“So Jackie, how have you been…besides the obvious elephant in the room?” Max nervously asked me.
“As long as Sara is okay, I’m okay.”
“I’m sorry, Jack, about everything. I know about your meeting with Dominick. He can be a real prick.”
“You don’t know the half of it, my friend, but I can’t really get into all of that now. Any new developments coming in?”
“Nothing on our end. We’re keeping an eye on the guy you told us about. Surprisingly, we’ve come up short on Marino. The guy seems to be off the grid.”
“Keep your ears low to the ground and your eyes wide open. I need this guy located.”
“You can count on me, Jack. I won’t let you down, not ever again.”
I believed my friend with every fiber of my being. He did what he had to do for me and the family he had pledged his allegiance to. I wasn’t going to question his loyalty. I knew I had it always, and I was the one that was sorry for ever questioning it.
“I trust you, Max, and thank you for always having my back. You may be the only one.”
I said my goodbyes to Max and ordered Tommy to close early tonight and post a sign to be closed tomorrow. I needed some quiet time and no interruptions when I finally talked to Sara.
She had slept the day away with little pain and discomfort. She was eating better and taking her medicine, which pleased me to no end. I would take tonight to hold her and then speak with her in the morning.
I had already negotiated with God for Sara’s survival. I was pushing my good fortune by asking for more, but I had to try. I held the rosary that was given to Sara. It had been years since I knew what to do with this, but I recited the prayers in the order that was on the prayer card. Then I spoke from the heart.
“Please, God, if tonight is my last night shared with my angel, then please watch over her tomorrow when we part. She will need your strength to get her though all the pain I will have caused her by my lies and deception. I don’t deserve her forgiveness, but I will ask for it anyway.”
I then remembered mama and her praying to St. Francis for me. She was another angel in my life that I didn’t deserve but who loved me anyway.
Climbing onto our bed and pulling Sara as close as I could, I whispered “I love you’s” softly into her ear and drifted off into sleep with the calming sounds of her heart beating next to mine.
“Be a better man for Sara, Jack! You are my brother. I didn’t understand you when I was younger, but I do now, and I love you for all you did for me. Please, Jack, don’t go down that dark road again, not even for our daughter.”
“I love you, Uncle Jack. You are my hero. I’m asking you to let him go, be happy again, and smile. I’m going to need you when these babies are born. They are going to love you just as much as I do.”
“I’m not leaving you, Jack, but I am taking a break. I need some time to myself to think some things through, and I can’t do that here with you. I’m sorry.”
“If you were so sorry, then you would stay and talk to me.”
“And say what? You are an island, Jack, tucked away somewhere off the coast of nowhere, and I’m not invited to visit. I have tried, but you stopped me at every turn, so I’m going to go to my own island for a while and take a long vacation from our life…or at least what it used to be before Nicolette was raped.”
“Jack! Wake up! Come on, baby. Please come back to me. You need to wake up!”
I was startled and sat up quickly, banging my head against the headboard. I screamed, “Dammit! Fuck! I can’t do this anymore.”
She looked terrified. I couldn’t believe we were here again. I kept hurting my wife over and over again, and her look was always the same.
“I’m sorry, Sara. It was a nightmare.”
What else could I say? It was the truth. It had been all my life.
“Yes, I know. You were thrashing your body all over the bed. I slipped out to bring you breakfast and found you like this. We need some help, Jack. Don’t you think it’s time you talk to someone about these nightmares and terrors? You are choking on them and struggling to breathe. I see it, Jack. I live it with you, and I hurt for you. Please, I want nothing more than to understand you. Will you finally talk to me?”
“Yes, I think I have to.”
I couldn’t eat even if I wanted to. I left her to wait for me in bed while I scolded my skin in the shower. The hot water was nothing compared to the stinging pain of the words forever imprinted on my heart:
Nicolette was raped…I need a favor Jack…You did good…The message you sent, he will never forget…Who are you?…My son would be here with me, and not with the likes of him.
