The skis under my feet sliced through the top layer of the snow and propelled me down the mountain at a rapid rate of speed. I wanted to slow down a little bit, but Donna and I were in a race now. It was a fun little competition, but I wanted to win anyway. As I drifted along, trying to ignore the cold air that was whizzing past my cheeks (the only part of my face that was really exposed behind the thick goggles, beanie, and heavy scarf), I did my best to stay focused on my own ride and to ignore her, but the temptation was too great. I kept looking over at my friend who was almost neck and neck with me. She was a strong skier and despite her claims, she was far more competitive than I was.
I couldn’t see Blake and Roy; they were long gone, but I wondered who was in the lead among the two of them. It didn’t matter much to me, but I would have had a little song in my heart if Blake came out victorious, just as I did when it was clear to me that he was winning the fight between the two of them, before it was broken up. It sounded really juvenile to think about, but it did turn me on when Blake won out over other men.
I’d never really thought about that before, but there it was. The truth had come out within me as I tried to block out all heavy thoughts and just concentrate on my race. But as it often did during athletic endeavors that I undertook, my mind wandered and aired out the dirty laundry of my thoughts.
I loved it when Blake was on top. There was something primal about being with a winner. But did that mean that I loved his money and power too? The thought bothered me, cut me to the bone actually. I’d always prided myself on not giving a fuck what kind of money Blake had, as long as he was happy, but did I really feel that way? I’d never really thought about it to the point that it had become a valid concern, and it always royally pissed me off when anyone else ever made that insinuation, but it was true. There was a small part of me that loved the fact that Blake was a successful, rich guy.
But what did that say about me? Did that mean my love for Blake wasn’t as real as I thought it was? If worst-case scenario happened one day, and Blake ended up broke and penniless, would I still love him the same?
I wanted to say that I absolutely would. But with these new feelings coming to life, I just wasn’t so sure.
The trail was almost ended. We were coming up on the final stretch. I kicked myself into another gear determined to defeat my friend. She was falling behind me. I was going to win this race.
As I sped up, the thoughts I’d been wrestling with did not slow down a bit; in fact, they intensified and I started to feel a bit anxious. Was I trying to outrun my negative thoughts right now? Or was I just trying to win this silly race with Donna?
I wanted to cry. The revelation that I was a much worse person than I’d previously thought, had me in its grip. I was exactly what people said I was, and what I had vehemently denied so fervently for so long.
This was silly. I was driving myself nuts over nothing. I knew this. Where had these crazy ideas suddenly come from? They’d crept into my head and now I didn’t know which way was up. I felt almost dizzy with the small panic attack I’d whipped myself up into.
I loved Blake. I knew I loved him. I loved every part about him. I didn’t love the money; I loved the ambition, the drive, the determination—all of the things that resulted in money, which I saw more as a perk than anything else.
And I was lucky enough that this amazing man loved me.
Blak was stopped along the side of the trail.
I was just about to pass him. Why was he…
Then it all came together. My head whipped towards him as Donna and I sped past. There had been an accident. Oh, no…
I put the brakes on and came to a hard skid halfway down the hill. Donna did the same. She’d realized the same thing I did and now we were both running over to where Blake was standing.
Blake was trying his phone. He yelled and put it in his pocket. “I can’t get a signal.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Blake looked at me and pointed over towards the clearing about twenty feet away. It was hard to see because of some of the snow piles and the brush over there. But as I surveyed it, I plainly saw a pair of legs sticking out of the brush beneath a large tree.
I knew instantly what had happened. “What…?”
“Yeah. Roy had an accident. He ran into that tree.”
“What’s going on!” Donna screeched as she came to a stop beside me.
Blake gestured to where Roy’s lifeless body lay.
Donna screamed loudly. “NO! ROY!”
I wrapped her in a warm embrace and let her bury her face in my shoulder.
“I’m going to ride down to get some help,” Blake said. “Stay here.”
He hopped back on his skis and took off quickly down the mountain heading for the lodge.
I just hoped he returned quickly. Roy was not moving. I knew he was gone, but I didn’t want to face it. How did this happen? In the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Blake returned with help about a half hour later. They loaded Roy onto a stretcher and carried him to an ambulance, but the medics pronounced him dead at the scene.
Just like that, Roy was gone.
Chapter Eleven
Blake
I pulled up to my parents’ house that Tuesday evening feeling a growing pit of sickness in the middle of my gut. I’d set up this dinner, which I usually tried to have a meal with them at least once a week when they were in town, but I rarely went into these things with any sort of an agenda, other than to spend some quality time with the folks.
This was going to be a bit different.
