Kitabı oku: «Out at Night», sayfa 2
“I’ve had five years’ practice. You were squeezing it,” he added.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My arm. The muscle. You were squeezing it as if you were testing its strength against your memory. My arm won.”
“Yeah, memory’s a tricky thing.”
“Been my experience.” His body shifted and tensed and she felt the familiar fit of his body, both of them wanting more.
She dropped her hand to his back. She could still feel the sun in his skin. “Have you had a lot of that? Experience?”
“Do my best.” He slid a hand down her back, and she could see him tracking its impact, evaluating mentally the way her back tensed, the short intake of her breath when his bare hand slid from her T-shirt to her skin, the hooded light in her eyes.
And then it rounded a corner again, what she was feeling, and her eyes filled.
He stopped his hands and moved his naked strong body a fraction away.
“I did this to us, okay? I made it be not simple.”
“So now you’re beating yourself up.” His hands found her hips. He pulled her gently toward him and she felt again the blurring sweetness of desire, the melting heat. His palm grazed her buttocks, his eyes still on hers.
She was going to have to push him away. If not now, then soon.
Her breath came in short gusts. “What are you offering, Mac?”
“I think that’s pretty clear.”
“No, I mean it.” She rocked back away from him, but all that did was position her closer. If he moved, even slightly, toward her. Into her.
“Okay, what am I offering. The truth. Ask me anything.”
“Risky business.”
“Riskier not to.”
He touched her breast, her belly, the soft part of her that melted under his touch. They stood together in the dim light, their bodies naked except for her T-shirt. He swallowed. Sighed as if it took everything he had. He pushed her gently away.
“Truth then. I get the feeling you’re a whole lot of work. Maybe I’m not up to that. Maybe I’d give it my best shot, and still come up short.”
Her heart was beating very fast.
“You kept Katie away for five years. When I think about that too much, it makes me crazy.”
She couldn’t breathe.
“Maybe it is too late. Not for Katie. But for us.”
His room held a king-sized bed, a mahogany sideboard, a bar, a flat-screen TV. Through the French doors she could see the ocean. She looked everywhere except his face.
“So that whole ‘sticking around when you’re not sure’—that stuff you said after you got out of the hospital and flew here to surprise us and meet Katie—that’s bullshit?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore. Not here. Not this way.”
He was a big man, his movements economical. He found his shorts and pulled them on. It was abrupt, final, and changed everything. The small window he’d offered—the one through which she could have slipped without penalty or disguise—had closed.
It would take much more now to open it.
Yet as Grace returned to her solitary bed next to Katie’s, listening to the commingled sounds of the surf and Mac gargling into his sink, it seemed as if they’d been doing this forever, or a version of it, and maybe when things evened out, they’d add back in the sex part and get married.
A fantasy she’d construct brick by fragile brick.
THREE Friday
They spent the morning in a golf cart touring the candy-colored clapboard Harbor Island village, stopping at Angela’s Starfish for fresh conch, searching for Jimmy Buffett’s Cheeseburger in Paradise. Mac had been polite and remote with her, lavishing attention on Katie and right before Grace’s eyes, their daughter bloomed.
There had been one reoccurring speed bump, an awkward one, when she noted it: she seemed incapable of letting Katie and Mac hold a conversation without interjecting herself into it, trying to change the focus, not to her, but so that Mac was closed out.
He’d point at a modest wooden house set back from a road and tell Katie it was a library. Grace would turn her in the other direction and point out the sea.
As the morning wore on, the tendency became more pronounced until Katie and Mac’s defense was to close Grace out entirely, and it was then that she finally lost her footing on the emotional cliff face she was climbing—this strange new territory with no toeholds—and slid a good distance backward, scraping parts of her psyche she didn’t know existed.
Battered, she thought jauntily. But still there.
On the heels of that thought, she felt it start in her throat, and then behind her eyes. She’d found herself close to tears.
