"We call you Poppie," she said softly. Stepping away, she took up a photograph of the two of them with Allie, taken before Angel's conception. She held it to her breasts. "I tell her about you, Zac. And about Allie. I've never said a word against you. I tell her you love her. I want you to know."
Heart twisting, he said, "Thanks most of all for that."
In the kitchen, sunlight poured through panes showing the slightest trace of white paint around their edges. Black-and-white checked linoleum gleamed up at them, forming an island for the kitchen table where they sat facing. Zac held Samson, stroked him and wondered about the feet that would tread these new floors, dulling their glow to normalcy as years passed.
He broke the silence he knew she could have sustained indefinitely. "Do you know where you'll be moving?"
"Back to Ramona."
He didn't bother hiding his jubilant surprise.
"I found a house to refurbish. Jan is investing with me again. We got a grant from Gerald Fitzpatrick on a great old house in an area of Ramona he wants to revive."
Gerald Fitzpatrick.
Zac rolled the name and a scene involving Gerald around his mind. Gerald's pink face had worn a reluctant smile as he had sat across from Zac and Carron that day. Gerald had asked about Zac's wife and son, his intentions, how he planned to balance it all and have Gerald's daughter, Carron, too.
Zac could hear Gerald's hearty voice asking if he knew Carron was a very sick woman, warning him about encroaching on her wealth. If Zac's intentions weren't honorable, Gerald would see that he never got a dime. Zac's motives hadn't exactly fallen into the honorable category then. It was more like being caught up in an avalanche. He had just tried to hang on in the descent. Part of the accumulated debris sat across from him now.
"Gerald Fitzpatrick," he said. "How did that happen?"
She tried to shrug, gazed out the window, then studied her cup. "He called here one day, out of the blue, looking for you." She lifted her eyes. "He knew you were gone, but he thought I might have your itinerary."
He couldn't feign indifference. "What did he want?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask him. He started asking me questions—said he was sorry about Allie." She faltered.
He saw her throat move as she swallowed emotions he would like to hear voiced, like to examine and exorcise, if possible.
"He apologized for Carron, actually. A strange conversation. He told me she had been sick since she was a child, that it influenced—his word, not mine—the way she behaved." Her smile was a little crooked, derisive, reactivating the familiar guilt in Zac's soul. "We got past that, and he asked about me, what I was doing. He thought he and I had a lot in common, since we're both into refurbishing. When I reminded him I do it for a living instead of a pastime, he asked me to come down to Ramona and look at some of the old houses he had his eye on." She stopped, her smile turning triumphant. "This house sold within days." She managed an ebullient shrug. "It's a done deal, as they say in the world of commerce. My world, now."
"That's wonderful." He wasn't that confident.
"He seems like a nice man. Still, I keep thinking he must have a motive." She was an altered person now, skeptical after Zac and Carron's travesty against her. "We'll see."
"What about Ben?" Her partner, the carpenter. Her housemate, as of when Zac left on the freighter. He hadn't known the actual circumstances of the partnership and had never felt privileged to ask. "Is he moving with you?"
"That's over. His investment in this house paid off. He doesn't want to leave Houston."
Zac waited. He watched to see if she was devastated, if Ben had hurt her, too.
"Ben is gay, Zac. You misinterpreted our relationship."
In the hours after Allie's accident, Ben had stuck by her side, shutting Zac out, exactly as he deserved. She had chosen Ben over him, Allie's father, influencing so many of the decisions he made later. He reserved comment now, suspecting his voice would betray the resentment coiled within his relief.
"Ben was a good friend when I needed one," she concluded.
"What about us?"
"What about us?"
If his question truly hadn't surprised her, she had learned to act in the time they had been apart. "You tell me, querida."
"We're divorced. Luke signed all the papers with his little power of attorney."
Her contemptuous tone let him know he had been fatally expedient in granting his brother that legal right. Zac touted it as one more mistake.
"Didn't Luke tell you about the divorce?" she asked.
