Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale
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“You okay?” he said.
She wanted to snap ‘yes,’ yes, of course.
Except her mouth wouldn’t comply.
The bed creaked under the weight of her husband.
“He looks like him. More and more everyday, I think,” Tak said.
There was no need to say who or even why they were talking about that.
Still, Deena didn’t trust herself to answer.
“Sometimes I ask myself if I could ever let Kenji go,” Tak said. “If I could ever be okay without my doppelganger.”
“And what did you realize?”
He looked at her. “That I hope to never know.”
He rose and pulled her over to the bed, where they sat together.
“He needs you, too,” Tak said. “He needs a mother. I can’t be that.”
Deena dropped her gaze, scarlet illuminated her cheeks.
“I know.”
She thought he would kiss her there. It was such a Tak thing to do.
Instead, he rose and went for the door.
“Breakfast,” he said. “Because the sooner we start the day, the sooner we can finish it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
After leaving Mike on the roof he’d gone and put his wife to bed, locked the door, and headed to the billiards room for a drink. Eventually, Tyson had joined him. They had drinks, talked movies, and insulted each other’s sports teams. It was almost as good as being with John—John before the divorce, that is. Tyson, who mentioned Ash a few times, seemed to be feeling wistful himself. They’d parted on a good note.
Tak had slept that night with his wife in a vice grip, her head on his chest and both his arms around her. More than once, he woke with his pulse skittering, only to have it calm at the sight of her sleeping still. His dreams had been filled with Mikes. Mikes raping and confessing and pillaging and plunging to his death. And when at last Tak gave up on sleep, he took a chair to watch his wife dream of Aubree Daniels.
Her name was like a broken whisper in the dark, a swept cobweb, a bit of shattered glass. Tak knew no more and no less, only Aubree Daniels, said once.
Then there was her, a phone that held secrets.
It gave him childish wants, that phone. It gave him impulses. He wanted to rummage through it, smash it, and stomp it in abandon. He wanted to spit misogynistic things at her, to remind her of what her bible said about her husband’s role in her life. But none of that was him.
He hadn’t been honest with her. Not when he retrieved her sleeping body from the upstairs sitting room. Not when she woke from her dozing in the middle of the night. Everything was fine. All was alright. That was what he’d said.
He’d made up his mind not to tell her. Whether it was best for her, he couldn’t say. Only, that it wasn’t possible for him to say the words—words that meant Mike had touch her without permission, violating her. His throat constricted at the thought, as if to squeeze his Adam’s apple up and out.
She would be okay, he told himself. She was obviously okay.
Downstairs, breakfast had already begun. There were great heapings of meat and breads, complimented by cheeses, eggs, and Belgian waffles with two dozen options for toppings piled high on table after table, a spread worthy of Buckingham Palace. Tak sat with his wife, alone. When Noah came over, Tak ushered him downstream with a tilt of his head, where he fell in with a few Hammond kids.
John came next but sat down gingerly, as if the seat itself fueled his discomfort. He had food before him but he didn’t eat, and promptly told them that Mike had gone.
Tak and John exchanged a careful look, only to find Deena studying them.
“I’ll leave you two to your breakfast,” John said. “Anyway, I hear there’s a knucklehead I need to congratulate.”
Deena spoke the second he’d gone.
“You two look as if something happened,” Deena said. “Although, I suppose my telling Mike off is something happening.”
Tak buried himself in his juice, one gulp, then another, until Tony entered and the room. It exploded into whoops and jeers and a dozen or so clamored around him. When at last he emerged again, his cornrows had frizzed and his shirt twisted, and lopsided.
Tak took in Deena’s bewildered look.
“What?” he said.
She looked at him as if trying to focus.
“It’s just…it was nothing like this when I went off to college. No one cared. No one.”
He wanted to tell her that these were different people; that her grandfather was dead and Caroline was but one in the crowd now. No family was the same at any two points in time, anyway. Families shift, grow and shrink, while priorities and how they perceive life changes with them.
“Mr. Tanaka?” a maid said.
“Not now,” Tak said.
“But Mr. Tanaka—”
“Is it possible for me to have one meal with my wife without being interrupted a hundred friggin’ times? Unless you’re coming to tell me which one of you has been lifting all the liquor, I don’t want to hear it. And who stands over people when they eat, anyway?”
“Tak—”
“Sir, it’s only that—”
“Take the day off,” Tak said and turned back to Deena. “Take more if you like.”
The maid snorted, mouthed off something he couldn’t make out, and stalked away. Tak stared through the plate before him.
“Baby?”
Boy was that an annoying look. The one people gave when they wondered if you’d finally succumbed to the voices in your head. Tak looked pointedly at Deena.
“What?”
She saw it. That his question wasn’t even a question. It was a statement, a command. Leave me alone, was what it should have said. But like everything, it softened for her. I need a second, was what he’d told her.
He felt a mountain atop them, a mountain of misunderstandings, lies and secrets. But this was no mere peak of stone, therefore scalable. This was comprised of that so delicate, one cinder could ignite it all.
