Best Kept Secrets (36 page)
Authors: Rochelle Alers
How easy for man to break what never was bound—our song together.
—
Anonymous
T
wo days following Teresa Kirkland’s startling appearance, Samuel entered his office and saw a large box sitting in a corner. He read the note taped to a side:
This was delivered last night—Charlotte.
He stared at the mailing label. It was from Teresa. Lines creased his forehead and he wondered what it was that she’d sent him.
The full impact of her visit did not sink in until later that night. Everything about her washed over him in vivid clarity as he recalled the exact color of her eyes—a frosty, cold green, the determined set of a mouth that was no longer lush and smiling, and the stiffness in her spine when she’d sat on the edge of the love seat. She hadn’t even bothered to remove her gloves.
Reaching for a letter opener, he slid it along a flap on the box. He went completely still when he saw the contents. The carton was filled with letters, hundreds of them bundled with narrow red ribbons.
Samuel picked up a stack, staring at Teresa’s small, slanting writing. The envelopes were addressed to him at his home. Untying the bundle, he realized none were sealed. He removed the first letter, his gaze racing over the fading blue ink. It was a handwritten birth announcement. He felt his knees buckle, and had to sit down before he fell.
Samuel couldn’t read any more—at least not now. Teresa had poured out her heart to him on paper, yet could not summon the nerve to mail her letters.
Would he have answered her? Would he have gone to her when she pleaded for him to help her?
Samuel knew the answers to those questions as soon as they were formed in his head.
Yes, he would have.
He’d given her to his friend to protect, and he had beaten her. It was good he didn’t know Everett’s whereabouts, because he knew without a doubt that he would hurt the man—severely.
Men are beasts and even beasts don’t behave like them.
—
Brigitte Bardot
S
amuel forced himself to put one foot in front of the other as he climbed the winding staircase like someone in a trance. His mind was reeling from the cruelty and physical abuse Teresa had suffered from the man he’d trusted to take care of her. If he’d known Everett was going to treat her as he had, then he never would have sanctioned their marriage.
He hadn’t lied to Teresa when he told her he would never leave M.J., but he would have provided handsomely for her and their child. He didn’t know whether he would’ve continued to sleep with her, but knew without a doubt he’d do everything within his power to keep her safe and content.
The house was quiet with Martin in Costa Rica and his daughters away at college. He walked past his youngest son’s
room. There were times when he forgot there was still a child in the house.
David was born the year he turned thirty-nine. After he and M.J. “reconciled” he hadn’t used any form of contraception with her. And when the years passed without M.J. conceiving, both of them thought their family complete with a son and two daughters.
Once her pregnancy was confirmed, M.J. doubted whether she would be strong enough to survive another. She’d spent the entire confinement in bed, and after she delivered her fourth child, a boy, the doctor confirmed her uncertainty with a hysterectomy. And like their other children, David was more Diaz than Cole, and Samuel wondered whether Joshua Kirkland was a Cole or a Maldonado.
He entered his bedroom suite, and went through the motions he’d done countless times, undressing and showering before climbing into bed next to M.J.
Her warmth and scent washed over him as she pressed her breasts against his back. “I thought you were coming home early tonight.” Her voice was low, husky. There was no doubt she’d fallen asleep waiting for him.
Samuel closed his eyes. “Why did you think that?”
“It was you who said we were going to take David to that new restaurant everyone’s bragging about.”
“Damn it! I forgot. Why didn’t you call and remind me?” He’d been so engrossed in Teresa’s letters that he’d lost track of time.
He had instructed his secretary to cancel all of his meetings for the rest of the week, then locked the door to his office and sat down to read as many of the letters as he could before his eyes began burning.
Her letter of May 18, 1933, confirmed what Everett had told him the day he’d come to Miami to close the office, that she had left her husband after he spanked Joshua because the child had touched his watch. She’d left Everett, but come back to him later that year when he’d promised never to hit her or the child again.
M.J. draped an arm over his waist. “I figured you had become involved in something that you couldn’t get out of.”
