Bonded by Blood

chapter THIRTEEN

DOM PARKED THE black SUV at the Ocean View Convalescent Center and held the door open for Mackenzie. As she got out, he lifted his face, letting the ultraviolet rays warm his skin. Funny how you could see a contrasting image of the sun on the inside of your eyelids. He’d forgotten what that was like. The pull on his energy levels was much stronger today. This would be his last time to enjoy it, he thought.

“You didn’t have to come, you know.” Mackenzie tossed her blue scarf over one shoulder, the beaded fringe flashing in the sunlight. She wore jeans, a pair of well-worn black boots, and a T-shirt with long sleeves pulled down so that only her fingers were visible.

“Yeah, but I wanted to.”

He thought about how things could never work out long-term between them. Like a match that flares brightly at first, their relationship was intense but doomed. It couldn’t last forever. At some point, he’d have to tell her about San Diego and everything would end. It had to. But for now, he wanted to enjoy the time they did have.

“This means a lot to me.” She was quiet, almost melancholy.

Her tone of voice didn’t surprise him. He’d overheard her trying unsuccessfully to convince her brother to take their mother to see the cherry blossoms. The petals would be dropping soon and her car was still in the shop. If Corey couldn’t take their mother through the arboretum, she’d miss the trees blooming this year.

“Will she have any trouble getting into the passenger seat?” Dom asked. “It’s a high step. Perhaps I should’ve brought one of my company’s vans instead.”

“She’ll be okay, but thanks. It’s only her mind that’s going, not her body. I should warn you before we go in though. Sometimes my mom is totally with it—so much so that you can carry on a normal conversation with her and you’ll wonder why she’s here. But then, just like that, she’ll go back to her dark place where nothing she says will make sense and you just have to go along with it. Are you okay with that? I mean, if you want you can wait here and I’ll go see—”

“I’m fine. I can’t wait to meet her.”

After checking in at the front desk, they rode the elevator up to the Alzheimer’s wing. The place smelled of antiseptic and old things as they walked down the hallway and entered her mother’s room. A gray-haired woman stood at the wall next to a television. She held a roll of tape in one hand and a piece of paper—a torn page from a magazine—in the other.

“Hi, Mom.”

The woman turned. Her jaw was slack, her expression blank.

“Mom, I’d like you to meet someone.” Mackenzie crossed the small space and hugged her. “This is a friend of mine. Dominic Serrano.”

Her mother handed Mackenzie the tape and paper and faced him squarely. “You may call me Tabitha or Bea, although many people here call me Cathy.”

“What name would you prefer, Mrs. Foster-Shaw?” he asked.

She cocked an eyebrow and gave him a confused look. “Why are you calling me by my husband’s name? It’s his, not mine. You’d need to call him that, except that he’s dead.”

“Mom, please. Dom didn’t know.” Turning to Dom, she said, “My father’s name was Foster Shaw. I hyphenated it, making it my last name when we moved here and I started college. My mother is Cathy Shaw.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Shaw.” Dom took her hand and bent to kiss it, but, scowling, she pulled away and slapped his fingers.

“Young man, your forward behavior will get you nowhere with me. I’m a married woman and that is just not acceptable.”

Dom bit the insides of both cheeks in an attempt to stifle a grin. “Yes, of course. Please forgive me.”

“Mom, here.” Mackenzie put her arm around the older woman, guiding her to a chair next to the bed, and threw a rueful smile to Dom over her shoulder. “Sorry,” she mouthed.

A nurse entered the room as Mackenzie was getting her mother situated in the chair. “Mackenzie, could I see you up at the nurses’ station when you get a chance? We need to update some of your mother’s paperwork.”

“Dom, do you mind sitting with her? I’ll be right back.” When he nodded, she squatted next to her mother. “Mom, I’ll be right back. Do you want Dom to read from some of your journals? He doesn’t know about all the travels you and Daddy made. I’m sure he’d love to hear about them.”

