Zach let out a sound of disgust.
Jason sighed loudly. “I don’t blame you for not believing me, ’cause the truth of the matter is, I’d already decided not to meet with Sophia. I would have avoided the place like the plague, but I didn’t think you’d get cut. I thought you’d get laid, that’s all. I swear it. You gotta believe me.”
Zach didn’t. He’d been a fool to trust Jason the first time and he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He shifted his gaze to the metal bureau near the bed.
“If I could change things, man, I would.” Jason thrust one hand into his pocket and rested the other on the bureau. “You may as well know, things are bad at home. Dad’s on the warpath against Polidori. Kat’s usually either drunk or on sleeping pills and Valium. And Trisha. Well, she’s a basket case, but what else is new?”
Jason moved into Zach’s limited field of vision but Zach wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up at his eyes.
“As for Nelson, you’re a hero in his eyes.”
Zach gritted his teeth.
“Yep,” Jason said, grabbing the jacket he’d draped over the back of the one chair in the room, “Nelson thinks that anyone who makes it with a whore, then gets cut by a switchblade, is some kind of hero.”
“Zach?” Her voice was familiar and brought back warm memories from a long, long time ago. In his mind he heard childish laughter and smelled the scents of cinnamon and hot chocolate and the jasmine of her perfume. Somewhere, maybe on the back porch, a dog barked. But it had been so long ago…
“I came as soon as I heard.”
Groggily, Zach opened an eye. The lamps had been dimmed. Only the night-light illuminated the hospital room, though from the window, the reflection from the security lights guarding the parking lot splashed against the wall. He squinted and saw a movement before he made out the features of a tall, big-boned woman in an expensive blouse and skirt. His mother, Eunice Patricia Prescott Danvers Smythe. She stood on the far side of the rails of his hospital bed. A dozen emotions riffled through him, none of which he wanted to examine too closely, and his head throbbed. “Wha—what’re you doing here?”
Her eyes were sad, filled with a lifetime of grief for the mistakes of her youth.
“Nelson called…explained what happened and I took the first flight out of San Francisco.” She reached across the rails and folded her long, cool fingers over his hand. Her grip was strong, the lines around her face desperate. “I’m so sorry this happened, Zach. Are you all right?”
He’d never been all right. They both knew it. “What do you care?” he said, drawing his hand away and forcing his thick tongue to form words.
She winced, but didn’t move. “I do care, Zach. I care lots. More than anyone you’ll ever meet.”
He snorted.
“You don’t believe that I love you,” she said, her voice losing all inflection. “You never did.”
He closed his eyes again and wished he had the strength to cover his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear her lies. If she’d loved him, really loved him, she wouldn’t have left him with Witt.
He didn’t reply, just pretended, as he had for years, that she didn’t exist. It was easier that way. Her rejection didn’t hurt anymore. He’d had a long time to recover and heal. She could say what she wanted, Witt had bought her off, paid her enough money so that she gave up her children.
“I thought you and I shared something special,” she said on a tremulous sigh. He felt, rather than saw, her move to the window. How long had it been since he’d trusted her? Eight years? Nine? Maybe never. “I hate to admit it, Lord knows a mother shouldn’t, but you’ve always been my favorite. Of all my children, you were the one closest to my heart.”
“Don’t lie to me, Mom. We both know you’ve never had a heart.”
Her intake of breath was swift. “Zachary, don’t you ever—” As quickly as her anger had come, it disappeared. “I suppose I deserved that.”
What a bunch of crap! Why didn’t she just shut up? Yet he couldn’t stop listening.
“I would never have left you, but…well, your father made sure I couldn’t get near you kids. You probably don’t believe this, but it was a horrible price to pay. I’ve regretted it…”
He closed his eyes. He wouldn’t trust her. She’d carried on her affair with Polidori for years, knowing the inevitable consequences. In Zach’s mind, she’d turned her back on her children, on her husband, on her life, for a fling with a man who used her just to get even with Witt. Zach didn’t believe for a minute that there had ever been any love between Anthony Polidori and his mother. No, what they’d shared was sex, pure and simple, and that thought turned his stomach. Polidori had chosen Eunice to best his opponent and Eunice had slept with her husband’s sworn enemy for a quick thrill in a life devoid of any kind of excitement. She’d had the affair to prove that she was still attractive to a man and to show her neglectful husband that she could still make her own decisions.
Zach had heard her rationalizations and deep in his heart he knew that she and Witt had never been happy. The house had always been tense while they were married, no safe refuge. He wondered how she’d become involved with Polidori, where she’d met him, who had taken the first step…but those were things children weren’t supposed to know and he figured he was better off left to his imagination.
“You judge me too quickly, Zach,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You don’t know what it’s like to be lonely and ignored, to have your life sorted out and planned for you, to have to pretend to be happy when you’re not, to smile when you feel like crying your eyes out.”
He cracked a lid and saw that she’d rested her forehead on the window, her chin nearly touching her neck, her breath fogging the glass. She looked weary and he wondered if that aura of exhaustion was from her stormy marriage to Witt or her guilt over choosing her lover over her children, or because of her new marriage to one of the most well-recognized heart specialists in the country.
She glanced over, as if sensing that he was staring at her. “Don’t hate me, Zach,” she said, blinking and dabbing the tips of her fingers at the corners of her eyes. “Don’t hate me for loving you.”
“You don’t know what love is.”
“Oh, yes, I do. I know love and the pain it causes. Unfortunately, so will you. No one, not even you, will get through life without it.” She wrapped her arms around her middle section and rocked back on her heels. “You want to hate me, Zach, because it’s easy. I hurt you because I cheated on your father.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“Well, I had to, do you understand? Witt was so…inconsiderate and he had other women, plenty of them before…Anyway, I met Anthony at a fund-raiser, he was charming and attentive and even though I knew I shouldn’t…well, that’s what started it,” she admitted. “So now you know. I suppose you still want to strike back at me. That’s understandable.”
“I don’t really give a shit.”
“Sure you do. Does it make any difference if I tell you I’m sorry?”
He didn’t bother responding.
“I’d do anything for you, Zach.” She sounded so sincere that he was tempted to trust her, but only for a second.
“What about sticking around? Was that too much to ask?”
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to.” His head was beginning to throb again.
She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. When she spoke again, her tone was icy. “You know where to reach me, Zach. You can pretend all you want, but I know that life with your father isn’t easy for you. If you want to come to San Francisco and live with Lyle and me for a while, I’d—”