“Tak?”
He returned to his food, smashed the eggs around a bit, and shoveled some in his mouth.
Cold.
He added it to his list of disappointments.
****
Tony’s father had granted him a last minute reprieve after news of his college acceptance. The second he’d done so, one word whispered in his mind: Lila. A phone call, a shower, hurried breakfast, and three thousand claps on the back had brought him to that moment. Tony climbed from the sedan like a man jumping bail.
She stood at the spot they always met at: the cluster of squat adobe fixtures, in turquoise, pistachio, and white.
Lila ran to meet him. A tall, raven haired figure pressed into a fitted blank tank and tights. She threw arms around him and showered him with pecks, body sinking into his so tightly that he felt every curve, every hint of flesh. She murmured something in Dutch and pulled back long enough to grin. Then the kisses started in for a second time, one long and luxurious after another. Tony’s arm found her waist and cinched it, mouth against hers and working.
“Somebody’s been lonely,” she said and unraveled from him with a teasing grin.
“You mean me,” he said and felt the smile slip from his face.
“Yes you,” she said and tousled his hair.
Tony took her by the wrists and placed her arms aside. Only one of them had been lonely? He pushed the thought from his mind.
“How’d you get free?” Lila said. “That man seemed so angry. Who was he, anyway? Kinda cute for an older guy.”
“My dad,” Tony snapped.
Her face went slack, as if presented with an insurmountable problem. Then it brightened. “Oh! So, you’re…adopted?”
He didn’t like the way she said it, as if it were something subject to xenophobia, some puzzling otherness she hoped never to have the misfortune of catching. There was some vague pity there, too, alongside the implication that he must be deprived of the truth concerning his identity.
Lila batted over long lashes at him and it wrapped her arms around his waist.
“I’ve ruined the mood,” she said. “But I know how to make things fun. Let’s go shopping. Then you can spoil me.”
His mouth curled down on an exhale.
“How about we talk?” Tony said. “Or take a walk on the beach?”
She cringed.
“Really? You sound like an online dating profile.”
“Fine. You think of something. But I didn’t earn early release just to take you shopping.”
She coiled up to him again, slipped an arm around him, and let red painted lips brush his ear.
“We could go behind that building over there.” She tilted her head in the direction of an evening café. “Have a little fun.”
Despite his better judgment, Tony’s breath caught as the thrill of arousal snaked up and down his body.
“Outside?” he breathed, and like that, his flush of abandon evaporated.
Outside. An image of Lila topless, of him on her, of his father stepping from the shadows turned him cold, all titillation forgotten.
“Yes, outside,” Lila said, to which he extricated himself a second time. Unlike the first, she held on, resisting his urge to be free. With his hands on her wrist, he was able to forcibly remove himself and give her a hard, bewildered look.
“What’s with you?” he said.
“What’s with you? You’re all into me one second and throwing me off the next. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t love me.”
She crossed her arms and huffed, bottom lip springing out before stealing a cautious glance his way. They’d never talked of love—love wasn’t possible—hell, he didn’t even know where she lived.
“You don’t love me,” she said, in what she only thought was a voice tinged in hurt. Instead, she sounded like his kid sister, back when she lugged eyeless baby dolls around. She’d lose them and demand his help, which grew tiresome quick. When he stopped, she’d accuse him of not loving her.
Except, he did love Mia, so that always worked, whereas with Lila, he felt only…urges.
“So, you love me?” Tony said and held eye contact. “You’re honestly trying to say that you love me?”
They didn’t keep in touch when he left Aruba, they didn’t write, they didn’t call, they didn’t email.
She swelled at his question, chest rising, chin rising, eyes lit.
“I can’t believe you have to ask,” she said, but as she said it she dropped her gaze.
His mouth thinned in irritation. It tended to do that whenever people avoided his questions.
“So,” he said. “Just to recap, we’ve established that the answer is ‘no.’ I don’t love you and you don’t love me. We’re just two kids having a good time.”
“That girl you call when you think no one’s looking,” she said. “The one back in Miami. She’s the one you love.”
Tony started down a side street toward a row of shops; Lila fell in step behind him.
“Where are you going?”
“Away from you. You’re annoying me.”
“You’re annoyed because you’re hearing the truth?”
He stopped. They stood in the shadows of a two story building. A YMCA, he realized belatedly.
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You’ve never even met Wendy. You didn’t even know her name until I just said it.”
“I know she must be pretty important.”
She looked proud of herself, as if she’d made some great point.
“Yeah? So?”
A Honda hatchback rolled by. Tony recognized it as belonging to Tito, one of Lila’s best friends. As inseparable as him and Wendy, last summer there’d been only a few occasions where they’d been without him.
Tony watched him drive off.
“Are we meeting him?”
She pursed her lips at the question, snapping off an “of course not,” that seemed unduly irritated.
