Illusions Complete Series (Illusions Series Volumes 1-3)

by Annie Jocoby

  I just shook my head. “No, Nick. I think he’s gone.”

  After about an hour of looking for him on the grounds, around the home and in the guest house, Nick concluded that Ryan had, in fact, left.

  “Looks like you’re right. He’s gone.”

  Nick looked worried.

  I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking of all the times that Ryan disappeared during the college years. He was always up to no good when that happened before.

  “Well, I’m quite sure that there is a logical explanation for this,” Nick said.

  “Yes,” I said. “He doesn’t love me anymore, and doesn’t know how to tell me.”

  Nick just shook his head. “Listen, Iris. I’m sick and tired of having to reassure you about how Ryan feels about you. So, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut from now on. You can sit and stew and think what you want. I know the truth.”

  “Well, then, I’m just going to call him and see what he says.”

  “You do that.”

  “I will,” I said, getting out my iPhone from my pocket. With shaking hands, I dialed.

  “Hello?” Ryan said on the other end of the line. “Iris?”

  I just started crying hysterically and couldn’t speak. “Ryan, where are you? Where did you go?”

  He was deathly silent for a matter of minutes. “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Didn’t you read my letter?”

  “What letter?”

  “I left a letter for you on your nightstand. I guess you didn’t see it, huh?”

  Breathe, Iris, breathe. That letter wasn’t a goodbye letter. It was something else. It just had to be something else.

  “What did the letter say?”

  “It’s a long story. Too long of a story for right now, because I have an appointment to keep.”

  “An appointment?”

  “Yes. Uh, I’ll explain later. Bye.”

  And he hung up.

  Nick came out and saw me standing there, the phone at my side. My right hand was gripping the phone, and it was shaking like I had a tremor.

  “Iris? Are you ok?”

  I shook my head. “No, Nick. I’m not ok. That was Ryan. He said that he wrote me a letter telling me about where he was going, and that it was too difficult to explain. He also said that he had some kind of an appointment to keep.” What I didn’t tell Nick was that Ryan’s voice and demeanor on the phone was business-like and cold. There wasn’t any warmth or levity in his voice when he was talking to me.

  It had been that way ever since the shooting, really. He was such a different person now. There wasn’t the look of desire and love in his eyes anymore. Instead, there was either a blank stare or a look of outright hostility. There was no longer the playful tone of voice. His tone with me was cold, clipped and formal. Like I was his headmistress or something. That was when he would deign to even talk to me at all. Most of the times he treated me with an icy silence.

  Everything that I loved about him was missing these days.

  Worst of all, I didn’t know if it would ever come back. Any of it. I was trying so hard to be patient and understanding. Trying to give him just what he needed, if I could ever figure out exactly what that was. Yet all I was getting was the literal cold shoulder and the feeling that I was living with a stranger.

  Nick and I were still standing out in the garden, which is where I chose to make my call. I walked back into the house, and Nick followed me close behind.

  Dalilah was waiting for us to come back in. She was standing up in her playpen.

  She soon would be walking. Would Ryan be here to see it?

  “Mama,” she said, putting her arms out to me. I was a little bit startled, because she hadn’t been coming to me lately. I always had to go to her, and she was still pouty with me. But she seemed to want my affection now, so I bent down and picked her up.

  “Where’s daddy?”

  “Daddy isn’t here, baby. He has something that he has to do.”

  Dalilah looked sad, and put her thumb in her mouth.

  “Would you like to go in your walker?”

  She said nothing, but nodded her head.

  “Ok, then,” I said, putting her in her little walker. She started walking all around the room, and started giggling when the dogs came up to her and tried to play. She was seeming to get back to normal.

  Getting back to normal when everything was falling apart.

  Well, Dalilah seems not to hate me anymore. So that’s one good thing in my life right now.

