The Glory Game (66 page)

Unconsciously she moved her head from side to side. “I can't believe he's dead. It doesn't seem real.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “I keep thinking he's just out on the practice field. Why? Why did he have to the? What did I do wrong?”

The cigar was left to burn in an ashtray as Raul moved to her side and gripped her shoulder. “You must not blame yourself, Luz. You are not responsible for his actions. Rob caused the fire, not you.”

She shrugged free of his hands and turned away. “You don't understand.” Nobody did. Nobody could. She took another drink of the whiskey, then walked back to the sofa and sat woodenly on its cushions. When Trisha walked in, Luz absently studied her pale face and tear-swollen eyes. She could only guess how ravaged by grief her own face was. Hesitantly, Trisha came over to sit beside her and rub a hand on her shoulder.

“It's dark in here. Don't you think you should turn on a light?” she suggested.

“No.”

“I know how it must hurt, Luz. Rob was always your favorite.” Trisha's voice cracked under the weight of her sorrow.
It hurts me too. I keep wondering if there was something I could have done.”

A part of her recognized that Trisha was seeking comfort, Luz knew she should pull herself together for her daughter's sake, but she couldn't make the effort. She had lost her son, admittedly her favorite. Trisha couldn't fill the void it left in her life.

“Rob always needed me more than you did. He needed me, and this time I wasn't there.” The agony of it washed through her. “If only I had known he was using drugs,” she moaned, then remembered a fragment of Trisha's words and wondered, “Did you know, Trisha?”

Avoiding her gaze, Trisha moved uneasily and knotted her fingers together in her lap. “This last summer, I caught Rob smoking in the tack room. He claimed he'd been smoking marijuana. It's the same thing he told Raul.” She glanced in the direction of the drink cart where he stood. “Only Raul didn't leave it at that the way I did.”

“But why … why did he use cocaine?” Luz doubled her hand to an impotent fist. “That's what I don't understand. He had everything he possibly could want. What was he trying to escape?”

Agitated, Trisha rose to her feet and moved stiffly away from the sofa, where she had found no consolation. “I don't know. They claim one of the appeals of cocaine is the supreme feeling of confidence it gives—the belief you can accomplish anything.” She hugged her arms about her middle, her chin tautly quivering. “Rob was always trying to live up to everybody else's expectations of what a Kincaid should be. That's all he ever heard. That's all we both heard, ‘You're a Kincaid,' “he accused, mocking the phrase bitterly. “Poor Rob never thought he was good enough, Probably the only time he did was when he used cocaine.” Angry tears filled her eyes as she looked at Luz. “I hate being a Kincaid!” A second later, she bolted from the room in tears.

Stunned and shaken, Luz stared at the door. It couldn't be. Her mind reeled from the things Trisha had said. She drained the glass, trying to drown them out, then moved stiffly to the drink cart and picked up the whiskey decanter. There were too many tears in her eyes. They blinded her as she tried to fill the glass, spilling half the liquor on the cart top.

“This will not help you.” Raul took the decanter from her shaking hands and set it down, then took her in his arms and held her close.

“It's my fault,” she murmured and began sobbing uncontrollably.

Her grief seemed inconsolable. He was sobered by how deeply a mother could love a son and how devastating the loss of a child could be. Nothing seemed to penetrate that wall of pain that imprisoned her, not even his love.

I
n the week after the funeral, Raul watched a pattern form. Each morning, Luz poured whiskey in her coffee so that she could face the reality of Rob's death and get through another day. There was always a drink in her hand, although she never actually became drunk. She seemed to consume just enough to dull the pain that hollowed her eyes. In that alcoholic haze, she wandered the house or sat for hours in Rob's bedroom.

She ventured outside once that week. After the bulldozers had finished removing all evidence of the burned stable, including the foundations, Luz went to inspect the site and ordered sod to be laid. After that, Raul wasn't able to persuade her to leave the house again.