When her mother stared at her with blank doe-like eyes, Mackenzie kissed the woman’s fingers, then stood up and walked back to Dom. “Over there is a shelf of her travel journals. She’d probably enjoy it if you picked one to read to her. She and my father traveled everywhere—didn’t you, Mom—and she journaled the whole time. I won’t be long.”

“And you would be…?” Her mother had forgotten her already and Mackenzie slipped through the door.

On the shelf beside Mrs. Shaw’s chair, stacks of notebooks appeared to be organized by color and date. Dom ran a finger over the spines, selected one from the middle, and sat down in the chair across from her. Mrs. Shaw looked at him expectantly. Mackenzie must do this a lot, he imagined. He settled back in the chair, opened the journal and began to read aloud.

March 7, 1985

The weather is beginning to turn warmer. I can’t help but think we should load up the trailer and be on the move north again. Old habits die hard, Foster tells me. Says I worry too much. I suppose he’s right. Don’t know if I’ll ever feel at ease staying in one place as summer approaches. Mackenzie Marie threw a tantrum in the grocery store today, right in front of the huge wall of candy at the checkout counter. I tried to look stern and turn my back on her like all the books say to do, but she was just so cute. She’s always so cute. Hopefully, she’ll grow out of this stage soon. I think the employees cringe whenever they see us come through the door.

Boneless chicken breasts were on sale, so I bought two packages and will try a recipe from the newspaper yesterday for chicken satay. Made with peanut butter, of all things. Susan came over—

“That’s more of a real journal, Dominic. Boring and uneventful. I think we were living in a small town in Idaho at that time. We did most of our traveling before Mackenzie was born. She was two and a half in the one you’re reading from. The red ones—” she pointed to the far left of the shelf “—are Foster’s. You can read them if you’d like. If you pull out one of the green ones, May 1980, you can read our account of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Foster and I were living in a small town in southwest Washington at the time, right in the shadow of the mountain.”

Mrs. Shaw met his gaze with strong clear eyes, her shoulders now erect, and with her chin lifted, she appeared to be a completely different person. With her surprisingly smooth skin and the change in how she carried herself, she seemed much younger now. An older version of Mackenzie. Just as striking. Just as beautiful.

“That must have been quite an experience. Did you hear the explosion when the mountain blew?” Even though Dom was working out of the Perdido Bay Region at the time, it had been all over the news.

“Didn’t hear a damned thing. We were in what they called the quiet zone. The sound waves passed right over us, I guess.”

Again he tried to hide his smile. It was humorous hearing an old woman swear. She was tougher than she looked. He asked question after question about the eruption and she answered each one with such detail he had a hard time believing she had Alzheimer’s disease.

“Mrs. Shaw, if you don’t mind my asking, why did you worry if you didn’t travel north in the summer?”

“Because of the Shaw Curse, of course. Hasn’t Mackenzie Marie told you anything? As her husband, you need to know these things. How long have you two been married?”

“Ah, well…” She was slipping back into the same place where she’d been when they arrived.

“I didn’t get an invitation and I’d think my own daughter would’ve invited me to her wedding.”

“She wouldn’t dream of not including you, Mrs. Shaw.”

“As I was saying, Foster’s relatives disappeared during the warm months mostly. It’s been documented, you know. I cataloged and charted every detail I learned about every disappearance. Dates, locations, weather conditions, things like that. They went missing mostly from the big cities, but not always. You can never be too careful. We lived in small towns, up here, mostly on the coast, where the temperature didn’t get much above 70 degrees in the summer. But it’s best to not stay put for long, no matter where you are. Better to move around a lot. I fear we’ve become too complacent lately.”

“Why is that, ma’am?” My God, she knew. She’d figured it out on her own.

She shrugged. “Don’t know why. We just did. It’s somehow safer. Foster said I worried too much, but when I finally let my guard down and we moved to San Diego, look what happened.”

“When your husband went missing?”

“Of course. Do you not know anything?”

