Mirror of My Soul (11 page)

pleasantness to a malevolent intent that startled Komal. She was still on her feet when Marguerite stepped back into her office.

“What’s going on?”

“Just something I need to address. It will only take a moment, then we can continue our discussion.”

She reached around her office door, picked up the baseball bat behind it, hefted it and strode across the kitchen.

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Mirror of My Soul

“Ah, hell. Marguerite.” Chloe dropped a tray to the counter and dashed after her boss, colliding with Komal. Both women recovered, hurrying after the fluttering blonde strands of Marguerite’s hair as she slapped her hand against the side screen door and strode down the path toward her community garden and playground.

The man in expensive gangster wear—gold chains, tennis shoes worth three figures and an oversized football jersey—had his back to her. Marguerite assumed he sensed danger in the way that the worst scum of the earth did, for he spun when she was still over two yards away. A tiny strip of children’s stickers were in his hand, still half extended to ten-year-old Aleksia, one of the neighbor children who watched her brother while their mother worked two jobs.

“This is private property,” Marguerite snapped. “You get your ass out of here.”

“You get out of my face, bitch, if you don’t want it messed up.” The sticker fluttered toward the ground as he reached under his shirt.

Marguerite heard Chloe’s scream, but as the gun flashed out, she was already

swinging the bat, connecting with his hand hard, sending the firearm clattering into the monkey bars.

“What the fuck—”

She moved in, slammed another stroke on his raised forearm. He howled, she

swung again, beating him to his knees, fast, brutal, repeated strikes, no room for mercy or hesitation. He was crawling away, scrambling, stumbling. She got him in the ribs, the kidney. She hoped she was killing the son of a bitch, making his internal organs bleed, giving him a slow death.

“Get the hell off my property. You will never get these children here. Never.” It thundered out of her, her scream like the fury of a storm.

He rolled into the street bleeding, struggling to his feet to move as fast as he could away from her park. His eyes were stark white with terror, the knowledge in them that he was staring at death. Marguerite stopped at the fence entrance by a picket gate where she’d planted spring flowers several days ago. There was even a lovely welcome sign that Chloe had stenciled with a teacup and an orchid curling over it. Watching him stagger down the street, she didn’t move until he disappeared, until the rage receded and she could feel the eyes of those in the neighborhood who’d come out on their porches to see what was going on.

She turned back to the park. No parents present, not in a neighborhood where the responsible adults often had to work multiple jobs at all hours to make ends meet, trusting their children’s street savvy to keep them safe. Tomorrow she’d call a security agency and have a camera installed so she could watch the park area at all times.

Shifting her gaze, she registered a white-faced Chloe and a stunned-looking Komal.

She clasped both hands around the bat’s fat top and struggled to center herself as Komal took a tentative step toward her.

“Miss M?”

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Joey W. Hill

She became cognizant of Aleksia touching her forearm. The child’s short brown

fingers, the pink skin beneath her nails. In her other hand she held a fistful of the stickers. “I told him I’d give them out to my friends, so’s he gave me a bunch. That way he can’t give these to nobody. And I picked up the ones he dropped, too.”

Her brother, the boy who had come to warn her, was now at her side. “Stupid ass.

He shoulda knowed who he’s messing with. You don’t mess with Miss M’s place.”

“Jerome.” Marguerite reached out to touch his head. “Remember I don’t allow

cursing in the park. And you need to work a little harder on proper English. ‘He should have known with whom he was messing.’” She frowned, going over the grammar

herself.

“My way sounds better.” He grinned, confirming her discontent with the

correction, his twinkling eyes unrepentant. “But sorry about the cussin’, Miss M. We did good, though, didn’t we?”

“You did very well. So well.” She took the stickers, pocketed them and managed a smile for them both. “You were so brave.”

He shrugged. “He was hittin’ on my sister with his junk. Don’t nobody mess with my sister long as I’m around.”

His older sibling rolled her eyes but Marguerite saw her elbow his side with

affection. “You’s all talk. I can kick your butt. We have to get home.”

“First, run in and tell Gen you each get a piece of lemon cake. And have her wrap up one for your mother.”

