“I assume he took you up on your offer.”
“I was fourteen by then, tall, a woman already in many ways. We were alone in the house. He brought me to his bedroom, and he took my virginity. That was over twelve years ago.”
Kingsley stomach turned. “You were fourteen.”
“I was scared, but the truth is, I enjoyed it. Eventually,” she said. “He’s a good lover. Handsome. Passionate.”
“French.”
“Of course,” she said with a smile. Then the smile faded. “I thought I was in love with him. For a long time I thought that. We did everything in bed two people could do. But I never forgot, not once, that my mother was at his mercy.”
“What would happen to her if you left him?”
“What are mental hospitals in New York like?” she asked.
“Hell,” Kingsley said. “Even the good ones are like Hell, they say.”
“Imagine what one in Haiti is like.”
“I don’t want to. Truly, I have seen enough horrors to last a lifetime.”
“I believe you,” Juliette said. “So now you know. Gérard takes care of Maman. I take care of him. If I stop taking care of him, he stops taking care of her. And when I say he owns me, I mean it.”
“Is this why you want to die? Is that why you’re planning to kill yourself?”
She looked askance at him.
“I saw the rocks in your bag,” he said by way of explanation. “I saw the book in your nightstand. Planning to follow in Virginia Woolf’s footsteps?”
Juliette’s lips formed a hard line. It took a few moments before she seemed ready to speak again.
“When I was eighteen, Gérard gave me a ring. Diamonds and sapphires. Worth a fortune. I have a cousin—he’s gone to Miami now, but when he lived here he worked outside the law. I had him sell the ring, and I told Gérard it was stolen at knifepoint. He kissed me, said he was sorry and called the insurance company. He had a check for the full cost of the ring and then some in a week and I...” She held up her right hand to display a diamond and sapphire glinting on her ring finger.
“Life insurance policy?”
Juliette nodded. “I took the money from the ring and bought insurance. My mother’s the beneficiary on my policy. If I die and it’s ruled an accident, then there would be enough money to take care of my mother for at least ten years. People drown in the ocean all the time here and their bodies wash up on the beach.”
“There has to be another way,” Kingsley said.
“There isn’t. If there were another way I would have found it by now.” She took his hand and he wished she hadn’t. Her long slender fingers felt as if they belonged in his grasp. And the time would come when he would have to let her go again.
“I’m not certain I can go through with it. I am Catholic, after all.”
“This is a new feeling I’m experiencing now. I’ve never been grateful for someone’s Catholicism before.”
Juliette laughed softly and squeezed his hand.
“In the car on the way to the house, you took off your knife and gave it to me. Were you hoping I’d use it to kill you?” he asked.
“All I wanted from you was a night with a man of my choosing. A night with a man I wanted and who I owed nothing to. A night with a man who didn’t own me.” She paused for a long time before speaking again. “Before I died.”
Juliette stepped out of the reach of the tide. Side by side they walked back toward Kingsley’s hut.
“You should know,” she said, squeezing his hand, “he doesn’t abuse me. The pain he’s caused me has been the kind you and I both enjoy. And he’s faithful to me. He and his wife haven’t been intimate in years. He has no other lover, only me.”
“He owns you,” Kingsley said. “He’s rich. Beyond rich. It would be pocket change for him to pay for your mother’s medical treatment.”
“I made the offer. He accepted it.”
“He should have helped your mother without making you pay for it with your body. You grew up with his own daughters, for God’s sake. You should have been like a daughter to him.”
“I never said he was a saint. I only said he doesn’t abuse me. I live in luxury. Anything I want he gives me.”
“Except your freedom.”
“Except my freedom.”
She squeezed his hand.
“I shouldn’t complain,” she continued. “It’s like a marriage of convenience. How many women out there have made the same bargain with a wealthy man that I have?”
“But it’s not marriage. If you were married, the law would be on your side. You could divorce him, take half his money and pay for your mother’s treatments yourself instead of putting rocks in your pockets and walking into the ocean.”
