A Twist of Hate (4 page)

              He shook himself from his reverie and sat in the swivel chair, thankful for the distraction of three framed 6x4-inch photos arranged at the back of her neatly organized desk. In the first frame, Brian and Courtney mugged in their Halloween costumes in Prescott’s senior lounge. Brian’s physique suited his Thor costume, but in the long blond wig, he bore far too close a resemblance to a manly Britney Spears. Courtney had dressed as Wonder Woman. Camden chuckled in spite of himself, remembering the Marvel versus D.C. debate that had consumed Brian and Courtney for most of the day.

              In the middle photo, a man and a woman flanked Siobhan, whose broad, radiant smile started his heart thudding harder. Camden recognized Damon Curran from the PBS television documentary. The woman, vaguely familiar, was pictured alone in the last frame. Camden picked it up to study her more closely.

              The hazel-eyed blonde in the picture was totally gorgeous in a sultry, slightly dangerous, Angelina Jolie way. Siobhan had the woman’s mouth and smile.

              Camden accidentally tipped over the middle frame when he replaced the last one. It hit the desktop with a sharp smack, startling Siobhan awake. She sat up, pushing her hair from her face, looking every bit like a tigress awaking from an afternoon snooze in the shade.

              “Who’s this?” Camden held up the last photo as he righted the fallen one.

              Siobhan crossed the room on sleep-drunk legs. She leaned over his right shoulder to look at the photo, her soft hair whispering against his cheek. Camden swallowed hard.

              “This is my mother.”

              The most recent newspaper article on Damon Curran mentioned the loss of his wife during his stay in Great Britain, but it provided no details about the cause of her death. Even Prescott’s ruthlessly intrusive grapevine hadn’t uncovered the specifics of Mrs. Curran’s demise, nor had Siobhan discussed it with Brian or Courtney, as far as Camden knew.

              Perhaps because it was the witching hour, or maybe because this was one of the most enjoyable evenings he had ever spent with anyone—most likely it was just because he wanted to know—whatever the reason, Camden met Siobhan’s fathomless dark eyes and asked, “What happened to her?”

              Sadness reshaped her features. She backed away a step, then turned and went to sit in the window seat. She avoided looking at Camden directly, instead facing his reflection in the spotless pane of glass.

              An apology for prying perched on Camden’s tongue, but before he could let it fly, Siobhan answered. “It was an aneurysm. It was like a self-destruct button hidden deep in a blood vessel in her brain. We were in the kitchen in our flat in London making
dou shi zheng yu
. It’s a Chinese dish of steamed fish in black bean sauce. We were laughing so hard over her awful pronunciation of the dish but, and then…she just stopped. The doctors said she died instantly. They said she didn’t feel a thing.

              “How can they know what she felt? How can they know whether it hurt to die, or whether it hurt to leave us?” In the window pane, she saw Camden looking at her, and she hid her face in her shoulder.

              Camden had no idea what to say. People always said, “I’m sorry,” at times like this. He knew from personal experience that “I’m sorry” wasn’t what those left behind needed to hear.

              “You have her smile,” he said.

              That was all it took to start her tears.

              He grabbed the boxed tissues from her desk and brought them to her, plucking a couple from the box. Her eyes were reddened, and pink tinged her nostrils. Tears sparkled in her lower lashes and their tracks striped her cheeks. Her hair was a tousled mess. She was supposed to look miserable, even haggard as grief took its toll. But she didn’t. Sorrow only heightened her beauty.

              He offered another tissue.

              She tried to thank him through fresh tears that came too hard. Without warning, without a hesitant preamble, he joined her on the window seat and embraced her. She held tissues to her eyes with both hands, her shoulders rigid. His voice soft and low, he uttered words meant to soothe, nothing words that meant everything.

              She relaxed into his embrace, her tears slowly ceasing. She slipped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. The pain of her loss, the ache of loneliness that always accompanied it, lessened with each beat of his heart.

              She wondered if she was compounding her distress by allowing him to see this side of her. She touched his jaw to tip his face to hers. Nothing deceitful or unkind glittered in his eyes. She saw only concern in the faint lines crossing his brow. She felt it in his close embrace.

              She stared at the damp wad of tissue in her hands. “I miss her,” she confessed on a tearful sigh.

              Her silky hair brushed his chin. He threaded his fingers through it and smoothed it from her face. “My mother is gone, too.”

              Courtney had reported that Camden’s mother left home when he was very young. But dead and divorced were two entirely different things. “It isn’t the same,” she said gently.

              “It would have been easier if she had died.”

              “Why don’t you live with her?”

              “She didn’t want me.”

              Her arms tightened around him. “Why not?”

              “She’s a lot younger than my dad. After I was born, she got really depressed. She cried all the time and wouldn’t leave the house. She got better for a few years, but then it started again. She ended up going to a treatment center out west.”

              “Do you see her very often?”

              “No. She lives in San Francisco.” He bowed his face into her hair to inhale its warm scent.

              “Do you ever talk to her?”

              “Sure, when she calls. But she doesn’t call that often anymore. She writes letters every week. My dad reads them. I never do.”

              She opened her mouth to speak, and he expected another question. Instead she said, “At least she’s alive.”

***

              He woke up twisted awkwardly in the window seat. His back and neck stiff with the early morning chill, he sat up and swung his legs to the thick carpet. Siobhan’s bed was still made. Her bathroom was empty, and the Pit was covered.

