Alex stepped into the uncomfortable silence. When she looked out, she saw tears falling from all but the youngest children. They may not have known Dahlia, but they knew loss.
“I have to agree with Hermes,” Alex said. “What I remember most about Dahlia was her beauty. She had this capacity to be so lovely right in the middle of mayhem. I used to call her the elfin princess because she was so fragile and yet so powerful.”
Alex nodded to Matthew who stepped to her side.
“I loved the way Dahlia laughed,” Matthew said. “Especially after a glass of wine. She would wrinkle her nose as if to try to keep the laugh inside. When it came, she would burst open with laughter. In the last week or so, I’ve seen Hector James laugh the same way. I’m delighted that this laughter has not faded from the world.”
Matthew hugged Troy and the boys and returned to his seat. Raz took Matthew’s spot next to the casket.
“I met Dahlia through Troy, of course,” Raz said. “She was visiting probably about a year before Hermes was born. Alex and I stopped in to see them on our way to… somewhere, I don’t remember. What impressed me about her was that for all her beauty, all her magic, all her laughter, she could be very thoughtful and deep. She and I stayed up late one night drinking brandy and talking about Hegel and Nietzsche.”
Raz chuckled.
“She had a lot to say. She was very bright,” Raz said. ”I’m sorry for her loss.”
Raz hugged Troy and the boys. Elizabeth came forward to speak.
“Boy, I have a lot to say,” Elizabeth smiled. “Very little of it makes any sense right now. I never imagined I’d be here and Dahlia would be… and the boys…”
Elizabeth seemed to draw into herself for a moment before she looked up.
“I loved her,” Elizabeth said. “Now that I know everything, I love her all the more. Not just because her acts of heroism saved my son and hers, but because of the whole of who she was – good, bad, difficult, funny, thoughtful and… I hope wherever she is, she’s at peace. She deserves it.”
Elizabeth hugged Troy and the boys. Still carrying the boys, Troy nodded to the crowd and stepped forward.
“I’d like to tell you a little bit about the Dahlia I knew,” Troy said. “We met in High School Geometry. I was already taking Calculus at the local community college. I had to take these classes to graduate. It was a warm fall and Dahlia wore her hair in a pony tail almost every day.”
He smiled at the memory.
“Under her mass of blonde hair, she had this tiny curl at the nape of her neck,” Troy said. “I sat behind her just itching to touch the curl. She ignored me. It wasn’t until we were matched up for an assignment that we talked. I don’t know if I believe in love at first sight, but I remember that assignment like it was yesterday. I loved her then. And no matter what I’ve ever done since then, I’ve always loved her.
“Since that time, she’s always been with me.” Tears fell down Troy’s face. “I thought about her when I was alone in some foreign country. Her beautiful face would pop into my mind before I fell asleep. I can’t tell you how much comfort she brought me.
“Now, she’s gone. And I will miss her for the rest of my life.”
When Elizabeth hugged Troy and the boys, Alex stepped forward.
“We would like you to join us in a toast,” Alex said.
Cian and Colin brought bottles of sparkling apple juice to the front. With much ceremony, they opened the bottles while the rest of the team passed out glasses to the audience. Colin poured for Troy and Elizabeth, and Cian poured glasses for Hermes and Hector James. Troy set the boys down so they could hold their glasses.
“Hold it up,” Cian coached the boys.
“To Dahlia!” Troy held up his glass.
“To Dahlia!” The Fey team repeated.
Troy nodded his head and everyone took a drink.
“Please stay for cake,” Troy said. “Dahlia would have wanted you to enjoy what she cannot.”
Alex watched Troy, with Hector James on his hip, walk toward the reception area. His mother followed with Hermes in her arms. The audience followed the family into the reception area. When the chapel was clear and the doors closed, they carried Dahlia to the crematorium. They lifted the interior wooden casket from the ornate coffin and set it on the conveyer belt. Alex dismissed the men to the reception and stayed with the coffin. After they were gone, she removed Dahlia’s jewelry and said one last prayer for this woman to find peace. When she was done, the proprietor started the process.