Now she and Mac lay on lounge chairs at the pool, watching Katie paddle in the shallow end, her water wings bright glints of inflatable pink plastic against the turquoise. A brilliantly colored wall of bougainvillea shielded the pool from the walkway. There were other people sunbathing on towels, but Grace didn’t get the sense that anybody was actively listening. It was only the two of them side by side, and the quiet sounds of Katie paddling and singing a small, tuneless song.
“I talked to my folks.”
“And?” She reached for her lemonade and drank.
“They were wondering if I could take Katie back to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. They live about an hour away. They could drive in.”
“You mean, by herself?” Grace kept her voice steady, but the panic was rising.
“Well, me.”
“That’s in less than two weeks.”
He was silent.
It hadn’t occurred to her until just that moment that maybe rehabilitating herself with Mac would be the least of her worries. The image of grandparents, bewildered and furious at having had a grandchild withheld, suddenly rose in her mind. It was another prick threatening the bubbly bliss of Grace’s imagined life.
“She’s barely five years old. I thought we were going to try trips, the three of us.”
“This is sort of one.”
“You flew out. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I wasn’t going to meet Katie while I was in the hospital, Grace.
We agreed. I didn’t want to scare her. You’d told me any time I was ready was fine with you.”
“Yeah, well, people usually call first, but maybe that’s me.”
He started to speak and stopped. This wasn’t going the way she’d envisioned.
“She’s got a whole other side of the family, Grace, she’s never met.”
“She’s got plenty of relatives she hasn’t met on my side either, she can start with those; I barely know them myself, we can start together.”
She stopped. It was exactly what she’d done all day; promised herself she wouldn’t do again.
“I found us a therapist. Elise Lithgow.”
She sucked in a breath.
Mac scribbled a phone number on a napkin next to his Coke and passed it to her. Grace glanced at it. It was a Mission Hills prefix.
“She wants to meet both of us separately first, to see if we’re each comfortable with her, so if it’s not a good match, I’m open to something else, Grace, if you’ve got another idea.”
Grace shook her head. Katie grabbed the side of the pool and kicked. She was wearing pink nail polish on her toenails and every so often the color winked in the water.
“Grace, when you stopped me last night—slowed me down so I could think through what I was doing—I realized something. You were right.”
“No, no, I wasn’t. Do over. Let’s do a do-over.”
“Let’s just do it right.” He looked at Katie and hesitated. “When I was in the hospital I worked with a Realtor. I bought a place near your house; with the market sliding, everything’s available. It’s a condo in the Rondolet. Right around the corner.”
“I know where it is.”
It stood on Shelter Island, an enormous round building with views on one side of the San Diego Yacht Club.
“It’s far from perfect right now; it’s packed with an old person’s furniture—I bought the place from an elderly woman moving into a nursing facility—but it’s a place, and it means Katie will have her own bedroom when she visits.”
It sunk in. He had planned this. The whole time he was in the hospital, while she sat by the edge of his bed. While they talked about how the light fell on San Diego harbor and the exact timbre of their daughter’s laugh. He’d been working with a Realtor.
“Lots of kids wind up going between two houses. It’s not ideal, but it’s not the worst thing, either.”
Dissolving into sparkly bits! The big candy-colored house with the granite counters and the security gate. Evaporating into air! The three of them climbing, skipping the stairs to some phantom life where Mommy and Daddy lived in the same bedroom and Katie was down the hall and everybody ran in slo-mo in fields of daisies like some personal hygiene commercial. Fragmenting into pieces! The dream of laughing around the kitchen table ha ha ha and having the only silences be good ones, not the lethal kind that took years of explaining and apologies and therapy to sort out.
Gone, gone, gone, not ever having to work at it, and never, ever having to say she was sorry.
She started to say, Right! Say it with conviction and nonchalance and stopped, straightening in her lawn chair.
A Royal Bahamas policeman was bicycling to a stop outside the gate leading to the pool, and even before he scanned the sunbathers and locked eyes with her, she knew he’d come for her.
FOUR
They walked the beach. Pink sand foamed into a burst of white, the waves a dark green flattening into a purple so deep it looked inked. On the horizon a sailboat stood motionless.
