Suspicion of Betrayal (25 page)

"Why not? You get this photograph, the next thing you know, he's moving in."

"You're saying he sent it? That's funny. He said the same thing about you."

"If that's what he thinks, the man is sick. Truly sick."

They discussed what to tell Karen, if this happened again, and came to no conclusions. Maybe it wouldn't happen again. They would wait.

Gail asked if she could see Karen's room. "I'd like to know what it looks like."

"Sure." He led her up the stairs.

It was a small, sunny room across from his, with its own bath. In the old house on Clematis Street, with its wood floors and heavy stucco walls, Karen's tastes had gone modern. Here was a canopy bed with ruffles. A poster from the movie
Titanic
hung beside the dresser, stuffed animals covered the bed, and crystals on fishing line brightened the windows, sending rainbows dancing around the room when Gail set them swinging.

"This is pretty." She smoothed the lacy coverlet, then picked up a stuffed Paddington bear. "A neighborhood boy kissed her. Did she tell you about that? He's fourteen. Sort of cute, but she didn't want him to, and she got mad at him."

"Fourteen! I ought to talk to the kid's father."

Gail shook her head, smiling. "I've seen her watching him, and naturally he pays her no attention. She says he has a girlfriend who's thirteen."

"She's growing up too fast," Dave said.

As if her limbs were weighted, Gail sat on the small chair by the bed and closed her eyes.

"Are you okay?"

"I haven't slept much lately." He stood beside her, resting a palm on her hair. She said, "I don't know what to do, Dave. I try to tell myself I'm not scared, but that's a lie."

He squeezed her shoulder. "I know. It scares me too. They've got to find this son of a bitch."

"I think it's me he's after, not Karen. Someone wants me to suffer. I don't know who or why. I don't have a clue. If I knew what I had done, I'd fix it. I'd pay him, and if he doesn't want money, I could write elaborate letters of apology. On the phone, that first time, he said, 'Hello, bitch. Time to die.' I keep thinking, What have I done?" She laughed. "Oh, this is prompting all sorts of insights into the darkest corners of my mind. What sins have I committed that someone wants me to suffer like this?"

"Sins? What are you talking about? You ticked somebody off. Hell, maybe it's somebody you cut off in traffic, and he's doing this for the thrill. People are crazy."

"No. It's too personal."

He was stroking the back of her neck, and she didn't tell him to stop. Birds chirped outside the window, and a patch of sunlight fell on the carpet. Rainbows were still twirling across it.

"I haven't done this in a long time," he said.

She shifted to get up.

"No, don't. Aren't we friends, at least? Gail, I'm not going to attack you. Give me some credit."

"I shouldn't be here," she said.

"Yes, you should. That's the damn shame of this whole situation." He leaned over to press his lips to the top of her head. He stayed there a moment, his fingers moving gently over her temple. She felt his warm breath in her hair when he said, "You know, I've been seeing a counselor since I got back. Me. I never believed in that. Anyway, it's helping." He patted her shoulder and stood up.

"Jesus, you're so tense," he said. "Come on, just let me fix this. You remember that time you came home from a week in trial and it was so bad you couldn't turn your head?"

"Drugs," she said, laughing. "I need heavy drugs."

"You need to meditate and do some yoga."

"Dave, tell me you are not doing yoga."

"I have a video. Does that count?" He moved his thumbs down either side of her spine. "I've been working on letting go of a lot of issues. Like our marriage. I know why we had problems. You were—and are—a strong woman, and I didn't know how to deal with that. You always made more money, and on some level it bothered me. I had a lot of unprocessed anger. I wasn't really angry at you but at myself. Do you understand what I mean? When I filed the lawsuit to get custody of Karen, it was like: Look, I am capable of being a good father. A good man. A success in my business."

Dave stopped what he was doing and came around to sit on the edge of Karen's bed, facing Gail. "You want to hear some good news?"

"Sure."

"The franchise deal is going through next week. I didn't tell you before who I'm dealing with. It's Marriott. As in hotel."

"No."

