by Fiona Zedde
“Unfortunately, he’s someone in our lives in Miami,” Claudia said before Rémi could object to her mother’s demanding tone. “He’s trying to take over Rémi’s business, and maybe even hurt her as well.”
“What?” Kelia came fully into the room and sat down hard in the armchair across from them. She touched her belly as if suddenly nauseous. “Are you sure it’s the—what does he look like?”
Rémi described him, watching her mother’s stunned face with growing curiosity and concern. “What’s going on?”
“What is he doing?” Kelia whispered, as if to herself.
“Do you know this guy, Mama?” Rémi withdrew her feet from Claudia’s lap and sat up in the couch.
“Yes. Yes, I do. He and your father were friends a long time ago. Something happened between them. I’m not sure what; Gus never told me.” Kelia’s low voice changed, became deeper as if giving way to secrets. “Whatever it was, was bad. They stopped speaking and it suddenly seemed like Matthias was trying to destroy Gus and whatever mattered to him.” She swallowed and looked up at Rémi. “After your father died, I didn’t hear any more from Matthias.”
“You said that this rivalry was between Auguste and Anderson. Why would you have any reason to hear from him?”
Beside Rémi, Claudia made a low noise. Rémi looked at her but her lover watched her mother with understanding. And pity.
“What? What happened?”
“Over the years, my relationship with your father became very turbulent. We . . . fought. And I grew angry at the way that he sometimes treated me. The first time I did it I was so angry that I barely knew what I was doing.”
“Did what?”
But Kelia didn’t answer her.
“You don’t have to tell us this if you don’t want to,” Claudia said gently.
“No. I have to. It’s only fair. Especially with what Matthias is trying to do to Rémi’s business.”
Then it hit Rémi. “You fucked him.”
Kelia flinched as if her daughter had slapped her. “If you have to put it that way, yes.”
“Shit.” Rémi sank back into the sofa.
This was the last thing she expected. Matthias Anderson and Kelia Walker-Bouchard? The image of her mother writhing beneath Anderson’s cold hands came unbidden to her mind. “You must have been really mad at my father.”
Kelia clasped her hands in her lap but did not look away from Rémi’s cool stare. “I’m not proud of what I did.”
“It seems like your relationship with Papa made you do a lot of things that you regret now.”
“Yes.” The flesh around Kelia’s mouth was tight and drawn, her eyes bleak with worry. “I can’t imagine why Matthias is doing this to you. You’re not Gus. You have nothing to do with his business dealings.”
“Are you sure what happened between them was business related? If he seduced you, there must have been something personal to it.”
“He didn’t seduce me. I went to him,” Kelia said with the voice of a woman who’d lived with her own martyrdom for a long time.
Rémi shook her head. “I’m sure there was a build-up. I’m sure he sowed the seeds of it. And he could have said no. Anderson doesn’t strike me as the kind of man to let things happen to him. He’s an opportunist who takes what he wants, regardless of whether or not people around him realize he’s the one doing the taking.”
“You don’t have to give me an excuse, Rémi.”
“I’m not giving you an excuse, dammit!” Anger flared to life, suddenly, in Rémi’s chest. “You were stupid. He took advantage of that.”
“Rémi . . .”
But she shrugged off Claudia’s cautioning hand.
“Don’t you think I’ve already punished myself over this even more than you ever could?” Kelia stared at Rémi, the long line of her throat taut with emotion. “I regret everything that happened between me and Matthias. I wish I hadn’t been so stupid, as you call it. I had other options, but I chose him. Just like I could have stayed with you in Miami but instead I came back here. I regret everything !”
“Did my father know?”
“I don’t think so. He never said anything to me.”
But Rémi knew that her father might not have told his wife all that he knew. Auguste could hide a boiling rage under the most pleasant of smiles. Even his contempt and disappointment in her, Rémi was convinced, he hid from everyone else in the family until the day he slashed her with the knife.