When Trisha left to return to college, Luz managed to be
on
hand to tell her goodbye. Raul hoped Trisha's departure would rouse Luz from her grief-stricken stupor and remind her that she had another child, but she seemed not to care whether Trisha stayed or left.

At night, she turned away from his caresses, and recently had begun to reject even the physical comfort of his arms. Every day he watched her sink deeper into mourning. Nothing he said or did seemed to make any difference. He was frustrated, wanting to help and knowing she wouldn't let him in.

For her, everything had come to a standstill since the night of the fire, but Raul couldn't remain in limbo with her. The fire had destroyed more than Rob's life. All Raul's polo equipment and gear had gone up in those flames. Although more than half his ponies had been stabled at the club, a third of his polo string had been killed in the fire. All of it had to be
replaced. Polo was still his profession. He had to practice and he had to play.

Still dressed in his boots and breeches, Raul entered the house through the French doors and halted abruptly at the confusion that greeted him. Boxes and tissue paper were scattered about the room. The yardman and his helper stood on stepladders, taking down the Christmas garlands and mistletoe that decked the archways, while Emma removed the brightly colored balls from the tree and wrapped them in paper to be put away in the boxes.

“What is this?” Raul demanded.

With lips pursed in disapproval, Emma replied, “Luz has decided she isn't having Christmas this year. I am to mail everyone's gift, including Trisha's. Yours are upstairs.”

“Where is she?”

“In the sitting room.”

Raul went up the steps two at a time and burst into the sitting room, but his impatience died at the sight of Luz curled in a chair wearing her rumpled red kimono and nursing a drink … and looking tortured. He closed the door quietly and crossed the room to the veranda doors. Reaching behind the drapes, he pulled the cord to open them and flooded the room with light. She shielded her eyes from the glare, then shifted to turn her back to it. Raul dragged a chair over and sat down in front of her, demanding her attention.

“Luz, there is something we must discuss.”

“Not now.” She took a drink of whiskey, trying to shut him out.

“Yes, now,” Raul insisted. “This cannot be postponed:”

“What is it, then?” She sighed.

“What do you intend to do about the polo team?”

“The polo team.” Luz frowned at him.

“It is entered in next week's tournament at the club. Are you going to continue your sponsorship of Rob's team?” He remembered how involved she had been in it, how much time she had devoted to organizing it with him, and hoped that it would be the key to bring her out of this stupor. “He would have wanted you to, Luz.”

She looked at him for a long minute. It seemed he had reached her at last. Then she shook her head. “No.”

She wasn't certain anymore that she had sponsored the team
solely for Rob's benefit. It might have been a vague idea before she met Raul, but it was afterward that the plan took shape. The team had been a way of justifying Raul's presence, a way to keep him with her while she pretended it was for Rob. How many times had she used Rob as an excuse to be near Raul? Meeting him in Paris, flying to Argentina, staying at his
estancia
, creating the team—all those things she had done in Rob's name when it had really been because of her own desire to be with Raul. She refused to continue the charade. She owed at least that to Rob.

“What about the players?” Raul argued. “You have made commitments to them.”

“I'll compensate them for the time they've lost. They're good players. I'm sure they'll find positions on other teams.” Uncoiling her legs, she stood up and walked to the drink cart.

Hanging his head, Raul breathed in deeply in defeat. Although she hadn't said it, she had meant that for him as well. It was true he would have little difficulty joining another team, and there were plenty of tournaments between Palm Beach and Boca Raton to keep him here through the winter season. Maybe by spring, she would be over the shock of Rob's death and come to terms with her grief, and her guilt.

Luz walked behind the counter bar in the living room and splashed more whiskey in her glass. “Are you sure I can't fix you something, Mary?” She glanced in her sister's direction, at the moment welcoming any diversion that would lead the conversation away from her failure to attend Christmas dinner at Audra's this year.

“No, thanks.”

Christmas meant children. Children meant Rob. The holiday had been agony to her without him. Luz sipped at the whiskey, needing the depressant to ease the awful ache. She took the bottle with her when she walked out from behind the bar and crossed the room to sit in a chair opposite Mary.

