Footsteps

by Susan Fanetti

  The scene at the bonfire had mesmerized her. Although she wanted, craved, the promised solitude that had been her sudden boon, the golden glow of the fire, the faint strains of music and voice rising up into the air with the sparks and smoke, the warm way the people were clustered near the flames, all of it appealed to her in a way that made her lonely. What she saw around that fire was friendship.

  Sabina had multitudes of acquaintances but not one friend. She could not remember what it was like to have a friend. The sight of it on the beach had frozen her in melancholy.

  Now, with the tall, dark stranger standing before her—no, not a stranger, her Good Samaritan from the night before, who was a Pagano…Carlo. Carlo Pagano—she felt awkward. Sheepish. It wasn’t a feeling that fit well on her. He’d hailed her, welcomed her. So she put on her meet-and-greet face.

  “Um…Sabina? Er…Mrs. Auberon, I mean?”

  “Sabina, yes. And you are Carlo? We met last night?”

  He smiled, and when he did, his eyes crinkled deeply at their corners. “Yes, kind of. Not formally, though.” He held out his hand. “Carlo Pagano.”

  For the space of one heartbeat, she hesitated, without knowing why she would. Perhaps because he’d seen her in an intimate weakness, dominated by her husband. But then she turned on her smile and shook his hand. “Sabina Alonzo. Auberon.” That, too, was interesting. Although her name was officially hyphenated—James, despite his refusal to allow her her language, the most important marker of her cultural identity, took great pleasure in the fact that she was foreign-born, which he thought exotic and alluring—she could not remember the last time she had not introduced herself as Sabina Auberon.

  Rather than release her hand immediately after a polite shake, he held on. Not forcefully, but firmly. His hand was large and surprisingly rough. Men who wore tuxedos and attended high-profile civic events did not, as a rule, have rough hands. They had hands like James’s—manicured. Soft. Well-tended.

  But she had noticed last night, in the brief, fraught seconds she’d been in his company, that this man had seemed not quite in place at that event. His tuxedo had been expensive and well cut, fitting his tall frame perfectly, but he’d seemed slightly awkward in it. His hair had not been so carefully coiffed as the other men’s; it had been then, as it was now, rather messy, but not in the studied, intentional way that some men affected. It was on the long side of short, and very dark, swept back from his face but not in a way that seemed like he had much control. He had a dark, full beard—that was neatly trimmed—and heavy brows that made his expression look particularly intense.

  Lord. He could have walked straight across the moors. He was Heathcliff incarnate.

  She snatched her hand back, freeing it from his hold.

  A furrow passed through his brow, and then he dropped his hand. “You’re welcome to join us at the fire. It’s just the town party, winding down. Nothing private.” He paused and looked past her down the beach from whence she’d come. “Your husband, too. All comers.”

  “It’s only me.” She thought. She should thank him and decline, then turn and head back to the solitude of her house, solitude about which she’d been ecstatic only minutes before, before she’d come upon the bonfire and suddenly and rather ironically gotten melancholy about the absence of friendship or connection in her life.

  But she was melancholy about it. Moreover, standing here, she’d realized that her feet hurt. She’d walked quite a long way in her well-tended bare feet, feet which were not allowed to become calloused. The salt in the incoming tidewater stung, even as the cold numbed. And her knees ached.

  Perhaps a short rest by a warm fire was a good idea. “Yes, thank you. I’d like that. For a minute or two only. Then I should go back.”

  Again, he smiled and held out his hand. She returned the smile but walked past his hand, heading up toward the fire on her own, ignoring the sting on the soles of her feet. She was quite adept at ignoring pain. When she reached the circle of people and flame, though, she was at a loss. This was not an event for which she understood the protocol, and there wasn’t an obvious place for her to sit that she could see.

  Then she felt a hand on her lower back, and she flinched a little and turned. Carlo stood behind her, his hand out oddly, as if he’d just pulled it away—which, in fact, he had. With his other hand, he gestured to a long log, where an enormous animal...a dog? Was that a dog?...lay, its head up, watching her with interest. That interest didn’t seem hungry, so Sabina allowed Carlo to lead her to the log, and she sat.

  “Can I get you a drink? There’s some beer left, some bottled water…a couple of bottles of booze are going around, but I don’t guess…”

  “Water would be nice, thank you.” He went off with a nod, and Sabina sat and looked around the bonfire. No one had taken much notice of her, except the dog, which had risen to sit and was now staring at her imploringly. When Sabina met its eyes, it pushed its nose toward her and shifted. The giant, furry beast wanted her to pet it. Hoping that she would not lose a limb in the effort, she brushed her hand over its wide head covered in soft, silky fur, and the dog immediately dropped that massive melon into her lap.

  “Elsa, down.” Carlo was back and holding out a bottle of water to her. At his command, the dog slithered sadly from her lap to lie again on the sand.

