He set the pen aside and sighed.
“What is it?” Carmen said.
On turning, he found her folding a stack of his t-shirts so sharply she creased them. Mike rose and took them from her.
“You’re not my maid,” he said and hurled the clothes into a cheap dresser drawer.
She slammed both wrinkled hands into her lap, like a child deprived of some toy.
“I have to earn my keep, Michael. You cannot pay me what you do and require nothing of me.”
“I require plenty of you,” he said and tore up his letters. “Your company, for instance.”
“And if I tell my father that, he’ll think I’m a whore. Already, he thinks you are a wealthy American who has secured me my own accommodations. Constantly, I am asked to accept visitors.”
He swiveled to face her. “Is that what you want? Your own place?”
Carmen rolled her eyes as if he were an idiot, before rising and venturing to the window.
“You can’t afford it, Michael. And I haven’t earned it.”
He studied the tenseness that held her taunt as a stretched coil.
“You’re unhappy,” he said. He wished she’d just tell him how to fix that.
“Who do you write?” she said. “You write to people who never read the letters. You maintain a cell phone but never make a call. Why do you run from your American life? Why do you no longer want a woman? Who has hurt you so?”
He sighed. It wasn’t as if he never expected her to ask. He supposed he’d been lucky she delayed so long.
“I hurt myself,” he said. “By falling in love with the wrong woman.” He shook his head, needing to get the story right. “I fell in love with the idea of this woman, not her. She was my cousin’s wife.”
Carmen gasped.
“The two of you did not…”
Mike laughed bitterly. “No, although I would have. She loves my cousin very much. Me? Not so much.”
“You are not hers to love,” Carmen said, drawing up indignant. “Nor is she yours to love that way.”
Mike turned from her, scalded. This had been his confession, delivered too soon. He hadn’t told her in order to earn a lecture. He didn’t even know why he’d told her, but whatever the reason; it wasn’t for the look of superiority she gave him.
“You said you loved…the idea of her. What does this mean?”
“Nothing. Forget it. Go fold something.”
Seconds passed where the weight of conviction bore down on him.
“Carmen, I’m sorry,” he said.
She went in the drawer and retrieved his t-shirts robotically, folding them with twice the force and twice the amount of creases.
****
For a week they said nothing to each other, beyond the pleasantries necessary to get through a day in close proximity. She went out to see her family when he had no tasks for her and she attended mass every day. He imagined the services at the glorious cathedral she walked to, to be as tedious as the Methodist ones he remembered growing up. The erratic times she returned must have meant that her priest rambled the way his used to about the second coming of the Lord. Christ was on his way during every commercial break if you let some people tell it.
They spent a week not speaking to each other before he asked her out to dinner. She accepted as if it weren’t in her powers to reject. They walked to a nearby steakhouse where they gorged on Argentinean beef and drained a bottle and a half bottle of local vintage wine before strolling the streets for fresh air. When she slipped her arm into the crook of his, Mike looked down in surprise but said nothing. They hadn’t spoken all evening.
She was beauty itself. A simple, South American beauty who’d spent her life in the sun. Her skin blazed with bronze life and the smile she deprived him of spoke of happiness. Her full figure did more for him each day.
So, he wasn’t surprised when he stopped her beneath an acacia and brought his lips to hers. Mike only found surprise when she responded, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing soft to hard against him.
One kiss. One indulgence. It was all he would permit.
Still, he thought with a meteoric grin, it was a start.
A start to a life all his own.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Tak and Deena flew home at the end of their second week in Curaçao. The next day, they were to pick up her mother, lodged in a hotel on the beach until they moved her to what would be her new home. Lizzie, who had no interest in seeing the woman ever, refused to even discuss picking her up. She could “climb into a dumpster,” as far as her youngest daughter was concerned. Likewise, Gloria Hammond’s grandchildren elected not to see her, leaving just Tak, Deena, and a few thousand contradictory emotions for the journey.
Morning came. When it did, Deena recognized its arrival, not through the usual presence of sun rays insistent on their beam into her room, but with the shrill of an alarm clock on the nightstand. Bleary eyed, she nudged Tak, who shot an arm out from beneath bedding to paw blindly at the offending object. Only when he upended it, did he manage a peek through one eye.
“Time,” he demanded.
“Morning. Time for dear old mother.”
He sat up. Looked her over.
“Baby, if you don’t want to go, I’ll pick her up. I’ll explain the apartment to her. When you’re ready—if you’re ready—then you can go see her. No pressure.”
He meant it. That tender, protective gaze said he did, as did that little way he rubbed her hand, as if he didn’t even know he was doing it.
“No,” Deena said. “I need to do this. We should do this.”
It was a milestone for her, for them. They would conquer it, whatever the hell that meant.
Tak dressed in a pale blue button up and dark, close fitting jeans. Both emphasized the ropy sinew of a lean body. Deena decided on a teal, pleated sundress and strappy sandals, and was halfway through her makeup regimen before the likeness to her mother in the mirror made her pause. Eyes, nose, mouth, chin, all compact and exacting in their replication.
But she was okay with that.
“Ready?” Tak prompted from behind her.
“Ready or not,” Deena said and stepped away from the mirror.
They took the Range Rover to her mother’s hotel. Once there, Deena sat, hands in her lap for the drive, mind a myriad of thoughts, mouth dry and useless.
