by Day, Laura
“Maybe I could take you out for real…” he said.
She looked up at him in surprise and he could see the brief splash of pleasure that crossed her face. “That would be great,” she said letting the smile linger on her lips.
“I would ask you to do something this weekend, but I know you have the big benefit. In fact, I’ll see you there.”
“You have tickets?” Marie demanded.
“My mother is in the Historical Society, so we are both going.”
“I’m going to get to meet your mom?” she asked elongated the word mom like they were a couple of teenagers ragging on their parents.
“Yes, she a nice sweet old lady, so you better behave yourself.”
“I know how to be appropriate,” she teased. “You, on the other hand, are the real troublemaker.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Maybe I am.”
A car drove past them slowly and he watched as Maria scowled after it passed. “Someone you know?” Axel asked.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head, but as always she stopped short of any real answers. It was always vague with Marie. There were very few proper nouns in her past. Right now all he knew was that she was from Arizona, everything else was just conjecture. But then she would do something like this and he knew there was something in her backstory she wasn’t telling him.
“How about we go out after the benefit, next weekend?”
“Sounds good,” Marie said.
“Your number is on your paperwork on the gym. Unless you gave us a fake?”
“No, it’s real,” she said.
He wanted to say something clever, but nothing came to mind. He didn’t want her to leave just yet. He had so much he wanted to say to her, but he didn’t know the right words. He wanted to tell her how he couldn’t stop thinking about her, how he had been wrecked without her, but instead her let her walk away.
He wanted to warn her about Thomas Middlemarch. But then she would know that he had been gossiping about her. He needed to find the right time to tell her. Maybe at the benefit it would come up and he could explain all he new about Thomas. Would she listen, though? Marie was proving to be tougher than he could have imagined. She might not believe him when he told her about Thomas’ little gambling habit.
At least he would have a chance to spend some time with her away from the gym. He was actually looking forward to the benefit. He could never remember caring about history in any way ever before. But here he was, getting ready to go to the nerdiest party he had ever heard of. Walking back into the gym he saw Hayden standing behind the desk with his arms crossed.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m asking Marie out,” Axel said simply.
“You can’t do that during training,” Hayden huffed.
“We made that rule and we can break it. Look, I can date this girl and train at the same time. I’m sure of it.”
“You’re gonna mess with our system now, Axel? We’ve perfected it and you just want to throw all that away? Let me remind you about Olivia. Remember her? You two started dating just before the State Competition, you had a fight before the match, and you were a mess. It was your worst fight ever.”
“I was younger then. I’ve grown up. I can handle it now.” Axel said. Hayden opened his mouth to argue, but Axel cut him off. “I’m the one who goes in the ring. I’m the one who does the fighting. I get to decide. End of discussion.”
Hayden’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t say anything. His arms were crossed and he stared at Axel. He was almost shaking with fury. Axel was afraid of this, but somewhere along the line he had decided Marie was worth it. His mother’s speech had gotten to him. He wasn’t sure why or how, but it had. He wanted Marie and she was here. If he put off being with her, he could lose her forever. Consequences be damned, he was going for it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Her hair was pinned up and off her neck in elegant curls. It was held in place with bobby pins topped with fake pearls. It was an elegant updo with twisting and turning strands of hair spun and woven into intricate patterns. She turned her head this way and that, trying to catch a glimpse of the artistry on her head. There were large pearl earrings hanging from her earlobes and she felt them move every time she did.
Marie was still in her normal clothes. Only from her scalp up did she look like an elegant eighteenth century lady. As she sat down in front of her mirror, her makeup spread out before her, she thought of Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre. The timing didn’t match up perfectly, but it was close enough.
She thought that, perhaps, tonight, if she closed her eyes and tried hard enough, she could really convince herself she was in another time. She wasn’t Marie DeSantos on the run from her ex-boyfriend. No, instead she could be an eligible young lady at a formal gathering. Her father and mother would be people of good standing in the community. She would be considered a good match and men from all over the countryside would come to the ball, just for the chance to meet her.
“Mama,” Cate called from the other side of her bathroom door. Oh right, she thought with a crooked smile to her own reflection, if I did live in another time I would be an unmarried woman with a daughter. I would never be invited to a party of this kind.
“You can come in,” Marie called. It was fun to pretend, but she could never let herself get too lost. She had a very real, flesh and blood daughter whom she loved more than anything. She would rather be who she was now, with Cate, than anyone else in history.
“Can I put my dress on now?” Cate whined, putting her best pouty face on.
“No, dear. The party isn’t for another hour and I don’t want you getting it dirty. I told you, when the clock says six-thirty, then you can get dressed, but not a moment before.”