Alex waited for Dahlia.
She knew she didn’t have to. She knew they would call when they were done.
She just knew what it was like to lose someone she loved. While she was in a coma in Germany and then Walter Reed Hospital, the Fey Special Forces team was buried. She felt a tremendous comfort that Joseph had been with every single member of the team as they were dispatched. This was her chance to give that comfort to someone else.
“I thought you were very nice about Dahlia,” Jesse said.
“I totally misjudged her,” Alex said.
“No, you didn’t,” Jesse said. “She used Troy and hurt him. You’re his friend. You didn’t like the wreckage she left behind.”
“Nice of you,” Alex said.
“Did they do this to…?” Jesse left the question linger in the air.
“No,” Alex said. “You were buried. Maria thought if there was a second coming, you’d be so pissed if you’d been cremated. She didn’t want to hear about it for an eternity.”
Jesse laughed.
“Can you stay with me?” Alex asked. “Or do you have to get back?”
“I’ll stay,” Jesse said.
“I feel really sad,” Alex said. “Lonely. Miss everyone.”
She felt the tingle of Jesse’s arm around her. For the next hour, they sat together through the waves of sorrow and loss. When Dahlia was ready, Alex was too. She wiped her eyes, smiled at the proprietor and took the ornate urn. With a nod to Jesse, she went to get Troy. She and Matthew would accompany him while he buried the love of his life.
FFFFFF
Monday night
November 2 – 9:24 p.m. MST
Denver, CO
“It was very sweet of you to go to the funeral,” Raz said.
He rolled over in bed to stroke Samantha’s naked back. She’d left her long auburn hair down for him. He loved the way it spread across her translucent skin.
“It was… Is there a word that means both beautiful and sad?” Samantha asked.
“Poignant,” Raz said. “That’s the best we came up with.”
“We?” Samantha asked. “You mean you and Alex.”
“The guys?” Raz sat up to look at her. “Alex was with Dahlia most of the reception.”
She looked away from him.
“Are you going to ask me about the picture?” Raz asked.
“What picture?” Samantha’s blue eyes flashed liquid fire.
“Okay, okay,” he flopped back to the bed. “Have it your way.”
“My way? My way!?” Samantha’s voice rose with each word. “Yes, you’re right. It’s my way that my boyfriend takes my sister to some romantic event that no one knows anything about. And that picture? Disappeared off the Internet! Every copy! TechCrunch says the only a high-level CIA operative would have the authority to make a photo like that evaporate. Know anyone like that?”
“Samantha,” Raz said.
“Why don’t you just admit it?” Samantha asked. “Man up; admit it.”
“Admit what?”
She flipped off the bed and stood naked next to the bed.
“You love Alex.”
“Do I love Alexandra?” Raz asked. “That’s true. Is that what I’m ‘manning up’ about?”
He sat up.
“So, I’m the replacement?” She pulled on her clothing. “A second best while you wait for Alex?”
“No, that’s not true.” Puzzled, he watched her get dressed.
> “You’ll always love Alex.”
She picked up her shoe. She was going to throw it at him but realized it was her favorite Christian Louboutin. She looked at the shoe, sneered at him, and put it on. With one last glare at him, she was running down the stairs toward the door.
He jumped from the bed to follow her through his carriage house.
She flipped around to look at his naked form. Even angry and hurt, his wide muscular shoulders, narrowed washboard stomach, and bulging thighs made her pause.
“When you say it… I know how it sounds….”
He let out a breath and shrugged.
“You KNOW how it sounds? It sounds like I’m wasting my time with you. It sounds like I’m setting myself up to be hurt.” Picking up her handbag, Samantha added, “It sounds like I should go.”
“Please slow down,” he said. “I don’t know how we went from ‘Let’s make a life together; let’s have a child’ to ‘I should go.’”
