A Candle in the Dark (37 page)

Cain wondered if there was some way to throw Jiméne to the floor and grab the wine without waking up the entire house.

“Forever.” Jiméne paused as if waiting for a response.

Cain struggled to remember what it was Castañeras had been talking about. Some woman. Forever. Ah, yes, forever. He turned his head slightly to look at Jiméne. “What happened?”

“She fell in love with another man.”

“Sorry.”

“She fell in love with you, my friend.”

Cain blinked, confused. Had he missed something? He tried to focus through his drunken haze, to make sense of Jiméne’s story. “What the hell are y’talking ‘bout?”

“Do you not know?” Jiméne asked softly.

The tale came back to Cain then. Hair with the fire of sunset. Golden eyes. Meeting on a ship. Jiméne was talking about Ana. Ana in love. With him. The idea was ludicrous, exhilarating, and painful all at the same time. He sat up. Too quickly. The world spun, he swayed, and he grasped the edge of the table with a gasp, catching himself just before he fell.

He tried to force coherence, formed his words carefully. “We aren’t—she’s not m’wife.”

“I know this.”

“She’s going to leave me in San Fra—Francisco.”

“I do not think so.”

“Damn you, Castañe—” Cain took a deep breath. “She’s a—” He started to say “whore,” but something stopped him. She would hate for Jiméne to know. She would hate it, and so he couldn’t do it, but more than that, he realized he didn’t think of her that way any longer. He couldn’t remember if he ever had.

“I have long ago forgotten my threat,
amigo
,” Jiméne went on. “I am no longer going to steal her away.”

“I know.”

“She loves you,” Jiméne said implacably. “And I think you love her,
amigo
.”

Hell, yes, he loved her.

“I am not a doctor. I cannot help her. You can.” Jiméne picked up the jug, setting it on the table, directly in front of Cain. “If you do not, she will certainly die. And then you will die, because you love her. Or you will go on, without her forever. It is not much of a choice, eh?” He shook his head, slowly rising from the bench. “Enzo will be up in two hours, and then Serafina. I am going back to bed.”

Cain listened to the creaking of bamboo as Jiméne walked off until he could no longer hear footsteps. The house seemed eerily quiet, though birds were calling to each other outside. Sun slanted across the floor, across his arm, lit the jug in front of him.

Cain stared at it, unable to tear his eyes away, feeling the insatiable monster growing inside him. He wanted to reach for it, but the echo of Jiméne’s words rilled the room.

But Jiméne doesn’t know you
, the voice inside him argued. He loved Ana, yes, but love couldn’t save her.
He
couldn’t save her.
Because you are nothing
.

He brought the cup to his mouth, frowning when he noticed it was empty, and turned back to the table. He leaned the jug over the cup. Wine poured in, splashing over the side to dribble on the table, staining his fingers—the same way the leech liquid had, he thought. For a moment, he thought it
was
the leeches, and he shuddered, looking for a towel to wipe it off. The movement made his hands more unsteady. He glanced down to find the cup was too full. He slammed the jug down, leaning over to suck the wine from the rim so he could lift it.

Suddenly he got a horrible, aching vision of himself. For a moment it was as if he were standing back, watching his body. He saw himself straighten, wiping his chin with the back of his sleeve, throwing back his head. He saw the shaking of his own hands and the desperate, pained look in his eyes.

False courage, Ana called it, and he thought suddenly it wasn’t even that. Courage had left him so long ago he couldn’t remember what it felt like. It had gone and left him with such unrelenting bleakness he thought it would never go away. Left him with a fear he fed every time he opened a bottle.

The thought was crystal clear, and Cain strained to channel his thoughts so it made sense. He had the feeling he was on the brink of some great discovery, some inner truth that would change his life forever. But it drifted away, wavered out of sight before he could reach out to grab it.

He buried his face in his hands, wishing she was here to talk to, wishing he could tell her what he was thinking and hear her calm voice soothing him.
I believe in you
.

How simple those words had seemed, how deceptively wise. How foolish he’d been to believe them, to think things had changed. Christ, nothing ever changed. He would never change. He would go on and on like this, fighting the craving, needing the drink and the dark, deep fear that came with it. Nothing anyone could do would make it go away.

