There were good times. Loving times. He became more patient, he taught her about making love, and in a little while skyrockets really did go off. But perhaps that, she realized now, was in its own way a form of control, for then, when she rebelled, when she said, “I hate that dress,” or, “I can’t stand opera,” he would stop her words with a kiss, tease and love her until, weak with desire, she acquiesced to whatever it was he wanted her to do.
They sailed back to San Sebastián on his boat, Straight On till Morning. “This is the way we will be,” he said that first night at sea. “Together, Annabel, straight on till morning.”
At night when he anchored in the lee of a cove, they made love out on the deck under the stars. And she had loved him. Oh, she had loved him.
It took them almost six days to get to San Sebastián, and this, for her, had been the real honeymoon. Now that they were alone he let her wear a bikini, off-the-shoulder blouses and shorts. “But for me,” he said. “Only for me.”
Once they reached San Sebastián he introduced her to the servants. Meadowlark hadn’t been there then, but Ambrosia had. Ambrosia, who’d said when Annabel had arrived a little over a month ago, “It’s real nice having you back, Mrs. Alarcon.” She hadn’t known then that Ambrosia had meant, “after such a long time.”
They stayed on San Sebastián for almost six months, and in that time she grew to love the island and the people. And every day, though at times he was difficult, she fell more and more in love with Luis.
A man came to the island one day and Luis introduced her to him—Zachary Flynn, a deep-sea diver. Luis had told her about the Cantamar. “I’ve been searching for her for a long time,” he’d said. “Flynn’s had experience as a diver. He’s found other galleons, he’ll help me find the Cantamar.”
The three of them, together with Samuel, had set sail on Straight On till Morning. She remembered now that she had wished at the time that she and Luis could have been alone, for while she liked Samuel, she didn’t like Zachary Flynn.
They cruised the Bahamian waters, and when they drew close to the island of Eleuthera, Luis said, “The ship is here. Somewhere. I know it is, I can feel it. The Cantamar is here in these waters.”
They went into Eleuthera to replenish their food and water supply, sometimes to spend the night. But most of the time was spent diving. Luis and Flynn made charts at night and dived during the day.
Hurricane season came, and Luis, looking worried, said, “We can’t stay out much longer. We’ve got to head back to San Sebastián.”
They took Flynn back to Nassau. “We’ll search again when we know the weather is clear,” Luis said.
The winter came and went, as did both spring and summer, and though they searched, they were no closer to finding the Cantamar than when they’d started.
The following fall Luis took her to Spain. By now they had been married more than two years. She celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday at a party in Madrid, where Luis introduced her to his aunts and uncles, what seemed like a great number of cousins and lots of small nieces and nephews. They were all warm and wonderful people, who treated her as though she belonged. She began to feel part of a family, and to long for a family of her own.
She had brought up the subject of having a child several times during their two and a half years of marriage. Each time she did, Luis said, “A baby? Good Lord, Annabel, you’re only a baby yourself. We have plenty of time before we start thinking about having a family.”
At his insistence, though she hadn’t wanted to, she continued taking the Pill.
She stopped taking it in Spain the night one of the small nieces, an adorable three-year-old whose name was Silvia, said, “I want Tía Anna to put me to bed.”
She’d gone upstairs with the child, helped her undress, and when she tucked her in, Silvia said, “Sing, Tía Anna.” She sang the only song she could think of, “Oh, Susanna!” in a slightly off-key voice that almost instantly put little Silvia to sleep.
As she sat there smiling down at the little girl, smoothing the hair back from her face, she decided that she wanted a baby now. And that no matter what Luis said, she was going to get pregnant.
And she did. Two and a half months later they took a trip to Sevilla, then to Toledo. It was in Toledo, excited but nervous, clenching her hands together behind her back, that she confessed she had stopped taking the Pill and that she was pregnant.
Luis was furious. She had betrayed him, he said. She’d known how he felt about having a child and yet she had deliberately gone against his wishes.
At first she had been defensive, chagrined. But when she thought of the tiny life growing inside her, she said, “I’m not a child. I’m a woman and I want a baby.”
“You should have told me.”
“I tried to tell you how much I wanted one but you wouldn’t listen. You never listen.”
He stormed out of the room. When he returned later that night he didn’t speak to her. Nor did he speak to her the next day.
They had agreed to meet a distant cousin for lunch. Luis spoke to her then because he had no choice. And when after lunch the cousin suggested they visit the Museum of the Santa Cruz to see the paintings and the wonderfully graceful marble stairway, they had little choice except to let him take them there.
“Go, go,” the cousin said before he hurried away to his office. “Enjoy.”
The staircase was indeed beautiful. They climbed to the top and then, touched by the beauty and wanting to make it up with Luis, she said, “I’m sorry, Luis. I know I should have discussed my not wanting to take the Pill with you.” She rested her hand on his arm. “Please, darling, try to understand how much I want this baby.”
“I don’t understand.” He shrugged her hand away and, turning his back on her, started down the stairs. “I’m not in the mood for a museum,” he said. “Stay if you want to. I’m going back to the hotel.”
