by Kitt, Sandra
The statement confirmed that they’d been seeing each other, and talking about her. Dallas felt like her life had been invaded and it made her wary. “I … never told Val. I never mentioned it to anyone.”
Alex pursed his lips thoughtfully and stared down at his boots. The light made his hair look like silver. “She and I have been out together a few times.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” she said quietly.
He shifted restlessly. “I know, but … I wanted you to know.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I feel like, I always want to be honest with you. We’re friends, and I won’t do anything to hurt you.”
Dallas was surprised by his confession. And ambivalent. It was none of her business who he or Valerie dated, but there was the question of how she felt about it. Nothing more was said on the subject. She and Alex continued to stand together in the dark.
The suburban quiet was very different from the constant noise and underlying buzz of the city that she had grown used to. She liked the vitality and bustle of Manhattan better. It was easier to be anonymous in the city, blend in.
“What are you thinking?”
She sighed. She had a suspicion that Alex knew what she was thinking. But she wanted to stay away from … the other thing. “I feel sorry for Lillian.”
“Why?”
“I guess because … I think she deserved a better son than Nicholas,” Dallas hesitated. “She loved him so much. I bet he could have had anything he wanted from her and Vin, but he was so … so …”
“Yeah, I know.” Alex slowly nodded. “It didn’t work out the way they’d hoped at all.”
Another strange thing to say, Dallas thought. She hugged herself against the chill. “I hope she’s going to be all right …”
“She will. What about you?”
She stared at him, trying to see his expression. “What do you mean?”
“Valerie said your life is very complicated.”
Dallas felt annoyed. “She shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“Is it true?”
“Isn’t everyone’s life confusing? Isn’t yours?” she countered. “I don’t know anything about you, either.”
He chortled, reaching for the door. “You know more than you think you do.”
Alex said it with such certainty that Dallas looked quizzically at him.
Alex pulled the door open again, and held it while Dallas preceded him back into the house.
“You care a lot about Lillian, don’t you?”
Dallas stepped back into the kitchen. The bright overhead light made her squint after the absolute darkness of outdoors. “Yes, I do. Lillian is like … a surrogate mother to me. She’s special.”
“Yeah, she is special,” Alex agreed reflectively. “She’s a lot like …”
Alex suddenly stopped and turned his head partially in the direction of the open basement door. When Dallas started to ask a question, he held up his hand for her silence, his expression alert and focused. And then she heard it, too. Crying. Soft, but heartbreaking sobbing from the basement. Alex moved quickly and started down the stairs. By the time Dallas responded and followed him, he had already reached Lillian. He was kneeling in front of her, and had gathered her against his chest. Lillian’s body shook with her tears.
Alex did nothing more than to support and hold Lillian. Over her head Alex caught sight of Dallas, and stared at her. In an instant of déjà vu she recalled Alex’s comforting her. He hadn’t held her the way he was holding Lillian, but he’d been there for her. Dallas quietly retraced her steps, leaving the two of them alone.
She stood alone in the kitchen for no more than a minute when she heard footsteps on the path leading to the side of the house. The door opened, and Vincent Marco stepped inside. He carried a small bouquet of flowers. Before she had time to gather her wits, he was shrugging out of a jacket and pulling off a baseball cap and calling out for his wife.
“Lilly? I’m ho …”
Vin’s eyes widened with surprise when he spotted Dallas standing behind one of the kitchen chairs.
“Dallas. How you doin’?”
“Hi, Mr. Marco,” Dallas greeted him a bit awkwardly.
His initial surprise quickly faded and Vin Marco placed the flowers on the counter, his cap and jacket on a chair.
“I told you, you don’t have to call me Mr. Marco. Vin is okay. Where’s my wife?”
Dallas was trying to detect whether or not Lillian was still crying. She gestured vaguely with her hand in the direction of the basement.
“She’s, er … downstairs.”
