Tangled Ashes

by Michele Phoenix

  “I’m fine,” she interrupted, her voice a little raspy.

  “But if you’re not feeling well . . .”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  He held up his hands in surrender. “All right. I’m sorry.”

  She sighed and turned away from the sink where she was washing the broccoli just long enough to cast him a weary smile. “I’m just a little tired. And church went late, so . . .”

  He thought he saw something more than fatigue in the dullness of her eyes and smile. From the moment he’d entered the castle and mistaken her for Fallon’s wife, she’d had a sparkle in her eye—something infinitely alive and aware. He hadn’t seen that just then. He’d seen something dim and forced. It had the dual effect of making him want to pry and flee. And since he was neither good at asking personal questions nor at beating hasty retreats, he was left anchored to the spot, at a loss.

  At the sink, Jade filled a pot with water and seemed to strain as she carried it to the stove to light a flame beneath it. She took a cast-iron pan from the shelf beside the stove and poured a dribble of olive oil into it, placing it too on a flame. Beck watched her tear open the package of meat she’d taken from the fridge—it looked like steak—and sprinkle it with an assortment of spices. She seemed as unaware of him as he was aware of her, which left the onus of any conversation on Beck. Under other circumstances, he might have left her to prepare the dinner in silence, but there was a frailty about her that he hadn’t seen before, and it made him feel . . . concerned. Granted, concern was a bit of a new emotion for him. At least, of late. And the coward in him would have preferred to ignore it. But as much as he had fought it, there was something about Jade that had gone beyond intriguing him. It had engaged him. And that small spark of new life in the high-strung void of his existence was reason enough to push past his reservations.

  He walked over to the stove before he lost his resolve and leaned on the counter next to it, crossing his ankles in an attempt at nonchalance. From that distance he could see more clearly the pallor of her skin and the determination in her eyes. She was fighting some sort of battle, and he was watching from the sidelines. He grasped at conversational straws and finally settled on “So you go to church?”

  She paused in the act of dropping diced onions into the frying pan and gave him a look. “You’re making conversation?”

  He had to admit that, given the tenor of previous interactions, she had a right to raise the issue. “I am,” he said. “And I’m not sure why, except that you look like you’ve been broadsided by something really large and really heavy, and I figure if you won’t tell me what it is, at least talking might get your mind off it. . . .” He let the sentence trail off, hoping for an “Okay, let’s talk” or a “What, are you kidding me?” that would give him a clearer picture of what he was up against.

  Instead, she said, “Yes, I go to church,” and left it at that.

  As far as conversations went, this one was shaping up to be painful. “Here in Lamorlaye?”

  She gave him another look. Given the fact that she owned no car, the likelihood of going somewhere distant for church was slim. “Can you cut me a little slack here? I’m just trying to . . .” Trying to what? “I used to go to church,” he finally said. The moment the words were out, he wondered where they’d come from. His churchgoing days were a farce to him. And certainly not worth discussing.

  Unfortunately, Jade seemed to have a different opinion of the topic, and though she didn’t regain any color and her eyes didn’t recover their spark, there was a fresh focus on her face when she said, “Tell me about that.”

  Beck held up his hand. “Wait a minute—you can’t turn the tables on me like that.”

  Jade smiled. “It’s called conversation,” she said, using a fork to transfer steak into the frying pan where the onions sizzled in the oil.

  Beck was starting to regret the concern that had prompted his foray into verbal territory. “Actually, since I asked you first . . .”

  Jade rolled her eyes, then put a hand on the counter, as if the eye motion had set her off balance. “Okay,” she said, a sheen of perspiration breaking out on her upper lip, “what do you want to know?”

  Becker shrugged and contemplated possible scenarios that would put an end to this conversation. Before he’d opted for any of them, Jade went on.

