Magnet & Steele (20 page)

“Because we really need to take
things slow,” she reacted, turning away from him.

“I’ll go slow…I promise.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Suzy
decided, thinking that maybe tonight wasn’t such a good night for
anything.

“But baby, I missed you so much,” he
coaxed, opening up his arms to her.

Suzy closed her mouth and thought
about their little girl sleeping in the other room. She would miss
her daddy…she already missed her daddy and maybe they should get
back together for their daughter’s sake. It had to be different, it
just had to, and maybe he had learned his lesson now that she had
stopped talking to him for almost a year. And she hadn’t had sex
just as long, and it was such a stupid choice to think of sex at
this uncertain moment, but she did miss him in that aspect. They
always had great chemistry in bed. Giving in, she smiled and walked
into his open embrace. “Me too.”

Suzy’s bare bosoms underneath her
T-shirt pressed against his chest and Ray lifted her head up to
gently place a kiss on her lips. When Suzy gave in completely, she
grabbed his body fierce and he in turn captured her body to his and
opened her mouth up to his passion.

The next morning, Stephen was
passing Suzy’s room on his way to his when he heard his
granddaughter crying behind the closed door. He knocked a couple of
times; no answer. Knocked again, only this time, harder; no answer.
“Suzy?”

Cassie’s cries got louder and
louder. He looked down at his watch: Ten-thirty. “Suzy…the baby’s
crying…Suzy?” He knocked one last time and then the door creaked
open by itself; slowly opening up to expose his daughter,
half-naked sprawled out on the bed face down. “Oh my God!” Stephen
ran over to his daughter and patted her face with his hand. “Suzy?
Wake up honey, wake up,” he asked anxiously, noticing the small
blood stain on the bed sheets beside her. Rolling her body over
now, there was a considerable amount of blood dripping down the
front of her face as well. “Oh my God!” He quickly gazed around the
room—it was empty. There was only a T-shirt stained with blood next
to her head and a broken trophy on the floor. A fear spread through
to his skin, “Suzy, wake up…wake up Suzy, wake up…Oh God,
Suzy…”

Nancy sat beside her daughter at the
hospital. Tubes stuck out from everywhere as Suzy’s heart beat
timely on a nearby heart monitor.

Nancy couldn’t understand why her
beautiful daughter would want a husband that treated her like that.
Then she thought of her own situation and the years that she
tolerated Stephen’s abuse albeit verbal, mentally or physically.
But how could she have thought that Ray had changed? Stephen never
did…Nor did Ray and recalled the night of Thanksgiving when he had
harmed Suzy. Nancy eyed Suzy’s lifeless body again and remembered
when she was little and growing up. She was so beautiful and Nancy
oftentimes took exception to her because she was so beautiful. It
was her own face that looked back at her. It was sometimes scary to
see herself young and in another body walking around their home and
Nancy occasionally hated the fact that Suzy’s life was just
beginning and it reminded her of all the times she wasn’t able to
freely choose her own path. But no matter what, no mother wanted
this particular outcome even if she was a little resentful. No
mother wanted to lose a child! Was it something that she did? Was
she being finally punished for loving another man who wasn’t her
husband?

That night, Suzy lapsed into an
irreversible coma, and just ten hours after Suzy was brought into
the hospital…she died.

*****

Two weeks later at the arraignment,
Ray was on the stand being cross-examined by an
attorney.

“I don’t know what happened,” he
cried, wiping some tears that genuinely fell out of his
eyes.

“And you still claim that your
wife’s death was an accident?” The attorney claimed without a hint
of emotion.

“It was an accident!” Ray shouted
out suddenly.

“Then in your own words Mr. Ashford,
please tell the judge what happened that night of Suzette Ashford’s
death.”

Ray turned to look at the judge and
cleared his throat before saying, “We started talking about living
together again. She said she wanted to go slow and I agreed…to go
slow. She asked me first if I had been with anyone else since we
separated and I told her the truth. And when I asked her if she’d
been with anyone else, she said no and I knew that she had been
lying. At first, I just yelled at her because I knew through a
friend of mine that she’d been cheating on me, then I got real
upset,” he whimpered now, cupping his hands to his face. “I grabbed
the first thing I could get a hold of…I grabbed her trophy, her
Daffodil Queen trophy and I threw it. I wasn’t aiming, I swear! I
was just upset,…and the next thing I knew, I was watching her fall
to the floor.”

Ray stopped to take a quick look at
the Steele family all looking his way. They all sat in silence and
were unaffected by his predicament. He continued through sobs, “She
was on the ground and ran to her immediately, she was bleeding and
I pulled my T-shirt over my head to see if I could stop the blood,
but too much was coming out. I knew everyone would accuse me of the
worst and I got scared, that’s all. I got scared. I climbed back
out the window.” He then tried to solicit compassion from Francine
and continued to speak directly to her. “I never meant to hurt her,
you must believe that. I love Suzy…I’ve always loved Suzy.” Ray
then cupped his hands fully around his face, clearly in
anguish.

The Steele family all stare back at
him. Not one of them shows any emotion…not one, but Francine. She
was holding back tears, but grief so strong beat them out of her
eyes. She did believe him. She understood that love now. That love
that tested your resistance and she couldn’t really blame him for
loving her sister as much as he probably still did.

Suzy’s death was determined
accidental and Ray was released immediately. A couple of weeks
later, he packed his belongings and took Cassie to New Haven to
live with his grandmother again.

In Loving Memory

At Suzy’s funeral ceremony at the
cemetery, Nancy pulled a rose away from the coffin as she watched
it being lowered into the ground and then blessed by the
priest.

