Trefoil (7 page)

When Nathan hung up with Dante, he went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. He was unkempt and dark smudges stained his under-eyes. He looked deeply, past the emerald irises and into the cavity of his soul, where Lillian’s light pulsed. She was in there, and if he desired, he could Call to her.

He whirled away from his reflection. No. Not yet.

He fell fully clothed onto the thick, soft mattress and was instantly asleep. He woke once in the deep hours of night, parched with thirst. He stumbled to the bathroom and drank two glasses of tap water before returning to bed. The last thing he saw before his eyes slammed with exhaustion was the North Star, winking through the open window.

His mind played with the images of his day, warping them into new ones. The seabird with the ruffled feathers burst from the chest of Ricardo, even as the long, spindly tree branches embraced that man. Nathan saw Maria trying to restrain him as he pummeled the fender of the rental truck. And he saw Lillian’s braid. The thick rope slid through his palm like a living creature. He tugged it gently to tilt her head back, granting him better access to her mouth. Silver cuff bracelets dug into the back of his neck and raised a pore-deep itch. With a growl, Nathan ripped them from her.

The bedroom where he led her was awash in the blue of twilight. Holding her gaze, he lifted her wrist to his mouth, feasting upon the tender, bare flesh. He trailed his fingers up her arm to the crease of her elbow and felt her shudder at his touch. As he bent to her collar bone, tasting the golden skin—the finest vintage of wine, floral and sweet musk on his lips—he pressed her down into the feather mattress.

And located the blade.

The silver knife flashed in the dim light as he drew it across Lillian’s wrist. He felt her skin give, smelled her blood. She gasped sharply, a gasp of pain rather than the gasp of pleasure when Nathan kissed her immortal tattoo. But he forged ahead and sliced his own flesh. The hot blood dripped from the cut on his chest and Lillian put her wrist to it as he entered her body. His blood began to fill her veins.

Suddenly, the quiet was parted by a curdling scream. Blood spouted from her wrist, a gruesome fountain, and it spattered on the floor and wall with a sound like heavy rain. There was a downpour of blood-tears on her cheeks.

“Lillian, no,” he cried, scrabbling to catch the blood and trying to press it back into her. Screaming, screaming, screaming.

Nathan bolted upright, smaller-scaled screams upon his lips.
Oh, God. God, no. Please don’t let that happen to us.

He scrubbed his face with his hands and felt tears. Where the hell was he? He patted down the front of his body and found himself fully clothed and soaked with sweat.

It returned in a rush—the inn, falling asleep in his clothes and following Lillian down the California coast. He collapsed against his pillows with relief, his forearm slung over his eyes. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t bleeding out, dying. She was safe. He hadn’t killed her.

The horrific movie threatened to replay in his head and he held his eyes wide so he couldn’t see it. He counted to two hundred before his breathing slowed, pivoting his head to stare through the open draperies at the vineyards. Dawn sent long tendrils of light into the grey sky. Nathan watched it lighten by degrees, but couldn’t shake his Vision. Vision or dream?

He had been sleeping, and he didn’t need to sleep to have a Vision of Lillian. But he had been asleep when her soul Called to his. On his bed in Vermont he’d awakened from that Vision, thinking it a dream. But the Vision had continued to come.

He sat up now and shook his head to clear it. Just a dream, he thought. . . hoped.

Climbing off the bed, he went into the little bathroom.

Nathan had never been a vain man. He had been reared in a home where the single looking glass was a silver, hand-held object which lived next to his mother’s hog bristle hairbrush. And having no natural attraction to society, a simple shower with the hottest water in Christendom before tromping outside and into his workroom was enough for him. After all, his granite didn’t care if his hair was mussed.

But when he spied himself in the bathroom mirror, he was shocked. This was not the Nathan he knew. This Nathan’s eyes were bright with hysteria. His forehead was creased. With a heavy sigh, he set about putting himself to rights.

