“A life without risk isn’t worth living,” Emmie pointed out.
Senora Cesare gazed up at her, her lips pursed and her brow furrowed. “You know how much risk you can take, Emmilita. You know how much pain you can bear. Go, but be careful.”
“I will,” Emmie swore, then impulsively bent down and kissed Señora Cesare’s cheek.
She spent the night with Michael. She made love with him, and laughed with him, and rested her head on his chest and listened to his heart pulse against her cheek. “I have an early appointment with Max tomorrow,” he told her, “but I have the whole night with you. That’s all that matters.”
It was all that mattered, the whole night. In the thin pink light of dawn, he made love to her one last time. They’d used up his condoms, but she didn’t care. She had Michael. She loved him. He loved her.
And then he was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CRICKETS TRILLED in the waning evening as Emmie rose from her chair, five years after Michael had disappeared. She had listened to him, taken in all his words, filled herself up with them—but her brain was having difficulty processing what he’d told her. Maybe if she walked around, maybe if she burned off some of her agitation...maybe if she put some distance between herself and the man she had once loved so deeply, who now sat on the bench of the picnic table on her patio in safe, sleepy Wilborough, Massachusetts, his shoulders stiff and still, his dark gaze on her, his fingertips drumming against each other...
Maybe if she walked to the edge of her yard and then kept on going until she reached the very end of the earth, she might be able to regain her perspective.
“You killed a man.” She wasn’t sure if she was asking a question or stating a fact. He’d just told her it was a fact.
“That wasn’t our plan,” he explained. His voice was so quiet she wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been hardwired into everything he said, his every gesture and nuance. “Our plan was to drive up to his mountain hideaway, get him and escort him back to California. We were supposed to lure him to the Jeep and then take off. If we got into any trouble, there were supposed to be two local cops backing us up. But the backup never came.”
“And you got into trouble.” She almost laughed at that absurd understatement. Getting into trouble was what happened to Jeffrey when he didn’t come home from Adam’s house on time. Getting into trouble was what happened to her students when they forgot to do their homework or neglected to bring an absentee note from their parents. Getting into trouble had nothing to do with telling lies and getting shot at and killing people. “Gallard knew what he was doing. He’d done it many times before. It was his profession. He’d gone after guys just as dangerous as Edouardo Cortez and brought them back. So I figured this would be okay, too. It was just...bad luck, I guess.” Michael held his hands palm up and shrugged. “Things went wrong. Stuff happens.”
Emmie stopped at the edge of the patio and turned to face him. “No,” she snapped. “Stuff happens, but this wasn’t just stuff. Your buddy—your research associate,” she emphasized, hating the sarcasm she heard in her voice, “got shot. You got shot. And then you shot that man. You killed him, Michael. You killed him.”
Michael’s hands fell to his knees, but his gaze remained on Emmie. The sky had faded to night blue, but she could see him clearly in the light from the amber bulb above the back door. She could see each angle in his face, each line. More lines than she’d remembered from five years ago. Harsher angles.
“I didn’t want to kill him. If I’d had a chance to stop and think...” He shook his head. “I probably would have done exactly what I did.” His hands clenched and relaxed in his lap, as if all his tension was stored in his fingers. “I’m not a murderer, Emmie. I was never into violence. My brother was the one who hung out with a street gang, not me. I was the intellectual.” He laughed derisively. “None of us knows what we might do under the right conditions. Even after I killed him, I couldn’t believe I was capable of such a thing.”
“Obviously you were capable,” she said, steeling herself against the sympathy she felt for him. She, too, believed she was incapable of violence. Yet if someone threatened Jeffrey, she knew she’d do anything—even fire a gun—to protect her son.
“When I realized what I’d done—afterward, a long time afterward—” he shook his head again “—it frightened me. It made me crazy. I really wasn’t fit for society for a long time. I just sort of withdrew.”
