In Between Men

by Mary Castillo

“Why hello!” Alex’s father called through the screen door. “Alex didn’t say you were—” He stopped when he saw Isa holding up June. “What’s wrong? Did she have an accident?”

  He didn’t know. How was Isa…what could she tell him when she hardly knew?

  “No, Señor Lujon,” Isa said. “June didn’t have an accident.” She sat June on the sofa and then laid her down, covering her with her metallic pink jacket. “Could you show me to the kitchen, please?”

  He led her to the kitchen and Isa leaned her back on the edge of the counter, taking every scrap of time before she had to tell this man that his son might be dead.

  “June found out that Ted might have been injured,” she started.

  Mr. Lujon’s face seemed to tighten against his bones. But with several blinks he pulled himself back together and stood taller.

  “I don’t know anything else,” Isa continued. “She was alone in the office when she got the information and I can’t get her to talk.”

  “Call Alex. He’ll know what to do,” he said as he moved back to the living room and June.

  “Dad?” Alex called through the screen door fifteen minutes later. He stopped short when he saw Isa sitting on a dining room chair beside the sofa, smoothing her hand over June’s hair.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, feeling the fear rip through his chest.

  “M’ijo,” his dad sobbed and then clung onto him. Isa shook her head and Alex held his dad, who quivered with the fight not to cry. Seeing the two people he’d sworn to protect fall to pieces, Alex shot into crisis mode.

  “It’s all right, Dad. We’re going to get through this.” The words sprung automatically from his mouth while his mind raced with doubt.

  “We don’t know anything for certain yet,” Isa added.

  He got his dad seated at the dining room table and then bent over Isa. He was about to kiss her on the forehead but stopped. “Are you okay?”

  Isa nodded. “I checked her purse and her desk for a letter or telegram but didn’t see anything.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know how long this will take.”

  “I called Susan to have her pick up Andrew. And I can order food when your sister comes over.”

  He deflated when he remembered that he still had to call them. “I just heard from him…” Alex’s voice trailed off and he shook his head.

  “June has a friend she emails whose husband is in Ted’s unit,” Isa continued. “I could have someone at school check her computer.”

  Alex never relied on anyone, not in the truest sense, anyway. But having her here beside him made this seem a little less impossible.

  “Would you do that?” he asked.

  When she grinned, he believed for just a second that everything would be okay.

  Two hours later Alex learned that Ted was most likely gone. His helicopter had been shot down over a remote country town that had gained the world’s attention as a hiding place for terrorists. Nights of watching news programs report beheadings, explosions, and sneak attacks told Alex that if Ted hadn’t died in the crash, he more than likely had been killed on the ground.

  Without missing a beat, Isa commandeered food and drinks before the rest of his family showed up. Isa got June to sit up and sip some hot tea. Alex would rather have had June screaming with grief than sitting stone still. Then again, Alex knew when she unraveled, he’d have no idea how to handle it.

  Isa turned, feeling him watch her. She whispered something to his sister and then stood up, swaying just a little before she walked over to where he stood in the hallway.

  “I spoke with June’s mother,” she murmured, nudging him deeper into the hallway. “She’s flying out first thing tomorrow morning. Did you find out what happened?”

  Alex held back from telling her most of the details that tortured his imagination. Isa had been truly amazing in keeping everyone calm and now her eyes looked heavy with exhaustion.

  “I don’t think he’s—” He bit back the rest.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, placing her hand on his arm. “You don’t have to hold it all in, Alex.”

  He did. If he came undone, then his father and June and the rest of the family wouldn’t have anyone to take care of them.

  He sucked in his breath. “You’d take some worry off my mind if you got some rest. You look tired.”

  “I’m fi—”

  “There’s nothing any of us can do until they tell us more. And I don’t want you getting too tired, okay?”

  Her hand fell away. “If the tea doesn’t knock her out, I want to give June something that will help her sleep. Are you okay with that?”

  “What did you put in that tea?”

  Isa quirked her lips. “Just some brandy.”

  “How much brandy?”

  “Two shots.”

  “When are you going to take it easy?”

  Isa frowned and then she got his hint. “I’ll stay for another hour and then pick up Andrew—”

  “Can you stay?” he blurted. “I don’t think I can sleep alone tonight.”

  She stepped back. “Alex, that’s not really approp—”

  “I don’t mean like that. I’ll sleep on the couch and you and Andrew can have my room.”

  She shut her mouth and then opened it to say something but couldn’t. “Never mind. Bad idea,” he conceded.

  “Maybe I should. Just in case June needs anything. But I need to get my things.”

  “And Andrew?”

  “Let me talk to him first.” She misunderstood Alex’s smile. “You are not touching me unless you want me to throw up all over you.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “It’s good, actually. It means the baby is—” She caught herself.

  “Is what?” he asked, genuinely curious as to what she meant.

  “Healthy. It’s an old wives thing.”

  By midnight, or sometime around it, everyone settled down to sleep but Alex. He spread out the plans across the dining room table. He’d made schedules and updated Outlook on his Palm and laptop. The work focused him away from the idea that his brother could be dead and that his baby was growing inside Isa.