Samantha stopped at the front door to his carriage house. She turned to look at him. Even though every molecule in her body yearned to leave, something in his face made her stand her ground.
“It’s me, Sami. It’s not Alex or Alex and me. It’s me. I’m broken.” He shook his head and turned his back to her.
Samantha wanted to leave. She tried to force her body to move but she was rooted in this spot. She’d seen her father in this very predicament. He’d told her once that the bravest thing he’d done in his life was to stand in place when things got hard with Rebecca.
Samantha was her father’s daughter.
“Broken?” she said under her breath.
He spun in place at the sound of her voice.
“The picture is from a private memorial at the World Trade Center,” Raz said. “I go with Alex because she started it.”
“The World Trade Center?” Samantha hadn’t wanted to speak, but the words just came out.
“You know I was married?”
“Alex told me,” Samantha said.
“Did she tell you what happened to my wife?”
Samantha shook her head.
“She jumped off the North Tower,” Raz said.
Samantha’s face flashed: shock, then horror, before settling into sorrow.
“Yeah,” Raz said. “Landed right in front of me.”
“What?”
“We started arguing over dinner, Vicki, that was her name, and I. I knew something was going on but I didn’t know…”
“She was seeing someone else?” Samantha finished his statement.
“Seeing?” Raz snorted. “Fucking. She didn’t care about him… at all! She fucked him to torture me. ‘Waiting for the great detective to figure it out.’ That’s what she said. We argued all night. When dawn came, she took a shower and got ready for work. The last thing she said to me, ‘Don’t play the victim. You did this to yourself. You don’t give a shit about me or anyone else. You are broken. You were broken when I met you. You will always be broken.’”
“What did you say?” Sami asked.
“I told her that I loved her. I thought I loved her. Fuck, Sami. I… I wasn’t the person you know.”
Samantha took a step into the carriage house. He took her hand.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For not leaving,” he said. He led her to the couch.
“I reserve the right to leave,” she said before sitting down. She arched her eyebrow to indicate her independence and added, “I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to tell the truth.”
He blew out a breath and sat next to her.
“I showered; I think. I don’t remember. I don’t think I shaved. And I… I went to work. I was at my desk when the first plane hit the North Tower… where Vicki worked.”
“9-11?”
He nodded.
“I knew she worked there. I’d said it a thousand times, you know. ‘My wife works at the World Trade Center.’ ‘Vicki? She’s a financial analyst at the Twin Towers.’ But, at that moment, I didn’t put it together.”
He raised his shoulders in a sad shrug.
“It never occurred to me. I simply didn’t think the thought: ‘Vicki’s in trouble.’” He nodded as if he was agreeing with himself. “I got the call; I stood from my desk; I went to work. One. Two. Three. The streets were jammed, so we ran from the precinct to the Towers. I arrived just as the second plane hit. We… I… Someone… Fire Chief, probably, told us to go to the North Tower to help people get out. I was running toward the entrance when it hit me like a stone – Vicki works here! Vicki’s here! My wife is stuck in this tower! I stepped back to see which floors were affected…
“I know it’s impossible but I saw Vicki peer over the edge of the roof. She was wearing this bright yellow shirt. I’d bought that shirt for her… silk… When she came out of the bedroom wearing it, I thought it was a sign that she wanted to work things out… that we were going to be all right.”
Samantha scrutinized his face for any hint of a lie. But his eyes were vague. Raz was lost in his memory.
“I grabbed a pair of binoculars from… someone. She was standing on the roof with her lover. They kissed and then took flight.”
“They jumped off?”
“Together… holding hands… after kissing. I swear Sami, Vicki saw me and stared at me, and only me, the entire way down. She had this smug look on her face… as if I was getting what was due to me. I watched… I watched… until….”
He stopped talking. His hands made the gesture and Samantha gasped in horror.
“They hit the concrete about six feet from me.”