Grace cut him a look. He was slightly built, very black, his gray shirt and shorts still crisp despite the humidity. He was wearing sandals. His name on the tag read epsten and when he spoke his voice was a deep baritone. “Thaddeus Bartholomew. Does the name mean anything to you?”
Grace shook her head.
He glanced around. No one was close enough to hear. A man in a leg cast and crutches limped away from them down the beach, his wife walking ahead, holding a cooler and a blanket. The wife never turned to check on him, striding briskly away from her husband as if he was paying for something not quite current in the marriage account. She seemed to be picking the least steady ground, the softest sand. He followed, a resigned slant to his shoulders, his wedding ring a dull flash against sunburned fingers.
“You received the message from FBI Special Agent Peter Descanso.” Epsten peered at Grace, his eyes bright.
“I’m on vacation.”
“Yes. With your daughter and her father.”
Grace shot him a look of surprise.
He said mildly, “Not all white people look the same, but those two do.”
“She has my color eyes,” Grace said. A rogue wave washed toward them and Grace took a step back. “And a dimple. You can’t really see that from where you stood, but it’s there.”
He started to speak and stopped.
“Some people think that Mac’s the one with the dimple, but he really isn’t. His is more of an indentation.”
He looked at her a long moment. “Thaddeus Bartholomew,” he repeated gently.
“Name’s vaguely familiar but that’s as close as I can get.”
She was still smarting that a stranger had immediately seen the connection between Mac and Katie. What if it wasn’t just physical? What if it transcended any bond she’d built with her daughter? And wow, the wrongness of that. Already putting Katie between them in a game of cosmic tug-of-war.
“He died in Palm Springs two nights ago. He was a history professor at Riverside University. Somebody shot him with an arrow. A bolt, they call it, in the States.”
“Special Agent Descanso—my uncle Pete—has been trying for years to get me to spend more time with him and his family. If you knew him—”
Officer Epsten shook his head.
“—but if you did, you’d understand this is so. Like. Him.” She was working up an aggrieved tone of voice. Soon she’d be able to thank Officer Epsten nicely and he’d leave, reassured that she’d done all she could, had nothing to offer. “Tracking me down on a family vacation so I could get pulled into something I know nothing about. Have no relationship to.”
Epsten stopped walking. “Special Agent Descanso, he didn’t explain in the letter?”
She shook her head.
“Mr. Bartholomew left a clue, one investigators think does involve you. He was dying, but resourceful.”
Epsten’s voice was measured and Grace realized in that instant she’d underestimated him. He wasn’t going away.
She was.
That’s what he’d come to tell her. She stared at the water. A teenage girl stood in the waves, her hair a springy golden mane against perfect skin.
“He sent a message to his home phone right before he died. At first, they thought it was just clicks, a child perhaps, playing. He had an oldstyle cell phone, no text messaging.” He turned. “It was Morse code.”
She snapped a look at him. He stared at the water. From the side, his profile was strong. A slight graying near his glasses betrayed his age.
“He spelled out your name, Grace.”
She licked a lip. “My first name? Because spelling out the word grace when you’re about to get killed by a maniac with a crossbow is probably standard stuff.”
“Both names. Actually the exact message was Find Grace Descans. He was cut off before he could add the o. He picked you, and they’d like to know why.”
He stooped and picked up a shell. It was small, fan-shaped, a soft purple and cream. He wiped off the sand and tucked it in the pocket of his shirt. “My granddaughter collects these.”
“I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Not really.”
The teen in the ocean turned. It was a woman in her forties who’d had very good work done. A little too tucked around the eyes for Grace’s taste, but still.
“It’s bigger than somebody dying randomly in a field. Isn’t it?”
Three horses picked their way carefully down a path toward the water, riders gripping saddle horns, and Grace turned back toward the Pink Sands cabana on the beach where a Bahamian attendant named Bolo smiled, waiting to offer a towel and a mauve-colored lawn chair. Grace smiled and shook her head and kept walking, taking the soft sand trail cut into the side of the hill that led back to the villa. Officer Epsten kept pace.
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“There’s an international agricultural convention hosted by the United States government that starts in Palm Springs tomorrow and runs through Monday night.”
