The Saints of the Cross (8 page)

His eyes ravish my body as he pulls off his jacket and kicks his shoes aside. He unbuttons his pants and shirt and tosses them to the nearby chair, as I bite my lip in anticipation. He places his hands on my thighs and moves my legs apart, sliding himself into place over me. He kisses my forehead first, then my nose, and finally, tenderly, my lips. The lemon-tart taste lingers in his mouth, and I pull him closer to me, feeling his weight and heat over my entire body as I kiss him back. My breathing has increased to a level that is borderline frantic—fast, shallow, and needy.

“Are you sure, Eva?” he whispers in my ear. His face is flushed red, and his entire body is tensed with excitement.

“Yes! I am abso—” It’s all I can get out before a sudden wave of nausea overtakes me. I slap my hand to my mouth, gagging.

“Eva? Estás bien?” Javier says as he rolls off me.

Shaking my head, I jump up and race to the bathroom, hand over mouth. I’ve just made it to the toilet when I start heaving. The nausea is relentless. I vomit three times before I can tell Javier to leave. He’s kneeling at the toilet next to me and rubbing my back, looking worried and not at all disgusted.

“I’m going to get Marie. She’s a nurse. She will know what to do,” he says and hurries out the door.

How completely humiliating! But I can’t stop him or argue with him about bringing a total stranger into this disturbing scene right out of
The Exorcist
. I’m too busy tossing the seafood.

Javier and Marie return within a few minutes. Marie runs to the sink and retrieves a cold compress for my head.

“Did you drink alcohol?” she asks, without a trace of judgment in her voice.

“No,” Javier answers for me as I shake my head and release another round of vileness.

“Did she eat something she hasn’t eaten before?” Marie asks, as she pulls back my hair and secures it with a clip just as I lose another bit of dinner.

“Oy—” I nod in affirmation to her question, but can’t get the entire word out before puking again.

“The oysters!” Javier finishes for me as he smacks his hand to his forehead. “I’m sorry, Corazón. I should’ve asked if you’d ever had them, before putting them on the menu.”

“She must be allergic to them. That would explain why she is so violently ill and you are not, Señor Cruz. The fact that you ate the same oysters and are okay tells me it’s not food poisoning,” Marie concludes.

“What do we do?” Javier looks terrified, which makes me even more alarmed.

“Javier, please leave. I don’t want you to see me like this,” I manage to say before another wave of nausea hits me.

“No, Eva.”

“It’s okay. I’ll take care of her. I’ll give her a shot of Benadryl to help with the reaction. It will pretty much knock her out for the rest of the night,” Marie says as she helps me to my feet. “Can you walk back to the bed?”

“I’ll carry her,” he says. Before I can object, Javier scoops me up and carries me to the bed, carefully propping me up against a stack of pillows that Marie has gathered. She hands me a small, white bowl.

“Here’s an emesis basin for you, Evie. If you have to vomit, use that. I’m going to go get your Benadryl shot,” she says and hurries toward the bathroom. Javier, who’s sitting next to me on the edge of the bed, pulls the blankets up to cover my exposed body. He gives me a warm smile and brushes my cheek with the back of his hand.

“I’m so sorry I ruined our last night together,” I say, beginning to sob and gag at the same time.

“Eva, please don’t think that. It’s not your fault that you’re allergic to oysters. It’s completely my fault that you are so sick.” He leans forward and kisses my feverish forehead. “Here.” He replaces the cold washcloth where his lips touched. Marie returns from the bathroom wielding a syringe tipped with the longest needle I’ve ever seen.

“I’m going to give her fifty milligrams of Benadryl,” she says to Javier. Directing her attention to me, she continues, “That should help more than anything, but you will become very drowsy.”

“Anything to make this stop,” I say in a tiny voice. Javier is staring wide-eyed at the needle, his face pale.

“Are you allergic to anything?” Marie asks as she swabs my left shoulder with an alcohol pad.

“Oysters, apparently.” I give her a weak smile.

“Any drugs that you know of?” She maintains her professionalism, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips.

“Just penicillin. I broke out in hives from it when I was five.” I retch into the bowl, and it’s nothing but bile. My stomach has nothing left to give, yet the nausea is still not subsiding.

“Here, I’ll dispose of the puke,” Javier says, grabbing the empty bowl and rising up. “I can’t watch this. I hate needles.” He heads to the bathroom with the bowl in hand, not looking back.

“So much for el machismo,” I call after him. Marie and I roll our eyes at each other and laugh, which makes my stomach muscles scream in protest.

“Okay, Evie, this will only hurt for a second.”

