When You Are Mine (20 page)

“So did I, Martin.” Her voice vibrated with tears. “We were both so stubborn. Both so…”

Kristeene’s unfinished sentence lay there in a silence growing between his parents, thickening with an emotion Walsh couldn’t place. He had not heard civil words exchanged between them since he was thirteen years old, but this conversation sounded intimate, punctuated with longing and…love?

Walsh stared at the door of the huge closet, separating him from his parents, and felt that he’d somehow stepped into a Narnian wardrobe, the other side populated with satyrs and witches and other impossibilities, no less fantastical than the notion that his parents still loved each other. He took one silent step toward the door, ready to reveal himself before things became more awkward.

“I’m sorry, Kris,” his father said in a rush, as if afraid the words would retract like acid reflux if he didn’t get them out. “I’m sorry about Laura. It was stupid. I was lonely. We were fighting all the time. There’s so many excuses I could make, that I
did
make, but it just boils down to me fucking everything up. Fucking my whole life up. You
were
my life, Kris. You know that.”

“I thought I knew that,” his mother replied so softly Walsh found himself leaning forward to catch the words. “That’s why…”

Walsh could hear her struggling to get the words out, though whether it was the cancer, making every bodily function more and more laborious, or whether it was this emotion he hadn’t known still existed between them that was choking her speech, Walsh wasn’t sure.

“That’s why it was such a betrayal,” she finally managed to say. “I knew you loved me. To throw it all away like that. At the time, I didn’t think we could ever go back. I didn’t think you could be the man I married, the man I fell in love with, and do that to us. I felt like I was married to a stranger.”

“I know, Kris.” Walsh was astounded to hear tears soaking his father’s words. “I wasn’t sure what I was capable of anymore, either, if I could do that to you. I think I’ve been lost ever since.”

“Martin, you aren’t lost.”

“I don’t know how to get back, Kris. I always thought…eventually that we would be together again. How could we not be together? And the years just…”

“I know.” His mother’s words shook. “Everything got so twisted around. And now it’s the end.”

“No, we can fight this,” Martin cut in, his voice gaining strength. “And then we’ll—”

“We’ll what? We’ll be together?” She softened the sharp edges around her words. “Martin, I am
dying
.”

“No,” he cut her off, underlining the word with denial.

“Yes,” she insisted, her voice still firm but gentling. “I’m dying and we don’t get that second chance I thought we’d have, but know this. I never, not ever, no matter what we said in court, no matter how we fought,
never
stopped loving you. That was the biggest battle of all. Fighting myself not to come back to you. I couldn’t do that. Not after Laura. I know some women get past those things, but I was too possessive.”

“I would have responded the same way.” The regret in his father’s voice chafed Walsh’s ears. “I’ve hated myself, and I think I hated you, Kris, for not forgiving me. For not getting past it so we could be together again.”

“Martin, we don’t have long.” Pain reduced his mother’s words to a hiss. “I…I, there’s a bottle of pills on the nightstand. I need to take my medication, but after I take it, I’ll be no good. Back asleep or out of my head. I need you to make me a promise.”

“No, not now, baby. Let me get the pills.” Walsh heard his father moving, rising to get the medicine. “We can talk later.”

Walsh stepped to the crack in the door, watching to make sure his mother didn’t need anything other than the pills. Kristeene had grabbed his father’s wrist with surprising strength, staying his fist, which was clutching the bottle of pills.

“No, I don’t know if I’ll…I don’t know if there will be time, Martin.” The finality of that pronouncement sat like lead in the room, weighing the air with pending grief.

Martin moaned, lowering himself to the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. He crawled up beside her and behind her, spoon fashion.

“No, Kris. Don’t go. I’m so lost, Kris. Don’t go.”

“Listen to me.” She turned with great effort to face him, her headscarf slipping to reveal the front of the smooth scalp beneath. “Just listen, sweetheart.”

The endearment sliced Walsh down the middle, reinforcing that secret truth that had lain beneath his parents’ years-long enmity. They had loved each other all these years, been separated all these years, seemed to hate each other all these years, and she had thought of him as “sweetheart.” Walsh tasted the bitter irony that he could have known a family, healthy and whole, instead of the broken dysfunction of being shuffled between two snarling combatants, who loved each other deeply all along.

“Just listen,” she said again. “It’s Walsh.”

Walsh stifled a whoosh of breath, shocked to hear his own name introduced into this moment. He felt like a character written in as an afterthought, or an understudy being called unexpectedly to the stage.

“What about him?” His father’s voice became wary.

“You are his father, Martin,” she said, her voice choppy with pain. “Not his trainer. He’s your son. Not just some heir or successor. He needs you.”

