“No, don’t touch me right now. I’ll never get this out if I feel the heat of you against me. Even your hand makes me want to throw a blanket over this story and . . . “
I put my hands in my lap. “Go on. I think you need to get this out.”
“I do. I’ve never told anyone except the shrinks what happened to me. Never. I don’t think even my father knows the whole horrible tale. When you grow up like I did the last thing you want is more pity. And I don’t want that from you, either. I’m begging you. No matter how sorry you feel for me—don’t. I’ll wind up hating you for it.”
“Okay. I can’t promise I won’t feel it, but I’ll try my best not to show it.” I already felt horrified imagining the rest of the story.
“When I was very little, I couldn’t put a name to what was happening to me. And when you’re just a tiny kid, you don’t know any different. I didn’t know all kids don’t go to the doctor all the time. I didn’t question when my mother told me I was sick. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re four or five years old, if your mom tells you something, you believe her, right?”
“Sure. A mother is a little kid’s world.”
“I was three when Dawn was born. I hate to admit it, but it was a relief that she was just as sick as I was. It made me feel more normal. We’d both get all kinds of illnesses. Mostly stomach related. Looking back, I realize that our mother habitually poisoned us.”
“No! How could anyone poison their own children?” I felt my stomach lurch at the thought of someone so cruel. A mother. It was almost too hard to listen to.
“She was insane, Rene. Insanity can do just about anything.” He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples. “It got to the point where we had ‘round the clock nursing care. I guess that started around the time I should have gone to school. But, of course, I couldn’t go to school because I was too sick. The doctors couldn’t come up with a diagnosis. We had every test in the book.”
“There were some awful nurses,” Dylan went on slowly. “I think my mother specifically recruited the sadistic ones. Except for Nurse Kelly.”
I smiled. “The one you kept calling me while you were so ill.”
“She was literally an angel. I think I was around nine when she started working for us. I believe she knew there was something terribly wrong from the beginning. She tried so hard to make our days just a little bit closer to normal. She was always sneaking us outside when my mother went out. Mother did not like us to play outside.”
“Couldn’t she report the abuse? Couldn’t she do something? Didn’t you tell her what was going on?” I found it hard to believe that any professional could fail to act in a circumstance like that.
“I came very close to telling her that I thought our mother was nutso. But, you have no idea how real it was. Plus, monster though she was, she was my mother. She lavished attention on us when we were ill. The sicker we were, the more she ‘loved’ us. Can you understand how a kid would have a problem accusing his mom of such atrocious abuse?”
“Yes, I suppose I can sort of imagine it. But it isn’t easy. My parents were demanding but I never doubted their love for me.”
“Anyway, mother fired Nurse Kelly when I was eleven. My heart broke into a million pieces.” He stopped then and turned his face away. I knew he was trying to hold it together. It was all I could do not to wrap him in a comforting embrace. “I loved Kelly more than anyone I ever knew because it was a real love. It was a healthy little guy crush on a beautiful, tender woman who cared about him. Just like thousands of pre-pubescent boys every day. I fantasized about her, imagining that she would carry me away, kissing me with her sweet mouth and letting me play in her soft hair. It was the color of maple syrup, just like yours.” He stopped for a moment and I stayed silent letting him bring Kelly to life in his mind.
“She never got to say good-bye. One day she was just gone. I knew why, but of course the words were never spoken. Mother fired her because we loved Kelly and Kelly loved us. There was no room for healthy love in my mother’s world. Two years later, my mom and Dawn disappeared and I started the long and excruciating process of trying to become a normal person.”
“What do you mean they disappeared?”
“Well, no one told me at the time but I learned later that my mother was committed to an institution for the criminally insane. I never found out what happened to Dawn. I’ve always assumed that our mother killed her only daughter.”
“You can’t just kill a child without some record of it . . . some trial or something!”
“You can if you have Jackson Cruz’s money and power. He could make you, me and the El Loco disappear tomorrow. Trust me. I know. My father is just as much of a monster as his wife was. He’s just more subtle.”
Chapter 2—Dylan
“I don’t know the extent of what my father knew when we were very little. But as we grew older, he had to have known just what a sick woman his beloved Francesca was. So he just stayed away. A lot. He built his empire while his two offspring were being killed by inches. Dawn was always more delicate than I was. She was . . . she was so sweet, Rene. She loved everybody, even our mother. The rare times my dad was around, she followed him like a puppy. She’d sit on his knee and play with his tie . . .” I choked on the memories.
I hadn’t loved either of my parents like Dawn did. Her big blue eyes would fill with tears every time my father left but she’d always welcome him home as if his return was the greatest gift she could imagine.
“I think my father blamed me somehow.”
Rene stood up and began to pace angrily. Who could fault her? It was an angry tale. “How could he blame you? What for?”
“For not being stronger. For not telling someone—anyone—what our mother was doing.”
“You were a kid! That’s ridiculous. How were you supposed to know what was going on?”
“Maybe if I’d told Kelly. Or the doctors. But the thing is we kept switching doctors and clinics. I think she had to do that to cover herself.”
