“Self-sufficient, not invincible. It is an old house.” She twisted in his grip. “I need to go check on Grandmother.” Her hand found the side of the pool, and she tugged free then hoisted herself upward. The splash of water from her exit overrode the storm in his ears for a brief time.
He stuck out a hand and found her ankle. “You’ll leave me here in the dark?”
Her wet skin slipped in his grip, and her hand found his face. She captured his mouth. “What have you done to me, Andre Garner?”
He laughed lightly. “Proven you’re a woman.”
They kissed again, drawing the timespan out. “I must go, but I will find you later. At your room.”
“You can navigate in the dark?” he called, his words echoing back to him.
Her footsteps padded away from the pool. “I’ll be fine.”
The clunk of the door announced her exit. Left on his own, he hauled himself out of the pool, using the painted light of the stained glass as a guide toward his clothing. Fumbling in the dimly lit dressing space, he changed quickly and made his way back to the staircase. Navigating the stairs in complete darkness was a feat, and he was relieved to reach the top and the cool texture of the door. But he had the hallway still to follow. He held onto the hope he wouldn’t get lost and groaned minutes later realizing that he was.
He looked behind. Where had he gone wrong? There’d been a corner at one point. He retraced his footsteps, running his palm down the wall as a guide, at a doorway coming to a halt. Voices distant but distinct lifted through the wall. He turned into the room and followed the sound, taking a stance at the edge of what felt like an ornate ladies’ vanity.
The voices continued, but they were raised in tone, harsh.
I went for a swim. Cerise. You, yourself, have told me I’m free to do so.
The other voice was older, gravelly. With Mr. Garner? Ironic. Her grandmother. His insides churned.
With Andre. Isn’t that what you wanted?
What she wanted? What did that mean? He’d said her grandmother had planned this, and she’d said the old woman was recreating the past. Surely, that’s all she referred to.
I never told you to cuddle up with him.
Cuddle up?
I’m doing what I want to do, not what you’ve ordered me to. Any feelings I have are my own. I don’t need you or some … some old story to dictate them to me.
There was a thud and a third voice entered the mix. This one sounded older. Yolanda.
She’s not well, Cerise said. Be sure she takes her medication. I’m going to bed.
Aware he was out of place, he turned himself around and exited the doorway into the hall. He was some fifteen minutes relocating to the right passage, enough time that Cerise had reached his bedroom first.
“Where were you?” she asked.
He slipped inside the space. “I got lost. It is dark and the house is huge.” He made no mention of what he’d heard. That she’d argued with her grandmother about him was best kept secret.
She trailed after him, shutting the bedroom door behind her. At the bedside, she grasped his shoulders and thrust him down onto the mattress flat on his back. She lowered her mouth to his, pressing in, the rich curves of her flesh begging his attention.
Startled, he took hold of her and pushed her back. “Cerise.”
“You’ve proved yourself to me,” she said. “I know we only have tonight, so here I am. Make me forget it all.”
Her desperate words barely had time to land before she reached up and unfastened the swimsuit top. It fluttered to her waist, and he froze. “Cerise, please … I didn’t mean …”
“You want me,” she said. “And I want you. Tomorrow it’ll all be gone, but I’ll have this to remember. Let us do what our bodies demand.”
He raised the bed sheet over her chest. “Tomorrow I will still exist and so will you. But if we do this, you’ll have regrets.”
“No regrets. I want to know what Andre Garner is like.”
He pulled himself from beneath her, sitting upright. Clasping the bed sheet with one hand, he shucked his shirt. It was slightly damp from his swim. He tossed it to her. “Put that on.”
What little light the darkness spread through the nearby window highlighted the confusion on her face. “You can’t?” she asked.
He nodded toward the shirt. “I can, but … the shirt please, Cerise.”
She obeyed, tucking her feet to her chest after. “I don’t understand. You can but you won’t? Is it because of who I am? I know our parents …”
He cut her off. “No, that has nothing to do with it. I thought you’d understand by now; I didn’t know any of what you’ve told me before coming here. To me, you’re a beautiful woman who I want to know for herself.”
“That’s all?” Her voice rose. “You kiss me because I’m beautiful, but not because …”
“Because I want you.” He interrupted her. “I want to do all the things you’ve offered. But I can’t because morality demands something greater of me.”
“Morality,” she said, repeating the word. “This is your Christian thing.”
“It isn’t a ‘Christian thing.’ It’s living according to the rules God has set for a single man to live by.”
“Rules?” She laughed. “You’ve been after me to set aside the rules. You wanted to see my hair, wanted me in the pool, you … you … I thought you were promising me something my mother never had.”
Her mother? He didn’t speak.
“You never figured it out,” she said. “What they argued over.”
He cleared his throat. What did her mother and the argument their fathers had gotten into have to do with any of this? He leaned his weight on his hand and a depression formed in the mattress. “What did they argue over? You said it was over her.”
Her answer crushed the air from his lungs.
“My father raped her.”
CHAPTER 5
Raped? Andre’s ears burned. Speechless, he could only sit there, the word soaking into the fabric of tales she’d spun about this house.
