Coming To Terms

by Patricia Watters

  Cavallaro looked at Jerry, cold and hard. "You're lying."

  "Why would I lie—" his eyes shifted to the gun "—with that aimed at her head?"

  "Maybe you're a fool." The smooth snick of the cylinder rotating into place broke the momentary silence as the man cocked the gun. He shoved the muzzle harder against Andrea's temple. "You have ten seconds to tell me where the stamp is. Nine... eight... seven..."

  Andrea closed her eyes...

  "I have the stamp." A man stepped through the opening in the brush and into the grotto, a gun in one hand, the other hand pressed against his pocket holding the stamp. "Drop the gun, Cavallaro, and kick it over here." When Cavallaro didn't follow the man's orders, the man said, "Make no mistake, Cavallaro, I'll be on that Learjet when it leaves today. You can either go with me, or I'll shoot you and toss you down that hole. So what's it going to be?"

  Cavallaro eyed the man, hatred and disbelief on his face, and said, "I should have known it was you, Acheson. I should have figured it out when Stanton didn't make the transfer. But stuffing him in a trunk. That's not your style, so I wasn't sure."

  "I didn't have too many options that night, so what's it going to be?"

  "This!" Cavallaro hurled Andrea aside, and in the process, the gun was flung from his hand. He threw himself at the other man, and while they were in death grips and rolling close to the edge of the embankment sloping down to the hole, Jerry grabbed the gun and fired a shot to stop them, but he was too late. The men rolled down the embankment together, arms disentangling and flaring out as they went, hands grappling while reaching out for something that wasn't there. Their desperate cries echoed as they plunged into the hole. The sound of splashing far below ended their cries. Then silence.

  ***

  Andrea stared out the bedroom window of her parent's suite at Finnegan's Hideaway. She felt oddly melancholy over Alessandro's death, not because she cared anything for the man, but because he was a man who'd had everything going for him—charm, charisma, exceptional good looks—and threw it all away because of his lust for money. Strange how that can twist a person. Jerry also had a lust for money, but he channeled it in a positive way, providing for his family.

  "Let it go," Jerry clipped, as he walked into the bedroom. "The man got what he deserved."

  Andrea bristled at Jerry's misinterpretation of her feelings about Alessandro. He was reading things all wrong, as he frequently did when he was miffed, which aggravated her. "I don't care anything about Alessandro Cavallaro. I was thinking it was such a waste of what could have been a good life."

  "Yeah, I suppose living in a villa in Majorca and cruising the Mediterranean on a sixty-four foot yacht could have been a good life. Now you'll have to settle for Myrtle Beach."

  Andrea glared at Jerry. For some reason she'd expected things to be different between them after their harrowing encounter. Clearly she was wrong. They were back to sniping. "I don't believe I want to hear any more of this," she said, then went to join her parents in the living room. She'd rather face her father than listen to Jerry's attempts to make something out of nothing, because the bottom line was, Alessandro had been nothing from the start, other than a pair of appreciative male eyes, or at least the perception that he found her attractive. But almost any nice-looking man would have been able to fill that role the day they boarded the ship, if only to block Jerry from her mind. But now, she realized no man could take Jerry's place in the bedroom, but out of the bedroom he was as impossible as ever.

  "Honey," her mother said, "sit down and have some canapés."

  "I'm not hungry," Andrea replied, her stomach suffering the effects of a deeply disturbing day. First, a near-death experience when she felt the cold, hard muzzle of a gun against her temple, then watching two men plunge to their deaths, then listening to the details of how to fish bodies out of a blue hole using a giant hook, and finally, spending over an hour with Inspector Schribe, while he took her written testimony with all the humiliating details of her interaction with Alessandro, almost as if she were reliving her four days of absolute, and complete madness. The only respite in the entire day was that the inspector didn't require Jerry to be present while she relayed the events of those life-changing days.

