He’d walked into the room, his smile anticipating the surprise he’d planned for weeks. But it was a disheveled and somewhat-pale Amanda he’d found in the hotel bed, CNN on the TV and a bottle of Aleve on her nightstand.
“Amanda—?”
At the sound of his voice, her head snapped toward the doorway where he stood. The room was curtained, the fan on high. “Beck, I . . . Beck! What are you doing here?”
He held up the bouquet in an attempt at getting his imagined scenario back on track. “Surprise?” What had been intended as a “mission accomplished” statement came out as a question.
“I—” Amanda straightened against the pillows and reached for the remote, muting Al Gore mid–stump speech. “What are you doing here?” she asked again, her expression showing none of the excitement he’d expected. In its place was something that looked a lot like uneasiness.
“I got a few days off to spend with my wife,” he said, attempting another smile. “Figured we could grab some time between your meetings. Maybe drive up the coast . . .” Beck glanced at the pill bottle on her nightstand again and stepped forward. “Are you sick?”
“I . . . Yes.” Her eyes darted to the door behind him.
Beck half turned, but there was no one there. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“Beck.” There was an edge of desperation in her voice. “You’ve got to go.”
“What?”
“You can’t be here, Beck.” She looked around the room. “This is—”
“Listen,” he said calmly, “we can stay put until you feel better. I’ve got three days.”
“Beck . . .”
The door opened so fast behind him that it knocked him off balance. He put out a hand to steady himself against the closet door.
“Got your prescription, but the cashier was—” The lanky man drew up short. He looked at Beck, then at Amanda. “Who’s this guy?”
Amanda’s head fell back. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin line.
Getting no response from her, the man in cargo shorts and a T-shirt turned on Beck. “You got a name?”
Beck’s thoughts ricocheted against his emotions. He saw the challenge in the man’s eyes and the drugstore bag hanging from his hand. “I’m the husband,” he said. “The better question is, who are you?”
He snatched the bag and held it up to the bathroom light. “Doxycycline?” His razor gaze went from the tall stranger to Amanda. “Convince me this guy is just a deliveryman from the pharmacy.”
Something cold came down over her face. She raised her chin and looked him straight in the eyes. “I think it’s time for you to leave, Beck.”
With a cocky swagger, the stranger stepped to the door and depressed the handle. “Here,” he said, “Let me get the door for you.”
Beck slammed him back into the door with both fists on the man’s chest and held him there for a moment, eye to eye.
“Let him go, Beck.” Amanda sat up and raised her voice. “Beck! Let him go.”
Beck did just that, turning and marching over to stand by the bed, sickness in his gut. “Wanna explain this?”
“He’s . . .” Amanda frowned and seemed to be searching for an answer. “He’s here to help me. I asked him to come.”
“Help you with what?”
“Becker . . .”
“Who—is—he?” Beck’s jaw was clenched, his nerves raw.
“I’m the guy who was here for your wife when you were too busy to be,” came a sarcastic voice from behind him.
Beck swiveled and planted a hard finger in the middle of the man’s sternum. “You. Shut it,” he growled. Then he turned back on Amanda, his voice low and forbidding. “One more time. Who is he?”
“He’s Jeff. He’s . . . a friend.”
Beck wanted to hurl the lamp across the room, but he restrained himself. “Define friend.”
She didn’t look away. She met his gaze and shrugged a shoulder in a mockery of apology.
Becker dropped his head and expelled a loud breath. His voice was gravelly when he asked, “How long?”
Amanda didn’t answer.
“Those business trips,” he said, conscious of the man standing just a few feet away with a smirk on his face. “Like this weekend. You were . . . ?” He looked at Amanda as a muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Becker.”
“You were with him?” he asked, trying to make some sense of the scene.
“Why wouldn’t she be?” This from Jeff, still standing by the door.
