That Touch of Ink

by Vallere, Diane

  “I did you a favor in there, Madison. I’d rather not have to do you another.”

  “Officer Nast, this was a simple misunderstanding. Nothing more.”

  I opened the car door and lowered myself into the driver’s seat. Nasty blocked the door so I couldn’t close it.

  “This boyfriend of yours, do I know him?” she asked.

  “How do you know about him?” I asked instead.

  “I hear things.” She stood with one hand on my rear view mirror and the other on the hood of my car.

  I didn’t know how much Tex might have told her about Brad, but her question made me uncomfortable. “He’s from out of town,” I said.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Brad Turlington.”

  “Are you seeing him tonight?”

  “He’s away on business.”

  “You sure he’s not a figment of your imagination?”

  I fought the urge to get out of the car and address her face to face. “You want proof? Maybe we should double date sometime.” I grabbed the door and yanked it away from her. She jumped backward. I slammed the door shut and peeled out of the lot.

  Although my blood was boiling, I kept myself calm until I was two blocks away from Turtle Creek apartments. I channeled all of my attention into the act of driving until I reached a shopping center off Mockingbird. I parked in a space at the end of the lot, cut the engine, leaned forward, and rested my forehead on the top of the steering wheel.

  The more I thought about what had happened at the apartment building, the more angry I was over the hostility from Nasty. I’d done nothing to warrant her attitude—I’d done nothing, period. I’d been at the wrong place, wrong time. I was a victim of someone else playing a hoax.

  The worst thing about it was that I was sure she was going to tell Tex. As I weighed the pros and cons of calling him first, my phone rang with an unfamiliar number.

  “Ms. Night, this is Dennis O’Hara. I’m a real estate agent. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “No, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s what I can do for you, actually. I have a house that’s been on the market for a couple of months, and there’s no interest.”

  “I’m an interior decorator, Mr. O’Hara. I decorate houses. I don’t buy them.”

  “Well, that’s where this gets weird. The owner isn’t interested in keeping up the taxes on the property, and he gave me your number. He wants you to have the house.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The house belonged to a Thelma Johnson. Her son said you might want it?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Thelma Johnson was a deceased Dallas resident. My interest in her estate had started a snowball effect that brought a killer out of hiding. “Mr. O’Hara, people don’t give people houses.”

  “Technically, you’re right. Her son didn’t give you the house. He gave you a tax bill. The house is paid off, and if you care to make up the back taxes, it’s yours.”

  “Free and clear?”

  “If four thousand is your definition of free and clear, more power to you.”

  I leaned back in the car and stared up at the crisp blue sky. I had a business. I had an apartment complex. I had a studio. What did I need with a modest split level house in the M streets?

  “Why me?” I asked the real estate agent.

  “He said you earned it. Something about you wanting his mom’s stuff so badly you risked your life for it. I figured he was being. So, what do you think?”

  “Can you hold for one moment?” I asked. When he agreed, I held the phone by my thigh and looked at Rocky. “What do you think, Rock? Do we want a secret hideaway?”

  He cocked his head to the left like he was considering the question. It wasn’t the first time I’d talked to my dog about major life events and it wouldn’t be the last. Even though he couldn’t answer, I knew what he’d say if he could.

  “Mr. O’Hara? I think the answer is yes.”

  I made arrangements to meet the realtor to swap a rather large cashier’s check and a couple of signatures for a rather small set of keys. He asked if he could transfer the utilities into my name. I wasn’t sure what I would do with a 1954 house with a flat roof and a pink bathroom, but at least the next time I needed an emergency place to sleep, I had one.

  I drove home, my thoughts a jumble of recent and distant memories. Effie was walking toward me in the apartment hallway. She carried her mail in one hand. Rocky strained his leash to greet her, and she dropped into a squat and ruffled his fur, then raised her hand and made him dance in a circle.

  “I missed you, Rocky! Madison’s been taking you everywhere!” she said to him.

  “I can spare him for about half an hour if you want to get reacquainted. I’m in desperate need of a very long shower,” I said.

  “Did you hear that? Did you? Huh? Huh? Huh?” she said.

  Rocky danced around on hind legs, trying to snatch an imaginary treat from her fingers. She stood up and took the leash from my hand.

  “Thanks, Madison. I’ve been studying for finals all week and it’ll be nice to have a break with Rocky.”

  “Thank you, Effie. You’re always so sweet to him.”

  “How can I not be? He’s such a good dog.”

  The three of us walked up the rear staircase to the building. I unlocked my door, and Effie and Rocky continued to hers, the middle unit on the opposite side of the hallway.

  “I’ll come get him in half an hour,” I said.

  “Take your time. I’d keep him all night if I thought you’d let me,” she said.

  I tossed my keys on the corner of the desk and took off my sweater. My pants followed, as did my lace bra and white cotton panties. I entered the bathroom and cranked up the hot water.