  Sabina took the bottle, and Carlo sat next to her. “Elsa. It’s—she’s a girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “She seems very sweet. She’s enormous, though. Like a bear. What kind of dog is she?”

  “Leonberger. She is sweet. They’re known as gentle giants.”

  Sabina nodded and sipped from her bottle. Having exhausted all the things she could think of to say about dogs—pets were not part of her experience with James, and thus not part of her experience at all—she fell silent and let her eyes trail over the people around her. They were mostly clustered in small groups—couples, families with sleeping children, friends—and yet the atmosphere, full of music, was very much of togetherness. It made her feel peace and tumult all at once. Perhaps she’d been better off without this taste of life out from under James’s thumb. The past few hours had been all about things she could not have.

  But if he was going to kill her, at least she could first take a little taste of what life was for other people.

  She turned; Carlo was looking at the fire. He was handsome, in that brooding, dark romance way. Wearing mismatched clothes—camouflage shorts and an unbuttoned plaid flannel shirt—he looked more relaxed than she was used to people being. With his attention away from her, she let herself indulge further in her critique. Strong, long, solid legs, with a moderate coverage of dark hair. His forearms, too, what was visible beyond the cuffs of his shirt, were long and visibly muscled. The loose lay of his open shirt didn’t afford much of a view of his chest, but what she saw was nice.

  Yes, he was handsome. And she was absolutely insane for even indulging her eyes. She felt as if somehow James would be able to tell, as if at this moment in Providence, wherever he was, at the office, at home, in another woman’s bed, wherever, he could see her seeing this man here.

  She had never been with any man but James. She wondered what it would be like to be touched in that way by someone who did not need to cause her pain to feel his own pleasure.

  And how, exactly, was she so certain that this man would not cause her pain? Or that any man would not? Because he was being polite to her now? Because he had intervened ever so slightly between her and James last night?

  Yes. Because he had intervened. Because he had felt enough power and self-possession to walk up to James Auberon and interrupt his abuse of his wife. A crowd of Rhode Island’s most prominent citizens had not felt that kind of power. They had all simply watched and pretended not to be looking.

  And because fate had put him in her path again tonight. Sabina laughed. Mother Mary. Even after all that had happened to her over the past fifteen years, the silly, bookish girl with the romantic notions
about tortured heroes and the redeeming power of love had not been killed. She’d merely lain dormant until the next ‘hero’ came along.

  She stood. “Thank you for the rest, and for the water. But I need to go back to my home now.”

  Carlo stood, too, and the dog rose with him. “There’s not another house on the beach for quite a ways. Where did you come from?”

  “Not far from Seagazer Point.”

  “Jesus. That’s more than two miles. Here—I can drive you.” He waved at some point behind her, trying to get someone’s attention.

  “Please don’t bother, really. I like the walk.” She stepped over the log to make her way around him, but she got tangled up in the mass of dog somehow, strafed one sore, bare foot across the rough wood, and only missed falling because Carlo grabbed her arm.

  As soon as she was steady on her feet again, she jerked her arm free. “Thank you. Good night.” She started off down the beach.

  He trotted after her and took her arm again. “Sabina!”

  She didn’t like this, not at all. Now she was beginning to feel like yet another man was forcing his will on her. Again, she yanked her arm away, and this time she stepped backwards, continuing down the beach but keeping an eye on him. Stupid romantic naïf in her head. She truly should know better.

  Walking after her, he put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Mrs. Auberon. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s dark, and you mean a long walk alone. I don’t intend anything inappropriate. I was only going to offer you a ride home. I can ask my sister to drive you, if that would make you feel more comfortable.”

  Sabina’s feet hurt. Her knees hurt. She had walked much farther than she’d intended when she’d come out for a stretch of the leg after her take-out dinner, and now she had to retrace her steps. She was cold, and it was dark. But there was not even the most microscopic chance that she would agree to a ride home from this man or from any of his relatives, male or female. This was about her will and his will. She would have preferred actually to have an accident on the beach and save James the trouble of staging one than to take the ride being offered.

  She turned without a word and continued toward home, her back to Carlo and his bonfire.

  For a few minutes, she walked alone, feeling both relieved and bereft. She had enjoyed that brief, warm respite at the fire. She had felt younger, even, somehow. Now, she was alone and cold, and her feet burned, and it was too dark to tell where the sharp shards of shells might be lurking, waiting to take a slice. The tide had come in, and she had to walk in the deeper sand, and around rock formations, which made her knees unhappy. The ride with his sister might well have been the smarter choice.

  But she could not have allowed it.

  Over the rush of surf, she thought she heard something else, or at least sensed something, and she looked over her shoulder to see Carlo running toward her. Knowing full well she couldn’t outrun him, she didn’t even try. Instead, she wheeled around and stood akimbo.