“Sometimes I think he hates me,” Martin finally said after a long silence.

Walsh squeezed his eyes shut, twisting the delicate cashmere slippers between his fingers. His father was right. There had been times when he’d looked at his father, ruling his sprawling business kingdom, so self-satisfied, so arrogant, and he’d hated him. Hated how he’d hurt his mother. Hated that his father had always been more concerned with grooming him than raising him. And that hate warred with an insoluble love that refused to be diluted by his father’s careless disregard, unreasonable expectations, and exacting standards.

He’d always thought of him as a cold man surrounded by barriers, impenetrable even by a young boy’s desperate need for affection. But when Walsh peered through the crack into that fantastical land where his parents still loved each other, it was not the face of a cold man he saw. It was a man tortured, anguished with regret and horrified by what his mistakes had cost him.

“No, Martin.” Kristeene shook her head slowly, sadly. “Just the opposite. He loves you so much and wants to please you. Don’t you
see
that? You and me, it’s too late for us, but—”

“Don’t say that, Kris.”

“I don’t have time left for us, Martin, but you and Walsh. You’ve still got time to make that right.”

“I don’t…I don’t know how.” His father sounded vulnerable for the first time in Walsh’s memory.

“Yes, you do.” She reached a bony hand up to caress the back of his neck. “Think about it. He needs you to get this right. Promise me.”

“I promise, Kris,” he said, not sounding sure, his voice thickening. “But don’t leave me.”

Walsh saw her reach up and kiss his father, chastely at first, a mere brush across his lips. But then long-denied passion seemed to swell between them, making them oblivious of Kristeene’s shining, bald pate, ravaged body, and lips chapped with illness. There was no self-consciousness, no consideration for the cancer or the years of malevolence stretching behind them. Only a long-checked hunger that seemed to consume them. They kissed like it was the first time, like it was the last time. His mother held his father’s head still, kissing him as if she’d take the taste of him on her lips into eternity. As if he were the wine at her last supper, a final indulgence to be savored and swished in her mouth like liquid luxury. An interloper, Walsh averted his eyes from the deep kisses and urgent, desperate caresses.

“Kris,” he heard his father say, his voice drained of passion, urgent. “Don’t leave me. Don’t go.”

Walsh glanced up, tears setting his throat on fire at the sight of his father holding his mother’s limp body in his arms. Tears ran unchecked down the lean, handsome face, so like his own.

“Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. So lost, Kris. So lost.” Martin wailed, clutching her tighter, pushing the scarf back completely from her head to look unflinchingly on the proud, ruined beauty of the body that remained behind. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

Walsh must have heard his father’s anguished litany a hundred times before he finally dragged himself to huddle against the wardrobe wall, sitting down among his mother’s shoes, wearing his father’s face, streaked by his own silent tears.

H
ow would she make it through this day?

Kerris planted herself in a corner of the Walshes’ elegant living room, watching an old camp counselor monopolize Cam across the room. Kerris felt so alone, though dozens of people surrounded her, chattering about what a lovely service it had been, and Kristeene’s remarkable legacy, and how much she would be missed. She genuinely mourned Kristeene personally, but she knew the weight she felt was for Cam and Walsh. Both despondent. Both grasping for an anchor as they negotiated the unfamiliar waters of unfathomable sorrow. Especially Walsh.

She would keep her distance. She couldn’t trust herself with him, especially not today, when all she wanted to do was drag him over the grassy hill to the gazebo, where she’d felt healed in his arms once upon a time and wanted to do the same for him.

She stood too quickly and the room twirled. She reached blindly for her chair. Feeling nauseous and short of breath, she walked out into the foyer on rubbery legs. Jo was speaking in low tones with Mrs. Quinton about food for the reception. Jo looked at Kerris, raising her brows like a queen considering a peasant, silently inquiring why she would have strayed from the herd of mourners grazing on heavy hors d’oeuvres in the living room.

“Can I help you, Kerris?” Over Mrs. Quinton’s shoulder, Jo’s eyes remained chilly.

The easy affection that had existed between Jo and her was gone, maybe forever. Jo saw her as the bone of contention between Walsh and Cam, the one who had broken up their tightly knit triumvirate. Since the night of Walsh’s party, the warmth she’d become used to from Jo had been replaced with coolness, overlaid with a light coat of polite disdain.

“I’m just feeling a little light-headed.” Kerris swallowed the water gathering in her mouth and twisted her wedding band. “I don’t want to pull Cam away, though. Is there somewhere I might lie down for a little bit?”

“Sure. Go up these stairs and into the first room on your right. It was Aunt Kristeene’s sitting room.” She looked Kerris up and down, her tone and eyes frozen. “No one ever goes in there.”