Vin nodded. “Oh, yeah. You were helping her with stuff that belonged to Nick. Did you finish?”
He was heading toward the door. She was not unmindful that there might still be some tension between him and Alex. “Yes. I … I just put out some garbage. I was on my way down again to see if Lillian wanted me for anything else …”
There were footsteps behind her now. Voices and murmuring. Vin also waited, his stocky body poised comfortably. Dallas saw the frown gather between his brows at the sound of another man’s voice. Lillian came first into the kitchen. Dallas watched her face carefully, looking to see if there was any evidence of crying. Her eyes were a bit pink, but she merely looked tired. When Lillian spotted her husband, her eyes brightened and she smiled, happy to see him.
“Oh, Vin. You’re home already.” She turned her cheek to him so that he could briefly kiss her.
He looked over his wife’s shoulder. “Who else is here?”
Alex appeared next.
“I asked Alex to come out, too. I had no idea how many boxes I’d find, or how heavy they’d be. I didn’t think Dallas and I could move them around.”
“Vin …” Alex nodded in greeting, appearing with his jacket slung over his shoulder. He entered the kitchen, which was becoming overcrowded. The atmosphere was charged with additional tension now that Vin was home.
“I didn’t know he was going to be here,” Vin said a bit gruffly, referring to Alex, but not addressing him. “I coulda stayed and helped if you wanted.”
“No,” Lillian said adamantly. “You needed to get out of the house. I needed to stay in. Besides, it gave me a chance to visit with Dallas and Alex. I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said reasonably, patting his arm.
Vin grunted. “Hi,” he finally mumbled to Alex. “Thanks for helping Lillian.”
“Anytime,” Alex responded.
“Yes,” Dallas also voiced.
“And it gave Alex and Dallas a chance to meet. How is Larry and Marilyn? How did the work go?”
Vin turned and picked up the flowers. “Okay. They want you to come out. Stay a few days. Here, these are for you.”
Lillian was delighted, and accepted them with a smile as if it were the first time her husband had ever brought her flowers. Dallas knew it wasn’t. She was charmed by Vin’s thoughtfulness.
“I’d better get going. You two probably want to be alone, have dinner and some peace and quiet for the evening,” Alex interjected. He reached out and stroked Lillian’s shoulder, and she smiled up to him with an assurance that she was fine now.
Dallas also took advantage of the opportunity. “I have to leave, too.”
“Alex, maybe you can give Dallas a lift back to the city …”
“Oh, no … I’m not going back tonight. I’m staying with my family. I can walk the two blocks.” She got a purse from where she’d left it, under the kitchen table on the floor, and Lillian got her jacket from a closet next to the basement entrance.
“I’ll drop you off. It’s on the way,” Alex insisted in a voice that brooked no debate. He crossed the kitchen as he put on his coat. He stood a foot or two away from Vin addressing him. “I don’t know what else you might need a hand with, but let me know. I can come back out.”
Vin turned around. Dallas had always considered Vincent Marco to be a giant of a man. Perhaps because he was stocky and always seemed so
aggressive to her. But he was about three inches shorter than Alex, and the difference to Dallas made Vin suddenly seem less intimidating.
Vin cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure. Look, I appreciate you coming out to help Lilly.” He awkwardly offered his hand for Alex to shake. “Dallas, you, too,” he said again.
“Good night, darling,” Lillian crooned and she reached to hug and kiss Alex. “Thank you for everything.”
Dallas noticed that Vin averted his eyes. And then Lillian turned to her with the same words and expression.
After a moment of repeated good-byes, Dallas and Alex left the house. They said nothing as they walked to Alex’s car, and he opened the door and held it for her to get in. But she didn’t right away. She turned to Alex, sorry that she couldn’t see his face.
“Can I ask you a question?” Dallas opened softly.
Alex let the door go and proceeded to walk around the front of the car to the driver’s side. “Go ahead,” he instructed, unlocking his own door.
