Free Off Season by Jean Stone Page A

sofa. He wasn’t sure if he’d been glad to be alone, or disappointed that his friend hadn’t returned from the mainland. Charlie was apparently shacking up with some woman who would probably, at some point, like most of them, expect him to think as she did, to think like a woman.
    “Never try to teach a pig to sing.” He whispered the favorite old saying to the walls. “It doesn’t work, and it annoys the pig.”
    He knew, of course, that he was being stubborn. But it was his life and his problem, and he wasn’t going to let Jill or anyone else tell him how to resolve it. Especially not his son-in-law, even though both John and Jill seemed to think a killer attorney was what he needed. Ben might be stubborn, but he was not stupid: he was not going to bring in an out-of-towner, a city slicker to save his neck. The town fathers would hate that about as much as they’d hate a child molester. Maybe more.
    Glancing back up the narrow Main Street, Ben’s gaze fell on the tall steeple of the old whaling church, built God-only-knew-how-many decades ago by Yankee forefathers who lived a simpler life. For some reason, or no reason at all, it made him think of Louise. A wave of sadness washed over him.
    She’d been dead five years now. His companion of nearly twenty-five years, the mother of his only child, Carol Ann.
    He closed his eyes. Would Louise agree that their daughter shouldn’t be told about this situation with Mindy? He and Louise had always believed in sharing the good and the bad with each other and with their daughter for the strength of their family. They had not wanted Carol Ann to be raised the way they both had been—in homes where no one talked about the unpleasantries of life and kids grew up believing the world was a playground, a shelter against wrong, a shield against evil.
    They had wanted to teach Carol Ann the importance of family, the value of being close. They had wanted her to know so she would be capable of trust and sharing when her own partner came along.
    It was, Ben knew, about emotional intimacy. The kind of intimacy that, no matter what, he could never havewith Jill. It was a closeness born out of youthful struggles experienced together: making ends meet, buying their first home, having a child of their blood come into the world.
    He opened his eyes and wiped the tears from his cheeks, wondering how Louise would handle this now, his rock of silent strength, his partner for nearly half of his life. Though Ben had been the man, the macho breadwinner and hunter-gatherer of their small clan, Louise had been the one who always knew what to do, the one who had believed in Ben so many times when he’d doubted himself.
    “If you want to live on Martha’s Vineyard, let’s do it,” she’d said.
    “Start your business, Ben. We’ll manage.”
    “Make plans for the museum. Your dreams are as important as your life.”
    He could not recall when she’d not been supportive. He’d even let himself believe that she’d have approved of his marriage to Jill: Carol Ann had even said so, the night before the wedding.
    But Jill—for all her wonder and all her goodness—was not Louise.
    Jill was glamorous and gregarious, where Louise had been quiet and plain. Jill was confident and clever; Louise had been steadfast, loyal, and there, always there.
    Still staring out the window, Ben felt his shoulders quiver. He leaned against the glass, looking out at the town center, out where no one who walked under the red and gold leaves of those safe tree-lined streets would guess that an accused child molester was standing upstairs, looking out into a world to which he felt he no longer belonged.
    Mindy looked out the window and wished her grandfather had never insisted on tracking down her motherfrom the “itinerary” she’d scribbled and sent them and that he’d kept in the drawer by the refrigerator as if they might ever need to know—or care—where she was. But Grandpa said this was something her