The Night Listener : A Novel

last two days stumbling around in this fucking cold just so I could say I was—” I cut myself off, knowing that my confession would lose its power if it was offered in anger.
    “Just so you could say what?” asked Donna.
    Silence.
    “That you were sorry, right? For thinking him a fraud.” She was staring at me—the only word that really works—in a way that suggested both disappointment and outrage. I was mortified at first, but that was unexpectedly swept away by a flood of relief.
    Then came anger at the realization that someone had cheated me of my chance to be honest. And I was sure I knew who that was.
    “It wasn’t Ashe’s place to tell you that,” I said.
    She looked down, entangled in thought as she toyed with the cuff of her trousers.
    I went on: “He knew how concerned I was about Pete’s feelings.
    And your feelings as well. He had no right to tell you that.”
    “He didn’t.”
    “What?”
    “He didn’t tell me anything. It’s just something I’ve had a feeling about. I’m glad we’ve cleared it up.”
    I was cowed into silence again.
    “No wonder you’re so distrustful,” she said. “You’re always holding something back yourself.”
    “That’s not true. I came here to tell you everything.” Can he hear me right now? I wondered. Is he pressed against a door somewhere, desperately in need of my reassurance?
    “C’mon,” said Donna. “You’ve been creeping after me for half an hour. That’s hardly the mark of a forthcoming man.”
    “I was afraid you’d be pissed off. That you’d see me as somebody terrible. That you wouldn’t invite me home.”
    “Well, you’re right about the first part. That book was Pete’s life-line, you know.”
    “Look, I’m angry about that, too. This has been the worst time of my life. But I really can’t take responsibility for what happened.
    That was Ashe’s decision completely. I begged him not to do it.”
    “But you planted the doubt, right?”
    My blood was beginning to rise again. “I didn’t plant anything. I just raised the question. He already had doubts himself, he told me so.”
    “So why didn’t you just come to me first? If we’re as close as you say we are.”
    I hesitated. “I don’t know, really.”
    “Yes, you do. You must.”
    “Well…I’m just not good at confrontations. I never have been.”
    “Oh, please. You can do better than that.”
    “But it’s the truth…”
    “Did you think I might be…unbalanced or something?”
    “No,” I lied, infusing my voice with indignation.
    “Then why didn’t you just ask?”
    I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t want to hurt Pete. I didn’t want to betray his belief in me.”
    Are you listening, son?
    “Ah,” said Donna. “So you went to his publisher. That makes sense. You cooked up this crazy storybook theory, and you went straight to the one man who could destroy—”
    “Look,” I said, leaning forward and lowering my voice so as not to be heard beyond the room, “I don’t think it was that crazy, okay?
    It may have been unwise in retrospect, but a lot of people would have come to the same conclusion. Ashe never met Pete. I never met him, and you wouldn’t let me meet him. You wouldn’t let anybody meet him, as near as I can tell. Frankly, if you hadn’t been so obstin-ate—”
    “ Obstinate? ”
    “Well, yes, as a matter of fact. I know why you had your rules, but couldn’t you have bent them a little when the question arose?
    This could all have been avoided, if you’d been willing to let one person in here to verify his…” I had started to say “his existence,” but it sounded too brutal. And I’d seen the look of cold fury that was beginning to contort her features.
    “How dare you?” she said. “What do you know about anything?
    That child couldn’t eat off a plate when he came to me. He barely knew what a fork was for, or what it was like to sleep on anything but a pile of dirty rags. He wouldn’t talk for a month, and he had scars in places you can’t even imagine. Do you know what that’s like? To live in terror for years—and to believe that it could happen again at any time?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Well, I do, mister. I know that one very well. So don’t be telling me what I should have done! Especially now!”
    “I’m not laying blame,” I said, softening my tone in the face of her rage, “but if being published meant so much to him, couldn’t you have—”
    “It wasn’t being published that