Just as I expected, Sara was right where I left her. She looked beautiful. She patted the spot next to her and invited me over. I climbed into our bed and found solace in her arms.
“Sara, I need to tell you something, but before I do, I need to ask you to please hear me out completely before you make any judgments or decisions based on what I’m about to reveal. Can you do that for me?”
“I will do anything for you, Jack. You know that.”
“Does that include to stay with me forever? To not walk out our door? To fight for what we have together? To see the man before you who has loved you since I was a boy who didn’t know any better, but tried to be better for you? This is what I’m asking you, Sara. Can you do that?”
“I will not leave you, Jack, no matter what you tell me.”
“You’ve done it before.”
“That was different, and you know why I left.”
I did know, but I still pushed her to challenge me.
“Michael St. Clair is dead.”
There, I said it. Now I had to wait. She didn’t say a word. Not a blink of her eyes, no tears fell, and she made no move to leave my arms. I moved slightly to touch her, and again, she didn’t pull away and, taking me by surprise, she leaned in to kiss me on my forehead.
“Thank you, Jack, for telling me.”
What?
“You knew? All this time, and you knew about Michael?” I asked.
“I did.”
“And you didn’t talk to me about it. Why? I’ve been in hell over this. My greatest fear in life is to lose you, and I’ve been trying to tell you but I just couldn’t. And then you got sick, and all I wanted to do was take care of you.”
“I know, Jack, and I’m sorry you had to go through that, but it wasn’t my place to confront you with it. It was yours. This has been our problem all along. You close yourself off to everyone around you, including me. You hide behind the walls you put up in the name of protecting me from harm. The only one that can truly hurt me is you, Jack, and it will be by you pushing me away. That reason—and only that reason—is why I left you. That’s why I compared you to an island, because that is exactly who you are and what you are. I can’t be that person anymore who fights for every crumb you decide to throw at me when the mood strikes. Either we are in this together—and I mean all-in with no walls between us—or we part ways, and I will love you forever, just not
with
you.”
“I’ll never let you go, Sara, so don’t even try. I will tell you anything you want to know if it means keeping you here with me. Please just ask what you’ve been wondering all along.”
“I don’t have to, Jack, because I trust you and believe you.”
“You shouldn’t, Sara. I don’t deserve you. I invited an angel to the devil’s bed a long time ago, and I’ve been trying every day since then to live up to the man you need me to be.”
“You are everything I need. I am not perfect, Jack, and I am far from being an angel. Please don’t break yourself down anymore. You are a good man, the man that I love more than anything else in this world. If you had a choice to believe just one thing I have ever said to you, then please believe that I love you.”
“You still didn’t ask me,” I said.
“Do you need me to say it?”
“I do.”
“Did you murder Michael St. Clair?”
“No.”
“Did you have him killed?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
“Yes.”
She exhaled and left our bed, grabbing her robe and tying it tightly around her as if it was a shield to protect her. Sara walked over to our window and stared out to the city we loved so much. I knew better not to go to her. This was Sara working out all that was revealed to her. My fingers were itching to touch her, but I feared I would be rejected. She would be repulsed by me. I didn’t kill him, but I’m just as responsible for his death…his blood was all over me.
I couldn’t wait any longer. Her silence was deafening. I threw on my pajama bottoms and walked over to her.
“Please, Sara, talk to me. Say anything.”
She turned to look at me with her arms crossed over her chest and said, “You’ve been tortured and tormented for so long now, Jack, and I’ve remained by your side doing everything humanly possible to comfort you. I’m not so naïve in believing that I wasn’t aware of your past and who I was marrying. I knew, and I loved you despite of it.”
“Sara, I…”
“No, Jack, let me say this.”
“Can I touch you?”
“No, you may not. Not yet.”
“I wish I could have given you children. You will never know how much it devastated me when I was told I couldn’t.”
“That didn’t matter, Sara, not to me. As long as I had you, then I was okay.”
