The Deep End

by AM Hartnett

  The cottage was no Bluebeard’s dungeon. There was no mad woman in the attic.

  But there was the disc.

  She knew that watching what was on that disc would be like cracking Taureau’s head open. She couldn’t guess whether it was like the others, if it was of him and Bette together or Bette with some other man, or if it was of that night he was attacked.

  She didn’t know which would be worst to watch.

  The sound of a car engine intruded upon her reading. She glanced at the clock behind her and slid the report onto the desk.

  It was Tuesday. Every Tuesday a delivery was made to restock the fridge and pantry. Upon first meeting Mike d’Entremont, Grace had been delightfully struck by the man’s resemblance to Taureau. Nothing one could pick out immediately, but on closer inspection she could see that Taureau’s cousin had the same clever blue eyes and knobby hands as her lover. That’s where the similarities ended. Mike’s mouth never stopped as he unloaded reusable bags and plastic crates, and he kept on talking after his work was done. She’d asked him to stay for coffee that first day, but he’d said he’d only impose long enough to get a refill of coffee in the thermos he always kept in his truck.

  Grace bounced into the kitchen and started to prepare his drink, and when the back door opened she called out to him.

  ‘Are they still tearing up the roads in town, Mike?’

  The click of the door, followed by immediate silence, made the hair on her arms stand up. She knew immediately it wasn’t Mike who was in the kitchen with her. She turned and nearly dropped the can of coffee in her hand.

  Senator Dominic Taureau.

  He was the last person she would have expected to see here. Taureau hadn’t said a word about his father since she’d arrived in June, but he dropped little comments about his upbringing that led Grace to believe that their relationship now was even worse than it had been.

  Dominic had considered his son a failure. Now, Grace suspected, he was just plain bitter that the screw-up had inherited the fortune that the ambitious fisherman’s son had married into.

  The elder Taureau bore little resemblance to his son, save for the similar arch of his dark eyebrows. His hair was silver and receding, gelled back and flat against his scalp. He was at least a head taller than Taureau, and, though he was dressed casually in khaki pants, a polo shirt and tennis shoes, he still had the flawless air of a politician.

  He glowered at Grace as he dug his hands into his pockets. ‘Which one are you?’

  She didn’t like his tone one bit. Even if she had been just one member of Taureau’s harem, the suggestion that she was some sort of parasite still would have rankled her.

  The Grace Neely of the bare feet and messy ponytail instantly became the Grace Neely of the corporate world. She set the coffee aside and stepped forward, hand extended.

  ‘Grace Neely, Mr Taureau,’ she said. She didn’t like how the title sounded when Dominic Taureau was on the receiving end. He didn’t seem worthy of being called Mr Taureau. ‘I’m Jacques’s personal assistant.’

  ‘I’ll bet you are.’

  He didn’t shake, and she tucked her hand behind her back. If he wanted to be a bastard, he had every right to be a bastard, just like she had every right to be a bitch.

  ‘I would have at least put shoes on if I had known you were coming. Did Jacques forget to tell me?’

  Something like distaste flickered in his eyes, and she knew he was on to her. She had given him that tone, had spoken to him like the unwanted guest that he was, like he was some insignificant cretin who had walked in off the street.

  ‘I don’t have to announce myself when I come to this house.’ He took a slithery look at her from head to toe and back up again. ‘You can make me a cup of coffee, and then you can track down my son and tell him I’m here.’

  Oh, he knows, she thought, and wondered if Taureau watched his father as closely as he did everyone else.

  She turned to prepare his coffee, and thought back to an incident a few years ago when Senator Taureau’s expenses came under scrutiny. Suddenly there were scandalous tales of the senator spending more time with a mistress in Montreal than at his alleged residence in New Brunswick. Every week it seemed as though there was more dirty laundry aired. Now that she thought about it, she smiled. No reporter could uncover that much dirt without a little help.

  ‘How long have you been his assistant?’

  ‘I’ve been an employee of Taureau-Werner for almost a decade. I was Hugh Caroway’s assistant before I was recruited to come here.’

  It was more information than he was asking for, but she wanted to drill it into his head that she wasn’t just his son’s mistress. Regardless of her relationship with Taureau now, she had a decade of hard work behind her.

  ‘How do you take your coffee?’ she asked after his silence had endured a little longer. He was probably trying to come up with something else scathing to say.

  And what about Taureau? He was probably sitting back, enjoying the show.

  ‘Two sugars.’

  She had a horrible thought as she collected a mug from the shelf. ‘Are you staying the night? I can make up a room for you.’

  ‘I’m just passing through on my way to a dinner in Halifax. Why aren’t you calling him?’

  ‘I thought you might want to have your coffee while you wait.’

  He grunted and from the corner of her eye she saw him glance out the window. ‘He’s locked away in there, isn’t he? He should be in a mental hospital, the way he acts.’

  Anger made her light-headed as she spooned sugar into his cup. She gave the coffee a series of annoying, clinking stirs before lifting the cup and turning to the senator.

  ‘Is there anything else?’

  Dominic Taureau gave her a second scathing look, then took his coffee and turned his back on her. ‘My son, and some privacy.’