“Heard about it. Its official name is the International Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology.”
He stared.
She shrugged. “A friend has a friend who’s involved in it.”
“Apparently Mr. Bartholomew was involved in it, too.” He scuffed the sand with the heel of his sandal. “He was not who he appeared.”
“How so?”
Epsten stared at her soberly. “You’ll have to ask Special Agent Descanso that.”
The villa was coming into view and she could see Katie on the balcony. She waved, and Katie bounced up and down and waved back. Mac appeared on the patio and he put his arm easily around Katie’s shoulders and Grace felt hollowed out, light.
“If you know about Katie’s father, then you probably know we haven’t had much time together.”
“And I am sincerely sorry for that, madam.”
Katie was laughing, Mac bending over her saying something only she could hear. Katie impulsively reached up her arms and hugged Mac hard.
Whatever Grace’s uncle needed her to do in Palm Springs was far less important than the likelihood of Mac forging a bond with Katie that forever altered the relationship she had with her daughter.
“I’ll be back to drive you to the water taxi, which will take you to Eleuthera. On Eleuthera, there’s transport waiting to drop you directly at the plane. They’re holding it for you.”
“Am I supposed to go right to Palm Springs?”
He handed her a sealed letter with an FBI insignia on it. “That, I do not know, madam.”
“How much time do I have?”
He glanced silently at the villa. Mac and Katie had disappeared inside, the balcony empty. He looked at her neutrally.
“Enough to say good-bye.”
“Mommy! Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy!”
Katie threw herself at Grace. She was still in her swimsuit; her skin smelled of chlorine.
“Daddy’s going to take me out in the golf cart later, just the two of us. We’re going to find a store where they sell kitties. We’re not going to buy one, just look. I want to hold a fluffy one.”
Grace met Mac’s eyes over their daughter’s head. He shrugged and Grace felt a territorial tug.
“You need to take a bath, sweetie.”
“There was a bird that flew onto the balcony. It had orange on its head and a very, very big beak. This big.” She held out her hands in front of her nose.
“Sweetie, that’s great. I need to talk to Daddy a minute, okay? Let’s get you out of this wet swimming suit.” Her tone held just the faintest hint of criticism, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see Mac tense.
It eased something in her. She rested an open palm on her daughter’s shoulder.
“Come on, kiddo, I’ll start the water for you.” She moved toward the bathroom, Katie skipping next to her. “I’m going to show Daddy how hot to make the water, so he knows.”
She glanced back at Mac just in time to see his jaw tighten. After a beat, he followed.
“What’s going on?”
Mac followed her into the bedroom and closed the door partway. From the bathtub came the sounds of quiet splashing, Katie singing an off-key version of “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Grace could feel his eyes on her as she moved to the closet and pulled down her suitcase from the shelf.
“I have to go to Palm Springs and help Uncle Pete with something. Today’s Friday. Katie’s got Monday off—it’s a teacher planning day—she has to be back in San Diego for school Tuesday.”
“Katie stays here. You’re not taking her.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. A bold squaring off.
Her intestines felt spongy. “No. I know you need time with her.”
He crossed his arms loosely. He’d scuffed up his right hand somehow and the knuckles looked chapped. “I still want her Thanksgiving.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“Now.”
The splashing stopped. “What?” Katie called.
Anger surged and spread through her body. Love was better, but this still had a warm glow to it. She shot Mac a look as she moved past him to the door.
“Everything’s fine, honey,” she called through the open door.
“I heard my name.”
“Daddy and I were just talking.”
“About what?” There was alarm in her voice and Grace went into the bathroom. A flotilla of rubber duckies bobbed in the water. A soap bubble bloomed on Katie’s shoulder, like a glittering corsage.
Grace sat on the edge of the tub and reached for the shampoo.
“About what a cool daughter we have.”
“You sounded mad.” Her eyes were dark and wide.
Grace massaged the shampoo into her scalp. “We’re fine.” She heard Mac come in behind her. “Aren’t we?”
“Absolutely.” His voice was a little too hearty.
