Athena's Daughter (12 page)

As the moments passed without a word, Derek’s
smile faded. The silence between them was charged, electric and
snapping. Still holding her gaze, he pushed away from the headboard
and leaned toward her, his eyes seeming to grow wider and deeper.
Athena held her breath, unable to move.

Before he reached her, Derek closed his eyes
and took a deep breath. He leaned back, releasing a long sigh.

“I’m awake now,” he said, his voice taut with
strain. “You can go and…do whatever it is Simon has for you to
do.”

Feeling almost drugged, she nodded. “Okay.”
She rose from the bed, but knew her trembling legs wouldn’t
tolerate walking just yet. “Do you want me to make your tea?” she
asked to give herself a little time to get it together.

“No, thanks. I’ll make it myself.”

“All right.” She took a tentative step, and
found out her legs decided to support her weight after all as long
as she didn’t try to run any marathons. As she made her slow way to
the door, she heard the snap of his lighter and smelled the sharp
scent of smoke as he lit his first cigarette of the day. Her
fingers just brushed the doorknob when his soft voice halted
her.

“Athena.”

She closed her eyes at the sound of her name
on his lips. When he’d said it on Saturday it had been uttered with
anger and disgust, but now it was soft and caressing and too, too
familiar. She beat down the resultant flood of emotions and turned
to him, wiping her face clean of all feeling. “Yeah?”

The tip of his cigarette glowed red as he
inhaled, watching her closely. He blew out a cloud of smoke that
hung suspended in the air.

“This isn’t going to work.”

The quiet certainty of his words was like a
bucket of ice water to her emotions, and she straightened with a
jerk. If he thought he could play her and then run her off, he was
dead wrong. She was there for Elizabeth, and nothing he did would
make her leave.

“Really?” she bit out. “We’ll see.”

She yanked open the door and fled the
room.

Memphis, October 1967

Mother Nature was a cruel bitch. If she had
any decency at all, it would be dark and stormy, and there might
even be a tornado warning or two. That was the kind of weather that
matched Athena’s turbulent emotions. But, no; it was a gorgeous
Indian Summer day with soft sunshine illuminating a riot of color
as the leaves on the Memphis State campus began to change from
green to vibrant reds and golds. Oh, and don’t forget the stupid
sky. Devoid of clouds, it was the same clear, knock-your-socks-off
blue of Derek’s eyes. No, Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating at
all.

Athena’s own eyes were swollen and
red-rimmed, and no amount of cold washcloths supplied by Andi was
going to remedy that. Constant crying interspersed with bouts of
hurling into the toilet kept them in a perpetual state of ugly. Not
that she cared. The appearance of her eyes was the last thing she
worried about; her heart and her belly demanded all her
attention.

“That son of a bitch,” Andi snarled, and
placed a fresh cloth just out of the freezer of her tiny dorm
refrigerator over Athena’s eyes. “You need to sue him for
everything he’s got.”

“He doesn’t have anything.”

“Well, then sue him for what he might get
some day.”

Athena hiccupped and pressed the cold cloth
tight to her closed eyes. “And just what am I supposed to sue him
for? It’s not like he waved a magic wand and put his baby in me. I
was an active participant, you know.”

“I don’t know then. Breach of promise. He did
ask you to marry him, right? And then the second you leave the
country he’s off making plans to marry someone else. That’s got to
count as breach of promise.”

Athena let out a muffled wail as a knife
twisted in her heart, and fresh tears soaked the washcloth. She
could still hear the girl’s cold, clipped voice, as clear as if she
was still holding the phone to her ear: “Look, I don’t know who you
are, but Derek is my fiancé, and I don’t appreciate strange girls
ringing our flat.”

How could he do this to her? It hadn’t even
been two months since she left England. How could he forget her so
fast and get engaged to someone else?

“I’m sorry, Theenie.” Andi’s soft hand
stroked her sister’s forehead. “Don’t cry.”

“What am I going to do?” Athena howled.
“Mom’s already driving me crazy with lectures about wasting my life
because I’m not getting a higher education, and Dad just gives me
these looks that scream how disappointed he is in me. When they
find out I’m going to have a baby, they’re going to freak out. And
now I can’t even get a job as a stewardess because I’m pregnant. I
can’t go back to England now, so even when I tell Derek about the
baby he won’t be able to help me. And now I don’t think he’ll even
care.” A new thought struck her, deepening her despair. “Plus, I
used all the money I had left to make that one phone call. I can’t
even call him back now.”

