Lies That Bind Us(61)

“Not everyone.”

“Kristen,” I said. He gave me a quick look. “Kristen doesn’t know.”

“You know that for sure?” he said. It was a real question, one that came from surprise.

“She says she doesn’t.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“In this case,” I said, “I think it is.”

“Well, that makes telling you even more awkward,” he said.

“Because it’s about her?” I said.

He looked away.

“Or it’s about Brad,” I said, knowing that was it. “What did he do?”

Marcus looked back to the house. You could see every detail of the brightly lit living room, the people inside moving soundlessly around, laughing and drinking, like characters in a movie.

“There’s a bench at the end of the garden,” he said. “Let’s sit down.”

There was something ominous about his manner, as there was about walking out of the pool of light on the flagged patio and into the deep shade of the garden, the edge of which was lined with tall black cedars. They loomed, and in their deep shade the temperature dropped a few degrees. I stayed close to him, my shoulder brushing his so that I would have to rely less on my dreadful vision, and as we walked, he started to speak.

“I don’t know what you remember,” he said. “We all went in pretty much one at a time. It was a long and tough hike up the hillside, and it was already late by the time we got there. The crowds had gone. I remember feeling weary and thirsty before we even went inside. You and I were . . . well, we weren’t getting on very well. I don’t recall what we were fighting about, or even if we were really fighting, but we went into the cave separately. Melissa had come up on the donkey and was complaining, so Simon left her. I don’t know what was going on with Brad and Kristen, but I think he was walking faster than her on purpose . . .”

“On purpose?”

He hesitated, indicating an old wooden bench, and sat down heavily with a sigh. I settled next to him, gazing back toward the house and its TV window, where our friends—if they were our friends—were acting out their silent little party.

“The cave was creepy, remember?” he said. “It went deep into the mountainside, and you had to follow this roped-off stairway, but it was huge, and every time you thought you were at the end, you’d go round some massive stalactite and there was more cavern, more little greenish lanterns set into the rock. Parts of the path were steep, dangerous.”

I remembered. The whole place was eerily silent, dripping coldly as it had for centuries off those ancient folds of stone hanging like swags of fabric. It was beautiful, but it was the kind of beauty that felt hard and primal, a beauty in which people are irrelevant and unwelcome. The cave had known history and myth. It was history, and in it, you felt insignificant, like one of those bugs that is born, mates, and dies all in one day. And it was dangerous, the path punishingly hard and slick with the constantly dripping water of centuries past. Then there were the formations themselves, bulbous and strangely organic-looking; some of them polished like bone; others spongy like vegetables or brains, split open. Creepy was right.

“So we’re all in there by ourselves,” said Marcus, “and I won’t lie: I’m a bit freaked out and looking to leave as soon as I’ve done the basic circuit of the caves. So I’m walking as fast as I dare, and I lose my way, miss a turn or something. But then I think I hear someone around a bend in the passage, so I figure I must be able to get out that way. I go round the corner and there’s Brad and Melissa.”

He floats it out there like that’s all I need and goes quiet.

“Doing what?” I say. I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but it wasn’t this.

“I don’t even really know,” he said. “It was dark, and I’m surprised—and they are surprised—and at first I don’t even recognize them, and then they break apart, and it’s clear that they were doing something they shouldn’t, and I apologize and try to get the hell out of there as fast as I can, but the damage is done. On the way out, I bump into Simon, who is looking for them, and he knows—I can just tell that he knows—and I get out of the way before he finds them, but I’m still in the cave when the shouting starts. It echoes back, you know? I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but yeah. That was it. That was the end of the holiday, pretty much. The next day everyone was pissed off and quiet. Simon wrecked his Jet Ski. And in the end we all just went home. In a heartbeat, it was all over. I was amazed when I heard from Simon a month or so later, more so when he talked about seeing Brad. I figured they had all worked it out, that it was just some vacation flirtation that got out of hand, and it was all done and mended. But I also figured Kristen knew. I guess not.”

I wasn’t sure what to say, so for a moment we just sat there. Was I surprised? Not really. Melissa flirted with everyone. It was her basic mode of being. She made people love her, or at least she made them want to be around her. Like that kid at the restaurant. Waiter boy. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but he positively swooned over her, and we went back time and time again because she liked it. Was I surprised that she had had a bit of a thing with Brad? That it seemed to have gone further than flirting? No. I was only surprised that she had been caught. Mel was careful, and she usually walked a fine line between playfulness and anything that might spark real jealousy in Simon. Maybe Brad had forced the issue. That seemed possible. He still seemed to watch her with a kind of fascination. Maybe that was why no one had told Kristen. Because it wasn’t really over. The incident was past and everyone had moved on, but who knew what the hell Brad thought—felt—in his heart of hearts? Kristen deserved better.