  ‘I’ll be just a moment.’

  He settled into the seating area just beyond the kitchen, and Grace headed down the hall to her room to call Taureau. Part of her hoped that he would refuse to see his father and give her the pleasure of throwing the man out.

  There was no answer when she called his cell, and as she was about to leave a sharp message she heard the kitchen door opening, and then the sound of male voices.

  She changed out of her shorts and T-shirt and into khakis and a peasant blouse, then quickly twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her head. Just as she strapped her feet into a pair of tennis shoes, the voices were raised. Not quite shouting, but definitely heated. Though she knew that this was a conversation she shouldn’t eavesdrop upon, Grace nonetheless tiptoed into the hall.

  ‘There’s no use in playing the moral high ground with me, boy. You forget that I’m the one who pulled you out of one mess after another from the time you could walk. I could have let you rot in jail. I would have, if it wasn’t for your mother.’

  ‘That’s a lie if I ever heard one,’ Taureau fired back. ‘You kept me out of jail because it was in your best interests, not mine. It was Grand-Père who took me to rehab. What did you do? Told me not to get caught and made sure I had the name of a “reputable” dealer who wouldn’t sell out the family name. You were hoping I’d just overdose so you could use my corpse to ride the wave of sympathy to the ballot box. It’s a wonder you didn’t stick a needle in my arm yourself.’

  ‘You ungrateful little shit. It’s always been easy for you to act persecuted, hasn’t it? I can’t stay clean because it’s too much pressure being Dominic Taureau’s son. And now look at you, hidden away like the monster in a fairy tale because the world is too much for you. You still can’t swallow being in my shadow, and you can’t scrub away the residue of what you did to yourself that put you here to begin with, and so you rot here.’

  After a heavy silence, Taureau spoke. ‘I can’t help you.’

  ‘You mean you won’t.’

  ‘Leave it to your spin doctors. They can –’

  ‘I can’t trus
t them not to betray me.’

  ‘And yet you’ll trust me?’ the younger Taureau replied with a scornful laugh.

  ‘Not in the least, but I can make cracks in this dome you’ve built around yourself.’

  ‘There are others who can provide you with the same ends to your means.’

  ‘None that are willing to skirt the laws like you are.’

  ‘And what if I do? Then what, once you have your dirt? Even if you silence her with her own secrets, she’ll still have yours. She’s refused your money, which tells me she’s either stupid and hoping for another chance or she’s holding out for more money. No one will care about what some twenty-year-old social climber has in her closet when yours is bursting with skeletons.’

  Dominic Taureau’s response was too low for Grace to hear, but whatever it was made his son laugh.

  ‘Go ahead. My mother is gone and so is my grandfather. The only one left to hurt is me, and I just don’t care.’

  ‘If that’s what you think, you have a short memory, boy. I’m sure a few people would be very interested to hear what else you’ve been keeping. You know what things get like when the media comes sniffing around. Some folks hold out their hands and take whatever change is given to them. Imagine if someone spilled all of Bette’s secrets. Who would be hurt then?’

  Grace couldn’t tell whether Jacques Taureau’s response was too quiet to hear or he just didn’t speak, but a moment later she felt the shudder as the door opened. She longed to dart into the kitchen and calm his anger, but she knew in her bones that her presence wouldn’t be welcome, and so she waited as the sound of a car engine broke the silence.

  The door opened and closed a second time, signalling Jacques Taureau’s retreat.

  Grace pressed her back against the wall as the sting of the senator’s words went deep. This exchange had told her everything she needed to know about father and son. There were some men who turned hard as a result of having their children drown in excess, and she might have believed it of Dominic Taureau if she had never met him. Now, as she heard the cruelty in his words, she suspected that Jacques Taureau had been born with this man pushing his head beneath the surface, and that the drugs had been his way of forgetting the pain of never being able to take a full breath.

  She decided to give him fifteen minutes alone before checking on him, but, hearing the sudden growl of his motorcycle, she raced to the yard.

  He fumbled with the helmet, his shoulders bunched and his spine taut. Grace stepped into his line of sight and waved both hands in front of her.

  He cut the engine and gave her a gruff, muffled ‘What?’

  ‘Not going to invite me along for the ride?’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for company.’

  ‘Oh.’ She stuffed her hands in her pockets and glanced back at the house. ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘When I feel like it,’ he snapped, then started the bike up again. Grace leapt out of the way as the bike jerked forward, but he simply spun it around and then he was gone.

  The spray of dust and grit he’d left behind seemed to infect her wound of rejection. For a moment she stood there feeling hollow, wondering if he’d ever turn to her for comfort.

  Straightening up, she drew a deep breath and determined not to dwell on his moods. She had work to do, and now that the black cloud of Dominic Taureau’s presence had vanished from the house, she could finish what she started.

  No sooner did she close the kitchen door behind her than the sound of the bike surged into the atmosphere once more. She opened the door and stood on the threshold.

  He came around to the door and brought the bike to a halt, then bobbed his head to his rear.

  Grace smirked, got the spare helmet from the compartment in the rear, then took her seat. At soon as they reached the end of the driveway, she tightened her grip around him and closed her eyes.

