“Oh, Marta. I am so sorry, I didn’t realize,” Caía said, chastened by the confession. Her grief embarrassed her, because she had clearly only been thinking of herself.
Marta nevertheless smiled. “My husband has been gone now for nearly one year,” she said, holding up a finger, and despite the strong façade, Caía noted a slight trembling of her lips. “Laura’s uncle has been a gift to us. I do not know how we will survive without him.”
A bit melodramatic, but the revelation had a sobering effect upon Caía. Some part of her wanted to apologize immediately, walk out the front door, and leave these people to live their lives in peace. But she stood a minute too long and “Tiíto” came bounding down the stairs, holding his very excited niece by the hand. Laughing, Laura skipped ahead of him, and only managed not to drag him down for his firm, steady hand and the sheer length of his arm.
Nothing could have prepared Caía for the sight of Nick Kelly up close.
Oh, sure, he was the same guy she’d spied from a distance—with that reddish-blond hair and those fathomless green eyes. But it was his presence she was unprepared for. Once off the steps, Nick Kelly stood a full head taller than Caía, with shoulders that said he worked out. But, yes, of course, he would be so vain, she thought bitterly. He had been a man at leisure for quite some time now. What else would he have to do while waiting for Laura to get out of school? She compared him with Gregg, and tried not to sneer.
It was difficult to view Nick in a positive light, and more difficult yet to meet his gaze, but Caía did so. He extended a hand in greeting, smiling companionably, and Caía was forced to reach out and embrace his gesture. It galled her, though she took his hand in hers, squeezing firmly, imagining it was her fingers wrapped around his throat instead. Only once she locked eyes with him, for one disconcerting moment, she couldn’t pry her gaze away.
Both Marta and Laura seemed to disappear from the room, despite the fact that they remained at her side. “I understand you are from Chicago,” Nick said, shaking her hand with equal vigor. “Whereabouts?”
“The burbs,” Caía said.
His gaze remained steady as he persisted. “Where?”
“Oh, um, Arlington Heights.”
“Nice area. So, what brings you to Spain, Caía?”
You, Caía replied silently, in her head. You did, Nick Kelly.
“No particular reason. It seemed as good a place as any,” she said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. She was managing to do exactly that, despite everything. “Divorce,” she added in an effort to quash the conversation.
Neither Marta nor Laura spoke a word. But one glance at Laura’s mother revealed an odd glimmer in her eyes. So, this had been her intent all along? To bring two lonely Americans together for supper. Well, the joke was on them.
Guess who’s come to dinner, Nico.
Here’s a hint, it’s not Sidney Poitier.
Caía liked Marta. But this was the most difficult thing she’d ever had to do—stand face-to-face with the man who’d killed her son and not scratch out his eyes. It was for Marta’s sake she held herself together. And for Laura’s as well. Only belatedly did she realize that she and Nick were still holding hands. She ripped her hand away, rubbing it as though she’d been stung.
“I am so happy,” Marta said. “I knew you would get along!” Pleased with herself, she clapped her hands. “Now, we will leave you to become acquainted while we go and check the paella, ¿no? Come along, Laura,” she said, before either Nick or Caía could protest her departure.
“Mami, ¿puedo abrir mi regalo?”
“First, let us see if the paella is ready.”
“Can we show Eugenia?”
“Despues,” Marta said. “We will wait to open your present later, vale?”
“Vale.”
Hand in hand, mother and daughter disappeared up the same stairs Nick had descended, where Caía assumed the kitchen must be. Uncomfortable to her bones, Caía peered around at the peculiarities of the ground floor. Bars near the front door, more bars near the back door. She felt as though she’d been imprisoned with her enemy, forced to face him. And in a sense, it was true. “Lovely house,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Nick agreed. He slid a hand into his pocket as he studied her. “Marta and Jimmy restored it from ruins.”
