Blind Fate

by Olivia Gaines

  He did not jump at his wife’s insistence. Instead he went over to Tempest. He kneeled next to her, placing his hand in hers. Softly he spoke her name.

  “Tempest. Dr. Fateman. Mrs. Muldrake, Wrong Way, whatever name you want to go by today, I am still in your service. I need you to know, if you don’t want to stay here, I’ll put you back in the car with us, and together, we’ll figure out another way. I leave when you tell me to leave,” Zeke said, squeezing her hand. He lowered his voice, whispering a secret very few people knew, “My other brother is the Archangel, there are options. You have choices.”

  “I prayed for help and you walked through the door,” Tempest said raising her hand to cup his cheek. “I’m where I’m supposed to be, I guess. This was Rami’s plan to make me pay for all my past sins. The biggest one just walked out that back door. I’ll be okay. Ferdinand would never harm me.”

  “Ten years is a long-damned time. You don’t know if he has a woman in his life that will resent the hell out of you for being here. Honestly, your kid didn’t seem to give a shit one way or another, so there’s that,” Zeke said.

  “Caliban wants me here,” she said softly, knowing in her heart, the mantra she’d been hearing in her head to come home, had been chanted by her son. Her husband on the other hand didn’t appreciate the intimacy between her and Zeke’s caring touch. Ferdinand pretty much told him as much.

  “Mr. Neary, your part of the journey is complete. My wife is home with her family. We will deal with what happens next. Please take your family and be on your way. Drive safe and go with my appreciation,” Ferdinand said, using his arm to show Zeke the front door.

  “Okay. Okay, I hear you. Be safe,” Zeke said, following his wife out the front door. He didn’t know where she’d found the apples, but she had a picnic sack of food. Everyone was right. His part of the journey was over.

  All of it just felt wrong. Something bad was coming this way. Common sense told him to get clear, but Tempest was again at the mercy of men who had ulterior motives. It felt wrong to leave her, but he had a wife and family to consider. She said she’d be fine.

  But it just felt wrong. All of it was handled the wrong way and he could feel the pain of her family at Tempest’s unexpected arrival. Either they would heal or completely fall apart. He prayed that she would gain an understanding from her journey and having come full circle to find the peace she desperately needed. If there was one thing that Zeke Neary understood it was the need for peace in order to heal.

  He also knew that peace always came at a high price.

  RAPHAEL HOYT LEANED back in the large deck chair, complete with cup holders, on the transom of his boat, fishing off the stern. He had no plans for the day other than sipping on a nice glass of white wine, catching a large fish which he planned to grill for dinner, and starting a new episode of a murder mystery on a podcast. The day ahead would be uneventful, and lately, he’d been enjoying the respite.

  The universe must have heard his sigh of complacency. A buzz from his phone in three successive bursts meant it was time to go to work. He didn’t want to work this week or next week for that matter. He wanted to fish.

  Growling, he picked up the phone, and spoke into the line. “Exit,” he said.

  “Louisville, Kentucky,” a strong male voice said in the line. “Wrong Way needs to be assessed.”

  “Threat level?”

  “Don’t know. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Timeline?”

  The voice replied, “Give it two weeks. If there is no threat, leave it alone.”

  Raphael didn’t like the sound of it. Threat assessments always ended the same way, a dead body, however, if the person sent to clean up behind the men who created the dead bodies, were in fact, the dead body, who would clean up after the cleaner? She’d been the Cleaner for 10 years and all of a sudden she was a threat which needed to be assessed. All of it made his nut sack twitch.

  “And if the threat is credible?”

  “Make it clean, no suffering,” the male voice said and ended the call.

  Raphael sat staring at the water in the low country basin. He had a nice life in Hilton Head and enjoyed the privacy of living on the island. There were days when he longed for a bit more and had even courted the idea of starting a romance with Wrong Way, but she always read as unavailable. She also read as broken in a way that was irreparable. Now he was tasked with providing an assessment of whether the woman should live or die.

  “Just fucking dandy,” he mumbled, casting his line into deeper water and hoping for a bite. “Never a moment of goddamn peace.”

  FERDINAND MULDRAKE was beside himself in emotions. The peace he’d worked fervently to gain inside of his head in regards to wife had been turned upside fucking down. The first was shock, the second was anger and the third frustration at himself for still wanting a woman who had ripped apart his world. In truth, she had never been a bad wife. Dinner was always on the table and hot when he came home and most days so was his wife. When they weren’t trapped under the covers embroiled in each other’s arms, the conversations were lively and Tempest got him. She understood him on a fundamental level as if she’d been given a playbook on how to handle him and here she was again, showing up after ten goddamn years, handling him like he was still that love sick medical student. It pissed him off even more that she also handled that Zeke guy who brought her home, with his wife and kid in tow, yet he took to one knee like some fucking knight in shining armor.

  “I’m still in your service. Is this a Shakespearean tragedy? The woman in his life may resent the hell out you for being here!” Ferdinand mumbled imitating Zeke’s deep timbered voice. “Fuck that guy!”

