Hold Me Close

by Rosalind James

“Are you OK?” Eli asked anxiously.

  “Yes. Just a burn. Turn the stove off.”

  He did it, then stood, shifting from foot to foot, not saying anything, still with the damning money in his hand.

  She pulled her hand out from under the water. Blisters rising along the side of her index finger and her thumb, but the pain in her heart was worse. She shoved her hand back under the stream, turned to her son, and said, “All right. Explain.”

  He did, and all it did was upset her more. Luke had hired Eli? Without asking her? Why? As a way to get her obligated to him? Well, he could think again. She wasn’t doing that. She’d been down that road. She knew where it led.

  She’d been pleased despite herself the week before, when he’d pulled up beside her and insisted on carrying her laundry. He’d made her heart beat faster when he’d smiled down at her and taken her basket, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up to reveal muscular forearms. She’d told him she didn’t go by looks anymore, and it was true, but that didn’t mean she didn’t notice them.

  She’d thought Luke was perfect at eight, but that was nothing to what he was now, at, what? Thirty? Thirty-one? It wasn’t just the athletic body, or even the way he moved. It was the lock of dark hair that fell over his forehead, the strong, straight nose, the square jaw and chin. And the eyes, dark as sin, sparkling with something wicked, like he had a naughty secret he couldn’t wait to share. All of it adding up to something much more than handsome, and she’d noticed. Oh, yes, she had. Because it had been Luke.

  And then he’d started flirting, and she’d known that she’d been wrong. Whoever Luke had been at eight, he wasn’t that sweet boy anymore. He was just another guy, jumping in fast and going for it, not even pretending to want anything more. The intent she had seen in his face that first day should have told her. How could she still be fooled? How could she still want so badly to believe that a man could want her for real?

  Luke had been interested, all right. Interested in hooking up. And now he was trying to use her son? Why else would anyone hire a nine-year-old child? Why else would he have hired her child, right after she’d told him no? Because he didn’t take no for an answer. But she’d had more than enough of men like that. Never again. Never, ever again.

  She let the cold water pour over her burned hand, and Pam’s words came back to her. The last thing you need right now is somebody touching you without your permission. That’s yours to give, or to withhold. Her “no” was going to mean no, every single time from now on. And she’d told Luke no.

  “I have to go today, too,” Eli said, apparently deciding to make a clean breast of it. “Because he’s working this weekend. And tomorrow. But that’s ten more dollars, Mom. He’s going to pay me every week.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.”

  “But I have to,” he insisted. “Daisy’s all alone. I have to play with her. It’s really important. It’s an animal, Mom. It’s what Dad said. You have to take care of an animal first, even before you take care of yourself, because they’re depending on you. I have to check her water and get her exercise and everything, because Luke isn’t there. If I don’t take care of her, there’s nobody to do it. It’s an animal.”

  “You’ve been going into his house?”

  “No. He said not to. Just outside. I’m just playing with her, Mom. I’m getting her exercise. It’s all right. It is!”

  “Well, no, sweetie. It isn’t, not really. You should have asked me first. But your dad was right.” Her throat tightened, as always, at the thought. “You have to take care of the dog, if that’s what you said you’d do, if there’s nobody else to do it. Just until we talk to Luke.” She took her hand out from under the faucet and wrapped a dishtowel around it, ignoring the pain. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had pain before. She picked the pan up from the stove and began to scrape out the burned pancake. “And meanwhile,” she said, summoning up some cheerfulness from somewhere, because it was the weekend, and she had a job, and she’d been paid, and they were free, “let’s have breakfast. And then we’ll go shopping.”

  The day had gotten better after that, although they didn’t end up with a sharp knife.

  “We’ll keep our eyes open,” she told Eli after she had hefted and tested the utensils on sale at their final stop. “These aren’t any better than what we have, but you know, sometimes it takes a while. The right one will be out there.”

  And then she saw the pretty little picture frame on the shelf. She picked it up, then put it back again. It wasn’t a necessity, and her life now was about necessities. But when they went up to the counter to pay, the frame was in her hand all the same.

