Key West (8 page)

Romano’s hair waved tightly back from a broad forehead. His eyes were unexpectedly blue. Chris guessed that meant he was a northern Italian but wasn’t about to ask. As he’d suspected, the man appeared very fit. Chris guessed some women might find him attractive—if they were into males whose testosterone level had to be something they prized more than their IQ.

“How could you possibly meet such a person?” Romano asked, not looking at Sonnie, but at Chris’s faded T-shirt inscribed,
If All Assholes Could Fly, This Town Would Be An Airport,
and jeans that were soft and faded, and thin enough to show skin in places. The boots were expensive, but Romano didn’t bother to get that far. “Sonnie? This is exactly what I’ve been afraid of. Frank would not approve, and neither do I.”

She started tο get up but had evidently sat too long in an awkward position. Chris walked past Romano without a glance and held out his hands to Sonnie. She looked straight into his eyes and let him pull her to her feet.

“You okay?” he asked quietly. “After Roy called, I decided to take a turn down here and make sure everything was okay with you.”

“Thank you.” She held his hands so hard he was sure she was unaware of not having released him. “Roy’s a dear.”

“He wanted me to check on you and see if you wanted a ride tonight.”

“My God, what has happened to you, Sonnie?” Romano caught at Sonnie’s wrist and made to pull her hand away. “Let her go at once. She is a fragile woman in need of constant supervision.”

Immediately, Chris released her hands. “Really,” he said. “I think you’re wrong about that, buddy.”

There was no doubt that Romano weighed Chris and decided they were too unevenly matched to make any physical move on his part a good idea.

“You can leave now,” Romano said. “Sonnie needs to be quiet. We have to call her family.”

“And call in a shrink, too, maybe?”

Romano sneered, but looked taken aback at the same time. “You make a habit of listening to the conversations of others? Despicable. But what else would one expect?”

“Expect from whom?” Chris asked. “And the lady doesn’t need a shrink, by the way. She’s doing very nicely all on her own. My brother considers her the best employee he’s ever had.”

He saw Sonnie bite her lower lip, but that wicked little smile was still there. She was actually enjoying parts of this.

“Employee,” Romano said, managing to look more confused than Chris would have thought possible. “My sister-in-law doesn’t work. She doesn’t have to work.”

“Careful now,” Chris said. “Υou wouldn’t want me to dream up any ideas about getting cozy with a wealthy, unattached woman.”

Romano’s face reddened. “You listened a long time. My sister-in-law is not unattached.”

“Is that right? Well, since we’re being honest, she’s right in not wanting you moving into her house, then, isn’t she?”

 “Get out,” Romano said.

“When Sonnie tells me to go, I will,” Chris said. “She’s very good with the customers, y’know. They look out for her. Say she raises the tone of the place.”

Romano turned to Sonnie and said, “You have never worked, my dear. There has never been any need. Giacano women look after their husbands and homes.”

“My husband seems to be missing,” Sonnie said. “I would very much like to see him come back. We’ve got things to work out. But he isn’t here now and I choose to fend for myself. I work for Roy Talon and Bo Quick at the Rusty Nail.”

Romano shook his head. “This is insupportable. Do you answer phones? Type letters? What? You have no training.”

“That’s an error I intend to make good,” Sonnie said. “I’ve got time to go back to school. Meanwhile, I’m a barmaid at the Rusty Nail on Duval Street.”

Six

The phone was ringing as Sonnie let herself into the house. She dropped her keys on the wicker chest inside the front door and went into the parlor. Without turning on the light, she picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”

“At last you answer,” Romano said. “Where have you been?”

Sonnie sat on the edge of the couch, then pushed to the back. She was so tired. “I told you earlier today. I’ve got a job. I work.”

“Sonnie,” Romano said, dropping his voice, “I am beside myself. Let me come to you.”

“This makes no sense. You have nothing to worry about—not about me. I’m fine.”

“Υοur car was at the house all eνening.”

Now he was watching her. “Υou have been the one I relied οn,” she told him. “I relied on you because you were on my side. Or I thοught you were. You supported me when I insisted I would get well faster if everyone stopped fussing over me and telling me what to do.”

