Mi Carino (38 page)

Diego felt his chest cave under the weight of his confession. And still she continued to pack. She should be still. She should listen and not move. His mouth curled in fury and his chest tightened to the point that his neck and face flushed deep red. “Did you hear me? Marie had no use for us I said. She left us there, in the cottage, never visited her baby boy who was only three and cried for her every night. I believe the food we received most days was from Juan Juarez and other villagers’ kindness not hers. So I decided to run away. I took them and ran to the coast. We slept on the streets, on the beaches, I danced for change and juggled cans for tourists until Enrique slipped away from me and drowned in the ocean. His body washed up two days later.”

Marcella burst into tears. This he expected. His story was a horror story. One he never wanted to share with her. She had forced him to reveal the ugliness of his past and like he suspected she was going to run from him. Just as most did when they saw what lay behind his mask.

“
Enrique’s death broke Ana, she ran from me. I found her two years later. She’d become a prostitute strung out on cocoa. She had only been nine. She died before she ever saw ten.”

Diego watched helplessly as she zipped her bag. He never cried, never permitted it, but he never spoke the story aloud to anyone. “I did what I could. I did things you don’t want to know to get my fortune and justice. I’m telling you this because… I made a mistake. I punished you to keep from loving you. I know that now. I crossed the line, and I couldn’t stop myself. This is my curse. Still I can’t be the man that lets you go. I need you Marcella, desperately.”

“
It’s too late.” She said.

Diego stepped to her. He blocked her from leaving. “This is me. Pain and fury is what I’m made of. I understand, because of you Marcella that life can be about more. Teach me. Teach me how to love you and I swear I will never hurt you again.”

She dropped her head and covered her eyes, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. He ached to touch her but he knew he’d lost the privilege.

“
Marcella. When I hold you in my arms, it’s the way you feel. It’s not the sex, it’s the way you feel
nena
. It’s something I didn’t count on, I didn’t plan for. That’s why I can’t stop touching you, desiring you. I know it started as sex, but it’s something more between us. You were never supposed to happen. But you did. I never counted on… on… on…
loving you so much
.”

She moved away from him, blowing hard breaths. She kept her back to him. It killed him when she turned from him. “It’s too late. I’m empty. Just like you. I’m empty inside.”

She went to her coat and slipped it on. Diego walked around her to block her in.

“
I’ll send Susan to pick up my things,” she said circling him wide to keep from being within his reach. Ginger the cat purred and she swept the white ball of fur into her warms. He tried to cut her off again but she sidestepped him—again.

“
Marcella. Marcella? Marcella?”

At the door, with her hand to the silver knob she paused. Then she turned it and walked out.

The air drained from his lungs. His eyes stretched to the point of watering. He pressed three fingers to his temple and rubbed hard, as if to wake himself from a nightmare. Then he dropped on the wall and every mistake he made with her since the moment they met hit him like a falling brick.

Chapter
Twenty

Turbulent smoky storm clouds blanketed the dark waters of the Pacific with the threat of a monsoon instead of normal winter rain. Sharp lightening in the distance flashed over the rising waves—the sea boiled with the tide and smashed over the rocky shore. Diego’s elbow rested upon the left arm of his deck chair, his chin propped between his thumb and his trigger finger as he sat silent and observant. He didn’t stir. Not even the threat of the storm could move him. Instead he sat in memories, all filled with her. Their short time together, their nights, her loving him without reward, he drowned in the remembrance. Diego could see her as she braved the waters despite the cold. He could remember how beautiful she was, topless, splashing about, her hair whipped out in long tendrils flinging water, her sweet laughter despite the low temperature. Remembering her was easy, facing what he’d done—it left him immobile with regret.

Marcella had left him. He spent the following days as he did this night, out on his veranda in his deck chair. A bathroom trip twice allowed him to retrieve the bottle of tequila for dinner. He couldn’t go back in. He smelled her in the sheets, could hear her voice in the wind. He thought he had it all under control. How wrong he was. Her rejection punctured a hole in his world; the beach house remained silent and abandoned, barren. Barren was the word that kept returning to mind. That’s how he felt inside, barren.

He gave a sardonic chuckle. Feeling sorry for himself was never a well he visited often. It made for weakness and he would not be alive today if he allowed that flaw. Still he sat there in misery, drunk off it.

How he loathed the sea. Yet this is the place he brought her, where he kept her, the one place that made him feel reasonably sane and gave him a sliver of peace. He took another shot of tequila, letting the liquor hit the back of his throat and burn its way down. There was movement in his house. Despite the rushing sounds of the waves rolling in, he heard a door close, followed by approaching footfalls on the stairs outside of his bedroom. He instinctively knew the reason why.
She had come
. Of course she would. Now.

“
Diego?
Miejo?”

She walked out on the deck alone. It was possible that Lance waited patiently below, which didn’t matter—what he had to say he wanted the whole world to know. She stepped further into his peripheral line of vision but he didn’t immediately look at her. She circled and stood before him. The hem of her coat lifted and flapped upward like her skirt about her knees. Was it cold out? He hadn’t noticed.

