Redemption Song

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Caía shook her head, uneasy about the direction of their conversation.

  “No family?”

  “Nope,” she said, defiantly. Plenty of people visited places without familial relationships. What should that prove?

  Nick smiled then, setting down his cup. “Do you believe in fate, Caía?”

  Caía toyed with the handle of her cup, turning it slightly. “I don’t know.” She looked at him warily. “Do you?”

  Nick shrugged. “I think every action we choose has consequences. But no, I don’t believe in fate, per se. However, I think sometimes we’re drawn, like magnets, to people with . . . let’s say, like minds. For example, what made you and Marta connect that day in the market?”

  You.

  The single word teetered on the edge of Caía’s tongue. She took a slow purposeful sip from her coffee cup and peered up over the rim, into Nick’s eyes, feeling as though the question wasn’t random. Could he have finally realized who she was?

  But no, rather, she had the sense that maybe he was testing her somehow. There was only one way he could know who she was and that was if he had pried in her room—snooped through her iPad. Even then, it wasn’t certain he would make the connection, because Caía didn’t have the same last name as Jack. She certainly wrote it that way while she and Gregg were married, but legally, she’d never changed her maiden name. She was glad now, because she didn’t have any more tethers to Gregg. At any rate, what sort of a name was Paine?

  Paine. Pain. It was as though she’d been destined for heartache with that name. Lindsey was welcome to it—and to Gregg. She hoped the two of them would be happy together. She didn’t miss that man, and as much as she’d believed she’d hated the guy sitting in front of her, she was more connected to him than she’d ever felt with Gregg.

  Caía wanted to tell Nick the truth, but to what purpose? Who would it serve? “I don’t know. We just . . . bumped into each other.”

  “Literally? Like you ran into each other, spilled your produce, and decided to live happily ever after?”

  Just like that? Did he believe that choosing to be happy was a simple decision? “Not exactly. I was going to buy some fish, and I wanted to know why Marta walked away from one of the vendors.”

  “And did she tell you?”

  “No.”

  Nick watched her. “It might have been Jose Luis. He’s the younger brother of—well, someone Marta dated before she married my brother. His brother handed off the business, but Marta, for some reason, keeps going there. Maybe hoping to see him. I don’t think Jose Luis intends for that to happen.”

  “They did seem a bit at odds.”

  “I’m sure they were. After Jimmy died, Jose Luis asked Marta out—talk about making things complicated. She wasn’t ready, and I’m guessing he took it personally. Although, I don’t think she had any interest in him . . . more his brother.”

  “Yeah, well . . . it happens.”

  “Hope you don’t mind if I ask . . . is your divorce final?”

  “All but the crying,” Caía joked.

  His tone was sober. “And . . . are you crying?”

  Not about that.

  Caía shook her head. This was the one thing she knew for certain. Gregg was out of her life—especially now that there was no child to keep them together.

  “Good,” Nick said, and he lifted his cup in a toast. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you picked Spain. Here’s to new beginnings, Caía. ¡Viva españa!

  Caía hesitated a moment, and then lifted her cup as well, tinkling it softly against Nick’s. But she didn’t return the toast, knowing intuitively that this was the beginning of the end—a thought that left her feeling hollow in a way she didn’t expect.

  *

  Seated in the tub, surrounded by flickering candles, Caía tried to remember a time when joy was her drug of choice, because yes, emotions were like drugs. Anger was a drug. Sadness. Drug. People got addicted to their pain. For Caía, it was the anger she’d latched onto, gripping it like a stiff-necked bulldog between locked jaws, allowing it to infuse her with a sense of purpose.

  Now . . . something was happening.

  She’d begun to wean herself off the anger, resuscitating pleasure in small shocks, like tiny, new blips on a flatlined monitor.

  The taste of food, the sound of a child’s laughter, quiet moments of friendship . . . these were small events that worked like defibrillators, shocking her senses back to life.

  But it was Marta who’d opened that door for her, literally and figuratively. Along with Laura. And Nick. Like some cosmic event—grief particles floating around in the atmosphere—Caía had been drawn to these people like ions to an energy field.

  She was teetering on the edge of a precipice. Tip one way, and she might topple in and never find her way back out of the abyss.

  Or she could make a different decision . . .

  Like you ran into each other, spilled your produce, and decided to live happily ever after?

  To let it go, or not to let it go . . . this was the question—at least for Caía. If she allowed herself to do this, she might find her way back . . .

  Certainly, there were things she could latch onto here, living in the lap of luxury.

  For one, this was a grand old tub. She picked up a bar of soap—a lemony wedge that produced deep, rich suds. The scent encouraged her to inhale deeply, fill her lungs. She ran the wedge over her skin, pausing between her breasts, sliding it down between her thighs.

  Ah, yes, soap was delightful . . .

  Sex was too . . . even when it shouldn’t be happening.

  Or maybe it was better because it shouldn’t be happening? Taboo, and all that.

  Caía pried her mind off the man lying upstairs, probably in bed by now, probably fast asleep. She craved something, but not revenge, not satisfaction, not love—no . . . this was something entirely primitive. She felt an addiction simmering in her veins, driving her to get up out of the tub. Even now, enveloped by the warmth of the water, it was the heat of his skin calling out to her.