He covered the hand resting on his belly. “You shouldn’t have made that decision, baby. You know when I promise my children something, they take precedence over everything else. Was David disappointed?”
“If he was, then he didn’t show it. You know nothing bothers him too much. Most of the time he acts as if he’s in another world. I’m beginning to worry about him.”
“Why, M.J.?”
“Because he spends hours playing the piano.”
“It’s all your fault.”
She stiffed. “Why my fault, Sammy?”
“You were the one who wanted to expose
your children
to music. And now that you have one who’s just as obsessed as you are, you think there’s something wrong with him. Leave the boy alone, M.J.”
“Oh, now they are my children?”
He smiled. “They were always your children, Mrs. Cole. You’ve reminded me of that fact more times than I’ve been able to count these past twenty-two years.”
She pressed a kiss on his shoulder before rising slightly to kiss the back of his neck. Her kisses and mouth became bolder as she moved over him and gently pushed him onto his back.
Bracing her hands against his shoulders, she charted a path with her mouth from his throat and through the crisp hair on his chest. At forty-eight Samuel Cole still had a body that was as firm and solid as their son’s.
Wrapping his arms around her body, Samuel reversed their positions and worshipped his wife’s body with his mouth and hands. He cradled her face, moaning softly when her hand closed around his erection and guided his hardness into her warm, pulsing flesh. Moaning in unison, they found the tempo that bound their bodies and hearts together.
For a few exquisite moments Samuel was able to dismiss the pain, horror and disappointment poured out on paper by a woman who’d set aside her pride and come to him not for herself, but for her son.
Samuel wanted to stop reading, put the letters back into the carton, seal it and mail it back to Teresa, but he couldn’t. Like an addictive drug, they’d pulled him in and refused to let him go.
One day blurred into the next as he cloistered himself behind the closed door. The decades passed by with the hours…1930, 1931, 1932, 1933…
There were only two letters in the bundle that began in the year 1946.
April 25, 1946
Dear Samuel,
Joshua turned 16 today. He did a lot of growing this past year. He is now six-one and weighs close to 170 pounds. He’s very quiet and seldom smiles. Girls come by constantly to ask for him, but he tells me to send them away because they interfere with his studies. There was a girl he seemed to like a lot, but that was more than a year ago—before we moved in with Mama and Papa.
I know I told you in a prior letter that we moved in with my parents after Everett sold the cramped little place he bought after you fired him. It was only today that I found out why he walked out on us. Joshua confessed to me that he told Everett, “Do not sleep here tonight, because if you do, then you’ll wake up in hell.” Everett believed him, because he got up one day, put on his clothes, and that was the last time I saw him. But before he walked out he told Joshua, “I only stayed because of the money, because why else would I marry a whore?” My son was able to
do what I had been unable to do for so many years—stop the physical abuse with one threat.
I had to convince Joshua that I had gone back to Everett because I believed a boy needed a man in his life, even one as cruel as Everett Kirkland. But now I know better. I should have and could have raised my son by myself. Divorced women and widows do it all the time, but I was too much of a coward to want to do it alone.
Joshua, who has always believed Everett was his father, wanted to know everything. I told him everything. He knows you are his father.
I have enclosed a photograph of him for you to see what a fine young man he has become.
I was surprised when he asked me what I wanted. And again I was forthcoming when I told him, “What I want I can’t have. What I wanted I could never have.”
Teresa
Samuel stared at the photograph of a tall, slender boy with hair so light in color that it appeared silver. He’d stared directly at the person who had taken the picture, with no expression on his face. Samuel couldn’t discern the color of his eyes, but probably they were the same color as Teresa’s. He looked like his mother.
Samuel sat motionless, staring at the face of a boy he’d come to know in name only. And knowing his name had allowed him to remain detached. It did not permit him to feel anything for a human he’d helped create through the most intimate act known to a man and woman.
Samuel was angry, angry with Teresa for thrusting the stranger into his life now that he had a face to go along with the name. A muscle twitched nervously at his jaw when he picked up the remaining envelope.
