“Okay, enough fighting for now.” Pam released Ryan from her embrace, walked him over to the foot of the bed, and sat down beside him, putting her arm around him.
Jake caught Pam’s eye, and he knew his wife well enough to know that she was only tabling the discussion. She hadn’t forgiven him. She would never forgive him. She would blame him always, and he deserved it. He would blame himself forever, too.
Pam sighed heavily. “Well. I know what we have to do next, like it or not.”
Jake looked past Ryan to Pam. “Pam, listen, please. I know you want to go to the police, but let me just explain why we shouldn’t.”
“Before we get to that, hold on.” Pam held up a hand, without meeting Jake’s eye. “I know a way to make this easier, immediately. First I’m going to withdraw my name from consideration for the judgeship.”
Ryan moaned. “Mom, no. I’ll get my act together when the FBI talks to us, I promise. I can do it. I’ll just answer the questions. I know how to put it out of my mind, if I have to.”
Jake realized Pam was saying that because she’d never get nominated or appointed, after he and Jake had been convicted. “Pam, please, don’t withdraw. Don’t give up. We can get through the investigation. The line of credit will be paid back by next quarter, if not next month. Voloshin will be paid off, which buys me some time to think about how I will explain the transaction later.”
Pam shook her head, her lips pursed. “No, it’s all right, I’m fine with it. We have bigger problems right now.”
“Mom—”
“Pam, please. Why?”
“It’s too much to deal with right now. Enough said.” Pam waved them both into silence, her expression stern. “We’re in a crisis, and we have to get through it. Jake, call off the line of credit, or take it back, or do whatever you have to do. Will you do that, first thing tomorrow morning, or better yet, call Harold tonight?” Pam spoke without even looking at him. “Tell me you’ll do that for me. It’s the very least you can do.”
“I will,” Jake agreed, reluctantly. “But Pam, as for what to do about going to the police, just hear me out—”
“No, my mind is made up,” Pam said firmly.
“Listen,” Jake said anyway. “I hate keeping this secret, and I hate that Ryan has to keep it, too. I know you’re a judge and you believe in the law. I know that.” Jake tried to make his argument as logically and rationally as possible, as if he were a litigant before her bench. “But Hubbard was right on the legalities, wasn’t he? If you go to the police and tell them the truth, Ryan will be convicted of vehicular homicide and sent to a juvenile detention center. No college, no basketball, no future. Even if you’re mad at me, if you go to the police, you’ll be punishing him. Neither of us wants that.”
“Mom, here’s what I think,” Ryan started to say, but Pam cut him off with a chop.
“Hush. I don’t want to know what you think, because I don’t want you to have any responsibility in this. This situation wasn’t created by you, and you’re not going to weigh in on it, one way or the other.”
“Mom, no,” Ryan shot back. “That’s treating me like a baby.”
“Oh please.” Pam waved him off. “That crap may work with your father, but he didn’t give birth to you. You may think you’re large and in charge, but I see through that. You may not be a baby, but you’re still a kid. You leave wet towels on the bed. You don’t know how to fill out a check. You’d wear clothes withmoldif I let you. I’m not going to let you have a say in decisions that are this important. I wouldn’t let you make a decision about whether or not to go to college, would I? You’re going to college, whether you like it or not, because that’s what’s best for you. So I’m not going to let you make a decision about whether or not to go to prison. It’s simply not your decision. It’s a decision I make for you. BecauseI’m your mother.”
Jake saw his opening. “But, Pam, what if we disagree? You shouldn’t trump me. I’m his father, and I have an equal say. I will not stand by and see him go to prison for this. Not for something that was my doing.”
Pam met Jake’s eye, for the first time, but there was no love there, only controlled fury. “Jake, at this point, you’re right. We have no choice now. You made sure of that when you left the scene. You turned an accident into a crime.”
“I know, I’m sorry, but—”
“So Jake, you pay that blackmailer from our savings or money market. I’m not going to the police, and my son isn’t going to jail.”
Jake couldn’t believe his ears.
“This is a secret we’re going to keep, as a family.”
Chapter Thirty
Jake went into his home office while Ryan took a shower and Pam escaped to her office down the hall, to make the phone calls that would end her becoming a federal judge. He flopped miserably into his desk chair and buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t think, he could only feel, and what he felt was abject misery. He didn’t see any way out of the situation, of his own making. He had wanted Pam to agree to keep their secret, and he’d gotten what he wished for, but it was only the lesser of two evils. He felt a creeping dread that it had only increased the pressure on all of them, tying their family together in a corrupt bargain, each one tethered to the other in a way that doomed them not to survive, but to sink.
Jake straightened up and tried to shake it off. He could hear Pam talking through their common wall, but he couldn’t make out the words she was saying, and he felt awful for her. She’d stormed out of Ryan’s room right after she announced her decision, and he hadn’t had a chance to talk to her alone or to say how sorry he was, again. He knew she’d unload on him later, saying all the things she couldn’t say in front of Ryan, and he hated being betwixt and between, living in that hell reserved for married people, who had to postpone their fights for not-in-front-of-the-kids. But no couples fought about things like this, ever.
Jake tried to focus and make himself do things, so he called Harold and instructed him to stop the line of credit and wire the $250K from their money market and savings account. Harold agreed, no questions asked, of course. Then Jake went online, pluggedAndrew Voloshininto the search engine, and tried to find out more about him, but couldn’t. Voloshin wasn’t on Facebook or any of the other social-networking sites and belonged to no professional organizations or alumni groups. Jake felt too distracted to keep looking, much less to answer any emails from work, and when he heard Pam finally get off the phone, he rose, left his office, and went down the hall to hers, knocking gently on the door.
“Pam, can I come in?”
“Yes,” she answered, and Jake opened the door, not surprised to see her teary-eyed at her desk. Her eyes were puffy, her hair undone, and she held a crumpled Kleenex in her hand. She slumped in her chair, framed by the soft pink walls and the red-and-pink toile curtains. All the feminine appointments of her office reminded him there was still a girl inside his wife, and he knew her heart was broken.