Ransomed Dreams (26 page)

Luke had returned her hug in like manner. Intense. Conveying a depth of feeling.

“Sheridan?”

“Luke. He was there. Eliot was there when Harrison went to Caracas!”

Silence filled the earpiece.

“Luke!”

“I know. 1983.”

“You already figured it out.”

Silence again.

“What if—”

“Don’t. Just don’t do the what-ifs. They were in the same city at the same time. I’ll get more information in D.C.”

“I’m calling him, Luke.”

“I gotta go. I seem to have this problem with flight attendants. All done, sir!” he called out obviously to someone on the plane. “Turning it off right now. Bye, Sher.”

Silence.

She closed her phone.

What if Eliot had met Harrison? What if Eliot went to that lounge or wherever her father did his dirty work at that time? What if Eliot . . .

No. Eliot would never. He wasn’t like that. He’d been a straight arrow since he could talk. No, he’d never . . .

They could have met. Their paths could have crossed. They both worked for the government. Why not?

Why not? Because Eliot never mentioned it to her.

So then . . . they never met. It was simply a weird, bizarre, ironic timing thing.

There was no reason to call and try to set up a time they could talk. None whatsoever.

Chapter 43

Topala

Eliot awoke. The bedroom was dark. He glanced at the clock. It was 6:20. He really needed to get rid of those sun-blocking shutters. He liked the early morning light.

The night had been a restful one with no incidents of torturous pain.

Except for a mental one that had accompanied a dream. He couldn’t recall it now, only the remnants of anguish and fleeting images of Caracas almost thirty years ago.

Which added up to his history with Harrison Cole, that segment he was going to leave out of the memoirs. . . .

As a young man, Eliot arrived in Venezuela, a bucking mustang fresh out of the chute.
Watch how high I can jump.

It was his first overseas assignment as a foreign service officer. Or rather, it was his first official assignment as an official diplomat. Unofficially he had already been serving simply because he happened to have lived most of his childhood in foreign embassies.

Of course location wasn’t the only advantage that blessed him. There were his parents, diplomatic role models extraordinaire.

He idolized his father and even as a tyke—or so his mother’s story went—mimicked the demeanor and skill of Eliot Montgomery II. By the time Eliot III was eight, he possessed—or so his mother proclaimed—amazing poise. A French statesman said—again, according to his mother—that the boy’s
savoir-vivre
, his enjoyment of life, the ability to meet it with civility, was enviable.

He felt a sense of destiny being first assigned to Venezuela, where he had lived a short while as a young teen when his father was ambassador there. Now the Montgomery baton of statesmanship had been handed off to him. It didn’t matter that his duties would be mundane, probably for years to come. He didn’t mind paying his dues because the country and the position of foreign service officer was where he belonged.

Then he’d met Mr. Cole.

The House representative from Illinois arrived with a splash. Eliot should have known immediately that the man was made of sludge.

Despite Eliot’s heritage, he was still wet behind the ears. Hobnobbing with a member of the subcommittee on trade impressed him. And hobnob he did. His job description included showing the man around the city, accompanied of course by a security detail.

Except Mr. Harrison Cole knew the city already, and he knew when and how to travel about it with the detail.

Eliot and Harrison were on their own when the older man took him to a bar. Obviously Harrison had been there before. Obviously he slipped something into the beer he put in front of Eliot. Obviously the girl was ready and waiting.

But first they had talked about opportunity available right in Eliot’s backyard.

Harrison spoke in nuance. By the time Eliot caught on, he realized the man helped in the smuggling of diamonds and that he needed the new guy on the block to look the other way.

When Eliot awoke from a drugged stupor, the honorable Mr. Cole greeted him with a list of two addresses: Noelle’s and his parents’. He also showed him two eight-by-ten glossies, one with the girl and the other with Eliot receiving a handful of uncut diamonds.

The message was loud and clear. Eliot could look the other way or he could lose his lifelong dream-come-true in a heartbeat.

The passage of twenty-seven years had done little to diminish the horror of that moment.

Eliot gazed at the ceiling, his hands behind his head on the pillow—

Hands behind his head? Arms raised?