“Oh,” Caía said, drifting away from Nick, seemingly nonchalantly, though really she meant to put some much-needed space between them. She could smell him—not a terrible scent, but she didn’t want that odor stored in her memory. It was not the cloying scent of expensive cologne, just clean male skin and a slightly toasty scent, as though he’d been warming himself by a fire. This was not what Caía had expected. She didn’t know how to stand, what to say, how to be.
“Would you like a tour?”
“No, thank you,” Caía said, desperately eying the front door.
“Are you sure?”
Caía shrugged, this time perhaps more uncertainly, and her gaze climbed to the skylight in the ceiling.
“It opens up. Beautiful on a warm summer night. You can stargaze while floating in the pool.”
“It’s November,” Caía said, shivering, grateful no one had offered to take her jacket. She rubbed her arms, despite the temperature being closer to seventy than sixty. More than anything, she wanted to leave now. She didn’t want to think of Nick Kelly floating half naked in a Sultan’s pool. Somewhere, she thought she heard a clock ticking away seconds, but it was probably in her head. She heard screams, sirens, and for an instant, reality felt disjointed.
There was no way she should be standing here now, arms crossed, counting away the seconds until she could make a dash for the door—particularly not after scheming for months about how to get face-to-face with this man.
“I take it Marta didn’t warn you she was playing matchmaker?”
Caía lifted her face to Nick’s gaze. “Is that what she’s doing?”
He smiled, a smile that might have been charming . . . if Caía didn’t already loathe him. “That’s my guess. Americans in Spain, both from Chicago. I’m sure she thought we might have some things in common.”
Oh, boy, do we ever.
Caía wanted to tell him exactly what it was.
Jack Lawrence Paine, my son.
“She probably feels I’ve been alone too long.”
Yeah, well, so what? So had Caía, and the one thing she’d counted on—because, yes, Marta was right, no parent should ever outlive her child—was that Jack would be around long after Caía was gone. But he wasn’t, and she didn’t believe anyone could comprehend the concept of loneliness until they faced the loss of a child. A baby that came from her womb. A child she’d raised from his first breath. She’d taught Jack how to walk, talk, and how to brush his teeth. Husbands, boyfriends came and went. Screw men. Screw relationships. Screw Gregg. Screw this man standing in front of her, with his dental job that must have cost a mint. Gone might be his suits, but there was no sense of hardship coming from Nicholas Kelly. His black skinny pants were something out of GQ magazine, and his blinding white T-shirt made her think of Brad Pitt. Softly woven and tight, it wasn’t exactly a working-man’s brand. “So, what about you,” she asked. “What brings you to Jeréz?”
Moving in on his brother’s rich wife, no doubt.
“My brother,” he said, exhaling a massive sigh. “Unfortunately, I got here just in time to bury him. Brain cancer.”
“Oh,” she said in a tiny voice. “How sad.” But even hearing that, Caía couldn’t give him any credit. She couldn’t imagine he’d come here for humanitarian reasons. “How long did you know he was ill?” He must have known about his brother’s illness for a long time, and simply missed the opportunity to be at his side because he, like Gregg, was too busy to stop and put time and energy into anyone else.
“About a year, give or take,” he said. “But
. . .” He fidgeted nervously, lifting a hand to his temple. “Something happened that kept me from coming sooner.” There was a shift in his demeanor. A look of raw pain crossed his eyes that he didn’t attempt to conceal. It really surprised her. “He was barely cognizant . . . when I arrived. And then . . . once he was gone . . .” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and crossed his arms, precisely the way Caía was doing. Their combined body languages couldn’t have been more guarded or unfriendly. “Well, you know, I stayed to help out with my niece—and Marta. I promised Jimmy I would look after them.”
Caía didn’t want to feel sorry for Nick Kelly. “That makes sense,” she said, reading between the lines. She assumed, probably correctly, that the something that happened was Jack’s accident. However swiftly they might have conducted Nick Kelly’s investigation, she was sure it must have taken some time. There had been no formal charges, or any true investigation, but she imagined they would have asked him to stick around, regardless. Or maybe he had ordained it himself.