She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to lose her anger. If she stopped resenting Michael for having vanished without a word, she might allow him back into her life—and then he might leave her again. He might hurt both her and Jeffrey. She had to maintain her resistance to him.
“Things started out okay that morning,” he said, returning to his story. “We’d gotten Cortez as far as the Jeep. We had him convinced we wanted to talk to him about buying guns, and we told him we wanted to sit in the Jeep to negotiate because we didn’t want his associates overhearing.” His fingers furled and unfurled, fisted and flexed. “Gallard had left the keys in the ignition so the instant we got Cortez into the Jeep we could take off. But he saw the keys and grabbed them. And then he and Gallard started tussling. I tried to help, but one of his goons started shooting at us.”
She tried to come up with a way to stop him, to spare them both. He’d told her enough. She didn’t need to hear the details. They weren’t going to make her feel more kindly toward him.
But he seemed determined to get it all out. “Gallard let go of Cortez. Cortez headed straight for his cabin up there in the hills—we figured he was going to get a gun. He had the key to the Jeep, so we couldn’t escape that way. Gallard said we’d better hide in the woods until the cops showed up. They didn’t show up until it was all over.”
“After you’d shot this man dead,” Emmie said, mostly to remind herself of what Michael had done and why she mustn’t soften toward him.
He pushed himself to his feet and risked a step toward her. She instinctively fell back, and he halted where he was. “There’s a part of me that says Cortez deserved it,” he admitted. “I’m not proud of that sentiment, but it’s true. Gallard was shot—either by Cortez or by one of his buddies. More important, Cortez was responsible for Johnny’s death. For that alone, maybe he deserved what happened to him.”
“That man didn’t kill your brother,” Emmie pointed out, her tone gentler than she would have liked.
“My brother died because people like Cortez supply street gangs with guns.” The words came out hard and cold. “You can tell me it’s wrong, or heartless or immoral or whatever you want to call it, but a part of me doesn’t care that Cortez is dead.”
She closed her eyes. She should have been glad to hear this, to glimpse Michael’s ugly side. It should have kept her from responding with anything but revulsion to what he was telling her. Yet...she wasn’t proud of it, either, but she could understand his lust for revenge.
If only he hadn’t acted on that lust. Other people might get into brutal, bloody situations, and maybe they might rationalize their deeds—and maybe she wouldn’t mind, at least not on a personal level. But Michael wasn’t other people. He was a man she had given herself to, body and soul. He was the father of her son.
“That’s the nasty part of me, Emmie, the part that killed Edouardo Cortez. That’s the part of me I couldn’t bear to have you see. And that’s why I stayed away from you.”
She swallowed. Emotions seemed to clog her throat, a confused knot of them. Rage and grief and regret were in there. Horror and disgust and bewilderment. “I’m not sure leaving me in the dark like that was the best way to handle things.”
“There was no good way to handle things,” he argued quietly. “It was a disaster. Gallard was seriously wounded, and I’d gotten shot in the shoulder somewhere along the way, and there was this dead man. It’s not the sort of circumstance a young college professor usually finds himself in. So I let the local police spirit us ou
t of the country. They got us back to California. They were glad to be rid of Cortez, and incredibly grateful to us for doing what they’d been too afraid to do.”
He studied her, apparently trying to gauge her reaction. His scrutiny made her uncomfortable, so she turned and stared at the crab-apple tree, the one with Jeffrey’s imaginary monster in it. She wanted her son to live in a world where the only monsters were make-believe, not a world where his own father became embroiled in acts of terrifying violence.
“There’s another, less nasty part of me,” Michael continued, addressing her back when she refused to face him. “The part that was devastated by what happened. The part that couldn’t forgive myself.”
“Maybe I can relate to that part a little better than the part that’s so pleased you killed this man,” she muttered.
“Maybe you can. Maybe I can, too.” He sighed, and it sounded almost like a groan. “Look at me, Emmie. Please. Don’t make me talk to your back.”