“I still support you. I am your champion. But you are not being yourself. I asked you about your car. How could you have gone to that place tonight without your car? Did that biker person take you?”

Biker person.
Sonnie grinned at the description, but she guessed that was fairly apt. Chris Talon was a biker person. “Chris didn’t take me. I walked.”

Romano’s following silence made her edgy.

“I cannot believe it,” he said at last. “Surely...It is a long way even in daylight. You don’t mean that you walked home in the darkness.”

“It isn’t far, and yes, I walked home.”

“Sonnie, please listen to me. I do not want to stay here at the club. I do not want to be in Key West at all. But I cannot leave you alone at such a time.”

“Such a time?”

“While you are not yourself, dear one.”

She felt shivery. “Why do you keep talking about me not being myself, about bringing in doctors to examine me? You aren’t responsible for me. I don’t want you to be. I want you to go back to being the friend I can call on when I need him. I can’t understand why you’re so upset. We’ve spoken regularly and everything’s been okay. As okay as it can be until we know—until Frank comes back.” If Frank came back she would have to pray for the strength to do what must be done.

“Frank will come back,” Romano said, but without conviction. “You have done so well since the accident. I thought you would continue to improve—as long as you didn’t do something foolish and possibly dangerous, as you have now.”

Sonnie propped an elbow and buried her face in one hand. He was a good, kind man who had always done his best for her. When she’d been in the hospital, he’d rarely left her side. Her family loved him. In fact, they loved him as they had never seemed able to love Frank.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

Perhaps she should stop trying to fight alone, and with so little idea of what she hoped to find, to do. “I’m here,” she said. If she asked his help, he would give it. He might well tell her she was imagining things, but she was the one who heard the voices and saw, if only briefly, those vague impressions of faces and movements, of fire in the wind, of reaching hands.

“Sonnie?”

“Be patient with me, Romano. I came because I felt I must. I felt there were things here that I should know about. Or perhaps things that would lead to information I should know about. You knοw how important you are to me. I don’t want us to become enemies.”

“Oh, my dear, we could never be enemies. No, no.” He expelled a long, uneven breath. “Tell me what you think you may find. Or what you want to find. Let me help you, please.”

She smiled. He hadn’t changed. “You are the man you always were,” she told him. “Thank you for that. I don’t know what I hope to discover here. I only knοw that I...I just wanted to come here and think. There are decisions I need to make about my future.” This wasn’t the time to reveal exactly what had brought her back here, not when he was talking about getting her reevaluated by a psychiatrist.

“What decisions?” He sounded tense and worried.

“I don’t work tomorrow evening. Come for dinner. Around seven?”

“Let me come over now. Then we’ll spend the day together tomorrow and I’ll bring you to the club for dinner.”

“Always the persistent one,” she said. “No, thank you. I need to be alone. That’s one of the reasons I decided to return to Key West—to be alone. You should play golf tomorrow. Or get on the courts—you will anyway.” Romano had been his brother’s coach and was a first-class tennis player in his own right.

“Sonnie—”

“Good night, Romano. I’ll see you tomorrow evening.” He was talking again when she hung up.

Business at the Nail had been brisk all evening. She’d wanted to stay longer and help, but Bo insisted she go home. Roy wanted to drive her, but she talked him out of it with a small lie: her car was parked a block away, she’d said. She was used to the walk back and forth now and knew it was strengthening her leg.

But she was exhausted. The day had been an emotional one, and the prospect of sleeping in what had been her bed with Frank made her jumpy. All of her clothes were hung in the closets. She’d changed the sheets and put a bowl of jasmine in the room. The rest of the house was far from back to normal, but she’d get it there within days.

She left the light in the parlor off and made sure the windows were closed and locked. Then she toured the ground floor, checking all doors and windows before climbing the stairs.

Milky blue light penetrated the sky dome over the two-story hallway. Clouds, shifted by the wind, dappled patterns on the shadowy pale walls inside. She didn’t fear darkness. When all was dark, the odds of seeing and being seen were even.

It felt good to look around and see into rooms where the furniture was no longer draped. Part of the reason for her being here was to brush aside specters. Living in one room surrounded by closed doors wouldn’t help her reach her goal.

