Burning for You (Blackwater) (28 page)

He sighs and buries his face in my
neck.  “Like I can finally have something I want.”

“What, me?” I ask him.  Then it
dawns on me.  “You mean Olivia,” I say.  “You can’t have her, but you can have
me.”  He doesn’t reply, and I let him lay pressed against me for a few minutes
and listen to him quietly breathing.  “Are you sleeping?” I ask him.

“No.”

“What are we going to do about
Heidi and Gabe?” I want to know. 

Theo rolls away from me, letting
the cold air press against all of the wet places he’s left on my body. 
“Tomorrow at the hospital,” he says.  “Find out what the process is for
newborns.  Discover what they do to make sure they stay with the mother and
don’t get switched or anything.  Baby switches aren’t unheard of.  Blackwater
Memorial must have something in place to prevent them from happening.”

“True,” I agree.  “But what will
that tell us?”

He shrugs.  “Maybe nothing or maybe
everything.  We won’t know anything until we ask.  And if we can figure out how
it happened, maybe we can prove to someone that it did happen.”

“Okay,” I say.  “I’ll ask around
tomorrow.”

He nods and sits up.  “I should go home
and let you sleep,” he tells me.  I nod and watch him get up and button up his
shirt and pull his jeans back on.

“Theo,” I ask him.  “Tell me what
you meant exactly by finally having something you want.”

He scowls.  “Are you going to make
me say it?”

I nod.  “Say it.  Now that you’ve
said that I need to hear it.”

He sighs and rakes his long fingers
through his hair and plops down on the edge of my bed.  “There’s never been
anyone but Olivia for me for my entire life, Leah.  It’s hard to grow up and
live with that.  Especially when your mother and everyone else tells you that
it’s wrong to act on that.  Which I know it is.”

I nod, horrified at the idea.  But
I’ve felt the pull of my own catalysts and can’t imagine being apart from them.

“For thirty three years I’ve been
holding myself together.  Olivia and I have often been sent away from each
other for months at a time.  When she was younger, my mother sent Livvy to
France to stay with my aunt Simone.  Simone and Maman have always exchanged
children back and forth from Normandy to France, where Simone stays.  When
Olivia came back, I would be sent to France.  We were almost never allowed to
see each other, and so for years we spent our childhoods apart, always needing
each other but unable to fulfill that.  We could communicate, though, even
overseas, so while we were rarely physically in each other’s presence, she was
always there for me.  As long as she is alive, she will always be with me.”  I
nod, understanding that Olivia and Theo have one of the deepest connections
I’ll likely ever know.

“When we became adults,” he
continues, “Maman stopped sending us away.  She told us that we were old enough
to know better, and she trusted us to make the right choices and not do
anything that would taint the family name.”  Theo stops and looks at me.  “You
seem freaked out.”

“No,” I say.  “I just feel sad for
you and Olivia.  I wouldn’t judge you if something had happened.  Did anything
ever happen?”

He shakes his head.  “No, it never
has,” he assures me.  I admit I am breathing a little easier when I hear this. 
“Even as adults, though, things became dangerous.  I would go to France to
escape the tension.  Little things would happen that would scare both of us and
one of us would inevitably be gone the next day.  Last night, at Normandy…it’s
never gone that far before.”

“But you and Olivia didn’t even do
anything!” I exclaim.  “I mean, I guess in retrospect it was a strange
scenario.”  I think of Olivia watching me, everything she did echoing what Theo
was doing to me.  “She can feel you through me?  What about now?  Do you think
she felt that?”

“I know she felt that,” Theo says. 
“You’re connected to me as I’m connected to you, and Olivia is connected to
me.  Everything I do for you is also for her without intending to be.  She
feels everything I make you feel, Leah.  She is always going to be a part of
this.”

I put my head in my hands, trying
to understand where all of this is going.  I can’t even swallow, though my
breathing seems okay.  I throw myself back on my bed and begin to rub my eyes,
escaping as I did like when I was a child behind the colorful patterns that
emerge from the pressure of my hands on my eyes.  “Leah?” Theo says.  “What’s
going on?”

“Nothing,” I say.  “But I think
you’d better go home so we can sleep.  I need to think and process some stuff
and I need to figure out how to ask questions about newborn security without
pissing anyone off.”  I’m still on my back with my hands over my eyes, but I
hear Theo shuffle toward the door and stop.

