When You Are Mine (19 page)

“Oh.” Having met Martin Bennett, Kerris could imagine how well that had gone over.

“Yes, oh.” Kristeene’s smile held more regret than humor. “I was so young. I didn’t know how to handle a man like Martin. He needs to conquer, to win, to come out on top. He needs the pursuit. And I wanted to take that away from him because everything he pursued took him away from me.”

Kristeene blinked several times, obviously staving off tears.

“Eventually, we just lived separate lives.” Kristeene reached up to stroke her lustrous hair out of habit, her hand falling listlessly to her side when she encountered the silk scarf hugging her naked scalp.

“I had to raise Walsh. And Martin had to build Bennett Enterprises. He had so much to prove, and none of it had anything to do with us.” Kristeene shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, he fooled himself that he was doing it for us, but I didn’t need any of it. I would have loved that man if he had decided he wanted to sell hot dogs on the street.”

Kerris laughed a little, afraid to draw too much attention to herself in case Kristeene stopped. They had grown close, but Kerris suspected Kristeene had never talked about any of this with anyone. It was a precious insight into the tumultuous relationship that had shaped so much about Walsh.

“He was unfaithful, you know.” Bitterness swept away the last traces of Kristeene’s humor. “With his secretary. What a cliché. And I knew he regretted it. I even understood how it happened. He and I had drifted so far apart, but I never stopped loving him. For him to do that…”

Kerris frowned, dismayed at how upset this discussion was making Kristeene.

“You need to get some rest.” Kerris moved to stand and leave so Kristeene could rest.

“No, just let me.” Kristeene broke off to press the button that released morphine into her system. “I’ll get loopy soon, so we don’t have long. Sit down.”

Kerris settled back into the seat, shifting under the renewed intensity of Kristeene’s eyes.

“You know Walsh is a lot like his father.” Kristeene’s eyes left Kerris nowhere to hide. “I did my best to temper it, but that boy has his father’s DNA as sure as he has mine. I always thought he escaped that single-mindedness, that ability to focus so completely on something he wants. And then I saw him with you.”

“Please don’t say that.” Kerris looked at her hands clutching the sterile bed sheets, unable to meet Kristeene’s eyes.

“I didn’t really let myself see what it truly was until your wedding day,” Kristeene continued as if Kerris hadn’t spoken. “He fooled everyone else, but I could see how miserable he was. And then it was too late.”

Kristeene’s words settled around them like snowflakes, melting into their skin with the iciness of truth, quickly absorbed.

“Walsh is also like me, though,” Kristeene said. “He always wants to do what’s right. He would never violate anyone’s wedding vows.”

Kerris shifted in the hard plastic seat, thinking of the kiss Cam had witnessed. They had both lost sight of what was right for a moment, and it had changed everything. The first tear startled her, with a mind of its own, slithering down her cheek, waiting for others to follow.

“Tell me,” Kristeene said, her soft voice inviting Kerris’s confidence. “Tell me why my boys can’t even be in the same room.”

And Kerris did. She told her the whole beautiful, gory tale, not leaving out even the most shaming parts. And she told her about that last kiss with Walsh, how it had torn through her preconceived notions of fidelity and love and good and bad, dismantling everything she had always believed about herself.

“And now Cam’s acting like nothing happened.” Kerris plucked at the sheets on Kristeene’s bed. “Like Walsh doesn’t even exist. I don’t know what to do.”

“Can you do this, Kerris?”

“Do what?”

“Can you stay married to Cam feeling what you do for Walsh?”

“Oh, God, I’d never leave Cam.” Shock widened Kerris’s eyes. “I could never do that to him. After all he’s been through? But I don’t know how to make it right.”

“First of all, figure out your course, and stay true to it.” Kristeene’s eyes flickered shut, snapping back open before the drug-induced darkness completely crowded out the clarity of her mind. “A girl like you can’t live with guilt. You have to feel like you’ve stayed true. You’re like the river.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Kerris thought the morphine must be kicking in and Kristeene was babbling.

“The river is clean and pure and strong.” Kristeene’s eyes popped open in one last moment of clarity. “And it’s a force of nature. Literally. It cuts through rocks. And once the course was set for that river, there’s no changing it. It stays the course. You understand?”

Kerris thought she understood, though she didn’t feel clean or pure or strong. Certainly she didn’t feel like a force, but she did plan to stay the course. She couldn’t live with any other option.

