Tangled Ashes

by Michele Phoenix

  Beck started to rise from his stool, but she motioned him back down. “No need to trouble yourself. It’ll pass,” she said, taking a flyer from one of her bags and fanning herself with it, eyes closed.

  “Jade . . . ,” Becker began, the act of pronouncing her name again doing strange things to his stomach.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, letting out a long breath and pushing away from the counter.

  “You sure you shouldn’t sit down?”

  Jade ignored the question and finished emptying the last bag, then retrieved a carton of eggs from the fridge. “Scrambled eggs and bacon okay for you this morning?”

  “I had some leftovers before you got here. I’ll be fine until lunch.”

  “Oh—all right then,” Jade said, returning the eggs to the fridge.

  Beck smiled and picked up his coffee cup. The conversation hadn’t lasted long, but all things considered, it had gone fairly well. He realized, as he placed the cup in the microwave and waited for it to heat, that he’d been so distracted by the conversation he’d been having with Jade that he’d almost forgotten the booming in his head—and had completely forgotten his schedule for the day. He picked up his reheated coffee and told Jade he’d be ready for lunch around twelve thirty. “If that’s okay with you,” he added as an afterthought.

  Jade smiled. “That’s just fine,” she said.

  Beck left the kitchen and headed for his office. When he got to the door, he paused, considering the one act of courage he’d been too hesitant to perform. With determination in his stride, he returned to the kitchen, marched up to the woman who stood drying dishes at the sink, and without preamble said, “I haven’t had a drink since Saturday. My head feels like someone’s using it as a soccer ball, and I might throw one of Jacques’s guys through a window at some point this morning, but I haven’t had a drink. Just wanted you to know. It’s not a best friend thing or a counselor thing. It’s just a fact.” He looked upward as if he were checking his mind for anything else that remained to be said. Finding nothing, he turned and walked out of the kitchen as quickly as he’d entered, leaving Jade grinning by the sink.

  The demolition in the ballroom was well under way when Becker joined Jacques and his men. They’d ripped up most of the flooring, starting at the fireplace and moving back toward the doors, and were plotting the best way to get rid of the rotten joists and support beams. With most of the rest of the room already finished, it was all the more important to reconstruct the floors with minimal damage to the walls, windows, and fireplace. These were not by any means ideal circumstances.

  With the ease of a carpenter, Beck walked on the bare four-inch-wide joists toward the front of the room, where Jacques and one of his men were planning the heavy-duty sawing that would remove the large timbers one piece at a time. He noticed a frayed rope hanging over one of the joists. “What’s the point of the rope?”

  Jacques shrugged and pointed at him. “We thought you left it there.”

  Becker was stumped. What was a clearly ancient piece of rope doing draped over the woodwork that supported the ballroom floor? He reached for the rope and pulled it up, coiling it. He was about to dismiss the whole thing as an unimportant detail when he remembered his midnight exploration of the basement the night before and the old rope he’d seen in the first room of the maze of cellars.

  “What?” Jacques asked, seeing the look of concentration on his boss’s face.

  “It was hanging there when you got in this morning?”

  “Sure. Just where you found it.”

  “And it wasn’t there when you left last night.”

  “Nope. You got a theory?”

  Becker did, but he didn’t know if he should believe it or not. He hadn’t seen anyone loitering in the series of small cellars when he’d given them a cursory once-over. But what if someone had been down there? Maybe hiding behind a pile of old wood . . . or behind the support columns in the space beneath the ballroom. Beck had locked the basement door on his way out, having found it unlocked on his way down. And if someone had truly been hiding in the dank shadows, they would have had no means of escape but through the torn-up ballroom floor.

  Becker looked down into the darkness beneath the joists. It was at least seven feet from the support beams to the floor. Whoever had used the rope to make an escape—if anyone had used the rope, he corrected himself—had been mighty determined.

