Note from author: WELL! Edgefire, I thought of ALL your ideas there and then just continued writing and I couldn't stop despite all the real life work, so here you go my dear! RHFan, LOL I do love Todd shocking people! And PJ, you inspired me with the glass of wine ;) I hope you all enjoy, thank you ALL for reading. You truly make my days sweet.
Caged: Reclamation
Chapter 26
Never in her life did Téa consider herself aloof or secretive or shut-off from people she loved. Scratch a little, love her a little, and her vulnerabilities would overflow. Not anymore. Completely unreachable now. She knew it. Couldn't help it. Even Gloria had a hard time talking to her, a kind-hearted check-in text reliably getting a snippy I'm-fine response. Empty. Devoid of emotion or appreciation that someone cared. Rolon barely looked at her, stalking the farmhouse in a constant state of disgust. R.J. called every week and left long voicemail messages, hurt and worried though knowing she wouldn't answer. Same with Carlotta, Blair… even Starr. She couldn't begin to think about the fury she got from Jedediah.
Thank God for Lucia and Reese and Viki who never wavered in their readiness for her. Quick to hug or give her a kiss or smile at her when she walked in the door. No judgment. She felt guilty and yet…
She poured another glass from the wine bottle on the coffee table. Lucia's birthday party was tonight. Turning double digits! And she couldn't bring herself to go, to see anyone. Couldn't bear the polite conversation, the clapping for cake, the happy faces, the embraces, the brightly lit rooms. But above all, she couldn't look her daughter in the eyes and see the knowledge of life's disappointment there one more time. At the turning of the double-digits. Lucia had learned that love could not keep a person alive. That sometimes all the praying in the world gets you nothing but a death notice. And mom… can't fix that. She hated being a mother who could not fix what happened to Lucia's precious father. She hated that Lucia lost her child's soul at such a young age. Like Téa had… like Starr had… like Todd had. Different for each and yet the same kind of lost innocence.
They'd soon forget her absence from the one party. She had shut her phone off some time ago so she'd get no more texts in all caps. She told Viki she wouldn't be there, business to attend. She'd make it up to Lucia over time. That was enough. Enough for Viki to come up with an appropriate enabling excuse.
She gazed across the dim room at a dainty chair that belonged in a museum, fine sunflower-painted fabric with matching seat cushion, four delicate exposed wooden legs. Without prompting she could see him evaluating the piece, trying to get himself comfy in those ragged jeans he liked, all that ink he'd accrued in prison and after clashing with the flora behind him, beneath him, all sorts of meaning in those tattoos... not a one was for fun or art's sake… then those stormy light eyes would find her.
$5,000 for this? I can't even like… stretch out on it. What were you thinking, Delgado? I hate it. Like right now hate.
She found herself chuckling, the ghost vanishing into the ether. Maybe he drifted to their home with the wrap-around porch and the thick imagination-inspiring forest in the back. When she had Lucia, she promised to insulate her from Todd's scorched earth way of living. God, she tried. But then he came home from Statesville and the fire and smoke were impossible to restrain. His LOVE was impossible to buffer, his madness impossible to hide. And in that chaos, Lucia grew to understand far more than other children of her same age. Was it the war, mami, his war? Most similar to Starr because of course… they were both Todd's daughters. She had that same cloud of sadness or cynicism or something that Starr carried, a rough outer layer that dusted what should have been childhood bubbliness. The two had grown close over the past year (my god, almost a YEAR he's been gone) partly because of that great disappointment in life.
Todd, the great disappointment, the greatest breathtaking adventure ever...
And it wasn't really his fault… not really. Yes, she hated him. Absolutely, fucking deeply, a loathing that pulled every bit of energy she had… YES. It was his choice to blow himself up, to blow up their lives… and yet, she understood to some degree but not in a way that she could distill into words that could be translated for Lucia's sake. Truth was she thought about it every day, every hour, free of the hate, unclouded. A thought. A bird flitting in and then out.
Why?
You had your children at home. Even if I was dead. Even if you had lost Esperanza.
