by Nancy Adams
But it was at the end of his tirade that Joe showed the sharpest of his teeth when he looked Claire in the eyes and said that if she were ever to attempt to ruin his family, his business, his political ambitions with this ‘shit’, then he would have no quarrels with taking his handgun from his bedside cabinet and placing a bullet in her head. “Then after that,” he chillingly snarled at her, “I’ll go to your ma, then your brother and finally myself. If you want that type of blood on your hands, then go ahead and spread your lies, because I won’t be ruined by you. I’d rather die.”
Claire was flabbergasted by this threat, as well as the hollow look in his eyes when he had made it. His own daughter. Not only was he willing to abuse her as a child, he was willing to kill her and everything she loved—his own family—if she ever ruined him with the truth. She could have taken it as an empty threat, but there was something in his eyes that gave credence to his words.
After that, Claire and her father avoided each other until she went to college that fall, and she hadn’t had individual contact with him since, only seeing him alongside the rest of her family. That was until he came to her door earlier that day. Now she was mulling over his furious words and feeling weak and pitiful in the face of them. Sam had been the first person who she had ever shared it with, and now when she looked back on it, Claire found it ridiculous that she should have abandoned years of being on her guard to simply drop it in a heartbeat for a man whom she’d only recently met and whose wife lay dying only meters away as they snuck into darkened rooms for coffees, secretive talks and then kisses.
How had I been so swept along in it all? she asked herself for the millionth time.
Just then, there was a knock at her bedroom door and Claire froze.
“H-e-l-l-o?” she slowly asked.
“Hey, Claire,” came the whispered voice of Kyle.
Claire let out a sigh of relief at the sound of her brother’s voice.
“Are you watching the news?” Kyle asked through the door.
“No, I was sleeping.”
“Well, you should. That billionaire guy whose wife you were caring for has just gone nuts. They say that the wife died earlier and now he’s racing through the mountains being chased in some sports car by the news and the police. You should see it; it’s fucking awesome!”
Claire hadn’t even been aware that Marya had passed away and she trembled at the news, a wretched remorse opening up inside of her soul with the cut of an invisible razor.
“Does mum know you use words like that?” Claire asked as a single tear floated down her cheek.
“Whatever!” Kyle let out, annoyed at his big sister’s scolding tone, and he began to walk away from the door.
But no sooner had he gone a few feet toward his own room than Claire’s bedroom door opened behind him and he turned. Standing with her head hanging out of the gap was Claire.
“You wanna watch it from in here?” she asked.
“Why not,” the boy exclaimed and came into Claire’s room.
They then sat on her bed and Claire switched the television on. The first channel it came to had the footage of Sam’s Lamborghini racing along within the floodlight beams of the two news helicopters. About fifty meters behind him was a host of police cars with their lights blazing.
“What’s he doing?” Claire asked out loud.
Her brother, thinking that she was speaking to him, answered, “I think he’s gone nuts! They say he’s a bit eccentric or something and that he never speaks to people and wouldn’t even let his wife be treated among other patients. Anyway, you know him, because you were with his wife in the hospital.”
“I only knew him fleetingly,” Claire muttered as she sat transfixed to the screen.
“Is he as cold as they say?”
Claire turned to Kyle, frowned and said, “His wife was dying, how do you want him to act?”
“Ooh!” Kyle let out, opening his eyes wide and making a face. “I didn’t know that you were Sam Burgess’s biggest fan!”
“Shut up!” Claire exclaimed, slapping her brother playfully on the arm.
“He sure is moving,” Kyle then remarked, turning his attention back to the screen. “Look at him go. Is that a Lamborghini Diablo GT?”
“How should I know?”
Claire took the remote control and turned the set up.
“Again,” anchorwoman Jenny Armstrong was saying over the top of the footage, “we’re coming live from Spirit Falls, Colorado, where billionaire tech genius Sam Burgess, having recently heard of his wife’s demise, has fled his estate in a sports car and is leading police and reporters on a high-speed pursuit. Now I have with me on the telephone Sheriff Walters of Fall County police department who is advising the chase. Sheriff Walters what’s the current situation? Why are the police pursuing Burgess?”
“Well, Jenny,” Came Walters’s grainy voice over the intercom, “at the moment the only laws that Burgess has broken are traffic violations for speeding and reckless driving. However, our main concern is for Mr. Burgess himself. There’s no warrant out for his arrest and as you can see on your screens my colleagues are maintaining a safe distance from Mr. Burgess. We merely want to see this thing out safely.”
“Is there any clue as to Burgess’s state of mind?”
“At the moment no. But regarding his recent bereavement, it’s safe to say that Mr. Burgess is not in a good place and we want to see a safe end to this.”
“What precautions are the police taking to assure my viewers that this won’t end in tragedy?”
“At the moment, my colleagues are clearing the roads ahead of all vehicles and people. We want as clear a passage for Mr. Burgess as possible, so that he is able to get whatever demons he has inside of him out—”
Claire pressed mute on the remote. She couldn’t bear to hear all the speculation and complete lack of privacy afforded to Sam in this terrible moment in his life. She really did feel sorry for him then and all her spite was instantly washed away from her soul as she found herself trembling in fear as he sped through the darkness toward oblivion.
