Unforgotten (42 page)
Pain and ecstasy were hard to separate. He had yearned for purpose, even a purpose that caused him to suffer if it gave meaning and identity. And now, in the midst of Nonno’s dark and desperate revelation, he heard the call, and his lips moved. “Here I am.” He sank into the grasp of God, outside of time and place.
Here I am
.
At a touch on his shoulder he startled. Rico stood harried and gray, cradling his unbound arm. Dragging himself back from the brink, Lance scoped the fresh swelling and bruising of Rico’s hand and wrist. “What did you do?”
Rico shrugged in the “I screwed up” motion Lance knew so well.
“You used it? Rico, did you drum with it?” He’d heard the percussion across the hall, but thought Rico was doing the one-armed-bandit act. Obviously one hand wasn’t enough. His pain was obvious. If Rico had rebroken the bones … What was he thinking?
“I had to try, ’mano. I had to know.”
“It’s too soon.” How could he think a week or two … But Lance knew the restlessness, the impatience that kept Rico in perpetual motion, the beats and rhythms going through his head just as melodies and lyrics filled his own. “How bad is it?”
“Feels like something broke.”
“Well, get down to the hospital.”
Rico made the money sign with his other hand.
“Look, we’ll rob a bank or something. Go get an X-ray.”
Rico noticed the Bible in his lap. “Can’t you multiply some fives and tens?”
“I’m still working on the water-walking part.”
When Rico moved his arm, his face screwed up in pain. Without thinking, Lance took the wrist and cupped it between his palms. He couldn’t feel if damage had been done, if Rico had battered the fractures and tissues. But even more than throbbing nerves, he sensed the fear and frustration that had driven Rico to take hold of that drumstick and strike.
Lord …
His clasp warmed. Rico’s identity and future depended on those bones, and Lance imagined them knitting, filling in around the pins, the tendons strengthening—cartilage, ligaments, and muscles …
He opened his eyes, and Rico’s expression caught him short. So they didn’t usually hold hands, and Rico didn’t go in for demonstrative prayer. Lance wasn’t even sure he had prayed. But Rico drew his arm back and studied the offended area with a puzzled pinch in his brow.
“Better get a picture of it.”
Rico’s eyes came up to his. “Don’t need one.”
Lance sighed. “Rico, could you just once not be stubborn?”
“Pain’s gone, ’mano.” Rico stroked his arm with that queer look back in his eyes. He turned, paused, and then walked out.
Lance raised the Bible. If he was called to end this vendetta, he had to know what might be expected of him. What sacrifice could be demanded now that he’d accepted the call. As he searched, it sank in just how precarious his life had become.
Moments of time,
like drops of dew,
glisten and are gone.
M
arco laughs when I tell him he looks sharp in his uniform.
“I feel like I’m wearing a sign. ‘Look at me, I’m a cop.’ ” “Well, of course,” I say. “What’s wrong with that?”
He gives me a strange look, then pats my shoulder. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
I straighten his sleeve, note the veins standing up under the skin of his hand, the signs of age appearing there. He is old to be joining the police force, and his sudden career change amuses me. “Tired of handling rich people’s jack?” I tease with his old line, though after all these years I still don’t know what he did when he was away on business for his clients.
He takes me in his arms. “Tired of being away from you, my sweet.” He kisses my nose. An old fool, but I love him. I won’t know what to do with him home so many evenings. Now that the children are grown, the restaurant takes so much of my time. But I love what I’ve made, in spite of Momma Benigna’s insults—though she eats there every day.
She is the cross I bear for the gift of her son, and in my better moments I’m grateful that she bore him. I’m mostly grateful that she gave him nothing of herself. I turn Marco around and straighten his collar at the back, under his fringe of silver hair. He is striking still, and my heart jumps at the thought.
“Marco.”
He looks over his shoulder, and I say, “Why don’t we go away somewhere, sometime?”
He turns fully. “Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. You’ve been everywhere. Choose a place and take me there.”
He laughs. “And what about your restaurant?”