“For God’s sake. You can’t possibly believe any of it was your fault.” I turned away and stared at the wall. “Dylan, look at me. Look in my eyes. None of this was your fault. None.”
Her brandy eyes were on fire. I’d never seen that kind of anger in them. I was relieved. Anger was way more acceptable than pity.
“After mother and Dawn went away, my father put me into intensive therapy. He staffed the house with some decent honest people who kept it running and brought a semblance of ‘normal’ to my life. The Robertsons were a nice couple and they tried to get close to me. But I wouldn’t have anything to do with them. I’d been burned too badly.”
“I became strong enough to go to school. I went to a fancy private school where no one asked and I didn’t tell. Academically, I did fine. I did well enough to go to a good university. I got strong enough to do just about anything physically that caught my fancy. I became known as a real dare devil—the first to bungee jump, sky-dive, ride the wildest surf, snowboard down the knarliest hill. I discovered sex a little late but found out I had a talent for it.” I smiled at her for the first time since I started my tale of woe. She smiled back, but just barely.
“You do have a talent for it. Like no one I’ve ever known. But don’t stop your story to flirt with me. This is too important.”
“There isn’t much more to tell you. I met Stephen on the docks just about when I finished my last intensive therapy. He was my first ‘friend’ except for Dawn. I never told him why I was so weird and he was kind enough to accept me as strange as I must have been. When I came back to Lauderdale on breaks, we spent our time together. And when I got out of school we just hung together naturally.”
“How did you wind up on El Loco?”
“Dad wanted to give me something to do. He wanted to keep me out of the way, entertained and largely invisible. I was young, it seemed like a deal. I also figured he owed me for being such a useless excuse for a father. Stephen was a na
tural choice and I can’t lie and say it’s been a drag these past years. We’ve had fun.”
“But now?”
“I got restless. I’m ready to feel useful. I may still have my problems but as long as I stay away from attack fish who bring me to my knees, I feel pretty well under control.”
“I understand why hospitals freak you out now. But I don’t understand . . .”
“Why I gave you the cold shoulder on your birthday after we made love?” I had to say it. It might have been ‘just sex’ at the time, but the memory had evolved. I couldn’t consider it anything else now. We had ‘made love’.
“Yes. What did I do?”
“You weren’t there when I woke up.” I sort of hung my head, a little ashamed.
“I had to get dinner going!”
“Rationally, I understand that. But even though my head is mostly healed, I still get anxiety attacks. When I woke up and you were gone, it triggered one. It scared the shit out of me. Literally. I hadn’t had one in a long, long time.”
“My mother had those occasionally. She said they made her feel like she was going to have a heart attack.”
“Exactly. And other nasty side effects. But the point is I had this moment where I felt the same sense of abandonment as I felt as a kid. And because the brain loves to screw with you that made me go off.”
“That makes a sort of sense, but why were you angry with me afterwards?”
“I wasn’t angry. I was terrified.”
“Of what?” she asked. She must have known but she wanted to hear me say it anyway.
I patted the bed and she sat down beside me. I took her hands in mine. The story was told and I was ready to touch her again, if she wanted to be touched. “Rene, I’ve never let myself get close enough to a woman to allow myself that kind of reaction. When you had gone from the bed, I was stricken. All my devils came out. I guess I just needed some time to put them back in their boxes.”
She went oddly silent. When she looked at me I couldn’t read her at all. I instantly started to regret my confession. I sensed that without moving, she was running screaming from the room putting as much distance as she could between herself and the damaged goods lying on the bed beside her.
“You’ve been through so much,” she said at last.
“You deserved to know.”
“It’s just so complicated. You’re so complicated.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“A lot of things make much more sense now. Thank you for telling me. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t. Most of the time I really try not to dwell on the past.”
“I can’t say I blame you. Your past is pretty awful.”
What can you expect a woman to say when she hears a tale like mine? I decided she needed time to digest it all. I wanted to hold her and tell her it would all be okay. No, truthfully, I wished she would hold me and tell me it would all be okay. But she didn’t grant my wish.
Rene stood up and started to pace again. I could see her gathering her thoughts as if they were tangible things scattered around the room. There was a thought when her glance fell on the window, another when she scanned over the dresser, yet another when she came back and looked at my face.
After they had all been collected, she spoke.
“I’m not a psychologist but even a layman like me can figure out that you must have some terrible obstacles to trusting anyone who cares for you. Especially a woman. I totally understand that. And I am flattered and touched that you’ve chosen to open up to me like this.”
“But?”
“It’s a heavy load.” Her pretty eyes were shining with unshed tears. “I don’t know if I can handle you. I . . . don’t know if I’m ready for something this heavy. When we started this I made a calculated decision to take it easy, have fun and enjoy the hottest, sexiest, richest—or so I thought at the time—man I’d ever be lucky enough to play with. And that’s what I thought you were. A player.”
“And I had the nerve to go all human on you,” I added bitterly. “And have the gall not to be rich.”
“That’s not what I meant at all and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know it. You’re telling me that my story has suddenly made me less desirable? And remember, I did tell you about my lack of funds before the fact.”
