Between Friends (12 page)

Slowly, Dallas raised herself from the bed. She didn’t want to be in it when Burke came out of the bathroom. She knew what was likely to happen.

The phone rang as she was halfway to her closet to retrieve a robe. She turned back to pick up the receiver, sitting naked on the edge of the bed.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, honey. Did I wake you up?”

A dozen thoughts swept through Dallas upon recognizing Lillian Marco’s voice, not the least of which was guilt. She knew that she had not called Lillian since the funeral for Nicholas nearly a month earlier. Spring had come in the meantime. Dallas thought it might have been too soon to call Lillian, but she had no guidelines. What was the protocol? How long does a mother need to grieve over the loss of her child?

“Hi, Lillian.” She glanced at the clock radio: 7:43. “Of course you didn’t wake me. I have to get ready for the office. Are you all right? How have you been?” she asked awkwardly. Stupid questions.

Lillian sighed. “I’m fine, I guess. They say these things take time. A lot of time …”

Dallas leaned over the phone so she could hear. Lillian’s voice was so low, so soft.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called sooner. I just thought that …”

“No, no. Don’t worry about it. I know you were thinking of me. There was so much to do. You know, after we put Nicky in the ground. Vin and I thought things would quiet down. It’s over and done and time to move on. But then friends kept calling and stopping by, and flowers were still delivered, and the mass cards kept coming. If I didn’t have so much cooking to do to feed all those visitors I don’t know how I would have gotten through it.”

“I should have called, then. There must have been something I could have done,” Dallas responded.

From the hallway the sound of the shower suddenly stopped. And Lillian chuckled.

“Oh, you helped quite a lot. You stopped Vin and Alex from making fools of themselves. They should have been ashamed to carry on like that, with Nicky lying just in the other room …” Her voice faded.

Dallas still had no clothes on, and the air was starting to raise gooseflesh on her bare legs and arms. The bathroom door opened. Burke had come back into the room, but she wouldn’t turn around to look at him.

“This has been
very
hard on Vin, Dallas. In a way, he’s having a worse time than I am getting used to Nicky’s death. He loved that boy … maybe too much,” Lillian murmured absently.

“I can imagine,” Dallas crooned. She wasn’t unsympathetic. “His only son.”

When Lillian didn’t answer right away Dallas feared she’d said something insensitive. After all, Nick was her only son as well.

Dallas sensed Burke’s presence as he came to stand next to her and toweled himself dry. In her peripheral vision Dallas could see his knees, his ankles and feet. Brown and damp and roped with veins. But she wouldn’t look up, because she didn’t know what she would say.

“Dallas, hon … I have a
real
big favor to ask. Now, don’t you be afraid to say no. I know you’re busy and—”

“What can I do?” Dallas interrupted.

“Well … it’s just that … I have to do something about Nicky’s things.”

Dallas blinked. Of course. There would be a lifetime worth of things.

“I understand,” she murmured.

Dallas still ignored Burke as he gently kissed her on the back of her neck. She didn’t respond to his attempt to bridge the gap between them. His hand brushed briefly through her hair, making the curls spring about. Then Burke secured the towel around his waist and left the room.

“I know this is a terrible thing to ask of you, but … do you think you could come out to help me, Dallas?”

She couldn’t answer. It was the last thing in the world she wanted to do. Not because she didn’t want to help, but because of what had happened between herself and Nicholas. To help with his things seemed like forgiving him for all he’d put her through. But his mother didn’t know that, and she didn’t need to.

“I don’t mind helping, but are you sure? Going through his things is so … personal.”

Lillian made a scoffing sound. “They’re just things, hon. They don’t mean much anymore now that Nicky’s gone. I’ll keep a few items. Vin won’t give up his high school football uniform, or the bars and ribbons he earned in the service. I’m glad now Nicky didn’t take everything with him when he and Theresa got married. But I don’t want to have the rest of it around. She doesn’t want anything … you know, that was becoming a nasty divorce.”