  Nick came back in about an hour later. I was sitting on the couch, a glass of wine in my hand. Dalilah was in her playpen working her Etch-A-Sketch. I was staring off into space, and I didn’t hear him come in at first.

  “Iris,” he said, and I jumped, startled.

  “Oh, sorry, Nick. I was zoned out.”

  “It’s ok,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  I just shrugged. I was trying very hard not to spiral into depression, but it was getting increasingly difficult.

  “You know, Nick,” I said. “I never thought that my life would be like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Chaotic. It’s like I don’t have any traction anywhere in my life, so it’s really difficult getting some kind of forward momentum. And I don’t even know where to begin to bring myself out of the ditch. I need a strong tow truck and chain, and I don’t know what that would be.”

  Then I looked at little Dalilah. She was getting more beautiful by the day, and, as she grew, she resembled Sarah with Ryan’s green eyes. And her intelligence was scaring me a little. At any rate, I should be happy. Dalilah was everything that a mother could ask for in a little girl, aside from her occasional temper tantrums.

  Yet even Dalilah brought me no joy.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  I just shook my head. “I’m losing hope, Nick. I’m losing hope that things are going to get better.” I took another sip of my wine. “And there’s not a light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, it’s like I’m resigned again to be a single mother. Because I don’t know what’s going on with Ryan. He’s changed, Nick. I don’t know the person who has treated me like dog shit for the past few weeks, then left the house without so much as a goodbye. I never thought that Ryan could be like this.”

  “Iris,” Nick began. “This is a part of who he is. The darkness is in him. It always has been. You’ve been lucky that it hasn’t come out before. You’ve….well, let’s just say that his meeting you is what brought him into the light. He changed after he met you. But the man you’re seeing now is who Ryan is, as much as the man that you married is. It’s a facet of his, and it’s something that you might always have to deal with. I’m not saying that Ryan is going to live in this darkness for the rest of his life. I’m just saying that the darkness is in his DNA. So, you need to come to terms with this.”

  “I know, Nick. I’m trying to come to terms with it.” The tears started to come again. “It’s just that I’ve lived with this sort of thing all my life. My sister was always like this. She’d hole up in her room and never come out for months, except to go to work. She attempted suicide several times, and was hospitalized for depression more times than I could count. She became addicted to crystal meth and used that for several years. She never left home.”

  Nick put his arm around me lightly. “Must’ve been tough, living with that all your life.”

  “Yeah, you might say that.” I took another sip of my wine. “When I met Ryan, I never would’ve thought that his life was anything but grand. You know, he’s drop dead gorgeous, intelligent, educated at the best schools, has megabucks. I was on the outside looking in all my life, like the little match girl. And Ryan was like a guy that I was looking in on all my life, thinking that he had it made, while my life was in the crapper. I never imagined that a guy like that would fall in love with me, and I really never imagined that a guy like that would have anything less than a perfect life. And I never could’ve imagined th
at loving a guy like him would be so difficult.”

  Nick’s arm was still around my shoulder. I looked at him. His face was so close to mine. I felt my heart quicken, and my hand started shaking violently. I ended up spilling wine down his shirt.

  “Oh, shit, I’m so sorry. Let me clean that up for you.”

  “No need,” he said, as he took off his shirt. His muscles rippled, and I lost my breath looking at his naked torso. I could feel myself hyperventilating.

  Nick got up to put his shirt into the washing machine, then left and came back in a few minutes in a new shirt. “Not a big deal, Iris. Spills happen.”

  I could say nothing, just nod my head.

  Dalilah was in her playpen watching both of us intently. I could almost see her wheels spinning.

  She didn’t look happy.

  “Mama,” she said. “When’s daddy coming home?” Her sentences were becoming more and more perfect. Pretty soon she’ll be reading War and Peace I thought, ruefully, translating it from the original Russian.

  “Soon, baby,” I said, hoping that I wasn’t lying to her.

  She said nothing, just looked at Nick and me on the couch.