Cain felt the tears seep from his eyes, trailing over his cheeks to the corners of his mouth, the saltiness mixing with the taste of wine. He imagined she was sitting beside him. In his mind he felt her warmth and smelled her citrusy scent. In his mind, her hair was loose and long and thick, and strands brushed against his shoulder and stayed there, webbing over his shirt. In his mind, she touched him, and he felt again the soothing touch of her hands, heard the soft croon of her lullaby: “
When you wake, you shall find all the pretty little horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, go to sleep, little baby
.”

She wasn’t beside him, he knew it, yet his vision was so strong he was surprised when he dropped his hands and there was nothing but sunlight there. He longed to touch her, wished for her steady strength, her conviction. What he would give to hear her words now.
I believe you can
. What he would give to believe it himself.

He
had
believed it for a while, that was the hell of it. He’d felt himself getting stronger every hour, every day, and he realized now that it was the thought of her that had given him the courage. The thought that she cared about him, that she believed in him, that she needed him.

Yes, that thought had always been there, the knowledge that she needed him, if for no other reason than to make her smile in the middle of the night. Without him, she would always be hard, cold, unforgiving, because no one would care to change it as much as he did. She would never know the joy of laughing, loving, hurting. She would never know any of it.

He could teach her those things, he knew he could. He cared enough for both of them. He could save Ana, and in the process, save himself, because he needed her just as badly.

But she was going to die
. There would be nothing for him. No redemption. No love. No pain. Nothing but desolation. Empty, lonely desolation like the last years had been. Moving from place to place, waking in strange streets and strange beds. Remembering nothing. Not good times. Not bad. Nothing.

He couldn’t do it. Not anymore. Not since he’d heard her laugh and listened to her description of a smile in the darkness. Not since he’d looked into her sherry-colored eyes and felt hope for the second time in his life. He heard Jiméne’s voice again in his mind: “
She fell in love with you
.”

Cain almost hated to remember it, hated his hope that it was true. But what if it was true?
What if it was
?

The thought grew inside him, a beacon in his desperation. He wondered suddenly if maybe John’s confidence in him hadn’t been misplaced. He’d been a good doctor once—hadn’t he?
I believe you can
. He heard her voice, felt her strength, and suddenly the past lost its hold on him, and he wanted nothing more than to prove she was right, that he was worth believing in. He wanted to prove it to her, prove it to himself.

It was a foreign feeling, not entirely pleasant, but better than his fear. Cain looked down at the cup in his hands, at the swirling red liquid. He smelled its tempting scent, thought again of what it would taste like, what it would feel like. And for the first time since he could remember, he shoved it away.

He shook when he pushed from the table. The world spun, his knees sagged, his head shrieked with pain. But he got to his feet and stumbled to the doorway of her room. He stood there, slumped against the door frame, staring at the mess he’d left hours ago. The puddle of leech water had stained the bamboo matting, the stench hovered in the air with that of quinine and tamarind and vomit. On the floor, the leeches were plump little shadows. The bleeding cup lay abandoned, a little blood still pooling inside, the rest spattered across the floor, the bed, her skin.

Finally he looked at her. The blanket was tangled now around her legs, leaving the long, pale whiteness of them exposed. Her hair fell like a curtain over the side of the bed, her mouth was open, and her chest rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths.

Cain felt again the terrible despair, the empty hopelessness. But he made himself think about how it would be when she was better. How they would smile and laugh and talk. How he would touch her. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Then he knelt to pick up the leeches.

She woke to find him sound asleep. He sat on the stool, his dark head buried in his arms, his breathing deep and exhausted and even. It reminded her of the first time she’d seen him, passed out on the table at Cavey Davey’s, and the memory made her smile.

How long ago it seemed. That night was hazy in her mind now. She remembered running and being cold. Remembered being frightened. But mostly what she remembered was the way D’Alessandro had paused outside his boardinghouse room and looked at her. What had he said then? “
I’m afraid of the dark. Will you stay
, querida?
Chase away the demons for me
?”