“I’ll hang a sign in the window like everyone else does: Gone on Vacation. A second honeymoon.” I tighten his tie. “Since the first was … difficult.” I wish I could undo those grief-filled days and be the happy bride Marco deserved.
He lifts my chin and kisses me. “Every time I come home it’s a honeymoon.”
Antonia stirred, aware of Lance beside her, and almost came out of the place where her memories lived. But she was determined to stay there, and settled back.
The first time I hold Lance, I know. This baby is my heart. How can that be, when I’ve held my own five to my breast, and seventeen other grandchildren? Yet this son of Roman’s, Doria’s child, takes hold of my soul.
Now I see, Nonno
. He had warned me, yet I cannot resist the tug of this infant in my arms. Yes, some loves attach to your very soul.
She had seen him take his first steps, not one but three at once. That was Lance, always reaching. While Doria taught other young feet jazz and ballet, Lance had developed his own listing weave and tumble. And Antonia had picked him up and set him right again.
I press the dollar into his hand for his First Holy Communion, but I know there’s no gift that can replace what’s inside him. The others, they take it in stride, but Lance is not like them. There is a glow in his face I can hardly bear. This child, who is my heart, loves God more… .
And because of him, she had made peace with the Deity who had tried her so terribly. She could not resent the One who’d put that child in her life. She couldn’t trust, but she had not come between Lance and his Savior. She had sheltered and nurtured his faith, for his sake … and hers.
And what good had it done? She should have shaken her fist at heaven. Lance queried, “Nonna?” But the present was more painful than the past. She wouldn’t hear him; she couldn’t.
————
Lance ached. This thing was real. No way around it. He had a role to play, and like Nonna, he had to play it alone. He’d seen the haunted look on Gina’s face, absorbed Nonna’s many griefs. If he chose to do this thing, he could not bring it on Rese. His head felt like sludge, his limbs like planks. His insides were chewed up, thinking how it would seem to her, how it would feel.
But if he was the instrument, he had to subordinate all other desires, hopes, and dreams.
“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
He had always been sure Jesus didn’t mean hate. It was a hyperbolic distinction between fervor for him and anything else that could get in the way. Now he realized the severing was as extreme as it seemed. A visceral longing seized him, but thinking of Rese distracted and weakened him.
He pressed his fingers to his brow. His motives must be pure, his conscience clear. The gauntlet had been thrown down, but he didn’t know what that meant, only trusted the Lord would make it clear. In the meantime, he would learn the enemy. Even as God’s instrument, he could operate only within the limitations of the physical world.
Unnerving even to think in those terms. Who did he think he was? He knew what Pop would say. But having glimpsed that other realm when Chaz prayed deliverance for Star, having twice been seized by the Spirit until all resistance melted away, he had to believe anything was possible.
He rubbed his face and looked at Nonna sleeping, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. She had brought this to him, because it was beyond her. And she waited now, suspended between the past and present, a past he had revealed and a present she couldn’t face. He needed to act. But once he took up the gauntlet, there would be no turning back.
————
Rese followed the caseworker back downstairs. The residence assessment was obviously perfunctory, the woman scarcely impressed by the hard work and attention to detail that it had taken to create an environment so appealing and authentic. But the living arrangements of a woman with mental health issues moving in with her stable, business-owner daughter might not be high on the county’s list of concerns—not that they would forego any part of the process to expedite things.
Rese led her out to the garden for a brief perusal of the property and carriage house. No stockpiled weapons, no meth lab. Not even a skeleton in the cellar anymore. Lance had taken care of that. But Rese chose not to mention the tunnel anyway. She didn’t want to open and show it.
When the woman had gone, Rese wandered back inside and tried to decide what to do. Three days with no word from Lance? Something had happened—again. She didn’t want to bother him, but four impending reservations had to be dealt with. Should she cancel and give them time to find something else, or confirm and assume he’d be there when she needed him?