  The hot spray massaged my shoulders, neck, and back, until finally I turned the water off. I stepped into a cloud of steam and dried off. When I opened the door to let in some fresh air, I heard a sound from my kitchen.

  I pushed the door closed again, leaving it cracked a sliver, and pressed my ear against it. There was someone in my apartment.

  That someone was singing Que Sera Sera.

  The singing from the kitchen stopped. “Maddy? Don’t be scared. It’s me.” Brad’s voice carried from the kitchen.

  It was dark outside. The apartment was dimly lit, with only a low wattage glow coming from the mismatched lamps placed around the living room.

  I shrugged into my thick terrycloth robe and secured it with a square knot, making sure there was no chance that it would fall open. My bare feet carried me from the bathroom into the bedroom. I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled out a pair of blue flannel pajamas from my stash. I picked the yellow peignoir set up from the bed and shoved it into the back of the drawer. I wanted to be careful about signals that would trigger unwanted advancements.

  I tapped my hand on the outside of the wall before I reached it. When I rounded the corner, Brad stood over the stove, stirring the contents of a large silver pot. He wore a gray and black checked sport coat over a white polo shirt with the collar up. On his head was a Hamburg that had been black once, but was now a varied shade of gray. A small pheasant feather stood out at a diagonal from the band above the brim.

  “Chicken soup from scratch. I made it earlier today at my place and brought it over. Is it still your favorite?” he asked and held the spoon out for me to taste it.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Your neighbor found me in the hallway. I told her I wanted to surprise you.”

  “Which neighbor?”

  “The teenager across the hall, the one who’s watching your dog.”

  “Effie let you in here?” Effie had a set of my keys in case of emergency, when I knew Roc
ky needed to go out and I couldn’t get home in time. It surprised me to think that she’d let a stranger in.

  Brad stepped closer to me. “She recognized me from the first day I came here. After you kicked me out.” He dropped his head and looked sheepish. “She asked how I knew you and I told her I knew you from before you moved here. She liked that. I guess because she likes you.”

  “She shouldn’t have let you in here.”

  “She said she was sad that you were going to pick Rocky up because she was having a good time with him. I asked her to keep him for the night so we could be alone.” He watched my face for a couple of seconds and poured the contents of the spoon back into the pot. “It’ll keep. Come here,” he said, and opened his arms.

  I stood in front of him, my emotions in a jumble. I needed something, just one thing, to signal which emotion to trust.

  “Have you changed so much that you don’t remember what it was like when we were together?”

  Exhaustion hit me like a body slam from a professional wrestler and my knees buckled. Brad caught me and held me in his arms. With my head tipped against his chest, I exhaled a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I inhaled the scent of his cologne, Old Spice. It was the same one he’d worn the night I first met him. The scent took me back to the room in Pierot’s Interiors, when we were falling in love and our lives were less complicated.

  “I know I said I’d give you space, but I couldn’t stay away. I’ve missed you so much. This feels right, doesn’t it?” he whispered into my hair.

  “It feels familiar,” I whispered back.

  “Madison, let’s pick up where we left off. It’s not too late, is it?”

  His hands moved up to my arms, and he gently pushed me away so he could see my face. The fingers of his right hand traced down the side of my cheekbone. I stood still, remembering what it used to feel like when Brad touched me.

  Everything other than the touch of his fingertips melted away. For a second, it was like it had been when we first met, when I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if it were Brad and I against the world, we’d win. The impulse to go back in time trumped everything else in my world. I closed my eyes and leaned in, and his lips brushed against mine.

  “Let’s run away, Maddy. Let’s start over. We both left Pennsylvania. I know things will never be like they were, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go someplace new and create something even better together.”

  I couldn’t say that I wasn’t the type to run away and start over because I was. Starting a new life had been the single best thing I’d done for myself. I’d never felt rooted. My family had passed away when I was in my thirties. Brad had been my family, until that one day when he wasn’t.

  I realized I’d run away from that life because it didn’t fit me. This life did.

  “I don’t want to run away, Brad. This is me, this is my life. This is where I want to be. We can never go back to what we were.”

  “Then I’m sorry I tracked you down and I’m sorry I interrupted your life. Why don’t you give me the James Madison? I can’t leave until you give it back.”

  I stiffened. The five thousand dollar bill was sealed in an envelope in the rent box in the front of my lobby. I knew it was evidence—to something—and I couldn’t risk Brad finding it. I couldn’t risk anyone finding it.

  I took a step backward, away from him. Did I still know this man? How much had I ever known him? What secrets did he hold that I didn’t understand?

  “That’s all it’ll take. Give me the bill and I’ll leave.” He put a finger under my chin. “Or let me stay and give me a second chance.”