“I should have asked him to marry me then. Oh wait, he’s already married. There goes that idea.”
Her flippant tone only made Kingsley angrier.
“Even an indentured servant knows when his service will end. How long will your mother need to be in the hospital?”
“They say she’s treatment resistant. And self-harming. There is no cure for what she has. Only constant monitoring and good care.”
“So you will be his...”
“Until the day she dies,” Juliette said. “Or until I do.”
“Do you ever see her?”
“Oh yes, twice a year I’m allowed to visit her for a week. She’s happy where she is, and safe.”
“Does she know what you do for her?”
Juliette shook her head. “She thinks Gérard’s father is still in love with her, that the family pays for her care because of what they were. I haven’t disabused her of the knowledge. It comforts her.”
“You are a good daughter. But you do too much for her. I don’t know of any mother in the world who would ask her only child to make the sacrifice you have.”
“Sacrifice? You’ve seen the house I live in, the clothes I wear, the car he lets me drive.”
“His house. His clothes. His car. Your life.”
“Yes,” she said. “They are. But I try not to think about it that way. My mother lives in a dreamworld. I try to live in my own.”
“Dreaming and lying to yourself are very different things.”
“I know. I have always known,” she said in her flawless, elegant French. Je sais. Je l’ai toujours su.
“What would you do with your freedom if you had it?” Kingsley asked. “If your mother were cured tomorrow, what would you do?”
“Go away from here,” she said. “Travel for a while. Then I would go to school.”
“School? For what?”
“Business,” she said. “I’m good with money. I handle all of his.”
Kingsley laughed and the sound carried across the ocean and back.
“What?” she asked.
“I never would have expected that from you.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t be so surprised. I have an eighteen-year-old assistant who is a computer hacker.”
Juliette laughed. “You have an eighteen year-old girl working for you? Do I want to know what it is you do?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I were you. Only because it would take so long to explain.”
“Is she just an assistant? Or more?”
“Only an assistant. She flirts with me, but I remind her she’s young enough to be my daughter. I hope she’s doing her homework while I’m here. Usually you have to make her get off the computer to eat. She’s always up to something. But I can’t scold too much. So am I.”
“You sound like a proud father.”
Kingsley winced. Father of an eighteen-year-old girl? Possible, yes, but God, he couldn’t imagine having a child who was already a teenager.
“She’s a sweet girl. That’s all,” Kingsley said. And then he asked a terrifying question. “Do you want children?”
“I’ve thought about it. Under other circumstances I would.”
“Could you have them with h
im?”
She shook her head. “He won’t allow it.”
“Why not?”
“His daughters don’t know about me. And considering I grew up in his home...it would be a scandal. Even for the French it would be a scandal. I’m nothing but the housekeeper to anyone but us. He wants to keep it that way.”
“You’ve asked, haven’t you? Asked if you could have children?”
Juliette visibly swallowed. “I’ve asked, yes.”
“And what did you do when he said you weren’t allowed to have children?” Kingsley asked.
She raised her hands again. They were still empty.
“I gathered a bag of stones.”
Kingsley closed his eyes and exhaled. He felt his heart crack like an eggshell.
“Bastard,” he breathed.
“C’est la vie,” she said.
Kingsley stopped walking. They were near his beach hut now.
“I could help you,” Kingsley said. “I have money, too.”
“And what would I do? Be your lover?”
“Of course.”
“Be your property?”
“Not like you are now. You’d have freedom.”
“Trading his bed for your bed, his money for your money...that’s not freedom. That’s merely transferring the deed of ownership.”
“It wouldn’t have to be like that.”
“What if I left you?” she asked. “What if I cheated on you? What if I betrayed you? Would you still take care of my mother even after I’d moved on from you?”
Kingsley didn’t have a good answer to that.
“What’s that English phrase?” Juliette asked. “Better the devil you know?”
“I won’t leave Haiti without you,” he said, meaning the words more now than he had when he first said them.