“Alll riiight!” The two children ran for the side path entrance to the kitchen, an access Marguerite had always made clear was a door that would open for any of the children or neighbors, the entrance for friends coming through the park. She suspected Jerome had used the front so the drug dealer wouldn’t realize he’d gone for help.

She peered into her pocket as Komal approached her with Chloe. “Chloe, remind

me I have these when our officers come by this afternoon for their green tea. I’m sure they can use them for training. Or at least dispose of them properly.”

“Are you okay?”

Marguerite raised a brow. “I’m fine.” She looked at Komal. “I’m sorry you had to see that. It happens occasionally.”

Though she’d never gone off on one like that
, Chloe had told her. When Komal studied her, Marguerite shifted her glance. “Chloe, will you excuse us a moment?”

Chloe looked between them both, nodded, headed back for the kitchen.

“If you’d hit his skull, you would have killed him.”

“If I’d jammed this up his ass, I would have perforated his bowel wall with

splinters and he would have died in a couple hours from internal bleeding. Seemed too quick that way. This way I can imagine his kidneys giving him hours of torment just to manage a piss.”

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Reaching out, Komal put her hands on the bat over Marguerite’s hands. “This is the side of you that worries me.”

“What? The side that says I won’t allow someone to harm the innocent?”

“There are laws.”

“Yes. And we both know how well they work to protect the innocent. I’m not afraid of death, imprisonment.” She laughed shortly, a harsh, angry sound. “I’m not afraid of having the blood of a drug dealer on my conscience.”

“You can lose your soul by making violence your instrument of justice.”

“My soul was lost a long time ago, Komal,” Marguerite responded bluntly. “And if I still had it, I’d rather lose it to that than have it obliterated by shades of gray.”

“A person’s actions are not black and white.”

“Wrong is wrong. There are extenuating circumstances, but this is a world that takes extenuating circumstances to such extremes that we’ve turning them into kindling for a sacrificial fire. And we’re feeding our innocents into it, one soul at a time. You think his extenuating circumstances make it acceptable to push drugs onto children, turn Aleksia into a crack whore that would perform a blowjob on her own brother for the next fix? You think I of all people have any sympathy for that scum’s extenuating circumstances?”

Komal nodded, closed her eyes. “I’m not here to engage in a moral argument with you. I just worry that you think you’re like the person standing in front of the tank at Tieneman Square. Except maybe you’re not there just for the cause, but for the hope that tank will roll forward and over you. That if people live up to your expectations and are savage, brutal, you have nothing of hope worth staying in the world for.”

She took her hands away, touched Marguerite’s chin, amazed at how tall her girl had gotten over the years. “And maybe that’s why you’re so afraid of Tyler. Up until you met him, you could have lived or died any given day and it wouldn’t have

bothered you. He’s made you want to live. You’re experiencing the same shock and disorientation as a newborn, only in the very self-aware mind of a strong, determined woman.”

“I don’t need psychoanalysis.” But there was little bite to the words. Marguerite let the bat swing to the ground, leaned on it as she obviously re-marshaled her courtesy.

“Let’s go in, let me get you a cup of tea.”

Komal nodded. “I’d like that. But let me say this, please. It’s your soul I care about.

You are probably one of the bravest children that came into my care.” At Marguerite’s startled look, she nodded. “It’s not a light compliment, nor a slur on the other children. I see what you’ve built of your life, what you’re giving to others. I also see you standing before the chance of love. You’re so very courageous. Believe me when I say that the love of a good man is the very last thing you should be running from. I’m afraid, not that he’ll hurt you, but that you won’t believe in yourself enough to take the leap.”

Marguerite looked toward the ground, an obvious attempt to cover the emotions

crossing her face, her beautiful pale hair shadowing her features. Unable to help herself, 57

Joey W. Hill

Komal framed that crown in her brown hands, rose on her toes and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Marguerite did not move. Komal held the kiss there through several breaths before she drew back, touching the woman’s hands. Hands now stained with blood from the portion of the bat she held.

