by Sandra Hill
When she returned to the bedroom, the lights had been turned low. Angel lay on his stomach, facing away. The cover and sheet had been turned back on the other side. He was fast asleep.
She turned the lights out. Except for the stream of light coming from the almost closed bathroom door, the room was in darkness. For a long time, she lay on her back, trying to digest all that had happened to her that day, and what was coming up. No way could she sleep.
“Angel?” she whispered.
There was no answer. At first. Then she heard him sigh, turn his head to her side, and say, “What?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Not now.” Angel had hoped to avoid any conversation tonight. His emotions were still too raw.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes.”
“Go ahead, dammit.”
“My parents were not nice people.”
“Big whoop! Do you think I lived with Mother Teresa?”
“At home, anyway,” she continued, ignoring his comment. “At church, at Dad’s office—he was an accountant—at Mom’s prayer groups, they appeared like normal, caring parents. But I was an embarrassment to them because of their age and I guess because people would know they’d actually had sex at least once. Because they considered me a punishment of sorts from God, they were especially harsh. I can remember being three years old, maybe four, and having to kneel and pray for hours because I didn’t eat all my oatmeal. In the end, my father forced the cold glob down my throat ’til I puked. Then he started all over again.”
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Yeah, her parents were idiots, maybe even cruel idiots, but what did that have to do with now?
“Are you awake?”
“I’m awake.” But I wish I weren’t.
“I wasn’t allowed to participate in any after-school activities. Friends never came over, but then, who wanted to associate with a girl who dressed like one of those LDS kids? You know, long plain dress, hair in long braids. I looked like I belonged on Little House on the Prairie.”
I would have liked to see that. A sexy Laura Ingalls. Hubba hubba! He barely stifled a chuckle. I’m going off the deep end here.
“By the time I was a preteen, I began to rebel. You know the adage—you might as well be hanged for a saint as a sinner. At thirteen and fourteen, I became wild. The harsher the punishment, the more I pushed the bounds of promiscuity. Anything with two legs and a penis was fair game for me.”
Okay, I am officially a dog. Because I wish I’d known her then.
“Of course, there were consequences.” She couldn’t go on, now that she’d come to the real confession.
Angel turned over on his side to stare at her. She was trying her best not to cry. To enforce that self-imposed edict, she bit her bottom lip, painfully.
He reached out and tugged her hand away. When he did, he continued to hold it loosely, reluctantly. “Go on,” he urged.
“When I was fifteen, I got pregnant and had an abortion. Anne Marie.”
Oh, shit! “You named your fetus?”
“I named my baby.”
Oh, that’s better. Naming a fetus in the womb.
“The baby I killed.”
You were fifteen years old, ferchrissake!
“Anyhow, my parents found out and went ballistic. It was the first time my dad hit me, and he hit me good. Black eyes, cracked lip, welts, contusions. Good thing my mother locked me in my bedroom for two weeks, because school authorities would have been on them like gangbusters for child abuse. They gave me only bread and water during that ‘incarceration.’ I was allowed to use the toilet but not shower or brush my teeth.”
Death-row inmates get treated better than that. Angel reeled with shock and fury at parents who could so mistreat a child, and that’s what she’d been, even if she had been fifteen. If they were here now, he didn’t think he could restrain himself from giving both of them equal batterings and a few years in jail.
Too choked up to speak, Angel twined his fingers with hers, and his thumb caressed her wrist in a comforting way.
“You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but, no, I got pregnant again. To a different guy, and, contrary to what Andrea’s adoptive parents told her, I know who her father was. This time, out of fear, I didn’t tell anyone. But, of course, I started to show eventually.”
For some reason, Angel’s heart ached at the image of a pregnant Grace.
“My parents went ballistic again, but they restrained their violence, barely, and instead sent me away to a Catholic home for unwed teenagers. So, a few days after my sixteenth birthday, I gave birth to a baby girl. Andrea, although to my mind she was Sarah. That’s how I’ve always thought of her, and no matter what anyone believes, I have thought about her often. I never saw her when she was born, and she was adopted out with my parents’ consent within hours. I can’t say that I protested at the time. Maybe I just wanted it all to be over.” She paused. “So, there you have it.”
Grace might be able to control her tears, but he couldn’t. Thank God for the near-darkness of the room. He didn’t want her to see how deeply he was touched. Anger and hurt warred within him against pity and admiration for her survival skills. “And that’s why you entered a convent?”
“Better that than return to my home. God only knows what they would have done to me.”
“Okay, so I’m beginning to understand your history, but you have to know, I am very angry with you, Grace.”
“I know.”
“But my anger has to do with your lack of trust, not with your teenage pregnancy or giving your child up for adoption. Hell, you were little more than a child yourself.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Self-flagellation accomplishes nothing. Why didn’t you ever try to find your child?”
“I didn’t deserve that second chance. Plus, I would have had to talk with my parents to initiate the search.”
“You haven’t talked to them since then?”