“You’re just as desirable. Damn it, Dylan don't make it seem like it meant nothing to me. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting so much . . . baggage.”
“Didn’t you tell me not two days ago in the hospital that ‘baggage’ was part of who I am?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“But nothing. Maybe you were expecting an overprotective mother in addition to the cold distant father. Maybe you thought there was a heartbreak lurking in the background. Predictable baggage everyone carries around. You’re standing in front of me now, a quivering pile of hesitation because my baggage happens to be filled with pure stinking lead.”
“It’s just difficult to swallow it all.”
“Well don’t. I wouldn’t want you to choke on it.” The girl was a coward. She was acting as if the story I told her was going to somehow wear off on her and taint her predictable middle class existence with its predictable adolescent crushes and heartbreaks. I should have known better. “There’s a damn good reason I haven’t gotten close to anyone and this is it. Whatever possessed me to bare my soul to you?”
“Now you’re over reacting. What do you want me to say? The most logical human response is the one you won’t allow me to have. So you don’t want my sympathy. Do you want my applause?” She began to clap her hands slowly and dramatically. “There you go. Here’s to you, Dylan Cruz, for surviving a nightmare I couldn’t even imagine. Here’s to having an excuse to behave like a horse’s ass whenever it suits you.”
“Get out. Just leave me alone.”
“I will get out. But first let me tell you something. You want my understanding but you can’t give me five minutes to come to grips with all that you’ve told me. When I didn’t say or react the way you wanted me to—because I can’t read your mind, you know—you turn on me like some rabid beast.”
I bared my teeth and growled at her.
“You know what? You don’t need my sympathy or anyone else’s for that matter. You feel sorry enough for you all by yourself!”
The angry set to her jaw and the stiff belligerent posture couldn’t mask the confusion of tears brimming in her eyes. My pride wouldn’t let me call her back. My fear wouldn’t let me beg her to stay.
Chapter 3—Rene
He shattered me. I fell onto my bed, weak and drained. I had so many conflicting thought swirling through my head that it was making me nauseous.
Hannah had called and I missed it. She was offline now because she was working and not being able to talk to her depressed me even more.
The Wikipedia entry on Munchausen’s by proxy didn’t help. Reading the clinical description of one of the sickest things I’d ever heard of made me weep inside for Dylan. But that didn’t lessen my urge to run away from the train wreck as fast as I could. There was no way I wanted to be part of the horror story going on in his head.
I went through the motions of getting the crew fed and sent dinner to the master stateroom via Angelo. I pulled my little suitcase out of the closet and stared at it. I could leave; I could just flee the scene of the accident and be gone. That would officially make me the horrible person Dylan undoubtedly already thought I was.
Air. I needed air. The night sky, the cityscape, the slap of the dirty water on El Loco’s flanks would help me clear my head. I left the suitcase open on the bed where it dared me to come back and fill it up.
It surprises me how quickly a person becomes used to something. The days at sea had swept through me. My ‘new normal’ had become clear salty breezes, sea birds and clean water as far as I could see. The smell of London and the rankness of the water hit my head hard. As ports go, I suspected this was not a particularly nasty
one. Canary Wharf was a pretty swanky address and well kept. But it was still attached to a major city and the waters had been well used for centuries.
I leaned over the transom and watched the lights swirl over the oily surface of the water. Part of me felt like barfing over the side. I felt like I needed to purge myself of the poison that invaded me through the tale of Dylan’s life.
“Good to be back on board, isn’t it?” I turned to see Stephen, backlit from the salon lights, beer bottle in hand. “I’m glad the boss decided to leave the hospital. He wouldn’t have been happy there for long and I don’t know how long I could have kept the old man out of his room.”
“He found us at the hotel.” I hated the odious bastard even more now that I had learned what a monster he was.
“So I understand. He’s a real sweetheart, huh?” Stephen took a long swig of his beer. “Can I get you something?”
“No thanks.” Alcohol wasn’t going to do anything to help me sort out the mess in my head.
“So, I’m dying to know. Did the boss spill his guts to you?” It was a bad choice of words. I felt my mouth start to water in pre-puke mode and swallowed hard.
The revelation that Stephen was privy to what should have been between Dylan and I alone really threw me. “Dylan discussed this with you?” It ticked me off more than a little to think that he had talked about something so intimate with Stephen before he told me.
“He discussed talking to you. I’m still in the dark about what was so potentially life altering about it. And I have to admit I’m damn curious.”
“What did Dylan say to you?”
“That’s kinda between Dylan and I, don’t ya think?”
“Stephen, please. This is really important to me.” When he didn’t speak, I begged. “Please, please tell me what he said. I need to know.”
“Okay. It wasn’t all that much. He just wanted to know if I thought that you would bolt if he told you the story of his bizarre childhood. Like I said, he didn’t give me details. I’ve known Dylan had a rough opening act. Just knowing his father makes that much clear. But I guess there’s a lot more or he wouldn’t have been so torn up about telling you.”
Tempest Tossed: A Love Unexpected Novel Page 19