“Lean back, honey, I’m going to rinse this off.”
Katie took a breath and held on to her nose and sank back into Grace’s hand. Katie’s hair floated in the water like a sea nymph’s, her lashes dark against her cheeks. Her head felt fragile in Grace’s hand, easily injured.
“You want me to—”
“Everything’s fine.”
He tried again. “But I could—”
“I’ll be right in, Mac, okay?” She lifted Katie up and squeezed out the water. She felt him moving away from the door, felt the absence of him.
“I held my breath.”
“I saw. When you’re done playing, I’ll rinse your hair again.”
Katie nodded, peering up at her uncertainly as if there was something that needed asking. That needed clearing up. That threatened world peace as she knew it.
“Okay,” she said finally.
Mac was leaning up against the door jamb, waiting for Grace when she got into the bedroom.
“She hears everything,” Grace said pleasantly, her voice low.
“I got that.” He smiled back pleasantly. “But let’s talk about you. What I especially liked was the bit about how hot to make the water. I think I can figure stuff like that out.”
Grace picked up a straw hat and a pair of espadrilles and carried them to the suitcase. She and Mac hadn’t danced this one before, but she remembered it from the times her parents did the steps.
“Go on, say the rest. The even-though-I’ve-never-had-the-chance-to part.”
He smiled. “Even-though-I’ve-never-had-the-chance-to.”
“Thanks to me,” she prompted. She lifted a clump of underpants and dumped them into the suitcase.
“Thanks to you. Here. Let me help you.”
“Gladly.” She was keeping her voice down, but it rang with hurt and her need to be right.
His eyes were bright with calculated interest. As if he’d waited a long time to play this game. As if he’d spent years studying the rule book. As if all bets were off.
He went to the set of drawers, yanked open the top one, and carried it over to the suitcase, upending the bras and tank tops into the suitcase, shaking the drawer hard.
“There. All set.” He tucked the drawer under his arm and carried it back to the dresser, shoving it back into the slot. “Anything else?”
“I’m good.” She unhooked a row of hangers and flung the shirts and pants in a clattering heap into the suitcase. “Ready to leave.”
“Works for me.”
The air left her body. A bullet of pain lodged in her belly. Not exactly a direct hit. He just needed more practice.
She was certain he’d been aiming for the heart.
She straightened. “I’ll be back in San Diego Monday night. Tuesday morning at the latest.” It sounded like a warning.
“Take your time.”
“You’re not keeping her.” It slipped out and the ferocity of it took her by surprise and made real the possibility of Katie leaving for good.
He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time and not quite liking it.
“Why are you doing this?” His voice was even. “She’s my daughter, too. Mine. And frankly, that’s all I’ve been thinking about. What you did. What it cost.”
She slipped the shirts and pants out of their hangers, one by one, not looking at him. The hangers were wooden, well made. She carried them back to the closet and hung them up. They clicked together. The only clothes that hung now were the dresses that belonged to Katie, a small bright row of pink and lime green, splashes of yellow and orange.
“Grace?”
“Don’t think I won’t be checking with the school, to make sure she gets there safely.”
“Nice.” He shoved past her into the hall.
“Okay, so it’s going to be really fun.” Grace cradled Katie in her lap as she dried her hair with a towel.
“Why are you going?” Katie sounded worried.
Grace kissed her. “Oh, honey, I have a couple of days of work to do, that’s all.”
“But I want you to stay.”
“I do, too, sweetie.”
“But Daddy’s going to be here, right?”
“Right here.”
“With me.”
“Every second.” Grace lifted Katie down from her lap. The towel had left a damp splotch on her shorts. “Okay, what do you want to wear? A sundress, shorts?”
“Do you like Daddy?”
The question caught her by surprise. She turned away from the closet. “Very much. Why?”
“I think shorts. Those pink ones.” Katie dropped the towel and scampered to the set of drawers. “And the pink underpants. Everything pink.”
From the back, she was golden except for the pale band where her bathing suit had been. “Does Daddy like you?” Her voice was muffled as she dug through her underpants and pulled out a pair.