Dallas got distracted by the sounds coming from the kitchen. Burke was putting on the coffeemaker. He was still trying to make up for the night before. He was being domesticated and cooperative.

“When do you want me to come out?” Dallas asked, the sound of Burke’s presence beginning to irritate her.

“How about this Saturday? I talked Vin into going out to my brother and sister-in-law’s for the day. They’re building a house in Wayne, New Jersey, and Vin is helping them move some shrubbery. I’ll be home alone.”

“Saturday is fine. Do you want me to bring anything?”

“Nothing, hon. You just come on out and keep me company.”

“I’ll be there early. Maybe we’ll go out for lunch or something.”

“We’ll see. Oh, Dallas …” Lillian sighed, her voice starting to quaver. “I’m
so
glad you can come. See you on Saturday.”

Lillian hung up, but Dallas held onto the receiver for a moment longer, even after the dial tone began to buzz again. She wondered if a parent losing a child was anything like a child losing a parent. Lillian had memories, and things belonging to her son that she could keep, that she could touch from time to time if she wished to. When they were ready Vin and Lillian could reminisce about their son. But what was a child left with when she had not lived enough years to accumulate any memories?

Dallas absently hung up the receiver. She had a flash of standing in a steamy rain with other people, around a hole in the ground. On the other side was a very large brown box that looked like it was going to be put into the hole. Someone held her hand and an umbrella over her head. But it wasn’t her mother. Dallas didn’t know where her mother was. When she’d asked, from the vacuum that children occupy where they’re too young to know what’s going on and aren’t being told very much, the only response she’d gotten had been “She’s gone away” or “Sshhhh …” Both answers had only left her confused and frightened.

Her mother had never returned.

Worse still, Dallas recalled being sent away somewhere by herself. On a train. Someone had hugged her and given her a doll. Someone had cried and kissed her cheek. A piece of paper had been pinned to her coat with her name and an address written on it. She hadn’t said a word the whole time she was on the train, until at the other end someone had met her, hugged her again as she’d gotten off. Dallas frowned as she relived the sequence of events. Whatever had happened to that doll?

There had been no things for her to go through later. Nothing to pick and choose from that would bring back the face of someone with dark hair and gray eyes. Whose skin was pale and whom she knew to be her mother. There was only what was left in her memory. Almost all of it now faded and dim.

Dallas envied Lillian Marco in a way she could never explain.

Burke appeared again in the bedroom doorway. Steam curled from the rim of two cups he held. One gave off the strong aroma of hazelnut coffee. He silently passed the second cup with herbal peppermint tea to Dallas. She hesitated but finally took it.

He sat down next to her on the bed, but far enough away to not be a threat. They said nothing as they drank the hot morning liquids. This was the no-man’s-land, the time-out to regroup and either continue their differences, or get over it. A Mexican standoff.

Dallas looked sideways at Burke and fought to meet him halfway. “Thank you for the tea.”

He nodded. “How are you this morning?” he asked smoothly, drinking the coffee and keeping his attention focused on her.

“The same as I was last night,” Dallas quietly responded.

“Even after last night?”

“Especially because of last night.”

Dallas put her mug down and stood up. She felt cornered sitting between him and the headboard, naked and vulnerable. She was relieved to see him putting his clothing on. He was all out of excuses and persuasion. She was out of patience and forgiveness. Last night with Burke had not reassured her but had only served to point out to Dallas that perhaps there wasn’t enough between them worth agonizing over.

Alex couldn’t see a thing.

He had down vision on the full-face mask, but he still couldn’t see more than ten or twelve feet. Alex thought he should be used to it by now. The impure water evolved into something murky and sinister. Bits and pieces of bottom silt and algae, rotting debris of God knew what, and filth flowing around him.

Alex breathed easily, nonetheless, because he knew better than to fight the apparatus. He had been trained for much worse than this. He didn’t have a redundant air supply, but counted on not needing it. Of course, things could go wrong. And the unknown was still a scary thing.