“Where are you going, Sam?” Claire whispered imperceptibly to herself.
“Man, he’s moving,” Kyle exclaimed, jumping about on the bed beside her. “This is better than Formula One. Whoa!” he burst out as Sam’s Lamborghini skidded as it worked its way through a tight mountainside chicane and just managed to hold its grip upon the merciless road. Claire dashed her hands to her mouth and let out a slight cry as the car wobbled, her heart dropping out of her body. “Did you see that?” Kyle cried out, glancing momentarily at Claire as he did, before returning his gaze to the television. “He’s like a demon from hell in that thing!”
It was then that Claire did something she hadn’t done since a child. She closed her eyes, put her hands together and began praying. She gazed out into the darkness behind her closed eyelids and asked for help from the great expanse, her voice echoing out into eternity. She asked God to guide Sam in this moment, to bring him to safety both physically now and spiritually in the future. Not for herself did she pray; but for him. For Sam Burgess. And in that moment, Claire realized that she truly loved him.
“WHOA!” Kyle cried out and Claire instantly opened her eyes.
It took several seconds for Claire to adjust in that moment and everything became an echo for a second or two, Kyle leaping about beside her. When she had adjusted, Claire saw the awful sight of Sam’s car careering off the road and smashing into some fencing, before flipping onto its roof and sliding down a slight bank into a ravine. Kyle grabbed the remote and put the volume up.
“Oh, my!” anchorwoman Jenny Armstrong exclaimed over the top of the footage. “What we feared most has happened. Sam Burgess has crashed and we only pray that emergency services can get to him in time. But if you’ll stay right here, we’ll keep on the scene and give you second-by-second coverage of Sam Burgess, tech billionaire, and his possible death.”
Claire went blind for a second as
despairing tears filled her eyes, her hands drawn up over her mouth, gripping her lips within their grasp, her whole body feeling as if it were about to explode.
“Claire?” her brother said, turning to her, a worried look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
He’d noticed Claire’s face going completely red and her eyes streaming with tears. Seeing her brother’s look of concern, she got up from the bed and attempted to reach the door, to escape, to not let slip anything.
But no sooner was she halfway across her room than she fainted into a heap, Kyle’s cries resounding into the distance.
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWELVE
Colombia, 2000
As Sam Burgess’s crashed Lamborghini Diablo GT lay heaped at the bottom of a Colorado ravine and Claire Prior lay heaped at the bottom of her despair, an elderly man named Jules Lee with nothing to do with either of them—well, not yet at any rate—sat at the back of an old rickety bus as it made its way along a bumpy mountain road in the middle of the Colombian jungle, traveling to the colonial town of Villa de Leyva. Stretched outside Jules’s window lay the thick jungle, the red sun hovering over the top of it, lighting the clouds in shards of vanilla. Underneath him, the bumpy road kicked the old bus’s long-suffering suspension and, in turn, the old suspension kicked Jules Lee’s long-suffering ass.
It had been an uncomfortable three hours so far and, as the sun gradually sank into the horizon, it would be at least another equally uncomfortable four. Two small children on the seat in front of Jules were standing looking back at the old gringo, sticking their tongues out at him. They found him odd, as they found most of the gringo travelers that passed through their villages odd, always sporting long beards and funny clothing. This old gringo was no different, and under his wide-rimmed hat was a mass of gray fuzzy hair that joined his big, equally fuzzy beard at the sideburns, several beads tied at its bottom. Except for his round nose, the only other thing that stuck out of the mass of hair was a pair of round-rimmed spectacles that sat atop his bright blue eyes.
Every so often, the children would stick their tongues out and the old man would stick his back at them, making the children giggle, then show off by touching the tip of his nose with the tongue. In turn, the children would attempt to touch their own noses with their little tongues and become frustrated in their lame attempts.
After a while, the children let the old man be and he attempted to position himself wedged into his seat so that he could get some shut eye without being thrown into the aisle. The flight over had been his first plane journey for sixteen years and he hadn’t slept a wink during it. The moment he had arrived at Bogota, he had headed straight for the bus terminal, which he knew well, and taken a bus to the village. It had been very hot when they set off and he’d been unable to sleep because of the heat while the roads were good. Now that the weather was much cooler, though, it was the terrible road forbidding him to rest.
Why was Jules Lee on a bus to some distant village on the other side of the world? you may ask. Well, he was attempting to reach his great love, an Italian-American woman by the name of Juliette. And he was trying to reach her for the first time in sixteen years.
A year ago, Jules had been released from prison after serving fifteen years. As a part of his parole, he was restricted from traveling for one year. Two days ago, that ban had ended and Jules took the immediate opportunity to go to Juliette who was in Villa de Leyva, Colombia. The information pertaining to her whereabouts he had gotten from her best friend Margot, who Juliette was currently traveling with. He was to contact Margot the day he got there and she would take him to Juliette the next day. Margot had always been a good friend to Jules as well as Juliette, and she sympathized with the old man’s situation.
