New Growth (Spook Hills Trilogy Book 2) (17 page)

Callie sat digging the toe of her shoe into a little anthill
in the grass.
 
“Can the transition be so
simple?”

“I wallowed in dread of finding myself way too long – afraid
the emptiness might be endemic.
 
My
method took too much
time,
but I did find
my soul and my heart.
 
While I will
always work at transforming into a fuller person, I am growing into the man I
want to be.
 
You can become the woman you
want to be.
 
Go back to more innocent
times and bring the kernel from the earlier days to refresh who you are
now.
 
Souls are the essence of our
being.
 
They thrive in the good and the
light.”

“I like your phrase ‘souls thrive in the good and the
light,'
” Callie spoke in a wistful tone.

“Back on the night when Mathew and I first conversed about
love, I asked him where he anticipated finding this paragon he sought.
 
Any idea what he said?”

She shook her head.
 

“He believed she dealt with personal struggles on her path
to him.
 
He’s not seeking the
flawless mythical
virgin.
 
He wants a woman with enough experience to
appreciate him and with the depth of character to help fulfill his dreams.”
Steve turned to face Callie and noticed a smile begin to curve her lips.
 
She breathed in deeply and pushed her
shoulders back.

“Thank you,” Callie whispered.
 
She sat for some time in silence.
 
A few tears trickled down her face, running
just to the edge of her mouth as it curved in a little smile.
 
She wiped the tears away with the soft sleeve
of her cotton peasant blouse.

She stood, bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
 
“Uncle Rick characterized you as the best of
men – a good friend, a kind listener and
a
no-nonsense
advisor. Hearing his praise gave me the courage to come and
talk with you.
 
You helped more than I
can say.
 
Now I must build on the
hopefulness you gave me.”

Callie left by walking across the grass and up the stone
pathway to the steps near the front of the house, going on her way alone but
not lonely.
 
Before she
disappeared
, she turned around.
 
A broad
smile came to her
face,
and she waved in
the way a child might, full of bright cheerfulness.
 

Steve lingered for a few minutes to enjoy the sun and the
open air.
 
Before the fall rains started,
he and Ivy needed to find time to sit outdoors and enjoy the tumbling
rhapsody
of the informal gardens.
 
They remained vibrant with the blues of
asters and the rusts and yellows of
mums
and dahlias, even in late autumn.
 
Too
bad they had these troubles – some intruder spying on them, a mysterious
continuation of the Fuentes saga, the aftermath of Susannah’s kidnapping.
 
Would their lives ever settle into
a normal
pattern?
 
Or was this normal for them?

He went into the house smiling to himself.
 
Since he needed to sluice off the chlorinated
water before he sat down for lunch with Ivy, he took the
little-used
elevator up to their bedroom.
 
They had put the lift in during construction
in case doing stairs ever became a problem, due to injury or infirmity.
 
Thinking that Ivy might be curious about why
Callie wanted to talk with him, he needed a few extra minutes to organize his
thoughts.
 
Then again, s
he might not probe him with questions.
 
He never knew with
Ivy,
and he liked those little mysteries about her.

Early the next morning, Steve woke up before four, made
coffee and went downstairs to work.
 
Delighted to find a message from his son, he opened it, surprised by his
eagerness to hear what he had to say.

Email from Jeremy to Steve, 7
^th
October
2014

Steve,

Thanks for reaching
out to me.
 
I want to ask a
favor,
but the situation is awkward.
 
George, my adoptive Dad, has a thriving
business here and will one day turn it over.
 
He had a son in his first marriage who is a few months younger than I
am.
 
While we both work at George’s firm,
he might give the lead to his blood son, with me in a secondary role.
 

His son and I have
certain resemblances.
 
For example, our
eyes are the color and shape of George’s eyes, plus our builds are
similar.
 
Mom knew George for some time
before you two divorced.
 
Did she start
an affair with George back before my birth, making it plausible that I am his
biological son?
 
You and I don’t seem
much alike.
 

Will you be willing to
take a DNA test with the results forwarded to a lab here in D.C.?
 
The lab can compare my genes to yours and if
they don’t match, I can talk first to my mom and then to George.
 
This is
a hard thing to request, but asking you is easier since we never see each
other.

Jeremy

Steve sat back in his chair struck by the irony of this
entreaty from his son popping up while they were conducting a genetic study of
the Fuentes.
 
Might Jeremy not be his
son
? Steve shook his head in disbelief, forcing
himself to think rationally.
 
He
read the words again and thought back more
than thirty years
to
his first
marriage.
 
As typical of his career, he
had worked away from home for most of those three years that he was
married.
 
The baby had come along near
the end of the second year.
 
After
that
their relationship had deteriorated, his
wife moved out, after what she claimed had been a fling of six months with George.

