Forever’s Just Pretend: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 2)

by Craig McDonald

  Brinke was suddenly at his side. She shook her head and hugged Hector. “I almost felt sorry for him when the rod hit him. What a terrible way to die.”

  “At least it was quick,” Hector said. “Maybe he was even dead before the sharks got him. A better, kinder death than the ones he was handing out. Surely better than Malú was dealt by him.”

  “You don’t feel anything for Miguel?” Brinke’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t believe that. You’re not that callous, not on your meanest day.”

  Hector brushed her wind-blown hair back from her face and kissed Brinke hard. “You’ve never seen anything close to my meanest day,” he said. “Old Miguel out there, he’s just another fish story now, the one who got away.”

  “Not from the sharks he didn’t,” Brinke said. She buried her face in his neck. “I need to go see to Consuelo. I don’t care how crazy Miguel was or what he just tried to do to us. She cared for that man once. Seeing that just now has to have hurt Consuelo, deep inside.”

  Hector handed her the binoculars to take back inside. He massaged his sore shoulders. “You do that then. Go see to Connie.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay, Hector?”

  “I’m fine,” Hector said. “That son of a bitch is not a bit close to my conscience.”

  “Then what are you going to do, Hector?”

  “See to Pap, I reckon. Man lived seventy years without taking a life. Now he’s done it twice. And, hell, we’re hardly halfway through twenty-five. What a bloody year this is shaping up to be.”

  Labor Day, 1925

  “The soul is healed by being with children.”

  —English Proverb

  55

  Hector said, “Seas are calm enough, we could take the boat out. Get a little time in before the storm season really settles in deep.” He stroked Brinke’s damp forehead. “If you’re up to it, I mean.”

  Brinke was sitting beside him on the sofa, fanning herself. She was wearing shorts and a loose-fitting T-shirt of Hector’s.

  Brinke had grown her hair out even longer over the summer and it reached below her shoulders, longer now than Hector had ever seen it. Brinke’s hair seemed to Hector to also be thicker and glossier of late. Her breasts were fuller and the texture of her skin had changed, he thought. Pregnancy seemed to agree with her.

  But Hector had also caught Brinke a few times looking in the mirror, searching her part for gray hairs. He’d tried to kid her about it, but Brinke wasn’t having any of it. “Five years between our ages, Hector, half-a-decade. Hell, in some ways, you’re still just a kid.”

  Hector had shaken his head. Smiling, he had said, “Actuarial tables indicate most men predecease their wives by just about that many years. Least this way we can maybe check out of this world together, or close to it.” He smiled and kissed her. “You won’t have to shoulder the trauma of mourning me, darlin’.”

  Brinke had shaken her head with a forced smile. Hector had to confess he hadn’t found it so funny himself, not after the bloody winter-into-summer of 1925. Hell, 1924 had been a bloodbath, too.

  He was hoping for a quieter, happier autumn. Maybe 1926 would be their banner year.

  But so far, Hector had found himself walking on eggshells. Brinke was obsessive about her diet and health. Since the doctor had told her she was pregnant, she eschewed liquor and cigarettes and shamed Hector into doing the same. He had to admit, he felt better, felt more clear-headed, for living the clean life.

  But all the colors of the world seemed somehow drabber.

  Brinke lifted her hair from the back of her damp neck. “Key West is just no place to be pregnant,” she said. “I’m actually homesick for Paris, for Paris in the winter. And for our friends still there. I wish I could go back there with you. See them. Let them know I’m still around. Hash and Hem, especially.”

  Hector stroked her cheek. “We could head north around these parts for the winter. New England, Michigan. Really feel the seasons.”

  “Maybe Key West is no place to raise a child,” Brinke said. “I know we just got here, but maybe we need to look somewhere else. Maybe out west, where we can have all those seasons. Idaho. Maybe Montana. Big Sky country. We could get a little ranch, and we could have a horse. When I was a little girl, I always wanted a horse. Wouldn’t you like one, Hector? You were cavalry, right? A horse for our daughter or son to ride? A big strawberry roan we could ride high up into the mountains. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  “If we’re going to sell this place, now might be the time,” Hector said. “Move before the Florida land boom goes bust, which I read in the paper some think is a real threat.”