Why, amor, why?
His heart had been paralyzed at such a young age, she usually concluded. He never felt he was good enough for the children. Death always teased him, always stood there in the day's doorway, the scythe ready, swinging for practice. Is today the day, Todd Manning? Will today be your last? She wiped her face of the insistent tears, the ones that wouldn't quit since remembering that morning in the shower. Since remembering just how deeply and freely he loved… sometimes.
She didn't even think about the meeting today, so consumed with sorrow, the machine she operated, the gears she shifted into high gear. Self-driving, verdad? Just lie back and watch the road fly by, a murder of crows exploding in a burst of blackened wings and flight.
Téa had earlier listened as the old farmhouse got cleared, listened to cars drive away, watched the dusk turn to night as she drained the wine bottle. Earlier than normal. Her dramatic withdrawal probably spurred the premature closure of business. She checked the time now, nearing seven already. The party most likely had started. People arriving. Lucia probably bouncing with anticipation. Hopefully she had moved on from Téa's absence. It wasn't the first time Téa had opted out of an important event.
She sipped the last of the red, an expensive French pinot she had no taste for, just a bottle she grabbed one afternoon shopping for a gift for Lucia. Yes, she personally purchased a gift, a step towards remediating her usual dereliction. She bought a necklace, an old fashioned locket, an antique, a real antique that cost loads, where Lucia could keep a picture of her choice close to her heart. She always wanted one when she was a girl Lucia's age.
Her tears had finally evaporated, the well lessened though she knew it was an ever-filling well so they could always start again. She turned and dragged the iPad next to her, still gripping the half-empty Waterford crystal. Clicked on the app that allowed her to see all the security camera shots. She stretched out on the couch, shoes off, dress askew, silk wrinkled from lying immobile for the past two or so hours. She drew her knees up to rest the tablet on her lap. She clicked through the silent black and white images, all kinds of angles, in the house, outside. The property had definitely been cleared. The absence of activity struck her… the house was an empty house.
Nothing but ghosts.
Click, click, click, click…
She flipped through them quickly but then there was someone actually. She went back, click, click, click. Stopped at the front door camera that captured the full entranceway, the open space hugged by the back and forth staircase that took a person all the way to the top floor, the space one could peer down into from the railing on the top floor.
And there he was, watching for intruders.
Keeping guard.
Mark…
She figured it was him because of his build, that narrow, almost lanky musculature. Yet solid. She also knew he was on schedule for tonight. Victor never sat…he paced the property. Mark usually paced too though.
Yet there he was, sitting on a chair he must have dragged from the main showcase conference room on the first floor. A high-backed leather executive chair. In fact it was the "head of the table" executive chair, the one SHE used to make a point to anyone who visited that SHE was in charge. And dragging that particular chair was an act that seemed very out of character, not something she'd expect of Mark. He knew how fussy Téa was about the place. He usually played hall monitor in fact, getting other workers to pick up trash or refill the coffee or close a door…
She dropped the iPad and reached to the floor and fumbled to grab glasses out of her purse-yes, she found lately she needed glasses to see anything really up close, goddamn forty-and sniffed and adjusted the readers and had to put the Waterford back on the table, nearly missing the edge of the table, catching the near mess in the nick of time and then making sure she placed the glass on the solid wood and not air. She sat with her feet on the floor, hunched over the iPad totally glued to the image on the screen of the upset, barely-in-control, hard-muscled, soap smelling…
Mark.
He still wore the black balaclava which was unusual being that he normally abandoned it when guarding her at the farmhouse. No need to wear it. He still wore the thin jacket and black canvas pants that were more or less the uniform of all her guards. But his shoes… they were different. She studied the image as close as she could get. She hadn't noticed earlier. Hadn't looked of course. But yes, definitely, yes.
Black boots.
