American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory (25 page)

She wrapped her arms around his
neck, gazing into his hazel eyes. “So what are you saying?”

His gaze was intense. “I’m saying
I want to marry you, more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I want to
marry you and love you and take care of you, and be the best husband and
step-dad I can possibly be.  I don’t expect an answer tonight or even next
week, or next month. But I want you to know what I’m feeling and how much you
are already a part of me.  I want you to know how proud it would make me for
people to say ‘yep, that’s Ellie Aury, Nash’s wife.’ God, you have no idea how
honored I would be.”

Elliot stared at him, her big
blue eyes reflecting every emotion she was feeling at the moment. “Oh, Nash,”
she wound her arms around his neck, holding him tightly. “I… I’m just
speechless. I don’t know what to say.”

He held her tightly, feeling weak
and deflated now that he’d spit everything out. “Just say you’ll think about
it. “

She didn’t say anything for a
moment. Nash wasn’t sure if he should be thrilled or devastated from her lack
of response, but he didn’t say anything. He was holding her and she was holding
him and, for the moment, that was enough. But suddenly, she pulled her face
from the crook of his neck and placed her soft lips over his.

“I love you,” she murmured
between heated kisses, touching his face, feeling his lips on her fingers.
There was such eagerness to their touches. “Of course I’ll marry you. I don’t
need a day or a week or a month to decide that. I know it now.”

He kissed her ferociously,
smiling as he was kissing her, eventually laughing with the sheer joy of the
moment. Elliot’s high-pitched giggles joined his laughter.

Together, they fell back on her
bed in a happy bundle, the only break coming when Nash turned off the light. 
But from that point on, clothes came off and they settled between the sheets,
celebrating a moment neither one of them ever believed they would experience.

The start of something truly and
wildly beautiful.

***

 They awoke the next morning to
the sounds of screams.

Nash was out of bed before he
even realized he had moved, running to the door until Elliot stopped him. He
didn’t have a lick of clothing on and as Elliot flew out of bed and pulled on her
pink pajamas, Nash yanked on his jeans and threw open the door.

They heard more screaming as they
hit the staircase and flew down the stairs, but they realized there was also
laughing intermixed with the screaming.  By the time they hit the kitchen, where
the sounds were coming from, they were confronted with chaos.

Wolfgang suddenly zinged by,
nearly knocking Nash over. He tripped back, bashing into Elliot and reaching
out to grab her so she wouldn’t fall down. Penelope and Alec were hot on the
heels of the dog.

“Get him!” Alec was yelling. “He
stole a whole pound of bacon!”

“No!”Elliot cried when she saw
the direction they were heading in. “Not the parlor!”

She raced after them while Nash
followed on her heels.  Wolfgang was deep in the double parlors, wedged in
between boxes, eating his stolen booty of raw bacon. As Elliot shrieked about
bacon grease on her couches, Nash stood in the doorway and grinned.  Shaking
his head at the antics, he emitted a sharp whistle between his teeth and the
dog suddenly appeared.

“Wolfgang,
entlassung
,” he
said sharply.

The dog trotted right over to him
and guiltily dropped what he hadn’t already eaten. He lay down contritely next
to the bacon, sad doggy eyes looking pleadingly at Nash. He frowned at the dog
as Penelope and Alec went to Wolfgang’s defense.

“He’s just hungry,” Penelope put
her arms around the dog’s neck and hugged him. “We don’t have any dog food.”

Nash nodded. “Yes, you do,” he
yawned. “I brought some with me yesterday. It’s outside by the kitchen door.”

He turned around and headed back
to the kitchen with Alec and the dog following him, Penelope bringing up the
rear gingerly carrying the half-eaten bacon.

“We can’t eat this bacon now,”
she pointed out. “We have to cook it for the dog.”

“Then why didn’t you just let him
eat it?” Alec wanted to know.  “Why did you scream so we had to chase him
down?”

