Dance of the Rogue

by Cris Anson

  Her throat worked. She swallowed several times.

  “Of course, no one from the Company knew I was waiting in that lodge for him. Days went by. I sent several urgent letters addressed to him in care of the pipeline, but there was just no way to connect to the office. You know, there were no satellite phones in those days. And I had no idea about ham radios or what kinds of communication they used. And of course, no roads into the interior. Everything came and went by plane. And I had no money to hire a plane to fly to headquarters.”

  She drew a deep breath, bit her lower lip.

  Rolf agonized along with her. He couldn’t bear to hear what happened next. But he couldn’t bear not to know.

  After a while, she spoke again. “By that time I’d racked up a week’s worth of hotel bills and needed a way to pay for it. I knew I couldn’t ask Erik to wire me money. He made it clear that once I walked out the door, he’d see me in hell before he’d help me in any way.

  “So I asked the lodge if I could work off my bill by waitressing, cleaning the rooms, anything.” She closed her eyes, but not before he saw the pain in them. “I’m not strong enough to talk about it more than once. Let’s wait until you’re all gathered together and I’ll answer everybody’s questions then.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry.” He glanced over at his oldest brother. “Why don’t you join Magnus in sleepyland? I’ll be happy just to hold your hand.”

  “How could I sleep when I finally, after all these years, have my youngest son at my side? With the other boys, at least I was able to watch them grow up a bit, I had a sense of what they might become, how they might look as adults. You were just a toddler. Tell me all about yourself.”

  Rolf turned his head, looked out the window at the New Jersey hills and towns rolling by in the late afternoon light. He saw none of the passing scenery. “I made a mess of my life,” he finally admitted. “I just never…felt like part of the family, especially after the man I thought was my father died. It was like Grandma and Grandpa Thorvald only tolerated me because I was related to Mags and Soren.”

  He worked his jaw. “Now I know why. I wasn’t their flesh and blood and they’d somehow known it. I think I always knew it too, but I kept hoping I was wrong.” He laughed, but he heard it come out as a harsh sound. “The kids in school who teased me about the mailman, I paid them back by sleeping with their sisters, their girlfriends. I’ve been acting like a fifteen-year-old stud ever since.” Dammit, he felt the sting at the backs of his eyeballs. “I have nothing to show for my twenty-eight years on this planet.”

  “Oh, but you do!” She shifted underneath the seat belt to look him squarely in the eye. “I can already tell that you’re a man whose heart is full of love and just bursting to share it. Plus, you’re sensitive and have a conscience. Believe me, there are a lot of men in the world who wouldn’t fit that description.”

  Her gaze skittered away from him then, and he couldn’t help but know she was speaking from bitter experience.

  “Thank you.” He took her tiny hand in his and brought it to his mouth, kissed the knuckles one by one.

  Just then Magnus snorted in his sleep, shifted his long legs. Rolf and Alana both snickered. But it reminded his pea-brain that if Magnus was tired from traveling, she must be even more so.

  “How long have you been on the go?”

  “Today was a short flight. Just over two hours to Newark. But from the time we left Cold Bay to now, it’s been exhausting. A hospital stop, three hotels, and four different planes. I sure got a firsthand view at the variety of the sizes of planes that fly these days. Dear Magnus, he put a positive spin on it. Said he was happy to be accumulating frequent flyer miles. Which, by the way, I didn’t know what that was until he explained it to me.”

  She too was putting on a positive spin after such an arduous trek, he thought, but the lines of fatigue seemed to be deeply etched on her face. Her eyelids drooped. Every now and again her hands shook. “No more chitchat,” he cautioned. “Close your eyes and rest. You’ll be taking another emotional hit at Nonie’s when you see everyone at once. We have about a half hour yet on the road.”

  It seemed to Rolf that she looked relieved to be able to let down her guard enough to relax. Still, she held onto his hand until her breathing deepened. Rolf wasn’t sure, because he’d only met her, but he thought she looked quite ill, not just fragile. Her skin held a yellowish tone he didn’t like. He’d make Mags tell them everything tonight after Mom was asleep.