  He stared at me, his smoldering gaze reminding me of the feelings I thought I’d buried. It had been years since I felt the touch of his hands, anybody’s hands, for that matter, and after the way it had ended, I thought I’d turned that part of myself off forever.

  I wasn’t the same person I’d been when Brad and I had been together. I shut people out and discovered my independence. I got my affection from a Shih Tzu, and I let my business keep a barrier between myself and the most reliable men I’d met since moving to Dallas—Hudson and Tex. Even owning the apartment building in secret was a way for me to protect myself.

  I didn’t like facing how much Brad’s betrayal had scarred me, and so I spent much of my time alone, not analyzing the person I’d become. But with Brad’s return came self-analysis.

  Tex had questions about his homicide. Nasty had questions about Tex. Hudson had questions about his future.

  And I had questions about my past.

  It was time my questions got answered.

  “We need to talk.” I set my spoon down and walked into the living room.

  Brad followed me and sat in a chair opposite the sofa. He put his elbows on his knees and folded his hands in front of him. When he rested his chin on his knuckles, once again, I stared at his watch. He noticed.

  “This watch tells me that time goes on. And now’s the real test, just like the inscription says. ‘Only time will tell.’” He dropped one hand to the face of the watch and traced the second hand as it swept in a circle.

  “I wondered if this day would come,” he continued. “I used to lie awake imagining what it would be like to have to answer to you. To explain what happened.” He looked down at his Converse sneakers. “I stopped wondering after a year. I knew you hated me.”

  If he wanted me to say I didn’t, I didn’t. I couldn’t. A part of me had hated him. A part of me still did. What he didn’t realize was that I hated him for all the wrong reasons.

  I hated him for lying to me, even if he said he lied to protect me.

  I hated him for not coming to see me when I was hospitalized with my knee injury.

  I hated him for driving us apart. If he hadn’t lied to me, we might still be together, sharing that bed in the back of Pierot’s. I might never have developed the life I had now.

  And after the break, when I finally was on the verge of dropping my guard, when I was ready to move forward instead of fighting so hard to block the past, I hated him for the hidden message, the apology, and the explanation telling me everything I’d come to hate about him wasn’t true.

  I hated him the most for that.

  As much of a release as it might have been to yell at him, to slap him ten times harder than Connie slapped Tex at my studio, to push him out of my life for good, I needed answers to questions that would otherwise haunt me. I also needed to tell Brad the truth.

  “Brad, there’s something you don’t know. That first year, when you were waiting for some kind of response or reaction from me, I didn’t know the truth. I didn’t find the message you left for me until a couple of months ago.”

  “But—”

  “I had no reason to think you were lying. When you told me you were married, you hurt me—badly. You damn near scarred me. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”

  “Your knee. Is that what happened in the skiing accident?”

  “I’m not talking about my knee.”

  “Madison, I never wanted you to get hurt.”

  “But I did get hurt, Brad! You can’t take that back. I don’t care if your lie was a lie. I don’t care if you claim you were trying to protect me. I’m a different person because of you. I’m not open anymore. I don’t trust people. The damage is done.”

  “Then give me the bill, Madison. Give me the bill and I’ll leave.”

  “No, Brad. No. Even if I could give you the bill, it wouldn’t change anything. I need closure, and finding out the truth about that bill is the only way I’ll get it.”

  “You don’t have it?”

  “It’s not here.”

  He stood. “That’s too bad, Madison. Without that bill, I’m a a dead man.”

  FOURTEEN

 
Our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door. I was ready to tell whoever it was to go away until I looked through the peephole. It was Tex.

  When I opened the door I kept one hand on the frame and the other on the knob, blocking him from entering.

  “What are you doing here? I thought private citizens were entitled to come and go as they wished. Or maybe you wanted to drop by, see if I was dining alone?”

  “Are you?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Because if you’re dining alone, I’d be happy to join you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “So you’re not dining alone. Anybody I know?”

  “Shouldn’t you be getting home to your girlfriend?” I asked abruptly. I stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me. Before I had it closed, Brad yanked it open.

  “Maddy, is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  Brad and Tex looked at each other. I looked back and forth at the two of them.

  “Brad, this is Tex. Tex, Brad.”

  Instinct kept me from introducing Tex by rank.

  I turned to Brad. “It’ll take just a second for me to finish up here, and I’ll be back inside in a second.” He nodded at Tex, and pulled the door shut behind him. A waft of chicken soup aroma followed me into the hallway.

  “Does he know about what happened last year?”

  “A little. He read the article from the paper.”

  “You didn’t tell him anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting.”

  “What’s so interesting? We have a lot of catching up to do. I’m sure it will come up in conversation.”

  “That’s not what’s interesting. I’m talking about the fact that you’re keeping quiet about parts of your life.”

  “I’m not keeping quiet. I just haven’t brought it up.” I paused for a moment. “Does Donna know you’re here helping me?”