The Year of Luminous Love

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “From the very moment we laid eyes on each other. When he emerged from his car, when our eyes met, the earth moved. And I knew then and there, he was the one.”

  Caught up in the spell of the story, Ciana hungered to feel such certainty. Perhaps she’d come close one summer night weeks before. Close only counts in horseshoes, she thought automatically. Farm people were practical, even Beauchamp girls who met a stranger in a dance hall and fell into a fantasy.

  Olivia’s creamy voice spilled over words in Ciana’s ear. “But the day he rode up Bellmeade’s driveway on horseback to claim me … well, I can see him still on that sleek chestnut Tennessee walking horse, saddlebags heavy with apples he would lay at my feet, his offering for my hand, his pledge of his undying love.”

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

  Eden rushed through the living room on her way to her upstairs bedroom, scowling but ignoring her mother’s put-down. “Not now. I have to change for work.” The trip to see Arie’s horse had put her off schedule. She usually left Tony’s apartment early enough to arrive home before Gwen woke up, although after a year, it was no secret where she spent most Friday nights.

  She made it to the staircase when Gwen announced, “Store manager called me in. I’m at the registers until four today.”

  The grocery store often used Gwen to fill in their schedule when others didn’t show up for their shifts. At least she was back on her meds and could handle the job. “Work strong,” Eden said, with more sarcasm than necessary.

  Gwen exhaled a mouthful of cigarette smoke as Eden crossed to the stairs. “You need to stay away from that guy you’re with. He’s nothing but bad news.”

  Eden jerked to a halt. “I said not now.” She took the stairs two at a time, ripping off her T-shirt. In her room, she pulled off her jeans and pawed through her closet. Everything was dirty or at Tony’s.

  “I’ll put in a load of wash before I leave,” Gwen said from the doorway.

  Eden hadn’t realized that her mother had followed her up. “Forget it. I lost a good white shirt last time when you stuck it in with a red towel.”

  “So you want me to do laundry but get mad at me when I do it. Which way do you want it, Eden?”

  Over her shoulder, she shot, “Please don’t smoke in my room.” After a sniff test, one shirt passed and Eden flung it on. She grabbed a long multicolored skirt.

  “Well, excuse me, missy. Didn’t mean to pollute your air.” Gwen grabbed a half-finished and forgotten cola bottle from Eden’s bedside table and poked her cigarette through the opening in the neck. The cigarette sizzled in the brown liquid and fizzled out. “And stop ignoring me. You prance in and out of here like it’s a motel instead of your home. The only time I can talk to you is between your run-throughs!”

  Eden, in front of her dresser mirror, smoothed powder blush over her cheeks and gloss on her lips. She bit back a bitter torrent of words about her and Gwen’s relationship. “What have we got to talk about? You only gripe at me.”

  “I’m trying to help you. Warn you. What do I have to say to get through to you? Tony Cicero is a user of people who will eat you alive. Get away from him. Far, far away from him.”

  “You don’t know him! You’ve talked to him, what, six or seven times over the last two years?”

  “I know his type,” Gwen said over Eden’s voice. “He’s a control freak, and he’ll keep his thumb on you until he squashes you.”

  “Stop it! Stop running him down.” Eden shook her hairbrush at her mother. “He’s good to me. I have a car because of him. I have pretty jewelry.”

  Gwen crossed her arms and looked at Eden with eyes hard as marbles. “So, then, what does that make you?”

  Eden froze. “Did you just call me a slut?”

  Gwen’s lips pressed into a thin line. “His gifts are just another way of locking you into him. Buy your own car and jewelry. Believe me, it’ll be a whole lot cheaper in the long run.”

  Eden slung the hairbrush across the room, not directly at her mother but near enough to make Gwen flinch. The brush dented the wall over the bed and dropped harmlessly onto the pillows. “You’re not exactly mother of the year,” she growled. “And you lecture me? You who can’t stay on your medications long enough to give me a life? To raise me? You judge me?”

  Gwen didn’t blink, just plowed ahead. “I’m trying to save you. Trying to help you see—”

  “Don’t!” Eden yelled. She picked up her purse, brushed past Gwen, and clattered down the uncarpeted stairs in her clogs.