She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she was so tired, too tired. Ana tried to summon her voice. Her throat was dry and tight, but she forced the sound out, and was surprised to hear a thin, rasping noise. “Cain?”

He stirred. The lamplight flickered.

“Cain?”

He jerked upright, looking wildly around. “Jiméne?” he croaked. He ran a hand over his eyes, shaking back his hair. “Christ, what a nightmare.”

“Dreaming of demons?” she asked softly.

He looked so surprised she wanted to laugh. He frowned at her, and then held the lamp higher. The light hurt her dry, swollen eyes, and she made a sound of protest and tried to wave it away.

“Ana?” he asked.

She heard the disbelief in his tone, and something else too. Something familiar. A laziness, a slur—She shook it away, confused. No, he was just tired, not drunk. He didn’t drink anymore—or had that just been a dream?

He looked tired. She squinted up at him, seeing the pale gauntness of his face, the smudges of shadow beneath his eyes. In his hand, the lamp shivered, and she thought for a moment that it was because it took all his strength to hold it. He used to tremble that way—

She closed her eyes. “I’m so tired.”

“Go to sleep then,” he said gently.

He touched her face, smoothed back her hair, and Ana recognized the touch. They were the hands from her dreams. His hands had soothed her to sleep, taken away the heat. He had taken away her demons, and she wondered why the thought didn’t make her afraid.

But she was too tired to think about it now. Now all she wanted was to go back to sleep, to feel his wonderful hands on her skin and drift back into the comforting darkness.

“Go to sleep,
querida
,” he said again, and instinctively she obeyed him, letting her body relax, letting his hands take her into quiet, calming places.

She was almost asleep when she heard it: a soft, almost inaudible sob, whispered words. “Thank God,” the voice said. “
Thank God, thank God, thank God”
…

A dream, she thought, and fell asleep to the lullaby of his prayers.

“—Enzo falls off the cow, and when Juan and I go to him, he says, ‘But Papa, she is my mule! Look, I am just like a miner!’ “

Ana laughed weakly. “I don’t think Americans are a very good influence on Enzo, Jiméne.”

Jiméne smiled and sat on the stool beside the bed. “It is good for him. When he is old enough, I will send him to New York.”

“So he turns out like you, of course,” Ana said, eyeing Jiméne’s brilliant green coat.

“Exactly so.” He nodded, brushing lint off his sleeve before he moved closer. “Ah,
cariña
, it is good to see you smile. We were so worried—all of us.”

Ana plucked at the ribbon drawstring of her borrowed chemise. “There was no need, I wasn’t that sick.”

“Who told you that?” Jiméne frowned. “You were nearly as sick as Mama. D’Alessandro—he was very worried.”

The sound of his name sent a tremor through Ana, her heartbeat sped. “He was? I—I didn’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

“You have not seen him because he sleeps—at last.” Jiméne shook his head in disgust. “Why he believes a man so tired can help I do not know.”

Ana frowned, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“He would not sleep the entire time you were ill,
cariña
. Serafina could not even make him eat—”

“He didn’t sleep?”

“No. Not for four days.” Jiméne picked up a vial from the table, turning it in his hands thoughtfully. “He was afraid you would die.”

Ana stared at him. Her whole body felt tight and strange. She had wondered why she had not seen Cain yet today. This morning she’d tried to keep awake while they all trudged into her room: Serafina and Dolores, Juan, Amado, and even little Enzo. But Cain did not come, and as the morning went on, her disappointment grew. Every time she saw a figure in the doorway, she caught her breath until she realized it wasn’t he. With every passing moment, the vague sense of hurt enveloping her sharpened. He hadn’t come, and she didn’t know why, and she started to think that maybe it hadn’t been his voice she heard in her dreams, or his hands whose touch she remembered. She started to believe that maybe he didn’t care about her at all.

And now Jiméne was telling her that Cain had stayed awake for four days, tending her, afraid she would die. Warmth stole over her at the idea, and Ana got a sudden, clear vision of him sitting beside her, holding her hand so tightly it went numb. She wondered if it had really happened, or if it was just an illusion.