Intaglio: Dragons All The Way Down (11 page)

“What’re you
doing here, Ava?” he grumbled.

“I could ask you
the same thing.” 

He scowled,
gesturing to the television.

“You know what
I’m doing...” he muttered, his lips a hard line.  “
Listening.”

Ava shook her
head angrily.

“No,” she
snapped, “you’re not.  You’re sitting here, hidden in this…” she nodded to the
room, “…this goddamn
tomb
while your son is outside, hurting!”  She
glared at him, aiming her words to cut.  “Cole’s alive, Frank.  He deserves
your time, not her!”

There were a few
seconds of silence before he pointed to the door.

“Get out!” 

It was the sound
of a man used to giving orders and being obeyed.  Ava crossed her arms, leaning
forward. 

“No!” she
snapped.  Across from her, Frank’s eyebrows rose in shock.  “You really have no
idea what it’s like for him, do you?” she continued.

He recoiled as
if he’d been slapped.

“Don’t you talk
to me about my son!” he growled, banging the glass down on the table, amber
liquid sloshing over the edge.  “You know NOTHING about this family!”

Ava laughed
bitterly, voice rising to match his.

“I know a hell
of a lot more than you give me credit for.”

“Out!” he
ordered again, but Ava just laid into him, her words fast and furious.

“You really have
no idea what it was like to grow up with Hanna as a perfect fucking ideal that
Cole could never, EVER live up to!”

“Don’t you
DARE!”  Frank bellowed, rising from the chair like a shark from the depths,
enraged and ready to attack.  Ava stood at the same time.  He loomed over her,
but she wouldn’t step back.

“I will dare,”
she hissed.  “Cole is doing this because he wants to fix things with you.  He
WANTS to get to know you.  Can you honestly say you want the same thing?!” 

She could see
him breathing hard, fighting to control himself. 

“So tell me,
Frank,” she said, voice lowering slightly, “what are you bringing to the table
other than your grief?”

Cole’s father
said nothing, just stared at her.  After a moment, he spun on his heel and
walked out, leaving Ava alone with the sound of pouring rain and the ghostly
echoes of children.

Nina was reading
in bed when she heard Frank walking up the wide wooden stairs.  There was
something about the slow progress and heavy thud of his footsteps that peaked
her concern.  They’d been married almost a decade now.  Little hints like the
heaviness of his tread warned her that not everything had gone well this
evening.

She’d known this
would happen eventually.

With a sigh, she
set down the copy of Gloriana’s Torch on the bedside table, her fingers tucking
a small copper bookmark into its heart, careful as always not to bend the
pages.  She had read this book more than once, but it soothed her, the epic
descriptions of common people drawn into events beyond their control.  Dreams
and visions of the future guiding the grand events of the Spanish armada. 

Nina didn’t have
a lot of use for the character of Queen Elizabeth, though perhaps, she thought,
that was her own issue.  She could, at times, see too much of herself in the
queen’s machinations.  After the car accident, she’d had plenty of hours to
contemplate that aspect of her character.  She wasn’t Frank’s first wife; he’d
been married when they’d met.  Nina shook her head at the thought
.  ‘Too
much time to think about my own role in the Thomas family's misadventures...’
her mind prompted.  Lately she rather fancied herself more in the behaviour of
David Beckett, adventurer and soldier.  He was a commoner who worked for the
greater good.  He saw the truth in his dreams, and believed.

She ran her
fingers over the worn dust cover, her mind pulled like a snare back to the
constant fight hidden in the walls of this house, the thing between Frank and
Cole that would not rest.  She could feel – much as Beckett had – the danger
ahead, the damage about to break free.  She wanted to be strong enough to help
them, but she was tangled up in it too, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to do
much.  But now they had Ava; that thought left her smiling.  Frank’s voice
wasn’t the only one she’d heard raised downstairs in the den.  The girl, with
her strength of character and quick temper, would fight to the death for Cole. 
Nina had known that months ago.

Outside, the
slow steps reached the landing, and Nina knew that Frank was pausing outside
the door.  She could imagine him pulling himself together, the mask coming
down.  She waited, eyes on the wooden panel for the moment he would walk in.

He cleared his
throat and the door swung open.  Frank looked tired, but his eyes brightened
when he saw her.

“I thought you
were already asleep,” he said with surprise.

She smiled,
reaching out as he crossed the room.

“No,” she said
smiling, “just reading.  I slept most the afternoon, but the migraine’s gone
now.  Feeling better.”

“Glad to hear
it,” he said, taking her hand and dropping a kiss on her forehead like she was
a little girl.

He settled
himself down next to her, running his thumbs against her double wedding rings,
spinning the heavy bands inset with stones again and again on her finger.  It
reminded Nina of her grandmother.  The way she’d carried her rosary beads with
her, praying in silence at random times during the day, almost an afterthought
after so many years of practise. 

For a moment, a
line from the book she’d been reading came to mind: 
‘The gods too had
rivalries and enmities...’
  Her grandmother prayed for sins long-since
forgotten by everyone but her.  In the last few years, Nina had come to
understand that need.  Across from her, Frank’s fingers twisted the ring, and
she wondered if he was doing the same.

They
all
had sins.

“Cole’s out
walking,” Nina said quietly. 

Sound carried in
the big house.  She’d heard Frank return alone, heading to his den to wander
the darkened halls of the past.  Ava and Cole arrived half an hour later,
though only one set of footsteps had come in through the front door.  She knew
Cole would be down on the beach now, walking the way he always did when his
father’s words became too much for him to bear. 

The two of them
had fought.

“Yes, he is,”
Frank growled, his face darkening.  Nina sighed.

“What was it
today?” she asked out of habit, not sure she really wanted to know.  “What did
he say?” 

