Off Season by Jean Stone Page A

do with hands for touching or lips for kissing.
    Mindy knew about all this, but she wished they didn’t have to talk about it. It only made her more upset that Ben must really hate her now.
    “The first thing we should do is find a different lawyer,” Jill said to Ben as they sat alone, pretending to have breakfast. She had made french toast—thick, golden slices dusted with lacy powdered sugar and served with a dollop of thebeach plum jelly she had taught Amy to make last year. Jill had taken a few bites, Ben a few more, and the rest sat untouched, interest having been diverted elsewhere.
    It had been the same way last night. After Ben told her what had happened, as best as he could remember from the time he’d been handcuffed, Jill had moved about in robotic, everything’s-okay movements, brewing coffee, setting out a plate of small trifle cakes that she kept in the freezer for special occasions like coming home.
    They had talked most of the night, and Ben told her his decisions.
    No, he did not want to tell Carol Ann or Amy. It was bad enough John knew.
    No, they should tell no one—not Charlie, not Rita. No one. This way they would not place on their family and friends a burden of feeling as if they had to believe him.
    And no, he would not talk to Mindy. It would only cause more trouble.
    They would wait, Ben said. They would see.
    Jill had not agreed with anything except the part about waiting and seeing, because surely this would be over soon. Surely someone would come to his or her senses and end this insanity.
    They had talked most of the night and the cakes, like the french toast now, had gone mostly untouched.
    “If I fire Rick, who else is there?” Ben asked. “I can’t exactly shop around. ‘Excuse me. I’ve been arrested for child molestation. Can you recommend a good attorney?’ ”
    His sarcasm must have been due to stress and anger. Sarcasm was not in Ben’s nature.
None
of this was in his nature.
    “What about Rick?” Jill asked, trying to be supportive without sounding like a nag. “Doesn’t he know someone more … specialized?”
    “Criminal lawyers aren’t exactly in abundance here.People come here for the low crime rate, remember? We’re on an island. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.”
    “Well, Boston, then,” Jill said, pushing her fork into the now-limp bread, dragging angry tracks through the white dust. “I can call one of my old producers at the station. He’s been in the city a long time. Maybe he knows someone.” Before she’d become famous, she’d been a struggling grunt reporter, a newly divorced single mother of two, working the streets, paying her dues. Maybe there was someone who still cared about that.
    “That’s just what we need,” Ben said with defeat, “for the media to find out that Jill McPhearson now has a husband who …”
    Jill stood and moved to the kitchen window. She looked past the back porch, out onto the yard. It was withered with autumn, blossoms turned brown, leaves already brittle. She rubbed her forearms, trying to make sense of it all. She knew who the girl was: she’d seen her a few times when Ben was rebuilding Menemsha House. She was a small, wiry child who was not shy but always seemed to be alone. Alone, apparently, with an overactive imagination.
    “Don’t you have to be at the studio soon?” Ben asked.
    Jill gazed across the harbor toward Chappaquiddick on the opposite shore. She wondered how soon the press would pounce on the story.
    Like the woman at Logan who’d asked about breast cancer, the rumors would be a blizzard of untruths. And where would the public sympathy gravitate? Toward their once-beloved Jill? Doubtful. She had, after all, walked out on a Cinderella story, which was how Addie had spun it.
    She felt Ben’s arms come from behind and slide around her waist. “We’ll get through this, honey. Right now I don’t know how, but I’ll get it straightened out. I won’t let this ruin our lives—or your