“Because it’s raw,” she frowned.
“He’ll get worms.”

Alec rolled his eyes. “He’s a
dog. He’s
not
going to get worms.”

Elliot was too tired to go back
into the kitchen with everyone else. She went upstairs and climbed back into
bed, snuggling down under the covers and dozing off. Deep, dreamless sleep
settled until big, warm arms wrapped themselves around her and she felt soft
breath on her ear.

“Hey, sleeping beauty,” Nash
whispered. “Breakfast is ready.”

She stirred, smiling as she
rolled over and wrapped her arms around his neck. “That sounds wonderful,” she
murmured. “But I just want to sleep. I’m so tired… I think this week has just
caught up to me.”

“Okay,” he kissed her cheek, her
lips. “Sorry I woke you up. I’ll be downstairs.”

“No,” she whispered. “Stay with
me. Don’t leave.”

He smiled faintly at her. “If I
stay, you won’t sleep.”

Elliot’s answer was to lift her
mouth to his, a gentle kiss instantly turning hot and passionate. In the bright
sunlight of a leisurely Sunday morning, Nash did things to Elliot than any
God-fearing, church-going Christian would have found shocking.

***

“They’re not coming down,”
Penelope told her brother over her plate of eggs. “I told you they wouldn’t.”

Alec shrugged, throwing pieces of
pancake to Wolfgang, who gobbled them up.

“So what?” he chewed. “They’re
grown ups. They can do what they want.”

Penelope shrugged, pushing her
eggs around the plate. She seemed normal this morning, not a hint of what had
happened to her yesterday except for the slightly black eye around her right
eye socket. Alec didn’t ask her how she was for fear of bringing up bad
memories, so he treated her like normally did - he alternately ignored and harassed
her.

 “You’re usually the one who has
a problem when men get around Mom,” Penelope said. “Why don’t you feel that way
about Nash?”

Alec shrugged again, throwing the
last of the pancake to the dog. “Because Mom loves him,” he said simply.

Penelope grinned, taking one last
bite of her eggs and taking the plate over to the big iron sink. “I’m glad you
feel that way,” she said. “I will admit I was worried about you.”

Alec went to the sink and washed
his hands as his sister started to rinse off the dishes. “As long as he loves
her too and treats her right, I’m okay with the whole thing,” he insisted.

 “They’re upstairs having sex,
you know,” Penelope teased quietly.

Alec made a face and put his wet
hands over his ears. “Shut up.”

She made grunting noises. “Sex,
sex, sex.”

He pushed his hands against his
ears harder to block out the sound. “Stop!” he roared.

She laughed as he walked away,
turning back to her dishes. “I’m just kidding, you big baby,” she called after
him. “Come and take the dog out so he can go pee.”

Alec was in the dining room, a
room that had so far been stripped of the old paint to reveal original wall
paper beneath.  The preservationist from Tulane wanted to try and save it, so a
small army of art students was coming up from Tulane next week to see what they
could do. It was a woodland scene, like a painting, with wispy trees and birds
and delicate grass all painted on one hundred and fifty year old linen. The
entire room was covered with one continuous scene.

Alec wandered over to the big floor
to ceiling window, trying not to think of what his mom and Nash were doing
upstairs, frustrated because he was bored and not particularly happy here in
the wilds of Louisiana. He was a city boy and as the days passed, he was
becoming increasingly convinced that he couldn’t survive out here.

In just the week he had been
here, he’d been forced to kill a man in self defense and his sister had been
attacked. But his mom had found Nash and for the most part, his mom and sister
were happy, so he really didn’t want to voice his opinion. As Penelope called
to him from the kitchen, he wandered around the dining room, teaching her a
lesson by not doing her bidding.

He peered at the wallpaper on the
wall that bordered the kitchen, the one that had the back stairs built against
it on the other side.  He could see little dogs and foxes running through the
trees.  He ran his hand over the wallpaper, although he knew he probably
shouldn’t, feeling the scratchy linen against his fingers.