Ten minutes later, he reassessed himself. Was this man worthy of Lillian? John LeClair was a dark man, and being the opposite, Nathan’s insecurities rose to the fore. He recalled the Hawaiian hotel employee’s description of John LeClair. Ritzy. Expensive. When describing himself, Nathan thought the appropriate words would be crazed, berserk.

As he yanked a navy cashmere sweater over his head, his stomach rumbled. Great, he thought. I have turned into a teenage boy again. All cock and stomach.

He smoothed his jumbled hair and spun from the mirror. The antique carriage clock on the mantel showed him it was ten o’clock and that he had missed breakfast. Knowing his stomach could wait for a lot longer, he sat down and opened his laptop. He typed John LeClair into the search engine in two spellings before he nailed his address in Virginia. Hastily, Nathan scribbled it on a scrap of paper and slid it into his pocket next to the forgotten pearl and the coiled mahogany hair.

Again, he stared through the large windows at the California wine country, so foreign to him and far, far away from Virginia. Nathan’s heart swelled with hope. Eventually John LeClair would wish to return home with Lillian, and when he did, Nathan would be waiting.

“Where are we going?” Lillian asked John as he twisted the key in the ignition. The sun burned through the windshield and heated her.

“On a tour of galleries. It’s open gallery weekend in San Luis Obispo,” he said, giving her a grin that made her body react. His beautiful, full-lipped mouth spread, and the black hair on his jaw reminded her of the previous night when he buried his lips and tongue between her thighs.

She squirmed and touched a bead of sweat on her temple with her forefinger. “What a wonderful surprise, John,” she said, leaning to kiss that sensual mouth. “You know I’ve missed the art scene since our Chicago days.”

Hours later, immersed in oils of country houses and watercolors of children on the seashore, modern Bauhaus primaries and Warhol-esque knockoffs, they entered an airy loft brimming with sculpture.

Lillian froze. Every hair on her body stood erect as if her dream man had stroked her immortal tattoo. Her lungs constricted and a clot of fear wedged itself in her throat.

At the center of the space a podium held an object too small to identify. But that object was a planet, and she was its moon.

Still unbalanced from her dreams last night, she avoided the center of the room and instead revolved around it, fearful of glancing at it. John struck up a conversation with the gallery owner. His voice reached her, rising and falling in pitch depending on his excitement level.

The smell of her dream was still in her nose—musk and leather. Her nipples bunched up as tight as knots. What can I do? she thought. How can I stop this? I will stop this somehow. I’ll stop it for John. She said this to Lillian, but did Lillian exist within the walls of her soul? She could feel only
him.

The closer she got to the object on the podium, the more it pulsed like a heart. Tremors washed over her, and she felt jerky on her high heels. Slowly, she drifted toward it. Blood rushed in her ears.

She paused before the small stone and stared through teary eyes. He was all over it, had formed it with the smallest hammer and finest chisel, though it looked like he’d flexed a slip of clay. His image was reflected in the granite sheen of each curling petal, so fine and thin at the edge that Lillian thought the light would gleam though it. His rumpled hair tumbled over his face and carving dust clung to the sweat on his forearms. His mouth was solemn. She wanted to kiss it and make it laugh for her.

Her hand twitched toward the small, perfect rose sculpture, enthralled and terrified. Her thigh muscles burned as if preparing to run. The scent of Old Spice filled her nose and she realized the gallery owner was at her elbow. “Go ahead and touch it if you’d like.”

She extended one finger and stroked the rose’s center. “It’s rock,” she exclaimed, but of course she knew it was rock. She’d seen him carving it.

“It’s magnificent, I know,” the gallery owner was saying. “It’s made by an artist from Vermont. He specializes in granite and I think you’ll agree this is very finely executed. Look at the turn of these petals. Only a master can employ such skill. In fact, most stone artists can’t achieve it in a lifetime of work!”

