Fatal Divide

by Jamie Jeffries

  “Thank you for all your help today,” he said.

  “Wait, wasn’t this my idea? Thank you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We worked together, and we did a good thing. That’s good, baby.” Dylan dipped his head to kiss her, but she didn’t raise her face. He kissed the top of her head, instead. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  He’d heard married co-workers joke about the nothing that was something, when their wives said it. He knew better than to let it go, but what to ask or do next was a different story.

  “Are you worried about Sophia and the baby being at your house?”

  “Not really. No, I don’t see how anyone could link her to us. It’s something else.”

  Ha! There it was. There was something wrong. Before he could ask, Alex spilled it.

  “Dylan, how soon do you think you’ll have your brothers? I mean, are we talking a week, a month? What? Do you think they’ll be here by Christmas?”

  Before answering, Dylan worked it out. It wasn’t out of left field. It had something to do with Sophia’s youth and having a baby, and Alex’s fear about being something to his boys. He answered by asking a question in return.

  “Are you worried I will or worried I won’t? Have them by Christmas, I mean.”

  “I wish I knew. I know how important it is to you...”

  “But?” he prompted, lifting her chin with his finger. “Tell me, Lexi. I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “That’s just the thing,” she said, her voice firmer now. “You can’t fix it. Nothing can fix it.” Pushing away from his chest, she said, “I need to get inside and make dinner for everyone. You’re welcome to stay.”

  There was no warmth in the words. Bewildered, Dylan answered automatically that he needed to check on his mom, but if it was okay, he’d come back later.

  “Whatever,” she said. Oh, this was bad. This was very, very bad. What did I say? Dylan reached for her, caught her by the wrist, and pulled her back to him.

  “Whatever is wrong, I will fix it. I love you, Lexi.” She allowed him to kiss her, but it didn’t feel right. She was wooden in his arms, and her lips didn’t welcome him as usual. “I’ll be back. Would you save a little dinner for me? Since you offered?”

  “Sure.”

  He let her go, then. She didn’t look back as she went inside. Dylan got in his pickup and sat for a moment before starting it. He needed to get this figured out, and fast. Maybe Ange could help.

  Minutes later, he entered his mom’s mobile home, kissed the ghost of a figure in his mom’s easy chair, and looked into the kitchen where Ange was preparing something. “Nothing for me, Ange. I’m going back over to Alex’s.”

  “I wasn’t fixing anything for you anyway. I never know when you’ll be home, and as you know, it isn’t my job.”

  What was with the women in his life today? Was there a full moon or something? At least he could ask Ange an honest question and get an honest answer. There was nothing but casual friendship between them. Maybe not even that. Ange was his mom’s live-in home care nurse, but she’d been friendly before.

  “Ange, I’m sorry. I assumed, and I know what that means.”

  “Okay. Just don’t take me for granted, Dylan, okay?”

  “I won’t. I don’t. If it weren’t for you, I couldn’t handle any of the shit that’s been going on. Sorry,” he added, as he saw her raise her eyebrows. “You’re a godsend, truly. And I need your advice.”

  “Advice is free. Not that I expect you to take it.” What the hell had he done? She was back to ragging on him.

  “Alex is acting strange, and I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.

  “Acting strange, how?”

  This was going to be awkward. He couldn’t tell Ange about Sophia. Not that he didn’t trust Ange, but anyone could slip, and Ange was with Bill, who was a deputy. His mind scrambled to catch up, knowing he was taking too long to answer. What could he tell her? Maybe a portion of the truth would do.

  “We were talking about my brothers. She asked when I thought I’d have them, and something was off about her question. She wanted to know if I thought I’d have them for Christmas. So I asked if she was hoping I would or hoping I wouldn’t. She said she didn’t know, so I told her I couldn’t fix anything unless I knew what was broken. Then she got all cold, like we’re not... Shit, Ange, what did I say?”