  Mom. It seemed so easy, so natural, to call her that, to worry over her health. It wasn’t a guy thing, it was a son thing. Rolf smiled as he put his head back on the headrest, settling on a slant so he could just…look at her.

  And imagine.

  Imagine him as a toddler, running pell-mell around the yard, galloping toward her, she on her haunches with her arms out, waiting for him, welcoming him with an enormous hug when he jumped into her lap.

  Or later, as he was learning the intricacies of a two-wheeler, running alongside him as he caught his balance and began to fly.

  Graduating from grade school, mortarboard askew, tassel in his eyes as he proudly loped to her with his certificate in hand.

  Or…

  Shit. Don’t torture yourself with “what if”, he chided himself. Just be glad for the now, and the fact that his mother—his mother!—sat next to him and clung to his hand even in her sleep.

  * * * * *

  “Kelleher? Your lawyer is here. Let’s get moving.”

  Lawyer? He didn’t have a lawyer. Couldn’t afford one.

  Pearce’s heart pounded. Maybe Fantine had hired one for him. Maybe she wasn’t the bitch he’d always thought her to be. Or maybe the court had appointed him one.

  He walked in front of the burly guard, wondering why he hadn’t been shackled. He’d seen other inmates, the chains between the manacles on their ankles and wrists making that humiliating clinking sound he hated, as they shuffled from place to place.

  Finally he stood, in his orange jumpsuit, before the lawyer in a small, drab room lit by a fluorescent ceiling unit that flickered and buzzed. Medium height, medium weight, bland expression on his unremarkable face, bland brown suit, graying brown hair, totally unmemorable.

  “Mr. Kelleher? Bail’s been paid and you’re free to go. Come with me. We’ll pick up your clothing and other items on the way out.”

  “Who paid for it? Fantine?”

  “Does it matter?” the lawyer said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” This last he said with a pointed look behind him, at the men in cages, locked up twenty hours a day with nothing to do but seethe and plot.

  Pearce bounced between elation and fear. Elation because four days of existing in this hellhole, with no privacy, with screams and noise and stench a constant bombardment against his delicate sensibilities, had made him physically ill. He couldn’t wait to get home, to get under a hot shower and scrub all the filth and degradation off him, couldn’t wait to burn the clothes he was slipping into with nervous energy.

  Fear because once outside, the shark would be demanding his pound of flesh. And God, the first thing he’d have to do is call off the hit on Rosalie. If she died now, he’d be right back in the slammer under suspicion and worse off for it.

  Sweat broke out over him. What if this man, this lawyer, was sent by the shark?

  But he couldn’t stay here in this closet-sized dressing room, one foot in and one foot out of freedom. He’d have to take his chances that he was smart enough to outwit them.

  A harsh knock sounded on the door. The guard’s voice, “Need any help in there?”

  The snide voice was enough to light a fire under his ass. Pearce had seen some of the “help” the guards gave a particularly unruly or detested inmate. He wanted no taste of that.

  With growing trepidation, Pearce entered the hallway, clad in the wrinkled, long-sleeved shirt and trousers he’d worn to the blood-donation trap at the hospital, the bitch.

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nbsp; The attorney jumped to attention. “Let’s go. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  They exited the prison into the dark of night. The final door thudding shut behind him provoked a shiver even though it was locking him out instead of in. He was led to a large black SUV with windows so dark he couldn’t see the interior. A cold skitter went up his back.

  The lawyer opened the door, manhandled him inside and slammed the door.

  And he came face-to-face with Mr. Z.

  “I hate throwing good money after bad, Kelleher, but I’ve invested too much money in you to let you get a shiv in between your ribs in that hellhole before you pay off your bill.”

  “Th-thank you for bailing me out.”

  Mr. Z. smiled and Pearce saw just how much like a shark he was. The man had a number of serrated teeth, like a shark, and his smile was as cold as the depths of the ocean that sharks called home.

  The sweat on his body turned to ice.

  “Since your assignment is just about completed, I’m looking for the second half of my payment.”