Vestiges of the sun peeked out from behind silver lined clouds just as Tak parked in one of the designated slots. Deena closed her eyes and tried to remember something about her mother besides murder, hatred, hurt.
Meatballs came to mind.
“Deena, not so large. Your father’ll choke on them, for sure.”
Deena’s mother grabbed the half dozen chunks of ground beef gathered in the massive plastic bowl next to her daughter. Deftly, she broke off small portions, marrying a few to create another half dozen.
“But I like them large,” Deena insisted.
“You like to have your way,” her mother said. “But I’ve already told you how it’ll be.”
Deena’s lip touted out. She refused to mold another ball.
“Sing for me, pumpkin,” her mother said brightly.
Deena shook her head, knowing it to be her attempt at a truce. Everyone knew how she loved singing.
Her mother shrugged as if it made no difference to her, before hurling herself into a tuneless, rhythmless, and hip rocking number of her own creation. Fingers covered in threads of raw meat mixture, she threatened to smear it on Deena’s face as she sang her horrible tune. Deena jerked and bobbed and swatted, laughter choking her as she dived. On recognizing the old reggae tune her mother made an unintentional mockery of—it was one of her father’s favorites—Deena chimed in, mock accent absurd, annoyance with her mother forgotten.
She remembered joy. Joy buffeting on the winds of time, joy that felt timelessly shrouded in hugs, kisses, comfort. She remembered a mother who sung horribly, danced worse, and promised to love her eternal
ly.
That was the woman they went to get.
“I’m terrified of saying something stupid,” Tak said. “But I—I want to say something meaningful.”
Deena slipped her hand into his.
“You just did,” she said and kissed his cheek.
Her mother emerged from the hotel.
She stood taller without her shackles, lighter, thinner. Yet, she was somehow not Deena’s mother without them and absolutely her at the same time. Clad in a simple white t-shirt and plain blue Wranglers, she crossed the parking lot in wide, sweeping strides, as if afraid to look back, to go back.
Deena climbed from the vehicle.
Her mother’s face transformed at the sight of her, a cloud of doubt disappearing in the place of unfettered hopefulness, before she checked it, burying it deep.
“Nice car,” she said instead. When Deena didn’t answer, her mother squinted up at the sun. “I’m still getting used to it. I can’t remember that thing being so bright.”
“Have you not been…out?” Deena said. The woman had a South Beach room with an oceanfront view.
Her mother shook her head. “Television and room service. It hasn’t got old.”
Deena stared at her, willing her mouth to produce words.
“We should go,” she said. “I have…things to do.”
She had nothing to do, except stop her hands from shaking and get her mother to the apartment in her name that she knew nothing about.
The two women headed for the car. Tak bounded out and opened the doors. Gloria blinked her surprise.
“Takumi,” he announced breathlessly. “Your son-in-law. Your…son.”
Her mother’s face split wide in a grin. “I know who you are. You’re stunningly handsome, too.”
Tak stood up straighter at the compliment, noted Deena’s smirk and deflated.
He his mother-in-law’s hand to help her with the climb.
“It’s high,” he warned. “Be careful.”
Deena caught his wrist after he slammed her door.
“You’re…interesting,” she said.
Tak studied her face.
“I’d like to know the woman responsible for giving me my wife and my brother his. So, much traces back to her, you know? I guess I’m just…grateful.”
He hesitated on the verge of more, before tucking words away with a kiss to her forehead.
Grateful. She turned the word around and examined it.
Once they were all in, they took off—not toward home, but toward the apartment they’d secured for Deena’s mother.
They would have her in a place of her own, close enough that they could drive and see her with ease, but not so close that an unexpected bus ride would bring her to them. They would give her a living allowance and cover all her expenditures. They explained this on the ride over and fell into silence when she didn’t respond.
“The grandchildren,” she said. “Lizzie.”
Deena’s hand, nestled under Tak’s as he drove, shifted into a fist. Her exhale came out as a shudder. She took her time responding.
“They don’t want to see you now. When that changes, one of us will let you know.”
Again, silence filled the cabin.
“And you?” she said. “Do you want to see me again?”
That wasn’t the question she wanted to answer.
So, she didn’t.
Deena owed her life to this woman. Not just because she had nursed her in her womb and given birth to her, but because she had traded her freedom for her daughter’s safety. Some might say it was something that any mother would have done, but Deena knew better. People sold their children for drugs, for money, or turned their backs on them in cowardice. Her mother had killed the man she loved to protect her children, knowing they would hate her for it.
Long ago, Deena stopped tormenting herself with the question of whether she could do the same. No answer she came up with left her anywhere close to sane. When she rode the endless merry-go-round of torment that question gave her, Tak would remind her that she shouldn’t even ask it, that it was unfair. That question was born of a life filled with deliberate choices and expected consequences. Her mother chose to marry and stay married to a drug dealer.
Life, Deena knew, came down to choices not circumstances.
Her mother’s life, her brother’s, Tony’s life, and hers. All of it had been dictated by the choices they’d made.
A fitting thought, Deena realized, as they prepared to renew their vows.
A fitting thought, Deena realized, for the moment Tak’s hand slipped into hers.
Forever.
That was the choice she’d made.
To spend forever with him.
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