  Back home again, she used their new pan to make grilled-cheese sandwiches for lunch, and cut up apples with the same old dull knife. When they’d finished lunch and Eli stood up to leave, she told him, “Hang on a second. We’re going to have a ceremony.”

  “Uh . . . OK.”

  She smiled at him and reached for her battered manila envelope, the new picture frame. She made a little production of it, then set the frame in front of her before reaching into the envelope and pulling out three of the things inside.

  “This is our home now,” she told Eli, “and a home needs a family portrait. We’ll put these other things into the frame behind it. All our most precious things in one place.” She unfolded the first piece of paper and showed it to him, trying to sound cheerful, because these should be happy thoughts. “This is your dad’s and my marriage license.”

  She couldn’t help tracing Kurt’s scrawled signature with her finger, thinking of him the way he’d been that day. So young, but so sure that their life was going to be wonderful. Undaunted. Unbreakable.

  She shook it off, folded the paper again, set it against the cardboard at the back of the frame, and unfolded the next item. “And this is your birth certificate. The two best days of my life, right here recorded on these two pieces of paper. And the ones your dad said were his best days, too, which makes them extra special.”

  Eli took the document from her and studied it. “I weighed seven pounds and twelve ounces.”

  “You sure did, and I felt every one of them. Having a baby isn’t easy.” She smiled at him. “But your dad held my hand, and that made it better.”

  The birth certificate joined the marriage license, and she picked up the third thing. The snapshot, a little battered now, of herself and Kurt sitting on the grass, a two-year-old Eli between them. Kurt squinting into the sunlight, laughing, his dark hair a little messed up.

  “Hey,” he’d objected when she’d pulled off his hat for the picture. “Nobody wants to see my hat hair.”

  “I want to see your handsome face, though,” she’d told him, and he’d smiled and kissed her.

  He hadn’t been handsome, not really. But the narrow face with its beaky nose, its creases around the eyes and mouth was exactly the way she remembered it. Strong and kind.

  She put his picture into the frame, closed the little tabs around it, and set it on the table facing the two of them. “There,” she managed to say. “That’s better. We’ll put it on the bedside table, and you can see your dad every day.”

  “I think I’m forgetting him.” Eli rubbed a finger over one of the deep grooves marring the table’s surface, not meeting his mother’s eyes. “I only remember a few things. But I remember that he was nice. I remember that he used to swing me.”

  “He did do that. We’d walk along, and we’d swing you between us. Or he’d carry you on his shoulders. He liked touching us. He always held my hand if we were walking together. That was the kind of man he was. And he was . . .”

  She hesitated. She hadn’t talked to Eli about his dad in a long time. At first, she’d had to work so hard to keep it together, had been so worried that she wasn’t going to be able to after all. She hadn’t wanted him to see her cry, and she’d known she would have. She’d been afraid that i
f she’d started, she wouldn’t have been able to stop.

  And then Alan had been there, and she’d had to hide even this picture. She hadn’t even been able to keep her memories. But that was wrong. Wrong for Eli, and wrong for her. It was time to bring the memories out. They hurt, but not remembering your father—surely that hurt more.

  “He was nice,” she told Eli. “He was . . . he was optimistic. Do you know what that is?”

  “Like, happy?”

  “Not just happy. More like—thinking you’re going to be happy. Thinking that things will work out, that you’ll find a way. It was scary sometimes, because we were young, and we were poor, and we were going to have you. But he’d say, ‘You and me, babe. We’ve got this,’ and he’d make me believe it. ‘The two Ks, all the way,’ he’d tell me. That’s what optimistic is, and he made me optimistic, too.”

  She reached out, put an arm around Eli’s thin shoulders, and hugged him to her. “That was your dad. I wondered if we should give you a K name, too, after you were born. I was thinking maybe we should name you after him, but he said no.”

  “I’d kind of like to have his name,” Eli said.

  “Know why you don’t? Because he thought it’d be better for you not to. He said, ‘We’ll let him be his own man, give him his own name. We don’t want to fence him in.’ So we named you Eli. That was his choice. He said, ‘It’s a good tough name, but it sounds like a decent guy. I’ve never known a . . . jerk named Eli.’ Except he didn’t say ‘jerk.’”