Her fist squeezed and released in her lap, anger still thrumming through it. Why was she angry? She should have been thrilled that Kelia had managed to get some of her own back in the face of Auguste’s abuse. But this just seemed too much. Her head spun. Kelia had slept with this man? This man who had tried to kill Rémi? This man who had tried to take everything she built over the last five years away from her? A muscle in her jaw ticked.
“Darling, this thing between your mother and that man is in the past.”
“But isn’t the past what’s kicking us in the ass even now?”
Claudia said nothing, only leaned close to stroke Rémi’s back, her eyes still watching Kelia with pity.
“I’m going to call Matthias,” Kelia said, standing up. “I must have his number around here somewhere.”
“Call him and say what? By your own admission you haven’t spoken to him in years. What do you possibly have to say to him now that will change the course of whatever he has planned for me?”
Kelia sat back in the chair, deflated. “I guess you’re right.” She cupped a hand over her mouth, staring into space.
Claudia squeezed Rémi’s arm. “Let’s give your mother some space. I think she needs some time to digest what you just told her.”
Alone with Rémi in her bedroom upstairs, Claudia was even more sympathetic.
“I can’t imagine the kind of life she had with her husband that made sleeping with his worst enemy a possible choice to make.”
Rémi couldn’t imagine the kind of woman who would lie under that vermin, Anderson, and keep coming back for more just because of a tiff with her husband. She squeezed her eyes shut to banish the images that crowded into her head. Anderson’s ash-white body moving like a snake over her mother’s. Kelia clutching at him, not in pleasure but in bitter revenge for whatever her husband had done to her at home.
“I can’t even imagine what—” Rémi pressed a fist to her forehead. The mattress dipped as Claudia sank into it next to her.
“Don’t judge. What’s done is done. Your mother is already beating herself up over this. Don’t get in line to do your damage too. Put yourself in Kelia’s shoes. She made choices. They were wrong. Let’s just deal with this Anderson character and stop looking back at the past.”
Rémi turned her head to look at her lover. “But the past is waiting in Miami, trying to take my livelihood away from me.”
“And if anything, it’s because of something your father did, not Kelia. Be reasonable and be fair. Think about it.”
Claudia sat above her, an oblique line in the bed, face soft with concern. She took Rémi’s fisted hand in hers. Long fingers roamed the back of Rémi’s hand, dipping in the shallow valley between each finger, warm and undeniable until the fist released and Rémi felt a sigh take her entire body and release through her mouth.
“What are you doing to me?”
“Nothing you won’t allow.”
Claudia fed her a gentle smile. “Forgive her,” she said. “Forget about what she did. Think about how to stop him when we get back.”
Just that simply, it was done. Rémi nodded and closed her eyes. “You’re right.” She sighed again. “You’re right.”
Sunlight poured like honey over Rémi’s bare legs and arms through the high windows of what had been her father’s study. Even with the windows and the sun high and shining most of the days she’d been in the room, Rémi only remembered the study shrouded in darkness. The thick curtains drawn to keep out the cold. A fire crackling and popping spa
rks in the fireplace. Her father’s brooding face behind the desk.
But now the room was a revelation of light. Kelia had apparently moved all the books into the darker adjoining room and made it into a library. Curtains still framed the windows, sentries at the ready to fight against seasonal chill, but that was all that remained of the old room. Bright purple and white orchids in porcelain pots sat on the window ledges, peeking out against a backdrop of deep green spring grass outside and the hedges of blooming lilac—thick and tall with their pale purple stalks like wheat—that rippled at the outer edges of the yard. Far beyond, white sails waved like flags from the bay’s glittering blue surface. Compared to the view, the book face down on Rémi’s thigh held little appeal.
“Mama, Mama! Look what I—”
She turned her head at the sound of the high-pitched voice bursting into the library. A boy who looked about eight years old stopped short just inside the room. His green eyes widened.
“You’re not my mama.”
A blue and white Transformers backpack hung heavily from both hands.
“That’s true,” Rémi said. “I think”—she paused, making the time to breathe as she took in the shape and shade of her brother’s face—“you might have better luck outside. She’s in the garden.”