  “My—my assignment?” Pearce felt his body jerk into the cushioned leather of the seat as his fake attorney started the car and roared away from the prison. He supposed a man could be both a legitimate attorney and a getaway-car driver. But Pearce was liking this less and less. He swallowed hard and thought hard. He could try to jump out of a moving car, but where could he run to? He was miles away from home, had only a few dollars in his pocket and no cell phone on him. And who would answer any plea from him, anyway?

  The shark showed his teeth again. “The old lady in the hospital. It’s going to be a piece of cake. All we had to do was wait until she was moved out of ICU. They put her in a private room, you know. Oh sure, there’s a 24/7 on her, but I assure you, it will be no match for any of my…friends. Why, it may be happening even now, as we speak.”

  “Aunt Rosalie?” Pearce’s voice cracked. “She’s—wait. You can’t do anything to her! You’ve got to stop whoever—”

  “Pearce, Pearce. You ought to know that once you’ve got a juggernaut moving down a hill, you can’t stop it on a dime. It’s going down tonight. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Nothing I can do to stop it.”

  “But…but they’ll think it’s me! You sprung me out of here just so I wouldn’t have an alibi if she dies tonight.”

  The shark’s smile only broadened. “No,” he said, his voice sounding smarmy and insincere. “I’m protecting my…investment. See, I happen to know you took out both a first and a second mortgage on your home that now equals ninety-five percent of its value. And I own the bank that holds them both. So, Mr. Smart Guy who can’t pay his just debts, I get to foreclose, we cart all your shit out the door—and I for damn sure hope you managed to get some of your Aunt Rosalie’s good antiques in there for me to take—then with a simple paper transaction from bank to me, I’m left with a classy home in a classy neighborhood. And your neighbors will think you just had a run of bad luck and moved on, too bad, so sad.”

  He leaned across the unbridgeable chasm of the seat separating them. “And you?” His smile flicked off in a flash, as though someone had changed the channel. “By the time morning comes, you’ll know what it means to welsh on your debts, what it means to try to walk out on an agreement.”

  Z leaned back into the cushioned backrest and chuckled. “Walk. That’s a good one. Pearce, my boy, you may never walk again. In fact, take a good look out the window. You may never see a tree ever again. But don’t worry, we won’t touch your hands. We may need you to sign the deed over to us.”

  Pearce felt his bladder loosen. He was dead. He knew it as soon as the SUV turned down a dirt lane whose entrance hadn’t been visible from the road.

  And if he wasn’t dead by the time they got done with him, he’d wish he was.

  * * * * *

  Fantine’s stomach felt like it hosted a bunch of kids bouncing on a trampoline. The limo driver had called to alert them he was two minutes away. She, Crystal and Kat stood in shadow inside the grand foyer and looked through the open doorway at the portable wheelchair ramp they’d been able to borrow from the local long-term-care center. If Alana Thorvald Kronk was as bad as Magnus had hinted, they reasoned that she would welcome a long, gently sloping ramp instead of having to negotiate the six wide steps leading up to the main entrance. She’d already ordered a permanent ramp for when Nonie returned and had gotten her approval to install an electric stair chair, which the main staircase was more than wide enough to accommodate.

  They’d decided Soren should greet his mother privately before all the females converged on her. Standing at the bottom of the ramp he looked, to Fantine’s eye, as nervous as she herself felt.

  Her thoughts turned to Rolf. How had he reacted when faced with the woman who walked out of his life so long ago? Would he ever make peace with her? With himself? Would he finally be able to rid himself of the notion that he was unlovable?

  A sleek black limousine pulled up to the curb. Magnus unfolded his long frame from the curb-side rear door and turned back to the interior. A moment later Fantine saw a frail shell of a woman take a few steps onto the brick sidewalk then stop. In seconds Rolf joined them and the two men, like an honor guard, paced themselves to her halting steps as she clung to their strong forearms.

  Fantine swallowed hard. Rolf’s face shone with love, with contentment, and he had eyes for no one but his mother. All was right with his world, she thought. Thank God.

