Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (9 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mike sat for a long while in the back of the sedan, ignoring the question that had been posed. Beyond the windows of the muted car, the weather’s sudden voraciousness of gloom surprised him and he lived in Seattle.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to do this. And yet, the words fell out just the same.

“Who lived here before?” he said.

The man met his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“An American football player.”

“Did you work for him?”

The driver shook his head. “My cousin did some cleaning for them.”

Some cleaning for the girl that used to love Tak. Mike slipped him two twenties for the honor of meeting this cousin.

They drove to a blustery fishing village on the south side of the island. There, simple pastel homes cluttered together as if huddled for warmth and comfort. A rickety wooden dock, just within sight, held to it a dozen or so antiquated boats, with a few more pulled right up to the shoreline.

Mike’s driver led him up a packed dirt walkway to an unassuming white matchbox of a home. He banged, rattling the hinges, before a stooped and leathery old lady appeared. They exchanged harsh words in a foreign language as raindrops began to fall. Finally, the old lady looked up to the heavens, said something foul, and gestured for them to follow.

They went around the house to a patch of vegetable garden out back. There, a middle-aged woman with threads of gray curling through black hair rose from a row of tomatoes. The driver went to her.

“She wants to know what you want,” the driver said.

Mike stepped forward, heart strumming, and handed over a few bills.

“I knew the wife, Aubree. I want to know how they came to sell the house to my cousin.”

The woman stood to rake him with skeptical eyes. She fired off rapid Dutch, never bothering to look away.

“She said rich people don’t consult cleaning ladies before completing transactions.”

Mike dug into his pocket, retrieved the lone twenty he had and handed it over.

“Please, try harder. I’m trying to help someone. This house was sold to the wife’s old boyfriend. Certainly, she’s seen him before. He looks like me, except…better.”

The woman looked him up and down, then nodded.

“She says she’s seen him? She’s seen Tak at the house?”

His heart sprouted legs and ran. They disappeared with a look from the driver.

“Done?” he snapped.

“Yes, if she could just tell me how often—”

The driver took off. A brown and burly man, he strode with a limp of gangly steps. Mike scurried after. No door opened for him, and once inside, the driver pulled off.

They rode in silence, back the way they’d came.

*****

With the sedan missing from the driveway, Tak set out in a windbreaker and jeans, collar up against the whipping wind. The air cut through fabric and punished him, the sea foamed up against the shore’s edge. Still, he needed space. Space away from that house. Time to clear his mind without children careening about.

The back of his estate perched Malmok Beach, the lone house on their private stretch of beach. Following their graveled path to the boulevard was a hike alone on foot. Once there, he veered south along the shoulder, the Caribbean Sea at his side.

At first, stretches of sand, tangled beach grass, and windswept rocks were all that painted his walk. Seaweed danced in the wind as the skies took on a sinister swirl. Instinct told him to turn back, to avoid the rain that would follow. But it never rained in Aruba. He bade himself to keep walking.

He was more familiar with the island than he let on. He knew not just beaches and tourist traps, but the nestled places of Oranjestad, San Nicolas, Saventa. Long ago, he’d spent tons of time on the island, with Aubree Daniels at the condo her parents owned.

They’d met as juniors at UCLA. Her, the beach blonde cheerleader with indigo eyes; him the frat boy with a convertible. How could their lives not intersect, when every flick on the planet demanded it? They’d been an on again off again asset, the inevitable between that came for each of their romances. Never toying with the idea of love, never bothering to mock it, they were all excess and nonsense and sex instead.

He cut things off from her when he moved back to Miami, so annoyed was he with their trite loop of hedonism. What they were required nothing of him, so he never grew and he never changed. That same year, she showed up unannounced at the family’s holiday vacation in California. She’d broken up with Brent for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time Tak let her in.