An oddity. She overheard him once talking to the other guards who had made fun of his expensive trainers and he had snarked back, if I'm gonna be fast, bam bam bam, like Michael Jordan, him gonna dress m' feet. That was when she learned he was actually Jamaican and that he tended to downplay the Patois around everybody else. He sounded like a newly transplanted Posse member at that moment. She clicked away and clicked clicked clicked through the security camera shots again, thinking maybe her imagination was playing games with her, but nothing changed once she landed again at the foyer camera.
Mark.
He sat… legs apart, stretched outwards, leaning back, eyes fixed out the front door. His elbows rested on the chair's arms, one hand up though, fingers thoughtfully caressing the edges of the face-mask. She squeezed her eyes shut as if to clear them… but there he was… reclining like a large… hungry... waiting…
...jungle cat.
Like a King of the wild.
Come on, come through that door… come see what I got for ya'. Meow.
She tossed the iPad to the other side of the couch. The wine must be stronger than she thought. She wanted to see what she wanted. He was dead. Fully dead. Cremated. If he was alive he'd BE HERE. She stood up and without any sense of who could hear or the value of things, she took the glass of wine and threw it against the windows, screaming wordlessly, the $500 crystal bursting into a million pieces. Then she collapsed back on the couch, raging at him once again.
How could you?! How could you do that to all of us?! WE LOVED YOU! YOU WERE ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH!
She roused herself to her feet and stormed to the single bedroom, a small bedroom, and threw open the doors to the closet where she had stored the urn. She brought it here because Jedediah had been looking at it and she had caught him and didn't want him touching it because touching it made it real and permanent and… GOD!
The box was heavy and she pressed it to her chest, the edges unforgiving and digging into skin, as she walked back into the great room and flipped on a light in the kitchen area and then dropped the metal box the color of slate with his name on the plate smack onto the kitchen table for four in case she ever wanted company which was never.
She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at it. She needed to see it.
Fuck you, you bastard, you miserable, rotten, narcissictic, motherfucking ASSHOLE.
She wondered suddenly if Mark had heard her. Wondered if he jumped to his black boots and was coming up to check on her. Certainly SOUNDS carry. Certainly SOMEONE heard her.
Storming back to the couch, she picked up the iPad and it lit up andshe clicked clicked clicked until the camera landed on the foyer and there he was, sitting on that chair, reclining on that chair just like before except… his eyes were up, head tilted upwards, as if looking up the stairwell. Elbows still rested only now both hands were at his face, steepling fingers. He had heard her and did nothing.
Curious indeed.
Out of character indeed.
She couldn't take it. She stomped to the front door, threw it open, and went to the railing and looked down.
And he… he waved at her, fingers in the air, two fingers running.
"You okay… mí Reina?" he called up.
The raspy voice carried up the darkened floors and fell gently against her like rain, mí Reina strong in its Spanish pronunciation, laced with a willowy thread of sarcasm. She leaned on the railing, eyes stuck on him. He didn't move, just reclined, eyes on her. Up through the space hugged by the back and forth staircase.
"What are you doing?" she griped, swinging the full weight of an irritated employer's disgust.
"Being a bodyguard, like you… um…" A pause. A quiet huff. Then.. "like you hired me to be."
"I screamed...someone might have been killing me… and yet you're still sitting there."
"Was someone killing you? 'Cause you… um… you're talkin' to me… like someone who isn't killed."
He STILL wasn't moving, STILL leaning back, one elbow and forearm fully resting now, the other hand in the air, casually moving, accompanying his words as he talked to her. The way he stretched one leg out, the other slightly bent, the way he sat slightly to the side… unnerved her. So much she didn't have an answer to his asshole-like, un-Mark-like snarky comeback.
He seemed to chuckle or maybe not and then he finally and slowly pulled himself to his feet and turned and crossed his arms, eyes firmly on her. Head tilted to watch her high above him.
"Are you okay, mí Reina?"
"I'm not YOUR queen."
"Whose queen are you then?"
"Where is Mark and did you kill him?"
Nothing, no response, just looking upwards from the darkness, through it, to her. She was the ghost now, she thought, staring back at him. She should spit and let the droplet fall to his feet. She stayed leaning, eyes holding onto him. Confused, really. Why should he remind her so much of… him? It wasn't right. She didn't understand it.