“Luis. Luis, wait.” She took a step down without looking and somehow missed the step. And fell, fell all the way down that long marble stairway.
When she awoke in the hospital Luis was with her. She put her hands over her stomach and knew there would be no baby.
She was in the hospital for three days, and when she was well enough, they returned to Madrid. He tried to talk to her, but now she was the one who was silent and withdrawn.
The day after their return to Madrid she went to an airline office and made a reservation to fly back to Miami. When Luis saw the ticket on the dresser, he said, “What’s this? What are you doing?”
“I’m going back to Miami,” she told him. “I’m leaving you.”
She remembered now how white his face had gone, how strained his voice had been when he said, “You... you can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can,” she said, facing him. “It’s over, Luis. I’m going to file for a divorce.”
He gripped the edge of a chair. “I won’t let you.”
“Let?” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t live with you anymore.”
He took her to the plane. When he tried to kiss her, she turned away from him.
Once in Miami she did as she had told him she would—she saw a lawyer and filed for divorce. She did not see Luis again, only his attorney. Though she had not asked for any kind of a settlement, his attorney informed her that Luis had deposited half a million dollars into a Miami bank in her name. She said she didn’t want it. “It’s yours,” the lawyer said. “Do with it whatever you want to.”
She bought a condo in North Beach. She gave away the clothes Luis had always selected for her and bought the kind of clothes she liked. And as soon as the divorce was final she looked for a job.
Because of Luis she knew a bit about boats and so she went to apply to companies that made or sold boats. Albert Croyden hired her to work in the sales office of his company at the marina. She had been happy there, and soon both Albert and his wife, Louise, had become friends.
She and Mark had started dating a year ago. She
liked him, and when he asked her to marry him, she almost said yes. But she didn’t. In spite of everything that had happened between them, she still loved Luis. Though they were divorced, in her mind he was still her husband. And, God help her, he always would be.
Almost five years had passed since she’d seen Luis. He had come to the hospital in Nassau, and because she had no memory, he had claimed her as his wife.
She knew now that she could have forgiven the deception if he had done it because, after all this time, he still loved her. But that’s not why he’d gone to Nassau. He’d gone because he thought she might know something about the Cantamar. Because she’d had a gold doubloon in her pocket when the coast guard found her.
And the lovemaking? The words whispered in passion in the darkness of the night? Had they been said in the hope that someday she would remember what had happened on the Drum? Because she might have learned where the Cantamar had gone down?
She looked out at the quiet night and wept for the friends who had died. And for a love she had only thought she had found again.
Chapter 15
He lay alone in the bed he and Annabel had shared. From the open balcony door came the sound of the sea, from above the slight whoosh of the fan turning slowly overhead. He had almost lost Annabel today, and now, every time he closed his eyes, he saw it all again. Annabel, backed to the edge of the cliff, sea foam swirling against the deadly rocks below, Zachary Flynn, with a gun in his hand, advancing on her. Then Flynn’s terrible cry as man and dog hurled over the cliff to the rocks below.
A terrible sickness rose in Luis’s stomach, because if it hadn’t been for Rob, it would have been Annabel’s body that lay broken and dead at the bottom of the cliff instead of Flynn’s. If that had happened he would never have forgiven himself.
He had brought her back to San Sebastián against her will. He had lied to her, deceived her. And tried to make her love him again. If she had died... “Oh, God,” he whispered. “God, help me.” He covered his mouth with his fist to stifle the sound of his anguish.
He had never loved anyone the way he loved Annabel, he never would. If she had died, a part of him, the best part of him, would have died with her.
Rob had saved her, big, wonderful Rob, who had adored Annabel from the day they’d found him on that deserted island.
Flynn had been killed instantly, but Rob was still alive when Luis reached him. He’d been thrown a few feet from where Flynn lay, and when Luis approached, the dog had looked up at him and whined. His back had been broken.
“He be suffering somethin’ terrible,” Samuel said.
“I know.”
“He gotta be put out of his misery. I’ll take care of it. You go on after Miss Annabel.”
Luis knelt by the dog. “No, I’ll do it.” He scratched Rob behind his ears and gently stroked his head. “I know you’re hurting, fella,” he said. “I’m going to take care of that for you in a minute. You saved her life, Rob. You’re a brave and wonderful dog and I’m going to miss you.”
Rob whined again. But tremors shook his body and Luis knew what he had to do. He had the gun. He rested a hand on the dog’s side. “Go to sleep, Rob,” he said. “Go to sleep, boy.”
Even now, as he lay alone in the darkness of the night, it seemed to Luis that he could hear the blast of his gun and feel Rob’s last quiver of life.
He would buy Annabel another dog. They’d go to Miami for a few weeks and he’d buy her any kind of dog she wanted. They’d stay at the Fontainebleu just as they had on their brief honeymoon eight years ago.