A fresh torrent of weeping overtook her,
making further speech impossible. Andi made soft, comforting
sounds, and leaned over the narrow bed where Athena reclined to
wrap her in a hug. After the tears slowed to a trickle, Andi took
the cloth and waved it around to cool it before refolding and
putting it back on Athena’s eyes.

“Listen to me.” Andi’s voice was stern. “I
don’t think you need to tell him about the baby.”

The cloth tumbled to her lap as Athena sat up
in shock. “But it’s his baby, too!”

“So what? Any guy who acts the way he did
would be a terrible father, anyway. And do you really want to have
that kind of person part of your child’s life? God, Athena! The way
he treated you is beyond contemptible. He’s just…he’s morally
bankrupt, that’s what he is.”

“Morally bankrupt? Where’d you come up with
that? Some old movie?”

“It’s what he is,” Andi insisted. “He
obviously just jumps from girl to girl, popping off marriage
proposals. How much you bet he manages to get out of marrying this
new one, too?” Lips pressed into a thin line, she shook her head.
“You can’t trust him, Theenie. What if he tries to take the
baby?”

Panic fluttered in Athena’s chest. “He
wouldn’t do that. Would he? Besides, he couldn’t, right?”

“Don’t count on it. Your baby is half
British, and he’ll be calling on the same bureaucrats who wouldn’t
allow you to marry him. Which, in hindsight, is a blessing. But I
bet they’d just love to take the baby and give it to their precious
subject of the crown to raise.”

Maternal instinct reared up and lit a fire in
Athena’s head. Her hands crossed over her belly, and her eyes
narrowed. “That won’t happen.”

“It won’t if you keep your mouth shut and
don’t tell that lying prick about the baby.” Andi leaned close and
looked her sister right in the eye. “I’m serious about this. Don’t
tell him.”

Beads of condensation rolled down the can of
Pepsi and pooled on the dull laminate surface of the cafeteria
table. An uneaten plate of something purporting to be Chicken Divan
was pushed as far away from Athena as she could reach. Staying in
Andi’s dorm room kept her parents from the suspicion that anything
was wrong, but taking her meals in the cafeteria was torture.

She glanced at the clock above the doorway.
She had another half-hour before she had to flee the cafeteria to
avoid her parents’ and her brother’s lunch period, and high-tail it
to the library or back to Andi’s room.

It had been a week since she’d found out
about Derek, and she still had no idea what she was going to do.
Andi was right – she couldn’t tell him about the baby. A man who
would do what he did didn’t deserve to know, and besides, she
wanted no further contact with him. Just thinking about him was
enough to bring her to her knees; if she had to see him again she
would probably lose what little mind she had left.

She was going to have to do something soon,
but any course of action she thought of seemed too daunting to
undertake. It was much easier to give in to the inertia that
overtook her, and just depend on Andi to make all her decisions.
And since Andi was at that moment in a Statistics class, the
easiest thing Athena found to do was watch the can of Pepsi weep in
front of her.

“Y’know, those things taste better if you
actually drink them.”

Startled, she looked up as a guy about her
own age slid into the seat across the table. He gestured toward her
untouched plate.

“You going to eat that?”

“What? No. You want it?” At his affirmative
nod, she slid the disgusting mess to him, careful not to let the
food come into contact with her fingers. “Are you a student
here?”

He sure didn’t look like the average Memphis
State undergrad. His long, tangled hair was pulled back in a sloppy
ponytail, and his full beard was in serious need of a trim. He was
attired in what could only be described as a caftan, a paisley
garment with full sleeves that dragged through the Chicken Divan as
he ate with the appetite of a pack of hungry hyenas.

“In theory,” he mumbled through a mouthful of
food. “That’s my grandparents’ plan, anyway. They’re the ones who
sent me here. Do you want that Pepsi?”

“Yeah.” She pulled the can closer and took a
sip to demonstrate. “I don’t understand. Are you a student or
aren’t you?”

“For the moment. But I’m about to bug out,
man. This kind of shit just isn’t my bag, dig? I’m going to drop
out, get back the tuition money, and then blow this town.”