“I’ve left my card on your desk. I’d love that cup of tea, but once I leave today please call me for anything. I would be delighted to have you visit me anytime. As a friend or if you need to talk to me professionally. For you I would hang out my shingle again.” She hesitated. “And just for your information, Tyler looked a bit shaken up after he left my house. I’m sure he’d appreciate hearing from you. We forget that sometimes there is something greater than our pain. That’s the pain of the person who loves us, who couldn’t protect us from that pain. After meeting Tyler Winterman I firmly believe he would sacrifice the world to go back in time and do just that for you.”

She nodded at Marguerite’s stunned expression. “The gun is still underneath the monkey bars. Don’t forget to give that to the police as well.”

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Mirror of My Soul

She sat out in her private garden that night, long into the early hours of the morning. Listening to the birds, watching the fountain gurgle, hoping it would penetrate the buzzing, the roaring force field around her. But it wasn’t the sounds of nature that broke through. Without direction, her mind chose its own compass. It pictured her here with Tyler next to her, his fingers laced with hers, his shoulder handy for her to lay her head.

His smile created a warmth inside her. She recalled the look on his face when she’d exposed her pain, her truths to him. A protective rage. No pity, no revulsion. When he kissed her lips, she felt as though he held her heart in both hands. And she was beginning to believe, just maybe, that there was no safer place for it. That he wanted her, no matter what she could or couldn’t give him.

He hadn’t shared what memories formed his nightmares yet, but as if they’d shared a secret handshake she knew he’d been places where he watched hell become reality.

And he hadn’t turned and run. He’d stood, accepting the blame and the responsibility, and done what he could.

He wanted her. Not just because he’d as much as said it to her but because she felt it whenever she thought of him, saw him.

I’m asking you to think it through. If you accept what we both understood well enough last
night, then you come to me. Please come to me.

So she thought about it. Thought about it for two weeks. The tears had loosened up some things inside her, given them room to move around and she wondered at them.

The way her feelings would dance through her chest when she thought about Tyler, bringing a smile to her lips if she let them. His bare heels treading on the cuffs of those loose drawstring pants as he’d moved around his kitchen. His hair when it was

disheveled. The way his gaze focused on her when she spoke. The picture Sarah had painted of him sitting on that landing.

How would it feel to sit there with him, her hand in his, two people avoiding their nightmares as they shared a cup of coffee and watched the sun rise? Maybe together they could stave off the nightmares and the morning would be about nothing more than enjoying the beauty of a sunrise, following a night of making love.

“Chloe.” She spoke through the open door of her office before she could lose her nerve. “Could you pack me up a little gift box for a pot’s worth of the new Ceylon we just got in and some of those lemon bars? I’m headed for the Gulf tonight.”

“Yes!” She jumped as Chloe and Gen did a high five over the counter. Marguerite leaned forward from her desk to study them.

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“The two of you should go out and find a social life of your own, instead of

meddling in mine.”

Gen held up a hand. “Don’t encourage Chloe. She’s dating a biker now who does

tattoos and piercings. She wants me to go on a double date.”

“Maybe we could go out with you and Tyler?” Chloe’s eyes danced. “Interest Tyler in a Prince Albert, maybe?”

“Oh my God.” Marguerite toed her door closed on a burst of their laughter. She felt an answering chuckle in her stomach, mixed up with something lower, coiling tight with her resolve. She’d decided. She wasn’t turning back. Now it was time to get dressed.

* * * * *

She hadn’t spoken to him directly for those two weeks. He’d called her work

number after hours to leave her warm, intimate voice mails, telling her his

whereabouts, his schedule from day to day. A short trip to New York, his cell phone number. Back to Tampa for a day or so to work on a project. A party tonight at his house at the Gulf for some industry contacts, a favor for a friend. He was respecting his own rule, the one he’d set when he said goodbye to her on her front steps, not forcing direct contact until she made the first step. And despite his resolve, she’d been warmed to hear the edge of male impatience in his voice as the days passed. She wondered how long her knight would have waited before attempting to storm her castle again. She’d kept all the messages, downloaded them so she could hear his voice on her digital recorder as she lay in bed at night. Let them keep her company in the car as she made the drive to his Gulf home.