Eva gasped and put her hand over her mouth. “You poor children. Husband and wife?”
“Husband and wife,” Ivor answered. “They remind you of us when we were young, don’t they?”
Eva scoffed. “When you were young, maybe. I am still a young woman.”
Ivor sucked air through his teeth and they both shook with laughter. Eva then gently took Larke’s hand into hers. “My God, they even took your wedding rings.”
Larke stiffly nodded and Eva placed a motherly hand against the side of her face. “Come inside and take a fresh shower. I will get you some clothes. I’m a seamstress by trade so I know I have some things that can fit you. Ivor, you take the boy.”
She then gently tapped her husband on the forearm. “Ivor, wasn’t it just last night I was telling you that I made that nice linen dress but I have nobody to wear it?”
“Just last night,” Ivor echoed.
Eva continued to walk Larke back to one side of the house while Desmond disappeared to the other. Realizing that it would be the first time they were separated since they left the wooden shack, Desmond stopped, turned to face her, and met uncertain eyes staring right back at him.
“I’ll only be a minute,” he told her. “If you need me, come get me.”
Ivor slapped him on the arm and laughed.
“My goodness, you would think we are taking the two of you to two different continents.” He playfully bowed towards Larke. “I will take good care of him, my dear. I promise.”
Desmond emerged from the bathroom in a white Red Stripe® lager t-shirt and khaki shorts. He searched the front room for Larke, but Ivor assured him that she was still freshening up and ushered him to the kitchen where a polished, wooden dining table was covered with an assortment of foods. When Ivor saw it, he shook his head and tsked.
“Eva, I don’t know why you always make all this food when it’s just me and you in this house.” With a nudge in Desmond’s side, he added, “She thinks I don’t know that she brings another man here to get his belly full when I’m gone.”
Eva tossed soap from her wet hands at Ivor who dodged it while holding his stomach in laughter. Soon after, she started laughing right along with him and Desmond couldn’t help but smile at the two. He and Larke were extremely lucky to run into such a kind and welcoming pair.
“Sit down, sit down,” Ivor insisted, taking the seat next to Desmond. “Where are you from, by the way? You look like you could be from the islands. You have a strong, nice looking face.”
Eva nodded. “Yes, you are quite handsome. The two of you make a very good looking pair. Do you have children?”
Ivor’s thick eyebrows came together. “One question at a time, Eva.”
She waved away his words and went back to the dishes.
“Well,” Desmond began, clearing his throat. “My father was born in Jamaica. He left Jamaica and went to Florida to join the military when he was eighteen, but moved to the Virgin Islands ten years later, which is where he met my mother. I was born there, but they moved to Jamaica before I was two months old. My mother and I moved to New York when I was five.”
Ivor slammed his hand against the table. “I knew it. I took one look at this boy’s face and said to myself, ‘he is a Caribbean man, you know.’”
Desmond looked to Eva. “And no, Larke and I don’t have any children.”
Eva dried her hands on another dish towel. “You don’t want any children?”
“We just got married not too long ago,” Desmond found himself quickly responding. “We wanted to live as a married couple first to make sure that it worked before bringing any children into the mix. Plus, our work schedules can get very hectic at times. Larke’s an attorney and I’m...I run my own business.”
Eva took the seat across from Ivor. “That is understandable, that you and Larke want to wait for children. It has always been just me and Ivor. It’s not that we didn’t want any children. It just never happened for us.”
Ivor reached across and placed a reassuring hand on his wife’s. Even after so many years, he knew that it was still difficult for her to talk about the fact that they’d never had any children of their own. Coming from a big family herself, she’d always wanted to have at least three or four, but after years of trying with no success, she eventually succumbed to the depressive cloud that first started looming when they were childless going into year three. Night after night, she’d cry herself to sleep because she couldn’t give them a family, and night after night, he would reassure her that it didn’t matter. With or without children, he would still love her until the day he died.
Still, as time passed, she didn’t improve. It wasn’t until he volunteered her for a youth-crime prevention program spearheaded by their church did he start to see the familiar flutter of light return to her shiny, brown eyes. Little by little, working with those children helped to fill the childlessness void, and it wasn’t long before the depressive cloud was lifted and he welcomed his wife back with open arms.
“All of this looks amazing, Miss Eva,” Larke complimented from the doorway. A swell of relief surged through Desmond’s chest as he turned to look at her…only to find that he didn’t want to look away. She was standing in a direct beam of sunlight wearing a light blue dress that flared slightly at the hip, and the soft, flowing fabric gracefully caressed her curves as though it was designed for no one else.
“Come sit down and have something to eat,” Eva urged and Larke obeyed, sitting across from Desmond. When she looked up at him and smiled, the knot in his stomach tugged even harder.
“Eat up, I have plenty,” Eva coaxed. “You probably already know what most of this is since your husband’s family is from the island.”
Larke hid the surprise from her face. She’d assumed that “Michael’s” Caribbean accent was just another part of the act.
“Um, not really. We don’t eat much traditional West Indian food at our house,” she answered.
Ivor, astonished, rested his hand on Desmond’s shoulder. “You don’t cook for your woman, boy? That’s how you keep her. Well,” he wiggled his brows, “that and some other things.”