Reluctantly she turned to him. He hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing, but he seemed closer. The way he watched her was curiously intimate, as if he were seeing her not as she was now but as she’d been five years ago, completely open to him, trusting and loving and believing in him.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he demanded.
“I’m thinking...” She let out a long breath, buying time to figure out for herself what she was thinking. “It’s a strange story you’ve just told me. Either you’re lying now, or you lied to me in San Pablo.”
“I didn’t lie, then or now,” he insisted. “I was doing research down there—research on Cortez.”
“Oh, sure. You were doing research.” Arguing with him would only prolong this discussion, and no good could come of that. Either she would feel sorry for him and what he’d endured, or she’d grow more angry and bitter at the way he’d deceived her five years ago. The wisest thing would be to get him away from her, out of her backyard and out of her life.
Yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “What am I, Michael? An idiot? You were in San Pablo with your thuggish compadre for one reason only—to find a criminal and haul him back to California so you could get paid a reward.”
“Gallard was doing it for the money. The only reward I wanted was to see the man brought to justice.”
“How noble.” Lord, she hated the bitterness welling up inside her. She had never been a bitter person before, not even when she’d discovered herself pregnant and alone. Yet now...it was as if Michael’s presence had lanced a boil inside her, and it was draining, spreading its toxic fluid throughout her. With every word he spoke, every new syllable of his outrageous story, the wound oozed more. She felt feverish, dizzy from the loss. “You lied to me, Michael. I fell in love with a liar. If you thought coming to see me all these years later would bring forgiveness, you were wrong. Instead of only knowing you were a liar, now I’ve got you standing in front of me, proclaiming yourself a liar—and trying to paint yourself as some kind of hero!”
“The man was responsible for my brother’s death,” Michael said. His voice had grown dangerously low, so low it was more emotion than sound. “Even knowing that, I regret that I killed him. I’m not a killer, Emmie.” He lowered himself back onto the bench, as if having to rehash what had happened in San Pablo weakened him. “I didn’t mean to kill him. But Gallard was bleeding, near death—and I guess I was in shock. I knew that if I didn’t kill Cortez he would kill Gallard and me both. I’m not pleased by what happened. And I sure as hell am not a hero.”
Emmie sighed. The monster tree had no answers in it for her. The night, the crickets, the first pinpricks of starlight perforating the sky—no answers anywhere.
“You should have told me,” she said. The bitterness had left her voice, replaced by sorrow. It occurred to her that she, too, had been in shock, and now the shock was wearing off and the hurt was sinking in.
“I wanted to tell you why I’d come to San Pablo. But Gallard and I had agreed not to talk about it with anyone. We felt it would be safer that way.”
“I wasn’t just anyone,” Emmie noted, moving back to her chair a safe distance from the bench. “I was in love with you.”
“And I was going to tell you everything when it was all done. I was going to send Cortez and Gallard back to California and stay on, and tell you everything once it was over.”
“So it took five years for this situation to be over?”
“I’m not sure it will ever be over.” He tapped his fingers together, then gazed at them as if seeing them for the first time. Emmie was glad he wasn’t looking at her. She didn’t know what he saw when he stared at her, but she feared he saw more than she wanted him to know. “It took a long time for my shoulder to heal, The bullet had done more damage than I realized. But more than that, I was having nightmares. All the time. I thought—I was in so many pieces I didn’t want to inflict myself on you. I didn’t want you to get stuck trying to put me back together.” He pressed his fingertips together, shaping his hands into a rounded cage. “By the time the nightmares stopped, I figured you were miles into a new life. You’d probably chalked me up as a selfish bastard and gotten on with your life.”
“You were right,” she said.