Cate released the longest and most dramatic sigh Marie had ever heard before sitting down on the edge of the tub. Taking a black pencil Marie began to carefully put on her eyeliner. Not too much makeup; ladies during this time would have only worn a little bit. Just enough to accent the features, anything more than that would have been considered unseemly.
“Mama, is Daddy coming to the party?” Cate asked.
Marie froze, one eye outlined in black, the other still bare. “No my darling I’m afraid not,” Marie answered. “I think we might not see Daddy again for a very long time. Maybe never again.”
“Because he made you cry so much?” Cate asked.
Marie’s heart broke. It fell into a million little pieces and crashed down onto the white tile floor of the bathroom. Of course Cate knew. Did Marie really think she could hide such a thing? She had tried so hard to protect her from everything. She had tried to create a home filled with love, she had lied and hid her tears, but her daughter had seen everything. “Yes,” Marie said and she was holding back tears now. Her other eye finished she turned to look at Cate and knelt down in front of her. “Your father was very mean and very cruel and I worried for our safety. That is why we left.”
“Does Daddy know where we are?”
“No.”
“Good,” she said, her bright eyes turned up towards Marie. “I like it better with just you and me.”
Marie stroked her daughter’s hair away from her face and smiled at her. It was hard being a mom. She never knew if what she was doing was right. She prayed her actions didn’t lead to years of therapy for Cate. But she was only one person. There was only so much that was within her power. She had got her daughter out of a dangerous situation and she hoped it would be enough.
“Listen, Cate, you need to promise me you’ll be very careful, okay? Don’t get into a car with anyone who isn’t me or Ingrid. Don’t talk to any strangers especially anyone who asks you anything about me or where we're from. Can you do that? Just don’t talk to strangers and if your dad comes and tries to get you in the car I want you to run in the other direction. Can you do that?”
Cate nodded with a sudden look of serious and fierce determination on her face.
Is this right? Marie wondered. Is this too much to ask of a five-year-old? Cate should be catching tadpoles and skinning her knees, not running from her own father, not constantly being on the lookout for danger.
He can’t find us, she thought as she kissed Cate on her forehead and then stood up and turned back to the mirror. Where was Austin now? Looking for her, no doubt. Had she covered her tracks well enough? She had done everything she could think to keep him off her trail and, so far, it had been working. But so far wasn’t enough. Right now she knew Austin would be in a rage. He would scream and rant and order his men to find her. It would be a humiliation for him, a personal insult that Marie had left him and taken his daughter. How would he explain their sudden disappearance to everyone back in Arizona?
Marie focused on her makeup, adding a little dark eye shadow to her eyes, some lipstick to her mouth. She couldn’t waste her time worrying about Austin. There was nothing more she could do but wait and hope he didn’t find her. She was well-hidden. She just needed to keep her head down as long as she could, long enough for Austin to move on. It shouldn’t take long he took every available opportunity to tell Marie he didn’t even want Cate.
“You got pregnant on purpose,” he spit at her when he had seen the test. “How do I even know it’s mine?”
Tears poured down Marie’s face. They were in her aunt’s bathroom, a litter box in the corner. This wasn’t how she pictured this. She had been scared, but otherwise happy when she saw the test. She had always wanted a child, a family of her own, a real one. She thought Austin would be happy.
He almost never used a condom. He told her they were uncomfortable. He promised to pull out, which he did about half the time. How was it possible that her being pregnant was a surprise? They weren’t careful at all. But here he was, fuming and pointing his finger and demanding a paternity test to prove it was his while Marie cried and tried to figure out where she went wrong.
Austin’s parents ordered the two to marry and bought them a house. Austin started working at his father’s security company while Marie stayed at home with Cate. They had fallen into a life together and neither one of them had wanted to be there. Marie spent her pregnancy alone in Austin’s house while he went out partying with his friends.
“Let the boy have his last bit of fun,” Austin’s father said when he caught Marie crying one night. “His whole life is ruined now, because of this, because of you. Don’t you think he deserves this?”
What about me? If only Marie had asked that question when she had been seventeen. But she didn’t know how. She was young and naïve and she still had innate trust of adults. Austin’s father was a real man; he had a good business, a nice car, a fancy house. She believed the things he had said and he hadn’t given a second thought to Marie. No one had. No one worried what the pregnancy was like for her. No one thought that maybe she deserved some fun, as well. No, according to Austin’s parents this was all her fault anyway. So she suffered the consequences alone.
Cate played with one of Marie’s makeup brushes and Marie smiled down at her. Cate was right: everything was better with just the two of them. They were happier and healthier than they had ever been. Soon Austin would get tired of looking. Soon he would admit that he was relieved they were gone. He could admit that he wasn’t built for fatherhood and he could go his own way and Marie and Cate could go their own way.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Oh, Axel. I can’t. It’s too nice,” his mother’s voice echoed from the other room and Axel rolled his eyes for what must have been the hundredth time.