Well, that was odd. His shoulders weren’t screaming at him.

How much of the painkillers had he taken? He hadn’t had more since eleven last night, had he?

He hated the regimen of taking pills to mask the pain, but it worked. He was mobile—at least semimobile, anyway. He didn’t have much of a choice whether or not to take them.

He’d made it through the previous day with very little of the pain medication. Did he dare view that as a hopeful sign? He wasn’t sure. It was such an odd day all the way around.

Wouldn’t that be grand, though? To wake up without that drugged stupor . . .

The fading dream slammed back into his imagination, an instant replay in vibrant technicolor.

He was sitting in a courtyard, not in Caracas but right there in Topala behind the house. Harrison Cole was spoon-feeding him pills, an ugly sneer on his face.

Eliot cringed at the vivid image. His stomach turned.

That was exactly what had happened those many years ago.

Exactly?

Were his arms tied? his feet glued to the floor? his brain checked at the door?

“God.” Eliot listened to the sound of his own voice addressing the Almighty. “I was doing my job. He took advantage of me.”

He sighed. Whining! At his age!

“All that aside, I made idiotic choices. I was pompous, full of myself. Please forgive me. And I’ve been angry at him. Please forgive me. I’ve been fearful. Please forgive me. I’ve cheated on Sheridan by not revealing everything to her. Please forgive me.”

He shut his eyes. Tears seeped out.

Help me to . . .

He swallowed. His ears needed to hear what was in his heart.

“I want to forgive Harrison. Please help me.”

As Eliot wept, he did not analyze. He did not debate. He did not negotiate.

He just let it happen.

Chapter 44

Chicago

Clearing the air with Sheridan at the funeral home had been a good thing, Calissa thought. Fussing at her about meeting Helena and picking up that stupid note from their mother and letting Calissa greet visitors half the day all by herself had been a good thing. That Sheridan had poured out her fears that Eliot and Harrison might have met in Caracas and neither one had told her was a good thing.

It was always good to talk straight to each other and not avoid the tough subjects.

Calissa reminded herself of all this now as she sat in the back of the hired car and watched pedestrians along Michigan Avenue travel faster than the vehicles.

She wanted to tell the driver which route to take to get them out of there faster.

She wanted to tell Sheridan, seated beside her, to take a hike.

Instead she bit her tongue and reminded herself about the hug at the funeral home and the shared tears at Ysabel’s sweet words. This day, too, would all work out. It would.

“Lissy, I’m sorry.”

Calissa sighed.

Sheridan said, “You may as well say it out loud rather than just keep exhaling like a locomotive.”

She looked at Sheridan and wrinkled her nose. “That was a sigh, not a huff, and it meant, ‘Oh, nuts, my heart just turned to mush.’ You play me like a harp, Sher. You always have.”

“I have not.”

“Have too.”

Sheridan frowned. “All I said was ‘Lissy, I’m sorry.’”

“Exactly.” She shook her head in dismissal. “Go on with the apology. You’re sorry because you huffed your way through Saks and Neiman Marcus. Because you whined as if the hairdresser and manicurist were torturing you. And that disdainful lip twist says it all—that hiring this car is the biggest waste of money when we could have driven ourselves downtown.”

Sheridan laughed and laughed. “Actually, no, that’s not what I wanted to apologize about. Those things are just me, right? I’ve always been like that.”

Calissa narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“I appreciate it all, Liss, really. I needed new clothes for the funeral. I didn’t want to look like I just got off a cruise ship wearing all my good finds from Mexico.”

Calissa had been appalled at what Sheridan had brought with her from home. Brightly colored tops and skirts. One sweater and a lightweight jacket.
That
was for a funeral in Chicago in the spring? Then Calissa had been informed that Sheridan didn’t even have most of her clothes at the house in Topala. They were packed away in a storage unit out east with their other possessions. Why on earth, she said, would she need pearls and black cocktail dresses and business suits in a village tucked away in Podunk, Mexico?

Well,
Podunk
was Calissa’s term. That sure was what the place sounded like.