“Since I left the convent,” she corrected. “That was the death blow for them. I won’t tell you what they said to me. It was so vicious. The kind of thing that can never be forgotten.”
He could imagine.
But all this was neither here nor there, with regard to him.
Sitting up suddenly, he swung his legs over the side and reached for his jeans. Slipping them and a pair of flip-flops on, he stood and tugged a T-shirt over his head.
Grace jackknifed up in bed and stared at him with incredulity. “What are you doing?”
“Going out.”
“Why?”
“I need to walk.”
“Why?”
“Did you think telling me all this, at this late date, would make everything all better?”
Her silence told the story.
“I sympathize, Grace. I really do. But I know damn well I’ll make love to you if I stay in that bed.”
“And making love would be such a bad thing?”
“Yeah, it would. Sexual gratification, sure, but it would only muddy the already muddy waters of you and me—if there ever was or ever will be a you and me.”
She winced.
“There are still too many unanswered questions. Like, do you love me? Why did you fake being a loser in the card game? Was your lovemaking the real deal, or more fake crap? Why did you say you would never marry and have kids? Most important, do I even care at this late date?”
“What do you want from me, Angel?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know anymore. Maybe nothing. I just know that I’ve been on this roller coaster with you far too long. I jumped the tracks a year ago, I jumped the same tracks yesterday, and I’m not sure I want to get back on.”
She looked crushed. And she looked cute, too, with her red hair all mussed up and curly from having climbed into bed with it wet. He refused to be tempted by either. A clear head was in order, and walking was the o
nly thing he could think of that would provide that. Although a barrel of booze held a certain appeal.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as he opened the door and was about to walk out.
Without turning, he told her, “So am I.”
And he left.
But a minute later he was back. Stomping over to the bed, he yanked her up ’til she was kneeling on the bed. Then he kissed her, brutally. A harsh, ravaging movement of mouth and teeth and tongue. Demanding and erotically raw. Fortunately, or unfortunately, she returned the kiss with equal fervor.
Then, just as suddenly as he’d begun the kiss, he ended it, shoving her back to a half-reclining position against the pillow. Staring up at him in confusion, she asked, “What was that about?”
“Hell if I know!” His heart was racing so hard he could barely breathe. “Consider it thanks for your dive in the poker game, or punishment for your dive in the poker game. Maybe both.”
Then he left again.
Chapter 17
When redheads collide...
Andrea stood in the park across the road from the motel, watching Grace O’Brien walk toward her.
She was wearing a strapless yellow sundress with white polka dots and high-heeled sandals, probably the same clothes she’d had on at the party last night. Had she slept with Angel last night? Probably. From what her mother had told her about her mother, or hinted, anyway, she was so loose she gave sluts a bad name.
Her red hair, the same color as hers, was a messy mop of lopsided bedhead curls—or did they call it sex head? She wore no makeup, except for lip gloss. Kissed off?
But Andrea had to admit she looked pretty good for being so old. Not at all the way she’d expected her mother would look.
Angel sat on a bench behind her, whispering encouragement, “Go for it, kiddo. She’s your mother. You’ll like her.”
Yeah, right.
Andrea wanted to hate this woman. She’d certainly written her enough unmailed letters over the years telling her just that, but she was finding it hard to hold on to that hatred as Grace got closer. Tears were running down Grace’s face, and her lower lip trembled. Thankfully, she stopped several feet in front of her. Andrea didn’t think she could handle it if the woman tried to hug her.
“Hello, Andrea.”
Andrea just nodded. She tried for a mature, unaffected expression, but it probably came off as just surly.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long, long time.”
“That is so bogus!” Andrea snapped out.
Grace flinched.
“Andrea,” Angel chastised behind her.
“Sorry,” she said, “but, c’mon, you gave me away, like a doll, or something. An unwanted doll.”
“Let’s sit down over here,” Grace said, motioning to a nearby picnic table.
When they were sitting opposite each other, and Angel had moved to lean against a tree a few yards away, she asked, “Do you even know who my father is?” She was having trouble keeping the contempt out of her voice, despite all of Angel’s pep talks last night and this morning about not making assumptions about her mother.
“As a matter of fact, I do. His name is Alexander Pappas. His friends called him Alex. Last I heard he was running his own restaurant in Philly. A Greek restaurant. Your father is Greek. You have his height. He was six-two.”
Wow! She’d never thought her father would be Greek. She’d imagined all kinds of scenarios, but never Greek.
Not that there was anything wrong with being Greek. “Were you in love with him?”
“I wish I could say yes, but no. I was only fifteen, and he was a hotshot football player a few years older. Very good-looking.”
A football player? A good-looking football player? Wow!
“Does he know about me?”
She shook her head. “But I’ll contact him if you want me to.”
“No. At least not yet. Do I have, like, half brothers or sisters?”
“I don’t know.”
She scowled at Grace. She should know that kind of thing, shouldn’t she?
“Honey, I haven’t seen him in eighteen years.”