Becker stared at his wife. She stared right back, unflinching. It was he who looked away first, his eyes glancing off the drugstore bag he’d dropped next to the bouquet on the floor.
“You should go,” Amanda said.
Jeff took a step forward. “Why don’t you pick up your flowers and get out of here,” he said. “A woman needs a real man around when she’s taking care of business.”
Beck’s jaw clenched. “Business?”
Amanda sighed, but there was more exasperation than contrition in the sound. “You don’t want to do this, Beck. Just go home.”
“What kind of business is he talking about?” Beck could feel his incredulity giving way to a burning rage.
“Hey, the lady said go home.”
“Amanda.” There was a command in Beck’s softly spoken word.
Jeff cleared his throat. “Listen—”
Beck swiveled on him. “If you say one more word—”
“I was having an abortion, Becker.” Amanda’s voice was steel edged. “Jeff was here to help me get an abortion.”
The words shattered what was left of Beck’s composure. He hadn’t ever been much for having kids, but to hear that she’d gone off and gotten pregnant with . . . He felt his stomach churn and his muscles go slack.
Jeff shrugged and smiled, something resembling self-satisfaction on his face.
Bile rose in Becker’s throat. He swallowed it down and stared at Amanda’s blanket-covered stomach. “You’re—” He shook his head. “You were—”
The stranger leaned against the hotel room door. “Preggers, knocked up, in a family way . . .”
“You,” Beck rasped, a long, drawn-out sound. “You son of a—” He surged across the space between them, slammed the other man into the door, and crashed a fist into his face, images of Jeff and his wife together incinerating his restraint.
“Becker!” he heard Amanda yell.
He brought his fist down again, then again, as Jeff raised his hands in a futile attempt at self-defense and slid down the door. Beck saw blood and felt cartilage break. It didn’t matter. He kept slamming his fury into Jeff’s cowardice, for the future he’d annihilated and for the baby he’d conceived with Beck’s wife and then killed.
“Becker, stop! Stop!”
Beck looked over his shoulder at Amanda, halted by the vehemence in her voice.
Amanda held two fistfuls of blanket in a white-knuckled grip. “It wasn’t his, Becker!” she yelled, anger and disgust dueling on her face. “The baby was yours!”
Beck increased his pace again. He pushed his strength to its limit and his muscles to their breaking point. He ran as if his strides were hammer blows that shattered each of the images in his head. He ran until his labored lungs constricted one last time in a guttural, primal cry that tore from every loss and shrieked from every wound and howled from every life he had assaulted with his pain. And on his knees on the dark forest floor, he capitulated, body and mind, and let the merciful night invade his soul. His last conscious words, hurled at the sky in a maelstrom of aggression and contempt, were saturated with despair. “I—hate—you!”
In the torpor of his mind, there was a commotion at the track. Jockeys and stable hands and trainers had gathered around again, all intent on stilling the escaped steed. As Beck tried to see more clearly, their faces kept morphing into people he recognized—the prostitutes from Paris, Gary, Fallon, Trish, Philippe, Amanda, and Sylvia. They waved their arms and yelled
instructions and barked orders and all began to converge on the trapped animal. In a flash of full vision, Beck realized the animal was he. He was the frantic, frenzied, and trapped one. The more the approaching friends and strangers tried to soothe him, the more he quivered and jolted with fear, until, backed into a corner between a tall hedge and the highway, he knew he might trample them all in his desperation to rush through their closing ranks.
There was only one onlooker who neither gesticulated nor screamed. She stood by the castle gates, arms at her sides, eyes focused on him, lips moving. He couldn’t hear her over the noise the others were making, and he strained to see the words forming on her mouth, but he couldn’t read them from such a distance.