  Nick’s scent was intoxicating, and the sight of him with his shirt off was burned in my brain. I could feel my breath quicken.

  He was so close to me.

  Then I started to feel that I couldn’t breathe.

  “Uh, I need to go outside for a little bit. Get some fresh air.” I then picked up Dalilah. “You want to take a walk with me outside, baby? Go through the garden and smell all the pretty flowers?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Good.” Then I went to get her stroller out of the closet.

  “We’ll be back,” I called to Nick. “We’re just going to go and take a little walk.”

  “Sure, I’ll see you in a bit. Sheila’s going to start making dinner in a few, too. Any special requests?”

  “Surprise me.”

  I hadn’t explored Nick’s grounds yet. His house sat on at least an acre of land, which was difficult to find in the middle of the city. As I walked along, I saw prize roses lining the walkway. There were about a hundred different varieties. I knew that Nick had a gardener who came in and maintained these beauties, and that gardener obviously knew his stuff. The roses were perfect. There were different shades of reds, yellows and oranges. There were also purples and even black roses.

  In the middle of the garden was a stone bench. It had a plaque on it, which I read. It said “Abrianna O’Hara. 2002-2009. Forever in our hearts.” A little angel was in the middle of the plaque.

  I wondered about that one. Did Nick also lose a child? Perhaps she was his niece.

  I realized how little I knew about the guy living in that stately home, but I was starting to get to know him more. He no longer was strictly the insensitive, blunt jerk that I thought he was. It was bluster, I guessed, because he had such a soft spot for my daughter and even myself these days.

  I couldn’t be more confused about my life than I was right at that moment. Somehow, Nick and Ryan managed to trade places. Now, Nick was the sensitive one (although he still had his moments of jerkitude), and Ryan was the ass.

  Sitting there in the garden, I couldn’t get the sight of Nick with his shirt off out of my brain. Nor could I stop thinking about his intoxicating scent. It was some kind of woodsy cologne. Then it occurred to me that he had no need to wear cologne, because he wasn’t going anywhere. He was working from home, as he had been since Dalilah and I moved into his house.

  Was he wearing that cologne because he wanted to impress me?

  I turned Dalilah around to face me, then brought her onto my lap. I plucked a daisy that was growing by the bench, and gave it to her. She looked at it with wonder, then looked at me. “Thank you, mommy!” she said, beaming.

  “You’re welcome, baby.”

  I tried to stop my mind from wandering to different scenarios, each more horrible than the last. That Ryan had left me. That Ryan would somehow burn up in a plane crash. That Ryan was suddenly taken over by a Body Snatcher.

  That scenario seemed as logical as any other at this point.

  Then I had to stop my mind from wandering over to Nick, who my subconscious was regarding as Plan B.

  Ryan dumps me, and I’ll marry Nick.

  Stop it, Iris. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Stop!

  Actually, the peacefulness of the garden reminded me of my wedding day with Ryan. Now that was a memory that I could savor. God, there was so much love between us that day. There had always been such pure, unadulterated love between us. No matter what happened, the love was always there. Nothing ever made it diminish. Not the episode with Nat, nor my stay in the drug house after having been raped, nor my leaving him for San Francisco and hiding his daughter from him for several months. Nothing ever made that burning lamp dim.

  I had to hold onto that. Hold on to the hope that it could be like that again. We made it through horrible situations before. Situations that looked absolutely hopeless at first glance. Yet, we always found that we weren’t broken, just bent.

  And we always managed to find our way back.

  We’ll find our way back this time, too.

  I can’t give up hope.

  But that night, Nick and I shared a couple of bottles of wine after Dalilah went to bed. I could feel my resolve lowering just being near him, and the wine wasn’t helping matters any.

  Nick had actually been drinking before we opened up the bottle of wine. I could tell that he was quite intoxicated.

  “You know, Iris, having you and Dalilah here these past few weeks has been a godsend to me. I don’t think that I’ve told you this.”

