The List

by Alice Ward

  “There are secrets in this room which must be released,” she began. “Secrets are not always bad, but when they are, they’re poison. I know you have things to tell me, but I’m asking that you let me talk first. It may make a difference in what you have to tell me.” She folded her long hair over one shoulder and tucked her legs beneath herself more snugly. It was a movement that suggested insecurity.

  I drank more of my tea, waiting for her to begin.

  “Hawk, I need to share something about myself that may make you a bit uncomfortable at first. I hope you’ll respond the way I think you will, but if you don’t, I’ll call a cab and leave you be.”

  I lowered the mug and leaned forward, shaking my head as if to tell her no.

  She lifted a hand and smiled gently. “It’s quite alright, just listen.”

  I pulled off the sunglasses I wore night and day. I wanted her to see the real me as she spoke. Her response was another gentle smile and nod of agreement that it was about time.

  “Hawk, you know how I shared the fact that I’m an empath, as was my mother and her mother.” I nodded. “Well, there’s one part of it that I didn’t go into detail about because I wasn’t exactly sure whether I could reproduce it at will or whether it was a one-time coincidence. When my mother was in her last days, she was beyond the pain medicines and suffering in agony. I sat by her bed and felt so helpless. She and I had always had a special connection. I summoned in my mind a visual of a hot air balloon in a pasture, bathed in warm spring sunshine. It’s difficult to explain the how part of it, but I mentally sent her that vision. I knew she received it because I saw her smile and relax; she even nodded a bit. The only problem was that this sort of transfer wasn’t a one-way street. I took on her pain and had to leave her side and go outdoors before I could feel it go away. It wasn’t pleasant.”

  I swallowed, trying to wrap my head around what she was telling me. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’ve never done that before, or since…” her gaze met mine and a ripple of fear went through me because I knew what she was about to say, “until last night.”

  I stood up so hard and so fast my chair toppled backwards. This was crazy talk. The woman I was falling in love with was crazy. Or a witch. A liar. She stood up too, turning toward me, watching me pace the room. I glanced at her and it was… her. Not some witch. Not some trickster. Not a liar intent on doing me harm.

  Her.

  My beautiful Liane. A magical creature of light.

  And I was drawn to her, just as I’d been drawn to her from the beginning. And just like that, I decided to accept whatever else she needed to tell me.

  She exhaled, feeling my acceptance and sank back into her chair. I followed, picking mine up from the floor, pulling it closer to her.

  “I was at home, and a sense of darkness came over me,” she continued her story as if there had been no interruption. “An emotional darkness — it felt like fury. Hawk, I knew it came from you. I have the ability to connect to you. I’ve had it since the first day we met. I know this all sounds hokey, but you have to accept my word as the truth as I perceive it.”

  I nodded and knew what was coming.

  “What I didn’t know, however, is that I could pick up your energy from such a distance. I “sent” you and image of a warm hug with the intention of slowing you down. It was also supposed to absorb the anger you were feeling. It worked, didn’t it?”

  I nodded again.

  “What I didn’t expect was that your anger would boomerang back at me. I became intensely angry and bitter. I wanted to hurt someone. No one I knew — just someone. That came from you, didn’t it?”

  Looking down at the floor, I said, “Yes.”

  “I don’t know exactly what had you so angry, or how you were acting out, but I felt what you’d been feeling. It wasn’t pleasant, and we need to talk about it.”

  The thought of causing her pain was agony. “I’ll leave you be, Liane. I don’t ever want you to feel pain or anger because of me. I can’t let that happen.”

  “No, no, Hawk, it’s no good. We’re already connected, you and I. It wouldn’t matter if you went to Antarctica, I would still feel it. Our connection is too strong to escape.”