  But at least Andrew spoke to him when Isa brought him over. “Sorry to hear about your brother. Want to play Soul Caliber?”

  They went twenty rounds, Alex losing only ten games, until it was time for Andrew to go to bed. Whatever Isa had said to him worked and Alex felt one part of his life click back into place.

  “What’s that you’re working on?”

  Alex jerked up. He hadn’t heard his dad come into the room. “What are you doing up?”

  “Can’t sleep. So?” He gestured to the plans as he eased down into the opposite chair.

  “House we’re working on. The neighbors took the owners to the city and the architect came back with new plans.”

  “Company got a new project?”

  Alex nodded.

  His dad made a noise, but his eyes stared at all the fears a parent never wanted to face. And then he focused back on Alex. “Why aren’t you with Isa?”

  Isa and Andrew were sleeping in his bed. “Dad—”

  “Her little boy is very nice. Promised I’d show him the trains before school tomorrow.”

  “He’ll like that.”

  “Too bad Ted and June didn’t have a child.”

  Alex’s head felt like a sponge that was being getting the water squeezed out of it. “Don’t say that.”

  “If June had a little one, this wouldn’t be so—”

  “Don’t!” Alex didn’t care if he woke everyone up. “Don’t talk about Ted like that. We don’t know for sure.”

  He’d never, ever snapped at his dad like that. Then again, he never faced the horror that his brother’s body could be lying on the side of a road somewhere far from them. Ted may never walk through the same door he’d walked out of, or may never have children or coach soccer, or be the center of attention at every party or holiday.

 
“All I’m saying m’ijo, is that if we get the news—” his dad struggled. When Alex moved to go to him, he held up his hand. The whole house seemed to hear his father’s sniffling sounds as he fought his despair. But Alex sat there, helpless to do anything about it. “Don’t let her go, Alex. Don’t ever for a minute regret her, her little boy, or your child.”

  “I don’t, Dad,” Alex promised. He got his dad back to bed. He even sat on the couch with the blankets and pillows and stared at the TV as it sent weird shadows over the walls and ceiling of the living room. His mind played his father’s words like a needle caught on a scratched record.

  As quiet as a thief, he opened his bedroom door and saw Isa and Andrew lying together under the strip of light from the open window over his bed. And this time he made that same promise to himself.

  32

  Isa thought she felt the bed give behind her and just when she was about to turn, she knew it was Alex as his arm slid over her waist.

  “Hi,” he whispered against her hair. “Don’t pretend to be asleep. I can tell.”

  She was in bed, wedged between her lover and her son. This was so completely—

  “I’ll get up before he wakes up,” Alex said. “I just need to be with you right now.”

  She really wasn’t comfortable with staying over in the first place, but this? No. And yet she lay there, not saying what she wanted. Damn it, she always kept what she wanted to herself, always too afraid to stand up for herself.

  As if he knew by the stiffness of her body, Alex groused, “Okay, I’ll go back to the couch.”

  Her head whipped around, watching his dark shadow get out of bed. Since Andrew slept like the dead, she easily slipped out and followed him into the living room.

  “How did you know I didn’t want you—” Okay, there must be a better way to ask this.

  “You were tense as a wire. Sorry.”

  Damn it. He’d be much easier to stay mad at if he were more like Carlos.

  “It’s not that I didn’t want you there, I just—” Oh come on, Isa told herself, just say it. “I don’t want Andrew to get confused about you and me.”

  “I’m sorry, Isa, but I don’t have it in me to talk about this right now.”

  Sitting on the couch, Alex pulled his shirt over his head and then adjusted his pillows. “I know you don’t,” he added.

  His stare and those deliciously naked shoulders drew her to him. Primly she covered him up with his blanket and then she sighed. Who was she kidding? She flipped the blanket up and then snuggled down beside him.

  “I knew you’d see my way,” he said, tucking the blanket over her and then turning off the lamp by the living room.

  “Not that way.” She propped herself up on an elbow. “I know you’re trying to be romantic, but not when my kid’s around.”

  She couldn’t see his face in the dark. “What? Say something.”

  “I’m sorry, Isa. But at some point we need to make a commitment and when we do, I want to be a father to him.” He shifted in the dark. “You’re not alone this time, okay?”

  “I know. I’m just—” In love with you even though you don’t love me, she thought. “Tired. And hormonal.”

  He reached over the back of her thigh and hiked her leg over his. “There,” he sighed. “Better?”

  Later that night, unable to sleep, Isa sat up from the questions wrestling in her head. Finding her way back to Alex’s bedroom so she could check on Andrew, she reached for the lamp on the bureau and the light pushed back some of the shadows, illuminating the picture of Alex’s mother.

  Isa was pregnant and she was in love. Inside of her another life took root and grew, unaware that Isa had conceived in a moment of lust and selfishness.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she smoothed her hand over Andrew’s hair. At least with him she had been in love, or, at least in the way a nineteen-year-old girl knew of love.

  “I knew you’d come looking for me,” Joan said from the doorway.

  Isa’s hand drifted to her belly, not yet hard or stretched. “I have to tell him that I—”

  “No, absolutely not. You make him say it first.”