  BUOYED BY THE morning’s conversation, Becker decided to eat lunch with Jade and the twins. All in all, it was a fairly drama-free meal, and though time-outs were threatened—for the kids, not him—they didn’t actually occur. Eva spent the bulk of the time retelling the visit to the doctor’s office, then launching into an endless list of possible baby names for the little boy she’d seen on the TV screen. It was Philippe’s order to “shut up” that had brought the time-out chair into the discussion, but a hasty retraction had deferred the punishment for the time being. Becker’s stomach still churned with the restless need for alcoholic relief, and he found the condition both remedied and exacerbated by protracted time with the kids. They were in turn entertaining and annoying. Their entertaining phases were a welcome distraction from the turmoil inside, but the annoying episodes made it hard for him to maintain his tenuous grip on his temper. He decided halfway through the meal that an after-lunch run through the woods would probably be a good idea.

  He was getting ready to go up to his apartment and change when he noticed the plate Jade was preparing.

  “For Jojo?”

  She nodded.

  “You know, he seemed to be pretty well-fed before you came along.” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. His intention had been to relieve her of the obligation to feed the old man who lived in the gatehouse, but he deduced from the look she gave him that he’d somehow fallen short.

  He quickly raised a hand in self-defense. “I didn’t mean—”

  She interrupted him with a well-aimed “Have you taken a good look at him lately?” She raised her eyebrows and gave him a moment to consider the question, much as she did when she was reprimanding Philippe. “He may have found ways to feed himself before I ‘came along,’ as you put it, but something tells me he could use the act of kindness.”

  “I was just trying to say that if it’s too much for you . . .”

  “It’s not,” Jade said, pulling plastic wrap out of a drawer. “The walk will do me good.” She covered the still-warm food on the plate and looked up at him with challenge in her eyes. “Anything else you’d like to confront me about? Giving to charities? Paying my taxes?”

  Though the words sought to be humorous, there was an edge to her tone that made Beck want to get hostile. Given his precarious disposition, he knew that any retort would probably be overkill and stifled the impulse to defend his motivations. Retreat, he figured, was probably the best option. “I’m going for a run,” he said by way of parting words.

  On his first pass in front of the castle, just when he was starting to feel the burn in his legs, he saw Jade heading across the lawn with the plate for Jojo in her hands. The children were playing something that looked like cowboys and Indians on the large island in the river, and Jade yelled at them that they had ten minutes before they had to come inside.

  On his second pass in front of the castle, the children had crossed the small stone bridge that led from the big island to the tiny one that stood at the widest part of the creek, not far from the gatehouse. It was really a rocky protrusion off the river floor, maybe six feet across, and it had long been a refuge for the château’s ducks and ducklings. The bridge that led to it looked to be centuries old and was nothing more than a large, long rock spanning the gap, moss-covered and age-worn.

  Beck was finishing his third lap when he heard Eva scream. He’d been within earshot of the children playing often enough to recognize that this wasn’t the usual juvenile drama. There was something in her voice that chilled Becker’s blood and sent him racing toward the last place he’d
seen the twins. He rounded the castle and saw Eva squatting on the stone bridge, her face frozen in horror, screaming, “Philippe! Philippe!” as she stared into the water beneath her.

  Beck didn’t take the time to scan the water for the boy. He ran so fast that he stumbled, his legs unable to match the commands coming from his brain. When he got to the river’s edge, he didn’t stop, splashing into the murky water with powerful strides as his eyes skimmed the space under the small stone bridge for any signs of the six-year-old. What he saw, through his panic-sharpened vision, was Jojo, fully dressed and chest-high in the river, his hands gripping the back of Philippe’s blue jacket as the boy lay facedown in the water.

  “Let him go!” Becker cried, his voice hoarse from exertion and fear. “Get your hands off him!”

  He covered the last few yards in a surge of water, arms and legs pumping against the river’s restraint, feet straining to break loose of the heavy silt that pulled them downward. Jojo lifted Philippe from the water and was turning him over when Beck’s fist connected with his jaw and sent him reeling backward into the muddy, opaque river. On the bridge, Eva screamed again, more loudly this time, then clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes impossibly wide as she watched Becker carry her brother to the river’s edge. She crossed the tiny island until she stood as close to her brother as she could, the river still separating her from him.