Upstairs, she could hear the happy shouts of a little girl, and her mom’s ensuing laughter.
“Here,” he said. “Let me take your jacket.” His tone brooked no argument, and Caía found herself shrugging out of her good leather coat—the only nice present Gregg had ever given her. She handed it over, despite not wanting to. Nick walked away with it and hung it on a coat rack, then returned. “How about that tour?”
“Sure,” she said, and gritted her teeth as he placed a hand on the small of her back.
Seven
We must embrace pain and
burn it as fuel for our journey.
– Kenji Miyazawa
One quick tour around Nº 5 Calle Lealas served to illustrate that, no, indeed, life couldn’t be more unfair. How was it that some people lived on the streets and others, like Marta Herrera Nuñez, lived like this? Why was she so special? Why was Nick?
Of course, Caía didn’t begrudge Marta her riches. It wasn’t that. It wasn’t about what either of them had, or didn’t have, but their general ability to have it, particularly since some people under this roof were directly responsible for the lack of ability other people had to strive for such things.
So, no, it wasn’t that Jack would never have a house like this—he probably wouldn’t have chosen it anyhow—it was that he would never be afforded a chance to try, or even to decide whether, for example, a Nasrid dynasty tapestry was an important addition for an already gaudy hall.
Or whether a garishly expensive Persian carpet—probably authentic—was a proper thing to walk on with dirty shoes.
As she passed by, Caía touched a calligraphic plaster fragment on display, wondering if it was an imitation. Spanish Islamic art was lovely, but if Marta possessed such things, they were probably not recent acquisitions. They would be heirlooms, passed down through the ages. The house was a veritable palace, with the second floor being a proper living space, equally as luxuriously furnished as the first floor. But somehow, it managed to feel a bit more lived in, despite the fact that they employed a full-time servant who kept the house spotless. Caía thought perhaps this was because here, on this piso, they were somewhat less formal than their home appeared to be.
Laura came shrieking past, skidding over the hardwood floors with hard leather shoes. She raced back out, carrying a well-dressed blond baby doll by the hair, cackling loudly. She waved the doll and then ducked back into the room from whence she’d come.
It was impossible to say exactly how many rooms the second floor held, but along Caía’s tour, she counted ten doors, not including the three balcony doors that opened to the view of the downstairs courtyard. Nick Kelly unlatched one of the balcony doors, opening it up to allow Caía to peer down at the pool. Naturally curious, she slid past him, taking care not to brush against him as she peeked over the balcony. As he’d said, it was a spectacular view.
Caía had never known anyone who lived this way. Her parents had been poor, their accounts of Poland so rife with hardship that they had never once considered taking her “home” for a visit. There were few family photos, but from those that existed, Caía had a sense of scarcity—except for that one photo of Caía’s grandmother with the lush fur shawl, taken, perhaps, before Nazi occupation. All Caía knew for certain was that the shawl did not arrive with her mother, and neither did either set of grandparents. Little to nothing was said about their lives, or their deaths, and Caía had learned to respect her parents’ silence. Some things were simply not meant to be shared . . .
Like your reason for being here.
“Jim designed the pool for the view,” Nick said. He closed the door again, shutting off the sound of trickling of water. One floor closer to the skylight, these doors would invite daylight into an otherwise dark interior.
“So, your brother was an architect?”
“Yes,” he said, scratching the top of his ear. But that was all he said before continuing along the tour. As it was below, the second-floor corridor persisted from one end of the house to the other. Street-side, there was an enormous living room, complete with a fireplace that looked like something out of a Jane Austen novel. In that room alone, Caía counted no fewer than three sofas and ten chairs, all grouped together into two seating arrangements. French doors leading to a balcony—presumably the same balcony he’d stood upon earlier today—lay squarely in the middle of the room, closed off at this hour to keep the nighttime street noise from the parlor.