“And, Kerris, you know I’m going home tomorrow.” Kristeene’s words began to slur as she fought off the lure of sleep.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s for good,” Kristeene whispered, making sure Kerris understood she what she meant.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I want you to make me a promise.” Kristeene still slurred, but carefully straightened out each syllable. “Promise that when I’m gone, you’ll do everything you can to make it right between my boys.”

“I think I’m the last one who could make it right.”

“And I think you’re the
only
one who can,” Kristeene said, her voice pretty firm for someone about to slip into morphine oblivion. “Promise me you’ll try.”

Kerris looked at this woman who’d given her more than a scholarship. She’d opened doors to another world, to a world where Kerris was positioned to do all of the things she wanted to do. She thought of all the orphans Kristeene Bennett had lived her whole life serving. And now she was just a mother asking for the best Kerris could do for her sons. One natural and one surrogate, but both of her heart.

“I promise.”

H
appy New Year!” Walsh chorused along with his mother, Unc, and Jo, all laughing and kissing each other.

They gathered in his mother’s suite, all wearing silly party hats and drinking champagne. She had defied the odds. Dr. Ravenscroft hadn’t been optimistic that she would make it to the new year, but Christmas had come and gone, and she was still here. Weak and asleep more often than not, but here.

“It’s late, Mom.” Walsh frowned at the lines of fatigue around his mother’s eyes and mouth. “We should all get to sleep.”

“The night’s still young.” Jo pulled off her hat and shook her hair free around her shoulders. “I’m going to a party.”

“Cam’s New Year’s party?” Uncle James sipped his champagne. “He mentioned it yesterday when he came by.”

Jo and Walsh locked eyes. If it had been hard for Walsh and Cam to avoid each other at the hospital, it was nearly impossible here at the house. It was a large house, but still. Walsh had gone for a run yesterday, needing an outlet for the massive stress he’d been under for the last few months and to run off some of Mrs. Quinton’s amazing home-cooked meals. He’d returned, toeing off his running shoes as soon as he entered the foyer. He’d sniffed the air, watching Jo come down the stairs.

“You couldn’t wait to get me out of the house, could you?” Walsh had asked.

“What…I don’t know what you mean.” Jo had avoided his eyes.

“At least you still have trouble lying to me. You don’t have to sneak around for Cam and Kerris to see Mom.”

“How’d you know they were here?”

“I smell her.”

“You
smell
her?” Jo had clearly not expected that response. “Do you hear yourself? Do you know how ridic—”

“Vanilla.” He bent down to grab his shoes and turn toward the stairs. “She wears a vanilla and brown sugar scent.”

“Walsh, you have to get her out of your system.” Jo caught his arm. He had one foot on the first step. “What about Sofie?”

“I should never have gone down that road with Sof. At least now she knows. I ended it a few weeks ago.”

“But if you can’t have Kerris, then Sofie—”

“I’ve lost Kerris and you offer me Sofie as a consolation prize? They’re practically a different species.”

“You haven’t lost Kerris. You never had her.”

Walsh thought of Kerris’s breath in his mouth, her small fingers stroking his neck urgently. He remembered the satiny roof of her mouth and the sensual dance of their tongues together. And he remembered their desperate communion as she’d pressed her forehead against his, confessing her fear for his life. He’d known that their hearts were connected by a silken thread he might not ever be able to sever.

Never had her? If only Jo knew.

“Yeah, it’s Cam’s party,” Jo said now, collecting the glasses they’d used to toast in the new year. “I’m rolling out.”

Neither Kristeene nor Unc asked if Walsh was going. He and his Uncle James had never had one conversation about Kerris, but his uncle would have to be comatose not to recognize the bitter shift in his friendship with Cam.

“Be safe.” Unc bent to kiss the top of his daughter’s head. “Call if you need a ride home. I don’t want you drinking and driving.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad.” Jo smiled against his chest. “Love you. Happy New Year.”

Unc smiled down at Jo indulgently, his face changing when he glanced past her to where Kristeene lay half asleep already. Walsh saw his uncle’s features tighten. She would take a part of him with her. Hell, she’d take a little of them all.

Jo and Uncle James made their way out of the suite and down the hall, calling their final good nights to Kristeene. Walsh went to gather the cup and saucer by his mother’s bed. He straightened, preparing to go when her hand reached out to him, keeping him there.

“Stay.” She licked dry lips and closed her eyes briefly before opening them again to look at him with a lifetime of intensity poured into that inch of time.