  I was silent, trying to put into words what I had to tell her, judging how much she should hear. If what she was saying was accurate, then my telling her of the horrors of the past would make her feel my pain.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” she murmured, and I knew she’d read my mind. “Hawk, there is in each of us an energy that is always passing in and out of us. We aren’t solid; we’re an accumulation of energy “units” for lack of a better word. Just like light travels, so does that energy. I think my brain is a superconductor, if you will. I am tuned in to you, just as I was with my mother. I feel that darkness that haunts you and I want to help you rid yourself of it. When you release that anger, you release it for both of us.”

  I looked at Liane, and her peace was settling over my thoughts. It was almost as if she glowed. “What do I do?” I asked her.

  “We have to feel our way through it. I’m no expert in this and as weird as it sounds, I’m a little scared of it too. With my mother, I simply had to leave the bedroom. With you, it’s more powerful. I don’t even know where you were, but I guess it wasn’t here last night.”

  “I was in California.”

  She reached out a hand to steady herself. “You see?” she said, her eyes wide and filled with awe and maybe a little fear. “You can’t go far enough to shield me.” Lifting my fingers to her lips, she kissed each knuckle, then held my hand to her cheek. “I believe that you’ll have to share some of yourself with me. Maybe not everything, but enough so that I recognize what triggers your hurt and anger. Then, maybe, together we can learn to not let those thoughts into your head and eventually, they will lose their power over you, and consequently, me.”

  I looked at her with skepticism.

  “I know. I know it sounds strange.” She put down the mug of tea and rose to her feet. Look, maybe this is a bad idea. I really don’t know what I’m doing in all of this. I only know how it feels. You’ve acknowledged that you felt it last night. But maybe I’m in way over my head, and I should just grab a cab back into town and leave you alone.”

  “No! No, Liane, don’t go!” I burst with a need to have her remain.

  She stopped and looked at me; at the misery on my face. Finally, she said, “My dad had his calling. Maybe in some sense, you are mine.”

  I held my hand out to her, and she took it. I pulled her down onto my lap, and she sat sideways, leaning into my chest. I gently pulled her head against me, and I smelled the chlorine and sunshine in her hair. She’d been swimming that day and probably hadn’t gotten the chance to shampoo it away. It was a wonderful smell. “I don’t understand all this, but you’re right. I felt the blackness you know about, and I also felt the warmth you sent me. You got me through it. Liane, I need you in my life. Not just to be my “energy shrink” but because there’s something about you I can’t get enough of. I can’t work, can’t sleep and barely get through anything I start because I just want to come and find you and keep you with me. Believe me, when I say this isn’t typical for a guy like me. I’ve seen some bad things, and they’ve driven me to hole up and live by myself. I’m not used to needing. Not anyone or anything.”

  I felt her head nod beneath my chin.

  “I don’t want you to hurt, though,” I told her. “I don’t want to lose you, either. Hell, I don’t know what to do.” I was feeling so conflicted and out of my normal element. Lack of control didn’t sit well with me.

  “Do you trust me?” Liane asked.

  It took me a second, but only because I realized what I was about to say. “Yes, I think for the first time in my life, I truly trust someone. Yes, I trust you.”

  “Then let me carry this for you. Tell me the darkness that envelopes you so I can help you banish it and we’ll both be free of the pain it
brings you.”

  “Do you trust me?” I asked in return, and she nodded. “Then come with me and lie on my bed. This will take a lot of telling.”

  She slid off my lap and we headed toward my room. I pulled back the covers and tucked her in, pushing the outside blankets beneath her. It was the closest I’d ever come to a loving gesture. I laid down beside her and slid my arm beneath her head, pulling her close. I was careful not to touch her in any other way. She needed to know I was a man of my word.

  I didn’t know how to begin, so I got the worst of it out of the way first. “I killed my uncle.” Her body jerked a bit at my words, but she didn’t pull away.

  “Go on,” she whispered.