  “I was just saying,” Brinke said. “A ranch some day, a horse, would be nice.” Brinke half-smiled. “But let’s do get out on the boat now. Out from shore, with the sea breeze, it will be cooler, at least.”

  “You’re up to it?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be fine. Really. I’m just fine.”

  ***

  They were two days at sea and headed back into port ahead of a storm front.

  Hector thought the tropical storm season was finally taking hold in the Gulf; hurricane season had arrived. The waters were choppy and the sky an ugly shade of gray. Hector could just see the top of the lighthouse on Whitehead Street poking up over the horizon.

  Because of the holiday, the waters were getting more crowded as they neared the Key and Brinke decided it was time to dress. She stepped back into her white swimsuit, pulling it up over her hips and breasts and then tugging its straps over her bronzed and now-freckled shoulders. She wrapped her arms around Hector’s waist. “How long?”

  “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “It was wonderful to get away. I so love this boat.”

  “Me too.” Hector wrapped an arm around her waist, steering the boat with one hand. He frowned at the heat he felt coming through her swimsuit. He raised his hand to her forehead. “It’s hot all right, but you don’t feel hot in that way. That’s a fever you’ve got, I think.” He thought that even with the sea breeze, he could smell the fever radiating from her now.

  “Really don’t feel so well all of a sudden,” Brinke said. “Haven’t felt great all morning. But standing up now, I feel woozier.” Brinke suddenly leaned into Hector, clutching at her belly. “My stomach hurts.” She groaned and went down to her knees. “Oh, God! It hurts so much!”

  Hector saw it then, this spreading crimson stain between her legs. Her swimsuit there was red with the growing stain of blood. Brinke’s gaze followed his. Brinke put a hand between her legs and it came away red. She held up her hand, slick with her own blood, and said, “Oh my God, Hector! What’s happening to me?”

  “Lay back, sweetheart,” Hector said, his voice urgent. He pulled down a life preserver and tucked it up under her legs, elevating them. “Just lay back, darling.” He opened up the throttle. “I’ll have you to a doctor in five minutes.”

  Brinke was groggy now, her eyes half-closed. She had curled into a fetal position, groaning and clutching harder at her belly and between her legs. Hector could feel her blood, warm and slick under his bare feet as it spread across the deck. It was a massive internal hemorrhage. He’d seen soldiers bleed out from belly wounds in a matter of minutes.

  Hector didn’t trust the civilian hospitals to cope with the kind of internal bleeding Brinke was enduring and those hospitals were all inland, anyway—they would take far longer to reach. Hector steered toward the naval base and the hospital there. Hector was counting on his veteran’s status and Brinke’s obviously life-threatening internal bleeding to secure her treatment there.

  Hector stole another glance down at her. Brinke was unconscious. Only the flutter of her pulse under her chin gave Hector indication she was still alive. Frantic, he got on the radio to the base.

  ***

  Hector contemplated the mounting pile of cigarette stubs at his feet. With shaking hands, he shook out another Pall Mall. His shirt tales and shorts were stained with Brinke
’s blood from where he had carried her from their boat to the hospital. He’d run with her, screaming all the way for help. Now Hector struck a match on the stucco wall of the hospital and lit his cigarette. It was starting to rain and he ducked under the eaves to get out of the cold shower.

  “Mr. Lassiter?”

  The doctor was fiftyish, tall and slender.

  Hector said, “Did I make a mistake, coming here?” His voice sounded strange to himself, hoarse and fragile. He said, “I mean, you probably don’t treat many pregnant women around here, do you, Doc?”

  The doctor patted Hector’s back. “Bum a cigarette?”

  Hector passed the doctor a Pall Mall and lit it off his own butt. The doctor said, “You did the right thing, Mr. Lassiter. The extra fifteen or twenty minutes spent getting to those other hospitals would have cost you your wife. You’d have lost her for certain. You saved her, coming here.”