“I hope so. Sure. Maybe. Probably. The main thing is, Daddy likes you. Lots. I’m going to get the lotion we use on your hair, so we see the curls.”
Grace went into the bathroom she shared with her daughter and stared at herself in the mirror. A woman she barely recognized stared back. Her eyes were dark, intense, her face looked hunted. She slicked on gloss, smacked her lips together, recurled her eyelashes and fringed on mascara, her mind blank, back on Katie’s question.
Does Daddy like you?
She found the hair conditioner and went back into the bedroom.
Katie lay sprawled on her stomach, next to the open suitcase, shorts and a ruffled top a pale pink against her glowing skin. “How am I getting home?”
Grace sat next to her and worked a dollop of conditioner into her hair. “I’m glad you got dressed. That’s good. You’ll fly with Daddy and then stay in his house.”
Katie yanked up her head in surprise and Grace gently tipped it forward again. “He has a house?”
“Daddy bought a place almost right next to ours, so you’ll spend Monday night there, and then I’ll pick you up after school Tuesday.”
“He lives in San Diego in Point Loma?” Her voice was astonished.
“Not too far away. He bought it when he found out about you. He wants very much to get to know you and be a real daddy.”
Katie sucked in a breath, her head still bent. Her curls were damp ringlets against her scalp. “He is a real daddy,” she said, her voice almost inaudible. “He’s mine.”
Grace nodded. “Yes, honey. He is.” The bullet now was burrowing, worming its way up toward her heart. It was one of those time-release ones, guaranteed to keep chewing up her insides for some time to come. She wondered what it would take to get rid of it.
“All done.” She carried the conditioner into the bathroom, found what she was looking for and returned.
Katie sat with her knees up, her face down, protecting herself.
“Sunscreen.” Grace put it on the dresser. “Even if Daddy forgets. Don’t you forget.” The bottle was bright orange and had a cartoon of a fish on it.
“Mommy.” Katie’s voice was muffled, forced. “Did you just forget?”
“Forget.” Grace looked around the room, her eyes settling on the open suitcase, mentally reviewing the contents. It was a jumbled mess.
“I think I packed everything.” She closed the lid and zipped it. “If I forgot something, bring it back with you, okay?”
“No, silly, that I had a daddy.”
Katie raised her eyes and looked at her. Her eyes were wide, dark brown, fathomless.
Katie’s aim was much surer than Mac’s. It was a direct hit.
Grace felt the aftershock first, the trembling as her body braced for a blow that had already come, and then she felt the pain coursing through her. It was hot, electric, a wire that stung with recriminations and truth.
Grace had tried to leave Mac behind for good. What she hadn’t factored in was how much that decision would cost Katie.
“Am I interrupting something?” Mac stood in the doorway, a hopeful look on his face, the parent at the fence, the one on the outside.
There was a split second when Grace could have said something, fixed whatever it was between her and Katie, a single word and everything would have been okay, but in that blinding moment of time, Katie turned toward the sound of his voice. Grace had always reached out to Katie, instinctively, joyously, but now she stalled, free-falling, unable to move. She stared at Katie and for the first time felt the awkwardness of not reaching out, embracing her, and in that instant she lost her standing as a mother. Not with Katie, perhaps, but with herself.
“He’s here. That’s what I came to tell you.”
Katie turned to take a look out the window. Officer Epsten sat in an idling golf cart. Katie trotted for the door.
Grace made a small sound.
“Wait,” Mac said. “Give your mom a hug.”
Katie came limply into her arms, her body angled away. Grace felt an elbow. Katie squirmed free, leaving behind the familiar scents of new-mown grass and lemon.
Grace swallowed. She felt faint and afraid. “My cell doesn’t have an international connection. I’ll call you from a landline when I get in.”
“Sure,” Mac said, his hand touching Katie’s curls.
Grace walked the two of them out the wide door and to the golf cart. Mac stowed the suitcase in the back.
Epsten eased the cart forward along the bumpy path and Grace grabbed hold of the frame to steady herself, and by the time she angled her body around to take a look behind her, they were gone.
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