“Please stay, Zeke.”
He straightened slowly, completely dressed except for his jacket. “I can’t. I don’t belong here.”
She pulled the sheet up. She wouldn’t get out of her bed—their bed—she wouldn’t try to keep him that way. But she wouldn’t let him leave without trying.
“Because you’re afraid that if you stayed you would become your father. That’s what you’ve always been afraid of. That’s why you left.”
He spun around to her. “What the hell are you talking about? I loved him. If I could be half the man…” He swallowed hard.
“Of course you loved him. That’s part of why you are who you are, and why you’ve done what you’ve done. But you can love your father so much you’re afraid you’ll let the love make you give up who you are and just be a shadow version of an original. So you fight it—both the wanting to please him and the love. You fight so hard you go in the opposite direction.
“You don’t think I’ve read the articles? All the interviews? All the profiles? Do you know how many of them mention your father? Quote you talking about your father? All of them Zeke. Every last one of them.”
“He was a great man.”
“Yes, He was. But not because of his mind. He was great because of his heart. You keep thinking he was a failure because—”
“I do not.”
“The hell you don’t! You’ve always thought he was a failure because he sacrificed the acclaim and intellectual status you thought he deserved. You took on that guilt and you determined to achieve success for him. You know in all those articles, all those articles where you talk about your father, you never once talk about the success of your company. Never talk about what you’ve achieved financially—”
“That’s Quince and Vanessa’s doing. Not mine.”
She nodded. “That’s right. Because you don’t care about that kind of success. Only about achieving, creating intellectually—the way your father could have if he and your mom hadn’t left that behind and emigrated here. For you.”
The final two words were hammer blows. She could see that. But a hammer, a sledgehammer, was the only way to get through to him.
“But you’ve got it wrong, Zeke. Your father achieved great things. He created a loving marriage, a home, a family. He created a respected position in his community, where he was looked to for common sense and uncommon kindness. Those are goals for you aspire to. Those are accomplishments that would make your father proud of you. They would make him happy.”
Silence held the moment. A thin band of hope squeezed around her heart, making it hard to breathe.
Then he bent and picked up his suit coat from the floor. He didn’t look at her.
She bit her lower lip between her teeth to keep from crying out. She wouldn’t do that. No even when he reached the door.
He stilled, his hand on the knob, and looked back.
“I do love you, Darcie.”
“You let him go?”
Darcie didn’t turn as Jennifer came to sit beside her on the stone bench with the best view of the fountain and Coronation Garden.
“No one lets Zeke do anything.”
Darcie had successfully avoided everyone this long Sunday by locking her apartment door and turning off her phones. When her mother knocked on her door for a third time, saying, “Just let me know you’re okay,” she’d called out in a rusty voice, “I’m okay. I need some time alone.”
As sunset neared, though, she’d found herself restless, yet too fatigued to go for a run. She’d driven to the park, nearly empty now as a spring afternoon gave way to a blustery evening that bowed tulips on their stems and rocked the lilacs.
“Here,” Jennifer said, wrapping a fleece blanket around her shoulders. “Why didn’t you go with him? He did everything he could to show you he wanted you to go with him. I know you love him, Darcie.”
“I think I’ve loved him since I was sixteen years old and looked across a Bunsen burner into those eyes for the first time.”
“You could go after him.”
She shook her head. “It’s always been me going after Zeke. Dragging him out of his isolation when we were kids, dragging him into social situations, dragging him back here for the festival. While he was here, too. Going after him for his mother or for the town or for myself… Not this time. It wouldn’t—” she sucked in a breath to keep from sobbing “—work.”
“But you love him, and he loves you. Real love.” She said it with an anguish that reminded Darcie that Jennifer carried the scars of something else masquerading as love. “Why—?”
“Because I love him. Because he won’t be happy until he figures out what he really wants. If I went back there with him, he still wouldn’t know, and I’d be there, all mixed in with his not knowing, and then I’d be part of his unhappiness. That would be worst of all.”