"Don't you have a party to go to?" he said.
"How do you know?"
"I know everything. About you."
She straightened. How dare he. "What I do or don't do is none of your business."
"Isn't it, mí Reina?"
She glared, disoriented by his talk, then turned on her bare feet and went back into the apartment, slamming the door. Who WAS that fucker? That was not Mark. This she knew. But she also knew that whoever it was had the approval of Rolon to be here. Of Tony. Of the actual Mark. He would not just NOT be here. He was on schedule! She flashed back to the day, to Mark guarding her at the meeting. He'd been so… strong in his presence. The men in the room… well… they backed off hard at the sight of him. At his… un-Mark-like attitude. And he did not hold back in criticizing her plan.
Are you insane?!
She went to the kitchen and stared at the urn. She brought it here because Jed had been nosing around it. A lot.
Curious.
Maybe I am insane.
She opened it. Lifted the plastic bag full of grey ashes. It simply existed. About four to five pounds. It didn't swing or move. It was just a bag of gray ashy-looking sand.
She tore open the plastic and dumped the grey mess onto the table. Stared at the pile that looked like a small, easily destroyed mountain.
"You stupid stupid bastard."
She had seen ashes before, the remains of a body heated to the point where everything is reduced to bone-like matter, where it's crushed into this bag of sand. Rubble. Because it wasn't ash. People called it ash but that implied something soft and easily dispersible in a light pleasing breeze that ruffled a weeping mourner's hair while violins played. No, it was much more like… sand. Heavy, hurtful, sand. She stared at it for what seemed to be a long time. She then put her hand on it and collapsed the hill… to flatten it… to spread it out on the table. Tears ran down her face and she moved her hand in a caressing fashion…
"You didn't let anyone hold your hand in your last moments, didn't allow anyone the privilege of saying goodbye. You deserved at least-"
She jerked back her hand. There was something in the hard unforgiving pile. Cold, metallic. She held her hand close to her body as if she had touched a snake. Stared at the disturbed grey. Then put her hand back and pulled out what looked like a rather largish surgical staple.
A staple?
She began to sift through the ashes again, sifting like a fevered archeologist, and when she finished her search she had pulled out no less than eight metal staples. She breathed hard and stared at the darkened pieces of surgical devices now separated from the pile of ashes.
Something… was WRONG.
No… impossible… no… no…
Her mind immediately flew to Jedediah and his lengthy trip to Cuba, near an entire month. THAT little trip that came and went with nary a word on what it was about, why it happened, and what, if any, was the result.
She counted the staples. Eight. She wasn't an expert in medical devices and what happened with them in cremation though she'd seen her share of devices AND ashes in her life as a trial lawyer though not together. Blended. In the United States, any material the cremation process couldn't dissolve was removed, usually in fact, medical devices. They were sometimes removed prior to cremation though sometimes they could not be. And those medical devices that couldn't be removed like permanent staples used to knit a broken bone were drawn away from the remains with magnets so the loved one received pure ashes.
Todd, however, was cremated in Havana which may not have the same… devotion… to a process. Cremation wasn't even a booming business in Havana thanks to a dominating culture of Christian traditional burial.
Todd fucking Manning had no staples in that god-forsaken body of his.
Téa stepped back slowly from the mess on the table.
No. Impossible.
She stood still… NOT POSSIBLE!
She heard a knock on the door and she spun in place. Swallowed hard, her heart pounding. Jed, Jed, Jedidiah Chant had been awfully cool when he returned from his little vacation, only just returned, but he was also wildly angry at her over her maternal failings and the only thing he said to her when he got back was that it had been "uneventful." She had watched him step out of her kitchen, bag of chips in hand, no lift in his step, no joy there, just solid Jed-like pissed-off-ness that had no bottom or border. He had no intention of forgiving her for her conduct and as a punctuation to his punishment of silence she had called out, "That's fine, Jedediah! JUST FINE!"