  “What are you doing?”

  He pulled up a few steps from her. “I’m walking with you. It’s too dark to go alone. I just needed to talk to my sister for a minute before I joined you.”

  “And if I don’t wish for your company?”

  He shrugged. “Public beach—actually, where we’re standing isn’t public. My other sister, Carmen, owns this stretch. That’s her house there.” He pointed up the rise to a sweet little shake-shingle cottage, its windows beaming with happy, golden light. “Technically, you’re trespassing right now.”

  “Why?”

  He grinned. Crinkly eyes. “Because you’re on Carmen’s beach.”

  Impatient with his willful obtuseness, she huffed. “No. Why are you following me?”

  “Because I’m a decent guy? Look, I don’t want to read the Quiet Cove Clarion in a couple of days and see that your body washed up down the coast. It’s dark. You won’t let me drive you. So I’m taking a walk at the same time you are, in the same general direction.” He held his hands out as if to show he was unarmed, harmless.

  “You understand who my husband is?” She knew that he did, but her point was made in the question.

  “Just walking you home. Mrs. Auberon.”

  “And then you’ll walk back? Alone? In the dark? Because the dark is safer for you? Do you have the night vision or something? Are you the Batman?”

  He laughed at that—a bark of surprise and then a full, rich laugh that made his baritone voice deepen to bass. She had no idea why what she’d said seemed to him so funny, but she waited, her fingers drumming her hips, until he’d collected himself.

  “No. Not Batman. Just Carlo.” He pushed his hand into the pocket of his shorts and pulled something out. “With a phone. I’ll call my brother for a ride back.”

  “Sisters, brother—how many is your family?”

  “Our little branch? There are six of us. Four boys, two girls. Do you have siblings?”

  It wasn’t a question she wanted to think about, let alone attempt to answer. “You may walk. Only that.” She turned and continued on. He trotted a few more steps until he was abreast of her, and they walked along the beach in silence.

  ~ 5 ~

  The woman walking alongside Carlo had surprised him. He’d made some judgments about her last night. She hadn’t focused his thoughts enough then for him to have realized it; he was much more focused on her husband. Those judgments he’d made about James Auberon he’d recognized right away and had allowed to form fully. Auberon was an abusive asshole who felt entitled to it. But as Carlo had made that determination, he’d also decided that Auberon’s wife was weak in will and in body. Despite walking up to them last night on some kind of hero’s mission, and despite her arresting beauty, he’d barely given her another thought. He’d spent his attention on his contempt for Auberon and his distaste for the reality that in order to find success as an independent architect in Providence, he’d have to make nice with a man like that.

  He hadn’t spent more than a few seconds wondering what Sabina Alonzo-Auberon might have gone home to, or what her life was like in general. He’d thought ‘beautiful,’ and he’d thought ‘weak,’ and he’d set her aside.

  Well, ‘beautiful’ was certainly accurate. Carlo thought she was more beautiful the way she was tonight, in jeans and a sweater, her hair loose and losing its battle with the night breeze off the water. But in just the limited exchanges they’d shared this evening, he could tell that ‘weak’ did not apply. There was fire and strong will in her. When she’d wheeled on him just now and asked him what he was doing, her eyes had flashed hot beams of anger at him, and it had pulled him up. It hadn’t been the desperate kind of fretful anger he might have expected from a woman who lived with an abuser. It had been fight. She’d turned on him and shoved her hands down onto her hips, and she’d been all confidence and attitude. She might as well have said out loud, ‘you think you can take me?’ She’d followed it up with sass, and she’d been comfortable in it.

  So she wasn’t weak. How a woman like this ended up letting a man like Auberon hurt her was beyond him. And hurt her he clearly did. When she’d reached up to take the water bottle from him, the sleeve of her sweater had pulled back from her wrist. The firelight had illuminated dark bands of bruising at the join of her hand to her arm and up for about three inches.

  But it wasn’t his concern. His only concern was getting her safely to her door.

  They walked in silence for at least half a mile. Once, when she’d put her foot down into deeper sand than she’d realized, she’d wobbled a little, and he’d reached out without thinking about it and taken her hand to steady her. She yanked it back immediately. Very clearly, she did not want him to touch her; she shrank and jerked away from even helpful touches. So he put his hands in his pockets, determined to let her go ahead and fall next time.

  The silence, though, was becoming oppressive and awkward. Usually, Carlo was perfectly comfortable in silence. Having grown up in the house he had, loud
was a constant state, everybody talking at the same time, nobody having what might be called a civilized conversation, but everybody managing to get their point across nonetheless. So Carlo had grown to like quiet and to appreciate people who could be together in silence. Now, though, the silence between him and Sabina was like an actual presence, and it felt strange.