Dark Places In the Heart

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Dark Places In the Heart Page 33

by Jill Barnett


  “That’s not true. You care more about the past. We care because we live with it. Maybe more than most people.”

  “What do you want?” she asked sharply, her spine straight, her manner cool.

  “You seem certain I want something.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Victor, you always want something. I just never cared to know what. You would think a man who had so much would be content.”

  Something in her laugh took him back to a time when he almost had everything, but a woman’s brittle laughter made him understand he had nothing. “I cannot imagine living a more boring existence.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m old.”

  She said nothing.

  “You have something I want.”

  “So you’re here to buy art.”

  “Yes. You sold me something like it a long time ago, but it came damaged.”

  “Appropriate, don’t you think?” Her words were meant to cut painfully, her façade almost Calvinistic, a thick, colorless glaze to protect the friable clay beneath. Warfare came to him naturally, and he understood her dark and secret weaknesses as he did his own. He considered them his catalysts, what made him strong.

  He slumped toward the counter, not looking at her. “We both lost everything a long time ago. I thought perhaps we might stop destroying our lives over it.” He closed his eyes and spoke softly. “Put them to rest.”

  A few heartbeats of silence passed before she moved. “Maybe you should sit down. Here, in the back room.”

  “Give me a minute.” Perhaps over the years he had perfected this duplicity. Maybe there was more of his father in him than he liked to admit. Or his childhood had forever branded his memory with exact images of the way a weak man looked and moved. When he sat down, her manner had changed as much as her voice. To get what he wanted, he needed to touch something essential in this woman, a place he sensed was locked down to everyone, including herself.

  “Here’s a glass of water.” Her voice had turned supple, the defensive edges dulled by concern. “You look like you could use it.”

  “I could use a scotch.”

  She left and came back with glasses of ice, offered him a small, airline-sized bottle of single-malt scotch, and poured vodka into her glass of V8.

  “All the comforts of home.” He looked around. “Do you ever go home, or is this your garret?”

  “I don’t live in a garret, Victor. You’ve said it before. You are wrong.”

  Her denial cinched it. He was in. “You think so? You’re an artist. I’d say it comes with the job.”

  “But then you aren’t an artist, are you?”

  “No, I’m an observer.”

  “You know what I see? Two people drinking at nine thirty in the morning,” she said all too brightly.

  “Two people who have lived our lives poorly.”

  She took a drink and said, “Speak for yourself. My life is exactly the way I want it. And if I lived in a garret, it would be because I chose to live that way.”

  “How did you picture your life when you were young?” It was a simple trap, the way he maneuvered her into talking about the past, then about the pain of losing someone you loved, children and childhoods. The more she spoke the more open she became, the more animated and easier to read. He told her about his mother’s coldness, his inability to capture even a single moment of her approval. He had never spoken to anyone about his soulless mother who made the penultimate mother’s sin of loving one child over another, and who then went on to commit herself to eternal damnation by taking her own life.

  When he was done, the silence felt heavy but right, as if someone had peeled away a dead layer of life. He knew what it was like to withdraw when pain became more than anyone could bear. Sometimes the only safe place left was inside, aloneness. You escaped, or you became a man who destroyed everything around him.

  “I almost followed in your mother’s footsteps the night of the accident,” Kathryn told him. “There are times when living seems harder than dying.”

  Did all women have something innate inside them that made them give up so easily? Why give up, when the fight was the best part of life? Not for the first time, Victor wondered what happened inside that car between Rudy and Rachel, and if one of them decided they should die. The pain he felt at that moment was genuine enough to make him for a brief instant forget about the painting. He was too old to go down this road. Kathryn Peyton with all of her pent-up emotions, her need for vengeance, and her ice facade had not killed herself. “What stopped you?”

  “Laurel. My child stood there while I held a handful of pills. The choice was no longer mine.” She spoke of Laurel, said she was her reason for going on when the world suddenly ended. Yet something in the way she phrased things told him she had not been successful in her relationship with her daughter. It made him think of the father he was and of his sons. One of them was dead because of him and the other didn’t know him as his father. A role he understood. His sole mission was to hammer out the innate Banning weakness from his male progeny. He used every stratagem, even cunning, to keep his father’s flawed genetic legacy from destroying the Banning men.

  She touched her mouth as if she wanted to take everything back, then faced him squarely. “I never wanted to think of you as someone with a childhood, with a mother, and a sister, and a son. I didn’t want you to become real or human to me. The moment you do, I might have to understand you.”

  It was done. Now she saw him in a different, humane light, one he had created with the truth, but for inhumane reasons other than the pouring out of souls. Had he been less driven he might have felt bad for using her as he was, but he didn’t live his life with regrets. He took her hand, then stood. She would expect him to deal for the painting now “Thank you, Kathryn. I’m going to leave.”

  “You didn’t get what you came for.”

  “Yes. I think I did.” He left, knowing he had gotten exactly what he wanted. But still he left the envelope on the counter.