He tried to say, “Come closer! I can’t hear you!” but his lungs couldn’t hold enough breath to form sounds. He tried to send her signals with his mind—“Come closer! Please!”—but realized his thrashing might not let her near. She finally moved. Imperceptibly at first, as if she glided just off the ground. Then she hovered in his direction, mercifully blocking the others from view. She didn’t smile. Her eyes were tired. Her hair seemed matted and dull. She glanced over her shoulder at the assembled jockeys and trainers clamoring to help him. Then she looked back at him with so much pity that he felt an aching void open up in his chest. She began to glide away.
“No!” he cried. “Come back!” But she was at the castle gates again, back inside the property. Out of touch. His bucking and howling increased until those who had been trying to calm him stepped back too.
Sunday peered over the horizon with timid rays that shone faintly through the fine mist over the racetrack. It was the cold that finally drew Beck out of his inertia. He looked up from the forest floor on which he lay, his body chilled and sore, and stared at the patches of brightening sky he could see through the branches. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. He wasn’t sure of what had caused his blackout. He wasn’t sure of anything, really. It was that thought that gave him pause and filled his mind with dread. If he were to do this thing—if he were to battle his need for the relief of alcohol—he’d have nothing left. No certainties. No escape plans. Nothing.
Beck was shivering when he finally turned over and pushed onto his hands and knees, the muscles in his calves and thighs protesting. There was a branch in his hand—he must have grasped it while he was out. He cast it aside and saw it reflect the faint light of the morning sun. This was no ordinary branch. It appeared smooth and pale, incongruous in the dark and sullen woods. Beck stumbled to his feet and approached the discarded object, his breath catching in his throat. He lifted it into a pale ray of sunlight piercing through the trees above him, stunned by what he saw. It was small and delicate and perfectly formed. A figurine of a rearing horse, intricately hand-carved out of cherrywood, exquisite. The mane flowed gracefully out behind its head. Its nostrils flared as its hind legs braced a nearly tangible weight. Its back arched, angry and unyielding. Beck knew enough about sculpture to recognize a work of art. This one had inexplicably been placed in his hand while he was blacked out, and the fascination it caused followed him into the next day.
There were no croissants waiting for him in the kitchen when he came down after a long, warm shower and a couple hours of sleep. A little surprised, he rummaged through the fridge and found enough to eat. He was in the entry hall, sanding the seam between the old and the new railing, when Fallon came bursting through the doors with the twins hot on his heels.
“Come on, lad. Put down that sandpaper!” he bellowed in his good-natured way. “It’s Sunday and we’re going on a picnic!”
Beck could tell that the kids were as excited about the picnic as they were uncertain about him. Their faces were all smiles, but their eyes were guarded.
“Come again?” Beck said.
“Jade’s taking a bit of a break, so your options are us—” he motioned to the twins—“or starvation.” Beck eyed the threesome with suspicion. “Listen, Becker,” Fallon said, taking a step closer. “It’s a beautiful day. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming—or they will be any week now—and it would be a great injustice to leave you holed up in here working when the rest of us are out enjoying the first days of spring.” He raised an eyebrow, clearly expecting Beck to drop everything and go.
Beck stared at his employer long enough to ascertain that this wasn’t a joke. Then he glanced down at the children. They stood a pace behind their father, eyes on him. “A picnic?” Beck asked.
Eva had finally had enough of her standoffish routine and burst out with “We’re going to the Château de la Reine Blanche!”
The White Queen’s Castle, whatever it was, was clearly one of her favorite places. Beck hedged. “I have an awful lot of work to do before the deliveries tomorrow, and . . .”
“Put it down,” Fallon commanded, pointing at the sandpaper still in Beck’s hand. “This is an order, lad, and I’d hate to have to fire you for picnic insubordination.”
Becker couldn’t help but smile at that. “I’d sue you for everything you’ve got,” he threatened, winking at the kids.
“Splendid! You can start just as soon as we get back. Now come on, lad! Hop hop! Sylvia’s in the car, pregnant to the gills, and we’ve got to get this picnic in before she bursts.”