May 18, 1946
Samuel,
Joshua has decided where he wants to go to college: the United States Military Academy at West Point. If he is able to gain entrance, then there is no tuition cost.
I know he is concerned about money, but I told him that I have saved some money, and with what I earn working at the hospital I will be able to cover the costs for tuition and books at Florida A&T.
What he doesn’t know and I will never tell him is that his mother had become a thief when she pilfered money from Everett’s pocket whenever he drank so much that he didn’t know what day it was or if it was day or night. I don’t know if it is illegal for a wife to take money from her husband when he doesn’t give her any, so maybe I am a thief, but no one judges me more severely than I do myself.
I am going to find out what it takes to get Joshua into West Point. My son has never asked for anything, so I will do whatever it takes to grant his wish.
Teresa
Samuel was relieved and saddened that there were no more letters. It had been a way of spending time with Teresa that was guilt-free. He could see her, touch her and smell her without her being there.
He knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and would always want her, but not enough to risk losing his wife.
Martin’s direct flight from San Jose, Costa Rica, landed at the West Palm Beach Airport several hours after the sun had set. He took a taxi directly to the office instead of going home. He wanted to leave the blueprints and the construction reports for his father, and he also wanted to pick up his car.
He took the elevator to the floor housing ColeDiz, walked
the length of the carpeted hallway and unlocked the door that led directly to Samuel’s private office. He was shocked to discover that his father hadn’t gone home. Samuel lay on a leather sofa, an arm over his face.
“Dad?”
Samuel lowered his arm, swung his legs over the side of the sofa and stared at his son as if he were an apparition. “You’re back.”
“You sound disappointed,” Martin teased, grinning.
“No. Not at all.”
Martin’s gaze swung to the stack of letters on his father’s desk. “What are those?”
Massaging his temples with his fingertips, Samuel shook his head. “It’s a long story.”
“How long will it take to tell?”
“All night.”
Martin placed the cardboard tube containing the plans and a leather-bound report on a credenza. “Does Mother know where you are?”
Samuel nodded, then rolled his head on his shoulders. “I called her a little while ago to let her know I was working late.” He had to catch up with the reports he’d neglected when the carton filled with Teresa’s letters was delivered. It had taken him four days to read everything she’d written.
Martin placed an arm around his father’s broad shoulders. “Let’s go over to Roadie’s where we can talk and eat.”
Samuel waited until Martin had eaten most of his dinner of oxtail stew, rice and buttered lima beans before he revealed what had remained a best-kept secret for seventeen years.
Martin’s black eyes flashed outrage. “You cheated on my mother,” he said through clenched teeth.
Not able to meet his son’s gaze, Samuel stared over his shoulder. “I’m ashamed to say I did.”
“How many times? With how many women?”
“Martin, don’t,” he pleaded softly.
“Don’t what, Dad? Don’t make you feel guilty? What about my mother?”
“No, Martin. Your mother had her way of punishing me for my indiscretion.”
“You call getting another woman pregnant an indiscretion?” He pounded the table with his fist, rattling dishes and cutlery. “I have another brother, Father!”
Samuel knew Martin was close to losing control of his quick temper. Whenever he referred to him as Father, it usually foretold a hostile encounter.
“Yes, Martin. You have another brother. One I’ve never met. One I saw today for the first time in a photograph. A sixteen-year-old boy who wants to go to West Point, a boy whose mother thinks I have the political influence to grant him his wish.”
“What’s his name?”
“Joshua Kirkland.”
“Where does he live?”
“Miami.”
Martin ran a hand over his face. “You’re going to help him, Dad.” He lowered his hand, glaring at Samuel. “You owe him that much.”
Pushing back his chair, Samuel stood up, put his hand in his pocket and left a bill on the table. “I’m tired, Martin. I’m going home to my wife. Are you going to drive me home, or should I call a taxi to take me back to the office so I can pick up my car?”
Martin came to his feet. His father had dismissed him. “I’ll drive you home.”