  Once in her car, Eden screeched out of the driveway backward and onto the road. Brakes squealed from behind and a driver sat on his horn. She was beyond caring. She held the steering wheel in a death grip. The car was unmercifully hot. She cranked up the AC, pushed her curling hair off her forehead, and struggled to calm herself. She was furious at her mother, but not just because of their fight. Eden would rather chew off her arm than admit to Gwen that she was correct. Tony was all the things she’d said and was getting worse. He wanted an accounting of Eden’s every move, a timeline for everything she did when she wasn’t with him, and he wanted her with him constantly. He wanted more and more of her, while she wanted him less and less, and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  It hadn’t always been this way. Two years before, the first time she’d taken out Tony’s card with his cell number handwritten on the back, when Gwen had left her alone and she was struggling not to take out a razor blade and slice a fine thin line across her upper thigh, that was all on her. She should never have punched in his number that night, never opened the door and let him in. But she had. As he once promised, he’d driven over immediately and picked her up.

  “Would you take me to my friend Ciana’s place?” she had asked timidly.

  “No. I’m taking you to my place.”

  A shiver of fear shot through her.

  As if he’d felt it, Tony reached over and squeezed her hand in her lap. “Don’t worry. No ulterior motives. We’ll order in some pizza, watch a DVD. Sound good?”

  She nodded, unsure of her voice. At least he wasn’t poking at her to spill her guts about what was wrong. She couldn’t have told him if he had asked. Panic attacks had no reasons sometimes—they just seized her.

  His condominium was on the outskirts of town, in a newly constructed complex that had risen out of the land almost overnight, built to attract an overflow of Murfreesboro and Nashville commuters. The gated community had every amenity—pool, gym, business center, party rooms—and Tony lived on the top floor in one of the five buildings. He’d taken over two condos, where he’d knocked out walls and lived in absolute luxury. At that time, she hadn’t thought that his lifestyle was financed by drug deals. She’d just been awed by the sheer grandeur of his world. Now, at almost twenty-six, he was wealthy beyond her imagination, and she was the focus of his undivided attention.

  That first night they ordered pizza and watched a DVD. Harmless. Calming. She had no thoughts of cutting. No pressure from Tony for anything except her company. The evening was repeated the second time she called and he picked her up. Also the third. She began to call more often, began to lean on him, depend on him to rescue her from her dark spells. At first Arie and Ciana were happy for her. “A big-time boyfriend at sixteen,” Arie had sighed. “I can’t get a guy’s interest with a flügelhorn.”

  Eden and Ciana had cracked up. Then Ciana had asked, “He seems a little old for you, don’t you think?”

  “Princess Diana was twelve years younger than Prince Charles,” Eden said defensively.

  “And look how that ended,” Ciana fired back.

  “Now you two stop it,” Arie had interjected. “Eden’s smart enough to look out for herself. Aren’t you, girlfriend?”

  Of course, Eden hadn’t shared Tony’s “business” venture with them; she didn’t dare. Ciana would probably call the police, and Arie, the peacemaker, would be horrified. At that time, Eden was starry-eyed over Tony.

 
These days, Eden missed being with her friends more than she could say, but if she complained, Tony would say, “Aren’t I enough for you? Tell me what you want, and it’s yours.”

  What she wanted, he wouldn’t give her. Her world grew smaller. Seeing Arie’s horse inside the fenced corral made Eden see that she, too, was fenced in by Tony. Her senior year at school had been like walking a tightrope, balancing classes, activities, friendships, and Tony. Along the way, she’d given in and began spending Friday nights at Tony’s apartment. It was easier than bucking him.

  With a start, Eden realized she had arrived downtown at the boutique. She didn’t even remember the drive. She parked quickly, locked her car, and hurried inside the store.

  “About time,” the manager said. “I’m starving and need to go to lunch.”

  “Sorry.” Eden slipped on her employee tag that read HI! I’M EDEN. “Busy this morning?”

  “A little,” the manager said, meaning Not so much.