“And,” Sheridan said, “I did need a haircut. I like it.” She touched the new, shorter style. Layers had loosened the natural curl, reviving its old bounce. “And the car is not a big deal. Factor in gas and parking and the chiro adjustments we’d need after hauling sixteen bags around, the cost is not that much more.” She stopped talking.

Calissa watched her forehead furrow and her lips crease, pulling her mouth downward. If it didn’t resonate with guilt, she didn’t know what would. It was probably a Luke thing. The two of them had begun to exchange looks, the kind that hinted at something below the surface. At dinner the one night, Sheridan had outright flirted with him.

“Sher, you can tell me. What is it?”

“This.” She pointed to her face and burst into tears.

“Oh, hon.” Calissa dug through her bag for a pack of tissues and handed them to her. “These things happen, and after what you’ve been through, it’s totally understandable.”

Sheridan dabbed at her eyes. “I didn’t think you’d understand. It sounds like such a fabricated excuse. Post-traumatic stress disorder. How do you measure that? And honestly, eighteen months later? But I’m a mess again. The city unnerves me.”

Post-traumatic? Not sleeping with Luke? “You—you seem okay.”

“You didn’t notice. I kept dodging people on the sidewalk. I almost jumped out of my skin every time I heard a siren. Those first days here I slept well, but not anymore. I’m eating like a horse. I want to go home. I don’t want to go home. What am I going to hear about Eliot now? What if he did meet Harrison? He almost would have had to. A young diplomat, wet behind the ears. A visiting politician on the prowl for young diplomats wet behind the ears. What if Eliot is involved with all of that business? I would know, right? But we didn’t know about Harrison.”

“What does all this have to do with Luke?”

“Luke? Nothing. Unless maybe with him and Bram in D.C., I’ve lost a sense of security. Though I’d hate to admit that. I was making progress. I really was.”

“Oh.” Calissa adjusted her impression of Sheridan’s turmoil. It wasn’t Luke and romance, just leftover stress cropping up again. “Do you need to talk to someone? clergy or counselor?”

Sheridan thought for a moment. “I need to go to church. Actually, I’d like to visit the church where Mamá used to take us.”

“You got it. We’ll swing by there on the way to the house.” She unclipped her seat belt and leaned over the front seat to give the driver directions. Seizing the natural opportunity, she also suggested a turn coming up that might get them to Lake Shore more quickly.

He smiled like a father indulging his child. “Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled back. “I am a pushy prig at times.”

He chuckled, and she slid back next to Sheridan.

“Liss, I’m sorry. You’re still taking care of me, like you’ve done your whole life.”

She gave Sheridan a one-armed hug. “That’s what big sisters are for, hon.”

* * *

The quiet, empty church seemed to calm Sheridan immediately. Calissa sat in a rear pew while her sister went to one nearer the front and knelt.

Things had not changed inside Sacred Heart. The wood still shone; the stained glass still glistened; the scent of incense still lingered in the air. The large crucifix above the altar still wrung her heart.

Calissa’s memories were good ones. Ysabel had loved the place and the people. She made going to church a fun adventure. Harrison even accompanied them to services when Calissa was small, before Sheridan was born, before life seemed to get complicated.

Through the years, Calissa went her own way, different from her mother’s. She believed in God but never thought she needed to be in a pew on a regular basis in order to talk to Him. When she attended church, she preferred the larger and livelier group not far from her condo downtown. They made a big deal about Jesus, but He too was larger and livelier there, not always hanging on the cross.

Networking-wise, the people she met were better connected. But in all honesty, some of them, most especially the pastor and his wife, reminded her of her mother. Ysabel would have enjoyed them.

Harrison would not have. Nor would he have cared for the congregation at his wife’s former church. Calissa still wasn’t sure about her decision to have the viewing at the funeral home, but the choice for funeral location was an easy one. It would be at a nondescript church where he had sometimes put in an appearance. He figured most of his voters liked at least a passing nod to tradition.

Funny, she thought, how he got by without really mentioning the name of God.

Eventually Sheridan made her way back down the aisle, her face serene, almost luminescent.

Calissa nearly jumped at the sight. She was looking at their mother, at an inner light that radiated from her at times.