  “Well, I’ve got this crazy situation in my family. When she was young, my maternal grandmother had an affair with my paternal grandfather, who was married at the time. There was a baby, and my grandmother was going to put it up for adoption. Instead, my grandfather adopted the child anonymously. He was intent that no one ever know.”

  Liane’s hand clutched a fistful of my shirt, but she didn’t say a word.

  “My grandfather had made some enemies with the wrong people and they switched the baby, using the real heir as leverage. So, my grandfather took in a stranger’s baby, thinking it was his own blood. His name was Linc, and he was killed in a car accident when he was sixteen. There is some mystery surrounding that, but my grandfather was a very evil man, and I’m fairly sure he was tied to a murder at some point in his past.”

  “How terrible for everyone.”

  I kissed her hair. “Yes. Well, one day this man shows up and tells my dad that he’s the real Linc and wants to be restored to the family, but he was one evil son-of-a-bitch. Long story short, he kidnapped me and took me to my grandfather’s farm. I’d just been Christmas shopping with my father, and I’d bought him a pocket knife as a gift. I managed to get around my uncle and pulled the knife I’d been carrying in my pocket. Okay, I admit, I wanted to play with it a bit first so it was in my pocket. Anyway, I stabbed him in the neck, and he bled out.”

  I expected her to pull away, but she snuggled closer. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen. I’d been farmed out to a military school as a younger boy before all of that happened. I guess I was too much to handle, and my parents were busy having their own cozy little nest. After the incident with my uncle, they bought a condo in Florida and told me my mother was pregnant with twins. I didn’t want any more brothers or sisters, and I told them so. I guess it spooked them, given the situation with my uncle. They turned me over to a shrink, and he gave me all kinds of pills, labeled me as psychotic. I got some more, here and there and I was pretty messed up in my head. I didn’t care, though, because they didn’t care and the angrier they got at me, the more I lashed out. I remember hating everyone. Guess I was living up to my label.”

  Her fingers found mine, and we linked them together. “I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine how confusing and horrible that was.”

  I didn’t tell her how little I remembered of it all, the pills keeping me in a loop of avoidance. But I nodded and went on, “I got really, really high one night and did a lot of damage to people’s things and they arrested me. I wound up in an institution because my parents were afraid of me. They also thought I’d hurt the twins. I got the shit beat out of me there and managed to escape. I called Bernie, my mother’s assistant. He and I had always been close. He took better care of me than my parents did. Bernie came and took me out of the country — to Mexico. He gave up his life for me and in return, my father sent him money every month to keep me away.”

  Liane sobbed, a tiny little sound that I felt more than heard. I shushed her. If she cried, I wouldn’t have been able to go on.

  “Bernie only gave me enough for pocket money,” I said after she nodded that she was okay. “I got slashed one night by some boys who thought I had a ton of money on me. That’s where the scars come from. We stayed in an okay place, but one day Bernie didn’t come home. He’d gone to the wrong part of town — he didn’t like women, you see.”

  “Please, don’t tell me he….”

  I nodded. “I found him. He was dead. I got out of Mexico with phony identification and the kindness of a minister and his wife headed back to California. I hung around, got myself into school and got a load of degrees. My income from my father disappeared when Bernie died. I guess they never took that into consideration. Or maybe they didn’t care; not really sure which. Anyway, changed my hair color, started wearing the glasses and built a small business, which gave me enough to move back here.”

  “That’s your parents’ place we looked at tonight, isn’t it?” she asked me.

  “Uh, huh. They don’t know I’m here. No one does, except you. So, Liane, I must trust you an awful lot because you have the power to get me into a lot of trouble.”

  “You know you can trust me,” she said, “after all, if something bad happened to you, I’d feel it too.” She smiled, and I knew she was trying to lighten my mood.

  “So?”

  “So, what?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Where does that leave me in the book of Liane?”

  “Fair enough. My father is a vicar, but I don’t believe in the God he does. I believe in the God of the Universe as an entity of energy, and we are all a part of it, and it of us. I believe that if we embrace only the positive energy, soon that’s all we’ll recognize, and we’ll attract others who believe in positives as well.”