“Ma! Just put the dress on!” Axel called back over. It had been a surprise for the party. Some members of the historical society would be attending in old timey clothes. His mother hadn’t said anything about it to him, but he knew she would love to go to the party in costume. But those costumes weren’t cheap and Axel knew how much she hated asking him for money. So he didn’t wait for her to ask. He went ahead and ordered the dress for her, going through her closet to find her measurements.
It was a long and elegant dress. The fabric was green silk and the sleeves and bottom hem were lined in black fur. It came with a set of costume jewelry, large, red rubies and bright gemstones. His mother had cried actual tears when she had seen it. Then they spent about thirty minutes arguing over the price with Mrs. Connelly declaring too expensive for such a frivolous occasion and Axel reminding her he had the money and already paid for it. Finally, she had acquiesced enough to try the damn thing on, but she still wasn’t making any promises.
She was still putting up a fight. Even as she was putting the dress on. Axel was in his best, black three-piece suit. He glanced at himself in the mirror. He was clean-shaven and his shoes were shined. But he didn’t want to look okay; he wanted to look great. Marie was going to be there and, so far, she had only seen him in his training gear.
“It’s just so lovely,” he heard his mother cry though the door.
He knew there were tears of happiness happening back there and he was glad there was a door between them. He shook his head and sat down on the couch grabbing a magazine and flipping impatiently through the pages for a few moments before standing up again. They still had thirty minutes before they had to leave and already Axel was feeling antsy and nervous.
Mrs. Connelly came out of the room, looking stately in her fine dress. The fabric rustled as she walked, the silk shining under the lights. She looked like something out of another time. Like a character on one of those unending Jane Austen movies his former girlfriends had forced him to sit through.
“Are my eyes red?” she asked, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “I just can’t seem to stop crying. I can’t believe I raised such a nice, sweet boy who would do something like this for his mother.” The tears started again and Axel looked away in embarrassment.
“You keep on like this and I’m never doing anything nice again,” he grumbled as she pulled him into a hug.
***
The courthouse building next door let the museum use their parking garage for the night and Axel parked his Mercedes and then opened the door for his mother and took her arm as the walked towards the party.
“I always hated this creepy old house,” he scowled as they walked to the front door.
“It’s not creepy. It’s lovely inside. How many times have you actually been in it?”
“Once, on a fieldtrip in the fourth grade. Didn’t like it then, don’t like it now.”
“You can be so set in your ways,” Mrs. Connelly said with a shake of her head. “Why don’t you try giving things a second chance every now and again. Maybe if you look at the mansion with an open mind you’ll find you actually like it.”
They walked up the marble steps and Ingrid stood at the entrance way in her own fine dress shaking hands and greeting everyone.
“Oh, my, Mrs. Connelly, don’t you look wonderful,” Ingrid said as she looked at the green dress.
Axel tuned out the conversation of the two ladies once he realized they were just complimenting each other and he searched for Marie. They weren’t inside yet, but if he craned his head he could see past the huge front door and into the house proper. There were plenty of people in there, quite a few in period costumes, but no Marie.
“Well, please, come inside,” Ingrid said and Axel walked through the door and into the mansion.
Okay, it’s not too bad, he thought as he looked around. It was dark and old-fashioned, but now that it was festooned with lights and there were people all around, it didn’t look that creepy. This was quite the party. Everyone was dressed to the nines and there was a piano player on the baby grand in the entryway. Bartenders were making drinks and appetizers were being passed around. It was much nicer than chicken or fish at the Holiday Inn.
His mother was a great success and he could tell she was enjoying herself. Every other minute someone came up to gush over her dress and Mrs. Connelly would say it was all Axel’s doing and they would call him a good son an
d on and it went and still there was no sign of Marie. Where was she? Didn’t she know he was coming? Did she not want to see him at all?
Leaving his mother with a gaggle of older ladies he walked through the dining room and around the entire downstairs. A fire crackled in the formal living room where guests sat on claw foot chairs and placed their glasses on tablecloth protected side tables. He felt a little disoriented when he found himself surrounded by men in and women in clothes that had gone out of style three centuries ago and he reached for his cellphone in his pocket to remind himself that they were still, thankfully, in the twenty-first century.
He found her in the dining room. A long table had been set up for the meal. There were plates, napkins, and several different forks and knives for each guest. Marie, looking stunning in a purple dress with her hair pinned up, was bent over the table, polishing a rogue fork. For a long moment Axel just watched her. Her face was screwed up in determination as she traced her hand along the table making sure everything was perfect.