"Did I tell you? Golden." He laughed, delighted. "They wanted the name and I have it. Now they're going to put an Old Island Club in every Marriott resort in Florida and the Caribbean. I didn't want to say anything till I was sure."

"Dave, that's wonderful. Congratulations. It's fantastic."

"There's going to be money coming in like you never saw. I can get a house with a yard, a pool. And a dock, because I want to buy another boat. Not a sailboat, a cabin cruiser. What do you think?"

"Me?" In a rush of comprehension she saw that he wanted her approval. "Well, I think a boat would be a great idea. But don't spend it till you have it."

"Oh, no, of course not. It's an investment. I could take the customers out. And Karen and I could take trips, wherever we wanted." But in the space of seconds the joy in his eyes faded, as if someone had yanked shut the curtains over the window. He reached for her hand and brushed his thumb over her engagement ring. "I could do this too."

She pulled her hand away. "I'd better go."

When she stood up, Dave put his arms around her. His mouth searched for hers, but she turned her head.

His forehead rested on her shoulder. "Two days ago I kissed you, and you kissed me back. Why did you want me to bring you upstairs? You know why." He held on more tightly. "You know what's right, but you're afraid to admit it. We need to be a family again. You. Me. Karen. She needs both of us."

"Stop it." With an effort she pushed him away.

His face was flushed, and his eyes glistened. "I almost called my lawyer today. I almost told him to drop the custody case, but something told me to hold back."

Gail stared at him. "But outside Fischman's office you said we could work this out."

"Well, I just changed my mind. Somebody has to care about our daughter." Dave caught Gail's arm. "Your marriage won't last. I'm sorry to say that, because I don't want to see you unhappy, but it's bound to happen. I wish I had some magic words to make you wake up. I can't fight him for you. Jesus. He'd probably have me shot. But he is going to lose you. One way or the other, whether it's because you leave him or he finds some other woman, and when that happens, I hope—I pray—that you remember one thing. I loved you."

Gail drove the Cadillac to a shady park near the water and stopped with the engine running and the air conditioner on. At irregular intervals, feathery needles and hard brown seedlings dropped from the pine trees, tapped on the roof, and slid down the windshield. She watched a man throwing a Frisbee to his dog. Bicyclists. No joggers in this heat. She cried for a while, then rummaged in the glove compartment for a napkin and found nothing but neatly folded maps, a small flashlight, and the car manual. She reused her soggy Kleenex, then tilted the leather seat back. Her head spun, and she seriously wondered if she was going crazy.

She thought about what she would tell Anthony.

Nothing.

Or how she would explain the fact that she was late.

Sorry. Deal with it.

If he became angry, she would remind him of his own behavior, throwing the keys in a jealous pique.

But she would certainly not disclose what Dave had said to her. It would be impossible, in any event, to follow his abrupt turns in logic and make sense of the contradictions. Not that Gail couldn't see the point: Dave wanted his life put back. He wanted her. And Gail had been profoundly astonished to feel, when his hands had been gently massaging her neck, a sinister uncurling of desire.

This would not be the first time she had withheld the truth from Anthony. He had asked her if she had ever thought of going back to Dave. This question had come after he had made love to her upstairs in his grandfather's house. Put his mark on her, then assured himself that there was no reason to suspect her loyalty. And she had lied. Who would not have lied at that moment?

A lie to avoid misunderstanding. To keep his feelings from being hurt. Not even a lie but an avoidance of an issue that had become irrelevant. Or so she had told herself at the time.

A few months after she and Anthony had become involved, and just after her divorce had become final, Dave showed up at the house late one night. He had been drinking. He wanted to come back, to try again, and when she said no, he had wept.

Go home, Dave.

I don't have a home anymore.

For God's sake, you'll wake Karen.

Gail, don't turn me away. I need you. I can't live without you.

She could reconstruct the events of that night and see herself walking to the front door, opening it. Telling him to leave. Gently, and without hesitation:
Dave, please go.
Then the sound of his pickup truck fading from the quiet street.

But it hadn't happened that way. They had gone to bed. She had wanted to be sure. Or hadn't wanted to hurt him. Or had done it simply out of habit. Easy to be with Dave. And easy to let him go. She had told him before dawn that he couldn't stay, and he'd left without protest. The next day she had called him.
It's over, Dave.