Mrs. Shaw leaned forward, reaching for his hands, and he set them in her upturned palms. He willed himself not to take in any of her energy, but it was difficult with the palm to palm contact. She gripped with the strength of a much younger woman and stared at him with eyes that reminded him of an eagle. Sharp, observant and extremely intelligent.

“You are her protector, are you not? A guardian? Someone who will look after her?”

“Yes, I am.” Good Lord. How perceptive was this woman?

“Well, then, there are some things you need to know.”

When she loosened her hold, he quickly pulled his hands away and she recounted many of the same details Mackenzie had told him the other night.

“And when her cousin, Stacy, disappeared last year, well, that’s when things really changed for Mackenzie. I’m not sure she took it seriously until then. And Corey still doesn’t.”

“What do you think is going on?” Dom didn’t want to ask a question to which he knew the horrible answer, but he had to.

“We don’t know. It’s hard to convince doctors that something’s going on when you don’t have a body to test. They just think the family has a higher than normal count of crazies. And that doesn’t even include me.” She tapped her temple with a forefinger. “My niece who disappeared last year was convinced it had something to do with alien abductions. Maybe she’s right. Who knows?” She played with her bangle bracelets, four or five on each wrist, clanking them up and down her forearms.

“But how can they say it’s mental illness? Have they done any sort of testing—genetic, DNA—to pinpoint any odd commonalities?” The strangeness of discussing genetics with a woman who only minutes ago couldn’t remember her name hadn’t quite escaped him.

“Can’t find a thing. So it’s easiest for them to say the Shaws have a tendency to walk away from their lives when things get rough. Can you imagine? Desertion as a character trait?”

Dom said nothing, just stared at the pages of the open journal on his lap, twisting one of his thumb rings with his forefinger. What could he say when he knew the answer?

“Mackenzie fears her father’s fate awaits her, doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does. That’s why she broke things off with that fellow last year. I know you’re trying to look after her, but I’m not sure why she thinks you’re any different.” Her clipped, biting tone made him cringe. He was different all right.

“The Curse tends to strike those before the age of thirty, and we thought surely Foster was safe at forty-seven. We didn’t think about starting a family until he was well into his thirties, did she tell you that? We thought he’d escaped the Curse, but we were very wrong.”

With a thumb and forefinger, Dom rubbed his eyes. Good Lord, how this family had suffered through the years.

“I expect that you will keep her safe since I am no longer able to do so. Keep her out of the big cities and be especially careful in the warmer months. Don’t let her out of your sight. I’m counting on you.”

Reaching her hands out to him again, she clasped his fingers and batted her lashes. “Shhhh, don’t tell my husband I said this, but you have very beautiful eyes. A girl could get lost in them and completely forget her manners.”

SEVERAL HOURS LATER Mackenzie jumped up on the park bench outside the front door of the nursing home and walked it like a balance beam, using Dom’s shoulder for support. What an amazing day. She wanted to sing, skip and dance in his arms, which made absolutely no sense because of what she needed to do.

Don’t think about it. Just live in the moment. Today was wonderful. Who cared about tomorrow? Her heart protested, but what choice did she have? None. Zero. She just hoped she wouldn’t hurt him. But it was better this way. No messy goodbyes. No promises of a relationship that had nowhere to go.

“Thank you so much. You don’t know how much today meant to me. And to my mom, even if she doesn’t realize it.” She caressed his cheeks with her thumbs and felt that incredible surge of adrenaline whenever she touched him. In response, he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her off the bench and spun her around. She couldn’t help but laugh. If only this moment, this time with him, didn’t have to end.

“Your mother is fascinating and I had a delightful time escorting both of you,” he said.

She intertwined her fingers in his hair and that strange but calming sound filled her ears again. She was going to miss how she felt whenever she was around him. God, she was going to miss everything about him.