To her surprise, he sent her a quick smile. “But then some more time passed, and I realized that whether or not you’d gotten on with your life, I couldn’t stand the possibility that you thought I was a bastard. So I tried to find you. I wrote to the Cesares in San Pablo, but they said you’d left years ago and hadn’t kept in touch. I contacted the school down there, and they said the same thing. I tried to find you in Richmond, but there were lots of Kenyons and I didn’t know where to start. So I hired a detective.”
“A detective?” Had Michael paid someone to shadow her and snoop into her personal business? Just thinking about it gave her the creeps.
“There’s a detective agency called Finders, Keepers. It specializes in reuniting separated lovers.”
She suppressed the impulse to retort that they weren’t lovers. They had been lovers once, and they’d been separated, so maybe going to this detective agency hadn’t been such a far-fetched notion.
“I thought, if only I could find you, I’d be able to explain what had happened, and why. And then, maybe...maybe I could get on with my life the way you’d gotten on with yours.”
“All right.” She searched for residual stores of bitterness. She knew they were inside her, but she couldn’t seem to tap into them right now. “You’ve explained. Maybe I even forgive you. There’s nothing more to say.”
“There is.” His smile vanished. “There’s Jeffrey.”
Her heart seized for a moment, then recovered, pounding hard. Before coming outdoors and listening to Michael explain why she shouldn’t consider him a bastard, she’d spent an hour with Jeffrey, watching him brush his teeth, helping him get into his pj’s, reading a chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh and using funny voices for all the characters, feeling his solid weight against her bosom as he snuggled up to her, smelling his warm little-boy smell as she hugged him. Even knowing that Michael was waiting for her outside hadn’t spoiled her time with Jeffrey. She hadn’t let it.
She would never let anything spoil her time with him. Not housing woes, not parental disapproval, and not Michael Molina and his tale of guns and killing and lies.
“Jeffrey has nothing to do with you,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster.
Michael opened his mouth and then shut it. What had he been going to say? she wondered. That he accepted her declaration? Or had he been going to call her a bigger liar than he was?
She would never know, because he was rising to his feet again. “I’ve taken enough of your time,” he admitted. “I’m not sure I’ve said everything I need to say, but this is a start.”
No, she wanted to protest. This is the end! Go away and don’t come back!
Yet when she saw the remorse in his eyes, the sadness and desolation as he gazed at he
r across the patio, she was forced to admit that perhaps he had experienced as much pain over the years as she had.
At least she’d surmounted her pain. She’d been blessed with a child she loved, and they’d made a good life together. What did Michael have?
Loneliness. Gruesome memories. Nightmares. The dreadful knowledge that he might never receive the forgiveness he so desperately wanted.
And he didn’t have his son.
“I’ll say good-night, then,” he murmured, and for’ a strange, silent moment he looked as if he wanted to cross the patio to her, take her in his arms and cling to her. Or maybe it was her own yearning she saw, her own wish that she could give him as much forgiveness as he needed.
But before she could speak, he turned and stalked out of the circle of light, into the shadows, around her house and away..
HE NEEDED A KITCHEN.
Hell, he needed a lot more than that. But as he sat nursing his refill of coffee at the diner across the street from the Holiday Inn, he was forced to confront the undeniable fact that he didn’t like diner breakfasts. He wanted a kitchen, where he could brew up a pot of strong coffee and refill his own cup instead of having to search a crowded dining room for an overworked waitress. He wanted a toaster, and fresh fruit from the supermarket, bought at a reasonable price. It galled him that for the price of a wedge of melon at the diner, he could buy an entire melon at the grocery store.
The issue wasn’t money, though. It was that as long as he stayed in the hotel, he was a transient. And as long as he was a transient, he had no chance of repairing things with Emmie, no chance of becoming a father to Jeffrey—assuming the boy proved to be his son.
It was only 6 a.m. in California, so he couldn’t call Maggie Tyrell or her brother Jack at Tyrell Investigative Services for at least a couple of hours. He had no good reason not to linger at the diner while he waited for the West Coast to wake up.
Found: One Son Page 13