‘Blowing this town’ was one of the many
options that flitted through Athena’s head the past week, and she
sat up a little straighter. “Where would you go?”

“New Mexico.” He ran a finger around the
plate, and licked the sauce from it. “My cousin told me about this
commune out there between Santa Fe and Taos. Everyone just lives
the way they want, man. They all work together, and everyone shares
everything. No judgmental shit or government crap. Just people
living life. You wanna come?”

The minute her belly began to swell with
Derek’s baby, the jig would be up. She would become the pariah of
her family, the shame of her parents, and a never-ending source of
Memphis gossip. Judged as The Whore of Babylon. For the rest of her
life. And she had to go somewhere, right?

Her common sense roared to the surface and
screamed like a banshee. She couldn’t be giving this serious
consideration, could she? How stupid could she be? She didn’t even
know this guy’s name!

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Steve. You?”

“Athena.”

“Cool. So?”

Her hesitation was so brief it didn’t count.
“I’m in.”

On the way to Baton Rouge, April 1975

Though she’d feared her first week as the
band’s personal assistant would be hard, she was pleasantly
surprised at how easy it turned out to be. It only took her a
couple of days to get into a routine, and after that things ran
with smooth efficiency.

Of course, there were a few hiccups along the
way, most of them having to do with Robin and Cindy. Athena’s
morning sweep of the hotel rooms wasn’t a huge chore; Paul and
Veronica’s room was always pristine, Ian’s only bad habit was
leaving his razor on the bathroom sink, and Derek was still as neat
as she’d always known him to be. Either that, or he didn’t want
Athena poking through his belongings, and she assumed that was why
his room was always so tidy rather than a desire for excessive
neatness. But the first morning she’d entered Robin’s room she’d
come to an abrupt halt, appalled.

Discarded clothing, toiletries and trash
blended together to form a second carpet on the room’s floor.
Athena knew they had suitcases; she’d counted them before allowing
the drivers to take them downstairs. But looking at the state of
the bedroom had her doubting they held clothes.

A slow burn of anger began to build when she
realized she was expected to sort the clothing and belongings from
the trash, and pack them up in something. Instead, she called the
desk clerk and requested a heavy duty trash bag and pair of work
gloves. Then she crammed everything not red hot or nailed down into
the bag and dropped it in the garbage before joining the band to
board the vans to the airport. It only took two days of that before
she trained Robin to pick up his own shit, and Cindy’s, too.

As far as Cindy went, she continued to treat
Athena with the highest contempt. If Robin talked with her as he’d
promised, it didn’t seem to register with the girl. Athena’s
disposal of Cindy’s clothing didn’t improve matters, and by the end
of the first week Athena made good on her threat to kick Cindy’s
ass to the curb. She left Cindy’s suitcases in the hall, and when
the girl went upstairs to retrieve them, Athena instructed the van
drivers to leave immediately for the airport. This caused a delay
when a fuming Robin sent one of the vans back for her, but Simon
backed Athena’s actions, and since that time Cindy was, if not
pleasant, at least tolerable.

The problem Athena was dreading the most,
however, turned out to be the most easily resolved. When she
explained that she would not risk Elizabeth’s future by buying
drugs, and therefore putting herself in a position to be arrested,
everyone understood. Though she cringed every time she did it, she
sent the dealers who came to the hotels to the rooms without
involving herself in any transactions. After all, it wasn’t her
business what the band got up to.

But it was hard to ignore Derek’s actions.
Those flashes of sharp desire and longing that took her by surprise
the first day only intensified, and having to go into his room to
wake him each day was becoming torture. There was always that
moment when he first woke when his expression was unguarded, and he
seemed happy to see her. But the moment he fully regained
consciousness, he’d grow distant and chase her from the room. That
was hard, but imagining him each night with a different girl hurt
more than his obvious desire to have her out of the way. She never
saw him with anyone, but if Ian was finding willing partners, there
was no way Derek wasn’t. He certainly got enough attention
backstage before and after the shows. Though he was always alone
when she arrived to wake him up, she was dreading the day when one
of the girls would stay overnight. Athena had no idea what she’d do
when that happened, but she was afraid it wouldn’t be pretty.