“Okay.” Walsh replaced the china on her bedside table and crawled up beside her as he had done so many times before, curving his arm around her shoulder. “You want company?”

“No, I want you.” Her smile, a paradox of sadness and contentment, squeezed Walsh’s heart. “I’m proud of you, son.”

“I don’t know if I deserve that.” Walsh pulled the down comforter higher up around her shoulders. “But thanks.”

“I want you to be happy.” His mother’s eyes rested on Walsh’s face. “
Are
you happy?”

Walsh hesitated, not sure how much she knew about the situation with Cam and Kerris. He opted for answering her question with a seemingly unrelated question, a tactic that wouldn’t usually work. Maybe with his mother under the influence of morphine, he could get away with it.

“Do you believe in soul mates?” He reached for her hand.

She glanced up at him, her eyes still not letting him get away with anything.

“You know, your father likes to think you come from a long line of warriors,” she began, seemingly avoiding a direct answer as deftly as he had done. “That may be true, but you also come from a long line of romantics.”

He raised both brows, silently encouraging her to shed some light on the subject.

“Did I ever tell you about your great-great-great-great, oh hell, I can’t remember how many greats, but Great-Grandma Maddie?”

“Didn’t we use her recipes to start the first Walsh restaurant?”

“Her mother’s recipes actually,” Kristeene said. “Great-Grandma Maddie was an octoroon. Do you know what that is?”

Walsh combed his brain for the definition of the word, but didn’t think the answer he retrieved made any sense.

“Isn’t an octoroon someone who is an eighth black?” He glanced down at his hands. He might be tan most of the year, but he was definitely white.

“That’s right.” His mother smirked, obviously enjoying his confusion. “She probably looked almost as white as you or me, but an eighth is all it took for her to be a slave.”

“Great-Grandma Maddie was a slave?” Walsh couldn’t wrap his head around it, and wasn’t sure how that painful history connected with what his family had become.

“She was the master’s mistress, Walsh.” She tightened her lips around the ugly words. “Their children looked as white as we do.”

“So my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a slave owner?” The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I’m afraid so. This is the South. Trace our families back far enough, and you’re bound to find a few of those. But the story I want to tell you isn’t about them. Not about what happened with her and the master. It’s about what happened with her and Asher.”

“Asher?” Walsh was now completely lost. “Who was Asher?”

A wistful smile broke through the line pain had pulled her mouth into.

“Asher was her second chance. He was her soul mate. He knew the first time he saw her that she was the one.”

“Where’d he see her?” Walsh asked, surprised that he was just now hearing this story.

“Lay back.” Kristeene motioned for him to stretch out beside her tired, narrowed body. “I’ll tell you all about it. Now
this
is a real love story.”

The next morning, Walsh greeted Carmen, the older Hispanic woman Unc had brought in to help with cleaning a few times a week. She was taking down the Christmas decorations, humming as she worked with great efficiency. Walsh glanced up the stairs toward his mother’s room. With her end so obviously near, Walsh felt like he was treading water: not moving forward, not moving back, and barely keeping his head above water. Waiting to swim, afraid he would sink.

Restless, Walsh occupied his hands with the mechanics of making his mother’s favorite jasmine orange tea. The familiar aroma wafted through the kitchen, bringing back memories from his childhood. He couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved her tea. Breakfast every morning in their New York City brownstone. A cup on her nightstand at night, a good book propped on her knees. His father in bed beside her, wrinkling his nose in feigned distaste.

Was he twisting history when he remembered his parents as a happy couple? In love, exchanging lingering glances over the breakfast table? Of course, he remembered the enmity at the end, the war zone their home became after his father’s infidelity. Never had he admired his mother more than when she’d traveled the ugly road of divorce with so much grace.

He closed his eyes briefly, gripping the marble counter. The reality of her pending death set in arthritically, inflaming and stiffening his emotions. The calming notes of the tea mixed with the stench of fear emanating from inside him. He clamped his lips against his tamped-down terror, turning them down at the corners to foreshadow his sorrow.

Fix your face.

He could hear his mother’s imperative even now, calling to him from distant memories.

Don’t pout. You’re a young man, and young men do not pout. Especially not Walsh men.

Technically, he was a Bennett, but he had known what she meant.

He arranged his mother’s tray, even adding a white rose he plucked from the huge arrangement in the foyer. The sight of his father walking up the driveway almost made Walsh drop the tray, tea, rose, and all. Walsh set the tray down and strode toward the door, hoping to get it open before the doorbell rang. Just in case his mother was sleeping upstairs.