Francine sat in the front row along
with the other members of the Steele family, holding onto Ian’s arm
for dear life. Saddened beyond belief, she closed her eyes and
recalled when her sister shined. Countless times when she was there
in the shadows when Suzy received her beauty awards, envying her
when she got them, admiring her when she was a popular cheerleader,
homecoming queen and Miss Bridgeport and Daffodil Queen; and now,
watching her go down into the ground with all those
memories.

At that moment, Francine tried to
reach for her mother, but was startled to see her embrace her
father like nothing happened between them. Angelo sat beside her,
quiet and grimacing from the inner torment at the sight of his wife
now reaching for her ex.

“Oh Stephen, our baby,” Nancy cried,
holding onto to Stephen’s forearm.

“I know Nancy,” he agreed, placing
his hand over hers on his jacket sleeve. “I miss her so much…Suzy
and I were getting closer. She was my princess…”

WHAT?!

Francine grinned once and then began
to laugh. A laugh so intense, everyone started to look her way.
“That’s funny daddy!” She said aloud, standing up on her feet.
“That’s so goddamn funny! Your princess?” Crazed and on the verge
of a breakdown, Francine started to scream back at her family. “I
can’t believe you’ve waited until Suzy was dead to say something
like that! I never thought I’d hear you say she was your princess!
What a joke!”

Stephen was horrified. The pompous
Steele clan all looked his way aghast. “Francine,
enough.”

“No dad! You make me sick!” Francine
said, then pointing to all her aunts and uncles. “All of you! You
make me all sick! All this time, all this horrible time you’ve
humiliated her, called her names, not inviting her to family
holiday events,” she wailed, then looked directly at her father,
“Even cutting her out of wills.” Francine then twirled around and
bumped into something solid. A human wall named Derek Magnet. “What
the hell are you doing here?” She questioned, pushing him aside.
“Get the hell outta my way!”

Derrie turned to look at Ian. The
two men don’t utter a single word to each other as Francine took
off and Derrie jetted right after her.

Francine made a mad dash through the
crowd of mourner’s, running aimlessly through a sea of gravestones
when she finally came to a halt against one set stone. Distraught,
Francine buried her face into the granite and began to
cry.

In the distance, Derrie summoned her
to answer him. She looked up in confusion and spotted him rushing
towards her. Did she want to be found? “Oh, what the hell do you
want? What are you doing here anyway? Don’t you have a life to
live—a marriage to commit to?”

He reached for her hand, “Fran, let
me help you.”

Francine hid her hands behind her
back. “Go away! Nobody really wants you here. I don’t want you
here.”

Derrie laid his hands back down by
his side. “I came here because I knew that you would need
me.”

Francine began to walk away from him
again. “Well, you were wrong, I don’t need you!”

Derrie traipsed after her and tried
to reach out for her hand again only this time caught her and
yanked Francine’s body into another nearby headstone. Fighting him
this time, Francine punched his arms and his chest to let her body
go, but Derrie didn’t flinch.

“It’s OK Fran; just let it go…I’m
here now,” he softly said to her.

“Damn you!” She yelled back at him,
slapping his face—hard.

Derrie does let go of her and pushed
her body away. “What the hell was that for?”

“For being here!” She yelled back at
him.

Derrie swallowed his anger. “…For
caring about you? For being here when you needed me? I love you
Fran, don’t you know that by now?”

Francine turned her head away and
wrapped her arms around her midriff. She looked down at the ground
and then read one of the names on the headstones for no good
reason. “I do…I do know that.”

“You must have always known,” Derrie
confessed tenderly.

“I’m pregnant,” Francine just
blurted out.

Derrie’s eyes bug out. He’s
flabbergasted—a loss for words. Swallowing his surprise, he barely
got out, “Really?”

Francine buried her face within her
hands. “I found out yesterday.”

He stared at her for a long moment.
She didn’t appear to be a wife that looked ecstatic about having a
baby. “I’m…I’m happy for you, if you’re happy…aren’t you
happy?”

Francine then burst into tears.
“No…no, I’m not happy.” But then she looked quickly up at him with
her tears still streaming down her cheeks. She stared into his eyes
and his into hers. It was a concentrated stare, a validation and a
moment of truth. “Every time I see you,” she admitted, “Every time
I think of you, I’m reminded how much I can never have you. You’re
married now, I’m married now, you’ve got a kid and I’m having one,
it’s just this big mess!”

Derrie stepped away from her and
threw his arms up in the air. “Damn you Fran! Why didn’t you think
of this before we both got married? We had our chance to be
together, but you went ahead and married that doofus.”

“So this is all my fault?” Francine
asked, disbelieving they were actually declaring their affection.
She backed away from him, not crying anymore. “I asked you once if
you had feelings for me but you shook me off. The next thing I know
you’re sending me some greeting card telling me you got some girl
PG and gotta marry her. What was I supposed to think? What was I
supposed to do? I was two steps away from marrying Ian!”

“Do you think this has been easy on
me? I look at my wife and all I see is you! The last time we saw
each other, I couldn’t get you outta my damn head; I’m drunk, I’m
preoccupied, I’m an ditz for days. I can’t throw a football, I lose
my concentration, my coach says relax, but I can’t…I
can’t!”

Francine shut her mouth and said
nothing else. All this time, all this gosh darn time he had been
experiencing the very same feelings? So every time he saw her, it
tied him in knots as well trying to figure out how they could be
together? “Oh Derrie, what a mess.”