She had wanted the D.C. social scene George lived as an up
and coming lobbyist.
 
With the
obligations of a career federal agent, Steve had dedicated himself to his
work.
 
As
he
recalled, the man had left his first wife and shacked up with Jeremy’s mother
in an apartment in Georgetown, how appropriate, until their divorces came
through.
 
What gob-smacked
Steve
was
he
had never suspected his wife had cheated on him earlier in the marriage and
Jeremy could be George’s son.
 
Had he
been firing blanks all these years or wearing a blindfold?
 

Did George realize Jeremy might be his natural son?
 
If their eyes were the same, he must
suspect,
and he had been adamant about
raising
the boy as his.
 
Steve had retained rights to visit
Jeremy,
and he had paid child support.
 
Did George chuckle to himself when the
support payments had come in each month?
 

“What’s wrong?” Ivy asked as she walked into the room.
 
“Did a ghost just whoosh past you?”

“Ghost of my
bygone
marriage.
 
You remember I told you I
reached out to my son?
 
He responded this
morning.”

“You wanted to hear from him, right?” Ivy asked, puzzled by
Steve’s reaction.

“He doesn’t think I’m his real father,” Steve blurted
out.
 
“Read what he sent.”

He stood to let Ivy sit in his chair.
 
She read through the text, gaped up at him and
reread it.
 
Will
Ivy
think less of him if he never produced a child?
 
She jumped up and took two strides
over, taking
him in her arms and pulling him
close to her.
 

“Am I bloody sterile or what?” he said and pressed against
her, wanting her reassurance.

“You didn’t use protection?”

“Not always.”

She pushed back to kiss him full on the mouth before saying,
“No one could ever doubt your masculinity or sexual performance.
 
You are a sensual, giving
lover.
 
This upsets
you,
but nothing changes between us.”

Ivy was more than he deserved.
 
Her words warmed his heart and made him want
to take her to bed right then.
 
Sensing
his desire and his rattled ego, she pulled him towards the stairs.
 
They hurried up the steps, never letting go
of each other, went into their bedroom and shut the door.
 
She towed him into their big bathroom, tore
off his robe, threw hers over on the tub and tossed her filmy nightgown up over
her head, letting it drift down to the floor in
a
silken
cloud.

“Let’s shower together today,” Ivy said.
 
“I want to be warm, wet and in your arms.”

She didn’t need to say those words twice.
 
Steve
had built the big, glass, two-headed shower stall with thoughts of
intimacy
in mind.
 
What if he was sterile?
 
For chrissakes at 62, he had the loveliest of
wives who wanted him and his equipment still functioned.
 
The past lay behind him, unchangeable.
 
His present was bursting with
the joy of living,
and he wanted to spend his
days building on his love with Ivy.

An hour later, she sat next to him on the bed, tugging on a
pair of black leggings under a loose red sweater.
 
Damp from their watery
lovemaking, her
hair fell around her shoulders
in ringlets.

“What will you do?” Ivy asked.

“About Jeremy?
 
Get
the test done,” Steve said in his
decisive
way.
 
“I failed to do much right by
him.
 
I can do this.”

“Make a morning appointment and you can take me for some
Thai food afterward.
 
We need a break,”
Ivy said.

“You won’t think I’m a failure as a man if he
isn’t mine
?”

“Do I need to drag you into
bed
this time, Nielsen?”

“Not yet.
 
Just
remember, I may
require
more assurance
over the next few days,” Steve said.

Ivy saw the hurt in his eyes and wanted to do whatever she
could to help him reconcile himself to this new circumstance.
 
“Don’t we make love often enough?”

“Ivy, I want to
make love
with you morning, noon, and night,” Steve said his eyes turning from hurt to
passionate.
 
“At least in my
mind,
I like to think I possess such stamina at
my
age,
and yet the frequency would wear
away the sweetness in our lovemaking, making it mundane.”

“I do love you, Steve
Nielsen,
”
Ivy said.
 
“You are
an incredible
lover.

Steve took her right hand in his, pulled it to his lips and
brushed the soft skin on the inside of her wrist.
 
He should be more upset and yet telling Ivy
about his son took away the sting of learning he may not be a father.
 
Talking with his emotions raw and unsettled
represented a big step for him.
 
This
morning marked a growth milestone in their union as a couple, making it deeper
and more
solid
.
 
A man could not ask for more.

Not until the following afternoon had Julio and Cruze
escaped to a safe enough location to talk.
 
When they neared the hotel in Caracas, a car tracked along behind
them.
 
Julio cruised past the entrance
and hooked a sharp left.
 
They twisted
and turned their way through the city until they lost the tail.
 
He pulled over and jumped out, hailing a cab
back to get their baggage and leaving Cruze to drive the car out to the airport,
return it and go
to the terminal
to
wait.
 