They fought all weekend about Tak dumping her, though technically, they had never been together. She accused him of falling in love with someone, which he’d laughed at before asking her to leave. Three separate times she came back, on each one, he rejected her. On pressure from his family for an explanation on what was happening, Tak took the easy way out, describing their fights as a lover’s spat.

The next time Tak saw her was in Aruba at 2 Fools and a Bull. She’d shrieked his name and scurried up ecstatic, only to freeze when Deena emerged, belly bulging with his child. He’d introduced Aubree as an old friend college friend, again taking the easy way because it was, well, easy. The unequivocal welcome Deena gave her, complete with a fierce embrace and an insistence that they all eat together, had turned Tak’s stomach to ash. But eat together, they did.

They talked about one nothing after another, until the house came up on the beach. Both Deena and Tak recognized it as the one they’d been admiring the day before. Later, when Brent went bankrupt and his wife left him, Aubree called Tak to see if he’d be interested in buying it.

It was a tiresome series of events, made possible with the help of one or two lies. Lies that had the ability to morph into something more.

Especially if someone else needed them to.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Deena took tea with Yukiko, Aunt Rhonda, Asami, and June in the room nearest to the north terrace. Mrs. Jimenez, who refused to serve cucumber sandwiches, gave them pepper ones with enough heat to blush the devil. Everyone left theirs to the tray.

“Really, Asami. You must guard your emotions,” Tak’s grandmother, Yukiko, scolded. “You’ve made your marriage the entire island’s business.”

She brushed aside a sheet of silver hair and took an indulgent sip of her Oolong tea.

“Tell us, what is it that you plan to do?” Yukiko asked. “Now that you’ve satisfied your primordial urge and assaulted your husband?”

“Maybe we should ask what you want to do,” June said. “I mean, you did break his arm. You can’t go back to the way things were.”

“The way things were,” Asami echoed. “And which way would that be? Back to a husband who prefers blondes? One who uses me to satisfy his family? Because I’m eager to get back to that.”

Mike came in, the way Mike tended to, as an insect on the wall hoping not to be noticed. He lowered himself onto the chaise by the fireplace and sipped some brown drink.

“You mean to divorce,” Yukiko said.

Deena never heard her sound so cold.

“I’m young,” Asami said. “And reasonably attractive, not to mention more than capable of earning my keep.”

“No one is challenging you,” Yukiko said. “Only your beliefs.”

Beliefs. Tanakas held onto those like stubborn leeches at times, sucking the life from conviction until conviction was all they had.

“Well, I say it’s time for some new rules,” Asami announced. “Our ‘beliefs,’ as you put them, would have neither Deena nor Lizzie in this family, let alone their children. I, for one, adore them all.”

Deena set down her tea.

“I don’t think—”

Yukiko held up a hand. “Asami is being intentionally provocative. It was her favorite pastime as a girl.”

Aunt Rhonda sipped her tea. It was the wrong thing to do.

“Tell her,” Asami said. “Tell her, Rhonda, that at times we must follow our own hearts, even if it’s down an unconventional path.”

“I’d rather not,” Rhonda said.

“Fine! Then tell her that men are trash.”

Across the room, Mike grinned.

“Asami,” June said in that perpetually soothing voice. “You’re upset. You don’t think that.”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

“What about the men in your family?”

Asami’s gaze fell on her mother.

“My otosan stepped out a time or two, didn’t he, Ma?”

Yukiko fell a shade past ghost.

Asami looked to Mike next.

“And he’s not exactly a saint. He’s been pining over his cousin’s wife for years.”

Deena’s face flushed, even as Mike’s darkened.

“So the others are then?” he said. “Tak? Kenji?”

Asami laughed.

“Tak a saint? Let his wife answer. She’ll know more about it than me.”

Deena couldn’t shake the feeling that they were teetering at the precipice.

“I…have no problems with Tak,” she said.

“No problems you know of,” Mike said from the corner.

Deena watched him wide-eyed.

“What?” she managed to whisper.