  “But what if he never does?”

  “What makes you think I’m going to let you stay with a man who doesn’t say ‘I love you’? Really darling, what kind of woman do you think I am?”

  But Alex cared about her and Andrew. That should’ve been good enough, but it wasn’t. She wasn’t going to devote her life to making this up to Alex and doubting his feelings. If he insisted on marrying her, she would insist on the condition that he loved her.

  And if he agreed, how would she really know?

  “Do you think he does?” Isa asked.

  Joan’s silk peignoir whispered around her legs. Her cynical smile softened. “Darling, he’s crazy for you and tonight, he learned that he needs you.”

  Isa balled her hand in her lap and she closed her eyes. She loved Alex. But she owed her life to Andrew and her baby, not to validate them to anyone.

  “That’s the spirit, my dear. A woman must know her priorities and you should never let a man know that he’s at the top of the list.”

  “Will you be there tomorrow morning when I—”

  Joan lifted a disapproving brow.

  “I won’t ask him to tell me, I’ll just tell him that I won’t marry another man who doesn’t love me back.”

  With the wisdom of a woman who’d been married more than once, Joan shook her head. “Are you prepared to possibly hear the worst? And what will you do if he says no? Could you watch him eventually meet another woman, marry her and start another family with her?”

  Isa took a deep breath, knowing that she had to be honest with Alex. Even if it meant that she would have to face all the possibilities, even the worst ones.

  The next morning, the world swam before her eyes and Isa took a deep breath, until everything righted again. There was nothing worse than nausea. Head colds, allergies, sinus infections…nothing topped hours of feeling like you were going ralph.

  Isa put on a brave face along with her mascara and lipstick. She had to say something to Alex. This wasn’t the best time, she knew, but she had to. He was talking about commitment and sneaking into her—no, his bed—while she slept with Andrew.

  Holding onto the wall with one hand, she slid into the kitchen, careful not to upset the delicate balance between nausea and vomiting in front of Alex’s dad.

  “Find everything okay?” Alex asked when she emerged. “You look green.”

  “Thanks. Is Andrew with your dad?”

  “The trains.”

  She stood there looking at him, curling and uncurling her fists.

  “Do you want me to come back after school?” she asked, not ready to say what she had to say.

  “If you want. I’ll be in Laguna probably till late.”

  “But what about—” Her sentence hung in the air and she couldn’t find the rest. Even though Alex stood in the kitchen with her, she felt like she was talking to a completely different person. “Do you have some Saltines or crackers?”

  “Oh,” he said, understanding. “How about Ritz and Seven-up?”

  “Nothing that smells.”

  “So Seven-up?”

  She gripped the edge of the counter, sinking into the chair by the phone. He got busy getting her the soda.

  “You all right?” He offered her the glass and sneaked a glance at the clock. “I can come over later.”

  “But what about your dad?”

  “Then come over and spend the night again.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you—you don’t.” She smushed her lips together and sipped her soda.

  “Do you need to go to the doctor?” he asked, concern softening his voice as he bent down in front of her.

  “Do you love me?” Joan was going to get her for that.

  He jerked back. “What?”

  “Do you love me?” she s
aid, emphasizing each word. “Because if you don’t, I can’t commit to you, I can’t marry you, and I can’t share anything with you.”

  His knees popped when he straightened up, staring down at her.

  “So,” she started again, twisting her fingers in her lap. “Do you?”

  He didn’t have to answer. She knew by his silence that she was on her own.

  33

  ROCK HARD IN THE MORNING:

  THE HAPPY COUPLE RETURNS

  “You’re not going to believe who’s out there,” Lydia shouted over the hollow burr of the cappuccino maker at Starbucks.

  The only person worse than Alex, Isa thought that Friday morning, would be her former mother-in-law. “Surprise me.”

  Lydia stepped closer, peering at her face. “Are you okay?”

  Isa slowly chewed one of the two cinnamon twisty things she’d bought.

  No. No, Isa wasn’t okay. She’d found herself strapped to this emotional roller coaster that she hadn’t paid a ticket for, but of course, she kept it all inside.

  “I’m just—” Wait. From here on out she was no longer going to hide everything. “Actually, Lydia, everything is all fucked up.”

  Lydia’s brows touched her hairline and she couldn’t get any words out.

  Outside, they heard someone testing a sound system.

  “Okay, okay,” Lydia said, holding her by the arms. “When you walk out that door, to the left in front of Casa de Oro, Carlos has his radio show.”

  Wow, Isa thought. She never imagined her life would ever reach this low.

  “Thanks, Lydia. I’ll make sure I don’t look to the left.”

  She was hollowed out, numb, and God damn it, knocked up again! It took months, months, to lose all that weight with Andrew and now—

  “Testing, one two three. Check.”

  She turned as the voice boomed over the wet parking lot and the empty sidewalks. A giant stage with lights and a “Rock Hard” backdrop had been built in the far corner of the mall in front of the rotting stagecoach.

  As if drawn in by a tractor beam, Isa walked in the opposite direction of her car and toward the stage. She had polished off both cinnamon twists, and wore crumbs on her shirt. She peeked around the corner of the stage.