Julio told the driver to drop him at the little-used far
entrance to the hotel where he slipped into the building using his room
key.
 
He took an elevator up three
floors, switched to the stairs for four flights, and went back to an elevator
to the fifteenth floor.
 
Julio
slithered down the hall, clinging to the
wall and peering around as
he
went.
 
None of the three motion sensors he placed in
the suite transmitted signals to his phone registering movement.
 

In a
flash
he flung
the door open while pulling out his gun.
 
Nothing moved in the room.
 
He
took the two suitcases, resting one on top of the other and walked to the door,
rolling the luggage behind him, then he hastened out of the room to scan the
hallway.
 
Seeing no one, he quick-stepped
his way to the elevators and rode down, again exiting through the far door and
hopping into a taxi at the corner.
 

Julio gave the cabbie the address of a restaurant, calling
as he rode to arrange a private jet to leave as soon as the pilot filed a
flight plan, hopped out when the taxi stopped and sprang
into another cab
to meet Cruze.
 
They flew back to Nassau, catching some sleep
on the plane.
 
Conversation
was sparse as each of their minds were filled with
what they just
learned
.
 
He had tried to get Julio to talk during
their flight from Caracas, but Julio put him off, remaining stubbornly silent.

Cruze had all he could do to hold back his tears.
 
His brothers were dead.
 
The filament of hope that he clung to that
they might yet be alive had snapped, leaving him bereft, empty and scared.

Arriving in Nassau at dawn after their
six-hour
flight,
they took
a
taxi
to the
harbor and prepared to take off in Julio’s speedy yacht.
 
Once ready, they zoomed out of the harbor,
traveled
to an out-of-the-way lagoon on the far
side of the big island of Andros and dropped anchor.
 

Julio opened a bottle of chilled Taittinger Ros
é
Champagne,
and they sat on the sunny deck to talk.
 
He pulled out a couple of fishing rods and
put them in holders on the side of the boat.
 
If anyone passed by, they would appear to be vacationers out for sun and
fish.
 
He sat down in a chair next to
Cruze.

“What I am going to tell you will be painful, for me to tell
and for you to hear.
 
I know you are
deeply aggrieved about your brothers, as am I, but we need to talk about this
now,” Julio said.

Cruze nodded even though he squirmed from a premonition
about the revelations to be disclosed.
 

“The summer when they sent you to juvie, I turned
sixteen.
 
You know my father harbored a
deep fondness
for
me?”

“Back then you were the fun and lively Annetta we grew up
with,” Cruze said.
 
“I remember that your
father doted on you, always hovering nearby at family gatherings and often
buying you presents.”

“What you do not understand is his affection was meant to
disguise his lust.
 
For
years
he abused me sexually.”

Cruze turned to her, his mouth dropped open in shock.

“I don’t mean intercourse,” Julio continued.
 
“He touched me in private places and made me
watch him jack himself off.
 
Once I
became a teenager, the exploitation became more flagrant and more
frequent.
 
Whenever he gave me new
clothes or jewelry, he would come into my bedroom, commanding me to stroke
him.
 
If I didn’t, he would . . .
well
, he would hurt me.”

Julio stopped speaking and took what for him was a big
swallow of champagne and then
a second
one.
 
He hated even to think of those
days, much less reveal to Cruze the misery that transpired.

“On my sixteenth
birthday,
he raped me.
 
I screamed and screamed.
 
My mother never came to stop him.
 
He left me with a promise of more gifts.
 
You cannot imagine the depth of my disgust
and despair,” Julio said reaching for his champagne and taking a third big
swallow.

Cruze refilled the glass silently.
 
He snuck a glance at his cousin and noticed
that he had gone very pale.
 
Cruze
understood that this retelling of events brought back to Julio the horror of
his childhood, back when Julio was Annetta.

“Even though the progression to that night should have been
evident, the
dreadfulness
of his attack
filled me with revulsion for him and for myself,” Julio continued.
 
“His
final
violation pushed me over my limits.
 
After a sleepless night
spent
sobbing into my pillow, I listened for him to leave and then went to my
mother.
 

“The bitch did the unforgivable.
 
She called me a slut.
 
I will always remember what she said.
 
‘You taunted him with your beauty and your
elusive
ways.
 
You must have liked what he did all these years.
 
Why are you upset now?
 
Live with it.’
 
Then as she did every day, she left to go to
mass.”

Cruze gritted his teeth.
 
He and his brothers had envied Annetta.
 
She lived in a big house, she had a father who spoiled her and she
always had new clothes and carried spending money.
 
She rarely invited them to her house,
although she was in and out of their small home almost daily.
 
He always thought she was ashamed of her poor
cousins even though she spent so much time at their house.
 
Now he understood that she was ashamed, not
of them as her cousins but of her parents and of herself.