Dallas hesitated. She hoped she wasn’t getting too personal. “What are you to the family? What was your relationship to Nicholas?”
Alex opened his door before he looked at her again.
“I don’t have any relationship to Nicholas or Lillian … Vin is my father.”
Chapter Seven
ALEX PULLED UP IN front of the house and put the car in neutral. He stared out the windshield onto the dark street. Dallas did the same. Someone’s dog barked mournfully from a backyard. A gruff “shut up” quickly silenced the animal. A car turned into a driveway down the block ahead of where Dallas and Alex sat. Getting out of the car, the driver cast a long and curious look at them and finally headed into the house. When the door closed it became very quiet again.
The ride from the Marco house took less than three minutes. Neither she nor Alex said a word to each other the entire time. They exchanged brief glances and grinned, looking away.
“You lost weight,” Alex observed awkwardly.
Dallas grimaced. “You’re not supposed to tell a woman that. You’re supposed to say … you’ve changed, or you look great.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. That, too.”
“You stopped smoking. And your hair …” Her gaze roamed over him. “What happened?”
Alex looked at her. “Life. Does it make me look old?”
“No … it’s kind of interesting. It looks good on you.”
It made him look, oddly, more like Vin.
Vin Marco was Alex’s father.
Now Dallas realized why, even when she’d first seen Alex, he’d seemed familiar. But now that she thought of it, now that she’d actually seen Vin and Alex side by side … now that Alex had said so himself … of course Alex was Vin’s son. Another son. The other son.
Dallas gazed at his profile. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. He didn’t seem in a particular hurry to leave.
Alex waited for the questions to begin. It made him uneasy. Not because he wasn’t prepared to tell about himself, but because it also meant talking about his mother. Vincent Marco being his father was more her story than his. And Alex had always been more protective of her than himself.
He caught Dallas’s intense gaze upon him. He couldn’t see her whole face. Just the places where the shadows created from the streetlamps didn’t fall directly on her.
“You probably had guessed,” Alex said quietly.
Dallas shook her head slightly. “No, I didn’t. Not that way. I never would have thought … Vin seems to be so in love with Lillian … I …”
“He is in love with Lillian. I don’t think Vin has ever loved a woman as much as he loves her.” He looked out the front windshield again and shrugged. “Vin and my mother … it wasn’t about love. It was a whole lot of other things.”
“Oh …”
He laughed softly. “You don’t really understand. That’s okay.”
“Look, I don’t think it’s any of my business. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?” he asked cynically.
“No, why should it? Not to me or to anyone else, I bet. I mean, it’s not as if it doesn’t happen and …” She sighed in annoyance. She looked at him squarely. “Why am I trying to make it sound better?”
“I don’t know. Why are you?” Alex asked.
Unexpectedly, he put his car into park and turned off the engine. The humming sound of the motor died, and they were left in the small space of the vehicle with the sounds of their own breathing. Alex swiveled in his seat and reached out to touch her shoulder. “Okay, let’s forget it. I was just answering your question. I’m not anything to the Marcos.”
“But you just said that Vin is your father,” Dallas said, confused.
“That’s right. He and my mother met and bang! That’s where the connection ends. He made a shot in the dark, and I was the bull’s-eye. Vin didn’t know I existed until I was almost fifteen. I knew who he was. I used to think that he’d come to look for me. But he really didn’t know. So, I went to him.”
In the dark, Dallas could see the tightening in Alex’s jaw. The fingers that just touched her shoulder slid away and curled unconsciously into a loose fist. She knew exactly what had happened between Vin and Alex and how Alex must have felt. Her stomach muscles clenched as she had a vision of herself at five, facing a black man with glasses and a mustache, with a black woman beside him, telling her he was her father. It didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense. But it was true.