  Annalisa checked into the Chicago hotel, went to an early cocktail party, then to dinner with the team from one of their bigger suppliers. Back in her room, she tossed and turned all night, haunted by silly, recurring images of Matt Banning with a dozen different blondes. Yet she was the one who had said no, no, no when she wanted to say yes. She didn’t want to make the mistake her parents had. What a joke . . .damn you, Daddy.

  At 3:43 A.M., she threw back the covers, took a bottle of water from the minibar, and swallowed an Excedrin PM. Her eyes burned and were probably puffy and bloodshot. No man was worth this. She fluffed the pillows, settled back, and turned on the television, flipping through the infomercials.

  The sound of the alarm woke her, and startled, she sat up, shoved her hair out of her face. The TV was still on. Well, hell . . . she had crashed before she learned how to make a million dollars buying houses with no down payment.

  It was 8 A.M. when she left the cool confines of the hotel and walked into the sweet sunshine on her way to the convention center. Cars, delivery vans, and cabs crowded the lanes of Lakeshore Drive. Two blocks down the street, her cell phone rang and she checked the ID screen and flipped open the phone. “Hey, Mom. I’m on my way to the show now.”

  “Good.” There was silence.

  “Is something wrong?” Annalisa asked.

  “There’s a problem with the plans on the Tea House and I’m going to have to stay here and resolve it. The meeting is scheduled for Saturday morning.”

  Annalisa stopped, then sidestepped the people on the sidewalk. “Do I need to fly back there?”

  “No. You need to handle the show orders.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. You probably know better than I what we need. Sweetheart, this is easy for you. If I were there, I’d probably just be standing behind you for the next three days.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “More true than you know. And there’s nothing we can do. You’ll have to handle that
end. I’ll take care of things here. We have no choice. It’s time you do this part of the business alone anyway.”

  “I don’t want to do it alone.” I don’t want to be here alone, she thought.

  “Think of your father. If you come back with everything together, he won’t be able to say it was me.”

  “That’s unfair. You know I would do anything to prove to him I’m doing what I should be doing, anything to get him to let go and treat me like an equal.”

  Her mom laughed. “Your father would have a difficult time treating any woman as his equal.”

  “Are you okay? You sound tired.”

  “I am. I didn’t sleep well. How are you?”

  “Standing in the middle of the sidewalk in morning traffic.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you go.”

  They said their good-byes and hung up. She dropped the phone back in her bag. “Great,” she muttered and checked her watch. Ahead of her, a traffic signal was broken and a patrol officer stood in the middle of the intersection directing antsy, congested traffic. Everything would be so much easier if someone would just step in and direct your life when it became too complicated to understand.

  She swung into a Starbucks, left with a vanilla latte and a reluctant determination to do what she needed to do. Outside the doors to the McCormick Place complex, she strung her name badge around her neck and went into the show solo. Today, she was King Design.

  Laurel hadn’t watched a soap opera since Luke and Laura were married. But there was little else to do in the sterile cubical that was her hospital room. Watch TV, read, sleep, eat elastic Jell-O and thick, tasteless tapioca pudding, or walk around with her IV pole.

  Cale walked in and saved her from going comatose. “Hey there, gorgeous.”

  “Me? Hardly.” She wanted to leap from the bed and fling her arms around him she was so glad to see someone. He glanced up at the TV.

  “That’s Sam, short for Samantha,” Laurel explained. “Sam loves Sonny, but he’s supposed to be dead because he has to hide from the Mafia so his wife, Carly, won’t be killed by the Casadines.”

  “Who are the Casadines?”

  “A fabulously wealthy but evil family comprised of mad scientists, conniving women, and young, handsome rogues and thieves who happen to fall for—and impregnate—only the women in Port Charles.”

  He laughed.

  She turned off the TV.

  While Cale read her chart, he asked, “How are you feeling today?” He didn’t look up.

  “Bored.” She set her tray aside. “Not to mention I’m ready to walk down to the kitchen and take over. You could play racquetball with the lime Jell-O.” She paused. “Do you actually eat here?”

  “Anything I don’t have to cook works for me.”

  She rested her hands on top of her blanket. “So. When can I go home?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “When your fever goes down.”

  She leaned forward and tried to steal a look at the chart he was holding. “What is it?”

  “Let’s see.” He stuck a thermometer into her mouth. She rolled the thermometer to one side of her tongue. “You did that to shut me up.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “Wouldn’t do what?” Karl Collins walked in.

  “Stick the thermometer into her mouth to shut her up.”

  “Cale?” Karl shook his head. “Nope. But I would.”

  Cale removed it and checked the reading.

  “What is it?” Laurel asked.

  “A thermometer.” Cale didn’t look up from his scribbling.

  “Great,” Laurel muttered. “I’ve put my life in the hands of Abbott and Costello.”

  “Doctors are so unappreciated.” Karl gave Cale a hangdog look. “And here we are just trying to make Laurel Hardy.”

  Cale threw his pen at him, but he was laughing. “At least you didn’t say ‘Hearty.’”

  “Do you two treat all your patients this way?”