A real clever bitch she was. They hardly spoke since.
The knock happened again, a light careful knock. She shook her head and walked to the door and opened it, Mark on her lips except...
Omar, the basement security guard, stood in the doorway, a traditional security guard's uniform firmly in place, black canvas work shoes at the bottom. One of the younger MK members she hired ages ago. She huffed and looked beyond him, around him, a look of exasperated perplexity on her face.
"Omar… what is it?" she snapped.
In Spanish he said, "Señora? I heard noise up here as I came in. Is everything all right? Can I check your rooms?"
"Where's Mark? Have you been here all night?"
He glanced down, sheepish, "I was late. I'm just coming in. Haven't seen Mark, no. Haven't seen anyone."
"He was downstairs- I was just -"
"He is not there now. He is probably walking the perimeter. He does that sometimes."
Téa closed her eyes and waved him off. "Whatever. Sure, take a look. So you're comfortable. Took you long enough to come up here."
"I am sorry. I wasn't sure I actually heard anything…"
"Whatever."
Omar went in, saying thank you, and Téa immediately went to the railing. Looked down. The chair was there but no Mark. She stood there until Omar came back out, said his goodbyes and headed down the back and forth stairs. She watched him all the way until he disappeared into a hallway that led to the basement stairs.
The place resumed its quietness and she checked her watch. She should go to this goddamn party. Her beautiful girl turning double-digits and where was she? Her limbs wouldn't move though. She stared into the darkness, eyes lingering on the chair, on the memory of Mark reclining like a lion, lazily waiting for his prey.
And then she saw him.
From the opposite side of the room, the opposite side from where Omar had gone, Mark emerged from the shadows, moving into the visible space to look up at her with his arms crossed, booted feet apart. She could barely make him out in the little bit of light that reached him. He stood deliberately beyond the light, leaving the empty chair to take it all.
"You wanna ride to the party?" he said.
"I can't."
"Your daughter would love you there, I'm sure."
"You are nobody to me."
"I'm a driver. I can drive you."
"I hate you."
The words fell down the stairs through the unlit space like ghostly drops from another time. They echoed because the old farmhouse didn't have cozy carpets or cozy chairs or cozy couches or the soft flesh of people throughout. The hate was leaden and hit the floor like prison cuffs. The guard dipped his head and she couldn't tell if he was laughing or feeling dejected from the wet barb.
"Why?" he asked, head not quite tilted enough to lay eyes on her.
"Because you left me."
He didn't respond. He stayed frozen, statue like, eyes ahead and unseeing. Or so it seemed from all these floors up. After a minute he dug into his pocket and pulled out keys. He jingled them.
"Your car awaits, mí Reina."
"No."
She turned on her feet once more and retreated into her apartment to sit at the kitchen table for four, as if, staring at the staples and the ashes that were spread out, graceless like a naked person spread-eagled on a coroner's table, all dignity destroyed, apart now from the secure confines of the urn. Her body shook with sorrow, regret, guilt, god, all the ways she had drifted from her original path of being a great lawyer, a change-maker, a savior, a devotee to love, motherhood, professionalism, ethics…
A wife.
She found herself weeping again and it was an endless thing that encompassed her, the crying that might not ever end, the source a forever fruitful body that she had yet to learn to truly control, and in that hopeless, pathetic wine-soaked display, she heard footsteps and settled those tears, listening to the rhythmic scrape the steps made because she had left her door open. She heard the heavy boots on the wooden floor and then heard him enter the apartment and then she felt the stroking of her hair, a hand moving downwards and a whispered, I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry.
She didn't want to turn because he wasn't real. It wasn't him. When she turned nobody was there, as she expected. He was not caressing her hair and he was not apologizing.
Not directly behind her, that is. No. Instead, Mark was leaning in the doorway, keys in hand.
"I'll take you."
She looked at the casual way he stood in the open door, the wood frame holding him up. She remembered Todd leaning that way in Sylvia's house in La Habana, shirtless, beautiful, alive, in a world of hurt because she had shot him back home in their kitchen. Because he could not understand how she could have done that to him.