  “Well, you taking us in has been a godsend to us, too. It goes both ways. If you didn’t take us in, I literally don’t know where we would be. I mean, we all couldn’t have stayed at my mother’s, which means that Ryan would probably still be at that hospital, which I don’t want to think about.” I shuddered my shoulders a little at that thought, then took another sip of wine. “And there really is no place for us to go, except for my parents’ house. And god knows they don’t have the room for us, even for just Dalilah and me. So, really, you are the one who saved us.”

  “Well, maybe we saved each other.” He stoked the fire a little bit with his poker. “You know, about the hospital situation. Do you think that maybe you overreacted just a teensy, teensy bit?”

  I laughed a little. “Maybe just a bit,” I said, making a gesture with my thumb and index finger that was the universal symbol for “little bit.” I looked at my wine glass, and Nick poured me another. “But I don’t know, Nick. I was on autopilot when I did that. All that I knew was that Ryan had attempted suicide, and I couldn’t stand having him someplace other than right where I was. Looking back, I think that was the real reason why I had him pulled out of the hospital. I feel that I need to protect him, like he has always protected me. I mean, I was angry with the hospital for not telling me things, and really angry with the doctor for overmedicating him, but that wasn’t the real reason why I had him taken out of there.”

  Nick just stared at me for a few seconds, sipping his wine. My heart quickened a little. Then a lot. Is it getting warm in here, or is it just me?

  Then he looked away and shook his head. I heard him mumbling a little under his breath, although I couldn’t make out any words.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, concerned.

  “Nothing, nothing. It’s just that, all my life, I’ve met exactly one kind of woman. The gold-digger. I don’t think that I’ve ever been with a woman who could give a rat’s ass about my well-being. The only thing that they’ve ever cared about was about was my black MasterCard. Do you know that I once dated a woman for about a month, and she already was pouting because I wouldn’t buy her a Beemer. I bought her a new Toyota Camry. Good little car, sporty. She didn’t have a car, because she was a grad student, so I figured that I was doing a great thing.” He shook his head. “
When I gave it to her, she didn’t say thank you. She just said ‘that’s great, but what I really wanted was a black BMW.’”

  I had to suppress a smile. I didn’t think that it was funny that Nick has had such bad luck with good women. But I did think that he was stupid if he kept falling for the same type every time, then get angry when it doesn’t work out. He obviously hadn’t heard the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.

  “Nick, just out of curiosity. How do you choose these women?”

  He looked at his glass, then looked at the wall. “I admit, I only date the hotties.”

  “Well, here is my theory about hot women. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  “There are nice hot women out there. I’ve met them. But they’re all currently in a relationship. So, you’re looking at hot women who are either not in a relationship or are willing to cheat on their current relationship. That narrows down your prospects right there.”

  “So, you’re saying that all the good hot women are already taken, so the ones that I meet are the bottom of the barrel.”

  “Something like that. They’re the ones who are single for a reason, you know?”

  He fingered his glass lightly, then looked up at me with those blue, blue eyes. “So, what do you suggest I do?”

  I shrugged. “Broaden your horizons. Find some woman who’s not a ten, and give her a chance. You got nothing to lose. Who knows? There might be chemistry there, and you’ll be a very happy guy. The point is, if you are only looking at women who look like Alexis and Tessa, then you’re limiting yourself.”

  Then he looked away. “Well, I’ve had my eye on a non-hot woman for awhile now, but I don’t think that she’s interested. I mean, she’s cute, but not a supermodel.”

  “There you go,” I said, lightly punching his arm. “Go for it! She’ll probably make you very happy.”

  “One problem. She’s married to my best friend.”

  I wanted to say that I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about. Perhaps he has another best friend? I felt extremely uncomfortable, suddenly, so I decided to change the subject. “I, uh, I always wanted to ask you something. I hope that it isn’t too personal.”