  And life-changing they were. For the first time in two years, when she looked at Jerry she saw the hunky male he'd always been before Scott's death. She wanted him again, and she wanted him to look at her the way he had when she was wearing the swim suit, the way he once looked at her. But a major part of their physical relation was missing. Those rowdy, uninhibited moments before they made love were gone because the fun in their marriage was gone. If they stayed together their life would vacillate between the kind of sex that happened on the beach, and the vehement, throwing of barbs. It had been their pattern too long to break.

  Her mother handed her a wide-mouth goblet with a slurry of ginger ale and lime juice, and said, "Think of it as a Margarita without the tequila."

  Andrea took the drink and stepped to the window. The sun was low on the horizon, and what had been turquoise water lapping against a stretch of glistening pink sand, early that morning, was now cloaked in golden light. Contemplating the seashore, which reached out in both directions, she thought about all the little private beaches, completely cut off from view by palms and mangroves, and wondered if any of them were occupied by couples at the moment.

  A place for lovers.

  She turned from the window in disgust. Would those four words, spoken inside her head in a soft Italian accent, always come back to haunt her, reminding her of her foolishness?

  To her annoyance, Jerry strolled into the room. For some reason she'd expected him to have let himself out by now. Her father, who was mixing himself a whiskey sour, looked up and said, "You'll have a drink with us, Jerry?"

  The glass in Andrea's hands slipped from her fingers and dropped to the tile floor, shattering. While Edith, the maid her parents brought with them, rushed in to mop up the mess, Andrea was aware of her mother saying something, but she didn't catch it, so stunned she was with her father's change of tone with Jerry. She couldn't remember one time, during the twenty-five years she'd been married to Jerry, when her father addressed him by his first name.

  "Honey?" her mother repeated. "Are you alright?"

  Andrea nodded to her mother, then said to her father, "Daddy, you just called Jerry Jerry."

  "That's his name," her father said, as if it had always been.

  "Yes, I know it's his name, but it seems to have taken you twenty-five years to get it right. I'm just wondering why."

  "It's not too hard to figure out," Carter said. "Jerry and I found out we had more in common than fighting over you. So, Jerry, can I fix you a drink?"

  "I tell you what, Carter," Jerry said. "Mix me one of those whiskey sours you like so much, and I'll let you know if it would have passed the Ninth Street Gang test."

  "Carter?" Andrea said, staring at Jerry.

  Jerry shrugged. "It's better than the other names I had for him."

  The men exchanged glances and there was no animosity, but their expressions were that of two men who'd just shared a private joke. Someday she'd ask her father what happened to change things between them, but for the moment she didn't want to be reminded of anything that took place in that dense tangle of tropical forest earlier in the day, even if it was to learn what transpired between two aging commandos that brought them together.

  When she realized Jerry was settling in for at least the length of time it took to have a drink with her father, she said, "If you'll excuse me, I have to go pack."

  "That should take about two minutes and a shoe box," Jerry said, with irony.

  Andrea glanced at her parents, who were waiting for her response. She shrugged, and said to them by way of explanation, "All my clothes are on the ship, and those Jerry bought for me don't take up much room since there's so little of them."

  Ignoring Jerry's glare that told her he was pissed because she insisted on stay
ing with her parents instead of with him in his bungalow for the upcoming night, she said to her father, "You did say we'd be flying to Cat Island in the morning, didn't you?"

  Carter nodded. "Your cruise ship's already there and your mother's anxious to get home, but you and Jerry can still fly back with us to Charleston if you want. I'm sure the girls would understand."

  "No!" Andrea said quickly." I don't want them to know anything about, anything. As far as they know, Jerry and I are happily married and at the moment cruising the Bahamas while celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and that's the way I want it. There's time for them to learn that their parents—" she stopped short.

  "Didn't sleep together the whole damn time?" Jerry said in a calm, even manner that held a host of undertones: I put my life on the line for you today and you don't give a shit. I want you in my bed and you're too damn stubborn to take what you want too.

  Andrea looked around at her parents, who were again waiting for her response. Ignoring them, and refusing to counter Jerry's remark, she said, "I have to pack," then went into the bedroom and shut the door.