  He found himself chuckling at the whole situation. Tempest had been home less than fifteen whole shit stomping minutes and he was back to being the rutting bull in the pasture fighting off the interlopers coming for his prized heifer.

  “Shit, this is unreal,” he said softly, gathering supplies to make her stay more accessible.

  His heart was hurting and if he had the time to cry he would, but he just didn’t feel like it right now. Caliban needed his mother. For whatever reason God chose to send her home, she was in the other room, still gorgeous, still sexy, and still making him want her in the worst way. On that front he wouldn’t make a move. She had a hearty appetite when it came to her sexual needs. He’d allow her to choose the timing of being reunited as man and wife; if she wanted that. Hell, he wasn’t sure he wanted it, but he still loved her as much today as he had when he asked Tempest to marry him.

  “There are good memories,” he said, locating rope and left over cut out letters he’d used for the sign out front for his business. “I’ll allow the good memories to lead my actions. I’m still her husband. She is the mother of our son. She’s come home.”

  He repeated the words over and over to himself as he prepared to face living with her again. A feeling of peace settled in his bones and he sighed with an odd sense of relief. Tonight, the dinner table would be set for three with the plates they picked up when they were coming back from their honeymoon in Florida. Tempest loved the pattern with little yellow flowers. They were still in the cabinet. She couldn’t see them but he could.

  It was enough for now.

  Chapter Eleven – Jumbled

  The quietness of the house irritated Tempest. Without noises she had no way of knowing if someone was sitting in the next room or watching her from a distance or if she were totally alone. A loud clunk onto a table made her jump.

  “Ferdinand?”

  “Yeah, it’s me. I’m going to place guide strings through the house along with notches on the end of the walls to let you know which rooms you are in and the location of the downstairs bathroom and the guest bedroom,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Tempest said softly.

  “Here,” he said, placing a wooden, stick cane in her hand. “It will work for now, but I’ll need to get you a white cane to help you navigate. I have clients for
the remainder of the afternoon, which means you have to get up off your ass and figure out how to live,” Ferdinand said.

  “You haven’t changed,” she replied, “which is good.”

  “Neither have you, which isn’t good for either of us,” he said quickly. “Stand up. Use the cane to work your way to my voice.”

  “And silly me was thinking that Zeke Neary was bossy,” she said, getting to her feet. Tapping in front of her. Tempest waited for him to start speaking again.

  “How do you know them? That Zeke Neary was really protective of you, but his wife wanted you gone. The kid seemed to steer clear of you altogether.”

  Tempest tapped with the cane, moving forward towards his voice as he talked. The bass in his voice was a comfort, reminding her of the familiar and easing the pain of having no sight to remember what he actually looked like after so many years. All she ever could remember were the hazel eyes and cleft chin. She just knew their child would inherit his features but Caliban didn’t.

  Born with a white patch on his forehead which blended into the front of his hairline, Caliban looked nothing like his father and was born with dark brown eyes and thick dense curly jet-black hair. To his credit, Ferdinand never questioned the paternity of his son, Tempest never gave him reason to do so. However, he did realize early after the delivery that she was not bonding with the infant.

  In her attempts to breastfeed, Caliban refused to take the teat. If she held him for too long, the child would cry uncontrollably until he was in his father’s arms. Mother and son never appeared to gel. The baby just turned two when she had packed her bags and said she would be leaving. Ferdinand didn’t try to stop his wife from walking out the door. Whatever demons dogged her heels and made her run, he knew they would be the same demons that would chase her back to her own front porch.

  “I stopped in Blairsville to stay under the radar with a friend and his family, but he wasn’t home,” she said. “The Neary guy is his neighbor. Rami blinded me and pushed me inside the diner, took my vehicle, and left me high and dry. I prayed for some help, and the Neary guy walked in.”

  “How did you know he would help you?”

  Tempest felt for the string. Holding onto the thin rope, she maneuvered her body into the open walkway, trying to determine which side was in and which side was out. Her fingers ran down the rope, touching the fine cords until her knuckles grazed the wall. The letter K had been nailed to the wall for Kitchen.

  “His last name is Neary. His dad works for the FBI and has some kind of long-standing connection with my boss. I never asked, because honestly, the less I know about the inner workings of the business, the better off I am,” Tempest said.

  She followed the rope down the hall as he worked, coming to the edge of the wall, feeling upwards and touching the letter B. “Bathroom?”

  “Yes,” Ferdinand replied, stringing more rope and nailing the letter L next to the laundry room. “I don’t know which letter for the living room, since I used the L for the laundry room.”

  “Use the letter S for sitting and a T on the guest room for me,” she said, following him down the hall. “I have no clothing. I have nothing but my purse. At some point, I will need to go shopping.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly.

  “You’re handling this very well, all things considered,” Tempest said, feeling the letters on the wall and following along with the rope.

  “We are your family. If your vision comes back and you want to stay permanently, then that is another conversation,” Ferdinand said, “and if your eyesight doesn’t come back and you have to stay, that is also a different conversation.”

  “I never stopped loving you, Ferdinand. I just didn’t know how to make it all work,” she said, staring at the last spot where she’d heard his voice. “I still don’t. I also still don’t feel as if I deserve a good man like you.”