“You’ve picked the worst time to start an argument,” she said, making him wonder who had done what. “If you knew what I needed to talk to you about, you’d feel horrible for how you’ve been treating me.”
Tony’s eyes narrowed.
“I think you should let me be the judge of that.”
She took a deep breath and extended a hand to him. He let it hover, staring.
They stood like that, with traffic milling by and the sky rolling toward darkness.
She’d let it hang forever, it turned out. So with a sigh, Tony accepted her hand.
She looked up at him with eyes that were more honey than brown and wider than he recalled. Mixed with a thousand things, he thought. All the islanders seemed to be.
Against his better judgment, he pulled her in by the hand and took her into his arms. His body responded to her even if his mind didn’t, and soon their mouths met. She responded to him as expected, their heat never ceasing.
“I’m pregnant,” she said between kisses.
He ran a hand under her shirt, then froze before pulling away.
“What?”
“I’m pregnant, Tony. I’m carrying your baby.”
His cloud of lust abated, making room for understanding.
“How can you be?”
Her mouth curved into a smile. “Tony, be serious.”
“I am being serious!” He turned, as if to leave, only to double back. Dumb shock had blazed to fury.
“I am being serious!” he yelled again, because he could think of nothing else to say.
But then he took in her features: her bloodless face, her searching gaze. His reaction shocked her, but why it did, he didn’t know.
“Tony, don’t be mad. I mean, I know it sounds like bad news, but—”
“It sounds like bullshit.”
“What?”
“I said, that this is bullshit. That you’re on some bullshit.” He roped in a thousand thoughts organized on a deep breath, and moved forward. “You may be pregnant,” he said. “But you’re not pregnant by me.”
“Are you really doing this?”
“It’s not possible, Lila. What’d you do? Conceive on Monday and call me on Wednesday? Good scam, I can see you thought it through.”
“I’m not talking about what we did this week!” She shook, furious under his glare. “You and I both know what happened between us last summer.”
“Nothing happened between us last summer.”
“Tony, come on. Tito’s party?.”
“You got drunk,” he said. “We made out. After that, I put you in a cab. I wouldn’t take advantage of a girl like that. I couldn’t.”
Lila snorted out a laugh. “Be serious.”
“I am serious. Unconscious girls aren’t my thing. So, I don’t know who got you pregnant. But I do know who it wasn’t.”
Tony stalked off, in search of a cab ride home.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Deena’s umbrella drooped with the weight of insistent rain, as it battered and clawed at her only defense. Howling winds cut, first one way and then the other, so that ice water sliced in sideways, buckets of permafrost hurled at her back as rivers rushed through the street.
She burst into the café and found a double pair of wide eyes staring back at her. The woman behind the counter stood tall and pale, red hair like a flickering flame. She offered neither smile nor greeting. Deena turned to greet the other person present.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Allison Tanaka said. “You sounded like you wouldn’t on the phone.”
Deena tossed her freshly bent umbrella to the floor and dropped into the seat across from her.
“I’m here,” she said. “But why?”
John’s soon-to-be ex-wife sat back. Unlike Deena, she seemed unfazed by the rain. Dry, ne
at, clothes clean. With her flaxen locks pulled high into an absentminded ponytail, the lines of her face looked severe, windswept by time and worry.
Allison drummed fingers on the narrow café table, the faint line of her ring finger betraying her secret.
“You said it wouldn’t affect our friendship if I left him. You said you’d be okay with it,” Allison said.
“And it hasn’t.”
“Yet, you talk to me like this,” Allison said. She waved over the ghost-lady behind the counter.
“Two cappuccinos,” she said before turning back to Deena.
In need of something to fiddle with, Deena plucked a napkin from the silver display and turned it round and round in her hand.
“I’m not angry about you leaving him. Like I told you before, you’re the one who has to live with him, sleep with him. I have no opinion on that.” She looked up. “But for the love of God, Allison, did you have to do it right before the holidays? And after all these years, couldn’t you have told him to his face?”
“Like he told me about his secretary to my face?”
Allison 1, Deena 0.
Deena tossed her napkin.
“Like I said, it’s no business of mine. If you can’t stand your husband, you can’t stand your husband.”
“I never said I couldn’t stand my husband. Only, that I couldn’t stand the idea of him with another woman.”
Both of Allison’s hands sat on the table, pale, open, veined and shaking. Like her face, they’d aged since the last time Deena had seen her friend.
“I’m not judging you,” Deena said. “I wouldn’t be able to stand the idea of Tak with another woman.”
She thought of Aubree Daniels and quickly shared what happened, up to and including her discovery of condoms and throwing Tak out.
But Allison only rolled her eyes.
“I warned you about Mike years ago.”
“Yes, I know, but—“
“And what did I tell you?”
“Allison, what you said is completely irrelevant to—“
“You think a man being in love with you is irrelevant to what he tells you about your husband? Really, Deena, you’re supposed to be brilliant. Or something like it.”
Deena sighed. “I know he misled me. But—“