“Then I hope you love it here. Because you will be here for a very long time.”
“I suppose I will then.”
She stood in front of him, raised her hand to his face.
“Don’t be angry. Don’t be hurt,” she said. “And don’t be afraid to leave me here. I’m fine. I won’t kill myself, I promise.”
“You swear?”
“I do. It was a foolish idea. In truth, I’m blessed in many ways. I have food, shelter. He spoils me. My life isn’t perfect, but name me one person who does have a perfect life. Can you?”
He tried to think of a name. Nothing came to him. He stayed silent.
“I thought so,” Juliette said with a tight smile. “No one.”
“Do you love him?” He’d asked before and she’d lied.
“I can’t leave the house without his permission. He always grants it, but also, I always have to ask.”
Kingsley couldn’t imagine how much that must gall her, this beautiful intelligent capable woman to have to ask permission like a child to leave her lover’s property.
“But...” she continued. “He didn’t have to help my mother at all, and he did. And he doesn’t threaten me, or her. He and I, we work well together, play well together. Despite everything.”
“Then why did you find me tonight?”
“Because his work has called him back to Paris for a week,” Juliette said, taking a step closer to him, close enough he could smell the scent of jasmine on her skin. “And I want to spend every moment until he gets back with you.”
“You’ll go back to him when he returns?”
“I will. I have to.”
“Spending more time with me will only make it harder for you, harder for both of us. You know that.”
“I know that,” she said.
“Answer this...why should we spend another night together if it’s only going to end with you going back to him?”
She gave him a reason he couldn’t and wouldn’t refuse.
“Because I’ll let you beat me.”
22
Upstate New York
“DO YOU HAVE a hymen?” Elle asked, and even in the dark she could see Kyrie blush. “Some virgins do, some don’t.”
“I think I do. Why?”
“I want to know what I’m working with.” Elle sat on the bed in front of Kyrie.
“What are you going to do to me?” Kyrie asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Elle said, and she didn’t. She’d never done anything like this before. Never topped a woman. Never taken anyone’s virginity.
She brushed her hand through Kyrie’s hair again. The waves in the sun-streaked mass looked like feathers in the darkness.
“You remind me of a dove,” Elle said. “All white and light and nervous.”
Kyrie smiled and pulled her knees to her chest.
“You’d be nervous too if you were me.”
“Yes,” Elle agreed. “You should be nervous.”
“Is it going to hurt?”
Elle nodded.
“Will I like it?”
“If I do it right you will.”
“Are you going to do it right?”
“I am,” Elle said, making the words a solemn vow. “But don’t think about what’s going to happen. Think about this instead.”
“What?”
Elle kissed her.
In the beginning, the kiss was nothing but light. A light brush of lips on lips. Elle let her mouth linger on Kyrie’s, waiting, patiently waiting. Elle would do the work, but Kyrie would set the pace. They had all night and tomorrow night. They had all week, all month, all year. As sweet as the kiss was, as beautiful as the girl she kissed, Elle was in no hurry for it to end. Only in a hurry for it to begin.
Kyrie tilted her chin up and parted her lips. Elle deepened the kiss. With the tip of her tongue she touched Kyrie’s teeth, lightly and without pressure. But Kyrie took the hint and opened her mouth even more to Elle.
She tasted sweet, like warm honey, and Elle cupped the back of her head to hold her mouth right where she wanted it—against her own. Kyrie whimpered at the force but didn’t pull away. The kissed deepened further, grew heated as Kyrie fell into the rhythm of lips on lips and tongue to tongue.
Elle moved her hand from Kyrie’s head to her shoulder, from her shoulder to her neck. She felt Kyrie’s pulse throbbing in the vein under her ear. She was scared, aroused, everything Elle wanted her to be.
From her neck, Elle dropped her hand to Kyrie’s waist. She found the tie of Kyrie’s white robe and unknotted it.
“Elle?” Kyrie made her name a question, a panicked question.
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