“Tell me this, Deena. And all you who feel Tak is a saint, feel free to help out. How’d you come by this house? Got a good deal on it, I’d bet.”

“Yes.”

The word felt very small in her chest, like the punctuation mark for a bigger thought.

“From a gorgeous girl named Aubree Daniels, that Tak just happened to know.” He paused, glare triumphant. “Look around you. Look at your family. Correction. Look at his family.”

She did. They wouldn’t look at her.

“Aubree was—”

“His girlfriend, Deena. His girlfriend for years. On again, off again, right back on again and loving it.”

He stopped to soak up her look of dawning horror.

“But, he said—”

“He lied. You’ll find he does that sometimes.”

“Michael—,” June said.

“You’ve seen her,” Mike said. “Seen her over the years, I’d bet. And you just happened on this house at the moment when Aubree’s leaving her husband? How do you think Tak knew it was for sale? How do you think Tak still knew her? Don’t you think it’s a little convenient that—”

No. No more of this.

Deena stumbled from the room. Walls pitched at her as she ran, the floor drew near, and at one point, she stopped to suck in great gasps of air.

But she would not cry.

Instead, she bled from heartbreak.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The room erupted.

“Why would you do that?”

“What were thinking?”

“It was cruel! So cruel!”

“All you two do is hurt each other! You and your cousin and your sick games!”

And Aunt Rhonda at the door, shouting after her niece.

Mike pushed past all of them, all of them hurling accusations. He didn’t care what they thought. He didn’t care what they thought they knew. He had the truth. All things worked to a purpose.

***
*

Tak broke into a run mere yards from home just as the rain fell in earnest. Still, the storm at home was worse. Asami attempting murder. Tony screwing girls in the garden. Deena’s secrets. Mike locked in the bathroom with his wife. It all had the feeling of standing at the center of a hurricane, while trying desperately not to get sucked in.

When the house came in sight, Tyson flung the door open and held it despite violent rain and wind. When Tak found him in the doorway, it was amidst a cannonade of thunder.

He pushed past him with thanks, peeled off his windbreaker, kicked away his sneakers, and shook the rain out his hair. A look down at his shirt had him sliding that sop off, too.

“Everything OK?” Tak said when he saw Tyson was still there.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I, uh, had something to say. Forgot, I guess.”

Tak hesitated, saw nothing further coming, and gave the guy a curt nod.

“Let me know if you remember,” he said and clamored upstairs to his bedroom.

Where he found Deena yanking his clothes from the closet.

“Uh, Dee?”

She whirled on him as if scalded. Never—not even in labor—had he seen her so…disheveled. Curls frizzed and half out of her ponytail, blouse askew, button missing. He looked up to see her lips curl back into a snarl.

She slapped him. It was like a branding iron to the face.

Whatever confusion he had ignited into fury.

“What the hell—”

“Aubree Daniels is your friend, huh? Just your friend, you whore!”

Of course. Had he really doubted that Mike would tell her?

“Deena, listen to me. I love you. The night I met you was the night I fell in love with you.”

“Oh, shut up.” She turned to the dresser drawers. Instead of snatching wildly, she rummaged, then stilled.

“If she’s your friend, then why do you need this?”

She chucked him in the face with a box of condoms. The corner sliced the slab of fresh directly beneath his eye, leaving him to wonder if his wife meant to disfigure him.

“Dee—”

“We don’t use condoms! We never have.”

“Baby, I know. I just—.”

He didn’t want to say more. Only, he needed to rein this in.

“Tony,” he confessed, with the feel of handing her 30 silver coins. “I get them for Tony.”

“Tony,” she echoed dully.

She looked wash worn, rung out, and he debated taking the words back.

“He’s eighteen,” Tak pushed on. “And I know we’ve encouraged him to wait—but it doesn’t change facts. He hasn’t waited, so I concentrate on making sure he’s safe.”

“Tony,” she said.

“Yes, Tony!”

“Then why are they here? In your drawer?”

