by Sandra Kitt
“Eva!”
Eva jumped. Diane stood dripping wet in front of her, shivering from the cold that had finally attacked her child’s body. The plump arms were hugging herself.
“I’m cold,” Diane declared miserably. Eva pulled herself together and reached to hand the child her own bright yellow beach towel. Shaking, Diane gratefully took the towel, putting it around her shoulders. She sneezed once and casually wiped her nose in the end of the towel. Eva smiled ruefully at the child’s action.
“I think you should probably stay out of the water the rest of the afternoon,” Eva suggested, and Diane readily agreed. She sat down on the discarded T-shirt and huddled next to Eva, who put a hand on the young girl’s towel-covered arm and began to rub briskly. It was a very natural thing to do.
Eva had a vision of Gail climbing into her lap with her wet towel-clad body after a bath. “Warm me up, Mommy!” It had been a ritual.
“Are you hungry?” Eva asked her.
“Yes,” Diane said, wrapping herself more in the large yellow towel. As Eva dug in her tote for the apple and crackers she’d packed for lunch and the thermos of lemonade, Diane sneezed again. Eva began pulling stuff out of the bag in search of the facial tissues she was sure were in the bottom.
There was a familiar, warm, comfortable silence between them as Eva cut the apple in half and handed it to the little girl. She then filled the thermos cup with the lemonade and gave that to Diane as well. For just an instant she was overwhelmed with sadness and loneliness, and her hands began to tremble. She suddenly wondered irrationally what she was doing here so far from home and her family, sitting in the hot June sun with someone else’s daughter. As tears welled to her eyes, she was thankful for the interruption from Diane.
“Do you have pictures in your wallet?”
“Wh-what?”
“Can I see the pictures in your wallet?”
“Oh…y-yes. Yes, of course, you can.” Absently Eva gave Diane her wallet. She wasn’t sure she had many pictures in the very worn red wallet anymore. She began to gather things neatly, thinking that as soon as Diane had dried out and warmed up a bit, she should get her back to her father’s house. It was already after four o’clock.
“Eva, who are these people?”
“Hmmm?”
“Right here.” Diane pointed. “Who are they?”
Eva took the wallet back and frowned. Her face instantly changed, and she went still at seeing the images she hadn’t looked at for more than two years. Very calmly Eva looked at Diane’s curious gaze.
“That’s my husband, me, and—and our daughter.”
Diane wrinkled up her nose. “I didn’t know you had a husband. Where is he? How come he didn’t come here with you?”
“Well, you see…my—my husband is dead,” Eva said softly.
Diane stared at her. “Oh,” she said somewhat in awe. She looked at the picture again and pointed a finger. “But where’s the little girl? Where’s your daughter?”
“She’s dead, too. She’s with her father.”
“Dead…” Diane intoned, as if the word had a strange meaning she’d never realized before. She knew what it meant, but it had never before been applied to people that had anything to do with her.
“How come?” she asked Eva with surprising gentleness in her effort to understand and in realizing the seriousness of it.
Eva felt her throat constricting with emotion. She coughed to clear it away. “Well, there was a fire in my house. My little girl was sleeping in her room upstairs. I ran to ring the fire alarm, and—and my husband went to get Gail—that was her name. But there was a lot of smoke and—and”—Eva waved her hand helplessly trying to simplify the words—“and the smoke made them go to sleep. The firemen couldn’t reach them and they…died.” Her voice finally cracked despite her attempts at control. Diane looked at Eva with a frowning expression for a long time and once more to the picture, piecing it all together in her mind.
“Don’t you have anyone to love you?” Diane asked curiously.
Eva smiled at that. “I have a mother. And I have two older brothers and nieces and nephews…”
Diane pointed to the third figure in the picture. “Who’s that?”
Eva grinned. “That’s me.”
“But…it doesn’t look like you. You’re not fat. And your hair is short.”