  She laughed, and Eli did, too. The laughter hurt, yes, and so did the memory, but it was a sweet pain. “I probably shouldn’t tell you that, but what the heck. That was your dad. He pretty much told it like it was.”

  “Was he riding in the rodeo then?” Eli asked.

  “Well, then he was, yeah. But after a couple years, it was too hard. We needed the money, so he stopped.” Because that was Kurt, too. If it had to be done, you didn’t whine about it. You just did it. If you and your nineteen-year-old girlfriend were having a baby, you told her that you’d always wanted to be a dad, and that you’d be so proud to be her husband. You made her believe it, because you knew she needed to. And if you couldn’t win enough at the rodeo to keep chasing the dream, you gave up the dream and got a job, and never showed her how much it hurt.

  “That’s why he was working in North Dakota,” she told Eli now. “Because that was where the money was, even though he didn’t want to leave us.”

  “When he died, you mean,” he said, looking down again. “I remember when he died.”

  She remembered, too. Remembered opening the door and seeing the two state policemen standing there.

  “Mrs. Chambers?” one of them had asked. Both of their faces so serious, and somehow, she’d known, had begun to shake even before they’d told her. How he’d hit the deer, speeding, because he’d been hurrying home to her. How his old pickup had rolled. How he had died alone there in the dark, on a snowy North Dakota road far from home. Far from the wife who’d been lying awake, unable to sleep for the excitement of her husband coming home. Far from the six-year-old boy who’d gone to sleep waiting for a dad who would never carry him on his shoulders again.

  She took a deep breath, now, and tipped the manila envelope so the final thing in it clattered onto the table, then put a hand down to trap the spinning gold ring.

  “This is the last thing,” she told Eli, doing her best to keep her voice steady. “My wedding ring.” A thin band that she’d worn for nearly two years after he’d died, until she’d met Alan. Their first date had been the first time she’d taken it off in seven years, since the day Kurt had put it on her finger. She didn’t put it back on now, because her marriage was over, and her husband was dead, and she had accepted that. But she was keeping it all the same.

  “Someday,” she told Eli, needing him to hear this, and to know it, “you’ll meet a woman you love like your dad loved me. I’m thinking you might want to give her this ring when you get married. You can put it on her finger . . .” She had to stop a moment, now, and get herself together, and, yes, Eli was going to see her cry, and that was all right.

  “And you can know,” she said when she could go on, “that you can be the kind of husband to her that your dad was, because you’re going to be the same kind of man he was. Just as strong and brave, and just as kind and loving.” She rubbed a hand beneath her eyes, laughed a little, and said, “He always said I cried for everything. Cried for sad, and cried for happy. And it’s true, see? Because I’m doing it again now.” Now that she could dare to cry again. Could dare to feel again.

  “I’m not sure I want to get married, though.” Eli looked dubiously at the ring. “I don’t really like girls. I mean, I like you,” he hastened to say. “But I don’t want to kiss a girl or anything.”

  She had to laugh, then, had to bend and kiss him on top of his head. “Well, like I said, you’re a lot like your dad. I think it’s safe to say that you might change your mind.”

  She wondered, now, if she should have kept Kurt’s wedding ring for Eli, too, if that would have been better.

  He hadn’t worn it all the time. Not when he’d been riding, and not when he’d been working on the drill rig, because it could have been dangerous. “I keep it for the important times,” he’d told her with a grin. “When I’m at the bar.” She’d laughed and hit him, and he’d grabbed her hand, pulled her to him, and kissed her, and then he’d made her believe some more.

  He’d died with it on. Died wearing it, coming back to them, and she hadn’t been able to stand the idea of anybody taking it off his finger, so she’d buried him in it. Her laughing, sweet, not-handsome, not-rich husband. Not a perfect man, no. But such a good one.

  “Did my dad hit you?” Eli asked quietly.

  The shock of it was like one of Alan’s punches, unexpected and devastating, and she had to sit for a moment before she answered.

