The Promise of Paradise

Chapter Twelve


Eddie felt her gaze on him before he awoke, beyond the twitching and the feeling of falling that always plagued him in these dreams. Nightmares, he corrected himself in the fog of sleepiness. Not dreams. No dreams could haunt him, day after day, night after night, the way these did. Behind his eyelids they played: one red light, like the eye of an indifferent god, changing to green—he was sure it was green—and then glass shattering and the wail of a siren. Finally, his brother’s moans.

Eddie lunged up from the loveseat, eyes wide open, fingers damp with perspiration punching into empty air. Ash sat next to him and stared.

“Eddie?” Her voice was quiet, fearful.

He sank into the cushions, took a deep breath, and tried to push the nightmare away.

“What was that?” Her eyes grew larger as he fought to breathe normally.

“Ah, just a bad dream.” He tried to laugh it off.

“In the middle of the day?”

He loosened his fingers from the fists they’d tightened themselves into. “Sometimes.” Maybe someday he’d tell her about the horror that had haunted him the past three years. Maybe. Right now it was still too painful to revisit.

“Sorry I dozed off.” He glanced at the television. Bottom of the eighth inning. How long had he been sleeping? Twenty minutes? Longer? Since the Sox were up in the sixth.

“Don’t be,” Ash answered. “You’ve been working twelve-hour days all week.”

Eddie rolled his head, neck stiff. “No kidding.” He checked his watch. Almost four. “You working tonight?”

“Yeah. Told Marty I’d come in around five-thirty. He hired another new girl, asked me to train her.” She paused. “Can I ask you something?”

Eddie winced. He hoped whatever question Ash had worked up during his nap wasn’t too probing or painful. Just thinking about opening the memory of Cal again, a rusty tin can with sharp, bloody edges, stole his breath. That’s what he got for falling asleep. She’d figure out what had happened sooner or later. If he didn’t tell her himself, she’d guess from the nightmares.

But to his relief, Ash’s question didn’t have anything to do with that. “What’s the story with that woman from the shop?”

Eddie’s cheeks heated up. “Cassandra?”

“The redhead who stopped in the other day, yeah.”

He cocked his head, not wanting to answer right away. “Why? You jealous?”

“Please.” She narrowed her eyes. “So what’s the deal?”

“We dated a while back.”

“So I gathered.”

“And then we broke up.”

“Does she know that?”

“She should. She’s the reason it happened.”

* * *

Eddie had let himself in the back door of her apartment, the same way he always had when he stopped by after work. This time, though, Cass wasn’t waiting for him. She wasn’t standing in the kitchen, frying pork chops in her black bra and his red plaid boxer shorts. She wasn’t sitting in the living room, a glass of wine in one hand for her and a cold beer in the other for him. A strange stillness filled the apartment for a fraction of a second. Then he noticed the sounds.

They came from the bedroom, low laughter and the swish of fabric on fabric. Eddie looked at the clock above the sink, the dishtowels below it, the cutting board, unwashed, lying on the counter. The laughter changed to soft moans, and a humming grew in his ears. He flipped on the hall switch, and too-bright light chased shadows from the pictures Cass had hung on the walls from last summer’s vacation. He’d walked down the hall and stopped in the open bedroom doorway. A man he didn’t know lay in bed on top of his girlfriend. Cass took one look at Eddie and yanked up the sheet.

She’d yelled at him as if it were his fault he’d walked in on them. He wondered how long it had been going on, and how stupid and blind he’d been not to see it sooner. She’d tried calling him at work and later at his parents’, but he wouldn’t talk to her. He returned to the apartment only once, to get a few lousy things he thought probably belonged to him, and that was it.

He hoped he never saw the bitch again.

* * *

Ash raised her eyebrows as Eddie finished the story. “Rough. Sorry.”

“Me too. Doesn’t matter.”

“You sure about that? Looks like she’s interested in a second chance.”

He shifted on the couch. One bare ankle brushed Ash’s, and he drew it back before his mind went in directions it shouldn’t. “Damn sure. Cass might want to get back together, but I’m done with her.”

Don’t forget who was there for you that night. Don’t forget who held your hand when the doctors told you there was nothing else they could do.

Eddie hoped Ash wasn’t thinking of what Cass had said the other day. He couldn’t explain. He couldn’t tell her, that yeah, Cass had come to the hospital the night of the accident. She’d waited for him to wake up, and then she’d held his hand when the doctor came in and told them about his brother. She’d wiped away his tears when he couldn’t find the strength to do it himself. She’d let him sleep at her place for days at a time, pulling the blankets over him when he kicked them off in nightmares so violent he’d wake up shivering. But so what? She’d cheated on him, too, less than six months later, so what did that say about her devotion?

Ash was asking him something. Eddie fought back the fog of anger and tried to focus. “Sorry. What?”

“I just wondered if you’ve ever had a serious girlfriend. In your life?”

“Depends on how you define serious. “Not really. Cass was close for a while, but…” He didn’t know how to finish. What good did it do to get attached to someone, if you knew that someday they’d betray you, turn their back and leave? Everyone left at some point. Girlfriends. Family. Even the people you thought you could count on forever, like brothers. Especially brothers.

“What about you?” he asked, filling the silence.

She dropped her gaze, same as always. Ash never wanted to talk about herself. She just wanted to finesse other people into telling all their secrets. Just like a lawyer.

“Serious boyfriend? This one you just broke up with?”

She shrugged. “I thought so.” She picked at a hole in the arm of the loveseat. “Guess I was wrong.” Sadness filled the spaces in her face that before had held light.

“His loss,” Eddie said.

“That’s what I keep trying to tell myself.”

“You decide how long you’re staying in town?” He tried to convince himself it was a casual question, that it didn’t matter to him one way or the other who lived upstairs from him. Truth was, though, Eddie couldn’t imagine anyone but Ash tripping down those stairs in the morning, letting herself in after dark, tossing a toy for the kitten to play with. He couldn’t picture anyone else on the other side of this door, anyone else stretching out on the rooftop, anyone else arguing about whose turn it was to drag the trashcan to the corner.

She’d gotten under his skin.

“I don’t know,” she said after a minute. “I only sublet through the summer, so when September rolls around…”

She didn’t finish, and Eddie wasn’t sure he wanted her to.

“Well, you’ll figure it out,” he said and left it at that.

She laid her head against the cushions and closed her eyes. “I hope so,” she said, but the words were so quiet he wondered if she’d meant to speak them aloud at all.