She jabs the needle into my arm, and—
ouch
!—she wasn’t kidding. That hurt like hell. She quickly withdraws the needle and drops it into a small, red container marked
Sharps
.

“You will start to feel better in just a few minutes. You’ll go to sleep and wake up feeling fine. I promise.” Marie tucks a stray curl behind my ear with a soft, manicured hand and gives me a kind, reassuring smile. Something in her touch reminds me of my mother, and the resulting sensation pains me a thousand times more than that Benadryl shot ever could. Javier returns, and I hear him thank Marie at the door. He crawls into the bed, wrapping me up in his arms, and I burrow into him. Soon, my eyes become heavy, and I drift off to a fitful sleep with thoughts of my mother weighing heavily on my mind.

CHAPTER 5

I open my eyes and I am transported back in time to our tiny house in Italy. My six -year-old self is sitting on the wood floor of the cramped living room, and playing with what was then my favorite doll. It takes a few seconds, but I realize I’m dreaming and brace myself for the inevitable. Emma and Ethan are babies, asleep in their crib, which is tucked in a corner of the room.

I glance around the small, wood-paneled space, which I always loved. It holds fond memories of my last days with my mother. But in my dream, the beloved space is dark, and the air is stagnant. The crashing sound of plates breaking snaps my attention toward the kitchen. I can hear my parents’ voices, but can’t make out what they’re saying.

“It’s okay, Susie,” I tell my doll. “She’ll stop soon.”

I turn back toward the voices and feel myself being sucked down the hallway and into the kitchen. My mother stands across the room, backed into a corner, her hair wild and her face smudged with a mixture of makeup, tears, and sweat. She’s holding a butcher knife in her right hand, her black eyes wide with fear.

“Mia, put the knife down. It’s okay, sweetheart,” my father says, his hands up defensively in front of him. He stands just outside of arms’ reach from her.

“Why don’t you believe me, Nash?” Mom wails, her face twisted and tormented. “I told you, they want to take them. They’re coming to take them away. We have to stop them.”

“Honey, listen. It was just a dream. That’s all,” Dad reassures in a soothing voice while extending a nonthreatening hand out to her. “A very bad dream.”

“No!” Mom screeches, pulling away from him. “You think I’m crazy. You’ll see that I was right when our children come up missing or worse . . . dead!”

Suddenly, I’m being sucked through a swirling, black vortex that deposits me at a graveside funeral. I stand at the foot of an open grave. A priest, reciting the funeral mass, stands at the headstone, which bears my mother’s name. Dad, dressed in his military whites, stands stoic and alone to the side. I lean over and peer down into the grave—it’s empty. My mind reels with confusion, just as a ghostly voice whispers in my ear:
There was no funeral
.

I awake with a start, gasping for air. My eyes dart around the room and relief floods me when I remember I’m on the
Maltese Falcon
. Javier is sleeping in a chair across from the bed, his long legs and arms sprawled out over the chair’s edges. I turn to the bedside clock.
Nine thirty!

“Javier!” I yell, throwing a pillow at him as I jump out of bed.

“Qué?” he wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. “What’s going on? Are you feeling better?”

“Javier, get up! You forgot to set the alarm. I’m going to miss the flight!” I race to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and brush my teeth.

“Good, maybe you’ll just stay here with me,” he calls from the bedroom.

“I hope you’re kidding. Now get ready!” I snap as I return to the bedroom. Javier has already managed to put on a pair of black jeans and a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt. I pull on jeans shorts and a tank top, then grab my suitcase and begin frantically shoving my belongings into it with total disregard for garment care—sorry, Matthew Williamson. “Oh my God, my dad’s going to kill me!”

“Calm down, Eva. I promise I will get you to the airport by eleven.” I feel his arms wrap around my waist, and my tense body relaxes with his touch. “Seems like I’m always telling you to calm down.”

“Oh, please. I’m the very definition of tranquility,” I huff over my shoulder. But he’s right; handling stressful situations with grace is so not my forté.

After I finish packing, we head up to the deck where we say our goodbyes to the crew, and I profusely thank Marie for helping me last night. Jean-Luc and another steward take our bags to the car, while we gather finger-foods to eat on the drive. This time I stick to bagels and cream cheese, nothing too exotic or nausea provoking.

We drive to the airport without stopping. I sit quietly while The Stone Roses blare on the car’s elaborate sound system. After about twenty minutes of silence from me, Javier turns off the music.

“Are you okay?” he asks, looking at me through his mirrored aviators. I can’t see his eyes, but I can tell by the tone of his voice that he’s worried.

“I’m just scared,” I confess. He grabs my hand and entwines our fingers, then pulls my hand up to kiss the diamond heart I now wear on my left ring finger.