I shut off the engine after finishing listening to the Blondie song Call Me. It has always been one of my favorites, especially when driving. It just has that sweet driving vibe that automatically transplants you into the opening of that Richard Gere movie American Gigolo. When it song comes on the radio, I just can’t help but think about that. I often wished I was more musically talented. Music has always been an alluring escape for me. I find it so fascinating how it can transport you to another time and place in your mind. You can remember where you were when you heard the song, what was going on in your life, and where you thought you’d be versus where you actually ended up. I couldn’t think of any other artistic medium that had that same kind of broad range, to stir up feelings and emotions.
My father had instilled in me the love of music at an early age, and it was something I continued to have with me to this day.
I stepped out of the car and made my way up the long flowing staircase that met my parents’ home and emptied into the huge pillars that emanated their status and power. I could have had a home exactly like this one, or better. Hell, I was wealthy enough to buy whatever home I wanted, but I’ve never been that into the lavishness of material things. I have nice clothes, most of which are for business, several decent cars, and a few other indulgences; but I’ve never been the guy that has to have the best of everything.
I love eating fast food and franchise pizza, too. I often wondered if that was one of the reasons that Tina loved me so much. I’ve always been a fairly typical guy. There isn’t much about me that screams, excess. She would probably have been turned off by all that type of audacious stuff.
When I entered the house, it was nice and quiet. That was the thing about my parents’ home that I would never get over. There could be a house full of people and it somehow seemed very quiet as if there was nothing going on. The sound just did not carry throughout the place.
The house was so much more quiet now that it was just my parents and the maid, Cynthia, and Butler, Davis. It felt odd that I didn’t live there anymore. After college I’d moved into my own home exclusively, and that was that. At twenty-two I was my own man and I was proud. I still was a few years later.
But I often missed the comforts of home. I guess that even though I was supposed to be some type of real estate titan, I was still a young man at heart who was trying to work through who I was going to be in ten or twenty years. I ha
d no clue, but there were times when I played with the fantasy of just erasing it all and starting over. That was the thing no one ever told you about success; getting there was the most fun you would ever have with it. Once you had it, you got bored with it pretty quickly. At the top, it was mostly dull maintenance routines and then you didn’t know what to do with the creative juices that were still flowing within you.
So, I’d recently been spending a lot of time trying to think of what new venture I wanted to tackle. But with everything else I was dealing with, I just didn’t have the time to devote much of my mental faculties to it.
I hoped that would change one day.
My parents were sitting at the table awaiting my arrival, both of them looking happy as usual. In all the years I’d known them, I’d never really seen my parents say a cross word to each other. Even when my mother was pleading with my father to quit the business, they never raised their voices, there were no tears shed, and there was no love lost or resentment at all between them. My mother just simply laid out the ultimatum and it was up to my father to accept or reject. He accepted.
I envied that between the two of them. That style of communication… it may have been where I got my way of doing business. I said what I wanted and what I needed; if someone did not agree, then that was fine. We wouldn’t do business together and I’d find someone else, but there was no animosity or hate there. I saw no need for it.
“I hope I’m not late,” I said as I hugged my mother and gave her a kiss on the forehead. Then I did the same with my father.
It felt weird showing him affection when I was utterly furious with him, but I had to hear the man out first. My mother might be annoyed, or even disgusted that I was going to bring this up, but I felt it was best to get it all out in the open and just talk about things.
That’s how I handled everything in my life.
Except Tina. I could not bring myself to do the same with her. She was my Achilles heel. Where she was concerned, I could not quite think straight sometimes. I guessed that was what it truly meant to be in love.
“No, not at all,” my father said. “Everything is right on schedule. How have you been, my boy?”
“Good. I’ve been working myself silly as usual. How about you?”
“Same, but your mother has been trying to get me to take some time off.”
“Yeah? A little time off might do the body good,” I said. “You should listen to my mother. She’s a smart woman.”
“That she is. You ain’t lying.”
He looked at my mother and they shared a smile. All these years and they were still very much in love. That was the type of success story I hoped to emulate with Tina.
We had a great dinner, as usual, and I ate too much food—as usual. After it was over and we were all sipping our coffees, I felt the itch to bring it up, to tell my father what I’d come to tell him, and to ask him exactly what I’d really wanted to ask him.
“Dad,” I said. “I saw you the other day with Joe. I know you were doing something together, I want to know what it was.”
My father stopped mid-sip on his coffee and his eyes went wide for the briefest of moments, and then he sat his cup down and laughed.
“Ah, my boy. You know that Joey and I go way back.”
“Yeah, I do. I also know what you go way back for.”
My mother was glaring at me, but it was all in the eyes. Her face remained stone, placid. I knew this was hurting her, but I couldn’t help it. This had to be brought out in the open and she had to hear it as well. There was no way she could ignore this just because it was easier.
Dad looked at me. His eyes were heavy and sad. I hated to bring up a painful past, but if he had nothing to hide or lie about, then this would be easy for him.
“Son, I know what you might be thinking. There is nothing going on there. Joey asked me to have dinner with him and it was two friends catching up. That’s it. I swear to you on your mother’s life. I’d never lie to you.”