Α quick shower, and then she slipped into a favorite pair of soft, satin pajamas. The sprigs of jasmine she’d used to fill a bowl scented the whole room. She left the window to the balcony open and slid between cool, white sheets.

The last time she’d slept in this bed, she’d been pregnant.

Would there ever come a time when she could think of that tiny girl and not have her eyes fill with tears? She placed both flattened hands on her stomach and lay very still. How she’d loved to feel the baby move. The first time it had happened she’d felt almost faint with shock and excitement. She had sat on the couch in the parlor and stared down at herself, trying to actually see a tiny elbow or knee or bottom poking around to make more room.

“I loved you so,” she whispered into the night. “I wanted you so. You will always be with me, little Jacqueline. Forgive me, baby mine.” Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and ran in hot lines down her temples.

This was something she’d promised to keep at bay, this falling back into the desperately sad place where her baby waited for her mother to comfort her.

The night was hot—too hot.

The sheer drapes billowed inward.

Sonnie turned on her side, then rolled to her other side. She felt sick and her scalp grew damp. She threw back the covers and took long, slow breaths. In her tote bag were the bottles of pills she kept for pain, or nervousness—or for when she couldn’t sleep. Slipping from the bed, she put on a small light beside a chair and found the sleeping pills. She hated to take them, but sometimes, when she knew the gulf of sweaty blackness might be opening up before her, she gave in.

In the bathroom, she swallowed two pills with water and returned to bed. As she stretched out she began to feel herself relax just at the thought of drifting away. She’d been going to stop by the florist, Moss Corner, and ask about the lilies, but she’d forgotten. They were a deliberate effort to frighten her. Romano had seen them and hadn’t even asked where they came from. In fact no one seemed concerned, so maybe she shouldn’t be concerned either.

...
Her only bed. White as the satin in her only bed
Sonnie tossed some more. The suggestion was horrible, and it had been intended to horrify her.

She gave in to a veil of unconsciousness that drew itself slowly over her warm body. The veil grew thicker and softer and closed out everything—even her hearing.

But she never quite slept. Each time she felt the last shreds of wakefulness grow thinner, she was drawn back up through shades of mist and darkness to an ever-increasing heat.

A crackling—distant, but clear—nibbled at the edges of her brain. There was a shooting blanket of fire. The flames within the blanket spun like elegant orange tongues, molten gold at their margins. Swirling, swirling, until they merged.

She couldn’t breathe. “Help me,” she whispered. “Stop. Please go away. I’m sorry.”

Her body was awash in sweat, her pajamas sodden and twisted around her.

“Νο.” Her own voice was pathetically small.
Breathe, Sonnie, breathe. Lie still and breathe, and shut everything else out.
He was trying to drive her away. She wasn’t supposed to try to find out what had really happened to her.

The crackling rose, rose to a roar, ripped at her ears, heated her skin until it was parched. Her mouth was parched, her lips dry and cracked. Her hair streamed and stuck to her face and neck.

“Go away from here. Do as you’re told. Get out, before I make you get out.”

Her eyes wouldn’t open. They were fused shut, and when the poking fingers attacked and she tried to fend them off, she couldn’t catch them. She was helpless before a shrieking audience with sharp fingers. They screamed and prodded her, prodded her stomach and howled,
“Baby, baby, baby, all gone.”

“Stop it!” She wanted to be silent. She wanted to be dead here and now. “I didn’t mean it. Let me go.”

No, nο, she was giving in. That’s what he wanted. He wanted her to be frightened to death. Then he’d have his wish. She’d fought through this over and over again. He’d gone away, she thought. But now he was back again, and he had her alone this time. But she knew she could beat him only if they were face-to-face, alone.

The fingers poked her stomach again, and the voices chanted,
“Baby, baby, all gone away.”

She screamed, then crammed her hands over her mouth, trying to force the sound down. No one must hear. They’d say she was mad—and they’d put her away. She’d heard them talk about that when she was in the hospital, how they didn’t know if she’d ever be able to be alone again. Perhaps she’d need to be “cared for sοmewhere,” they’d said when they thought she still couldn’t hear.