  “I’ve attended church since I was . . . I can’t remember, actually. Since I was a child.” She looked at him and smiled, a vestige of her usual feistiness in her gaze. “Why did I go to church, you ask? Because my parents dragged me there, kicking and screaming, every Sunday. Why was I kicking and screaming, you ask?” She smiled again, enjoying the conversation “they” were having without any need for Beck’s participation in it. “Because I thought church was this austere place where people went when they didn’t have anything better to do, or—worse yet—when they were so lonely that the only company they could find was the priest who sat in the confessional.” She let a moment or two pass while she flipped the steak and seasoned the other side, then washed a potato and placed it in the microwave. She glanced at him and said, “It’s your turn to ask a question.” She dropped several broccoli florets into the pot of simmering water.

  Beck, who had been considering his own definition of church, shifted against the counter and said, “So . . . you’re Catholic?”

  “Good question, Mr. Becker.”

  “Beck.”

  “Beck. I was Catholic. Then I was agnostic. Then I went through a bit of an atheistic phase—my mother died and I had to hate somebody, right? And it was easiest to hate God because he doesn’t fight back. And then I found . . . something else. Not so much a religion as a place where life is valued and hope is pursued and . . . and there’s peace. I’m a big fan of peace,” she concluded.

  Beck found himself envying the simplicity of her statement. He couldn’t help saying, “So now you’re Buddhist.”

  At this, Jade laughed. She laughed and again caught the edge of the counter. This time, Beck could see what little color was left draining from her face. He moved quickly, catching her arm as she swayed and hooking a stool from the table with his foot. “Here. Sit,” he said, hoping the roughness he heard in his own voice didn’t sound like anger to her.

  Jade sat and leaned forward, her hand on the table’s edge, as if she might fall from the stool. Beck opened two cupboards before he found the glasses. He filled one with water and brought it to the woman who sat bent over, taking deep breaths. He knelt down in front of her to push the hair back from her face and assess the situation, but she immediately pushed his hand away.

  “I’m just . . . ,” he began.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  Beck handed her the glass and she took it gingerly, her eyes unfocused, her breathing deliberately slow and deep. After a few more moments, she took a sip and closed her eyes as she swallowed. She let go of the table to blot at the patches of sweat on her face with her fingers. “That’s attractive, isn’t it?” she said with a weary smile.

  “Jade . . .” He didn’t know what to do or how to ask whatever questions needed to be asked in a situation like this.

  “See what happens when you get smart-alecky in conversations? Somebody always gets hurt.”

  He didn’t know where she was finding the strength to poke fun at the situation. She looked—depleted. Worn out. Another wave seemed to hit her and she bent over again, her hand clutching the edge of the table for support.

  “Do you need me to help you to the bathroom?” Beck asked, becoming truly concerned as the episode wore on. He reached for her elbow and started to help her up. “Here, let me . . .”

  She motioned with her hand for him to stop. He stood beside her as she took several more deep breaths, then straightened.

  “I’m calling the Fallons,” Becker said when she seemed to have regained her balance. “They’ve got to know a doctor you could see on a Sunday.”

  “Don’t.” Her voice was firm, her eyes t
rained on a fixed point in front of her, as if trying to keep the world from spinning. She didn’t move her eyes when she motioned toward the stove with her hand, fingers flapping. “The steak!” she said.

  Beck quickly removed the pan from the fire, the very-well-done steak a little seared around the edges. “You’re sitting here about to pass out and you’re worried about the steak?”

  “I’m a cook. It’s what we do.”

  Beck thought he saw a trace of color returning to her cheeks. “Have more water,” he instructed.

  She drank a little. “I think it’s passing,” she said, tentatively moving her eyes away from the fixed point at which she’d been staring.

  “What’s passing? What was that?” Now that she was starting to look better, Beck wanted some answers. He went to the counter and tore off a paper towel, handing it to her to blot her face. “Does this happen often? ’Cause really, you need to warn me next time.” He attempted a lighthearted chuckle, but it got caught somewhere between his mind and his throat. His legs were shaky and his heart was racing. He’d wanted to—help, somehow. To comfort her or warm her or touch her. But he hadn’t been able to do anything but stand by and watch her suffer. He tried to counteract the powerlessness with purpose. “Okay,” he said, “how ’bout we try to make it to the office. You can lie on the couch in there for a while and see if this really passes.”