"He hinted, but I wouldn't let him tell me. I wanted to hear—or not hear it—from you. I only gave him that power for your sake, Maggie. Considering my misunderstanding about Ben, I didn't want you to have to wait a year for freedom, if that was what you chose."
Everything had happened so fast after Allie's accident, after Carron's death, when there had been so much strife between him and Maggie. At the time he hadn't seen how things could ever be rectified. A year on a freighter provided a lot of down time. Time to re-evaluate. "Tell me the divorce isn't final."
"To me it is." She glanced away and then back. "Yes. It is."
He looked into her eyes, not quite believing her. "All we have to do is pick one of these many unused bedrooms, Magatita." He let his gaze lift upward to the bedroom area. "Let me give you all the love I've stored up for a year, and that legal work goes right out the window." Visions of his proposal flashed in his mind. He held her gaze, hoping to impart the picture to her.
"Very tempting," she said softly. "I'd enjoy that I'm sure, but unfortunately we could only cancel the legal work. The memories will live forever."
He fought back old visions, entertained new ones. "Only if we let them. We can make new memories, starve the old ones out."
"A new Allie? New babies to take his place? I don't think so, Zaccheus. And I don't think we could make love often enough—probably not good enough—to keep me from wondering where you were going and what you might do every time you left the house. I won't let Angel grow up in that kind of home."
He could see she had given it as much thought as he had. Her dry eyes told him her wounds were too deep, scabbed over.
"I still love you." He had promised the day of Allie's accident, the day she screamed her anger and hate, he would never tell her that again. "Do you still love me?"
"Too much to go back to you and make your life a living hell." She rose from the Formica-topped breakfast table and crossed to the big window, her hands gripping the rounded edges of the new porcelain sink.
Gripping her resolve, he thought.
"Trust is like the soul." Her voice floated so softly that he strained to hear. "Once departed, it never returns."
Listening to the traffic whipping by outside, he thought of Allie sitting on that front step in the twilight waiting for him. He heard an imaginary screech of brakes and knew she was right.
"Then, will you do something for me?"
She nodded, her back to him, the jet-black mass of her Dutch-boy-like hair bobbing up and down.
"Will you give me a haircut? I can't walk into Papa's house like this."
She turned, smiling. "So you were saving that for me, too."
He put Samson on the floor and went to her, took her in his arms. "Because you're the best, Maggie." He held her, rocked her, took his fill and then stood back, knowing she wanted, yet didn't want, to be released.
They sat on the ground in her backyard, beneath the shade of a jacaranda tree. He didn't take off his shirt. That rite of passage had been canceled. As she snipped and combed, he tried not to react to the feel of her hands in his hair.
He sensed her straining from a kneeling position for the best vantage point. "You didn't get any taller while I was gone."
"No, but I stand straighter now."
He glanced over his shoulder, conceding a smile.
She said, "But you're even more beautiful. Especially with all this gray in your hair. Male beauty isn't
fair. I've always known that."
His physical attractiveness provided surprise every time he passed a mirror or a storefront and caught a glimpse of the body housing his soul and spirit, his intellect. Every time he caught a surreptitious glance across a room.
Across a piazza.
He affirmed her insinuation. "My beauty hasn't been one of my greatest assets."
"Nor had your beauty been one of my assets." Her laughter made him wonder if it was possible they could now be friends. "There," she said with finality.
She had simply taken the thick rope of hair hanging between his shoulder blades, whacked it off at his nape, then spent a long, careful time shaping, layering the rest. She handed him a mirror. Silver threads ran prominently through the shorter hair. He smiled, pleased.
"The prodigal son can return in style," she assured him. "Alejandro will never know you were a vagamundo."
He swiveled on his haunches to face her, bracing his elbows inside his folded knees, leaning forward in emphasis. "Maggie, I was so wrong. I want you to know—" Her chin shot up, eyes going wary, but they softened when he spoke again. "Forget that. You already know I was wrong. What I really want you to believe is how completely I realize it." He held her gaze, driving the words home. "I've had time to think about blame and I've never been more sure where it goes in my life."