“Where's Raul this afternoon?”

“Playing in a tournament at the polo club.”

“You should have gone with him, Luz. You need to get out more. You can't stay cooped up in this house forever. You're turning into a recluse, and I don't like it.”

“I couldn't have sat in those stands, Mary, without remembering
all the times I watched Rob play.” Tears filled her eyes while her throat became choked with pain. “Why did I have to find out after he was dead that Rob was using drugs?”

“Parents are usually the last to find out, Luz. Maybe we don't want to see it because we don't want to believe it can happen to our children. God knows, we're all afraid it will.”

“The signs were there,” Luz went on as if she hadn't even heard Mary's response. “The personality change, the paranoia, the secretiveness. I see them all now.”

“Luz, you must stop blaming yourself. It wasn't your fault,” Mary protested.

“But it was,” she said flatly. “Don't you see, Mary? I've failed at everything. I wasn't a good wife to Drew. And I wasn't a good mother to Rob.”

“That isn't true.”

“Yes, it is. Those outbursts of anger from Rob, they were cries for help, but I wasn't listening. I didn't want to hear because it was too inconvenient. Rob accused me of being selfish, and he was right. I was happy and I didn't want anything unpleasant intruding on that, so I pretended it would all go away if I ignored it long enough. He needed me and I wasn't there,” she declared bitterly.

“Stop torturing yourself with guilt like this, Luz.” Mary leaned forward and gripped the hands that clutched the whiskey glass so tightly. “Chances are there wasn't anything you could have done even if you had known.”

She stared at her sister. “You don't understand, do you? As long as I had Raul, nothing mattered unless it affected my relationship with him. Rob's behavior upset me because I thought it might cause problems for us. I pretended my children's opinions mattered, but I had already forsaken them emotionally. All I cared about was what I needed … and I needed Raul.”

Rising to her feet, Luz brushed aside Mary's hands and walked swiftly from the room, breaking into a sobbing run when she reached the stairs. The tears didn't help, and the whiskey couldn't dull the wretched pain. She simply couldn't forgive herself for the way she had failed Rob.

She sent away the supper tray Emma brought up to her, but a few minutes later, Raul entered the room carrying it. “You have to eat, Luz.” He was still dressed in his polo attire of brown riding boots, white breeches, and blue knit shirt.

“I'm not hungry. Take it away.” She wouldn't let herself look too closely at him as she reached for the whiskey bottle on the nightstand beside the bed.

“No more.” He took it away from her and slammed it down on the stand. “There is nothing in there but misery.”

“Without it, there is more misery.” But she didn't reach for the bottle. Instead, she cradled the empty glass in her hands and stared at it. “I want you to leave, Raul,” she said tightly.

He sighed heavily. “I will leave the tray—”

“No, I mean I want you to leave this house.” Luz finally looked up and saw his stunned, disbelieving look. “Can't you see it's no good for us?” she protested angrily.

“Why?” he asked quietly.

“Because it happened too fast. The ink had barely dried on my divorce papers when I met you. I was frightened and alone, and I rushed into this without thinking. Emotionally it was too soon. It was a mistake, and I'm paying for it.”

“And I have nothing to say in this.”

“I need to be alone so I can think without having you around to influence me,” Luz insisted and raked her fingers through her hair in agitation. “Just go away! Go away and leave me alone! I don't need you anymore. I don't want you here! What else do I have to say to make you leave?”

“Nothing.” He broke his rigid stance to move toward the closets. “It will not take me long to pack.”

Taking the whiskey bottle, Luz went into the sitting room and tried very hard to drink herself into oblivion, but she was still conscious when Raul walked out the door with suitcases in hand. She wept long and bitterly, crying for the past and all the pain it had caused.

In the following weeks, her tortured grief failed to lessen. The whiskey became her sole companion and confidant, greeting her in the morning, sharing her agony in the day, and lulling her to sleep at night. Luz rarely left the house and refused all calls. Half the time she didn't bother to get dressed or to brush her hair. She simply sat and thought and remembered.