THOUGH BECKER HAD generally had amiable relationships with his employers, he’d never been invited on a picnic by any of them. So it was with a bit of discomfort that he got into the backseat with the two children, who were still keeping a safe distance, and buckled himself into Fallon’s Mercedes for the short drive to the White Queen’s Castle.
Sylvia turned cumbersomely in the front seat, just far enough to smile her greeting. “It’s about time we tore you away from that castle, Mr. Becker. Don’t you think?”
“Don’t ask him that,” Fallon warned. “The boy has been tethered to that staircase for so long that I’m sure he feels incomplete without it! Consider this an intervention, Becker, my friend. We’re about to prove to you that there’s a whole world outside of banisters and parquet flooring!”
They arrived just a few minutes later and the children scampered out, yelling, “There it is! There it is!”
Beck got out of the car and prepared himself for his first glimpse of what he presumed would be a Versailles-esque vision of historical architecture, then stopped short. This was by far the smallest castle he’d ever seen, no larger than a middle-class house, though its four towers and sky-reaching lines were graceful and elegant.
Beck turned to his boss. “Was the White Queen poor or something?”
Fallon, who was helping his wife out of the front seat, chuckled. “Not big enough for your American tastes, is it?”
“What can I say? We like our cars long, our music loud, and our castles . . . Well, if we had any, we’d want them to be a little more castle-ish than this!”
“Actually, it was built to be a hunting lodge and the architect clearly got carried away,” Fallon said, joining Becker where he stood, “but I think it’s stunning—something straight out of a fairy tale—and neither Eva nor Philippe would contradict me on that.”
The children had run up the stairs to the front door of the castle and were trying the handle.
Mrs. Fallon smiled up at Becker. “Next thing you know, they’ll actually get in and we’ll all be arrested for trespassing!” She walked off toward the twins, a little more teetery than she’d been a week before. “Philippe! Eva! Get away from the door! I’m sure there’s a very good reason why they keep it locked!”
The castle’s prime feature was its location. It stood at the head of four picturesque man-made reflecting ponds, each rectangle nestled in the dense forest that flanked it on two sides. On that sunny Sunday, fishermen cast their lines into the dark water, their brightly colored lawn chairs out of place in the lush natural environment.
The children ran on ahead as the Fallons and Beck made their way down the path along the side of the ponds, Fallon carrying the large basket th
ey’d brought along and Becker the blanket and chairs. They found a spot under a lime-blossom tree and set up their camp while the kids raced each other around the nearest pond.
The conversation was a bit awkward at first, as Beck and the Fallons had never interacted outside of the other castle’s confines and the topics of their conversations had until then been about work. But as the children returned to eat and they all indulged in the sandwiches and salads Sylvia had prepared, things got decidedly lighter.
It was after lunch, when Fallon and the twins were off chatting with a fisherman, that Sylvia said, “So, Mr. Becker, why is it that you’re so uncomfortable around children?”
As discussion starters went, it was a bullet between the eyes. Becker choked a little on the mineral water he was drinking and contemplated her question. When he took too long to answer, she continued. “Not that it’s any of my business, of course, but it’s been my experience in life that a man who doesn’t like children is not to be trusted. And I want to trust you, Mr. Becker. It’s just that the children have been coming home with some tall tales about you that have aroused my curiosity.” She waved at Eva, and the little girl returned the gesture with all the excitement a six-year-old could muster. “Would you mind if I taught you something about children?” she asked.
Becker swallowed. “I’d actually be thrilled if you did most of the talking on this topic,” he answered with a kind of desperate sincerity.
“First, tell me this,” she said. “Why are you so . . . standoffish with them?”
Still at a loss for words and fighting the urge to get defensive or rude—the most expedient way out of uncomfortable conversations—Becker shook his head and raised his hands. “I just don’t have it in me,” he said.
Sylvia laughed. “I assure you it’s not a matter of having it or not. Children are not much different from horses, you know. If they smell fear, they balk.”
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