“Did you see the starry look in her eyes as we drove through the Arboretum?” Mackenzie asked. “For her, seeing the flowering cherries each spring is like taking a child to Disneyland. It’s breathtaking and exciting no matter how many times she experiences it. You’d think she’d never seen them in bloom before and yet, we go every year. Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to take her otherwise.”

“It was my pleasure.”

Looking into his eyes, she thought she detected a touch of sadness within their depths, but when he blinked, it was gone. No, she was imagining things. She was simply projecting her own feelings onto him.

She winced inside and concentrated on what was making her happy right now. She’d wait to talk to him when he took her home. She could put off the inevitable for a few more hours. Grabbing the back of his hair in her fist, she kissed him hard and tried to stamp the feel of him permanently in her memory.

DOM REACHED FOR the door handle, but Mackenzie put a hand on his forearm and he hesitated. This was it, he thought, and his heart rolled over in his chest.

The emotion in the air had been evident as he drove her home from the convalescent center. Although he hadn’t dipped into her thoughts, things had to be weighing heavily on her mind—their relationship, this bonding between the two of them that she undoubtedly felt, the visit to her mother’s which brought the Shaw family curse to the forefront again.



He’d known she was planning to break things off between them at some point. In fact, he’d sensed she’d wanted to do it earlier today, but because she wouldn’t have been able to take her mother to see the cherry blossoms given her car situation, he’d insisted on driving them. A selfish move on his part—meeting her mother when their relationship was doomed—but he wanted to be introduced to the woman responsible for bringing such a remarkable human being into the world before he had to say goodbye to her.

Dread stabbed at his insides, but this moment was inevitable. Like a train pulling into a station, there was no going back. No stopping. It had to happen. Long-term, he was a liability to her. Today might be fine, but tomorrow—or the next day or the next—the lure of Sweet might be too much. Like hell would he do to her what Alfonso had done to the girl he’d loved once. Those images would never be erased from Dom’s mind. No, Mackenzie was definitely much safer without him.

At least she was the one starting this conversation, rather than the other way around. The instigator of a break-up always had the most power and it was important to him that she drew strength from that. Not that it’d be easy for him, but he’d manage.

“I’m glad you read some of my mother’s journals. I hope it gave you some additional insight into what our family has gone through.”

“Yes, it did. You’ve all been through quite a lot.”

She cleared her throat and tugged one sleeve, then the other, down over her hands. “If I were a regular person with a normal family history, I would not be sitting here like this, getting ready to say what I am now.”

And if he weren’t who he was, he wouldn’t need to leave her in order for her to be safe.

“But you’re not.”

“Dom, these past few weeks with you have been wonderful—as in amazing.” She dropped her hands in her lap and turned her head away.

“But…?”

“That’s the problem. It’s too good. I feel myself getting too attached. To you, to what we have together. To the promise of a tomorrow. And…and I can’t let that happen. I’m binding myself to a future that can never be.”

He ground his molars together and stared, unseeing, out the windshield at the solid beige of her garage door. He knew her bike would be parked just on the other side, on the left, with boxes on the workbench and upper shelves filled with unpacked belongings accumulated from a lifetime of frequent moves. He could hear dishes clanking inside—her roommate was home. Good. Mackenzie would have someone to talk to when this was all over.

“I understand.”

She snapped her head around. “You do?”

He might as well make this as easy as possible for her and not argue. “And I agree.”

Her eyes opened wide in surprise. He reached over and released a strand of hair caught in her earring. His throat tightened to the point that he wasn’t sure his voice would work. This would be the last time he’d look into her eyes while she looked into his. Oh sure, maybe after he moved, he’d have occasion to visit the Seattle office again and could drive by her house, potentially see her from afar.

But never again would he see her like this. Smell the fragrance of her hair. Touch her soft skin. Hear her speak his name—either casually, while asking him to pass the salt as they prepared dinner together, or at the height of pleasure, while he made love to her and her body shattered around him.

He missed her already. “Mackenzie?” he whispered.

“Dom?”

There. She’d said his name again.

“It’s best this way. I could never be the right man for you.”