Raz took a breath and held it. He fell forward until his elbows caught on his thighs. The story hung in the air for a moment. She touched his bare thigh. He looked up at her for a moment and then continued his story.
“Someone knocked my shoulder and I went to help people get out of the tower. I watched my wife fall to her death and went back to work. Six weeks, eighteen-hour days, identifying bodies, documenting the mess, dealing with the families… Vicki’s parents. Her lover’s wife asked for me by name. We’d met at some holiday function and she wanted a friendly face. God… They had three kids. She had no idea her husband was having an affair. Before you ask; I didn’t tell her. I didn’t have time. If I wasn’t interacting one-on-one with a victim’s family member, I was filling in paperwork.”
“Paperwork?”
“Missing person’s reports, violent crime reports, and any other form we could find to stick people’s information on. The paperwork lined up like mountains around us. I think about it now and…”
He shook his head as if to shake the image from his vision.
“I slept maybe two hours a night. Every time I closed my eyes, I’d hear her tell me that I was broken. Her fall replayed on my eyelids like a movie. Ben found me about three months after the towers fell. He asked; I agreed; and bang, I ceased to exist. I had no family, no friends, nothing. Why not be dead on paper? I was in real life. I went to work with Ben. Broken.”
“What changed?” Sam asked.
“Alex... and her team. They had been around so many hostages that they knew exactly what was wrong with me. They pushed, prodded, poked… Jesse hit me.” Raz rubbed his jaw as if Jesse Abreu just punched him. “…until it all came out in one stinking mess. I fell to pieces. Alex stayed with me through the shaking, crying, raging, vomiting, and I don’t know what else. Days? Weeks? I don’t have any idea how long I was like that… at least a month.
“I’d never known that kind of strength, or kindness. She got me working out again, cleaned me up.”
“She always says you were ‘fat and hairy’ when she met you,” Samantha smiled at the idea.
“You should have seen her team. At the time, I thought they were mean but… they were right,” Raz said. “No partner of Alex’s was going to get away with being a ‘tub.’ That’s what they called me – tubby.”
“And I was tubby. I was emo
tionally, mentally and physically soft. They straightened me out.” He gave a half-smile at the idea and continued, “Alex brought me home to Max and John, the first family I’d had since Momma died. By the time Ben returned, I had my feet under me for the first time in a long, long time.
“So, yes, I love Alex. I’ll always love Alex and no one else. Because Vicki was right; I am broken. And Vicki was wrong; I am capable of love, just not the kind of love a wife wants or needs. I’m only capable of loving Alex.”
Samantha picked up her abandoned wine glass and drained its contents. Holding the glass, she stared off into space for a few minutes.
“What’s your real name?” she asked.
“Joshua Craig Peretz,” he replied.
“Josh. I’ve heard John call you Josh,” she said.
She picked up a picture of Raz and Alex. They were floating in the sea off Majorca. Alex’s hands were draped around his neck. He was looking into her face and laughing. She seemed to be saying something to the camera. Samantha loved this funny, happy photo of her sister and her lover… Well, except for the fact that they were both naked.
“Have you ever…” she said to the photo. Setting it down, she continued, “How many times have you been with my sister?”
“Been with? You mean have we had sex? No Sami. We never have. I know Alex told you the same thing.”
“Because she’s married?”
“Because it wouldn’t be right. We’ve had chances all over the world. No one would ever have known. It’s not right. She and I are not sexually right.”
He stopped talking. Samantha raised her eyes in silent expectation for him to continue.
“Alex says that becoming sexual would ruin something in our relationship. She says that a few minutes of passion would minimize a love so profound and precious that it’s not worth it.” He furrowed his brow and shrugged. “That’s how it feels… to both of us.”
“What if that changed?” Samantha asked.
“Boy, Sami, I can’t predict the future. I can only tell you what has been true for the last six… no seven years.”
He watched as Samantha struggled with herself. She could be so fierce and still so meek. He slipped a piece of her auburn hair behind her ear.
Lean on Me Page 22