“I’ll always be here for you, Eva,” he offers.

“I know, Javi. It’s just that . . . I had a horrible nightmare about my mother, and I don’t know where it came from.” The dream seemed real, less like a nightmare and more like a memory of something that truly happened. I’ve never before had a dream involving the rest of my family. My nightmares usually consisted of just my mother trying to kill me.

“What was your dream about?”

“My mother had gone insane. She was holding a knife and saying that someone was trying to take her kids. She insisted that we would all end up dead. My dad was there, and he didn’t believe her. It was more like a memory than a dream. The look in her eyes scared me. But I swear that when she was living, I’d never seen her like that, ever. At the end of the dream, I was standing over her grave, and it was empty.”

“It was just a nightmare, nothing more,” Javier says.

“I hope so,” I reply with a shudder. Javier strokes my cheek with the back of his hand and gives me a reassuring smile.

“You can call me anytime. Okay?”

I nod and hold his hand to my face. My heart begins to ache with that awful, unbearable pain you can only feel when you lose someone you love. I’ve only experienced this agony once before, when my father came home and told me that mother had died. Now my heart is splintering because I’m about to lose the only man I’ve ever loved in my life, besides my father. I inhale a deep, steadying breath in an attempt to suppress the panic rising up from deep inside me. A familiar sense of abandonment begins to creep its way into my heart and mind, and I know I can’t blame Javier for that. I’m the one leaving him behind, not the other way around. He should be the one feeling abandoned; but if he is, he’s doing an excellent job of hiding it.

“We could always just run away together. Just take off now and not even go to the airport.” My voice is full of desperation, but I know there’s no hope for that scenario.

“Corazón.”

“I mean it, Javier. I’ll be eighteen in October. I don’t want to be away from you. I don’t want to lose you.” Panic is overruling any good sense I have left. My mind is numb with fear and anxiety. Without a doubt, I’d run away with Javier, if only he’d agree to it.

“And your father would have the entire US military out looking for us. I don’t think I’d stand a chance against their Black Ops,” he says, an empty smile turning up one corner of his mouth. “Besides, you have to finish school. I want the mother of my children to be educated.”

“It doesn’t make it any easier, knowing that we’ll be together again next year.” I bury my face in my hands. Javier places a reassuring hand on the back of my neck and pulls me closer to him. I admit the worst to him: “I don’t think I can do this. I have to hold it together, and I don’t think I can do it.” Tears are stinging my eyes.

“You can do it, Eva. I know that you can. You’re the strongest girl I’ve ever met. I’ll come visit you in DC as soon as I can.”

We arrive at 10:45 at the terminal in Seville for my flight to Heathrow, where we’ll catch the connecting flight to DC. According to the ticket, boarding is to begin at 11:00. I’ve already received three text messages from my father reminding me of the time. Javier jerks the Mercedes to a stop at the curb outside the terminal.

I snatch my luggage out of the backseat, and we sprint for the gate, hand in hand. We whiz past baggage check and hastily cast off my luggage to the attendant. Two officers try to stop Javier at the security checkpoint because he doesn’t have a boarding ticket. He pulls his identification from his wallet and says something to them in Spanish, and they begrudgingly wave him through with annoyed expressions on their faces.

We arrive at my gate with only minutes to spare. Grandma Winnie is standing by the desk, tapping her foot as she always does when her patience is wearing thin. The twins are slouched in seats, each with their iPod earbuds in place—Emma likely listening to her favorite Emo band, and Ethan absorbed in obnoxious rap music. Their sun-bleached, platinum hair stands out like a sore thumb in a sea of raven-haired Spaniards. Dad is nowhere in sight. The three of them glare at us as we run up, panting from our mad dash across the airport.

“There you are!” Grandma Winnie exclaims. “I thought you were going to miss the flight.”

“What took so long?” Emma asks, clearly hoping the question will elicit a response that might result in my grounding.

“None of your business,” I snap at her. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’ll be right back.” Grandma Winnie glances nervously at her watch. “He’s too claustrophobic for tiny airplane toilets.”

A friendly female voice announces overhead: “Flight two-one-one, departing for London–Heathrow, now boarding at Gate Five. Please have boarding passes at the ready. Now boarding first class.” I listen as the same voice repeats the message in several different languages. I turn to Javier, who’s standing at my side, and although he’s smiling down at me, his face is pure sadness. I move to him and snuggle my face on his chest. He wraps his arms around me and holds me with an intensity I’ve never felt before. I move my arms up under his leather jacket, pull him as close to me as humanly possible, and inhale his scent one last time.