  Beck deposited Philippe on the grassy riverbank as soon as he was out of the water and knelt down, his ear to the boy’s chest, trying to perceive movement or a sound that would attest to the boy’s breathing.

  “Ow . . .”

  Beck snapped his head up and looked into Philippe’s face. The boy’s eyes were open and squinting, his face contorted in pain.

  “Philippe?” Beck said, still breathless from his run and the fear that was cramping his legs. “Philippe, can you hear me?” He grasped the boy’s chin and moved so he could look into his eyes. “Are you okay? Where do you hurt?”

  Philippe raised a wet hand to his forehead and touched the growing purplish knot just below his hairline. The gesture broke through his semiconscious haze. “Ow . . .” This time, it was a wail that grew into sobs. He looked up at Becker with so much pained surprise in his tear-filling eyes, begging with his gaze for some sort of comfort, that Becker froze. As the boy’s sobs grew louder, Eva, still on the small island, joined in, her crying pitched higher but just as gut-wrenching as her brother’s.

  As Becker sat next to the sobbing boy, a hand on the drenched arm of his jacket, he found himself paralyzed, incapable of thought or motion. In his peripheral vision, he saw Jojo, who had been standing waist-deep in the water just beyond the island, wading toward the spot where Eva knelt, hand outstretched, wracked with terrified sobs. She didn’t see the man approach her and hardly reacted when he lifted her off the rocky edge of the island and carried her across the expanse of stream to the shore where her brother lay. Becker watched him, saw the gentleness in the man’s touch and the compassion in his eyes as he carried the child across the water. Their eyes met.

  “You weren’t harming him,” Beck said, dismayed, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper. “I shouldn’t have . . . I assumed . . .”

  Jojo lowered Eva onto the riverbank with so much tenderness that she looked up into his craggy face with surprise, her weeping suspended by his kindness. At his nod, she turned and ran to her brother’s side, taking his hand in hers and joining her tears to his. Beck met the old man’s gaze and saw nothing but kindness there despite the red imprint of his fist on the stubbled jaw—no reproach, no defensiveness. He knew there were words he needed to say. Words of apology. Words of explanation. Self-deprecating words about snap judgments and fear. But there was a child lying in the grass in front of him, paralyzing him with his need, and Becker’s mind could formulate little more than panic. With a nearly imperceptible smile and a last glance at the children, Jojo walked away toward the gatehouse, his clothes dripping.

  Philippe’s sobs had become less frantic once his sister reached him. His tears still flowed and his chest still heaved, but he seemed somehow soothed by her presence. Beck checked the boy’s scalp for any other bumps and found none, but the one on his forehead was growing. He needed to get some ice on it. Fast. Beck gingerly snaked one arm under Philippe’s shoulders and the other under his legs to lift him and carry him back to the castle, but as soon as the boy felt Beck’s arms holding him, he turned and burrowed into his chest, his hands clutching the front of Beck’s sweatshirt and his legs curling up until he half sat, half lay against Becker’s body. It was such an unexpected act that Beck’s instincts took over. Rather than standing with the boy in his arms, he merely held him more tightly, dropped his chin onto the boy’s wet hair, and stayed seated with the shaking form in his arms. The fragility and need of the weeping boy broke adrenaline’s grip on his emotions, and he found his own body shaking in time with the child’s.

  Beck sat for a moment longer, cradling the frightened boy. Eva had scooted over on the grass and leaned against him, her small, white hand patting her brother’s shoulder, her sobs now mellowed to occasional hiccups. Beck tried to meet her wide-eyed gaze with soothing confidence and wasn’t sure if he succeeded. There was little peace in his mind and even less in his water-chilled, shocked muscles.

  The cold eventually brought the world back into focus. It seeped through his wet clothing, relentless. They all needed to get inside, and quickly, before the air temperature did more damage than the water already had. Beck was about to stand, holding Philippe, when he sensed movement and looked around to see Jade standing just a few feet away, her face pale, her arms wrapped around her middle, her eyes intense. He wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there, but the tug-of-war between fear and surprise in her eyes indicated that it had been a while.