And in that second she realized a why. Why not? She had wanted him dead. The shooting had sucked the last bit of reason to stay on earth, to stay alive. Even at the cusp of him coming home, even before the actual bombing. For days and days he had basically told her he planned on dying along with Manuel Caro. He had no intention of coming home. Her dying in that taxi had just been an excuse that would make sense to everyone else.
Why should he stay alive when she had long ago told him with two bullets he was NOT worthy of keeping around for his children? That SHE no longer believed he was worth saving.
Fin.
That's all folks!
"I can't go," she said quietly. "I am nobody's mother."
He breathed and sniffed and tilted his head as he scanned the darkness of the apartment. He straightened and walked towards her and she noticed a slight limp but dismissed it out of hand, a similarity for sure, but then he was towering over her and all observation was gone. He lay a hand on her shoulder, the touch fragile, barely there, and said, "Come on," softly and airy and encouragingly. "You're a mother, feel it or not. Gotta play the…" He didn't finish, the words trailing off as he pulled her to her feet by the arm, using the same fragile touch, barely there, and she let him.
She had no energy to stop him and she simply cried from grief, from guilt, because she had once loved a man so much that she had thought she could kill the bad part of him without touching the good and in that didn't she become everything she hated, through to this day? She had played judge, jury, executioner. She gave him nothing to hang on to in his last moments. She had taken the last bit of motivation to stay alive months before, in his very own house.
Why blow himself up?
Why NOT?
"I can't, I can't, I can't…"
He carried her at that, lifting her and cradling her, squeezing her to him as he slowly walked to the bedroom. He laid her down and got to his knees at the side of the bed and just rested his head at her side, arm across her belly, holding her as she cried, as she drew from that endless pool in a deep forest she never asked for, a forest she thought maybe she'd been born into.
Todd crouched at her side, frozen at her side as she unleashed her sorrow he knew she'd been keeping in for all these months he'd been gone. He knew that simply unmasking himself would not heal Téa's torment, because the grief wasn't just for him. She carried it for a million things he couldn't change or fix. He knew this pain so well.
He'd been grieving his own lost soul since he lay beneath a spinning fan as his father tore into him and cut out his heart and ate it, swallowed it, leaving nothing behind. A million times he opened his eyes to a morning sun, alive again, only to wreck the day with his heartless body. A million memories of destroyed promises and promises kept.
Oh he kept promises all right. Promises of revenge, of hate, of rewarding all those who loved him with bloodless empty life.
He stood over her, and she curled into a ball and cried only now it was a moan and he couldn't stop himself from getting on the bed and lying down to hold her tightly, tight, tight, tight like she had done to him, like he had so often begged her to do, and he did it to keep her from flying apart because he knew that feeling so well.
God, just squeeze me with your body to keep me here, to keep me alive, god, please tell me there is something to keep breathing for…tight, tight, tighter...
He grunted with the effort, speechless, words stolen from him, the dropped words his brain wouldn't allow him to say, so many fucking words that were useless anyway, yeah?
Sorry sorry sorry sorry.
What a fucking joke!
He moved his leg over hers, pulling her even tighter to him. How small she was in his arms, against his body, and yet how solid and strong and so very much alive. He smiled at that, because wasn't grief but another form of love? To feel such sorrow is only possible if you love.
Yeah, that included himself. Rico. Brandy. His own mother. So much love and so much sorrow.
He stroked her cheek with the back of his folded fingers until she stopped her tears, until she lay in silence like a flower fallen away from an arrangement. A clock ticked in his head, the minutes turning into an hour. He imagined the birthday party across town in the mansion of a house they shared. The people milled through the kitchen, the living room, streamers strung and balloons hanging and his perfect Lucia with shining brown hair opened gifts, a lollipop in her mouth, and hazel-colored eyes searching the room for her mother and father only they aren't there, just ghosts to the side, smiling at her, nothing but gossamer, easily dispersed into the air like ashes in a breeze.