“Okay.” He ran off, hip bouncing off the doorjamb, not even questioning who Rémi was and what she was doing in his house.
She abandoned her book on the sofa and walked after him, through the house with its shifting light and dark, beyond the kitchen and the radio warbling NPR news, and out into the backyard. The screen door banged shut after him. Beyond the mesh, his pale curls twisted in the midafternoon sun.
“Mama!” he called to Kelia, who was kneeling near an explosion of yellow roses. “Are you hiding out here again?” His voice rang high with laughter.
Beside her, Claudia looked up and at the boy. The automatic smile fell from her mouth as she got a proper look at René.
“Never from you, sweetie.” Kelia pulled off her gloves and pulled her son into a long hug. “I think you grew taller while you were gone,” she said, pressing his cheeks with her bare palms and dotting his forehead with kisses.
“Mama . . .” the boy protested, flicking an embarrassed gaze at Rémi and Claudia. But he leaned, greedy after so long from home, into his mother’s touch.
“Oh, I’m being rude.” Kelia stood up. “René.” She turned her son to face Rémi. “This is your sister, Rémi. Remember, we talked about her.”
He held out his hand, a grown-up in miniature, wearing jeans and a remarkably clean oversized white T-shirt. “Pleased to meet you.”
The weight of his hand was slight in Rémi’s. A feather. He was eight years old. He could have been any child, blameless. But when he looked into her face, his father’s eyes stared out at her. Vividly green and undeniable. Rémi’s grip slackened and she dropped his hand.
“And her friend, Claudia.”
She took his hand and smiled gently down into his face. The boy smiled back, cheeks coloring at her warmth. A new infatuation? Then his mother touched his shoulder and he turned away.
“I wasn’t expecting them to drop you off until almost dinnertime,” Kelia said, hugging his slight frame to hers. His wordless reply made her laugh and she took his hand in hers. “I’m going in to make lunch,” she tossed over her shoulder as she and René walked toward the house.
“Sure.” Rémi answered automatically. What else was she supposed to say?
“This is unexpected,” Claudia murmured, moving close to slip an arm around Rémi’s waist and lean in.
Rémi shook her head. Unexpected. Yes. This new development certainly was that. In the kitchen, Kelia fussed over her child, making a lunch of meatloaf sandwiches and salad that was enough for all of them, including the absent Yvette who was off with friends and had been since just after breakfast.
They sat down at the table and ate in an odd triangle of silence. René and Kelia chatted about the boy’s camping trip while Rémi and Claudia could only look on in bewilderment. The awkward lunch couldn’t end fast enough.
Afterwards, Rémi took Claudia sailing, coasting out onto the placid waters of the bay in the small boat that once belonged to her father. The sun pressed down on her shoulders and arms, which were bared in a white tank top that fluttered against her braless breasts in the breeze. In a pale yellow polo shirt tucked and belted into matching shorts, her companion sat back in the small sailboat, eyes shaded by sunglasses, face held up to the caressing wind.
Claudia hadn’t questioned her sudden need to be on the water and away from the house, only said yes to Rémi’s question and changed her clothes. Her silence in the rocking cradle of the boat said that she understood everything. Rémi was glad. For now, she didn’t want to think, didn’t want to question. That was for when they returned to shore. For now, it was just her lover, the breeze, and the water. The rest would come later.
Chapter 32
“Did Auguste know the child wasn’t his?”
Rémi asked the question baldly as she stood with Kelia over a sink full of dirty dishes. Claudia, Yvette, and René had already fled the scene of the great American feast to watch the sunset, leaving the two women alone.
Ever since Rémi could remember, Kelia always preferred to hand wash the dishes then leave them to drip dry in the dishwasher. They set up a mini-assembly line, with Rémi rinsing the soapy dishes she took from her mother then sliding them down into the white insides of the underutilized machine. A white salad bowl clinked against a clear glass plate as she settled them side by side.