Jennifer studied her. “But you know, don’t you, Darcie? You know what you want.”
“Yes, I do.” She smiled, despite the pain. “I’m glad, even though I know I’m not going to get it. Not all of it.”
Jennifer put her arms around Darcie’s shoulders. “If anybody does get it all, it’ll be you, Darcie. It just has to be.”
Monday morning, Chief Dutch Harnett strode up to Darcie’s car as she emerged from it in the parking lot behind Village Hall.
“You’re not on duty yet. I want to talk to you. Unofficially.”
She wasn’t sure she could take the shock of another unofficial talk with the chief. “Sir?”
“I hear Zeke’s left town.”
“Yes, sir, he has.”
“That’s, uh, permanent?”
“Yes. But I want to assure you that the interview with the FBI— I’m not resigning, Chief.”
“I’m sorry.”
She froze. He was sorry she wasn’t resigning? She knew they’d never been the best of buddies, but he wanted to get rid of her?
A welling of something sharp clawed at her throat. Chief Harnett swore. And Darcie realized a tear had escaped. A few weeks ago she would have been mortified. Right now, in the hierarchy of things, it was nothing.
“Maybe you better take the day off, Darcie. You worked a lot of overtime during the winter and—”
“If it’s all right, sir, I’d rather work. Only… You want me to leave?”
“Leave? Who the hell said anything about— Oh. Damn. I didn’t— No, I don’t want you to leave. I consider you a fine officer. If I’ve been hard on you, it’s because I see what you’re capable of. And—” he rubbed a hand over his jaw “—if I’m honest, probably because I didn’t want anybody thinking I favored you when it came out about me and your mother.”
His erect stance went even straighter. “When I said sorry, I meant about you and Zeke. And I am. For the two of you, and selfishly, too. I hoped you’d get together and then Marty would be satisfied you were settled enough that she’d move in with me.”
Darcie rocked back on her heels, then took one step backward. Before she got back in her car, though, she did get out a couple sentences.
“If you’ll excuse me, Chief, I’m going to take you up on that day off after all. I need to talk to somebody.”
Her mother was hanging up the phone as Darcie walked in the kitchen.
“That was Dutch—the chief,” she said, looking at Darcie warily.
Darcie nodded as she took a chair at the table and gestured her mother to another. “Mom, come sit down. I have an apology to make to you.”
Her mother paused, her blue eyes wide. “To me?”
“Yes. I worked all this out in my head recently, but I never said it to you. And you’re the one person who needs to hear it. I was using you as an excuse for coming back to Drago. Not taking responsibility for my own decisions. I could have left a long time ago. You don’t need my rent and you don’t need me to keep the place going. You do fine on your own.”
Martha sat down, hard, with none of her usual grace.
“Oh, Darcie.” She gu
lped in air. Her words came out trembling between a laugh and a sob. “I do need you, but not… Oh, God. You stayed because you thought I needed your help?”
“Yeah, initially. Or you would have lost the house.”
“I would have lost the house? I only wanted the damned thing to give you a sense of security. I tried to protect you, to keep you from finding out those collections of Gordon’s were worthless, but I couldn’t stop you, I just couldn’t stop you.”
Darcie opened, then closed her mouth. Her brain was too busy chewing over the damned thing to produce words.
Her own words to Zeke about his gifts to his mother sounded in her ears as if the Fates were laughing at her.
This isn’t about what you need to give, it’s what she needs to get.
She’d been lecturing him, but she’d made the same mistake—only on a much more grandiose scale. What an idiot!