Cerise laid her cheek on her knees. “I said I wouldn’t tell you, but I can see you deserve to know.”
Tell him? What else could there be to this story?
“My mother and your father were in love. He brought her here. My dad was supposed to bring his own date, but he didn’t. A fateful choice.” She laid one hand atop her feet, perched on the mattress top. “I don’t know … maybe he was jealous of them … maybe he was unstable like his father, but for whatever reason after they’d all gone to bed, he snuck in her room and raped her. Your father found out. Her behavior was off the next day, so he pressed her for the reason. But she lied. She said she wanted my dad instead. That he’d swept her away.”
“He didn’t believe her?” Andre asked.
She shook her head. “No. She had bruises on her wrists and her neck. He went crazy, accused my dad of it and took the fateful swing. My dad banished him from the place, had him escorted off without any of this things, and my mom stayed behind. I am the result.”
“Dear God,” he said.
“That isn’t all of it.”
He couldn’t speak then for the thoughts mixing in his head, all the little things his mother had said that now made so much sense – why his dad had never stayed home; why he’d sent money for whatever she needed, but refused to see his own son; why his death had pained her so much, she’d destroyed his photographs only to realize her son looked just like him. She had to have felt like his second choice – unfair to her – and then been forced to live under the weight of his love for someone else.
“He was abusive,” Cerise said. “He beat her, before and after they wed. Tossed her against the walls, brought my birth on early. I was small and weak. My grandmother stepped in and wouldn’t let him near me, and so they argued. He said he wouldn’t live under the shadow of your father anymore. My mom cried for him all the time, for Levi. Called his name in her sleep. He said he’d end that f
or good.”
Andre swallowed on a dry throat, a million questions in his head. Questions he couldn’t ask, didn’t know, in fact, where to begin.
“Your father died the year before mine,” she said. “Dad had left the island, one of the few times he and my mom were apart. He returned triumphant. You understand, my mother has told me all this. I was only three.”
He nodded.
“All he talked about was the death of Levi Garner, and he waved the pictures in her face.”
The pictures. The stain of them spread from their place on the nightstand, bloody, across the floor.
“‘He’s gone. The love of your life is gone, and all you have left is me.’ That’s what he said.”
Andre shivered. And mourned. Grief choked him, grief for the dad he’d never known, a man who’d kept himself away from them unable to deal with his past, and then he was gone. His life snuffed out. How?
He stared at her. She’d said her dad had left, had made threats. But surely––
Her voice broke into his speculations. “He turned unbearable. Even my grandfather couldn’t stand him anymore. He raved about his ‘worthless son’ to the point my grandmother and he separated. That’s when Grandfather retreated to the third story and refused to come down.”
Andre compelled a question to his lips. “Y-your dad died.” The year after his.
She exhaled. “Yes. Similar circumstances to yours.”
“You said that before,” he said. “But I don’t know how my father died.” Or why it mattered. It was a strange coincidence, had to be, yet––
“Grandmother says he drowned.”
Drowned? The truth coiled in Andre’s stomach and heaved. That meant … meant … “Your father drowned?” he asked. His blood swished deafening in his ears. He didn’t want to hear the answer, but needed to hear the answer.
It fell flat, matter-of-fact, from Cerise’s mouth, as if she’d dwelled on it for years, for an entire lifetime, and it explained why she didn’t swim, why she’d not wanted to get in the pool, why their attraction to each other was so very painful. It told why one old woman had picked him out of all the glassmakers she could hire, but it didn’t say what her motive was. Was she trying to free her granddaughter or torment her?
Because one thing hadn’t changed. Cerise was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and he still wanted her. Wanted to kiss her. Wanted to make love to her. And had to refuse.
Cerise lifted her face from her legs and unfolded herself. Standing to her feet, she walked to the window. The contour of her body outlined itself against the glass, and he could only stare and drink it in.
“My father drowned in the pool,” she said. “Funny thing is he knew how to swim. Was an expert even. He was found there fully-clothed. The police came and ruled it suicide, but no one’s ever believed that. Then Grandfather died the next year and the truth went with him.”
Andre recoiled. “You think your grandfather killed his son?”
She shrugged. “Grandmother thinks it. He was unstable; I’ve told you that. He became worse after, got careless and fell down the third story stairs to his death.”
Defeat showed in the slump of her shoulders, the sag of her spine. She’d lived with knowledge of this her entire life, had it held over her by her own grandmother, who for whatever reason then brings him into the mix. Why? So he’d find out? To torment Cerise?
Did it even matter? Why was so trivial in the light of everything else. She had to have known how his looking so much like his father would affect her granddaughter, and that made it wrong on a huge level.
And now, given their feelings for each other, worse.
He stood to his feet. Coming up behind her, he took hold of her shoulders and turned her around. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it changes nothing for me.”
She had to know that. He wasn’t held by the past. He hadn’t known it to begin with and so hadn’t been formed into any role his dad would’ve made for him.