She placed her tiny brown hand in his, squeezed a little. He looked at her bare ring finger. A thin, pale line marked the absence of the band they had chosen together. Hers had matched the one in his pocket, rings meant to solidify them for eternity. He stroked her hand. "Please don't think I'm absolving myself when I tell you something went crazy in me when I met Carron. I'm not pleading guilty by reason of insanity." Smiling proved difficult. "I'm afraid to even examine what happened. All I know is I threw away a marriage that just the day before I met her, I held more sacred than anything on earth. I hurt you. I can see now I hurt you beyond repair." Had he imagined the slight negative twist of her head? "I changed your life and even the way you think. You were loving and trusting. I threw it in your face. Ultimately, I cost Angel a normal childhood."
She looked away, fingers whitening where they still gripped the scissors. He caught her chin, turned her face back to him in order to drive the words into her maimed spirit.
"I blamed you for not letting me come back—after Carron died—for not wanting me to be a part of Angel's birth. I hated you a little. It took all those lonely nights in that ship bunk to realize you had no choice—or believed with your sweet heart you didn't." He let it run through his mind as he listened to a car pull into a near-by drive, children's laughter, then running feet. "I know you reached out to me at my craziest point. I can see that now. But I gave you no hope. I wish I was the only one to pay, but it doesn't work that way, and that's what's so wrong with cheating. It never involves only one person... or two." He searched her somber gaze. "I ask you to forgive me for that, Maggie."
She nodded. The tears that slipped down her bronze cheeks burned his own face, as surely as if he had shed them. He waited, taking deep breaths, waiting for the constriction in his throat to ease. Finally he said, "The fact I blamed you for Allie's death will probably haunt me forever. It wasn't your fault. You did the best you could by him. I know you would never be careless as far as this street was concerned. I'm the one who let him down when I didn't show up that night." The hated vision broke through. "I've woken up in the middle of so many nights and thought of him sitting there on those steps, with his little rounded shoulders and his sad eyes, waiting for me. I'll see that for the rest of my life—and that puppy running into the street. I should have asked you before I let Carron get that puppy for Allie, but I put her first then, too. It cost us our son." He swallowed, eyes stinging. "Can you ever forgive me?"
He waited an eternity. The sensation of coming home leaped in him when she spoke.
"I forgive you." She placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. She was tiny and warm, soft and muscly, familiar, yet ever new.
She sat back, giving him a Madonna smile. "I've hurt you, too, Zac. Let's forgive one another enough to last a lifetime, no matter what separate courses our lives may take."
* * *
"Well, Zac." His older sister, Concepcion, eyed him reflectively as she stood at his mama's kitchen sink, rinsing off dishes, placing them in a turquoise plastic drainer. "Did you have a nice cruise?"
He pulled her into a bear hug, getting a minimal response. He let go. "Actually Connie, it wasn't a cruise, but thanks for asking."
She continued retrieving dishes from the soapy water, rinsing, placing.
Zac deemed his homecoming anti-climactic. "Mama's gone to bed already? It seems early." Still light outside. "Is this a normal routine or did she have a premonition I was coming home today?"
That pulled a stingy smile from Concepcion. "Mama's your biggest fan, Zac. Like always. She's driven us crazy with those postcards and cheap presents you sent. She wears herself out taking care of Papa all day. Carmen and Jan and I take turns bringing supper over and she goes to bed as soon as she eats. Just make sure you're here when she wakes up in the morning."
"Got it." He couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
"And you'd better get rid of that cat."
"No way. Samson and I are a team." He crossed to the back door, stared out the screen, holding Samson close, relishing the melodious purr that vibrated both their bodies. The screen was a bit rusty. Before Alejandro's accident, just over a year ago, he would never have permitted a screen to rust. He would have rubbed it religiously with machine oil to ward off the Gulf Coast humidity. "I'm waking Papa up, Connie."
