The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction) (13 page)

Anyway, in terms of the Bible, after their three-way Euly supposed she took cover too.

Because of her upbringing – mass every Sunday and catechism every Saturday – she felt innocence dissipate overnight and watched as the snake hung so close to her in the tree.

Yet, over thirty years later, when she pondered that night and remembered the boys, she remembered it now with warmth and asked herself, “How can that be?”

She wondered how such a disdainful act could lend itself to a memory of tenderness? Can time feign atonement? Who knew?

Today, the act seemed as if it had happened outside her—as though it happened to someone else and she were merely the storyteller of that girl.

Did she tell anyone? Hell no! She never told a soul.

Could Clive have found out? Euly doubted it. But, even if Phoenix was a large city, it still had a small town feel. People were connected. People knew people. People had found out too much about her. She’d gotten away once and wondered if she could do it again this time. What was the old adage? You can run but you cannot hide.

Their conversation jingled like pennies in a pocket, like someone walked by you while your head was down, like being unmissed. Had Clive alluded to something she didn’t hear? She was usually quick to the draw on innuendo but felt like she’d missed important parts of their talk. Or, was she simply fabricating a way to add apprehension to another meeting with him.

It was years ago. They were younger. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care anymore. She couldn’t get out from under the shadow of the bible when she played the era out in her mind. A trickle of sweat leaked from under her left breast, the larger one, and she wiped it off by stuffing her cotton pajama top into the fold of her skin. She hated this town.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

When no one answered, Euly went around to the side to check in the window of Aunt Moon's garage and found her car gone. She dropped her arms and looked one way then the other. She sighed. After speaking with Geoff about the visit, she wanted to apologize to her aunt for her behavior. She wanted to make amends and explain the loss she felt. She needed her aunt’s forgiveness. She wanted to say it didn’t matter anymore and she was sorry.

Her time in Phoenix so far was fraught with bad memories and bad habits. She opened her bag and grabbed a pen and paper. She would leave her message on her door by slipping it into the crack of the screen door. After writing it, she folded it one, twice, three times. If Aunt Moon wanted to, she could call Euly on her cell and they might be able to meet up again and, hopefully, make up. She hoped they would. Her aunt was a gentle elderly woman. She didn’t want her aunt’s last memories of her to be about their last visit together. Euly had no doubt she would forgive her for the way she acted yesterday and forgive the things she said.

Euly tried to force the note into the door’s seam but it was too tight. She unfolded the note once and tried again but it didn’t work. She unfolded the note to its single thickness but, still, she found the seam too tight. She grabbed the door handle and gave it a tug. It budged but not enough to loosen. She walked back around to the side of the house, toward the side again, and in back where she knew there was a door leading into the garage. Aunt Moon’s yard was manicured even there on the side where she walked. A medley of mosaic stepping stones had been inset in the cool round leaves of Dichondra ground cover. There, on the shady side of the garage, her aunt hung baskets of geraniums and petunias that spilled over their cedar containers. Euly had to go through the redwood gate to get to the garage door where she’d have a better chance of slipping the note into one of its cracks.

The handle turned fully. It surprised her to find the door unlocked especially in Phoenix. She stepped inside. The emptiness of the room echoed when she shut the door. It felt like a museum. Inside the room held captive a confusion of car oil and gasoline mixed with detergent and softener. Euly stood silently next to the washer and dryer, the same ones she remembered when she romped through the house as a girl. She looked at the brand, a heavy-duty old set from the 1960’s and she smiled to think how they don’t make things the way they used to. Next to those were three wicker laundry baskets stacked within each other. The top one still had a few crumpled and dingy rags and towels, kitchen towels, looking ready for a wash. The door to the house was just next to the laundry area. She felt awkward on the inside of her aunt’s garage like an intruder. If that door was unlocked, she’d just place the note on the kitchen counter, just two steps inside, and leave. If it wasn’t, she’d slip the note in the crack of the kitchen door. Euly prayed Aunt Moon didn’t have an alarm.

The same familiar scent she’d noticed the day before hit Euly when the door swung open. It was a fragrance only Aunt Moon could produce, one of fennel and
Evening in Paris
, her favorite cologne. She stood inside thinking how comfortable she felt, how unusually comfortable like it was her home too. This was the house she, Enaya and Micaiah had played countless times. This was the home where they ran Tonka toy trucks over dirt mounds in the backyard and played hopscotch on the driveway with yellow pink and blue chalk smeared on their small hands and clothing. It was the same home where their two families spent eating breakfast, lunch and dinner together, opening presents at Christmas together right over there by the picture window the very one shaded the ponderosa pine outside. The pine the kids climbed. This was the same home where, just a day before, she’d questioned her aunt about Micaiah – asking her to prove his birthright. She couldn’t believe how badly it had gone. Still, Moon could’ve just as easily put her questions to rest by showing her. Was that so much to ask? A chill covered her when a blast from the air conditioner kicked on and blew on her neck. It reminded her of someone breathing down her neck. It startled her. She couldn’t believe she had been so bold to come into her house.

