The Tears of Dark Water (57 page)

Derrick glanced at Vanessa and saw that she was blushing.
Shit. So I wasn’t imagining things. All I have to do is get through the day. Then I can walk away graciously.

“Bon voyage,” Ted said, holding up a spatula. “Bring back a whetted appetite.”

“Sorry about that,” Vanessa said, as she led Derrick toward the river. “He has no filter.”

“I like that,” Derrick replied. “I know where I stand.”

He inhaled the fragrant air, scented by forest and sea, and drank in the day. The weather was magnificent—seventy-five degrees with spotless skies and just enough of wind to fill the sails. He saw Ariadne in the cockpit of the
Relativity
, dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and cutoff jeans,
and Quentin standing on the dock looking like a yachtsman in a windbreaker, shorts, and topsiders. As Derrick watched, he handed Ariadne a cooler without losing his balance.

“He’s really coming along,” Derrick said.

Vanessa laughed softly. “It’s amazing what a girl can do.”

Derrick hesitated a moment, then asked the question that came to him.
“I don’t mean to pry, but has he talked about the future? Is he thinking about college?”

Vanessa nodded. “He’s finishing the correspondence courses he was taking on the
Renaissance
. We’ll send in college applications in the fall.”

“He’s going to take a gap year,” Derrick said.

“I think it will be good for him. Ariadne is going to take it with him. They’ll work some and travel the rest. They want to go college together.”

Derrick stopped on the sun deck. “They’re really serious.”

Vanessa shrugged. “I was skeptical at first, but not anymore. She’s the best thing that ever happened to him. I don’t know if it’ll last. But right now it’s a gift.”

Derrick looked into her eyes. “I like that perspective.”

She smiled again. “I’m trying. You’re not the only one who needs to learn how to relax.”

Thirty minutes later, they sailed out of the mouth of the Severn River and into the blue-gray embrace of the bay. Quentin stood at the helm, his hands on the wheel, and Ariadne scurried behind him making adjustments to lines and sheets. Derrick sat with Vanessa in the shade of the dodger, sipping a Heineken. With alcohol in his system, he found it easier to loosen up.

So, apparently, did Vanessa. After they swapped anecdotes about life in D.C., she gave him a truth-or-dare kind of stare and asked: “Were you ever married?”

“A long time ago,” he said, watching the wind tousle her hair. “It was messy.”

“Isn’t it always? We’re all a bit of a mess.”

He tilted his head, refreshed by her candor. “I wouldn’t know. I never tried again.”

She gave him an inquisitive look. “Why not?”

“The Bureau keeps a tight leash. It’s not fair to subject someone else to that.”
At least that’s the excuse I’ve always used
, he thought.
Kelly couldn’t handle it so neither could anyone else.

Vanessa laughed. “That sounds miserable. Don’t you get lonely?”

“I try not to focus on it,” he replied, thinking:
Ted isn’t the only one without a filter
.

She looked away and watched Quentin steer the boat in the direction of the Bay Bridge.

For some reason, her silence prompted him to explain himself. “It’s like this. When you do what I do, the pace never relents. It’s like a Ferrari stuck in top gear.”

Her expression turned empathetic. “I understand. Many of my patients are refugees. There’s always another family in need. I used to resent my limits. But I’ve learned to accept them. I’m only one person. If I don’t take care of myself, I can’t take care of anyone else.”

He pondered her counsel, moved by the resemblance it bore to Megan’s. But there was a difference—Megan had never taken her own advice.

“I’m sorry,” Vanessa said, putting her bottle in the console between them. “I don’t mean to preach.” She gave him a playful look. “Let’s go up to the bow.”

He looked at her curiously. “I thought sailboats turned your stomach.”

She showed him a patch behind her ear. “It’s the newest remedy for motion sickness. I don’t feel a thing anymore.” She stepped onto the deck, using the dodger for support. “Come on.”

Derrick glanced briefly at Quentin, wondering what he was thinking. But the boy wasn’t paying attention to them. He was lost in Ariadne’s world. “Okay,” he said and joined Vanessa in crab-walking to the bow. They took seats beneath the headsail as the
Relativity
pitched and rolled with the waves.

Vanessa raised her face toward the sun. “I love this bay. It’s like Heaven to me.”

Derrick looked across the water toward the bridge and back toward the Annapolis skyline. He was close enough to smell a hint of her perfume mixed in with the brine of the sea. He didn’t know how to handle the way he was feeling. After his marriage imploded, he had boarded up his heart, giving himself only to people who knew they needed him—people at work and people in duress. But the void had never felt natural. He was made for companionship. He decided to take the plunge.

Be here now
, he told himself.
Be here with her. Don’t turn away the gift.

After sailing under the bridge, they turned around and returned to the house, arriving just in time for Ted to serve up a banquet of tenderloin, yams, asparagus, and St. André cheese, along with an exceptional Virginia red called “Octagon.” They ate at a round table on the deck and enjoyed a freewheeling conversation guided mostly by Ted, who seemed enamored of his role as host.

The teenagers polished off their food with gusto, and then took turns regaling them with stories from the South Pacific. Derrick listened to them with fascination, wondering at moments where Quentin ended and Ariadne began. They traded jokes, interrupted each other with ease, and finished each other’s sentences.
No wonder Vanessa likes her
, he thought.
She’s adorable
.

“You must miss your family,” Derrick said after finishing his last bite of tenderloin.

Ariadne nodded, humor in her eyes. “My mum doesn’t know what to do without me around. She’s coming to visit in a couple of weeks.”

“And we’re going to go to Australia . . . after the trial is over,” Quentin added, his hesitation between words now barely a hiccup.