“You see, after my husband and little girl died, I got very sick…” Eva said to explain the period of grief she went through for six months. “I lost a lot of weight, and when I got well again, I decided to cut my hair.” She took the wallet back, examining herself. There was, as a matter of fact, very little resemblance between the overweight woman with the cute round face and long hair in the picture and the considerably thinner more self-possessed person she now was. Some changes do come about the hard way. She sighed and put the wallet away.
“I think you’re much prettier now,” Diane declared earnestly.
Eva laughed. “Why, thank you!”
“And I’m real sorry you don’t have a little girl anymore…”
It was a long time before Eva could whisper another thank you for Diane’s sympathy. Diane could be very thoughtful, looking distantly over the sea. “I’m going to be thin someday. Just as soon as I grow up.”
“I’m sure of it,” Eva told her. “But I think you’re pretty right now, too!”
From the look on Diane’s face, it was just what she needed to hear.
EVA HAD TO ADJUST to the early Caribbean sunsets. By six thirty it began to get dark and Eva decided it was past the time she promised to bring the young girl home. With Diane’s directions Eva was able to find the modest house that she was sharing for a while with her father. It was closer to the beach and at the end of the section where Adam Maxwell often kept his boat moored.
The sun and swimming all afternoon had completely done Diane in, and it was all she could do to find the strength to shower the salt water out of her hair and off her body. While she did that, Eva looked, somewhat in shock, at the condition of the small house. The four-room structure looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in a month of Sundays.
There were all kinds of fishing gear and equipment littering the front yard—poles, fins, masks, gloves, spears, weightbelts, and more. The inside would have been quite attractive and airy if it wasn’t for tanks filled with odd-looking fish and other crawly little things and seashells everywhere. Plus, there were books on fish, charts, and pictures of fish. The smell of salt and seaweed seemed to reek through the house, as well as grittiness of sand on the plain wood floors.
The kitchen had dirty dishes in the sink, unemptied garbage from the night before that smelled of bananas. The cupboards were well stocked, as was the refrigerator. But inside were also jars with dead fish and parts of fish in some smelly alcohol solution. With her stomach lurching, Eva quickly closed the door.
Diane’s room was surprisingly neat for a ten-year-old, but Eva realized that she hadn’t been there long enough to make much of a mess. Eva had only a fleeting desire to see Maxwell’s room but forced herself to ignore it, not admitting to herself she was afraid of what she’d see. There was no backyard since the house was built into the mountain, but between the kitchen and Diane’s room was a ladder leading to the top of the house. Sticking her head through the square opening, Eva was delighted to see the roof had been converted into an open-air deck with two director’s chairs and a small round table. It was all closed in by a low, protective wooden railing. But it, too, was littered with magazines and scientific journals and more books.
Letting out a deep sigh, Eva had sent Diane off to the shower and instinctively set about putting the house in some kind of order. She was sure there was a system to Maxwell’s madness, so although she swept and made things neater, she pretty much left his research materials the way she found them. She was also positive he’d not appreciate her interference. She fed Diane and sent her to bed, and when Maxwell came in at a quarter to seven, Eva found she was rig
ht.
She was sitting gingerly on the edge of a too soft, too low chair when she heard him stomping up from the beach. More stuff was dropped into the front yard before he entered the house. Eva pretended indifference, leafing through one of his sea world magazines when he came in, his size suddenly filling the already too-small room.
He took one amazed look around the room, dumped a knapsack noisily on the floor, and glared at her.
“What the hell have you been doing?” he yelled.
Eva quaked at his anger but met his angry stare. “Shhh,” she admonished calmly. “Diane’s already asleep. You’ll wake her.”
“Okay…what the hell have you done?” he grounded out in a whisper.
“Nothing. I just swept away the sand and dirt. Everything is just where you left it.”
“I didn’t ask you to do any of that.”
Eva gathered her things together. “That’s right, you didn’t. But I didn’t do it for you.”