The wooden slats of the old tambour desk slid easily into itself as she opened the lid. Each drawer contained orderly stacks of antique and yellowed papers kept within sepia-colored manila folders – each tabbed marking its contents – closer to the front of the drawer was one marked home remodel, another marked last will & testament, and so on until she came upon one marked vital records. Euly paused. Her heart quickened and she held her breath. She pulled out the manila folder and sat on the floor. She put one hand over it holding it down waiting to open it and keeping her hand ready to lift it out but stalling until she worked up the nerve.

The first bunch of papers was a stapled set containing Aunt Moon and Uncle Teddy’s marriage certificate, next was of her aunt’s and one of her uncles birth certificates. Directly behind those was Micaiah’s birth information. She stopped and stared at the death certificate that had been the last thing stapled to his set. Her hand slid across the top of it almost caressing the cool sheet as she read the information her hand was passing over. He died so young. Her pulse quicken when she remembered what she was looking for. She lifted the death certificate.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

It was dreamlike, reading about him her brother, her cousin, whatever he was to her. It was a feeling like dog-paddling, everything muscle working at once yet suspended, unmoving. Or the reeling sensation, that impression of freedom as someone pushes you on a swing away clinging going forward and up, clinging as it returns. A familiar voice felt distant from where she sat on her spot of the floor but ringing true in her ears. The sharp shrill sound of a clarion seemed to ring in her ears, how many times? Once, twice, the third shattering into someone speaking, then words and became crystal clear when the woman called out to her the third time.

“Euly? What are you doing?”

It still didn’t seem real. Her movement seemed out-of-body. She felt her head lifting and looking up and over her shoulder toward the sound but she was voiceless as she turned.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” She repeated to her niece. “I, uh, I…”

“How did you get in here?” Aunt Moon’s face crushed into a question and her eyes flared open.

“Oh my God. Aunt Moon.”

“How did you get in?”

“Through the garage. The back door was open and the kitchen door…”

“What have you got?”

She didn’t answer but lifted the folder up so she could see.

“Micaiah?” Her voice arced and sounded as though he’d just walked into the room after not seeing him in many years.

“Oh my God, auntie, I’m sorry.”

She snatched the folder from her hands and flipped through to make sure nothing had been stolen.

“Leave.”

“Auntie, I can explain.”

“You can? You can explain how you broke into my home and went rummaging through my personal things? You can explain how you’ve violated my trust in you, violated the memory of my precious Micaiah? Leave.”

“Auntie. I’m…”

“Leave!”

The rental car tires skidded when she put it into gear and drove off. Her hands shook violently. She fought a sudden urge to cry. Her head pounded. Her eyes ached from the pressure building behind them. How could she explain what she had done? What was she thinking?

She fumbled for the cell phone in her purse but whom would she call? Whom would she tell what had happened? Her mother would understand. It was her fault anyway. She’d try her mother.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

She understood the pull toward another person – the constant harping of fantasies rolling around in your head of another someone. It wasn’t you wanted to be untrue, no, it was more a Pac- Man of thoughts – you wanted to consume someone else if only a little and for a short time until the desire cooled.

She’d heard men call it the conquest. For women, it was more of a collection. A little untidy something they could store high on a shelf and out of sight. She hadn’t felt the urge in a long while and blamed menopause for the dullness in her body that had replaced more torrid sensations of youth.

She wore the vest she called her ‘writer’s vest’, the one she’d intended to wear on her trip back to Seattle. It had lots of pockets for pads of paper and pens, her recorder. It was normal for the bar. The cool room was in stark contrast to the warm November day she walked out of when she entered Benny’s again. A fading spotlight shone behind her and faded as the closing door sliced the light away. The cigar smoke was thick, thicker than before, and she felt saliva building in the back of her throat.

How could people do this to themselves? She removed her sunglasses and spotted Clive sitting in the same spot at the bar humped over his glass. He didn’t look up, he didn’t speak this time because he wasn’t expecting her. He was leaning on both elbows with a cigarette in his left hand. He held the thing like a woman, deep in the crotch sandwiched between two fingers.