Of course she had lied to Anthony. In matters of sex, truth was a matter of interpretation, and by then she had been aware of his jealousy and pride. The truth—or what he thought was the truth—would have eaten away at them like acid.

After repairing her makeup, Gail put the car into gear and drove back to Coral Gables, turning onto Malagueña Street and parking behind the high iron gates of the Pedrosa house. She had been gone over two hours.

Anthony was watching the last inning of the Marlins game. She said she was sorry for being late, and he gave her his usual shrug—the slight lift of shoulders and brows, a downturn of his mouth. They waited until the game was over, then said their good-byes to his family, most of whom were leaving too.

As the car turned out of the driveway, she unfolded her sunglasses and put them on. "We were thinking of sending Karen to stay with Dave's parents in Delray Beach."

"I told you, nothing is going to happen to her. If you want a bodyguard, I'll get you one."

"Nothing scares you, does it?"

He glanced at her but said nothing.

Sunlight flickered through the branches of a poinciana, a brilliant canopy of red and bright green. Around a curve they entered a dark tunnel of ficus trees. He waited until the stop sign at the end of the street to ask, "Did you make love to him?"

Her exhalation of breath was so sharp it could have been a laugh. "Are you crazy? No. We didn't make love. He didn't kiss me. I showed him the color copy, and that's what we talked about. That and Karen and what the hell we're supposed to do about it."

Anthony said, "I'm sorry. It was a terrible question, but it was going through my mind because I know what he wants."

"In your imagination."

"No. It's in his eyes when he looks at you." Gail was glad for her sunglasses, but he seemed to look through them. "If I were Dave," he said, "and I had lost you, I would want you back. I would hate the man who has you, and I would do nothing but think of ways to take you away from him."

"Well, Dave isn't you, is he?"

"It hasn't occurred to you—not at all—that he did this? That he is the one person who could have come that close with a camera and nobody would have thought it strange? The photograph brought you to his house."

"Oh, please."

"Didn't it?" The dark eyes searched her face. "What did he say, I wonder? What would get to you? Our daughter is better off with mommy and daddy in the same house. Did he say that? I would have. Yes. We make an appeal to your motherhood. You might even forget that he never contacted Karen for weeks at a time."

"Anthony, leave it alone," she said through clenched jaws.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, then accelerated through the stop sign. There was not much traffic on Saturday afternoon in this part of the Gables. His long fingers tapped on the curve of the steering wheel, and his ring glittered.

"What else would I say if I were Dave? That I need you? Need. Yes, that's a word he would use."

Gail glared at him. "Not a word that Anthony Quintana would use, is it?"

"You're right. It's not my word. I want you. I love you. But I don't need you. There's a difference. He needs you because he's a loser. He needs your money and your brains. He needs to lean on you, like he leaned on you for twelve years in your marriage."

"How reassuring it must be to think that," she said. "Dave is doing quite well. Next week he will sign a contract to franchise his restaurant with Marriott hotels, with more to follow. It's apparently a lucrative deal, and I'm very happy for him."

"How nice. If it succeeds."

"It will, but I'm sure you hope otherwise."

Anthony glanced out the side, then took a right. They were on Granada Boulevard, passing one luxurious home after another. "Why did he tell you about this deal? Did you ask yourself that? This deal that will make him so much money? Because he wants you to think he can support you. He wants to be petted on the head like a dog. And we like dogs because they never challenge us, never question what we do. Go fetch, Dave. Be a good boy."

"Shut up, Anthony."

"What else did he say? That I'm Cuban, and don't all
latinos
cheat on their wives?"

With her fists she came down hard on his shoulder, and the car jerked, then straightened. "I said shut up! Dave was never as irrational, so jealous, so emotionally violent, as you are. Jealousy is not attractive. I am not flattered by it. If you want to make me unhappy, if you
want
me to leave, then just keep it up!"

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Gail turned her face to the window, so tense that the muscles in her neck sent white flashes of pain down her spine.