  “Off to lunch with you. I’ll hold back the crowds.” Her stomach growled, reminding Eden she’d missed lunch altogether.

  The manager huffed her way out the door and Eden stuck out her tongue at the woman’s back. Alone in the store, Eden straightened clothing on hangers. She couldn’t get the fight with Gwen off her mind. The words reverberated: “I know his type. He’s controlling and demanding.” How did she know men like Tony? She never dated or brought men to the house, although Eden had no way of knowing what Gwen did whenever she left town. She could be turning tricks in strange cities for all she knew.

  In the silence of the store, she thought back to the night Tony moved on her. She had been barely sixteen. The pizza was eaten, the movie over. He had poured her a glass of wine, something he’d not done previously. “It’s a great vintage,” he said. “I want to share it with someone special. You.”

  She sipped the wine, and like Goldilocks, found it just right, not too tart, not too sweet. She felt grown up. “I’ve never liked wine very much,” she told him, not confessing she had never liked any wine she and Ciana had sneaked from Bellmeade’s liquor cabinets.

  “That’s because you’ve never drunk fine wines. This is a French vintage, one of the best.”

  He topped her glass and she drank deeply, feeling the silky liquid warm her throat. “Yummy.”

  The edges of the room turned softer. Tony took the glass, set it on his glass-topped coffee table, and leaned forward. “I want to kiss you.”

  As warm and pliable as she felt just then, she wanted him to kiss her, had wanted him to kiss her for weeks. His mouth found hers and in seconds the warm places inside her heated by the wine blossomed. His mouth trailed her neck, teased at her throat. Her arms wound around his neck. His hand drifted to her breast. “May I?” he asked, touching the top button of her shirt.

  In minutes, her shirt was off and his hands were sliding over her, heating her body on the outside as the wine heated her from within. Her mind gave itself over to feeling, allowing his hands and fingers and mouth full privilege to her bare skin. When his tongue touched her breast, she trembled. She didn’t want him to stop. He did. Her eyes flew open. Had she done something wrong?

  “Come with me,” he said. He rose from the sofa and led her into another room that smelled of sandalwood and was filled with soft music. Banks of candles glowed on every flat surface, dancing flames that filled the darkness of his luxurious bedroom. He laid her on the bed’s silk sheets, stood over her, and began to remove his own shirt. “I won’t hurt you. If you want me to stop, say so.”

  She did not want him to stop, would not have been able to utter the words necessary to stop the exquisite pain that exploded into pleasure and sent her spinning into ecstasy and dependency on that night she first melded into Tony Cicero.

  In the beginning she felt euphoric. Tony loved her. She loved him. He met her every need. They laughed. They played. They made love. It took over a year before she began to notice subtle changes in his behavior toward her. Possessiveness. Jealousy. Flares of anger she didn’t see coming and didn’t deserve. Thinking back to that first night in his bedroom, she slowly realized that the candles had been lit before she ever arrived, the sheets smoothed in expectation, music chosen with a purpose. She had gone to him willingly. She had given him all of herself, fallen into his well-planned and beautifully orchestrated seduction that over time became a free fall into a golden cage more binding than an umbilical cord, more tangled than the bonds of years-long friendships.

  In the silence of the deserted boutique, Eden remembered her journey with Tony while she toyed with a letter opener. He discovered she was a cutter. He had forbidden her to cut, and she hadn’t for a long time. But for weeks now, her long-held need for him, her hunger, had diminished.

  Eden studied the silver tip with a detached curiosity. Would it feel the same as it used to? Would it fill the scared places inside her like it had before? With a single strong thrust, she jabbed the dull point into the underside of her arm and cried out, then endured the pain, standing still as her heartbeat slowed. She watched as bright red blood dripped from the wound and ran down her milky skin like swollen crimson tears.

  She wanted her freedom.

  “Ciana! I’m here!” Arie hopped down from the cab of her brother’s bright red truck. She wove a path through a maze of wooden booths to where Ciana was loading unsold garden produce into the bed of her old farm truck. “Can I help?”

  “All done.” Ciana slammed the tailgate shut. “How’d you and your horse do today?”