  Don’t think about that.

  Pizza, she thought. Pizza could be sensational—Chicago deep dish. Not that Pizza House variety, with all the gooey cheese that wasn’t even real.

  That last night with Jack, when Gregg was “working late,” she’d sold him on a pizza pie, heaped high with anchovies. So they went to that place on North Clark Street, the one he liked so well, and Caía ordered the biggest pizza they had, topped with a double order of anchovies.

  Well, as it turned out, her son didn’t love anchovies. Annoyed, Caía had plucked them all off, knowing Jack was likely to eat most of it. And that was fine, she had reassured herself, because it meant she could have the anchovies to herself. Really, not very hungry, she’d placed them one by one in a dish and set them aside, intending to pile them onto her own slice—if there was any left when she returned from the restroom. But the dish was gone when she sat down again, and rather than order more, she’d sat nursing her disappointment—in fact, she’d mourned the loss of those anchovies as much as she’d mourned the loss of her marriage. She’d had herself a good little pity party over it, and all the while Jack sat across the table, long faced because he’d forgotten to tell the waiter to leave her dish of anchovies.

  But that was the trouble with expectations; so often they led to disappointment. Caía had expected her marriage to fulfill her. She’d expected life in Chicago to be exciting. She’d expected her son to love all the things she loved simply because Caía had loved them.

  But you didn’t not eat a pizza simply because there were no anchovies on it. So, they ate the damned pizza, and Caía loved it. After all, it was perfectly reasonable to enjoy pizza without anchovies. Seeing her son’s long face, she’d made a conscious decision not to begrudge the loss of those anchovies, and the instant she’d let it go, Jac
k’s smile returned.

  When you got right down to it, loss could be a bit like that pizza pie with anchovies. Simply because they’d been plucked away didn’t mean they didn’t linger still.

  “That was the best pizza I ever ate, Ma,” he’d said, licking his fingers. He was digging under his nails, and Caía didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop. The smile on his face was too wonderful.

  Caía sighed longingly. It was the best pizza Caía had ever eaten as well, though not because of anything that was on or off it. She’d spent that entire evening with her son—never worrying about Gregg or what he might be doing. It was just the two of them, mom and son, smack dab in the middle of the moment, and for a while, no one was angry or disappointed about anything at all.

  Reaching out with a foot, Caía wrapped her toes around the faucet dial, turning on the water, refilling the tub with warm water, albeit feeling guilty over the rush of noise. Except for the running water, the house was still, and the water seemed to play in stereo.

  Everyone must be asleep by now. Caía was sure of it; despite the fact that she normally couldn’t hear anyone anyway. They were insulated upstairs, and only now and again did she ever hear their balcony doors open or close. His mostly. Despite Marta’s room being directly above hers, Caía rarely heard footfalls overhead.

  Sex was good, Caía thought again—really, really good.

  She brought the hand with the soap to her left breast, circling her nipple, letting it rest there, feeling the thump-thump of her heart beneath her palm. And, as she lay there, she sensed a pin-prick of light at the edge of her darkness.

  Why can’t you want someone else? Why does it have to be him?

  But she already knew the answer to that question, because it was wrapped up in the same reason she’d come to Spain.

  Unable to resist temptation, Caía stood. She grabbed a towel, dried herself off, and put on her robe. She thought maybe she would stop in the bedroom, lie down on the bed and lull herself to sleep, but she didn’t. She paused long enough to rough the towel through her hair, mainly so she wouldn’t drip water all over the floors and give herself away, and then she hurled the wet towel onto the bed, not caring that she might return to a wet spot.

  Deep down, she wasn’t sure what was luring her upstairs, but she wasn’t in the mood to analyze it. That she didn’t pick up a candlestick on the way was promising.

  She did it in the bedroom with a candlestick.

  The thought brought a wry twist to her lips. Over the course of the past few weeks, Caía had found herself fantasizing about the house as a game of Clue. She did it with poison in the kitchen. Or, it happened in the office with a gun. Except she didn’t own a gun, and she was beginning to suspect that revenge wasn’t at all what had brought her to this moment. Although she wasn’t sure why she was risking discovery, creeping up to the second floor, that’s exactly what she did.

  The house was dark, but Caía’s eyes easily adjusted. Tonight, the balcony doors were all shut. Laura’s bedroom door was closed. So was her mom’s—both at the opposite end of the hall from Nick’s. She looked toward the kitchen, telling herself that a glass of water was her objective. Certainly, that’s what she would tell Marta, if Marta should happen to see her now. Or Eugenia, but Eugenia rarely ventured downstairs.

  She could hear the tinkle of water in the pool below.

  There was only one reason to go right . . . one bedroom in that direction—that and the salon, where she and Marta had spent so much time chatting. But this was the first time Caía had ever dared come upstairs alone at night, because she was afraid that if she did she would march into his room and strangle him where he lay.

  How many times had she imagined her fingers closing around the small bones of his neck? How difficult was it to strangle a man, anyway? It looked so easy in the movies. You just wrapped your hand around his neck and squeezed. Or she could use the pillow.