Eva swatted a hand in his direction and again he dodged her.
“Well then eat up, dear,” Eva encouraged. “I have cornmeal porridge, salt-fish, fried dumplings, hard dough bread, green bananas, and guava jam. Eat whatever you like.”
She turned back to Desmond. “What part of Jamaica did your family live in?”
Larke’s ears perked up. He might have been able to shelter himself from her, but she was sure that he couldn’t hide anything from the keen old woman.
“Trelawny,” he replied, pouring a ladle of porridge. Taking a spoonful into his mouth, he was instantly transported back to New York and watching his mother dance to calypso tunes around the kitchen while fixing him a bowl for breakfast.
“What is your mother’s name?” Ivor asked, munching on a fried dumpling.
“Elin,” he replied, the porridge suddenly feeling thick in his throat. “Elin Harding.”
Ivor and Eva exchanged a look.
“Do you mean Elin Harding that used to be married to Delroy that worked on the ships down by the dockyard?” Ivor asked, rubbing his chin and squinting at Desmond. Then, he tapped his wife on the wrist.
“Eva. This is the little boy. He was so small when they left that I didn’t even recognize his face, but this is him.”
Desmond busied himself by reaching for a piece of bread. He already knew that someone would recognize him as soon as he mentioned his family’s name. Nearly everyone around the island knew his father, which meant that virtually everyone knew what his father did.
“What boy?” Eva asked, now examining Desmond’s face as well.
“Look good at his face,” Ivor added. He then glanced at Larke. “Desmond, does your wife know about your father?”
Desmond searched Larke’s face before slowly shaking his head.
“What is it, Des?” She asked, shortening his n
ame in a way that made him feel unusually centered.
“Oh my word,” Eva gasped, finally grasping what her husband was talking about. “You are the same son Elin left with in the middle of the night. To get away from Delroy.”
Ivor nodded. “Yes, Eva, this is him. They used to call him little Delroy, remember?” He rubbed a hand over his head. “No offense, son, but your father was one wicked man. He was a good looking man when he was younger, so he had a lot of young ladies running after him. But the son-of-a-bitch was so good at pretending that none of those poor young women knew what kind of evil man he really was. At least until he met your mother.”
Ivor smiled as he reminisced.
“She was Miss Virgin Islands, so that should tell you something about how naturally pretty the woman was. Oh, and she was such a sweetheart. When Delroy set his eyes on her, he did everything in his power to make sure no other man could ever get close to her.”
Desmond, now transfixed by his food, listened to the details of a story that he’d already known quite well.
“They left Trelawny when you were about six months old, I believe,” Ivor continued. “He moved Elin into this big, nice house over there in St. Andrew. But, no matter how nice the place was, almost every night whenever somebody walked by that house, they could hear that woman screaming for that man not to hit her. Like she was begging for her life.”
Larke reached across the table and touched Desmond on the wrist.
“I even talked to Elin a few times myself,” Eva jumped in. “Three times I went all the way down to that house when Delroy was at work and begged her to leave. Packed her bags for her once. I told her that she could come stay with me and Ivor and if Delroy so much as stepped his foot across my garden, I would shoot him dead. But by then, his work was done. He broke that poor woman down so badly that she refused to leave. That’s why I was surprised when one morning, Delroy woke up almost the whole island screaming for her. Years passed before we knew where she went, and it turned out that while Delroy was beating her, she was working on a green card for herself and her son.”
Desmond reached for more food and Larke could tell that only his physical presence was in the room.
“What happened, Desmond?” She asked, trying to pull him back. “You know, don’t you?”
The entire table paused, awaiting his response.
“Well,” he began, clearing his throat, “one night when Delroy came home and started his usual yelling and throwing things, I tried to intervene. I was only four at the time, but I still used to try to get in between them when they were fighting. But that Delroy, he was not the type of man that liked to be tested and it didn’t matter who was doing the testing. Usually, he would pick me up and toss me aside, but that night, he tore the shade off of a lamp and used the base to hit me in the arm, breaking it in three places.”
Larke’s throat went dry.
“That was the last straw for my mother, seeing me hurt. At least, that’s what she told me. So, we snuck out one Wednesday morning when he was at work and landed at JFK airport late in the afternoon. I remember because I had been so hungry from not eating anything all day. When we left Jamaica, we had nothing but forty US dollars and the clothes on our backs. That’s it. But somehow, we managed to make it.”
Larke moved around the table to where he sat, cautiously kneeled on the floor next to his chair, and pulled his hand between hers.
“But you see I’m surprised to see you,” Ivor went on. “When I heard from a partner of mine that Delroy had gone to the states and killed some people, I thought that it was Elin and her son.”
Larke didn’t attempt to wipe the tears that escaped and rolled down her cheeks. “Is that how she died?” she asked. “Did you see it happen?”
Desmond’s fist clenched. “I was seventeen. The doorbell rang and my mother told me to get it thinking that it was the pastor dropping off a cake she’d preordered from the church’s fall bake sale. When I opened the door, there was Delroy with a head and face full of unruly, jet-black hair. He stepped inside without being invited and as soon as my mother saw him, all the fear in her eyes returned. Then, he nodded when he saw her like he was making sure that she knew he’d found her, reached into his pocket, pulled out a gun, and shot her in the chest.”