Their honeymoon. He’d been thirty years old, experienced and worldly when it came to women because he’d had his first sexual experience when he was fourteen. Twenty-three-year-old Rosalinda, a maid in his parents’ home in Madrid, had introduced him to the ways of lovemaking. By the time his father found out what was going on, he’d acquired an enormous appetite for sex and had become fairly adept with women.
He’d been in and out of love a dozen times before he met Annabel. Once, when he was twenty-two, he’d even been engaged to someone his father said would make him a suitable wife. Pilar Villareal came from a wealthy Andalusian family. Her father and his father had gone to the University of Salamanca together.
“It will be a match made in heaven,” his father told him. “Her family is rich and she is pretty enough.”
Yes, pretty enough. But she giggled. My God, how she giggled.
He couldn’t imagine Annabel ever giggling.
He fell in love with Annabel the first time he saw her. She was beautiful of course, incredibly feminine, with rosebud breasts and a waist he could span with his two hands. There had been a charming, unsure-of-herself awkwardness about her, an endearing innocence that instantly captivated him. The first time he put his arms around her when they danced that night in New Orleans, he knew he wanted her. Once he made up his mind to have her, she didn’t stand a chance.
He’d known almost immediately that Annabel was different from the other women he’d met and made love to. But she was a woman, and with time and patience he could have seduced her. That wasn’t what he wanted; he had fallen in love with Annabel, and he wanted her for his wife.
He held himself in check during their courtship, but each day his desire for her grew. And when finally, legally, she came to him as his bride, he could no longer wait.
He knew now that he had been too impatient. Annabel had been innocent to the physical side of love, and instead of leading her gently along he had demanded a response, a passion she had not yet learned. Even as he reveled in the fact that Annabel was a virgin, he had been annoyed by her inexperience.
He’d been an insensitive fool, but she had loved him. In spite of everything, Annabel had loved him.
Later, when he learned to be more tender, more patient, he had reveled in teaching her the many ways of love. How quick she’d been to learn what pleased him, how sweet her trembling words each time he took her to the brink of passion.
Their best times were spent at sea on the Straight On till Morning. She’d been seasick her first time out, but she soon got her sea legs and they’d had a happy time of it. They sailed the Bahamas together, following the charts he’d made, getting ever closer, he was sure, to the place where the Cantamar had gone down.
It was the trip to Spain that finished them off. He still remembered, though he had tried for five long years to forget, his harsh words when she told him she was pregnant. How could he have been so insensitive to her feelings? Why couldn’t he have rejoiced with her that together they would soon bring a new life into the world?
The memory of that day, that terrible day in the museum in Toledo, would never leave him. Even now when he closed his eyes he could see her falling, falling down those hard marble stairs. He had knelt beside her there at the bottom of the stairs. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he said over and over. But she had been unconscious, unable to hear.
The two days he sat beside her bed in the Madrid hospital were the longest two days of his life. When finally the doctor told him she would live, he turned his face to the wall and wept. For her and for the child that would never be born.
She left him then, and when she did she took a part of him with her. The best part.
He thought of the child they might have had. Their son or their daughter would have been five now. Would have been. Would have been.
Why had he acted the way he had when Annabel told him she was pregnant? Why couldn’t he have been happy with her, proud that together they were creating a new life? Because you wanted her all to yourself, a voice in his head whispered. You didn’t want anyone, not even your own child, to come between you.
What a selfish bastard he’d been. No wonder she left him.
There had been no one else in the five years they had been apart, for in his mind and in his heart Annabel was still his wife, she would always be his wife. He would always love her, for she was his beautiful Annabel, his Annabel Lee.
He thought t
hen of the lines of Poe’s poem and knew that for him they rang true—that the moon never beams without bringing him dreams of his beautiful Annabel Lee. His darling...his darling...his life and his bride.
Forever and always Annabel would be his wife. No legal paper could change that.
In the early hours before dawn Luis fell into a troubled sleep, and awoke before seven feeling haggard and drawn. He wanted to talk to Annabel, but because it was too early, he pulled on a pair of trunks and went down to the beach for a swim.
A storm was brewing and the sky was as gray and leaden as he felt. There was a chop to the waves and he waded out, waited for a roller and dived through it. When he surfaced he swam straight out, waves breaking over his head, the current tugging at his legs, and when he knew he’d gone too far, he started back in. He was breathing hard by the time his feet touched sand, but his head was clear.
He went back to the house to shower and shave and dress in a clean pair of white shorts and a pullover shirt. Then, bracing himself because it had to be done, he went into the room where he kept the shortwave radio and contacted the Miami police.
He told them about Zachary Flynn, that Flynn had not drowned on the Distant Drum as had been reported by the coast guard. He had been very much alive, hiding here in San Sebastián. He told them, too, that Flynn, in an attempt to kill his—Luis’s—wife, had fallen from a high cliff to the rocks below.
Yes, he said in answer to their questions, he would come to Miami soon and sign whatever papers were necessary.
That done, he went to Annabel’s door. When he knocked, she said, “Yes?”
“May I come in?”
Long-Lost Wife? Page 17