“Jack! Let me talk. We should have tried harder for children. We could have adopted. We could have gone back to Italy where you were born. Orphanages all over the world have unwanted children for couples like us to love. You chose me, Jack, above your desire to be a father. I knew what that cost you inside, but yet I didn’t do anything to convince you to try. Then you did the most unselfish act of kindness. You gave your brother a chance to have what you desired most: to be a father and have a child with his wife who he loved with all of his heart. Don’t you see, Jack? Nicolette being born saved you in more ways than I ever could. That precious girl broke down your walls and found a place in your heart and forever changed you. It was beautiful to experience that blessing with you.”
She continued, “You never believed you deserved anything for yourself: not love, not peace, and certainly not forgiveness. Your past is your past, and you have owned up to every sin you say you have committed. You pray to St. Francis when you don’t think anyone is close enough to hear you. Well, I have, Jack, and even when I was sleeping, I heard you pray for me but never for yourself.”
At that moment of listening to my Sara bare her soul to me, I collapsed to the floor and wept. I just had no strength left to hold onto. I needed to release this pain once and for all. All of it that had been wrapped around my heart like jagged chains, piercing me every time I tried to break free from it.
Sara’s love and honesty had broken through, and I was finally able to come up for air. She kneeled beside me, wrapping her arms around me. I welcomed her touch and felt safe in her arms.
“I didn’t do it, Sara. I didn’t hurt anybody. I won’t sit here and deny that I didn’t wish him dead every single day, because I did. I wanted to be the one. I wanted my revenge. I wanted him to bleed and suffer until he took his last breath. I wanted all of that, Sara. What kind of monster does that make me? I’m no better than him.”
“That’s not true, Jack! Wanting and doing are two very different things. What he did to Nicolette was unimaginable, a brutal act of violence that no woman should ever have to go through. It was never up to you to make him pay for what he did to Nicolette. You must know this, and that fact has been the one constant in your life. It has controlled you all of these years, and it forced you to push all of us away. It is not your fault what happened to her. You are not God, not this invincible force to control every little thing. No one has that power…no one. Your life is
unfinished
and defined by your past. Change it, Jack. Hold my hand, and walk into the light and free yourself once and for all.”
“Jack, forgive yourself for your parents. For Mason. For me. For Nicolette, and even for Michael St. Clair. He too was someone’s child, and there is someone in the world grieving over him. We are not meant to understand why people do what they do in this short life. All I know is what we have right here now. Forgive yourself, Jack, and together we will handle everything else waiting for us beyond our doors. No more hiding from me. No more running.”
“You just don’t know what you are saying, Sara. There is so much more to my life than what was said here today. You will leave if you know the truth.”
“No, I won’t. Dammit, Jack!”
I didn’t see it coming, but I certainly felt the sting of her slap against my cheek.
“Ow! My hand. Your face is like a brick wall. Dammit, Jack, that hurt.”
And just like that, the black clouds that were above me parted, and there was warmth. The sun was shining down on me, and I allowed myself to feel. Laughter burst from deep inside of me, and the sound of it resonated throughout our entire home.
“Do you think this is funny? I need ice. Ugh! I can’t believe you. Men! Here I am, pouring my heart out to you, and you are laughing at me. Stop that!”
She couldn’t help herself and began laughing along with me. I needed to feel and believe all that Sara had said to me. She had no reason to lie to me. She was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I would make new promises to her today. I did it once, and I would do it again. I would break free of my past and stay in the sun with Sara.
“I love you, Sara.”
“I love you too, Jack. Sorry for slapping you, but you deserved it.”
“I did, and it was just what I needed.”
We went back to our bed and held each other for the rest of the morning. We were both drained and needed sleep. She was still here after I revealed my darkest secrets to her.
“Jack, are you awake?” she asked.
I didn’t answer with my words. I kissed her in return. We couldn’t make love, because she was still recovering. So this was the next best thing, just holding her and keeping her body close to mine.
“Jack, what happens now? Are you in danger?”
That woke me up, and I had to bite my lip before answering.
“How do you want me to answer that? Because no matter what I say will hurt you to some degree.”