  Arie grimaced. “Caramel hates me.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Maybe a little. She does fine with the halter and lead rope but will not come when I call her if she’s in the main pasture. If Jon starts her off in the small corral, she’ll come to us in her own sweet time, but if she’s in the big pasture, no way. Stubborn beast.”

  Ciana laughed. “Horses can be headstrong. You’ve only been at it a few weeks. You’ll eventually win the war of wills.”

  “Plus,” Arie added with a pout, “she likes Jon better than me. Can’t blame her for that, I guess.”

  Ciana opened the driver’s door of her beat-up truck. “Hop in. We’ll drop off these vegetables at the community kitchen and then go to lunch.”

  Arie climbed into the passenger seat, still talking. “You know, I’ve wanted a horse all my life, and now that I have one, I’m finding I want the trainer more.”

  Ciana’s eyes cut sideways. “I can’t believe you’re picking a summer cowboy over a horse!”

  “And you wouldn’t? Jon’s fantastic!”

  Ciana had no answer for that.

  As they drove into town, down Windemere’s main street, Arie pointed to the banners strung high between traffic lights heralding the town’s upcoming Wild West Days and the July rodeo. “Jon says he’s going to enter. Calf roping and broncos too.”

  “Guy could get hurt riding bulls and broncos,” Ciana muttered.

  “He doesn’t seem to mind.” Arie turned to Ciana. “I registered to ride in the opening parade, but I’ll have to borrow Sonata like I used to.”

  “Of course you can ride Sonata. I have a new bling jacket and boots, and I’m using Grandfather’s fancy Mexican saddle.”

  “Mom hot-glued rhinestones and fancy emblems on an old denim jacket she bought off the kid racks at Goodwill for me. I can’t seem to put on any weight.”

  “Some of us wouldn’t consider that a curse.”

  Arie sighed. “Some of us do.”

  After the produce was unloaded at the community kitchen by two men who were somehow related to Arie, Ciana parked on Main Street, which was full of tourists in town for the upcoming rodeo. “It’s hot,” she said to Arie. “If you don’t feel like walking to Southern Fixin’s, I can drop you off and come back and park.”

  “Stop treating me like an invalid.” Arie slammed the truck door for emphasis.

  “Excuse me,” Ciana countered. “Just trying to be nice.”
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br />   “You worry too much,” Arie added, regretting her sharp tone. “I’m fine. Really.”

  They walked along the sidewalk, dodging tourists, kids, and baby strollers, passing the general store, the hardware store, Johnson’s feed store, Bennet’s Tractor and Mower, and the boutique where Eden worked. Arie stopped, cupped her hand to the plate-glass window, and peered inside. “I don’t see her. Did you invite her to lunch with us?”

  “Course. She said she was doing something with Tony,” Ciana said, moving on. “I really don’t like that guy.”

  Arie fell into step beside her. “So you’ve said. Often. He does monopolize every bit of her time. I’m beginning to get a complex.”

  “I don’t get it. She’s always acted so independent. Remember meeting her in middle school? How shocked we were when we found out her mother would leave her alone for weeks at a time?”

  Arie would never forget. She and Ciana insisted she stay at one of their houses, telling their mothers that Eden’s mother traveled for her work and that they didn’t want her to be alone. They kept Eden’s secret about Gwen’s illness and about Eden’s tendency to cut herself. Their families didn’t need to know everything. “At first,” Arie said, “I thought Tony was good for her, but now not so much.”

  Ciana said, “She’s done a total turnaround. Now whatever Tony wants, he gets. I’m telling you, that’s not normal.”

  “She says she loves him.”

  Ciana snorted. “Doesn’t look like love when someone’s got you under his thumb. And what’s with the guys who hang out with him? They’re big enough to eat hay.”

  It was true that two hulking men followed Tony like menacing guard dogs. They gave Arie the creeps. Suddenly she stopped in front of the window of the town’s small travel agency/real estate office. “Look.” She pointed to a large vacation placard that read SEE ITALY! STAY IN TUSCANY. VISIT ROME. THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME! “Now, that would be my dream vacation.”