She pressed her palms to her head. What if he didn’t come and she had to handle it with Star? She had paced through the night imagining all kinds of things that might have happened, but she couldn’t come up with a single reason for his not calling. Of course, she hadn’t called either, but only because she was afraid she wouldn’t know what to say. Lance had never in his life not known what to say. She expelled a breath. It was so much easier when he was simply there, sucking words from her with no effort at all.
Alone in the kitchen, she crossed her arms and pondered. With the early drizzle, Star had set up in the workshop to paint and stayed there even after the sun broke through and slid westward. Rese could have carved while Star painted, but though they had made a flimsy truce, she didn’t want to crowd her. Baxter was sacked out in front of the stove, and other than the looming reservations, nothing demanded her time or attention.
She sighed. What if he was waiting for her to call? He’d made his feelings known, and she’d been the one dragging her feet. Now that they were apart, he could be hoping— Oh, what did she know about any of that? She headed for the phone, and just as she reached, it rang. Hah!
She picked up the phone, relief rushing over her at the sound of Lance’s voice. “Are you all right?” She curled her arm around herself. “I was getting worried.” Apprehensive, panicked, obsessed.
“Rese …” His voice clogged. “Honey, sit down so we can talk.”
Honey? Her legs buckled. She slid down the wall and waited, but he said nothing for so long her heart started pounding like a drum in a tin room. “What’s wrong?”
He sighed. “I don’t know where to start.”
Her limbs went numb; her head filled with fog. From a distance she heard his ragged breathing, and hers felt just the same. “You’re not coming.” She gripped the cool receiver. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“There’s something I have to do. If there was another way, I’d take it. But everything has led to this, Rese, and it’s bigger than me.”
“Lance,
what
are you talking about?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
Better… ? How could he even say that, knowing all the things that had been kept from her, things that mattered, big things? “So you’re coming when it’s done?”
“When it’s done … things might not be the same.”
For someone who could make himself so clear, that was incredibly obscure. “What things?”
He released a slow breath. “Everything.”
She pressed a hand to her belly, wondering when she’d been punched. And he was right. Sometimes not knowing was better. She hadn’t imagined this, that he was through, that he would dump her like … “Did you count me on your wall?”
He groaned. “It’s not like that.”
“I see.” Clear as concrete.
“Rese, God—”
“Don’t even go there.” Anger had slithered in like a snake, swallowing fear and sympathy whole. “If you’ve changed your mind, fine, but at least take responsibility for it.”
His voice came raw and weary. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Rage boiled up. “No problem. I don’t want to run an inn anyway.” If she had guests there now, she’d boot them out. These last months had been nothing but a huge mistake.
Lance said nothing to that. The man of many words had none.
She hung up and looked at her watch, then glanced outside where a shaft of evening light slanted through the garden. Even if he still stayed late on the jobsite, by the time she got to Sausalito, he’d be home. She went out, started her truck with a roar, and peeled out. Thankfully the drive cooled the anger to a slow burn, easily controlled, and by the time she got there she was composed.
Brad opened his door with a look of surprise and an exhale of smoke.
She waved it off. “I thought you quit.”
He looked down at the butt between his thumb and forefinger, flicked it out to the driveway, and shrugged. “Does a month count?”
“Thirty days’ worth.”
His smile creased his suntanned skin. “What are you doing here, Rese?”
“I wanted to follow up on something you said.”
“Uh-oh.” With a laugh, he waved her in. “Want a drink? Beer, soda, tequila with lime?”
She shook her head, then looked around, walking through the living room into the kitchen that flowed through to the entertaining area. “You’ve done a nice job in here.” It wasn’t a large house, but he’d opened it up and made it feel right, more contemporary than she’d have gone, but Dad had spoiled her with historic places before she could form her own tastes.
Brad followed her through the rooms. “Works for me. I wouldn’t want to knock around in something bigger.”
No, big old villas should not be lived in alone. She turned. “Brad …” Words clogged her throat. There was so much history between them, and a lot of it ugly—her fault as much as his.
Compulsively competitive
. She pressed her palms to the kitchen counter, spread her fingers over the smooth Corian surface and wondered how responsible she’d been for everything she had blamed on him and the others.