“He didn’t believe me. He denied it. But Lillian … she took one look at me and knew.” Alex shifted to a more comfortable position in the seat and sighed deeply. “If Lillian hadn’t stood up for me and tried to calm him down, I would have left and never gone back. She was crying and, man … I was so scared I was shaking. But I was also mad as hell. Nick was there, too. He just kept yelling and shouting, ‘Get outta here. You don’t belong here … I’m his son …’”
Dallas stared blindly into the night, the story coming to life before her eyes. A skinny kid with dark hair standing for the first time ever, alone before the formidable angry shock of his own father. And being rejected.
“You were so brave.” Dallas shook her head in wonder. “I don’t think I could have done that.”
“I had to. I had to know.”
“But … it … didn’t work out. Did it?” she asked carefully.
Alex shook his head. “He had Lillian. And he had Nicholas. I didn’t compute. I didn’t fit. Hell … I wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Alex looked at her, touched her shoulder again. “You know, Vin is not a bad guy. He’s honest. He works hard. He’s good to Lillian. When she fell in love with him and agreed to marry him, I think Vin couldn’t believe his luck.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lillian once told me her parents didn’t much like the idea. They didn’t think he was good enough for her. He wasn’t one of them, if you know what I mean.”
Dallas did. She remembered the photograph. She knew about Lillian’s background and family. Her father owned a number of successful neighborhood businesses where she’d lived. She had an older brother who had also done well, who lived in New Jersey.
“Vin getting Lillian to marry him was a big deal. She was the best thing that could have happened to him. Lillian made him feel like more than he thought he was. When I showed up, it was like I blew his cover.”
“And Lillian?” Dallas asked.
“Lillian …” Alex murmured in consideration. And then he sat there slowly shaking his head, as if he couldn’t find the right words to say it all. He raised his left hand and then let it drop to the steering wheel. “She didn’t hold it against me or Vin. She tried to bring us all together. She wanted Nick and I to get along. That didn’t go over big, but …” He sighed deeply. “Lillian probably saved my life. I’d do anything for her. Anything. Next to my mother, I love her more than anyone else in the world.”
Dallas was deeply moved, but she wasn’t surprised at all by Lillian’s part
in the drama. All she had to do was remember standing outside that fence when she was seven years old, with Lillian urging her to come closer.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Alex suddenly said. Dallas turned her attention sharply to him. “Lillian is exactly the same way with you as she is with me. So, what’s your story?”
Already Dallas was shaking her head, denying that there was anything remotely as significant as Alex’s relationship to Vin and Lillian. Not willing to share her history, and not sure she could explain it to someone who never had to worry about race first.
“I was just a little girl. My family was new on the block …”
“I know. The first black family, or something like that. That’s what Valerie said.”
“Lillian was just very kind to me. I don’t know why. But I’ve always liked her. She’s … one of my favorite people,” Dallas confessed shyly.
Another car came down the street behind them, its headlights shining and growing larger like spotlights. They ignored the slow-moving vehicle until it continued down the street and turned the corner. It was quiet again. He waited for her to continue.
She waited for him to ask. Dallas knew he was going to. She could almost feel the question forming on the tip of his tongue. She felt like her heart was beating faster. She held her breath, waiting.
“Do you remember that time? Not with Nick. That other time?”
Oh, my God …
Dallas closed her eyes briefly as her stomach heaved. It was an odd kind of giddiness. She nodded.
“Me, too,” he murmured with a nervous chuckle. Dallas remained silent. Alex gently shook her arm. “Hey. You aren’t ashamed, are you?”
Again she merely nodded.
“Why? Don’t do that.”
She templed her hands and fingers, hiding her mouth behind it. “I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I actually had the nerve to call you and …”
“Yeah, well … I couldn’t believe you did it either … it’s okay,” Alex rushed to reassure Dallas. She shifted in the seat and uttered a slight moan. He stroked her arm and squeezed it gently. “I’m not complaining but … it was the first time anyone had just asked me to …” He made a helpless sound, unable to find the words for how incredible it had been.