She didn’t like Grace calling her honey; she had no right. “My stepfather is a scumbag.”
“I know.”
“Oh, God! Did he come here and try to blackmail you?” She was so embarrassed.
“Yes, but he didn’t succeed.”
“Good. Is he going to jail?”
“No. Unless he does something more.”
Andrea let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “It would kill my mother.” And just make him more angry.
Grace winced, probably at her calling someone else mother, but what did she expect? As if she had any rights!
“Your mother...did she...does she treat you well?”
Andrea shrugged. “She’s so in love with the scumbag that nothing else matters, but she’s not mean. Most of the time. And she was lots different when Harald, her first husband, was alive.”
“Why did you come to Louisiana, Andrea?”
“I overheard my stepfather talking to Mom about you, and I decided to come and tell you that I hate you, and I don’t think much of a mother who gives her kid away, and you must have been a real skank and maybe you still are, and how can you have as much money as my stepfather says you have and I can’t even go to college, and—”
Grace reached a hand across the table to take hold of one of hers, but she jerked it away. But not before noticing her neatly trimmed nails, covered with light pink polish...except for the thumb, which was cut to the quick. “You bite your nails,” she blurted out.
“But only the thumb,” Grace said, with a small smile, noticing Andrea’s stubby thumbnail, too.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she snarled.
“Of course it doesn’t.” Grace withdrew her extended hand. “Okay, I respect your right to hate me, but what do you want to do in more general terms? I mean, will you come back to my cottage and stay with me for a while so we can get to know each other?”
“Will Angel be there?”
Grace and Angel exchanged a look that she couldn’t interpret.
Grace answered for them both. “Angel has other plans.” Her voice sounded kind of choked, but then she cleared it and went on. “He has to leave today for New Jersey, where he has a job.”
Angel made a rude sound at her explanation but offered nothing different.
“If not staying here with me, for a visit, is there a college you’re interested in...where you’ve been accepted? Because I’m certainly willing to help you achieve that goal.”
“I wouldn’t take your money if you...if you paid me.”
Grace released a long exhale. “Or would you just rather flay me with insults and go back to your home in Atlanta?”
“I’m not going back to Atlanta.”
“Where, then?”
Actually, she hadn’t planned anything beyond contacting her birth mother.
“Are you two shacking up together?” she asked both of them.
“No, we are not shacking up,” Angel answered, “and Grace is right, I’ll be catching a flight to Jersey this afternoon, once we’ve finished here.” Just then, his cell phone rang.
She and Grace stared at him, thankful for the break.
“What?” Angel growled into the phone. “Grace? I don’t know. Let me ask.” He put his hand over the phone. “Grace, where’s your cell phone? Apparently, Luc and Tante Lulu have been trying to contact you.”
She pulled it out of her purse, then grimaced. “I forgot to recharge it last night. Yikes! Ten missed calls.”
Angel was talking on his phone again. “Son of a...gun! How did that happen? Slow down, Lena. What? Oh, crap! Where did they take them? Is Luc on the case? And Tante Lulu? What jail?”
Andrea and Grace were both standing now, sensing Angel’s alarm, waiting to hear what he had to say.
Finally, he ended the call and looked at them. “CPS showed up
at the Duval house early this morning with a police escort. They took the three younger kids into foster care. Tante Lulu tried to fight them off. When she pulled out a pistol, they arrested her. Didn’t matter that the thing wasn’t loaded. That incident on top of the one at the Lafayette Hotel cooked her goose. She’s in custody.”
“What can we do?” Grace asked.
“Let me call Luc first.”
While he punched in the number, Grace told Andrea, “Luc LeDeux is a lawyer.”
LeDeux, LeDeux, LeDeux, that’s all I’ve heard since I came to Louisiana.
After Angel ended his call, he told them, “Luc is on his way to the courthouse. Apparently, he had already filed guardianship papers for Lena this morning, now that the house is complete, and that’s what prompted this SWAT-type swoop down on them. Luc says Lena is a basket case and is alone at the house. Can you go over there, Grace? I need to contact the other family members. He hasn’t been able to reach anyone. Apparently, everyone is either hung over or sleeping in from the party.”
“Of course, but you’ll have to drop me off, since my car is still there.”
He nodded. “After you settle Lena down, maybe you can come with me to the courthouse.”
“Tante Lulu must be distraught,” Grace said, then laughed. “On the other hand, she’s probably enjoying the experience.”
“You got that right.” Angel smiled back at her.
And Andrea realized that, just like that, her grand reunion had turned into a great big bust. Her mother, if you could call her that, cared more about these LeDeux people, who must be nutcases by the sound of it, than she did about her. They didn’t even realize at first that she’d stood and walked away.
She was halfway to the road when Grace yelled, “Andrea? Where are you going?”
When she declined to answer, Grace ran after her. Pretty quick, too, considering the grass and her high heels. Grabbing hold of her arm, she stopped Andrea and demanded, “Where are you going?”