  “No,” she said. “No. He never touched either of us with anything but love. Good men don’t hit the people they love.”

  Eli nodded. “If I ever do get married, I’m not going to hit my wife.”

  The guilt was an icy shard straight to her heart. “No. You aren’t, because you aren’t that kind of person. And I’m sorry.” She hadn’t said it before, but it was time to do it. “I’m sorry that I took you into Alan’s house. I’m sorry that you had to see everything you did. I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you. But it’s over now. We got away. We’re gone, and we’ll never be with anybody who hits either of us again, I promise. I forgot about being optimistic for a little while there. I thought I didn’t have a choice. I thought things couldn’t get better. But here we are, and we’ve made them better, and we’re both going to be optimistic now, OK?”

  “OK. Except . . .” Eli hesitated.

  “Except what?” Kayla’s hand smoothed his hair. “You can say, baby. You can tell me.”

  “It’s just . . . I was going to meet the guys at the pool. I know you want me to keep you company, though,” he hastened to add. “I mean, I can stay and talk to you some more if you want me to. I just have to go play with Daisy first.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Kayla hugged him again, and he hugged her back, and she laughed. “No. You go on. That’s enough weepy time. We’re all good. Lots of life to get lived. You want me to walk you, since I’ve got the day off and all?”

  “No. It’s kind of . . .” Eli stopped again. “It’s kind of embarrassing, no offense, Mom. Nobody else walks with their mom. They all just ride their bikes.”

  “Ah.” It was a pang, but it was good, too, that he was making friends, and that he was having normal kid feelings again. She got up, put her ring back in the envelope, picked up the framed picture, put it on the bedside table, and put her ring into the little drawer. Safe and sound.

  “You go on,” she told Eli. “It’s pretty safe to go by yourself, I guess, as
long as you come back before dark. We’ll get you a bike as soon as we can.”

  “I think bikes cost a lot of money, though.”

  “Well, you know that optimism thing? Let’s decide that you’re going to get one. Let’s figure that, one of these days, we’ll find a way.”

  UP IN SMOKE

  Alan picked up the phone on the first ring. He’d been up and pacing for half an hour, because Kervic had told him this was it. The day he and the uniforms would raid Isabel’s place.

  “Yeah?” he snapped.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” He grabbed the back of his desk chair, his fingers tightening painfully on the black mesh. “It’s been more than an hour since you went in there. What the hell have you been doing? She has to have gone there. I know she did.”

  “Nothing in the place. No sign of them. I hung around afterwards, and the fat chick left, went to her boyfriend’s. Nothing in the apartment, and no sign of anybody else.”

  “Did you trash it?”

  “We searched it, yeah. No sign of a kid, and nothing we can get her on. And if you tell me to plant something . . .” His voice was rising. “You can forget it. I’m not doing it. That’s as far as I go. There was nothing at the restaurant, either, and nobody will admit to knowing anything. If Kayla went there, either place, she’s gone now, and I’m done.”

  “I want a trace on Sanchez’s phone calls.”

  “I told you. That’s it.”

  “Don’t give me that BS. She’s a foreign national. Patriot Act. Do it.”

  A long pause, then, “All right, but this is the last thing I do. I’ll keep the trace open, but that’s it. I mean it.”

  “You don’t say what’s the last thing. I say what’s the last thing. And this isn’t the last thing. Trace her calls. Do it now.”

  He hung up without waiting for an answer, stood for a moment, breathing hard, then picked up the chair by the back and slammed it into the floor. A wheel broke off and skittered across the floor, and he kicked it viciously into the wall. But it wasn’t enough. He strode into the bedroom, pulled the closet door open with a force that nearly took it off its hinges, and began to yank down Kayla’s clothes, flinging them into the center of the room. He kept going, moving faster now, pulling open drawers, and then, when that was too slow, taking out the entire drawer and dumping its contents onto the rapidly growing pile, then tossing the drawer aside before heading into the bathroom, sweeping her cosmetics into the garbage, pulling the bag out, and tossing it onto the top of the pile.