  “I’ll be fine. . . .”

  “You’re going to the office. Now.”

  He was relieved to see that Jade knew an order when she heard one. When he placed a hand under her elbow and helped her stand, she didn’t resist. They made it to the office, where Beck pulled the protective sheet off the couch, moving around it with her and helping her sit. “Still okay?” he asked. She nodded. Beck handed her the glass he had carried with them from the kitchen and offered to get her a blanket.

  “No, I’m fine,” she answered. “It’s almost passed now.”

  “At the risk of repeating myself . . . what’s almost passed?”

  She looked at him with the enigmatic expression that was so typical of her and smiled a little weakly. “It’s nothing to worry about. I promise you.”

  Beck pulled the sheet off one of the armchairs and sat across from the woman whose face had, moments before, been frighteningly white. Though some color had returned to her cheekbones and the tip of her nose, she still looked far from healthy. “So I’m not calling the Fallons?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing to panic over, I assure you.”

  He attempted some levity, if only for his own good. “Maybe somebody spiked the holy water at church.”

  She gave him a look that warned him not to joke about her religion. “For your information,” she said, her voice gaining back some of its strength, “we don’t have holy water at my church.”

  He was curious. “A confessional?”

  “No.”

  “A priest?”

  “No.”

  “How ’bout those incense things. You got some of those? Or a crucifix?”

  Another smile, this one nearly amused. “No and no.”

  He smiled back. “So what’s left?”

  Jade took another deep breath and shifted, sipping from the glass of water, her eyes evaluating him. “I’m not sure what you really want me to say, Beck. I mean, I can give you a fairly thorough overview of what I believe and how it is lived out in my church and beyond, but . . .” She hesitated, sipping again. “Something tells me that you’re just looking for one more topic to turn into a joke.”

  Beck considered this for a moment, admitting to himself that probably would have been the direction the conversation took. He realized there were few topics of any substance that he could approach without ridiculing them.

  “Am I right?” Jade asked.

  It was Beck’s turn to take a deep breath. He saw the sincerity on Jade’s face and gave himself the challenge of hearing her out without turning her words into weapons. “Fine,” he said. “I promise to be good.” He thought of his own checkered past where church and religion were concerned and added, “I’d actually be very interested in your point of view.”

  Jade put her glass down on the coffee table and rubbed both hands over her face. “Here’s what I know,” she said, leaning her head back against the couch. “My parents used to read me Jesus stories when I was little. Then I went to Sunday school and heard more Jesus stories. And when my mom died when I was fifteen, I heard more Jesus stories about how she was with him and he was comforting me and . . . and then I decided I didn’t want to hear any Jesus stories anymore. Ever.” Another deep breath. Another sip of water. “So I went a few years being angry at God—literally cursing him and accusing him of all the horrors in the world—and all that time . . . all I wanted, all I craved, was for someone to tell me another Jesus story.” The eyes that had been so dull until moments before now filled with tears and certainty. “They aren’t just stories, Beck. I know that now. They’re promises. And without those promises and the God who made them . . .” She shook her head.

  Beck swallowed hard. There were no jokes needing to be stifled. Only a yawning void at his core. He nodded, incapable of doing much more.

  “And at your church?” Jade said, pulling her legs up onto the couch next to her. “Were there priests and incense balls and crucifixes?”

  “The ugliest crucifix you’ve ever laid eyes on!” He managed a chuckle.

  “I loved the Catholic church,” Jade said. “Still love a lot of aspects of it—the reverence, the mysticism. . . . But those Jesus stories told me that he’s right here, as real to me as you are. And I didn’t want a secondhand connection to him.”