“Oh, God,” her mother repeated, sobbing. “Dutch says I need to learn to say what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, and he’s so right. I’ve kept you chained here because I didn’t have the courage—”
“No! Mom, that’s what I’m saying. Yeah, I came back and lived here so we could pay off the house. But these past years it wasn’t because of the house or because you—” Better not to spell out her earlier views on her mother’s lack of competence when she was trying to apologize. “I stayed because I made that decision. Because I wanted to stay. For a long time I wasn’t grown up enough to admit that. I blamed you instead of taking responsibility for my decisions. I apologize for that.”
Her mother smiled, and gulped in a sob. “You have nothing to apologize to me for, Darcie. There are so many things I wish I’d— No.” She shook her head. “No. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to look ahead. We each did the best we could at the time. I thank God our best is better now than it was.”
“Amen!” Darcie said with irreverent enthusiasm.
Her mother giggled. Then they were both laughing.
Ribs aching from laughter and cheeks stained from tears, they finally came up for air.
“Darcie, I know the timing on this is awful, what with Zeke…”
The last bubble of laughter in Darcie’s lungs evaporated like a drop of water on a skillet “He’s gone, and he’s going to stay gone, Mom. I can’t live my life waiting for that to change.” Or waiting for the hurting to stop.
She had a feeling she’d waste a lot of time if she waited for that.
Her mother laid her hand over Darcie’s on the table. “I don’t know how I came to have such a strong and courageous woman for a daughter, but I am so grateful I have you, Darcie Ann.” She straightened and hesitated before she continued. “So, what would you think if we sold the house? Because I want to move in with Dutch.”
The box had fallen apart. The box he’d told Darcie about where he kept memories of her. Splintered, shattered, turned to dust. Poof.
He’d accepted the box might need to be larger—a lot larger—after these weeks with her, after making love with her again and again. But he’d thought he could contain them. Eventually.
It used to be they were neatly contained during his waking hours, spilling out only in the weakness of dreams. He’d thought he could return to that when he left Drago. He’d thought that not getting much sleep would mean he’d be free from Darcie.
Except the box had fallen apart and now those memories and thoughts and feelings haunted him all the time.
There were the insidious Drago thoughts. Catching a weather map on TV and knowing Mrs. Richards should be warm enough. Hearing a reference to soybean futures and wondering how Everett’s niece-in-law was doing with the farm. Seeing a prototype for a game and thinking Warren would like it.
But those weren’t nearly as powerful as the other moments.
A glint of sun on brown hair, the echo of a laugh that almost sounded like her. For God’s sake, last night he’d seen a cop car and he’d had to pull into a parking lot and sit there, waiting for the wash of reaction to ease until he could finish driving to a dark house that seemed utterly unfamiliar.
Darcie could have been here with him, if she’d wanted. It wasn’t him running away. It was her refusing to leave.
“Zeke.” Brenda was at his office door.
He snapped, “Knock, dammit,” without looking up.
“You’d tell me to stay out. Again.”
He growled. “I’m working on something.”
“You’re working on bringing your company down.”
He slowly raised his head. Vanessa, Quince and Brenda stood shoulder to shoulder in front of his desk.
“Ever since you came back from Illinois,” said Vanessa, “you’ve been possessed. It can’t go on like this.”
“I’m okay.”
“You haven’t left this complex in a week, Zeke,” she said.
“Bull. I drove home last night. I saw a— I drove home last night.”
“That was last week.”
Zeke started to scoff, then his gaze connected with Brenda’s grim expression. “Five days ago,” she said.
“You’re looking worse and worse, you blew off the board meeting last week, you’ve got Wall Street nervous, you’re not producing anything,” Vanessa said, with the assurance she always spoke with when citing facts, “and you’re driving everyone crazy.”
Brenda leaned forward. “Here are today’s resignations.” She slapped papers on Zeke’s desk facing him so he could read them. The top one said, “I resign, effective immediately,” signed by the VP for Development. “That brings the total to thirty-seven, Zeke.”
“Who needs them?”
Holding his gaze, Brenda added another sheet to the pile. “And mine.”
“What? You can’t—”
“I can. I do. I quit.”