“Okay…I’ll bite,” he said stiffly, standing with his hands on his hips.
Eva hid behind indignation. “How could you think to bring a child into this…this wreck?”
“Diane knows what kind of work I do. The mess, as you call it, can’t be helped.” He waved a large hand at the room.
“You wouldn’t leave your laboratory dirty. You’d be very careful with your samples and specimens. Why should you treat your daughter with less respect?” Eva asked in calm curiosity.
Maxwell’s jaw twitched in tension and his eyes narrowed at her. “Who are you anyway?” he scoffed. “Miss Goody Two-Shoes? What do you care?”
Eva was surprised at his attitude, but she was more surprised still that she minded. “About you? I don’t. But I like Diane. She only has two weeks with you, and I want to see her enjoy them.”
“Do I treat her so badly? Is that what she told you?”
“Will you stop scowling at me?” Eva said suddenly in annoyance. Maxwell quirked a questioning brow at her sudden outburst. Eva drew a deep, calming breath.
“She hasn’t told me anything except that she’s happy to be here. And for some mysterious unclear reason, she worships the ground you walk on…”
“Why is it so unclear?” Maxwell almost bellowed. Eva ignored the question and went right on.
“You might keep her feelings in mind when you—you bring her into this. Or when you bring home your…” Then she did stop, clamping her mouth closed.
A wicked gleam came into Maxwell’s eyes at what Eva was about to say. But she wasn’t all that sure what she was about to say.
“I think you were going to say, my lady friends. Which is much more ladylike than saying lovers, isn’t it?” he smirked, making her feel like a prude. As he talked, he’d begun to move closer to her chair. Eva stood up, thinking she’d feel less vulnerable if he didn’t seem so far above her, but that was a mistake. That unexplainable fear shook her again as she faced him, and she was speechless, her mind wandering to his physical being. Maxwell noticed the change and frowned in puzzlement.
Eva shrugged nonchalantly, with more ease than she felt. “I—I don’t really care what you do. I just don’t want to see Diane hurt. I’m going home…” she said bravely and went to brush past him. His hand closed with an iron firmness around her upper arm to hold her.
“Wait a minute,” he said gruffly, but in a lower tone altogether. Eva ventured to look up into his rugged face, into the brown eyes searching into her own. He was unaware of the odd sensation she had. “I wish you hadn’t moved my things. But I thank you for letting Diane stay with you this afternoon. I thought she liked going out on the boat with me…”
“But she does. She likes being with you.” Eva lowered her eyes briefly, unsure how much she should say in Diane’s behalf without, indeed, interfering in Maxwell’s personal life and business. He noticed the hesitation.
“Go on.”
“I—I don’t think she felt welcomed with Miss—Miss Morris there,” Eva explained carefully.
Maxwell began to frown again impatiently. “Lavona didn’t go with me today. I took her home before I sailed over to Tortola.”
“Oh,” Eva said in surprise, having misunderstood herself. “But you might have explained that to Diane,” she offered.
“She should have known!” He turned away from Eva and, picking up his knapsack, started removing items. A towel, a damp shirt, his wallet, keys, a comb.
“Maxwell…she’s ten years old! You bring home a woman for the night…what should she have known? What do you want her to know?”
He threw the now-empty sack into a nearby chair, scaring Eva with the sudden action. “Look. Don’t be my mother…or my conscience. How the hell do you know so much? Do you have kids? A ten-year-old daughter?” Then he turned his back on her in disgust.
Eva gasped softly, her hands clutching into her cover-up. Without answering, she walked quickly to the door and picked up her bag. Her eyes were filling quickly with water, and she knew that if she didn’t leave now, she would make a fool of herself and start crying.
Eva could have informed him at once that she used to have a daughter. But then he might have felt obligated to apologize and say he was sorry. She wasn’t sure if he’d mean it…and she didn’t want him to feel obligated. She resented his lack of foresight in any case.