  Karl said, “Only the ones we like.”

  “How did you ever graduate med school?”

  Cale laughed. “A love of abuse, bribery, bullheadedness, and the ability to get by on an hour’s sleep.” Karl left then, with another joke, but Cale was still sitting on her bed. “Your fever is down. But wait. I know you want to go home but I think you need to stay a little longer. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?” When he looked at her that way, spoke to her in a soft voice she didn’t remember him having, she thought she would do anything he asked. And the realization startled her. All she could do was nod.

  “Good girl.” He patted her hand and then, as naturally as if he had done so a hundred times, he reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. It was an intimate touch. The touch, the voice that could talk you into anything—she wondered if he had cultivated those in med school. He was good-looking still, had the same smile he’d had all those years ago. Maybe he was better looking, actually, because now he wore some of life on his face, those indescribable things that give a really wonderful face character. She could almost forgive herself, or at least understand why everything happened all those years ago. Why she had thought she loved this man. He checked his watch. “I’d better get out of here before the nurse comes in and throws me out.” He put her chart back. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” At the doorway he paused. “Good night, Laurel.” Then he added, “Like-the-Tree.”

  She watched him disappear down the hallway, then sagged back against the pillow and fiddled with the tape on her IV. Sitting alone in a hospital bed was a constant reminder that she had a life-threatening problem with her heart. At night, she was still aware of the medicinal smells in the air, the noises in the hallways, the bell on the elevator, someone’s quiet laughter, the way the nurse would come in the middle of the night and wake you to change your IV or take your temperature.

  All of it brought back the frightening little experiences from seven years ago she had forgotten. The way she could feel every beat of her heart, extreme, like some old cartoon where the character meets his love and his heartbeat is exaggerated and pounding so hard it moves his whole chest. Her heart beat in her neck and throat, as if she’d been running for hours. She hated that fluttery feeling. It made her dizzy, so she closed her eyes and saw Cale’s image. For survival and her own sanity, she had never let herself think about Cale Banning. Jud sometimes, on those lonely nights when she tried to imagine what would have happened if her life had taken a different path. When Beric had affairs or after the divorce. She tried to think in terms of her life, her choice, her decision. How else could she live with herself?

  From the day she walked out of that Seattle hospital, she refused to let Cale live for one second in her memory. Because she would have had to face the truth that she had given up their son. There were no happily-ever-afters for them. There never could be; going into that particular past at all was like wanting the impossible.

  But now the impossible was happening, and she had no control over it. A strange, grand irony brought her back to this moment, to this truth, where the young man whose heart she had broken became the doctor who would fix her own broken heart.

  32

  Matthew Banning was standing in the lobby under a warm circle of light when Annalisa returned to her hotel. One look and she was struck by a deep, primal hunger she couldn’t explain, and she didn’t know if she wanted to run toward him, away from him, or run something through him. His expression was strained when he spotted her, as if someone had pulled his skin so tight he’d never smile again. She composed herself and tried to build a protective wall in less time than it took to breathe.

  The noise in the lobby faded to background the moment he called out her name. He came toward her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Is this about the job? Mom said there were problems—”

  “My coming here has nothing to do with the pro
ject.” There was something probing in the way he studied her face, and she wondered what he was looking for. She kept walking, with him dogging her steps. “I’ve flown all the way here to talk to you. Are you going to send me packing without hearing what I have to say?”

  She stopped, conflicted, knowing she really didn’t have the strength to tell him to go away. With her arms crossed protectively, she said, “Okay. I’ll listen. Talk.”

  “Not here in the lobby.”

  The bar was loud and filled with people watching a game on TV. She’d eaten earlier and the restaurant had a line anyway. He took her arm and walked toward the doors. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m tired, Matthew.” She pulled away. “I’ve been up since six. My feet are killing me. If you want to talk to me, then you can talk to me upstairs, where I can put my feet up, have a drink, and relax.”

  He followed her inside the elevator, which had a mirror on the back wall, so she caught a glimpse of them as a couple—his GQ cover looks, the crazy thought that her hair matched the stripes in his tie and he could rest his chin on her head while holding her. The elevator filled quickly, making small talk unnecessary. The idea crossed her mind that taking him to her room was stupid, or manipulative, she wasn’t sure which. Inside her suite, she kicked off her shoes, tossed her bag on a chair, and headed for the minibar. “You want something to drink?”

  “A beer.”

  She poured some Jack Daniel’s into a Diet Coke and handed him a Heineken, then felt the need to put some distance between them, so she walked away and sat on the sofa.

  He stood in the middle of the room looking as if he didn’t fit his body.

  “So talk. What was so important that you flew to Chicago to say?” She sounded petty and didn’t mean to.

  He took a draw on the beer. “This seemed like a good idea a few hours ago. I thought it would be easy. I thought I would walk up to you and just say, ‘Your mother is dating my uncle.’”

  “I know.”

  “You know? Great.” He swore under his breath. “Now I feel like an ass. This wasn’t exactly the way I imagined it.”

 

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