“You ungrateful—”
“Ungrateful, my ass. I have worked ten times harder for you than you noticed. And five times more than you pay me for. I haven’t minded because of the break you gave me at the start. And because you were a good guy at heart. Good, but lost. Now you’re only lost. I am not going to sit outside that door and watch you tear your company, your life and yourself apart.”
She had tears in her eyes. Brenda Truman had tears in her eyes. The shock reached right through his fog and grabbed him around the throat.
“This has got to stop,” Vanessa said, “for the sake of Zeke-Tech. If you don’t stop it, I will take over the company, Zeke, and force you out. I’d hate to see you lose your company, but I’d hate even more to see you kill it.”
Zeke looked from her to Brenda, and finally to Quince. His college roommate. His oldest friend.
Except for a girl from chem lab, now a cop in Drago, Illinois, who wasn’t willing to leave her hometown for him.
“Quince?”
“You’re like a brother, Zeke. If you need to crash on my couch indefinitely, get drunk, talk, I’m there. But I won’t see Zeke-Tech go down. If you don’t snap out of this as far as the company’s concerned, I’ll back Vanessa’s takeover. If it doesn’t succeed, my resignation will be in that pile.”
Vanessa didn’t give Zeke time to respond. “The news conference for Z-Zap that you’ve had Quince postpone four times is the day after tomorrow, Zeke. You will go home, get some decent food, sleep for twenty-four hours, shower and shave and return for a meeting of all employees at which you will assure them that Werewolf Zeke is gone for good. Then you will go home for more decent food and regular sleep before putting on your slickest suit and you will wow them at the news conference. This is not negotiable. You have twenty minutes to leave this office.”
She sounded cool and crisp and certain, but he saw her hand shake as she reached across the desk and touched his. “Take care of yourself and take care of this company, Zeke.”
Then she turned and left.
Quince came around the desk and rested his hand on Zeke’s shoulder. “We had to do this, buddy. You’re in a tailspin. Another few days and you’d crash an
d burn. You want anything—anything—you call me.”
Then Quince, too, left.
Brenda remained, looking him over. “I don’t know all that happened out in Illinois, but I know enough to know you screwed up, Zeke. Now you’re punishing yourself and everyone around you. I won’t watch it any longer.”
She pivoted, heading for the door.
“Brenda.”
She stilled, but he didn’t know how to start. Or was it that he didn’t know how to stop. How to stop doing what he’d done all his life. Driving. Achieving. Pushing.
Living for two people’s dreams, even when one had never asked him to do anything but live for his own dreams.
He created a loving marriage, a home, a family…. He was looked to for common sense and uncommon kindness. Those are goals for you aspire to. Those are accomplishments that would make your father proud of you.
“What, Zeke?” Brenda demanded.
He met her eyes and said the only thing that came to mind.
“Please.”
Zeke looked terrible.
That’s all Darcie could think as she watched the business network’s coverage of the release of Zeke-Tech’s spam killer on the café TV usually tuned to sports or soap operas.
“Look at that Zeke,” said Loris. “He puts the rest of them to shame.”
“Bet that suit’s Armani,” added Mildred Magnus knowingly.
Darcie felt glances dart her way, but she kept her eyes on the screen.
Oh, he was dressed great, in a suit that slid across broad shoulders like a lover’s hands. His face was as arresting as ever. But his eyes were…gone.
Except nobody but her seemed to see it.
Everyone in Drago was thrilled at their hometown boy doing it again, especially with the stock recovering just as everybody was getting nervous about its recent slide. It had jumped up yesterday, with analysts citing some hush-hush meeting at Zeke-Tech that they said had restored confidence in Zeke and his company. As if anyone with a brain would doubt Zeke.
But Darcie could only watch and ache. For him, and for herself.
He looked terrible. And miserable. It would break her heart if his time in Drago had done this to him permanently.
What Are Friends For? Page 21