I watched his eyes intently as he delivered his speech. He was a shrewd man, my father, and I wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. I had to hear it from him, and I had to watch him as he said his piece, but I did not know deep down in my heart of hearts if he was telling the truth or not.
I had to give him the benefit of the doubt because he is my father, and I loved him dearly. I wanted to believe that he was still committed to the changes in his life that he’d promised us so many years ago, but a part of me would always have doubts.
Still, I couldn’t prove anything right now. And I had to let it go. But I would be watching things closely.
“Ok,” I said. “I get it. You can just imagine my concern.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Did you tell mom about it?”
“Yes, your mother knew,” he said.
“Well, when I mentioned this to her the other night after I saw you, she didn’t seem to know that you were meeting with him.”
My father didn’t miss a beat.
“Well, I told her right after. It was kind of an impromptu thing. I just happened to be in that neighborhood on business; Joey heard that I was, and he invited me for a bite.”
I nodded, listening to every single syllable that my father told me, hearing the slippery way that his tongue slid fluidly over his teeth and propelled the narrative he was concocting to appease my ear.
It was all total bullshit; I was sure of it. But as of right now I didn’t have a way to call him on it. There were words floating back and forth between us; that was all we had here.
“Ok, fair enough,” I said with a smile.
My father smiled back, and he continued with his coffee. I caught my mother’s eye briefly and then it was gone. What did that mean? Was my mother trying to tell me that she knew my father’s story was full of holes? Or was she willing to go along with it?
When it boiled down to it, all of this was between them. I was out on my own, my own man, living my own life. I had everything I really wanted in the world, but if my mother was in danger of being hurt or having her heart crushed, then I’d be damned before I let that just fly by.
But for the time being, there was nothing else I could really say about it.
I was willing to drop it and get on with the evening, but then I started seeing how my questioning had gotten under my father’s skin. I’d ask him a question and he was a bit gruff with his answer. He suddenly became much quieter, preferring to sit there and sip his coffee while my mother and I chatted.
I was just getting ready to leave when my father asked me, “So, why have you been keeping us in the dark about meeting this fiancée of yours? You aren’t ashamed of us, are you?”
My eyes saw red. I couldn’t believe he had point blank asked me that, and I knew it was a backhanded way of telling me how much he didn’t appreciate being questioned earlier. Growing up with my father, I knew all of his devious little tricks that he often used to get underneath someone’s skin. How dare he.
“You know why?” I asked. “Because I’m ashamed. That’s right; I’m ashamed of your past. I can’t bear to tell the woman I love that my father used to be in the mob, he used to have people killed, and I have no idea how much blood is still on his hands.”
I stormed out without giving my father an opportunity to react or say a word. I couldn’t even stand to look at my mother because I knew this kind of tension was the thing she had tried most to avoid in recent years. She’d forgiven my father’s transgressions much more readily than I had.
I got in my car and drove home, trying my best not to have such a heavy foot on the gas pedal. My music was cranked to some nineties rock and grunge music, the type of tunes that always helped calm me down when I was mad.
By the time I got home, I was settling down a bit, but still the words of my father and his blatant lies were dwelling within me, circling around inside my head. He had his ways of getting inside my mind and making me feel so many negative emotions; he always had. On one ha
nd, I loved my father, but on the other I kept thinking about all of the horrible things he’d done to people.
I picked up my phone and called my uncle Louis. If my father was really mixed up in something, he might know.
“Hey, nephew,” Louis said when he answered the phone. When it was me, he never said hello. He just picked me up off the caller I.D. and then answered with his customary greeting.
“Hey, Uncle Louis,” I replied. “How is it going?”
“Good, I was just sitting down to a drink. It’s been a busy few days. How’s life treating you?”
“Not terrible, but a few things here and there.”
“Well, I wish I could tell you that one day things were going to be smooth sailing for you, but I’m afraid that isn’t the real world.”
“That’s what I’m starting to realize,” I laughed. “I hope I’m not interrupting any time with some special lady friends…”
My Uncle Louis was a notorious ladies’ man. The guy was in his early forties and had never even thought about settling down with one woman. He was just having too much fun being a playboy.
His life was almost like a young man’s fantasy, but he had latched onto it and decided to pursue it for the long haul. At any rate, he seemed happy and it was working for him.
“No, not tonight,” Louis said. “I’m just having a bit of a rest tonight. Sometimes it’s good to have a bit of alone time.”
“Well, I guess I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “You know I’m getting married soon?”
“Yes! I heard about that. Congrats nephew!”
“Thanks,” I said. “I can’t wait for you to meet her; she is an amazing girl.”
“That’s what I hear, but no one in the family has met this sweet, little princess yet. Does, she actually exist? Or is this some kind of a prank?”
I laughed. “Trust me, she is real.”
“Then why are you keeping her in the shadows?”
His Secrets Page 12