His jaw tightened.
“I tried to wrestle the gun out of his hands, but he pulled the trigger and I took a bullet to my leg. Then, like the coward he was, he ran.”
He slammed a fist on the table and Ivor squeezed his left shoulder.
“I thought we were going to die,” Desmond continued. “When the paramedics arrived, my mother was pronounced dead at the scene, but I lived because the bullet just missed my artery. The doctor that stitched me up had actually called it luck, so I asked him, how the hell was it luck if the world as I’d known it for the past twelve years was destroyed in five seconds? And by my father? A man whose genes make up half of who I am?”
He pushed the chair from underneath him, excused himself from the room, and disappeared towards the back of the house. Larke started after him, but Eva stopped her.
“Let him have a moment, honey,” she advised. “With men, they need some time to cool off and handle their emotions. I feel like this is the first time he has ever said anything about what happened, so he will need some time to sort things out.”
Larke sat back on her legs. “Are you sure?” She asked, still tempted to follow Desmond to at least make sure he was okay.
Eva nodded. “I am sure. As his wife honey, you will be one of the best things to ever happen to him and here is why. Men growing up are taught to keep everything in. All their feelings, their thoughts, everything. So, when they meet a woman that they decide they want to call their wife, there comes a time when a man has to do something out of the ordinary. He has to let things out—his secrets, his thoughts, his wishes, his desires. Then, when he does that, he’ll have to leave and sort out his feelings since it’s something that he has never done before. But, when he comes back and you are still here, he’ll realize that you will always be, and that will fill him with such grounding that it will overwhelm him. He will realize that he never has to be alone again.”
Ivor nodded. “My wife speaks the truth.”
Larke stood and went back around the table to her seat. She would let Desmond have all the moments that he needed, but even though she wasn’t his wife, she wanted him to know that she could still be a friend. No one deserved to be alone, especially not someone who risked their life for the safety of others. When he was ready, she was going to show him just that.
By the time Desmond returned, Ivor and Eva had already cleared the table and retreated to the porch with beers and a pitcher of lemonade in tow. Larke was still seated at the table, tracing the ridges and grooves in the natural wood with her fingers.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said from the entryway.
“Nothing to be sorry about, Des.” Her eyes remained on the table top and he wished that she would at least look at him.
“I called my contact,” he continued. “He said that he’ll have everything prepared for us in the morning. Ivor said he could take us down there tomorrow and Eva invited us to spend the night. Is that okay with you?”
She smiled. “Yes, I’m okay with that. Those two have actually grown on me.”
He reclaimed the seat across from her. “Yeah, me too.”
They spoke in unison.
“Larke—”
“I trust you, Des.”
He stopped midsentence. “What?”
“I said I trust you, Desmond,” she repeated. “To get me home safely.”
His chest tightened with happiness. “Thank you for that. For trusting me.”
“And I know we haven’t known each other very long,” she continued, “but I don’t want you to ever go back to that dark place alone again. So, if I’m going to trust you to get me home, I would like for you to also trust me with something.”
He nodded and fin
ally, she met his eyes. “If you ever feel like you’re slipping away again, talk to me and I promise that I won’t shut you out. We’ve got to be there for each other if we plan to make it home alive, so I’ll do my best to be a solid structure in your life. Even if I’m the only one holding you up, I promise you that I’ll use every last bit of my strength before I let you fall.”
Desmond held her gaze and wondered if she truly understood the weight of what she’d just said.
“It’s the least that I can do, you know, being your wife and all.”
He erupted with laughter and she laughed along with him, again enjoying his amusement. He then took her hand to help her out of the seat so they could join Eva and Ivor, but Eva suddenly appeared in the doorway, her usual, jovial expression replaced by a worried wrinkle in her brow. Behind her, they heard the annoyance in Ivor’s voice as he argued with someone at the door.
“Why do you feel the need to come into my house, sir?” He was saying.
Larke’s smile dropped when she recognized Gano’s gruff voice.
“Because I can,” Delgano answered. “As Deputy Superintendent, I can do whatever it is that I want, old man.”
Realizing that there was more to Larke’s abduction than met the eye, Desmond now had an idea about the information his contact would have ready for him about Gano’s background.
Eva motioned for them to follow her and she took them back to a small, narrow room off the hallway. When she flicked on the light, there was a sewing machine on a table in an alcove to the left of the room with two mannequins standing next to it in half-finished dresses, and a third one that had been completely stripped. They walked swiftly to the back of the room and Eva opened the door to a walk-in closet that held finished clothing pieces. Continuing to the back of the closet, she opened a second door and ushered Larke and Desmond into a cramped space bordered by shelves filled with sewing supplies. As she was closing the two doors, she heard Gano’s heavy footsteps walk into the room.
“You have it smelling quite nice in here,” he announced. “But look at all those dishes in the sink? Why do you have so many dishes if it’s just you and your husband?”
In Love and Rescue: When love is the perfect rescue... Page 4