Ashes.
That was what was all over the table. He sighed and stayed, holding her as tightly as he could.
Oh mí Reina, mí preciosa, mí Téa bonita.
Fucking ashes. Not even his.
"What do you want?" he finally said quietly, giving up the pretense, impulsively, just like everything else he'd ever done. "I'll do whatever you want." He spoke with his own voice. Undisguised. Unhidden. Words spilling his brain now didn't corrupt.
"I can disappear and stay dead."
They lay still on the bed for a long while, his offer hanging in the little bit of light that poured in from the kitchen.
At last, she turned in his arms and looked at him. Light eyes colored by the earth, brown, green, hate, love, life, death, eyes she knew like her own in a mirror. She sighed, her body feeling broken, features swollen from crying for so much that had happened. So much more than simply the loss of Todd. Her forehead crinkled as she looked into those eyes she had loved so much. Was it possible? She studied the man who held her, who kept her from falling to pieces. On this night. The reclining lion on the chair in the foyer. In the dark beneath the stairs.
He closed his eyes and she wriggled out of his arms until she was sitting up. She wrapped her arms around her raised knees, watching him, keeping guard. Then she untangled herself in a rushed frenzy and pushed him onto his back. She ran her hands down his chest and she spread the sides of his jacket, opening it.
"Take it off," she said, strength there, a command.
He sat up, reluctantly, hesitating a second. Then he took the jacket off and dropped it to the floor. His head was down, avoiding her accusatory gaze. The long-sleeved shirt covered all his ink and she just stared at him. She got to her knees and firmly touched his shoulders, the hard muscles beneath. She jerked back as if she touched fire.
"No," she whispered. "No."
If he took off his shirt, she would know. Wouldn't need to take off the mask.
"Take off your boots," she said, her voice gentled.
With another sigh he brought his foot closer and untied the boot, then did the other. Socks waited. He tilted his head as if to say, these too?
"Yes," she snapped, her voice gaining in pitch, spirit coming back and coming back hard. "Socks."
He stripped the black socks to the side of the bed, revealing his feet, masculine, bony, toenails clipped close. And there she saw an unfamiliar tattoo across the top of his foot: epilepsy. She closed her eyes, shaking her head, saying "no, no, no," under her breath.
Now he was kind of thinking maybe probably perhaps he ought not have been so goddamn impulsive and maybe probably perhaps he should ease his way out of this bedroom—
She had gotten off the bed and now she stood at his side, breathing hard with her arms at her side, hair flowing, her delicate face expressionless, fury building. She got on her knees on the bed and placed fingers at the hem of the balaclava.
"Say my name."
And he looked at her, eyes just as hard as hers, fury always there, hate beneath the love always.
"Delgado."
No Spanish, no accent.
"God damn you. God fucking damn it," she huffed, tears again. And with that she pulled off the mask and there he was, her beautiful Todd, staring at her, face lean and lined with Havana and Llanview and Chicago and Hell, a scar on his cheek from when a woman hit him to stop him from maybe raping her, stopped an attack anyway, long ago, so god damn long ago, a face she hated and loved and dreaded and desired, a face that so often could not hide feelings he couldn't understand, feelings he didn't want, didn't ask for. A face that put fear in those who didn't know him and a face that made those who did cry because they could never ease the pain he felt always.
She caressed the light beard he wore, a goatee, grey she could see even in this low light.
"Todd," she said softly.
"Yeah."
Her face crumpled and she held fingers to her lips as she saw his eyes fill with tears and he stuttered, "T, T , Téa." Except there was no voice, only a breath, as if he couldn't talk, as if since exposed, his voice retreated into cover, a last desperate grasp onto staying hidden.
She took in his buzzed hair, reaching for him, fingers on his head, fingers finding the scar where a doctor had cut into him to save him, to give him a fighting chance. She pulled him to her chest and held him and he let her.
"Todd," she said.
He was quiet, quiet as a mouse.
To be continued...