“Whitey, I failed her.” I can barely talk but I force the words out. “Catalena is dead because I didn’t see the truth.”
“Shhhh,” he says, rocking me back and forth. I can feel him enclose me, almost wrapping his body around me.
“It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s going to be all right.”
I cling to him, wondering how I can keep the truth from him. I’m tired of keeping secrets. There are so many and they eat at me like a cancer.
I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him. But not today.
Whitey loosens his hold and looks down into my face, his startling blue eyes filled with love and worry. He brushes the hair from my forehead saying, “This will get better, darling. It will. Give it time. You’ll see.”
Whitey kisses one eye, then other, and embraces me again. “But if it makes you feel better, you go on crying until
you’re cried out. I know what it’s like to need to do that.” And so I do.
Several minutes later he gives me a handkerchief to wipe my face and never once asks me any questions. I love him for it.
“You know what I think?” he says after awhile. “I think you ask too much of yourself. I’m not sure why, but you do.”
I let out a tight laugh. “Oh, Jesus, you must be kidding. All my life, Whitey, whatever I’ve been, it’s never enough,” I say, paraphrasing Doc’s words. “Not for my father, not for my family, not for me. I’ve never been enough.”
“Jeri,” he says, taking my fingertips in his hand and stroking them. “There are a lot of people that think who you are is exactly enough. But you need to believe it yourself or you’re never going to be happy. I’ve learned that the hard way.”
We’re both silent, lost in our own thoughts. When I steal a glance at him, his eyes are glazed over and far away, maybe in a small roadster, careening down a darkened road of long ago.
“You know the hell of it, Whitey?” I fold his handkerchief and hand it to him. He says nothing, waiting for me to go on.
“I’ll never know if I had just lain down in the bank if that little boy might still be alive. And I’ll never know if I’d seen the truth in the photo, Catalena might still --” I break off. “I’ll never know.”
“No, you never will.”
“And I have to live with that every day of my life.”
"’For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been!' John Whittier. Smart guy."
Whitey looks at me, rises and stretches out a strong hand. I grab onto it with both of mine, push up and into his arms.
About Heather Haven
After studying drama at the University of Miami in Florida, Heather went to Manhattan to pursue a career. There she wrote short stories, novels, comedy acts, television treatments, ad copy, commercials, and two one-act plays, which were produced at several places, including Playwrights Horizon. Once, she even ghostwrote a book on how to run an employment agency. She was unemployed at the time.
One of her first paying jobs was writing a love story for a book published by Bantam called Moments of Love. She had a deadline of one week but promptly came down with the flu. Heather wrote "The Sands of Time" with a raging temperature, and delivered some pretty hot stuff because of it. Her stint at New York City’s No Soap Radio - where she wrote comedic ad copy – helped develop her long-time love affair with comedy.
Her first novel of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Murder is a Family Business, won the Single Titles Reviewers’ Choice Award 2011, and the second, A Wedding to Die For, received the 2012 finalist nods from both Global and EPIC for Best eBook Mystery of the Year. The third of the series, Death Runs in the Family, has already received rave reviews and is a finalist in the EPIC Best eBook Mystery of 2013.
Stand-alone noir mystery, Death of a Clown, is steeped in Heather’s family history. She is the daughter of real-life Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus folk. Her mother was a trapeze artist/performer and father, an elephant trainer. Heather brings the daily existence of the Big Top to life during World War II, embellished by her own murderous imagination.
Death of a Clown is published by The Wives of Bath Press, March 1, 2013.
The Wives of Bath Press
The Wife of Bath was a woman of a certain age, with opinions, who’s on a journey. Heather Haven and Baird Nuckolls are modern day Wives of Bath.
www.thewivesofbath.com
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