Derrick regarded Vanessa. “You, too?”

She shook her head. “Just the two of them. I’d get in the way.”

“Where do you want to go to college?” Derrick asked Quentin.

“St. John’s,” the boy replied decisively. “I want to stay . . . in Annapolis.”

Ariadne laughed. “He’s going to spend four years sailing while I do all the studying.”

“She wants to be . . . an occupational therapist,” Quentin explained. “But we’re going to sail around the world . . . before she goes to grad school.”

Derrick was astonished. He glanced at Vanessa and saw her apprehension, but she said nothing to dissuade them. “How long would that take?” he asked.

“If we follow the southern route around the great capes, we could do it in a year,” Ariadne said.

They chatted for a while longer, savoring the wine and magical weather. When the sun fell behind the house, casting the deck into shadow, Quentin gave Derrick a pointed look. “I don’t mean to impose . . . but would you play for us again?”

Ariadne nudged him with her elbow. “He just finished eating.”

Derrick grinned. “It’s all right. What do you want to hear?”

“Anything,” Quentin said eagerly.

“That I can do,” Derrick replied, taking the last sip of his wine.

They retired to the living room and Derrick took a seat at the Bösendorfer while the others sat on the couch and chairs. He tried not to look at Vanessa, but he couldn’t help it. She was watching him, her green eyes sparkling in the light. He stretched his hands over the keys and launched into a robust arrangement of Gershwin’s
Rhapsody in Blue
that rattled the windows and made everyone laugh. After that, he improvised a bridge into Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man.’

“You have to sing it,” Ted said, clapping his hands. “It’s one of my favorites.”

Derrick shook his head, but Vanessa urged him on. “Sing for us, Paul.”

He raised his eyebrows in mock dismay, but he couldn’t deny her, so he dug deep and gave it his best shot. He knew the lyrics, but he couldn’t quite reach the high end of the register and had to deploy his falsetto. It didn’t matter, though. In those minutes, he lost all sense of embarrassment. He gave voice to the music, and the music gave voice to the melody in his heart.

After he struck the final chord, he received their applause with a lopsided grin. Then he looked at Quentin and said: “That’s enough for me. Now it’s your turn.”

The young man traded a glance with Vanessa. “Mom, will you join me?”

“Do you really want me to?” she asked, her reticence plain.

He nodded. “Let’s play
Scheherazade
.”

“All right,” she acceded and they stood together, moving to their instruments.

Derrick watched, mesmerized, as Vanessa placed the violin beneath her chin and played the first haunting strains of the prelude. Then Quentin came in and the notes erupted from the piano like sparks from a fire. They played the sonata side by side, her fingers dancing on the fingerboard and his on the keys, as the sun descended into the trees behind them. There was a synergy in their performance that spoke of something more elemental than music.
They’re alive
, he mused, catching the same look of pleasure on the faces of mother and son.
And they are one.

When they finished, Ted exclaimed: “Bravo! Bravo!”

Vanessa smiled sheepishly and put down her violin. “Thank you,” she said for both of them.

Derrick smiled along with her and took a picture of her face. The thought came to him:
No matter what happens, I don’t want to forget this moment
.

Somehow he knew he never would.

Vanessa

Annapolis, Maryland

May 13, 2012

The next morning, Vanessa took a long shower, allowing the steam to cleanse the cobwebs from her mind and clarify her feelings about the day before. What had started as a glimmer on the day Paul played Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2 and redeemed Quentin’s joy had grown into a flame she could no longer deny. It was true she had experienced trauma, and that the trauma made her vulnerable. But she had spent twenty years mastering her own psychology, and she was sharp enough to discern a trap. Paul Derrick didn’t look like a trap. He looked like a good man who actually gave a damn.

She had agonized over the invitation for more than a week, wondering whether it was too soon. Daniel had been gone only six months. She talked it over with Aster, and her friend exposed the core of her fear—that Curtis and Yvonne would judge her for dishonoring their son.

“They love you,” Aster had assured her. “They want you to be happy.”

“I suppose,” Vanessa had replied, not quite mollified.

“Daniel would say the same thing,” Aster went on. “I’m sure of it.”

Vanessa shrugged. She and Daniel had never talked about death. She didn’t know why exactly, but she imagined that on a subconscious level they had considered divorce a more likely possibility.

It was then that Aster had offered her an olive branch from her own culture: “In Islam, a widow isn’t permitted to mourn for more than four months and ten days. Death is the end only for the dead. The living must go on.”

As the water suffused her skin with warmth, Vanessa wrestled with her doubt. She still didn’t know what Daniel would say about Paul, but she took solace in the fact that if Aster were in her place, she wouldn’t be afraid to befriend him. That’s all it was, after all. She liked Paul. Something about him moved her. He was an engaging conversationalist, though he was guarded about his past. Even after a few interactions, she got the sense that his heart was as deep as the ocean. He was a gifted musician—not classically trained, but his instinct for the piano more than made up for that. And he loved Quentin. She saw the delight in his eyes when he looked at her son. It was that more than anything that endeared him to her. She had the intuition that Paul was a loyal soul, that once his heart formed a bond, he would be true to it for the rest of his life. It was a quality she found immensely attractive. She couldn’t understand everything she was feeling, but she knew this much: she wanted to see him again.

After her shower, she dressed in a lacy white top and jeans and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. She saw Ted standing by the back door, watching the sunrise.

“I’m glad you had a nice time,” he said, a glint in his eyes. “You could do much worse.”

She felt the heat rising beneath her collar. “He’s just a friend.”

Ted gave her a knowing smile. “It’s good to have friends.”

“Are you packed?” Vanessa asked, starting the espresso machine.