Lillian knew this was not chance that brought her face to face with another of his artworks. Her soul was unraveling behind her and her dream man was coiling it in like a long rope. He was following her now. She could feel him.

“Who—who is the maker?” she asked in a faraway voice, thinking of the deep blue tattoos on his chest. Her breath caught in anticipation. She needed that name. If she said it, she could Call him from across all space and time, as he had Called her name in her dream, spoken it into her mouth.

When she heard it, she was unprepared.

“The sculptor is Nathan Halbrook.”

She felt like weeping. Her soul had known him, and her mind knew him now. She swung away from the rose sculpture, afraid if she didn’t she might crush it to her breast so her heart would know it too.
Nathan Halbrook. Nathan. Nate. Mine
.

John’s voice drifted to her and she glanced around, disoriented, for half of her soul stood in a Vermont farmhouse with Nathan. John was ready to go, holding a white box. Lillian didn’t want to know what that box contained but could guess. It was a ticking bomb.

At the exit, John took her arm and led her across the street and onto a bench at the waterside. The briny wind blew at her face, but she smelled the close heat of two bodies entwined on a feather mattress.

John passed the gift into her trembling hands. She felt green, wanted to drop the box and run. But she desperately wanted what was inside. She wanted to hold the sculpture in place of the man. She parted the tissue paper, cupped the rose to her chest and introduced it to her heart.

* * * * *

The sun blazed through the window of the train and Lillian stared into it unblinkingly, trying to blind herself. She hoped to burn away all images of Nathan’s lips hovering over her throat. And she hoped to obliterate the adoring black eyes of John. The cool weight of the rose sculpture rested on her palm, fitting as though carved for her hand.

The train they had boarded barreled south along the California coast, and John paced the confines of the cabin as if caged. He threw worried looks at her as he passed, but she could find nothing within herself to comfort him. She counted his rotations. . . nine. . . ten. . . eleven. . . twelve. He threw himself in the seat opposite her and buried his head in his hands.

“Is it
him,
then?” he asked in a muffled way.

Pain rippled through her. His words shot her directly in the heart.

He knows, he knows.

“Him?”

“The name you saw on the USS Arizona Memorial. Robert Albright.”

She jerked. Her mind couldn’t be farther from Robert Albright just now, but at the sound of his name a sharp pain welled inside her. Through a glaze of tears, she picked at a fingernail. “My mortal husband,” she whispered.

John’s eyes snapped to hers. They glittered like coal. “Yes.”

Memories circled her mind, soft brown eyes and gentle caresses, riding on the handlebars of Robert’s bike and sharing ice cream cones, the day Robert had his head shorn when he joined the service, crushing her against the kitchen sink and kissing her, kissing, kissing.

A tear slipped from beneath her lashes. “He was a good man, and I loved him.”

John twisted his gaze from hers.

Seeing his pain filled her with remorse. She climbed into his lap. “John. My love for Robert was a mortal’s for a mortal. What I feel for you is different.”

He tucked her head beneath his chin and encircled her with his arms. She felt the tension flood out of him, but her anxiety was just beginning. The deep, sickening tremor in her core grew. Yes, her love of John was different. But how to explain her overpowering need for her dream man?

* * * * *

Lillian eyed the cotton sleeves concealing John’s immortal tattoos. The first time she saw those blue-black bands circling his biceps, she was awestruck. Where did he get them? Had he traveled to an exotic land where such acts were common? No, he explained. It was the mark of immortality. She possessed such a mark on her spine. And then he had spun her to the mirror and made her look.

She gasped, not in shock, but at its loveliness. It was perfectly fitting, as were John’s. The Celtic knot pattern reflected his Irish descent. She knew she could gain comfort by touching his tattoos. The shocking sensation would grant them both calm. He was offering it—his shirt sleeves were rolled up against the fuggy heat of the train car and they beckoned to her. But lines of the same color lived on the chest of another man, and she could not touch John’s.

