The Summer We Came to Life

Chapter

19





JESSE SAT ALONE ON THE BEACH. HOW STRANGE to be so affected by all these memories from thirty years ago. A floodgate had opened, and suddenly Jesse couldn’t get her head out of the late seventies. Out of the gutter, Jesse thought. But the thing was, as she told the stories, they kept popping into her mind and out of her mouth very differently than she intended. She wanted to help Samantha. After all of Jesse’s tough talk over the years, she knew Sammy expected her to talk her out of her romantic notions of marrying Remy. Jesse sighed and pulled her beach towel around her. Was it all just talk or only some of it? The little flutters she’d been experiencing with Arshan reminded her of the girl she’d once been. When it had been possible to trust a man.

“Uh-oh,” Jesse muttered. What have I done to my Isabel?



A twenty-three-year-old Jesse lay in a marble bathtub, a mound of soap bubbles covering her pregnant belly. She moved the bubbles back and forth over her belly button. She pushed her navel in and out with her finger. With a sudden toss of her head, she dried her hand on a towel and picked up the cigarette from the ashtray on the ledge of the tub.

Without warning, Cesar burst through the bathroom door. Jesse froze with her cigarette in mid air.

“Amor, I’m ho—” Cesar’s smile dropped off his face. “Are you smoking in the house? My mother will kill you!”

Jesse, recovered from the shock of seeing him, took a deliberate drag of the cigarette before snubbing it out slowly in the ashtray. “What are you doing home?”

Cesar ran his hand over his hair, his curls cut short at his father’s insistence, as he ascertained his wife’s mood. He frowned but didn’t answer.

Jesse looked away. “Business trip” was all she’d been told, as usual. The Guerra women were never told anything more.

Jesse returned to playing with the bubbles and said in an even voice, “I smoke in here because I have nowhere else to go. If I walk outside of our room, I am approached by a servant. If I walk outside of the house, I am accompanied by guards. If I want to go somewhere in town, I am escorted by a fleet of security. I am a prisoner. And so I can damn well smoke in my cell. Darling.”

Cesar looked down on his wife, at her thick hair curled up in the steam, at her dainty eyelashes, her graceful hands amongst the bubbles. His look was one of sadness, the anger drained. Jesse chose not to acknowledge this, and jutted her chin out for a fight.

“I thought I prepared you for this,” Cesar said gently. “I told you about my childhood. About the claustrophobia.”

Jesse shook her head in fury, startling the loving look off her husband’s face. “Yes, you told me about your indulgent childhood and childish rebellions. I am not a child, Cesar!” Jesse felt ready to murder him. She forced in a steadying breath. “You promised me we would move out of your parents’ house.”

“I know I did, mi amor. There hasn’t been time. And with the baby, my father thinks—”

“That he owns me. Isn’t that what he thinks? That I am just another piece of property of the Guerra cartel—”

“Oye!” Jesse had gone too far. “You be more careful, señora. Remember where you are, my spoiled little wife.”

Tears stung Jesse’s eyes. She turned to face Cesar just as they spilled down her already moist cheeks. “Cesar, why didn’t you tell me how it would really be?”

Jesse had asked him this countless times in the past year. But this time, Cesar heard the full weight of sorrow behind the question. Was he remembering his beautiful wife, in all her feisty glory in New York? Could he see her broken spirit? The trampled spirit of a stallion. He was a boy raised to be a prince in a patriarchal kingdom. Had he forgotten how different it would be for his wife—a fiercely independent woman? How could he have forgotten his mother’s pain?

Cesar’s eyes were wet as bathwater. “Jess, you’re going to have to try to adapt, find ways to be happy. Appreciate everything you have,” Cesar said, gently sweeping an arm around the luxurious bathroom.

Jesse didn’t look around. “I had money, Cesar. I bought whatever I wanted.”

Cesar raised an eyebrow. “Not like this, princesa.” When Jesse didn’t budge, he said, “Look at my mother. She has her tea parties, and her charity work, and—”

Jesse sniffed in disdain. “I am not your mother, Cesar. We don’t have the first thing in common. Is that how you expected me to be?” She lifted her gray eyes to his.

Cesar stepped toward the tub. He knelt before her and smoothed back her hair. Jesse lifted her chin again. With that simple act of defiance and dignity, Cesar’s face filled with regret. “What did you expect, Jesse? What did you want?”

“I expected you to save Panama.” From people like your father, Jesse thought. She met Cesar’s eyes. “And all I wanted was you.”

Cesar cupped Jesse’s face in his hands. He kissed her forehead and then her lips. Softly and then with hard passion. Jesse resisted and then gave in. Cesar pulled on Jesse’s hands, helped her up. He kissed the enormous belly that emerged from the water, and gently toweled off her glistening body. He took his wife into his arms, and carried her off to the bedroom.



On a beach in Tela, Honduras, Jesse slumped forward and put her hands over her eyes. A second later she took in a huge breath, sat up and shook out her hair, raking her fingers along her scalp. She snatched up the pack of cigarettes on the sand. Empty. Dadblammit. She slapped her back against her chair and glared at the sea.

Arshan laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Shit!” Jesse yelped. She turned around and saw who it was. She grasped his hand. “You scared me.”

Arshan pulled a chair close to Jesse. “You looked about a million miles away. You okay?”

Jesse stared at the sea a long time before answering. “It’s unsettling to remember all these things I’ve been trying not to for so long. You know, I really thought I wasn’t thinking about them,” Jesse said with a weak smile. “Now I realize I may have spent my entire adult life reacting to—and thereby, living for—people long since gone and things long since over in my life. How crazy am I?”

Arshan took both of Jesse’s hands in his. He rubbed them to warm them, tried to gauge the look on her face.

“Yes, it is pretty crazy.”