  Beck had a few questions he wanted to ask, but he didn’t voice them. He had avoided this topic for two years now—when he hadn’t been using it to vent his frustration on the pious and self-righteous. He’d allowed Jade to speak for reasons he couldn’t understand, but it wouldn’t go any further. The God thing was dead to him. Life made more sense that way.

  Jade gingerly sat forward on the couch. “I think I’m okay,” she said, moving to stand up.

  Beck was on his feet in an instant, reaching for her arm. They stood there together while Jade seemed to gauge her stability. “I’m fine,” she finally said, this time with more conviction.

  Beck stopped fighting his frustration. “Okay, so now that it’s behind us, will you tell me what that was?”

  Jade walked toward the door, Beck close on her heels. “First, I’m going to walk you through the rest of the meal preparation. It’s almost finished anyway, and you might as well learn a few tricks while I sit on a stool and bark orders at you. The broccoli’s going to be overcooked, by the way. Second, you’re going to take a plateful of food over to Jojo’s and leave it by his door.”

  “Wait, I’m not—”

  “Oh, hush. I’ve been taking food over every day since that lasagna and I’m still here to tell the tale. And third, I’m going to go home, put my feet up, and not move again until tomorrow morning.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Beck said. “But it doesn’t answer my question.”

  Jade sighed loudly, turning exasperated and revived eyes on Becker. “Will you shut up about it if I tell you it’s female problems?”

  He wasn’t convinced—but by that point, he’d used up all the courage required for follow-up questions.

  It was the children’s screams that alerted Becker that something was not right. He was up on a ladder helping install the renovated molding in one of the dining rooms when Eva and Philippe’s frantic voices reached him. They were calling Jade with such urgency that he jumped off the ladder and rushed to the French doors that led from the dining room to the front of the castle. The first thing his eyes registered was Eva holding on to two bars of the closed gates, her face pressed into the space between them, immobile. Philippe stood a little closer to the castle, his attention torn between the frantic pleas for help he was yelling toward the château and the tense scene beyon
d the castle gates.

  A terrified stallion stood in the center of the large four-lane boulevard just beyond the castle, probably escaped from the racetrack on the other side. He had a racing saddle still strapped to his back, but his jockey was on foot nearby, flanked by other men, arms outstretched, who were trying to corral him away from the traffic. Amazingly, though many of the cars had pulled off to the side, others still sped past the hysterical animal, too eager to get where they were going to wait until the drama was resolved. As the men stepped closer, nearly encircling the black, wild-eyed stallion, he bucked and whinnied and burst through their ranks, narrowly avoiding a collision with an oncoming car and coming to a stop in the middle of the short, broad passage that led from the castle’s front gates to the boulevard beyond. His flanks quivered with panic and his nostrils flared.

  The men who had been trying to surround him were so busy shouting strategies at each other that they didn’t initially notice the hunched form that emerged from the gatehouse and moved toward the horse. The children, who had been pressing their faces between the bars, didn’t see him either until he had grasped one side of the ten-foot gate and pulled it open. They fell back a few steps and stared, gape-mouthed, at the apparition.

  By this point, Beck had run across the circular lawn and, with a “Stay here!” barked at the children, was about to follow Jojo into the street. The older man’s eyes were focused on the horse with an intensity that made the jockey and men stop their bickering and watch. Beck was just passing through the gates when Jojo, without a backward glance, held out his hand in an unmistakable order for the younger man to stay where he was.

  The horse, the kind of spirited thoroughbred that Lamorlaye and neighboring Chantilly were famous for, made a couple lurching bounds away from Jojo as he approached. Jojo stopped, his lips forming inaudible sounds, his hand outstretched, palm down, toward the fierce animal whose coat shone with sweat. When the horse snorted and stamped a hind leg, Jojo moved forward again, one soft step at a time, his gaze so powerful that Beck wondered if its trajectory could be seen if he concentrated hard enough.