God, he needed this conversation to end. Had he any leverage at all, any, he would have insisted on keeping things between him and his son.

“I give him a few at a time,” Tak said. “Just to try and gauge, you know.”

Deena stared.

“So you think this is OK?”

“I think what is OK?”

“Our son being sexually active.”

Tak eyed her. “I think it is what it is. That’s all.”

“His father had him when he was sixteen.”

“That has nothing to do with Tony.”

“That has everything to do with Tony!”

Tak shot her a look an exasperated look before going to retrieve a change of clothes. But the second he snatched up a shirt, his wife grabbed him by the wrist.

“Did you love her?”

Deena’s face was unreadable.

He shook his head. She released him and looked him over with the eyes of a skeptic.

“We were something in college, Deena. Never after. Never once. And I was honest with you when things started between us. Honest about how my life used to be.”

“But Mike said—”

He shot her a look.

“Never start a sentence that way. You’ll wind up looking stupid.”

Deena reared back, face bridled with anger, but Tak couldn’t help his irritated glare. She, of all people, should know to practice caution with his cousin.

An image of the two locked away together, rushed fire through his veins.

“You can’t blame this on your cousin,” Deena said. “These are your lies coming back for you. Now, tell me. How many times have you seen her since—since we’ve…”

She choked on the words, body rigid as she worked to swallow the last of them.

What her yelling hadn’t done, what the slap hadn’t, the almost-tears certainly did. They twisted Tak in the brutal winds of desperation, accosting him with his need to be her everything, all the while screaming he’d failed.

Again.

He’d been emptied out, hollowed to an aching cavern of pain. If she thought this—that he could be with another woman—then she thought nothing of him. Instead of anger, anguish rooted deep, carving a home in the rawness of his fears. She would not—could not—do this to him. The world had already claimed too much; it would not have his heartbeat, too.    

“Please,” Tak said only to realize he’d only thought the word.

“Please,” he tried again. The voice that found him wasn’t quite his own. 

His arms went around her, steady as she resisted, there when she relented. Chin resting on her head, Tak’s eyes closed, willing reason, understanding, and clarity to find its way in.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “I love you too much. It feels like I’m dying.”

He brushed the hair from her face and saw that his fingers shook. She wanted to leave; she wanted to set everything he loved ablaze. The realization, powerful as it was, made him cling to her, too terrified of what letting go would bring. 

“I want to believe you,” she said, voice muffled against his shirt. “It’s just that Mike—”

Tak withdrew. Cold.

“Mike?”

Danger coursed through his veins.

“Don’t you try to turn this on me. You’re the one who—”

“Who what? Had a girlfriend before he met his wife?”

“Except she wasn’t a girlfriend, was she?” Deena shoved away from him. “Because you didn’t have those. Just, a few hundred casual encounters.”

He closed his eyes. Told his hands not to pull out all his hair.

“Unbelievable,” he said. “After all these years, you wanna ride me about what I did in college? Why don’t you get pissed about my prom date, too? Were we together back then without me knowing it?”

“You keep trying to act like I’m crazy. But you’re the one who’s off if you expect me to believe we got a 23 bedroom, 15,000 square feet mansion for $7 million dollars, because you used to be a good lay.”

Fuck. He could put a fist through his cousin. He could kill him slow and enjoy it. 

“Fine, Deena,” Tak said. “You win. You want to believe—”

“I don’t want to believe anything.”

“No, you do. Because it’s what your boyfriend told you. What he do, whisper it in your ear while you were locked away in that cupboard?”

“Oh, I was waiting for that! For you to make that nothing into something.”

“Nothing?” Tak yelled. “You sneak into the bathroom with my cousin, a guy you know wants to screw you. You lock the door, get caught, and somehow, that’s nothing. But I’m on trial for a girl I dated when fanny packs were hot.”

“We live in her house!” Deena screamed.

But she could scream at herself.

Enough, Tak thought, and stormed out the door.