“Just so you know,” he says
quietly.  “I wasn’t using you just now.  I wanted you.  It wasn’t for Olivia,
it was for me.  She just happens to be involved.”

Monday morning my mother and I are
sitting and having a very silent breakfast.  It’s almost as though we know each
other’s thoughts, but refuse to voice them.  I’m not sure how much she knows
about Heidi and Gabe, and I don’t know if I should tell her what I saw.  She is
likely horrified by the loud sex I was having the other night with a man who
wasn’t the man I was having loud sex with the week before.  I could mention how
her older daughter is cheating on her husband, but it really does seem like I’m
cheating on my boyfriend at the moment.  I want to talk to someone about it,
and I need to, but right now I can’t even look at myself in the mirror without
thinking of some awful name for myself.  “Will you be home tonight for dinner?”
she asks me.  I nod.  “We can talk then,” she says.  “Right now let’s just go
about our day.”

I’m relieved, and wonder when
things became so easy living with my mother.  I recall what Theo mentioned
about when he and Olivia became adults, Lisette began to treat him like one.  I
suppose that’s exactly what my own mother is doing.

I turn on some very loud music to
drown out my thoughts during my ride to work, humming along to The Pixies
“Where is my Mind?”  The song seems fitting for today.  It takes all of my
strength not to burst into tears during my ride to work, but when I pull in to
the employee parking lot, I see Erika getting out of her car and lose it.  I
quietly sob in the comfort and seclusion of Betsey, thinking about Ash,
wondering where he is, and then I look at my phone.  Duh, why don’t I just call
him and see if he picks up?  My hands shake as I go to my contacts and speed
dial him.

“Hello?” I hear him say gruffly. 
My heart leaps into my throat.  His voice sounds tinny and far away, but it’s
him, and I want to scream.

“Where are you?” I ask him.  “What
happened?”

“Leah?” he says.  “Is that you?” 
There are sounds in the background, almost as if he’s in a windstorm or
something, even though in Blackwater it’s perfectly still and very cold.

“Ash!  It’s Leah,” I repeat.  “Can
you hear me?”  There is a long pause, and more background noise.  “Are you on
the wing of an airplane or something?  What’s going on?”

“I can’t talk to you right now,
Leah,” he replies.  “Please don’t call me again.”

“What?” I say into the phone.  I’m
about to go off on a tirade of emotions but the call is disconnected.  “He
fucking hung up on me!” I shout, smashing the palm of my hand against the
steering wheel and crying out from the pain.  I can’t help it, though.  Feeling
pain on my hands is a lot better than feeling the pain of being rejected by
Ash, and so I continue to pound my hands against the wheel until the heels of
my hands are bruised and sore.  I want to die, like half of me is gone, and the
other half of me is still here but distant and sad.  Why does this all have to
be so difficult?

I pull myself together with some
tissues to touch up my eye makeup before getting out of Betsey and on with my
day.  I have some business to attend to that I can’t back out of.  I can’t be
entirely selfish when my friend is at home missing her baby.  I’m a married
woman with two boyfriends, and when I put it like that in my head, my problems
seem trivial and ridiculous.  “First world problems,” I say to myself, and then
laugh.  “You can do this.  Don’t run away, Leah, fight.”  I step out of Betsey
with a renewed strength in my shoulders and walk with long strides through the
front entrance to the hospital.

Apparently my renewed confidence is
not meant to last very long, because Gwen is waiting for me at my workstation
with two uniformed police officers.  “Leah, good morning,” she says nervously. 
“These policemen were looking to speak with you.”  She gives me a look with
raised eyebrows and a shrug from behind the two officers.  “You can use my
office.”

“Okay,” I say, eyeing the two
officers.  One is a short stocky man who looks like he achieved his short and
stocky physique at a very young age.  He doesn’t look like he’s from
Blackwater, with dark brown skin and a huge crop of black hair that holds a
swoop that some figure skaters in the eighties would have envied.  He’s
probably around my age.  In Gwen’s office, he introduces himself to me as
Arthur Bautista.  The other man is Bill Cousineau, who introduces himself as
the Chief of Police, making my blood turn cold.  “My father was the Chief of
Police before,” I remark, eyeing my father’s replacement.  He is tall, and
probably in his mid-thirties, with broad shoulders and a buzz cut to hide the
fact that he’s pretty bald on top.  We all sit around Gwen’s small table used
for intimate conferences, and now, police interrogations.