She knew the
question could be flipped.  Frank was easily the one who might have started
this, but she had learned to handle her husband’s temper in their years
together.  Careful phrasing was the first step.  Patience was the second.

Frank lifted his
gaze from her thin hands to her face.  His knuckles brushed lightly over the
papery skin before dropping back to her fingers, wrapping them in warmth.

“Dr. Langden
wanted us to talk about Angela.” 

He didn’t hold
her eyes when he said it, his gaze wandering to a picture near of his first
wife with their children which hung near the door.  The four of them together:
Hanna, her mother’s image, Cole, Frank.  Nina had never removed it –
never
felt the need
– but she felt her rival’s gaze on her tonight.  It bothered
her.

“Well, Frank,”
she said, sitting up tall, “that’s probably a good place to start.  You and
Cole do have some issues revolving around her.”

“Harrumph,” he
grumbled, face turning to the side.  He hadn’t let go of her hands, but he’d
stopped fidgeting with her rings.

“You didn’t want
to share that?” she prompted.

He turned to her,
heavy eyebrows drawn together in frustration.

“What’s the
point of it, Nina?” he sighed.  “What’s done is done.  Open up all those old
wounds and Cole and I are right back where we were when Angela died.  Yelling
at one another and… and…” 

He stopped himself,
though Nina knew the next word was fighting.  She had been there at the
graveyard that day.  She could remember seventeen-year old Cole in the backseat
of the hearse, his cheek purpled and swelling, sitting silently as they’d
driven back to a home he now despised.

She cringed in
remembrance.  (She’d played a part in those events too.)  When Frank didn’t go
on, she pulled her hands from his, straightening the bed linens and smoothing
her nightshirt (as if this gesture could straighten everything else undone
too).  Nina felt like she’d faded since the accident in the fall, like the
brush with death had brought everything too close to the surface.

Tonight was no
different.

“It all started
with Hanna’s death,” Frank muttered.

Nina paused for
a moment, wavering.  The easy thing to do here was to agree with him… but there
was a young woman downstairs right now who’d stood up to him, and that gave her
the nerve to say it.

“No, it didn’t,”
she said firmly.  “There were issues long before Hanna died.  You know that as
well as I do.”

Frank’s head
bobbed up, eyes sparkling with indignation.  She felt a twinge of guilt. 
Looking the way she did right now – still wan and tired from the migraine,
dressed for bed and settled in the covers – he wouldn’t argue with her.  In a
way, it gave her an unfair advantage.

One she intended
to use.

“I don’t… I
don’t know what you mean by that,” he mumbled, his face becoming wary and
distant.  It reminded her of his son.

She smiled,
weaving her fingers into his, raising an eyebrow in disbelief.

“You and I were
far more than just friends before Hanna passed away,” she said quietly.

“Yes, well,”
Frank stammered, glancing back to the photo of his ex-wife for a moment, then
to Nina, as if worried she would somehow overhear, “Angela never knew about
that, Nina.  I mean she suspected you and I were more than just friends but—”

It struck her
that Frank – a veteran – was blushing.  Her fingers tightened on his, pushing
his denials aside.

“Even Hanna knew
about us, Frank.”

She watched as he
closed his eyes, his face warring with pain and grief.  His daughter’s memory
was preserved unsullied like her upstairs bedroom, the one with the pressed
sheets and lines of school awards, still waiting for her return. Frank
swallowed hard, throat bobbing, before he spoke again.

“You don’t know
that she did for sure,” he retorted, voice wavering. “Hanna, she… she thought
something was going on, but she never really knew for sure.  I never said
anything about it to her.”

Nina’s heart
thumped painfully hard, the muted pain in her temple beginning to pulse in time
to it.  This was difficult for Frank... anything to do with Hanna was... but it
needed to be said.

“She
did
know,” she insisted.

“No, she
couldn’t have.”

“Yes, Frank,”
she repeated, nodding.  “She could and she did.”

 “No!” he
barked.

It was a
command.  Nina felt the admission resting on the tip of her tongue, ready to
disappear under his words.  She’d spent a decade in the hazy fog of almost
truth. 

That stopped
today.

“Yes,” she said
flatly.  Frank’s mouth opened to argue, but she pushed on, finally saying what
she’d denied for so long.  “She came to my apartment and confronted me once. 
Hanna was a senior in high school then: all teen bravado and indignation.” She
leaned back against the pillows, sighing tiredly.  “God, she was so much like
you, then… the same exact temper.  Furious with me – the other woman.”  She
laughed .  “She stood up for Angela.” Her voice wavered.  “That girl of
seventeen shamed me.”

Frank stared at
her, wide-eyed, cheeks ashen.

“That’s why you
left that summer.”  His voice was incredulous; this had never occurred to him
before. 

She picked up
the corner of the embroidered sheet, fiddling with the hem.

“Well, part of
it anyhow,” Nina said with a weary laugh, “France was nice too.  But the truth
is, I needed to get away, to think about things… to decide what I wanted to do
about you… and us.” 

Frank reached
for her fingers, his hands around hers once more.

“I’m glad you
came back.”

She nodded.

“I am too.”

For a moment, Frank’s
gaze rested on the framed picture with Angela and the children.  Something dark
churned under the surface of his expression, his voice breaking when it finally
returned.

“Hanna knew,” he
said quietly.  “Why didn’t you tell me that she’d talked to you?  I never
realized...”

Nina shook her
head, throat tight.  She didn’t know all of the reasons; perhaps there was more
to her in Elizabeth’s manipulations than she wanted to admit.  Once, long ago,
she’d been good at reasoning the balance of carefully slanted facts and
half-truths, dealing them out carefully like a miser’s coins. 
‘Frank’s not
happy in his marriage… they’ve already separated twice… Angela had an affair
before he did… it’s a marriage in name, nothing else…’