  “Well, your first mistake was assuming she wanted you to fix it. Let me guess. You asked her what was wrong and all this came out.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s how it works. The minute a woman gets quiet, her guy wants to ride up on a white horse and rescue her. Nine times out of ten, she just wants time and space to think, and then she’ll work things out for herself. It’s even worse when we do say something, because you guys take over. That’s why we say there’s nothing wrong, when there is.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Did you not hear me? Nothing! Let her work it out for herself.”

  Dylan scratched his head. That didn’t sound right. The guy was supposed to solve the problems, wasn’t he? But if Alex wouldn’t tell him what the problem was, how could he solve it? That reminded him he had a problem related to that same question.

  “Ange, what do you think? Before Christmas, or after?”

  “For you to get your brothers?”

  “No,” he said, glancing at his mom. She gave no sign she could hear him or understand what he was asking, even if she could. But, he wouldn’t spell it out any more than that. Ange would get it, probably.

  Understanding dawned on Ange’s face. She shook her head. “You never know. Why? I’d ask you the same question you asked her.”

  “It isn’t that. What am I going to do with them if...? I’m thinking I should try to get an apartment.”

  Ange stopped stirring whatever it was she was cooking, to turn and stare at him. “Oh... Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it. I think you should. You don’t want to bring them here, Dylan, even if... Here, let me get your mom fed, and then I’d like to get some air.”

  She wanted to talk outside. That meant she thought his mom may have some brain cells left, somewhere behind that still, blank face. She’d been in this position before; he hadn’t. Whatever she was going to say came from the voice of experience, and at this point, he needed some experience to guide him. Not only in matters related to his mother’s illness, but in love.

  He waited almost half an hour, while Ange patiently coaxed Maria to open her mouth and then close it again before the soup could dribble out. When she couldn’t get his mom to open her mouth again, Ange dabbed at Maria’s mouth with a napkin and took the half-full bowl of soup to the kitchen.

  “Come on, she’ll be okay for a few minutes, before I need to change her diaper and get her into bed.”

  Dylan winced, reminded of the more unpleasant facts of his mom’s illness. To Ange, it was all in a day’s work. He hated every escalating loss of dignity his mom endured.

  Outside, Ange took the lead. “You’ve stopped noticing, but this trailer stinks of death. Even if your mom is still alive when you get the boys, I don’t think it’s a good idea for them to have constant contact with her. It would scar them for life to have to live with her like that for long. Besides, there’s no room. They need their own room, and so do you.”

  Dylan thought the same thing about the space and about what the boys would think about their mother’s condition. Ange was right, he had stopped noticing the odor in the trailer, except when he hadn’t been there all day. To tell the truth, he avoided being there, and that shamed him.

  He rocked his upper body back and forth, an exaggerated nod. “Okay, I’ll start looking as soon as I can. And I guess I’ll need to look for a babysitter too.”

  Ange glared at him. “Oh, so you were expecting me to do that?”

  Jeez, he couldn’t win! “No! Well, maybe just after school. Shit, Ange, I’m just trying to d
o my best here. I didn’t expect any of this.”

  Her expression softened, and she patted him on the cheek. “None of us did, hon, none of us did. But you won’t need a babysitter. There’s a program at the school, before and after care. As long as you can pick them up by six, you’re good.”

  It was the best news he’d heard all day, after finding Wanda safe.

  FORTY-FOUR

  When Dylan didn’t return in an hour, Alex gave up and put the leftovers away. She tried to give him the benefit of the doubt; maybe his mom needed him more than they needed to talk. But she couldn’t help feeling that he’d dismissed their argument. Or, maybe, to be fair, she pissed him off by acting the way she did.

  Miserable, she sought the company of someone who might be able to understand her - Sophia. She knocked on the door of the guest room. “Sophia? May I come in?”

  “Yes.”

  The one-word answer wasn’t very welcoming, but she opened the door anyway. She had to take into account the different culture in which Sophia was raised.

  “Are you sleepy, or busy? I don’t want to interrupt. I just wanted someone to talk to, really.”

