I clutched the door handle, knowing exactly where she was taking us.
We followed the road through the grounds and she eventually pulled into a parking space and killed the engine. “It’s over there.” She pointed across the lawn, then opened the door and got out of the car. She tromped across the lawn without looking back.
I unfolded from the car and followed. She stopped about twenty-five meters in and moved aside when I joined her. She pointed at a granite headstone.
JAMES CHARLES DONATO
BELOVED SON
Birth and death dates followed.
I slid my hands into my back pockets. I should have felt angry looking at the stone, and I should have felt some sort of connection to, or sense of loss toward, the woman standing beside me. The man I used to be had lost everything. Instead, I felt a bone-deep fear that Natalya could be right. Would I recognize her when I got back to the Tierneys’ house?
I glanced from the headstone to the car and back and swallowed the rising panic. “Is anything buried here?”
Aimee hummed a laugh. It sounded cruel and was filled with loathing. “A coffin full of sandbags.” Part of Thomas’s stratagem to fake my death, she told me, and I had to remind myself she didn’t know the full story. Based on what Thomas explained to me yesterday, Aimee and anyone else close to James had been told the bare minimum of what they needed to hear.
“Leaving you behind in Mexico was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was the right thing.”
Afternoon sunlight peeked through the tree canopy. Shadows of leaves danced on her clothes. Warm light played off the outline of her profile. It reflected in the shimmer of tears that moistened the soft tissue under her eyes.
“I love James. I will always love him. And for the most part, he treated me very well. In the end, though . . .” Her voice slid away. She swiped a finger under an eye and hummed uneasily. “You know what happened.”
“I wish I could apologize on his behalf.” I wished I could beat the crap out of James for what he’d asked of her. How he’d expected the love of his life to bury what happened with Phil until Thomas and the DEA could carry out the sting operation. For not allowing her to heal the way she needed to.
She sucked in her lower lip. “There are three reasons why I’ve been able to forgive James.” With her arm down by her side, she splayed three fingers. “One, I had to put the past behind me. Two, James was fiercely loyal to me. He was protecting me the best way he knew how, and that was by doing what he thought he could to keep Phil away from me. But Carlos,” she lifted her head, her eyes a piercing blue in the shadows, “I have to believe James is dead. He is dead to me.”
My chest rose and fell with a deep, settling breath. “That’s the third reason, isn’t it?”
She pressed her lips between her teeth as though holding the emotion inside and nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do, or how I’d feel, were you James, and you moved back here. That scares me. I’ve never told Ian, but I know it’s something he thinks about.”
I took two steps back and one forward, rocking on the lawn. What would James do? I had to assume he’d return home as soon as he could. Would he bring the boys with him or leave them behind?
“You’ve mentioned James wasn’t like his brothers. Other than how he handled the situation with Phil, was he a good man?”
“I wouldn’t have spent as many years of my life with him as I did if he wasn’t. There were things about his past, things that happened before he moved to California when we were kids, that he kept from me. I have to believe he did that because he was ashamed. But I’d trust him with my life, even after what happened in the meadow.”
“My sons . . . should something happen to me . . .”
“James will be angry and hurt. He will feel like everyone bailed on him, but he would never give them up.”
Aimee had built a new life with Ian, a man I sensed she loved deeply. What would happen to them when James returned? Would he try to win Aimee back? He’d already left Aimee behind, but then that hadn’t been intentional. It probably never crossed his mind he wouldn’t be back for his wedding.
What about Natalya? Would she give him up, or fight for him? James wouldn’t know her.
“Would you leave Ian for James?”
“I honestly don’t know. But I can tell you this. For Ian and me to be truly happy together, I can’t live near James. There’s too much history. Ian trusts me, but I know he’ll wonder, and that’s not fair to him.” She rested a hand over the lower region of her belly. “It wouldn’t be fair to our child.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Her mouth turned downward and she looked at the headstone. She’d probably imagined for as many years as she and James dated telling him that news. For one day they would be married and she’d birth his children. But here he stood before her, but not really him, and she was pregnant with another man’s child.
Her eyes sheened and I agonized about what to do. This must be so damn difficult for her. I shouldn’t have come. Instead, I opened my arms. “Come here.”
After a slight hesitation, she leaned against me and I folded my arms around her as she cried on my shoulder.
A breeze swept through the trees, rustling branches, giving flight to Aimee’s hair. Sunshine brightened the tint of red threaded in her curls and suddenly, with Aimee in my arms, I longed to be with Natalya with an intensity I hadn’t felt before. To hold her tight while making promises I’d never let her go. That I’d never leave her, or forget her.
But on the heels of that need came an unbearable reality. While I could make those promises to Natalya, I wouldn’t be the one breaking them.
Aimee soon eased from my embrace and pushed the curls from her face. “Must be the hormones.” She wiped her damp cheeks.
I slightly nodded. “Congratulations.”
She reached a shaking hand for me only to let it fall to her side. She gestured at the headstone. “Anyway,” she said with a wistful sigh, “I wanted you to understand how I feel, and showing you this is the only way I knew how. Knowing this headstone is here helps me keep the past in the past. And James is my past. I had to let him go.”
The following morning, Natalya flew to Los Angeles and I left for Oaxaca. We didn’t talk much about our afternoon with Aimee, Ian, Catherine, and Hugh, but that night we’d made love fiercely and exhaustively, until the early-morning hours. I buried myself deep inside her, convinced that loving her this intensely, I could imprint her on my soul and it would be impossible to forget her when I surfaced from the fugue. Because how could James not sense how deeply I loved her?