  She hurried forward when he stood, still holding Philippe, and bent down to scoop Eva into a tight hug. The little girl clung to her. “What happened, Eva? Eva—look at me.”

  The child, whose head had been pressed into her nanny’s neck, pulled back, a hiccup convulsing her little body. “We were on the bridge,” she said, fresh tears welling in her eyes, “and then he slipped on the moss.”

  Jade saw a chill quake through Beck and said, “Come on. Let’s go inside and get everybody warm, okay?”

  Beck walked briskly toward the château’s front entrance, opening the door with his elbow, then hurrying through both dining rooms with the boy in his arms. Eva didn’t stop talking as she and Jade followed, but little of what she said registered in Becker’s mind. There was something about a space landing and having to walk on a bridge from the spacecraft to the surface of Mars. Then something about Philippe slipping off the bridge and hitting his head on the stone as he fell into the water below. Jojo and “Mr. Becker” were the heroes in the rescue, but he didn’t care about that, either. All he wanted was to get the boy into the warmth of his office and still the shaking he could feel through their drenched layers of clothing.

  He kicked the office door open when he got there and put the boy down on the couch.

  “Take his clothes off while I get a blanket,” he instructed Jade, his throat still constricted by the emotions of the past few minutes. Jade was installing Eva in an armchair when he left the office. By the time he came back down, Philippe had been stripped out of his cold, wet clothes, and Jade was holding him close to her, rubbing his back and arms vigorously. She took the blanket from Beck and asked him to sit on the other side of Philippe while she wrapped it around the shaking boy.

  “Now rub his back and arms while I call the Fallons, will you? We need to warm him up.” She went to the desk and picked up the phone. Eva slid off the chair and went to press against her.

  The task of warming Philippe’s shocked body lay far outside Beck’s comfort zone, but the welfare of the now-silent boy superseded his druthers. He rubbed his bony back with restraint, afraid to rub too vigorously, but as his palm circled, he felt some of the tension see
ping out of the boy’s waterlogged body. Philippe scooted a little closer, then closer yet, then so close that Beck couldn’t reach his back anymore. There was nothing left to do but hold the boy against his side while Jade finished explaining what had happened to Mrs. Fallon and asked her to bring dry clothes.

  The flurry of activity that followed was a welcome respite from the slow-motion aftermath of Philippe’s adventure. The Fallons arrived in a whirlwind of concern. Eva promptly burst into tears when she saw them, and it was all Fallon could do to calm his daughter. He finally gained moderate success by promising her a pizza for dinner. Even Philippe perked up at that news. After gathering what information Jade had about the accident and placing a call to the doctor, informing his receptionist of their imminent arrival, the Fallons loaded Philippe into their car, still wrapped in the blanket, and drove off, leaving Beck standing in front of the château with Jade, utterly spent.

  Beck went up to his apartment to shower and change, telling Jade he’d be right back for the coffee she’d promised. Over half an hour later, he heard her footsteps on the stairs. She went to his bedroom first and knocked lightly on the door, calling his name when there was no answer. He heard her move to the bathroom next. The door was open, and he wasn’t there either. Her footsteps moved back toward the stairs, then paused. He heard them come back in the direction of the extra bedroom where he stood, motionless.

  Jade reached the doorway and stopped. “Becker?”

  He didn’t move. His wet clothes clung to him, a cold straitjacket that mimicked the vise grip of shock that had seized his mind shortly after he’d reached his apartment. He’d stood in his bedroom for a while, his thinking blanked by the assault Philippe’s accident had waged on all his senses. He’d told himself to move—to go to the closet and take out dry clothes, to head to the bathroom for a long, restorative shower. . . . But the shrieking static in his mind had propelled him instead to the bedroom where five bottles stood lined up on the windowsill. He felt as if his eyes bulged and his skin throbbed from the intensity of need.