  Then she saw Soren take a step forward and go to one knee before his mother. He took both her hands and kissed them then half rose to embrace her. Mother and son shared a few private words as the other brothers strode up the ramp and into the foyer. Magnus had Kat against the wall in seconds and was being welcomed home with gusto. Crystal’s eyes were focused with laser-like intensity on the drama of Soren and his mother reuniting.

  Rolf stopped in front of Fantine, his heart in his eyes. “I-I didn’t know,” he stammered. “I didn’t know all she went through. I didn’t think I could already love her so much when I just learned how to love Nonie a few days ago. And how much I—” his voice broke. She realized she had half expected him to say he loved her.

  “I didn’t know anything about love,” he finished lamely.

  Ignoring a pang, she raised her palms to his jaw, cupped him, kissed him gently. “You know all there is to know about love,” she murmured. “It’s all there inside you waiting to come out.”

  He opened his mouth to say something else but Soren’s voice boomed out. “Clear the way, you big lunkhead. You make a better wall than you do a door.”

  A small chuckle escaped Alana at the casual slur as Rolf and Fantine moved aside to admit mother and middle son.

  “Let me see all of my sons together,” Alana said, emotion coloring each word.

  Magnus disengaged from Kat and he and Rolf stepped up to either side of Soren. They formed a loose arc around her.

  “My sons. My boys, all grown up.” Her voice cracked. “All these years I prayed for you, worried about you, wondered how you were. Wondered if you were happy.”

  “We are, Mom. We’re all fine, now that you’re here with us.” This from Rolf, and Fantine had never been more proud of him. They stood, to a man, tall and still and silent, allowing their mother to devour them with her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her hands trembled as she touched first Rolf then Soren then Magnus, in rotation, as if she still couldn’t believe they were standing before her.

  Fantine noticed her swaying and was about to speak when Rolf said, “Why don’t we all move out of the hallway? You’ll probably be happy to sit down.”

  The men moved in slow procession into the living room, escorting Alana to the nearest cushioned chair.

  The three women hovered in the archway as Alana’s gaze came to rest on each of them. “I see that all my sons have an eye for beauty.” She raised her arms to Kat. “You must be Kat. Magnus showed me photos. They don’t do you justice.”
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br />   Kat came forward and kissed her on the temple. “I’m honored to meet the mother of my husband.”

  “And this is my fiancée, Crystal,” Soren said as he gestured her forward.

  Tears filled Crystal’s eyes. “Welcome home. You’ve made all your sons so happy.”

  Alana turned expectantly to Rolf. Fantine tried not to stiffen in anticipation of how cavalierly he might introduce her. She wasn’t his wife, wasn’t his fiancée. She had no clue what she was to Rolf other than a rowdy bed partner.

  “Mom,” Rolf said, “I want you to meet Fantine Mercier, the woman who managed to turn me from a clueless bum to a man I hope you’ll be proud of. It’s because of her that I met my grandmother.” His Adam’s apple jerked up and down. “My father’s mother. The other side of my family.”

  He’d neatly turned the conversation away from his relationship to her, but Fantine understood he was overwhelmed by events of the past week and she couldn’t fault him. “I’m so happy to meet you. And I know that Rosalie Dwyer will be ecstatic to meet you too.”

  Then they all took seats, pulling chairs up close to Alana, at times all talking at once, the men telling anecdotes about one other, the women occasionally making comments. Questions were asked and answered, or skirted. Over the course of the evening, while they dined on a beef stew Kat had done up to a tender turn in a Crock-pot and then over coffee and tea, Alana’s past came to sketchy life…

  How she’d existed on the pittance of her hourly wage, no paid vacation, no sick benefits, no income during the times the lodge had closed between seasons. How she’d allowed herself to become acquainted with a man of quiet dignity who had dinner at the lodge occasionally, how she’d been drawn to his nonthreatening demeanor.

  How she’d finally consented to his repeated offers to live with him and let him care for her, but then found herself in an even more alien environment, farther from civilization. How they’d lived on meat he’d hunted and on potatoes, turnips and cabbage she’d cultivated during the cool summers with long daylight hours. How she’d been left alone for several months at a time while Kronk risked his life plying his trade of deep-sea fishing for king crab and other Alaskan delicacies.