  Her stomach flipped as the bike picked up speed. It still scared her, but the fright was worth it to cling to him like this, arms cinched around his waist and thighs pressed against his. He was so warm and solid, and with no other way to communicate through the roar of the engine she could only speak with her body: a pinch on his thigh to tell him to go slower, a tap on his stomach to alert him that she wanted to stop.

  Mostly she was still and quiet and content in the thrill of it all. These rides were as arousing as foreplay. Legs spread apart and the vibration of the bike running through her … she had never dismounted without her panties being soaked through. After the first ride, the day she’d entered his sanctuary, she’d been so horny when it ended that she’d growled as she led him into her bedroom. She’d kept her silence in the aftermath and so had he, but the grumble from the back of his throat while he fucked her almost mimicked the sound of his bike.

  Now was not the time to let arousal take hold of her, though there was little she could do about her body’s reaction. As he mastered the sharp curves and made a blur of the green landscape on either side of them, Grace pressed against him and willed his anger to leach from his body into hers so she could do away with it.

  He rode until he reached his usual turning point, a dirt road that led to a finger of land sticking out into the strait. When he could take his bike no further he stopped and cut the engine. He didn’t dismount. Instead he remained hunched, gloved fingers flexing over the handlebars.

  Who knows how long he would have stayed there like that if Grace hadn’t climbed off the bike and walked away? She pulled off her helmet, shook out her hair and strode towards the wooden pier that stretched out over the dune. Once she reached it, she glanced back over her shoulder and found Taureau trailing behind her, fingers weaving through his flattened hair.

  ‘Do you want to walk down to the beach?’ she asked. He glanced at his brown riding boots and thought for a moment, and Grace chuckled. ‘You can take those off. It’s sand, not lava.’

  When they reached the rickety stairwell leading down to the strip of sand, Taureau broke his silence. ‘You don’t need to try and improve my mood.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re too stubborn,’ she retorted.

  She allowed him his silence as they walked side by side along the water’s edge, entertained by birds running towards the sea as it receded and racing from it when it rushed back towards the shore.

  Grace squatted down to collect a seashell, and as soon as she righted herself Taureau took her hand.

  She lost her breath and her heart drummed as they strode along, fingers linked and palms pressed together. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something like this with a man. Long walks on the beach had never been her thing, not even quiet strolls around the park on a Sunday. What had seemed so cheesy to her then now flooded her with pleasure, and for the first time she didn’t silence that horrid little whisper that had been hovering around her, hinting that she might actually be falling in love with Taureau.

  She squeezed his hand and pulled him closer to the water.

  ‘Your dad’s an asshole,’ she said when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Taureau gave a bitter laugh. ‘He is, and the sad part is that if I hadn’t turned out to be such a mess I would be just like him.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true at all,’ she said, and squeezed his hand again. ‘Why did he come here?’

  ‘You didn’t hear?’ He laughed again as her cheeks went red. ‘I know when someone’s listening in.’

  ‘I won’t say I didn’t mean to, since that’s never true when it comes to eavesdropping. I know he wanted you to watch a woman for him.’

  Taureau shorted. ‘He got a woman pregnant. Can you believe that? At over sixty-five, he got a twenty-year-old pregnant. He tried to pay her to have an abortion, but she’s not interested. She wants him to own up. He doesn’t want to, so he wants me to find something to quiet her down with.’

  ‘And you refused.’

  He pressed his lips together and gazed out at the sea. ‘I won’t do what he wan
ts me to. There’s no reason to destroy her life, but I will send Reeve to talk to her. He has a way about him. He’s gentle when it comes to the vulnerable, always was. She shouldn’t hold her breath waiting for my father to step up, and she shouldn’t have the baby. There’s a better life for her than that.’

  Grace burned to ask him what his father had said about Bette, but his former lover was strictly a subject for him to broach. When he said no more and they turned back, Grace let it go.

  Her hand slipped from his grip and he moved a few steps ahead of her, walking into the damp part of the shoreline, then stopped and stared into the distance. ‘What he said about me, do you agree with him?’

  Grace felt a stab in her heart. She came up beside him and stood with her arm against his. ‘No one thinks that.’

  ‘I didn’t ask about no one, I asked what you think.’

  She thought of all the things she could say and was grateful that he kept his eyes on the horizon. If he had turned to her with a questioning look, it would have knocked her off her axis and into an orbit where she would have nothing to grasp at. Could she tell him that this thing between them was slowly creeping towards a place where she wanted more than just the sanctuary of Mont Carmel? That more and more she wanted to take that broken part of him in her hands and fuse it back together? That, in spite of all this, she liked him the way he was, cracks and all?

  Grace folded her hands across her chest, took a deep breath and said the only fitting thing that came to mind.

  ‘I think you need work.’

  Taureau drew back, his expression puzzled at first. Then his shoulders shook as the laughter poured out. He clapped his hands over his face and as the laughter died he groaned into his palms.

  ‘I need work. That’s perfect,’ he said, muffled, then ran his hands through his hair. ‘That sums it up perfectly.’