  “It’s okay. You want to hold the baby?”

  Alex smiled and held out her arms for the warm bundle Sophia placed in them. She looked around and settled on an old chair in the corner.

  “Sophia, can I ask you another question, you know, about being so young and having a baby?”

  “I guess you can.”

  Alex was getting used to the girl’s manner. It seemed to be more cultural than personal. Sophia’s expression wasn’t as sullen as the answer had sounded. “You said you were scared. Was it because you thought you were too young?”

  The girl’s eyes widened and her mouth parted a bit. “No! Why would you think that? It was because I wasn’t sure my family would accept Juan. Because he was with the cartel, you know? I wanted the baby. Because I knew he would bind Juan to me. He would never leave me if we had a baby. Now, Diego is all I have.”

  Cold tingles ran from the back of Alex’s head, down her neck, to her shoulders. Sophia had deliberately gotten pregnant to hold on to her chosen man, even though he was cartel. Unbelievable. And yet, she could see Sophia loved the baby. She took good care of him, and her face was transformed when she was looking at him.

  It didn’t help her own dilemma, though. She had to know how it would be, at her age, having her boyfriend become a single father with other responsibilities — other people he needed to pay more attention to than her. Was she being selfish about this?

  Wasn’t the proper order of things to become involved with the person you wanted to spend your life with, slowly? Getting to know him at a deeply intimate level and then spending your early married life immersing yourselves in each other? Alex wasn’t naive; she saw many examples of people who didn’t hold those same values. She also saw a lot of divorce, spousal and child abuse. Maybe those problems would have come to light before children came along, if the couple had taken their time in the first place.

  And then there was the whole irony of her almost losing her virginity to Dylan, before she was old enough to have any thought of lifelong love. That seemed like fate had intervened, but she now knew it was dumb luck, plus her dad’s demand of Dylan that he leave her cleanly. She’d been saved from that embarrassment and possibly worse consequences. What kind of wild coincidence was it that she and Dylan had this second chance, fueled as much by shared risk as by infatuation?

  And here she was, back at the starting point. How could she spend enough quality time with him to be sure, once he became his brothers’ legal guardian?

  “Alex?” Sophia said, bringing her out of her reverie with a start. “Um, I’m ready to go to sleep. Was there anything else?”

  “Oh, Sophia, I’m sorry! I was thinking about something.”

  “I could see that.” Sophia smiled. “You were thinking about Dylan, yes? He’s very handsome.”

  “Yes, he is, isn’t he? Sophia, did you talk to anyone, before, you know, before you were, uh, with Juan?”

  “Before we had sex? A little. I mean, I talked to my friends.”

  “The same age as you? Or older?”

  “Same age. They’re the ones that told me Juan wouldn’t leave me if I had a baby.”

  Her heart broke for Sophia. Chances were, if Juan hadn’t died, Sophia would have had a rude awakening. But then, having your child’s father killed before the child was even born was a rude awakening of its own.

  “I hope things work out for you with Jimmy. Someone told me he was a good man.”

  “I hope so, too. Diego needs a father, and I need a husband. Maybe I can learn to love him.”

  What a sad, ass-backwards way of looking at it. Alex got up and gave Sophie an impulsive hug. “Maybe so.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Wanda was nearing total exhaustion, having refused to sleep while Hector was unconscious and the deputies outside the door.

  Thurston finally came through with a written statement that the execution of the warrant for her arrest was on hold until the outcome of Hector’s condition was known. In return, she told him as much as she knew; that the warring cartels had snatched her as she hunted for a young relative who may be able to shed more light on her grandfather’s murder.

  She didn’t know which cartel had held them captive; only that her relative had secured their release. No, she didn’t know where he went. He hadn’t been to the hospital since he and Dylan Chaves brought Hector and her there.

  She was certain that Dylan had nothing to do with the murder, but she couldn’t offer proof. She didn’t think he would do such a thing, even to secure his brothers’ adoption. Besides, that wouldn’t ensure the outcome he wanted.