As he sat thinking about their potential meeting, Jules’s heart sank. He didn’t know if Juliette would take ahold of him in a warm embrace, or instantly run in the opposite direction. He’d attempted to write to her many times while he was in prison, but she had never answered him. At first, this had angered him, but in the end he came to understand why she didn’t write back or offer to come and visit him; she was ashamed. When he’d become decided on her reasons it had soothed his soul to know that it wasn’t out of spite. She was so sensitive and, in his love, Jules understood that her sensibilities prevented her from being able to look him in the eyes knowing that it had been her that had put him in that awful place.
Now, he merely wanted to reach her and tell her that it didn't matter, that they could be happy, that they should spend the rest of their days together. Not in any of those sixteen years had his love for Juliette abated. In fact, not in the last thirty-six years, since he’d first laid eyes on her, had Jules Lee’s love for Juliette abated.
Sitting on the bus, he recalled that first moment.
Jules was down and out in Rome at the time, having gone there to study art in 1966, but only finding the study of extreme poverty awaiting him there. The college that he’d gone there to attend had closed down due to financial irregularities only a month into his study. After that, Jules survived with whatever odd drops of work he could find.
Soon, though, he was down to his last month’s rent at his attic apartment and there was no sign of further money to keep his abysmal lodgings alive. So, he was spending the entirety of his days searching for work in the local cafes, restaurants, bars and hotels, and his nights sketching and making pictures so that he could spend the weekends selling them on the streets. As to sleep, he had very little time for that and would often be found drawing his portraits and paintings all the way through until morning when he would shave and get ready for a day of trawling the local businesses on the off chance that they wanted to hire him.
It was as he left the manager’s office of one such cafe that Jules felt the earth stand still for but a few seconds, feeling his heart pause within his chest as the cosmos momentarily stopped for a mere instance. There, sitting outside the window at the front of the cafe, was Juliette. She had a bright summer dress on—thin white cotton with prints of red roses—and it hugged her tall, wiry frame, slender shoulders opening out at the neckline, lily white skin with a scattering of faint freckles glittering the length of them. Down her back flowed raven black hair in an inky waterfall that cascaded all the way to her waist. In the breeze, several strands of it balanced tentatively on the airflow, and Jules watched them dance for a moment. It was then that she turned sharply to him, as if something inside of her had motioned her to do so at that moment—an angel whispering in her ear perhaps—and she made eye contact with him.
Jules had felt a light burst open inside of him as her gleaming emerald eyes shone at him like green fires in an eternal darkness, guiding him forward through the bleakness that he sensed had always existed in his heart until then; until he’d found her.
He recalled the manager of the cafe standing beside him and looking oddly between the stunned American boy’s face and the beautiful damsel sitting drinking coffee at the front. “Love,” the manager had tutted, before turning and going back to his office. Jules hadn’t gotten a job, but he believed in that moment that he had gotten much more. He’d gotten love.
No sooner had Juliette unexpectedly turned to Jules than she had turned back around, the American boy observing a gentle blushing in her cheeks as she did. He had then continued to stand as if stuck to the spot for a moment while trying to get his head together, the beauty at the window having stunned him like a bolt of lightening sent from the other side of the universe.
One of the waiters came up to him and asked him if he wanted a table and, without even turning to the man, Jules had replied that he did. He’d then taken one in a back corner where he could observe Juliette without being too obvious. Once he was settled, he ordered a coffee without really thinking.
When the waiter had gone, Jules suddenly realized his imprudent mistake and quickly took up the menu. Looking through it, he found the price for a cup of coffee and gasped as he saw that it was three time
s his daily food budget. However, looking up from the menu at the beautiful girl at the front, Jules simply smiled, shrugged and told himself that it was worth starving for three days in order to sit in her presence for three minutes.
The coffee came and Jules ignored it as he stared dreamily at the girl. He watched as she read a book and finished her coffee. Having sat watching her for twenty minutes or so, Juliette closed her book and got up from her chair. Jules’s heart paused once again, as for the first time he saw her in all her slender glory, her beauty dazzling the breath out of him. She then left some money on the table and walked off down the street.
Jules quickly got up from his own table and made his way to the bar to pay, having not touched his coffee. Unlike Juliette, he couldn’t afford to leave money on the table, forget about his change and make his way out in haste. His poverty meant that he needed his coins. He sat rapping his fingers on the mahogany bar as the barman nonchalantly took his money, moved listlessly to the till and then got Jules his coins. Jules snatched the change from the man’s hand and darted out of the cafe.
When he hit the street, Jules stopped and searched with his eyes in the direction that the girl had gone off in. At first, he felt the raging hand of frustration tug at his swollen heart as he couldn’t make her out in the crowded street. But then, like a ray of sun bursting through a thick thundercloud, he saw her farther ahead among the throng, and began jogging along, sliding in between people as he tried to reach her.