  Jerry looked at the closed door, then at Andrea's parents, and said, "So now you know how it is. Sorry you had to be dragged into it."

  Barbara placed her hand on Jerry's shoulder. "Midlife isn't an easy time for any couple. You've both been getting older for some time by then, but all of a sudden you're pushing fifty and you begin to look your age."

  Jerry let out a sardonic huff. "Andrea looks better than most twenty-year-olds."

  "That may be, but midlife is still a difficult time," Barbara said.

  She looked at Carter, who nodded for her to continue, as if knowing what she was about to say, so she said to Jerry, "Carter and I went through a little of what you and Andrea are going through about that time in our lives, and we managed to get through it."

  Jerry started to argue that they got through it because they didn't lose a son, and they never knew what it was like to feel so damn guilty for buying him a fast car that he wanted to die every day of his life, and that it was hell living with a woman who blamed him every day of her life because she also had a son who died because his father didn't have the guts to say to him, No, you can't have that car!

  He took another sip of whiskey sour, rested his head back against the sofa, and said, in a weary voice, "It's not like we're the first couple to call it quits midlife. We did have some good years. And those girls of ours, they don't come any better." He took another long sip, swallowed, and let out a little sigh.

  Barbara sat on the sofa beside him, placed her hand over his, and said, "I know it's going to be a difficult day for you and Andrea tomorrow, since it would have been Scott's eighteenth birthday, but maybe it could somehow be a day of coming together, for Scott's sake."

  "Scott's dead," Jerry mumbled, then took another long sip of his drink.

  "Scott's still very much alive in many people's hearts. He is in ours," Barbara said.

  Jerry stood abruptly. "I need to go." He plunked the highball glass on the table and started for the door.

  Carter caught up with him, took Jerry by the arm, and said, "Wait!"

  Jerry looked at Carter.

  Carter's hand remained on Jerry's arm. "It's tough, and I don't know what I'd do if I were in your shoes, but just for the record, I know all about boys and fast cars. The only difference between me and Scott is when I flipped my Corvette when I was his age it had a roll bar and I walked away, but like Scott, I was old enough to know that drinking and speeding don't mix. I'm the real bastard here, Jerry. You didn't kill your boy. It's just a bad combination, boys and cars. He could just as easily have left the road driving an old clunker."

  "But he didn't leave the road in a clunker, he was driving a Dodge Charger with mags and duel exhausts that I helped him buy."

  "Don't be so hard on yourself," Carter said. "Maybe you and Andrea should call a truce for the day and talk about it."

  "Yeah, like that's going to happen. In case you haven't figured it out, Andrea and I don't talk about Scott. Pretty ironic isn't it. When he was alive we never stopped talking about him. Well, arguing would be a better word."

  "He's gone now," Carter said, "so arguing is pointless, but maybe it's time you and Andrea started actually talking about him. No pointing fingers. Just talking."

  Jerry knew Carter meant well, but what he was asking was not an option. "Look, sorry to cut you off, but I'll handle this in my own way."

  Carter patted him on the shoulder. "Yes, I'm sure you will. And I get the feeling that Andrea's going to handle it in her own way. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you're both wrong and there could be another way to handle it?"

  Jerry let out a short, ironic laugh. "If you figure it out, let me know because I haven't got the damndest idea what to do."

  He left and headed for his bungalow, feeling lonelier than he'd ever felt in his life. For some reason he thought if he could lay in bed and hold Andrea in his arms things would be better, but that's not the way it would turn out if she were with him tonight. It would be a repeat of the beach, and he'd feel like hell afterwards, and she'd turn her back to him, and Scott would be hovering between them, untouchable, unreachable. Silent.

  CHAPTER 15

  As the Learjet circled Cat Island before making its final approach to the Old Bight Airport, Andrea looked down at endless miles of pink sand beaches, and lush green forests, and a patchwork of farms intermingled with the ruins of cotton plantations dating back to the 1700s, and saw the crumbling remains of vine-covered mansions, the vestiges of stone walls that once penned in cattle, and the wooden ruins of slave villages.