  The lower half of the walls were
wood paneling, untouched by the painters or conservators as of yet. He saw what
he thought was a knot on the wood and ran his finger over it, feeling it give
way slightly. Curiously, he ran his finger over it again, pushing it all the
way down. Suddenly, a huge portion of the wall shifted.

At first, he thought he had
broken something, somehow, and he stepped back, looking around to see if anyone
had seen him do it.  It was a foolish reaction considering there was no one
around, and after the initial ‘oops’ moment, he peered more closely at the spot
and notice that the entire section of wall, vertically from floor to ceiling,
had shifted back about a quarter of an inch, as if there was a seam buried
beneath the wall paper. He gave the seam a push just to see what it would do
and the entire section of wall swung back, like a door, and the wallpaper gave
way. 

Alex muttered a curse, jumping
back in surprise and perhaps a little fear. He stared at the gaping hole he was
now faced with, with the tattered wallpaper waving in a slight breeze. He could
feel damp, cold air drifting from the hole and he swore, in the midst of it, he
heard voices. Mouth hanging open, he made a run for the kitchen where his
sister was washing dishes.

“Come here!” he grabbed her by the
wrist, spraying water. “Quick!”

Penelope was up to her elbows in
soapy water, shrieking when her brother grabbed her and pulled her out of the
kitchen.  She was fighting him angrily, slapping at him, until he pointed out
the one-foot gap in the dining room wall that ran from the floor to the
ceiling. Penelope’s struggles came to a halt and she gasped.

“What happened?” she demanded.
“What is this?”

Alec threw up his hands in
confusion. “I have no idea,” he said. “I just touched the wall and this whole
section opened up!”

Penelope’s mouth was hanging open
in shock as she inched forward, looking at the seam, very cautiously peering
into the blackness. She didn’t want to get too close, fearful that something
might give way. The house was falling apart before their very eyes.  But as she
peered closer, she suddenly noticed something.

“Steps!” she pointed wildly
inside the hole. “I see step! They lead down!”

Alec moved beside her, also
seeing four very narrow, very old steps disappearing down into the darkness.  He
bolted from his sister’s side and ran into the stairwell hall, taking the
sweeping staircase two at a time.

“Mom!” he was yelling. “Nash!”

Behind the closed door of
Elliot’s bedroom, Elliot was laying flat on her back, naked, while Nash lay on
top of her trying to catch his breath. In fact, they were both trying to catch
their breath, but Alec’s cries roused them. Nash was out of bed in a flash,
hunting down his pants. 

“Mom!” Alec was banging on her
door. “I need to show you something!”

Elliot was sitting up in bed. 
She and Nash locked gazes, Nash with his pants already on but not zipped. They
looked at each other curiously.

“What is it, Alec?” Elliot
called.

Alec just banged on the door. “I
can’t describe it,” he told her. “You have to come and see it. Please! It’s
important!”

Nash finished securing his pants
and went for his shirt as Elliot got out of bed and put on her pink pajamas.
Nash went to the door, his hand on the knob as he turned to Elliot to make sure
she was dressed. When she finished pulling the pajama top over her head, he
opened the door.

“What’s wrong?” he asked the
young man.

Alec’s face was taut with
surprise and perhaps some fear. “Come on, dude,” he grabbed Nash by the wrist
and began pulling him down the hall. “You have to see this.”

Nash allowed the kid to pull him
to the stairwell. He turned around to make sure Elliot was behind him and she
was, giving him puzzled and concerned expression. They took the stairs and
entered the dining room, immediately faced with a quarter of one of the walls
missing. At least, that’s what it looked like on the initial glance.  It looked
as if someone had pulled out the middle quarter of the east wall.  Elliot
gasped when she saw it.

“What happened?” she demanded,
moving in to inspect her missing wall. “Alec, what did you do?”