  “She going to pull through, you’re saying?”

  The doctor hesitated. “The problem is plasma. I need more AB-negative and the place here is a bit short of potential donors. Everyone’s off base.”

  Hector tossed his cigarette to the ground and twisted the toe of a sandal over it. “That’s my blood type. Let’s go, right now. You can drain me dry if it’ll help Brinke pull through.”

  The doctor cast down his own cigarette and opened the door. “You’re sure of your type?”

  Hector nodded. “I’ve shed enough of it over the years to know. I was a medic, and so constantly getting tapped during my service in Europe.”

  The doctor took Hector’s arm, walking him briskly down the hall. “That’s very good luck for us, then. It should make the difference.”

  “What’s happened to her?”

  “She’s sustained at least a partial ectopic pregnancy,” the doctor said, urging Hector around a corner. Hector was already rolling up his shirtsleeves. “The fetus developed outside the womb,” the doctor continued. “It developed in the fallopian tube. I’m sorry, Mr. Lassiter, but she lost the baby. I’ve had to take the fetus, the placenta and both of her tubes. She also is likely to lose her right ovary. She shouldn’t ever risk another pregnancy, and frankly, after what’s already been taken from her, it’s unlikely to be an issue of choice.”

  “Just keep Brinke alive,” Hector said. “That’s all that matters anymore. You can pull her through, can’t you?”

  “With your blood, yes, I believe I can.”

  “Then like I said, you suck me dry if it will save Brinke.”

  56

  For the next several days, Brinke’s condition was judged “guarded” by her Naval doctor. Returning bellbottoms were screened and tapped for more blood.

  For the first day, Hector had been the sole source of blood for Brinke’s needed transfusions and for two days following her admission, Hector was woozy and weak from his own blood loss, living on sugar cookies and orange juice.

  He was sleeping on a couch in the waiting room. An orderly shook him awake. From the orange glow through the seaside windows, Hector guessed it was sunset. “She’s awake now, and she’s asking for you,” the orderly said.

  Hector struggled up into a sitting position and ran his hands back through his hair. He was still wearing the clothes he’d had on when he carried her into the hospital. Brinke’s blood had dried and darkened to the color of mud. He felt his jaw; six days since his last shave.

  Brinke winced when she saw him. “My God, Hector,” she said, her voice weak and hoarse. “Were you injured?”

  “That’s not my blood,” Hector said, absent-mindedly fingering his blood-crusted shirt.

  “The baby?”

  “Hush,” Hector said. “Rest. Sleep.”

  “I just woke up and don’t need more sleep,” Brinke said. “I lost our baby, didn’t I?”

  Hector stroked her forehead. “Thing that matters is that you’re here and you’re going to pull through.” He tried to make a joke. “You’re going to be fine now. You’re full of that crazy and intrepid Lassiter blood now. Seems we’re the same blood type, and a good thing it is that we are.”

  “It’s Stryder blood that buys a woman miles,” Brinke said trying to joke. “Or so I hear.”

  A tear slid down her cheek. Hector wiped it away with his thumb. “What have the doctors told you, Hector? What has happened to me? How bad is it? And no kind lies, Hector. I need the whole truth, straight up. And I need to know, can we try again? Can I have another baby?”

  Hector stroked her cheek. “No. And even if it was a remote possibility, you shouldn’t try. I wouldn’t let you try. I can’t risk you again. I can’t go through another week like this one.”

  Brinke scowled. “A week? I’ve been here a week?”

  “You were in shock before I got you off the boat. You nearly bled to death. You were in something like a coma for several days. We can’t try again.”

  “What did this cost me?”

  “I think the doctor should talk to you about that. I don’t know that much about female anatomy, I mean not the inner workings.” Another lame joke.

  Brinke nodded. “But he’s sure I can’t conceive another?”

  “Yes. That’s a certainty.”

  She bit her lip and her chin trembled. She said, “You can have a divorce, Hector. You should have a family. Babies of your own. That can’t happen with me now.”