“Devastated beyond hope, I went upstairs, threw clothes into
a suitcase and ran out.
 
After Eduardo
and Cristo
left
for school, I snuck in
the back door of your house into your mother’s kitchen, knowing she would be
there since she worked at night and stayed home during the day.
 
She held me while I cried and she muttered
that my father was an oversexed goat and called him names in Spanish I didn’t
understand at the time.
 

“
During
the
morning
she told me years before my father had
attacked her too with a savagery she still quailed from.”

Cruze released the hand he clasped during Julio’s
disclosures.
 
His mother had never let on
anything had gone so
profoundly
wrong in
her life.
 
He was not a man to feel
hatred
easily,
but at that
moment
he hated his Uncle Rodrigo, Annetta’s
father.
 
He hated him for what he had
done to the teenager Annetta and to his sweet mother.
 
He would never forgive that man any more than
he or Cristo ever forgave the people who abducted Eduardo.
 
Thankfully the man was dead.

Julio handed him champagne and picked up his, this time only
taking a long sip.
 
Cruze drained his
glass
, wishing it were a stiff Bourbon.

“Back on the day your mother was raped, she first walked you
and Cristo to grade school as she always did,” Julio said, “then she went home
to do housework and rest before going out to work late in the afternoon.
 
Your father was at his day job.
 
My
father
came in, hurled her against the wall and pounced on her, raping her in the
sadistic
way he had ravaged me.”

“When was this?” Cruze asked, croaking his words out.

“September
1974,”
Julio said, pausing to let Cruze do the math.
 
“Nine months later Eduardo was
born,
and your mother could only hope your father was the biological dad.
 
Of course in those
days,
family rapes went unreported or often not revealed.
 
The same is often true today.”

Cruze remained quiet for a couple of minutes, absorbing what
Julio had told him.
 
His mother had
epitomized
happy
sweetness,
and she had devoted herself to his father.
 
He would bet that she went to her grave
without ever telling anyone except Annetta.
 
His mother would not have even wanted a priest to know of her misery.
 
Hearing about these violent assaults,
horrified him for Julio and for his mother.

“What did you do?” Cruze
asked
although he thought he knew the answer or at least most of it.

“I hung around your house.
 
Your father had it out with mine and would not allow him near the
house.
 
I was unsure what I should
do.
 
I trembled with fear every time your
father left the house, lest my
father
broke in to get at me.
 
It was only years
later that I discovered your
father
had
told him I had left the country.

“I talked it over with your
parents.
 
W
e explored various options.
 
I could not stay hidden indefinitely.
 
Together we devised a plan to get me to
Caracas.
 

“When I missed my monthly cycle, we realized I was
pregnant.
 
While each of us cried over
the very thought of ending a life, given the incestuous parentage, I went for
an abortion and made plans to flee beyond my father’s reach.
 
One evening, I said goodbye to your parents
and left.”

An abortion!
 
He
didn’t know the rest of the story then.
 
What else could Annetta have done?
 

“How did you live?” Cruze asked, his mind moving to the
years that Annetta had lived outside the United States.

“Before
departing
I
went to the dry cleaning plant my father owned where he kept a locked
vault.
 
I had spied on him and figured
out the combination.
 
I broke in at
night, scooped up a ton of money and flew out
to
Caracas.
 
I lived a secluded life while I
made myself into Julio.
 
From my
perspective men possessed power.
 
Women
suffered as prey.
 
I became determined to
build a life where I possessed power and control.”

Cruze sat staring at the calm, aqua water letting Julio’s
heartrending history sink in.
 
“Did you
kill your father?”

“That happened after I left the country.
 
Against your mother’s
wishes,
I confided in Cristo before I left.
 
Young and hotheaded he was in a rage
with
my
father,
but he told me to leave.
 
Some days after
I had
called
to confirm my safe arrival
in Caracas, Cristo heisted a car and shot my
father
when he came out of his current mistress’s house.
 
Cristo put three bullets
in
him, sped off, ditched the car and went
home, slipping back in through his window.”

“As we often did at night,” Cruze said, his voice strained
and sad.
 
Cristo had known about
Annetta’s tragic
childhood
but had never
said anything, just as his mother never had.

“My father ran a local ring of pushers.
 
The dry cleaning chain he operated fronted
for his illegal activities.
 
The big
money came from narcotics.
 
You didn’t
know it, but you ran drugs for him.
 
He
made sure you and Cristo became his delivery boys.”

“We suspected from rumors circulating back then,” Cruze
replied.
 
“I think he wanted my father to
join the ring.
 
He was the opposite of
your
father
, unobtrusive and humble and
he believed in the American dream of hard work and honesty having their own
rewards.”

“Your
father
personified goodness and kindness.
 
I
felt safe in your house.
 
I loved your
parents and the way they were always happy.
 
So sad he died too soon in his fifties.”