Although no one was seated in this room right now, the fireplace was ablaze, and Caía wondered if this was where Nick had picked up his toasty scent. A glance at the coffee table revealed a sweating mug, half filled with beer. He led her back out of the room, leaving the beer for someone else to clean up, and Caía bristled over that.
At the other end of the hall, the kitchen was large and spacious, with not one but two enormous tables, neither apparently having been intended for the precise use of eating. The centerpiece was a knotty farm table that appeared to be used as a cooking space, judging by the plethora of nicks and scrapes across its surface.
The second table was built in, with a long bench on one side and no seating on the other side. It appeared to be meant for clerical purposes, if the semi-permanent-looking household ledger was any indication—semi-permanent, only judging by its size. Caía could well imagine it must be filled with years and years of annotations. The heavy book had been pushed to one side to make room for Laura’s gifts. This is where Caía’s last-minute present had found itself, waiting for its time to be unveiled. It sat modestly atop significantly larger packages, all wrapped in pink with silver bows. It wasn’t difficult to guess that Laura’s favorite color must be pink.
Among these gifts, the flamenco fan Caía had purchased this morning masqueraded as a thoughtful gift, but perhaps not all that appropriate for a five-year-old. The point, however, had been not to arrive empty-handed, but now that she eyed the little package beside the others, Caía wished she’d gone back for one of the artisan dolls.
In the corner, behind the table, hid another set of stairs, leading up to a third floor. Caía assumed this must be intended for the servants. The stairs were dark and uninviting, curling upward and disappearing out of sight. If you closed off the kitchen doors—there were two sets of doors for this purpose—the kitchen area was a self-contained workspace, accessible only from the servant’s quarters. The largest set of doors—those leading to the main house—bore speak-easy windows that could be opened from the inside. Yet another door led to the dining room.
Eugenia, a quiet, older woman, with a face generously painted with age spots and bright, unnaturally tinted red hair, moved back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. This was the same woman Caía had seen on the stoop the other day, locking the front door—a servant after all. And yet Caía was surprised to discover it wasn’t Eugenia who was toiling over the stove.
Marta was doing the cooki
ng, with a bit of help from her birthday girl. As Caía and Nick entered the kitchen, Marta peeled off her apron, immediately assuming the role of house mistress. Laura, on the other hand, wearing her own apron, one twice her size, leaned over the table to pluck a slice of chorizo from the cutting board while her mother wasn’t looking. The discreet act of defiance reminded Caía of her son . . . and maybe a little of herself. All three of them were only children, and perhaps this was a trait only children shared—a mild but harmless resistance to authority. She and Laura shared a conspiratorial look. The child beamed, a smile that was neither self-assured nor contrite.
“Alas, it will not be my best paella,” her mother said apologetically. Without turning to look at her daughter, she said, “Fingers out, Laura. Remember yourself before our guest.”
“I didn’t do anything, Mami,” Laura said, her elbows still on the table as she slid Caía another conspiratorial glance.
Out of practice though she was, Caía gave the child her best “mommy nod” in support of her mother. Seemingly oblivious to their interaction, Marta floated past, opening the dining room door to reveal a space that seemed more appropriate for heads of state than it did for a family of three celebrating a five-year-old’s cumpleaños.
“Sit where you wish,” Marta said.
“I will have Papá’s chair!” Like a Tasmanian devil, Laura raced into the dining room, her pink chiffon dress tickling Caía as she passed. She chose a chair at the far end of the twelve-seater table, while her uncle chose a seat in the middle, and Marta picked the opposite end of the table from her daughter. For her part, Caía felt obliged to choose the seat across from Nick. It was maybe appropriate they should face off. Regrettably, only one of them had any inkling of the undertones present during this standoff.
I want answers, she told him silently.
Do you think of my boy?
Redemption Song Page 7