Finally his eyes did lift to meet hers. How many years had gone by? How many long years since he had seen her? Twenty, and a mountain of blood and shit he had to dig his way out of just to arrive to this moment.  

Marie stood before him unchanged. Father time was a pussy. He had fallen for her charms too, given the bitch whatever she wanted. Just like any other sap that got caught in her web. Age only touched the corners of her eyes and the roots of her raven black hair. A beautiful thick mane like Ana’s flowed in curves past her shoulders. Her skin was burnished a dark olive from over tanning, her make-up flawless. He wondered as he stared up into eyes like his own if Ana would have grown to look like her.  

“
I’ve asked them to see you. I begged.
Miejo
, my son. Look at you, you’re a man.” She took a step forward.

Either the heated glare he gave her or the silence to her greeting stopped her approach, he wasn’t sure. She however did step back with caution, her eyes pleading, her dark strands blown forward into her face. She looked away from him to the sea when she spoke again, “I thought you were dead. I didn’t know.”

“
That I survived? Oh yes, I survived.”

“
I looked for you, for all of you. You ran away, what was I to do? What choices did I have?”

She looked back to him scooping her hair behind her ears. Diego smiled, he pushed up then rose to his feet. Towering over her he didn’t hide his contempt as his eyes did another sweep. She fit the part, diamonds in her ears, dripping from her fingers, her wrist. She looked well kept. But that was always the plan, for Marie to be well kept, damn them all.

“
I saw it.”

“
I don’t understand,” she said, flipping her eyes up at him innocently. “Saw what? Diego?” she reached for him but he stepped back. Marie sighed patiently. “What happened to your brother and sister? Juan told me that you said they were dead. Is that true?”

“
You know it’s true!” he seethed. “You know everything, and so do I, so don’t stand there and play victim! Own up to what you are!
Coño
!”

“
Don’t speak to me that way!” she snapped, throwing her purse down to the patio table. The umbrella cover began to flap angrily as the winds picked up and thunder echoed in the clouds. The storm didn’t charge the air. It was their anger that sizzled like boiling heat. “Don’t you dare lay that at my feet. Whether you like it or not I am your mother! I am owed some respect!”

“
Why? Why Marie? Because I’m the only man in your life you can’t fuck to get it!”

She slapped him.

Diego’s head snapped back. He drew back to hit her and she stepped away. Her cool demeanor failed her for a second, and he saw fear. But it was as quick and fleeting as the flash of lightening in the sky behind her. She marched off the deck into his room. He clenched his fist and went after her.

“
Enough of this!” She whirled on him. “You come here, you torture my husband, destroy his business, Juan is dead because of you! For what? For what! You killed him as if you had put the gun in his hand.”

“
And you killed Papi, Enrique, Ana…you heartless
puta
!”

 “
I was a victim too. I did what I could to survive after your poor father had been butchered. I begged for his life, and I sacrificed myself to save yours! I kept you safe in that cottage until I could think of what to do next. You ran away. You left! I had no way to find you! What happened to Ana and Enrique was not my fault.”

“
LIES!!! I saw it Marie. I saw you in the fields as they hacked Papi to death. I saw your eyes, I saw
you
!”

Her face contorted into a painful grimace of shocked disbelief. He nodded taking a step toward her. For each one he made she stepped back. “That’s right. You didn’t care then and you don’t care now. I saw your soul that day and I never forgot. Did Juan tell you how Enrique died? He wandered into the sea at night, lost, looking for you. He drowned. And Ana…”

“
Stop!” she put her hands to her ears.

“
Ana was a whore, abused and used by any degenerate on the streets; she took to drugs to withstand the pain. She was so broken when I found her that death was a blessing.”

“
STOP!! PLEEASEE! STOP!!” she screamed at him. “I never wanted you to run away. I was coming for you. I had a plan, I needed time. You took them and you… you… did this!”

“
Look at you, still the manipulative whore you always were. Your tears don’t work on me.”

She froze. Her face and features turned hard as stone. She glared at him, a slow sneer forming over her mouth. “And you are still the same scared little boy you always were. What did you do Diego? Spend the rest of your days looking for mommy? Is that what this is about? Because you had to be a man! Well tough! They were your responsibility and you failed! You drowned Enrique, for all I know you sold your sister to those men!”

Diego’s chest bulked, his fingers gnarled into menacing fists as his nostrils blew out angry puffs of restraint.

Marie put a hand to her hip, tossing her hair. “I’m here now
miejo
, you’ve found me and it doesn’t change a thing does it? They’re dead. All of them. Just me and you…it changes nothing! Does it?” she stepped to him a light chuckle deep in her throat. “Look at you, how you dress like… well you’ve done well for yourself son. But you are still a sharecropper’s boy. Trying to show everyone you’re a big shot. I gave birth to you. I know what you are. You’re as pathetic as your dirt-digging father.” She tossed her head back and laughed.