Nathan Halbrook was following her. She saw his face, sunk in the cradle of his hands, and knew the blame for the hurt he experienced was hers.

When John went out of the train car to retrieve drinks, Lillian put pen to paper and slipped a note into the crack between the seat and wall.

An hour later the train drew into the terminal and she disembarked, still jittery from leaving her gift. Yet she knew he would find it.

The chaos of the train terminal brought violent images of Nathan to mind. Voices of travelers and the barking of announcements echoed off the high ceilings. A wave of dizziness struck her. She felt Nathan’s roar of fury, the pounding of feet on pavement, the thud of fists against metal.

Surfacing from this shaking and dizzy, she released John’s arm and made a beeline for the ladies’ room. She shoved the door against the wall of a stall with an unsteady hand, and for long moments hovered over the toilet, thinking she might vomit. She hadn’t been ill in over half a century, but the back of her tongue was ticklish and her eyes streamed.

She sat abruptly on the toilet seat, weak-kneed, and unrolled a length of toilet paper to wipe her eyes. The paper was frail and rough and separated beneath her tears.Visions flashed through her mind like snapshots. Crooked smile. Mouth to hers. Mouth to spine.

Diving into the perfumed depths of her handbag, she retrieved the rose sculpture. Beneath the flickering fluorescent lights, it glowed like alien rock. She brought the cool, smooth rose to her lips and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

When she returned to John, he wound a supportive arm about her waist and led her into the sultry San Diego air. But he could not help her from the confusion of her mind. In the back of a taxi on the way to the airport, she was haunted by Visions of Nathan’s sensual mouth set in his blond beard. She had seen those lips on her too many times to remain indifferent. She also saw his rigid forearm slung over his face, making her realize she’d never seen his eyes.

She thought of John’s, deep and black. Robert Albright’s were hazel and gold-flecked, and her own were grey and almond-shaped. She bit her lower lip brutally.

John stroked the crest of her cheek. “I promise you can sleep on the plane, Lily,” he said, and then loaded her onto another plane carrying her to yet another city separating her from Nathan.

The past few days were a cyclone in her mind. The cities blurred together, the taxis, the jets and hotel beds all became one. She stared at the dusting of black hair on John’s knuckles, thinking of the blond.

As the jet engine vibrated to life and John fastened her seatbelt around her waist with a smile and pat of her knee, she panicked. Where was she headed? Behind her, she heard the strains of a song bursting its confines of a man’s headphones. The pilot’s voice sounded through the white walls of her prison, tinny and distorted.

She was so isolated and treasured these past decades in John’s care that she had failed to enter this new world. She streaked through the atmosphere at a thousand miles an hour, when once she had lain in a quiet bed with Robert and listened to the rain patter the roof of their home.

Lillian.

The voice slammed her, defying all laws of space and time. It Called to her. Beside her, John was deep in conversation with a Christian minister and oblivious that Lillian’s soul had been caved in by this voice.

She wound her arms about her torso to hold him in.
Nathan.

Can you see me?

Yes,
she immediately answered. Oh, God, he’s inside me. He is part of me. And I need him.  Through his eyes, she saw the bit of paper she had left for him on the train.
Thank you,
he said. His voice reverberated in her soul, a balm to her tremors.

I had to.

Are you alone?

No. Please go away.

Never,
he said, his mental voice low and passionate.
I’m coming.

Horror filled her. She squeezed her eyes shut and thought with all her strength,
Don’t. You can’t.

I’ll follow my star,
he said. His voice dissipated, falling away, leaving her empty and breathless.

The exchange was as blinding as the sun on the train to San Diego. It blocked all thought, memory, sense of time. She might have spoken with Nathan for seconds or days, she didn’t know. When he’d said,
I’m coming,
her hair stood on end. As the sensation of Nathan’s voice engulfed her from all angles disappeared, Lillian’s heart plummeted. Oh, God, she thought. Make it quick.