  In the bay where the cruise ship was docked were dozens of fishing vessels. Not far from the airport, she spotted the monastery. Built by an architect turned Catholic-priest, it sat atop Mount Alverina, the highest point in the Bahamas. She'd read about it in Frommer's Guide the first day then forgot about it completely when Alessandro Cavallaro slithered into her life.

  "So, what are you going to say to the other passengers about Cavallaro?" Jerry asked, zeroing in on her thoughts, a heady reminder of how it had once been with them. But now, Jerry seemed to zero in on the thoughts she didn't want him to know.

  "I don't plan to say anything," she replied. "There's no reason for anyone to ask, and I would just as soon shove the whole horrible episode out of my mind, that is if you'll let me, but I suspect you'll want to rub my nose in it for the rest of our time together."

  Jerry took a few moments before saying, "I think we both stuck our noses in a couple of piles of shit we weren't expecting so I'd just as soon forget it too."

  Andrea was surprised to hear Jerry admitting to his brief episode with Val, even if it was a somewhat oblique admission. "I still plan to stay with Val for the rest of the cruise," she said, filling in the gap Jerry provided. "Like you said, we don't need a repeat of what happened on the beach, but you might have to explain to a few people why you happened to stay behind with me. When we left the ship you and I were a couple of singles, me with Alessandro, and you... not showing up at the fire dance, and now we're returning together, which makes me curious. Why did you stay with me?"

  Jerry eyed her, brows drawn, and said, "Maybe to save you from yourself. Maybe to protect the mother of my girls. Maybe because I still—" he cut his own words off and shrugged. "I don't know. I just did."

  The wheels touched down with a squeal, and shortly after, the jet came to a halt. Andrea wondered if Jerry had been about to say he still loved her. If so, she wouldn't be hearing it now because he'd already left the seat and was standing at the door, ready to leave the plane as soon as the stairs dropped down.

  For some reason, she expected him to excuse himself as soon as he stepped onto the tarmac. Instead, he waited for her and her parents to join him. Her father patted him on the shoulder and said, "You two have three more days to get it all together."

  Jerry avoided the remark by glancing at the jet, and replying.
"Thanks for the ride, Carter. Maybe I should get myself one of those little toys someday."

  "Maybe so." But there was a definite edge to her father's tone, Andrea noted. An odd turn of events, her father lobbying for them to stay together.

  Addressing her father, while ignoring Jerry's pointed stare telling her to let her father's remark pass, she said, "Jerry and I will try to make the most of the time we have left." She looked at Jerry then, and added, "In fact, maybe we should join the tour the cruise line scheduled to the monastery in about an hour."

  Jerry let out a muffled grunt.

  "Honey," her mother said, "for the girls' sakes, you and Jerry enjoy the days you have left. Think back on the good times and put aside the troubling ones, and make this day special." She avoided mentioning that this day would have been Scott's birthday, just as she and Jerry had been avoiding the subject ever since they joined their parents for breakfast at the resort before flying to Cat Island. But at some point between now and when the day was done, they would read the letters from the girls, but she wanted to put it off as long as possible.

  "I'll get a taxi," Jerry said. He gave Barbara a hug, shook Carter's hand, and headed toward a cab waiting on the edge of the tarmac.

  Andrea sighed and looked from one parent to the other. Settling on her father, she said, "Thanks for coming, Daddy. You were quite wonderful out there in the bush. Maybe when I get back you can tell me what happened with you and Jerry."

  Carter smiled and gave her a hug. "I learned you married a good man. Don't be too quick to let him go."

  "Things are as they are. But I'll keep an open mind."

  She hugged her mother, but before her mother let go, she said to Andrea, "Think of the girls, honey. Breaking up the home where they grew up will also break their hearts."

  "I know, but thanks for caring." Andrea released her mother and went to join Jerry in the cab.