She rattled dishes noisily.
"I can't wait until morning to see him."
No answer other than sensed disapproval.
"Are you going to throw your body in front of the door to his room?"
"No, Zaccheus. If I did, the commotion would wake him and he'd resent me for trying to keep you from him. Just like always."
They faced in unison as she stood drying her hands on a frayed towel.
"He can't talk very well, and he can't walk, but there's nothing wrong with his mind. You're still his baby—all he lives for. I guess your year on that freighter was well spent."
The reception he'd gotten from her left room for doubt.
He went down the dark, cramped hall to his and Luke's old room where Concepcion had told him they kept his father now. The moment he'd heard that, he made a self-commitment to change it. His father belonged with his mother. They would die without each other.
A small night-light revealed Alejandro in a large recliner, new to Zac, half sitting up, a pillow behind his head, a sheet over his legs. The room sweltered. More air conditioning and a ceiling fan in order here. Somehow. Some goddamned way.
"Papa?" Zac called softly from the doorway.
His father's hand fluttered, raised, lowered to his lap.
Zac crossed the room to squat beside the chair. "Are you awake? It's Zac."
"Zaccheus." Alejandro's voice was strong, hearty.
Zac's heart soared.
Alejandro did a fair job of lifting his arm, considering he'd been a vegetable when Zac had last seen him. Zac helped. Lifting the arm just enough to get beneath it, he pulled in close to the chair, slipping his arms around Alejandro's waist. That was a shock. His father, once rock hard, had gone slack.
"Mi hijo." Alejandro's body shook, convulsed with instant, silent dry sobs. Through some sheer, surprising strength, he got his hand into Zac's hair, his old fingers curling, pulling impressively.
Zac's arms tightened, his own body shaking, his hot tears wet and merciful. He relived again fragments of the pain he had carried since Luke rousted him from Carron's bed, all those months ago, to tell him the Ramona Dos had exploded and his father had suffered a stroke. Now the pain eased somewhat.
* * *
"So, Papa, that's the story."
Zac had sat on the floor, as close a
s possible, holding his father's hand, sharing recall of the past year. He had turned on a brighter light in order to see Alejandro's eyes and judge his reactions. Although his speech was halting at times, he was alert, responsive. God was kinder than Zac deserved, but the deserving one was Alejandro.
"I spent my thirty-third birthday in Singapore and all I could think of was that caramel cake Mama bakes me every year. I saw a lot of the world, but I didn't see anything better than Ramona." Zac smiled. "I think I remember you telling me that when I was about eighteen. As usual, you were right."
He could see that Alejandro, nodding and smiling complacently, liked being right.
"You were right about everything, Papa. If I had only listened to you—that first day when you found out about Carron." The warning in Alejandro's voice, the concern in his face that day, reflected now in Zac's mind. He hadn't wanted to hear it then. "If I had been with you the day of the accident, instead of with Carron, the Ramona Dos would never have burned. You'd still be a whole man—"
"No, niño."
While Alejandro's rigid insistence surprised Zac, his strength and the conviction in his tone proved encouraging.
"I tell you again, Zaccheus. You are not God. Some things are out of your hands."
"I'm not God. But I sure as hell know how to fix a fuel leak. I told you I'd fix it the night before the Ramona Dos blew, and I let you down. I'll spend the rest of your life making that up to you—and to Mama." To everyone affected, he vowed silently. The far-reaching task loomed insurmountable at the moment, but he had only been back in Ramona a few hours. He would find a way.
Alejandro pulled his gnarled hand from Zac's, lifted it, and Zac leaned forward to receive a facial caress. He wanted to cry again, but there was a limit to how much solace a grown man was entitled to seek.
"I think you should know—I'm not sure why I think this. Maybe it's selfishness, but I want you to know I really loved Carron. It wasn't just rooting around—machismo." The curse of the Mexican male. "Maybe it was at first, but not for long. You didn't raise me like that, no matter what I accused you of in my blaming phase.
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