Wash couldn’t help but note how much alike they were physically. It was like looking into a mirror, years down the road. Would he hold himself so stiffly? Would his gait remain as confident and sure, more like a prowl? It was the deeper-than-skin similarities that frightened him. The unfettered, selfish ambition of Martin Bennett. The ruthless disregard for anyone standing in the path of what he desired.

“Dad.”

“Walsh.” His father answered him with a level stare across the threshold.

“What are you doing here?” Walsh was afraid he already knew.

“I’m here…I’m here to see your mother.” Martin came as close to stuttering as Walsh had ever heard. “You should’ve called me.”

“You asked me to keep you apprised of her condition.” Walsh wasn’t sure what his father expected other than a call notifying him she had passed. His parents hadn’t had an amicable relationship after their bitter divorce. “And you were in Hong Kong.”

“Claire got a hold of me.” Martin flexed a muscle in his lean jaw. “Your uncle James called.”

“Uncle James?” A frown knotted Walsh’s forehead. “Really? Dad, am I missing something?”

“No, I just want to…I want to see your mother before—” Martin smashed the sentence before he finished.

Walsh had never seen his father any less than perfectly composed. Arrogantly striding through the luxuriously appointed offices of Bennett Enterprises with a line of employees/minions trailing behind him, yes. Commanding a boardroom full of executives like they were royal subjects, yes. Charming a thousand people at a business convention, yes.

Discomposed? Never.

“Where’s your uncle James?” Martin cut into Walsh’s bewildered thoughts.

“In his study.” Walsh nodded toward Uncle James’s lair. “Look, I was on my way up to take Mom some tea. If you come up, come quietly just in case she’s asleep.”

His father watched him for an extra moment before turning on his heel toward Unc’s study. Walsh climbed the stairs, still turning it all over in his head, once again balancing the tray. At the top of the stairs he drew in a deep breath, bracing himself for the sight of his mother, so different than how he had always known her. Vibrant. Glowing. Unassailable.

Walsh nudged the door open centimeters at a time with his shoulder. The sight of the small figure huddled beneath the down comforter dragged out all the ugly emotions he’d been wrestling. Depthless fear and pain clawed their way up through his belly like from the bottom of a dark well, up through his constricted air passages, asphyxiating him.

The bright paisley scarf tied around her head peeped out from beneath the bed covers. His eyes roamed the still-beautiful face. The strong bones jutted proudly from beneath the skin pulled so tautly over them. He knew beneath the covers she was almost skeletal, but somehow, even in a fitful sleep, even ravaged by this voracious cancer eating the very life from her, she still managed to radiate strength.

He noticed her bare feet peeking out from beneath the comforter and remembered her cashmere slippers. He could at least slip those on her feet. Placing the tray down beside the bed, he slipped into a closet the size of most people’s bedrooms and looked around for the slippers. For a moment he just absorbed the lavishness of the wardrobe. Pants, shoes, dresses, suits, hats, scarves, jewelry—all of the very highest quality. She loved to give, but she loved to have, too. And without any sense of guilt. How could someone who gave so much feel guilty for what she had?

He resumed his search for the slippers. Movement and a whisper out in the bedroom distracted him from his self-appointed task. He started toward the door, which was ajar.

“Martin,” he heard his mother rasp drowsily.

She had called for her long-dead mother, father, cousins, close friends. She was in and out of her head at this point, with windows of lucid thought, like what they’d shared last night, growing smaller and smaller every day.

“I’m here, baby,” Walsh heard his father respond, immobilizing Walsh with the intimacy of his words.

His father must have entered the room while Walsh was looking for the slippers. Should he interrupt? Shoo his dad out so his mother could rest?

“I knew you’d come.” She sounded more alert than Walsh had heard her in days. “I knew it.”

“Of course, I’m here.” Martin’s voice was stripped of the steel and stone Walsh was used to hearing. It was so soft Walsh barely recognized it. “I’ll stay, if you want. If you’ll let me.”

“Oh, Martin. I’ve always wanted you to stay.”

“No, that’s not true, Kris, but I’m glad you want me here now. I wasn’t sure.”

“Yes, you were.” Her laugh was dimmed, but throaty. “You’ve always been sure of me, haven’t you?”

“Not always. I thought we’d…” His words trailed off, but his mother seemed to know the rest.