Police Chief Bill nods.  “My wife
was the maid of honor in your sister’s wedding.  I don’t recall seeing you
there.”

“I just came back to Blackwater a
few weeks ago,” I reply.  “I hadn’t been back here in over ten years.”  I
wonder at what point will I have to stop providing that explanation to everyone
I encounter?

Bill nods.  “I see.  And what
brought you back to town?”

I blink.  “I’m sorry?”

“I mean why did you come back?” he
asks.  I notice Officer Bautista is taking notes, though I’m not sure I’ve
provided him with any relevant information yet.  “I’ve noticed you seem to be
putting roots down here again.  You’ve moved in back home, you’ve gotten a job,
you’re taking up with the Lavannes.”

“Excuse me,” I interrupt.  “But
could you please tell me what this is regarding?  You seem to have all of the
information on me already.  I’m not really sure what I can answer for you.”

“This is regarding Michael Collins,
your husband,” Bill Cousineau continues.  “His sister reported to the Chicago
police department that she has not heard from him for a week, and they traced
phone calls made to her from here in Blackwater.”  I think of Amber, Michael’s
bitchy sister, who told me to “suck it up and quit complaining” when I told her
about Michael cheating on me.  That was the first time I knew about it and
decided to confide in her.  Needless to say, we’d never really been close after
that.  “Is any of this ringing a bell?”

“I left Michael a few weeks ago,
packed my stuff and came to my mother’s house,” I say.  “But I feel you already
have that information.”

Bill nods, completely missing the
note of sarcasm in my voice.  “We heard that as well.  When is the last time
you saw Michael Collins?”

“Last Monday,” I say.  “In the
parking lot here.  He was stalking me.”

“Stalking you?” Bill says.  “Yet
you never reported it?”

I shake my head.  “Look, I saw him
a week ago.  Ash Lavanne was with me the time before that, when he came up to
us with the intention of doing something that could have hurt us.  Ash beat him
up and drove away.”

“Ash Lavanne has skipped town,”
Bill says.  “No one has seen or heard from him at all for a couple of days.”

I sigh and put my head in my
hands.  “We had a fight,” I say.  “He left after that.”

Bill stands up and crosses over to
the window, looking down at the courtyard below.  “Mrs. Collins-“

“It’s Holt, actually,” I say,
glowering at him.  “I never changed my last name.” 

Bill catches my eye and casts me a
dangerous gaze with lowered eyelids.  Officer Bautista never stops writing. 
“Ms. Holt, do you have a gift for driving men away?”

I feel my cheeks grow hot and I
stand up to walk over to the window and stand next to him.  “No, because it’s
not working on you right now.”

“I remember your father,” Bill says
in a lowered voice, glancing at Bautista, who doesn’t really seem to even be
paying attention anymore.  “I never liked him very much.  It was a great
feeling to get him the hell out of office and have the Order take over the
department.”

My mouth hangs open at Bill’s words. 
I look over at Bautista, wondering if he is planning on jumping in any time
now, but he appears resigned to the situation.  “Care to further your
explanation?” I ask.

Bill shakes his head.  “We’re going
to get our town back one day, Ms. Holt,” he says, stressing the “T” of my last
name.  “The Order was here first, and we’ll be here last.  Crafters like you
should go the hell back to Chicago and keep out of Blackwater for good.  We got
your father out, and you won’t be far behind.”

“You’ll never get the crafters out
of Blackwater,” I say softly.  “We belong here.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he
replies, glancing at me up and down with beady eyes.  “My family was here long
before yours ever was.  My family tried to hang, burn, bury and drown your kind
out before this town went to hell, but obviously they couldn’t.  The Order will
prevail where it previously failed, and it will be sooner than you think.” 
Shivers course through me as he walks away from the window and taps Bautista on
the shoulder.  “Let’s go,” he tells him.  I focus on the door and hear the lock
click the minute Bill’s hand touches the handle.  He twists it furiously back
and forth.  “Let us out of here, you witch!” he says to me.