Jo resumed her conversation without further comment, a dismissal. Kerris mumbled a hasty thanks, brushing past Jo to climb the stairs, clinging to the rail. She slipped into the room, glad the setting sun provided some light through the partially drawn curtains. She flicked on the lamp by a recliner that reminded her of Kristeene, a delicate frame encased in tough but supple leather. She settled in, glad of the darkened room and the soft cushions enfolding her weary body.

Walsh nodded for what felt like the thousandth time when someone expressed their condolences, shared memories of his mother, or assured him that he should “take all the time he needed” to grieve. Everyone understood.

Bullshit.

He felt for the flask-shaped elixir in his interior suit jacket pocket.

“’Scuse me,” he said to the chairwoman of one of his mother’s committees. “I need to check on something.”

He had to get out of there before he really lost it. Not tears. Those still eluded him. He was more concerned about the senseless rage lying supine beneath his grief, waiting patiently to strike the nearest unsuspecting bystander. He was so ready for them to just leave. He headed up the stairs for the one place he was sure to be alone.

He knew the closed door to his mother’s sitting room would be unlocked. When he walked in, the lamp was on, which was odd. His nostrils flared at the subtle scent of vanilla reaching across the room to him. He saw the small figure slumped in his mother’s recliner and stood still as a mountain.

Shutting the door behind him, he padded across the thick pile carpet until he was towering over Kerris, relishing the small liberty of looking at her without inhibition or judgment. Her loosened hair spilled over one shoulder. He caressed the smooth face with his eyes, paying special attention to that lush mouth and the impossibly long eyelashes painting stripes on the high cheekbones. Good God, the woman was beautiful.

Kerris could be his solace. A moment in her arms wouldn’t take away this bone-gnawing grief, but she could soothe him like no one else. He knew it. The years-long loyalty to Cam wrestled with the scorching desire to hold her, have her, keep her. On a day like today, when it seemed he’d lost everything that mattered, she was the one thing he wanted for himself. But his mother would have been ashamed. Cam would be broken. Kerris, with her unwavering sense of right, would be ruined. He had to accept it. He couldn’t have her. When the food had been eaten and the mourners had all gone home, she would leave with her husband. Walsh knew it, but he couldn’t walk away from this one moment with her. So he watched and waited for her to wake.

Kerris sensed someone standing over her and cracked her eyes just enough to make out Walsh’s tall frame, hovering over her. She slowly opened her eyes, bracing herself for the vulnerability of this grieving giant. She stared back at him for a heartbeat before leaning forward, returning the recliner to the upright position. She pushed her tumble of hair back with fingers she willed not to tremble.

“Walsh.” Her whisper took back up where they always left off; as if it hadn’t been months since they’d faced each other, held each other. “What are you doing up here?”

“Escaping.” Something most people would have taken for a smile curved Walsh’s lips. Kerris knew better.

She wasn’t sure what she could say that wouldn’t get them into trouble. If she opened the door to the despair she saw behind his eyes, she wouldn’t be able to resist holding him, comforting him, and she couldn’t be the one to do that.

“I should go.”

She stood to her feet. He grasped her wrist, a gentle tether. The brief contact paralyzed her. And his eyes—burning with grief and need.

“Stay. Please. Just a minute.”

She knew there was a comfort he found in her that he could find nowhere else; with no one else. She didn’t understand it, but she knew it. She reached for his hand, tangling their fingers.

“Are you okay?” She probed beneath his rigidly controlled expression.

“No.”

“You will be,” she said, her words soft like cotton.

Walsh stared over her shoulder at the recliner she’d just vacated. She tugged gently on his hand. Pulling his glance back to meet hers.

“I feel so lost.” His voice cracked down the middle, but didn’t break. “I don’t…I don’t know if I can…if I can…I can’t cry. I was at the funeral in a church full of people crying, and I couldn’t cry. Why can’t I cry? I kept thinking I had to get through the eulogy without crying. Just don’t cry. And now, I can’t. I can’t…”

Without thought, she bent her elbows, laying her forearms and palms against his back, drawing him close enough to feel his heart slamming into hers. He bent to the curve joining her neck and shoulder, pushing her hair back and resting his head there. She felt him sigh, and then breathe in deeply, as if filling his lungs with fresh air. She could feel him blinking against her skin, still fighting the approach of the tears he thought he’d longed for, but was afraid to give in to. She began to sway just a little. She’d seen mothers rock their children to comfort them, though she’d never experienced it herself. The motion seemed to loosen the grief lodged inside of him. Something had slipped and set it free, leaking it in rivulets across her shoulder and inside her dress, down her back, leaving a warm, wet trail of heartache.