              He put on his jacket and ventured downstairs, where he found Siobhan in the solarium. She was curled up in a white-washed rattan deck chair, a blanket with a colorful Navajo motif tucked around her.

              “Did you sleep out here?” he asked. “It’s freezing.” March mornings had teeth, and beneath the blanket, she wore only the T-shirt, boxers, and white anklet socks from the night before.

              “I couldn’t sleep.” She stood and stretched.

              The blanket slid from her left shoulder. Without thinking, Camden pulled the blanket more snugly around her. “Are you okay?”

              “I’m fine.” She held the blanket closed under her chin. Its warmth was a poor substitute for Camden’s embrace. “Thank you.”

              He fastened the lower snaps of his navy and gold bomber jacket, just to give his hands something to do.

              “My grandmother will be here soon,” Siobhan said. “We go to Soulard Market every Saturday morning. She’ll be here soon. She’ll go mega Godzilla if she catches you here. Give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll drive you home. I’m sorry I didn’t wake you and take you home last night. I fell asleep too. Is your Dad gonna kill you for staying out all night?”

              “My dad probably slept like a baby. Even if he noticed I wasn’t home, he’ll have thought I was at Brian’s or Michael’s. You know, about Michael, I—”

              The deep blue of the blanket’s design electrified a warning in her dark eyes. “Who told you?” she snapped. “Courtney? God! I can’t tell her anything.”

              “I’m glad I found out, and it doesn’t matter who told me.”

              “It matters to me,” she said.

              “Michael’s got issues,” he explained lamely. “Everybody knows that.”

              “I’ve got an issue too. I’m having a very hard time knowing who I can trust.”

              “You can trust me,” he insisted with a short step toward her.

              She shifted her gaze to the cardinals and blue jays competing at an ornate feeder hanging from an oak tree.

              Camden touched two fingers to her chin, directing her gaze back to his. “You can trust
me
.”

              She stepped free of his touch. “We should get going.”

              “I live only a few miles from here. I could use a walk, it’ll wake me up.”

              She nodded.

              He forced a smile. “So I’ll see you around.”

              “Odds are good.”

              “Like at school.” He wiped his damp palms on the hips of his jeans.

              “I go there a lot.”

              “Bye, Siobhan.”

              He left through the rear door of the solarium to cut through the backyard. Halfway to the gate accessing the alley, he turned and ran back to the solarium. Siobhan, still standing there in the sunlight, was even prettier than when he left her two minutes earlier.

              Camden shoved his hands deep in the front pockets of his jeans. He scuffed the toe of his shoe across one of the patterned floor tiles. He started to leave but stopped himself again.

              Siobhan watched his display with more than a little interest.

              “I want to kiss you,” he blurted.

              Heat rushed into her cheeks. She cleared her throat. “Do you mean a peck on the cheek or a long, heavy-duty kiss?”

              “I don’t know,” he groaned. “It was hard enough to come right out and say it. Now we have to negotiate details?”

              “Three seconds,” she suggested. “Or longer?”

              “I don’t know!” A fierce blush raged above his collar.

              “I’m assuming you mean on the mouth and not the cheek,” she considered thoughtfully.

              “Do you take classes? You can’t be this aggravating naturally.” He turned to leave once and for all. “Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

              “Why do you want to kiss me?”

              Because I enjoy being with you whether we’re fighting or saying nothing at all. Because tears look like stars hanging on your eyelashes. Because your head fits my shoulder as if it were made to be there. Because you look like a wish come true standing here in an old blanket with the sunrise washing over you. “I don’t know,” was the reason he settled on.

              With one stunted step, she closed the distance between them. She rose on her tiptoes, bringing her lips within inches of his. Camden clenched his fists, fighting to keep his hands to himself as his breathing grew heavier. Siobhan’s light breath swept the shell of his ear. “Let me know when you do,” she whispered. The train of her blanket sweeping after her, she went inside, and with a final glance at Camden, she closed the door.

***

              Camden wanted nothing more than to sleep when Michael and the girls picked him up Saturday night. The foursome went into the city for toasted ravioli at Zia’s, then to Richmond Heights to catch a movie at the Galleria. When the girls excused themselves to the ladies restroom before the start of the show, Michael cornered Camden at one of the concession counters.

              “I called you ten times last night,” he said, his tone accusatory. “Chrissie invited Bitsy over. We could have ditched Bits the Ditz and had some flesh time if you’d been around to keep Bitsy busy.”

              A counter girl opened their end of concessions, and Michael ordered two large popcorn-drink combos. “Pat called me a little after midnight, looking for you. He said you didn’t make it home. I covered for you, of course. You want to tell me where you were?”

             
No
, Camden inwardly cringed. But he told him anyway.

              Michael stood silent for a full minute. His power of speech returned with a flat, “You gotta be kidding.”

              The counter girl interrupted to repeat their total twice before Michael elbowed Camden. “The tickets for me and Chrissie cleaned me out. Can you get the grub? I’ll get next.”

              Yawning, Camden reached for his wallet.

              Michael grinned at the counter girl, who impatiently tapped her fingertip against the register while Camden sleepily counted out bills. He clenched his fist and clamped his jaw, fighting a sudden sharp impulse to smash in Camden’s face. Camden finally gave the counter girl the money, blunting Michael’s spike of anger.

              “What was she like?” Michael asked. A salacious grin replaced his angry scowl. “I read somewhere that black girls go crazy in the sack. Their bodies are built different, like they have more nerve endings or something. Man, when I think of her ridin’ you with that ass in your hands, I—”