  “The funny thing is, Tempest, I felt the same way about you. It was very difficult to believe that a nerdy black guy like me, too smart for my own damned good, had gotten lucky to find a nerdy black woman, smarter than me, who liked me for the man I was on the inside. My worst fears, hinged on the fact I believed that I didn’t deserve you, were confirmed when you left,” Ferdinand replied. “For nearly I year, I believed you left because of me.”

  “And now, Ferdinand?”

  “I came to understand that you left because you were broken inside and didn’t want the good in the world. All of your life, you’ve been handed the bags of entrails and had to make a meal,” he said, “and then I came along with steaks and nice plates, offering you a seat at the table. You felt like an imposter.”

  “Well, listen at you. I hope you paid your therapist extra,” she said snidely.

  “No therapist needed to understand a basic woman like you,” Ferdinand said. “I just had to learn that your brokenness was no reflection on me or our son. You’re here. You can heal and be better. You can heal and get gone. Either way, Caliban and I shall continue on with our lives.”

  At those words, the back door opened. There weren’t four sets of footsteps, just the one. The smell of outdoors mixed with 12-year-old body odor filled her nose.

  “Hey,” she said, turning her head towards the door.

  “You can’t see me?” Caliban asked.

  “No, I’m blind. Don’t know if it’s permanent or not,” Tempest replied.

  “So, you get messed up and come running home. If you hadn’t been blinded, would you be here with us in this house?” Caliban questioned.

  “Probably not,” she said in a very honest tone. “But I got your messages, so there’s that. I’m here.”

  “Well, guess what, Mom. You really suck!” Caliban shouted, “so Daddy and me are stuck caring for you when you’re down because all the other people who made you feel important when your eyeballs worked tossed you out like a bag of trash. Are those people that brought you here part of your fan club or socialites and fancy party life? They looked pretty ordinary to me!”

  “Jesus, you don’t pull any punches for a 12-year-old,” Tempest said, taken aback at the hostility in his voice.

  “Growing up with a mother who sent a birthday card and a box every Christmas tends to make a twelve-year-old view the world differently,” he said. “My friends have sleepovers and moms who bake cookies. I have one that sends me chemistry sets and spy kits. Yeah, I’m a little angry.”

  “I’m here now,” she said, “so let’s see if we can work it out.”

  “Good grief! If I hadn’t reached out on that cosmic thread that still connects us, would you have come? Probably not. We were a last resort, aren’t we? How selfish are you?” Caliban said, stomping up the stairs to his bedroom. She heard the loud slam of the door and used the stick to guide herself into the living room. She located a large chair and plopped down in it.

  His words hurt.

  Ferdinand’s words hurt.

  Tempest found herself crying for the second time in less than two days.

  “You okay, Tempest?” Ferdinand asked. “Cosmic thread? I don’t understand what that means.”

  “No, can you...just let me sit for a minute? I need to process all of this new information and make a choice as to how I proceed with you both,” she said, gripping the stick. “Truly, I never imagined this day, so I had no way to prepare for this mentally. The connection I never thought existed between me and my son is very real. So real, in fact, that explosion of anger just struck me like a blow to the chest. Wow. Just plain wow.”

  “Okay, I guess. I can’t unpack all of this at the moment either but I will let you know that we are here. Let me know if you need anything,” Ferdinand said. “I have clients to see this evening, so I will be gone until about 8 p.m.”

  “You’re just going to leave me?” She asked uncertain of how she would be able to handle it all. “Caliban? Will he be here with me?”

  “If you want. He normally rides with me, but he can stay here,” Ferdinand said, looking her over. The smart-ass c
omment which hung on the tip of his tongue he swallowed. This was not the time to dig in her open wounds, regardless how good it would feel.

  “Again, thank you,” Tempest said, holding onto the cane for dear life.

  “No worries,” he replied, continuing to run the string through the house. He didn’t how their son was going to react to having to Mommy Sit, but he’s the one who called for her to come home, and she was here. Caliban was going to have to deal.

  “BUT I DON’T WANNA STAY here with her!” Caliban yelled at his father. “She’s been on her own all this time. She can be on her own here. There are ropes all over the place, and she can work her way through figuring out how to live with no sight. She figured out how to live with no us.”

  Ferdinand understood his son’s anger. Inside, he felt pretty close to the same. Yet his son had admitted to calling her home which made no sense to have his mother home and be so angry about it all. However, he was the head of the house and the role model he needed his son to follow. After clearing his throat, he spoke.

  “Son, our destinies in this world aren’t determined by the goals we set, but how we treat others in their times of need. This is a chance for me and you to be men of value. It doesn’t matter how she treated us. We must rise above our emotions and be good humans,” Ferdinand said to his son. “We must be better men.”

  “Why can’t I just be a son of bitch...,” he asked, his face looking towards his mother.

  “Dang, you are quick,” Tempest said, “but you can’t be a son of a bitch because I’m not a bitch, my son. You don’t have to stay. I can figure it out by myself, but if you come back and the house is burned to the ground, then you can rest assured that had you stayed, I wouldn’t have gone into the kitchen alone.”