Earlier, after the few hours on the water, her mind had cleared enough for her to see past her shock at René’s existence and her mother’s nonchalance. At the dinner table, Yvette, René, Claudia, Kelia, and she chatted amicably about nothing in particular over another of Kelia’s plain and delicious meals until it was time to disperse.
Now, up to her pink-gloved elbows in hot soapy water, Kelia stopped. The oval plate burped as it slid between her soapy hands and almost fell back into the water.
“What?”
Looking at her mother, Rémi felt stirrings of the same sympathy that Claudia had expressed. Here was a woman so caught up in the horrors of her own world that she missed the most obvious things. Or perhaps she just hoped others had missed them.
“Were you able to fool my father?”
“There’s nothing to fool Auguste about, René is my—our son.”
“You were right the first time. René is your son, but if Matthias Anderson walked in here right now, he’d say the same thing. That boy is his son too. He’s the image of him. And there’s no way that my father didn’t know this.” Rémi braced her wet hands against the granite counter. “There’s no way that you didn’t know this.”
Kelia allowed the plate to fall back into the sink with a splash. “Is it that obvious?” Her face was a study in amazement.
“Mama, yes.” Rémi stared at her mother. Not able to believe that this woman kept the child she bore from a man other than her husband. A revenge child. “Papa would have been blind not to notice that René is not his.”
“But he never said anything.” Kelia’s voice hovered barely above a whisper.
At least not to you.
The thought of Auguste suffering in emotional agony while another man’s child thrived in his wife’s belly and then his home filled Rémi with a sudden and vicious satisfaction. She cleared her throat.
“I can’t tell you anything about what my father may or may not have said. Obviously I’m the last one who’d know what was on his mind. But I do know if my woman got knocked up by my enemy, I wouldn’t be able to keep on going as if nothing happened.”
“But he never hurt me. At least no more than usual. And Gus was nothing but wonderful to René. All the way until the very end.” Kelia’s gaze fell into the soapy water, as if seeing the past eight years with the man she thought she knew.
“I don’t know what to s
ay, Mama. I really don’t. But this definitely complicates things with Anderson. I don’t even know what to say to this man the next time I see him.”
“You shouldn’t have to say anything to him. René is mine. He doesn’t need to know about my son.”
“But what if this has something to do with your son?”
Kelia pulled her gloved hands from the water and turned to Rémi, keeping a soapy grip on the edge of the sink. “What can this possibly have to do with René?” Her eyes bored into Rémi. “Nothing,” she spat. “Absolutely nothing. I’ll do whatever I can to help you in this situation with Matthias. The last thing I want is for something that your father or I did to come back and hurt you. But this has nothing to do with my baby. Just remember that.”
Rémi ignored the pinch of jealousy that wished Kelia had felt the same way about her fourteen years ago. Possessive. Guarded.
“All right,” she said then cleared her throat. “Do you want to switch with me? I can wash the plates while you put them in the dishwasher.”
Kelia blinked as if waking from a startling dream, then nodded jerkily. “Okay.”
They continued cleaning the dishes in silence until footsteps on the walkway made Rémi look up.
“Why do you both look like someone just died?” The screen door slid closed as Claudia walked into the house.
Rémi shrugged. Kelia continued to rinse the dishes and put them away.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. René and Yvette sent me up to get you. The sunset is much too nice for the two of you to waste it cleaning dishes.”
Rémi opened her mouth to protest, but Claudia gently squeezed her side. “Come on, you two. René and Yvette would enjoy some family time with you.”
“You’re probably right.” Kelia dried her hands on a towel, face settling into lines of exhaustion. “I feel like it’s been ages since I’ve sat down with my children.” She looked at Rémi.
“Come on. The others are waiting down by the water. We even saved a place on the blanket for the two of you.” Claudia wove her fingers through Rémi’s and touched Kelia’s shoulder. In the backyard, just as the grass began to slope, Yvette and René sat shoulder to shoulder on the blanket, their heads bent in laughter.