“I look like my dad,” he said. “But I’m not my dad, and you aren’t your father either.” He ran a finger down her cheek. “In the morning, I’ll still be Andre Garner, still think the same, live the same, still want to spend more time with a woman I never thought I’d meet. It’s terrible and awful what brought us here, and horrible what it’s done to your family and mine. But it doesn’t change me because I already know the truth about who I am.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Forgiven. I’m forgiven of whatever sins I’ve done, whatever mistakes others have made before me, and now, God shows me the path of feet will walk. And something else as well.”
“What?”
“You,” he replied. “I see you, and I want nothing more than to be with you, tonight, tomorrow, next week. We have to trust God to work this out. If I have to leave the island, I’m still not gone, and I want you to remember that. I’m right over there, waiting. You have only to come find me.”
Her shoulders shook and a sob escaped. He tucked her to his chest.
“What did I ever do to deserve this?” she asked, her voice broken.
“Nothing,” he replied. “We don’t get what we deserve. The Savior’s death proved that.”
***
The room was empty without her in it. Yet he’d done the right thing, escorting her down the hall and kissing her good night. She’d gone into her room, and he’d returned to his bed. Yet a million thoughts whisked through his brain along with an urge to pray. Things still weren’t right in this house. Unable to sleep, he tossed and turned, his mind drifting into his past and how he’d found faith.
As a kid, his mother had sent him to church with a carload of neighborhood children. But like any other young boy, he was more apt to spend most of his time there joking around and not particularly listening. The absence of a father-figure in his life hadn’t helped any. He’d gotten into plenty of scrapes, done things he shouldn’t, several of which should have received way more punishment than they had.
He’d developed a belief in God, but not a reliance on Him. That hadn’t come until he turned nineteen and a friend almost died in a car accident. Seeing him lying in a hospital bed at the edge of death came as an eye-opening experience and caused him to ask all the questions he should’ve had answers to by going to church.
Probably the church he’d gone to as a boy had meant well. From what he could recall, they’d been friendly enough, dedicated to holiness and faith, but it seemed like they hadn’t tried so hard to give the foundations of their beliefs. He’d needed more than the story of Jesus’ birth once a year and His death a few months later to survive. He needed to know how God through the eons of time had loved man so much He’d gone out of His way to protect him, bless him, and love him. How Jesus had come not as a take-that-society sort of moment, but as a true sacrifice, the only one that would cleanse man of sin, cleanse him once and for all if he’d believe it.
The church hadn’t given him that. Prayer had. Also, hours of time spent with his head in the pages of the Bible, study guides in hand. Others had made fun of him, called him crazy, except for one old man who’d given him the second best gift he’d ever received – glass.
“You’ve a natural talent,” the old man had said.
A talent he’d fostered and developed. He’d taught him all he knew; knowledge gleaned over years of experience, and poured into him faith and stability as well. He’d become the father he’d never had.
The old man’s death had come at the end of a life well-lived, one loved by a boy, now a man, who could stand on his own feet today because of it. And make difficult choices like this one tonight. He could turn away a beautiful girl, a broken girl, for the very reason she’d offered herself up – because this moment between them was so very special.
Sleep finally pulled at his eyelids, and Andre drifted away. The storm raged on, the sound of limbs clawing at the glass entering his slumbering brain and a ticking of old wood as well as the scrape of boards shifting
beneath the weight of the wind. A strange rasping woke him up.
His eyes adjusting to the darkness, he laid there motionless, then the gurgle and pant of someone’s breathing drew his gaze toward the door. He bolted upright and backward on the bed.
“Who are you?”
The figure of a woman, older, wearing a flowing white gown bent over him. Her hair was wild, spraying in all directions, and her hand extended as if to touch him. He leaped off the opposite side of the bed.
She turned with his movement, her fingers claw-like reaching out, and he flattened his spine to the wall. The wind clustered the limbs against the window and the room became yet darker. The shuffle of footsteps and a rush of air made him cry out. Then the little bit of light from outside returned.
He stared into the now bare place where the woman had stood, and anger rushed up in him. Mrs. Delacroix? It wasn’t good enough she’d brought him here, but now she’d seek to foster all these stupid, pointless stories of curses and legends by showing up by his bed?
He was no fool. There was no one else in this house who that could have been. Stomping across the room, he flung open the door, gazing left and right in the empty hallway, and walked to Cerise’s bedroom. He pounded loudly on the door and called her name.
She opened it minutes later, rubbing one eye, and leaned on the trim. “What is it? What’s up with …”
“Your grandmother,” he snapped, cutting her off.
“Grandmother?”
He gave a snort. “Yes, she showed up in my room dressed like some sort of … I don’t know … spook … and stood there over me. Scared me near half to death until I realized who it was.” His blood boiled. “The nerve. I’ve had it with this house, had it with playing into her hands. Had I known what she was after I …”
“Mr. Garner.” Cerise’s voice addressing him formally shut him up. “My grandmother could not have been in your room.”
“But she was,” he insisted. “I saw her.”
Cerise softened her tone. “What did she look like?”
“Look like? Like an older woman in a white gown. She just stood there with her hand out like this.” He demonstrated it for her.
Glass Page 5