“N-no. I don’t have ch-children,” Eva whispered in a strange voice he took no notice of. “I—I just know it’s sometimes hard to do the right thing for them. Goodnight. And I’m sorry for interfering.” She pushed open the door.
“Have you eaten yet?”
“What?” she asked in a daze.
Maxwell turned toward the kitchen. “I’m hungry. You might as well stay and eat something.”
Not will you stay, or can you stay. Just, you might as well. And he didn’t care if she did or not. Eva shook her head at the sudden shifts in his mood. The man had incredible nerve, she thought in wry amusement. But nevertheless she turned back into the house and put her bag down. She could hear the banging and slamming of drawers and shutters in the kitchen.
“Shh!” Eva warned him again as she stood in the doorway. He cursed through his teeth.
“Well, I can’t find anything!”
“Don’t be a baby. You haven’t looked!” She carefully opened all the cupboards so that the entire food content was visible. He began to pull things down from the shelf, and Eva got out of his way, not making an offer to help him. She herself declined any food but accepted a glass of orange soda.
Eva watched silently while Maxwell ate in the uncomfortable position of balancing his plate on his lap and propping his feet, crossed at the ankles, on the edge of a low stool. He seemed for all the world to have forgotten her presence. Eva lamented his ability to take care of one small ten-year-old girl when he did such a lousy job with himself. She absently sipped at her soda, her thoughts deep and far away for a moment, and was unaware when Maxwell had finished his food and sat watching her speculatively. He admired the shape of her small head with its attractive wisps of layered curls, the graceful line of her neck and shoulders, the soft-looking skin over her breasts.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked abruptly. Eva’s eyes flew open to his face, their almond shape looking exotic from the space between them.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why are you here? Where are you from?”
“I’m from New Jersey. And I’m on vacation…”
He lifted a brow, his eyes roving her exposed legs. “Alone?”
“Yes, alone,” she said primly.
“Where’s your husband?”
Eva stiffened and stared at him. He was alerted to the sudden alarm in her and was curious.
“My husband is dead,” Eva stated softly, firmly. It was ironic that twice in the same day she’d had to say that, when she’d gone the whole past year without having to clarify her status for anyone. She expected Maxwell to then murmur the appropriate condolences or at least to ask how it happened, b
ut he did neither.
“Why do you still wear your ring?”
Eva looked down at her hand. The question was a little confusing, as she’d never considered it before. “I’ve always worn it. It never occurred to me to take it off just—just because Kevin was gone.”
“How do you expect to marry again?” he asked sarcastically. Eva raised a brow at his presumptions.
“I hadn’t thought to marry again.” She lowered her eyes, frowning just the same at this new thought coursing through her head. So much had changed since Kevin. Her past life and whatever it might have been had almost been obliterated with his death and her grief. All that was left were loving memories and photographs. “There are other choices, you know,” she informed Maxwell. “I have a good job, my own life. This is my first trip and I like it. I’ll do more of it in the future.”
Maxwell shook his head at her, the corner of his wide mouth lifting. “Not for long,” he said with firm assurance.
“Why do you say that?” she asked suspiciously.
Maxwell suddenly gathered himself, putting his plate on a side table, and stood up to his full height with surprising grace. He walked toward her, his closeness forcing her head back so she could see him. She dare not stand again, remembering her reaction the last time. She didn’t like having him so close. He was too dangerous, too large and powerful. One did not oppose a man like this easily.
“You have marriage, family, children, home, written all over your sweet face.” His eyes swept her features, coming to concentrate on her mouth. Eva found the focus very unsettling and threatening. She gasped in surprise when he moved, bending toward her to remove the soda glass from her limp hand. Then he took both hands and pulled her to her feet. Before Eva could even voice a protest or pull away, Maxwell had lowered his head to firmly ply a kiss from her unprepared mouth.
