigh.
“You were a bright, interesting child, and you have become a talented and intelligent young man. Too often when you were growing up, I saw you shoulder the responsibilities of others. You took on your brother’s far too often for your own good, or for Kyle’s.
Don’t make that mistake now over something you can neither change nor repair. ”
“I’ve been telling myself that for the last couple of months. ‘Leave it alone, live your own life.’ I’d decided not to dig into the past, to try to concentrate on the present and forge a future. There’s a woman.”
“Ah.” Kauffman relaxed, eased back.
“I’m in love with her.”
“I’m delighted to hear it and would love to meet her. Has she been vacationing on that island you took yourself off to?”
“Not exactly. Her family lives there. She’s spending some time.
She’s had . . . difficulties of her own.
Actually I met her when we were children.
When I saw her again ... well, to simplify, one thing led to another.
I could have prevented it.” He moved to the window, to the view of Central Park, which was thick and green with summer. “Perhaps I should have.”
“Why would you deny yourself happiness?”
“There’s something I know that affects her.
If I tell her, she’ll despise me. More, I don’t know what it will do to her, emotionally.
” Because the park made him think of the forest on Desire, he turned away from it.
“Would it be better for her to go on believing something that hurts her but isn’t true, or to know the truth and have to live with pain she might not be able to bear?
I’ll lose her if I tell her, and I don’t know if I can live with myself if I don’t. ”
“Is she in love with you?”
“She’s beginning to be. If I let things go on as they are, she will be.” A ghost of a smile flitted around his mouth. “She’d hate hearing me say that, as if it were inevitable. As if she had no control over it.”
Kauffman heard the warmth come back into Nathan’s voice. The boy had always been his favorite, he admitted privately. Even among his own grandchildren. “Ah, an independent woman. Always more interesting—and more difficult.”