  “Jesus! Stop!” Hector squeezed her hand. “Stop it! I don’t want a divorce. Hell, I don’t need family more than just the two of us, darling.”

  “Don’t need isn’t the same as don’t want, Hector.”

  “I don’t want more than you,” Hector said. “You’re all I want and all I need. And that’s the gospel truth.”

  Brinke hugged him to her. “Later you might feel different. You can go then, if you need to. I just want you to know that. I can’t lay claim to you now. Not when I’m not a true woman anymore. I’m sorry, Hector. I’m so, so sorry I failed you. Failed our baby.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for and I don’t ever want to hear you talk about yourself like that again, as damaged or incomplete. You just need to focus now on getting better. Get stronger so we can back to our sweet quiet life. Turn your mind off about all the rest.”

  “I don’t think I can do that, Hec.”

  “You have to, darling. Get well. Then we’ll get back on the boat, and we’ll go someplace neither of us has ever been. Just you and I and our writing tools. We’ll go wherever you want, New Orleans, Bimini. Maybe the Bahamas.”

  “Cuba,” Brinke said. “Havana. I need to finish revisions on Havana Bounce. Would be good to do that in situ.”

  “Okay then,” Hector said. “Havana it is.” Her talking about her writing gave him some heart and hope that fight remained in her. Brinke still saw a future for herself, he thought.

  She said, “I need you to do something else for me, my love.”

  Hector said, “Name it.” He figured she might ask him again if she was the one. If so, he was prepared to tell her so again, this time without hedging or reservations.

  “Go home now,” Brinke said. “Go home and wash up and get some sleep in our bed. Come back tomorrow shaved and showered and rested and having had a big, good breakfast. Do that for me, yes?”

  Hector squeezed her hand.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  “And bring my manuscript, would you? I need to put my mind to something. I need to work.” A strange and sad smile. “I need to create. Need to finish something.”

  ***

  A week later, Brinke was released from the hospital. She seemed fairly miserable. “I’m pretty mutilated,” she said on the ride back to their cottage.

  Jack Dixon, new sheriff-elect, had loaned Hector an official car to transport Brinke home. Brinke rolled down the window and leaned her head out, letting the wind whip her long black hair. “You’ve seen me naked for the last time, Hec. I look like Frankenstein’s monster down there now.”


  “The doctor said there will hardly be a scar in three months,” Hector said. “In a year, you won’t even notice it.”

  “I want to swim, but the damned stitches preclude that.”

  “Just for a short while longer,” Hector said.

  “I’ve been thinking again about us adopting.”

  “That’s fine, and we surely can think about all that,” Hector said. “But later. For a few months, let’s just be you and I, please? Our time in Paris was frenzied and strange. Our time together in Key West so far hasn’t been much different in that sense. I want to just loaf and love you. Okay?”

  Brinke rested her elbow on the car window and propped her head on her hand. The wind through the car window fingered her black hair. “You’re sure you’re not still with me because of guilt?”

  Hector sighed. “I’m sure, and that’s the last time I want to have this conversation. I mean that. Do we understand each other on that point?”

  “I understand what you’re saying.” Brinke scooted over and rested her head on his shoulder. “The doctor told me what you did for me, all of it,” she said. “Racing into port, carrying me across the base. Then giving so much blood they were afraid you’d be at risk yourself. He said you told them they could have it all and he believed you meant it. I have never had anyone make even minor sacrifices for me. He said you drew your Colt on him to make him take another pint from you when he knew he shouldn’t. What you did, what you’re doing…?”

  “You act as if there’s a choice to be made.”

  “Of course there was. There are always choices, Hector.”

  Hector wrapped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her. “Like I told you before, there’s no choice. Not where you’re concerned. Not loving you as I do.”

  57

  The first several days with Brinke back home were fiercely tumultuous. Her moods swung wildly between a kind of exhilaration or mania and terrible valleys of black despair that terrified Hector. Her depressions were so dark and fearsome Hector toyed with taking Brinke’s gun and his own out of the house. He thought of hiding the Colts somewhere on their boat.