  “Then why the hell did you get mixed up with me?” I asked. “You already said you could see a dark something around me.”

  “That’s a very good question. I think it’s because I know that the darkness comes from events that happened to you, not because you’re a bad person on your own. I think you were intended to meet me and I to meet you. I think we’re good for each other.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “You’re the only person who has ever believed in me. Even Bernie was scared of what I might do.”

  “One question?”

  “What’s that?”

  “May I go to sleep now because it’s two in the morning and I’m sleepy.”

  I kissed her hair again and whispered, “Good night, my angel.”

  She kissed my cheek and rolled over, scooting her precious ass against my hip as she puffed her pillow and promptly fell asleep.

  I laid awake a long time, thinking about our conversation. I realized she had no incentive to tie in with me; she was simply a good and loving person. I was suspicious of this — it was my nature. I wondered whether I could learn to take people at face value for once in my life. And I wondered if she would someday hate me when I settled the score that dwelled inside my heart.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Liane

  When I awoke, Hawk was lying on his side, his head balanced on his hand, his eyes watching me. He smiled, and I felt a light happiness fill the room.

  “You aren’t afraid of morning breath?” I asked him.

  “Not in the least,” he laughed and smacked me on the rump before he slid off the bed and headed to the kitchen.

  “Are you making tea?” I called after him.

  “Nope. Coffee.”

  “Could you make me some tea?”

  “Nope. Coffee. You’re the tea maker in this house,” he added, and I felt a glow of belonging.

  We took our mugs outdoors and sat on a small patio that held only one chair, so I sat on his lap. “Why just one chair?”

  “There’s only one of me,” he answered, and I recognized in his words the defensive posture he had determined for a lifetime. He must have realized how that sounded, because he added, “We can get a second one if you insist, but I kinda like you here.”

  I licked the cream cheese I’d smothered on a bagel from my thumb and set the mug down. “Well, it’s up to you,” I taunted him and leapt off his lap before he could grab me. He came after me, laughing and scooped me up into his arms. I wrapped mine around his neck and kissed him h
ard on the lips. He pulled back his head, and there was a very serious look on his face.

  “I want you,” he said.

  My shoulders drooped a bit as I realized the effect I’d had on him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a tease. You just made me happy.”

  “I’m not talking about sex, Liane. I want you. Forever. Here. With me. I want you to marry me.”

  I realized he wasn’t teasing. And it felt right. So very right. I couldn’t stop myself from nodding.

  He dropped me to my feet and lifted my chin to look up at him. “Are you serious? Will you marry me?”

  “Are you seriously asking me?”

  “Sweet Jesus!” He picked me up in a bear hug and swung me around until I threatened to lose my breakfast. “When?”

  “When will I lose my breakfast?”

  “No, silly. When will you marry me? How soon?”

  “Do you mean to tell me, Hawk Sansabri, that you aren’t going to give me a proper courting? You’re not going to take me to dinners and picnics and movies and for long rides in the country? You just want me to drop everything and marry you this minute?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” The look on his face told me he was overjoyed. “Hawk?”

  “Yes, my darling?”

  “Slow down. There are two things that have to take place first.”

  His face fell. “Such as?”

  “Number one, you must properly ask my dad for my hand. That’s a token of respect, and it’s simply the way it’s done. You can have him on your side or make an enemy for life, but respect makes the difference.”

  “That’s no problem. Let’s go now.” He pulled me by the hand toward the drive.

  “Not so fast. The other thing is we have to straighten out the mess with your past. I can’t marry a man who doesn’t have a legal name. It will catch up with you eventually. You also have to come clean to your father. I don’t care whether you do it with open arms or boxing gloves, but we can’t begin anything as wonderful as our life together under the shadow of deceit.”

  “Liane, you’re not serious?”