  Caía’s bare feet left the cold marble stairs, padding quietly over old wood. It was a long, endless hall, and despite its tendency to echo, she managed to be silent.

  She didn’t go straight into the living room. She turned left into Nick’s suite, slid past the outer foyer of his bedroom, where his closets were, and stopped, leaning against his door frame, peering into his room, surprised to find that he slept with his balcony doors open—the one that looked out onto the street.

  Really, if she wanted to hurt him now, escape would be easy. There were no bars on his window, as there were on the windows downstairs. A soft, cool breeze filtered in, cooling Caía’s damp skin. The scent of oranges wafted in . . . low-lying fruit.

  Why are you here, Caía?

  The answer lay so very still in the center of the bed, and the sight of him made Caía’s heart pump a little faster. Confused, unsure of herself, she turned to leave.

  “Caía?”

  The sound of his voice stopped her. Her hand lifted to her throat, and the robe fell open, her nipples tightening with the breeze.

  Caía didn’t know what to say. What did you say when caught creeping into someone else’s room in the middle of the night? Not, “Oops, I’m sorry, I took a wrong turn.” She didn’t belong on this floor at all. She didn’t belong in this house . . . and yet, here she was . . .

  “Caía,” he said again, and Caía turned to face him without bothering to pinch together her robe, leaving herself exposed. She wanted him to see her, wanted him to know . . .

  She could feel her body coming to life again, and she moved closer, against her better judgment. Her breath came in soft pants now, and she tried to find the will to leave.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. “Hoping you would come.”

  Goosebumps erupted over Caía’s skin as she slid out of her robe, dropping it to the floor. She moved purposely toward the bed. Nick took her by the hand when she came within reach and pulled her the rest of the way in.

  Thirteen

  To protest against the universe of grief . . .

  create happiness.

  – Albert Camus

  Right. Wrong.

  These were concepts that Caía understood on a basic level. Where she lived now dangerously skirted the other side of the fence.

  It wasn’t as though sex changed everything, but it should.

  Shouldn’t it?

  There had been nothing tender about their coming together. Sex was desperate and even furious, and if Nick understood what they had done—or rather, what they were doing—he never let on. They were like teenagers, sneaking around at night, trading bedrooms. If only on Caía’s stronger nights he would stay in his room, it wouldn’t have continued.

  By day, neither of them confessed anything to Marta, but Marta wasn’t stupid. You could smell pheromones in the air—or at least that’s what Caía suspected.

  She smelled sex all day long. What was worse, her body responded to Nick’s voice. The minute he entered a room, her nipples grew hard.

  Last night, after they were done, he’d kissed her gently on the forehead as Caía pretended to sleep, and then he’d crept out of her room and into the dark house. Long before he’d reached the marble stairs, there was a lingering emptiness where only seconds before there had been something else . . . something Caía would never have dreamt.

  Only when she was sure he was gone, she’d lifted herself from the bed, and hid behind the palm outside her room, peering up at his balcony doors.

  Did Marta know? Was she awake to see his bathroom lights flip on?

  His balcony doors opened, and Caía sensed him standing there, gazing down at her room—at her—but then he went away and imagined him slipping into his bed, sated and spent. After a while, Caía moved back to her own bed, pulling the covers over her head.

  Had she betrayed herself? Jack? Certainly not Gregg, because Gregg no longer had any stake in her life. Maybe she was meant to
be with Nick? Not for the long-term, only for the moment. Maybe this was how they were both meant to heal?

  The next morning, Caía slept late. She grabbed her iPad the instant she woke up and lay in bed, clicking through photos of Jack, taking time with each and every one, trying to envision the moments before and after each photograph was taken.

  It was so strange to consider how much time she’d spent uploading her library, especially after the swiftness with which she’d dumped her household belongings into storage. Hours and hours longer by comparison. Whatever Gregg hadn’t seen fit to take, Caía had packed up and called movers to cart over to storage. At the moment, she didn’t even know where the key to the storage unit was. Maybe in one of the pockets of her suitcase. But this photo library she had accumulated was at least a hundred thousand strong—easily. Especially given the plethora of similar poses Caía could no longer find in her heart to delete. There were nearly one hundred shots in one set alone, where Jack’s face—every possible expression and angle—had been captured on digital film, way more special to her now than the natural wonder they’d gone to see.

  “Wow!” Jack had said, as he’d peered out over the Grand Canyon. He spread his arms, and stood on tiptoes, like an eagle in flight.

  “Be careful, Jack.”

  “Let him be, Caía.”

  She was a “hover parent,” Gregg sometimes said, never giving Jack any room to breathe. Caía didn’t see it that way. She was sure what he meant to say was that she was a “hover wife,” never giving Gregg space to carry on like he wanted to.

  “Hard to imagine anyone might want to jump that, eh, Jack?”

  Jack’s brows crashed over his father’s question. He looked at his dad. Caía captured it on film. Click. Click. Click.

  “Evel Knievel,” Gregg said.

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Nope,” Caía argued. “It was his son, Robbie. His father never did it.” She was right, of course, but Caía cared more about proving Gregg wrong than she did about enlightening their son.