  She had not been in communication with Dylan before the old man’s murder, nor with anyone else who had a reason to murder Alvarez. She absolutely denied doing so herself. After submitting to two hours of redundant questions, Wanda called a halt.

  “Kevin, I’ve told you everything I know and everything I think. Go investigate something else, I’m tired.”

  “You know this isn’t over, Wanda.”

  “It is for tonight. Leave me alone.”

  When Thurston finally left the room, Wanda closed the door in the deputies’ faces and curled up in a chair that she pushed near the bed. She threaded her fingers through Hector’s unresponsive ones, sighed, and put her head down. Maybe it would be okay just to close her eyes for a moment. They burned, and there were no more tears to put out the fire. Indeed, the tears had been part of what irritated them. Wanda’s eyelids fluttered closed.

  She woke in alarm, as a commotion at the door signaled the arrival of medical personnel in response to the shrieks coming from the telemetry panel on the other side of the bed. Wanda cried out Hector’s name as they swept her aside to get to him and looked on in terror as the nurses worked to bring his vitals back to near-normal. When one of the nurses slammed her hand against the intercom’s button and yelled “Code Blue!” Wanda came near to fainting in her panic.

  Moments later, more medical staff arrived, pushing a crash cart. Wanda watched as they yanked down Hector’s hospital gown, ripped leads off his chest and placed paddles near his heart. “Clear!” someone called, and everyone took their hands off Hector. His body jumped as the electricity coursed into him to start his heart. Someone else manually checked his pulse and shook her head.

  “Clear!” came the call again, and Hector’s body leaped again. Wanda’s own heart was beating rapidly, but she would have said it stopped, waiting for the verdict on the second defibrillation attempt.

  “I have a pulse.”

  Wanda let out the breath she’d been holding and then fell into the chair that the nurses had pushed aside. Someone came to take her pulse, which she protested weakly.

  “Mrs. Lopez, I think we need to admit you. You’ve had a bad shock, but Hector’s heart is beating normally now. You can see that we’re right here to save him if it stops
again. You need some sleep, and unless I miss my guess, it wouldn’t hurt to hydrate you intravenously.”

  “No, I want to stay with him!”

  “Mrs. Lopez, you can’t do him any good if you’ve collapsed yourself. Come on, now, let’s go.”

  Still protesting, Wanda allowed herself to be led away. The resident accompanying her fixed the deputies with a stern stare when they made to follow. “I’ll let you know what room we put her in. Until then, stay out of our way.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Saturday Night

  Thurston tended to believe Wanda, on all counts. It was true they’d butted heads more often than not on town policies and how he chose to enforce the law, but he’d never known her to lie to his or anyone else’s face. Nevertheless, the only leverage he had was the arrest warrant that still hadn’t been executed. He left the hospital and returned to Dodge, still harboring deep misgivings about this case.

  It seemed to be dissolving in front of his eyes. He still had no viable suspect, though he liked Dylan Chaves for it. On the other hand, something had certainly happened to the Lopezes, and it seemed to be related. He didn’t have a clear idea who this mysterious relative was.

  Her story was a little garbled on that count. Why had she been looking for him? Was he the same relative who’d rescued her? How had he known where to look, or even known to look? Nothing added up. Wanda had held back on him, again, and it didn’t sit well.

  Once he was back in Dodge, he cruised the town, mostly to determine if people were where they should be. He found Chaves’ truck at Maria’s trailer. The Lopez house was still empty, of course, its occupants at the hospital in Sells. Alex Ward’s piece-of-shit Nissan was in her dad’s driveway, as was Paul’s SUV.

  That was a little odd. He would have expected to find Paul at the Rattler. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, like clockwork. Paul Ward had a little thing going on with Jen Mackey, and who could blame him? The poor sap’s wife had taken off years ago. He should just divorce her in absentia and claim Jen. That gal was a looker, no doubt about it.