The air bubbles released from the open circuit respirator rising to the surface above him were reassuring, as were all the functioning components of his gear. He had fifteen minutes of air left but knew he should start to ascend in half that time. He checked his oxygen mix for the third time since he’d been down, and checked the buoyancy compensator, which was lightweight and not really meant for tech diving. But he’d put himself at a slight disadvantage on purpose. It was impossible to challenge his ability to handle the unexpected if he knew that everything was perfect and as it should be.

Alex let his body tilt forward into the current, the cold water molding the black rubber protective suit against his skin. He needed an extra effort kicking with his fins to move forward, and he was careful of his footing, hoping not to discover any sharp metal edges, sheared and dangerous, that could cut into his suit, his air line. Alex didn’t try to actually go against the tidal current as much as try to use it and his body to maneuver.

He got into position to check on the test sites. They weren’t supposed to be too close together. None were supposed to be easy to find, but he’d planted a few in deceptive areas to test the thoroughness of the NYPD Scuba Unit search and recovery team.

To his left, about fifteen feet away, Alex could make out the dim, broadly dispersed beam from Ross’s underwater light. He could detect some of the slow black motions as together they finished the course that had been plotted for training of the eight men from the unit. It was a given that he and Ross were never to get more than fifteen feet apart, but Alex knew he could no longer make even the simplest dive without remembering how even thirty seconds apart could mean someone’s life. And did.

Alex turned his focus back to his own position. He double-checked his landmarks to keep the area tight and controlled. Their task was pretty specific and not meant to be difficult. But still … things sometimes went wrong.

For a brief second Alex was back on the Kuwaiti border, part of the team to seize the island of Qaruh occupied by the Iraqis during the Gulf War. His SEAL team never assumed success, but they had yet to fail at any mission directed to them. Until the one with the surprise ship attack. He’d fielded the signal from the second two-man team that they were to retreat back to base. He’d turned to relay the message to Crosby, his dive partner, and couldn’t see him. This was not supposed to happen. It didn’t help that the LAR V, a closed-circuit rebreather, was designed not to release the bubbles that would have pinpointed Crosby’s position. But worse was just the fact that they had gotten separated at all. Crosby was in trouble.

The other two teams also realized something was wrong. And against the drone and vibration of a fast-approaching craft, they’d tried to locate their SEAL member. The most immediate concern was whether Crosby had dropped below the ten-meter limit of their equipment. Alex knew it was bad enough that he had lost sight of his partner, but he also realized it only took a heartbeat for the moment to become tragic. That’s exactly how long it had taken.

Crosby’s safety line was spotted first, leading Alex and the other team to the spot where the depth suddenly dropped off into a black hole. The end was still attached to Crosby’s weight belt around his waist. His limp body was below them, swaying gently in the underwater current. His regulator had been displaced. There had been no time for any other reaction except to claim the body and get them all out of harm’s way.

For Alex the flashback always failed before he got to the part about his buddy being carried to the surface as dead weight. He still wondered where his shock and pain had gone to. All he could ever recall, could still feel, was the guilt.

He was breathing too deeply.

Immediately Alex slowed his down and gained control. He concentrated on something else, counted the time between each breath through his regulator. He needed to hear that sound to reassure himself that he was okay.

Alex could recite whole passages from the official investigation summary. It was as if he were hoping that he’d missed something in an earlier reading, and would miraculously discover anything that would absolve him. The report had concluded that the LAR V rebreather, a closed-circuit unit that doesn’t release telltale bubbles, had functioned as intended; that Crosby may have gone below the depth limit for a sufficient period of time to suffer oxygen toxicity, a build-up of too much oxygen in the body, which affects blood and body tissues. But it might have been induced anyway by a combination of the cold water and the strenuous activity the SEAL team was engaged in at the time. A number of symptoms but probably the most likely, a grand mal seizure, would have caused him to release the mouthpiece. He would have drowned, never realizing what was happening to him.

Sometimes Alex was close to believing that it was an accident and wasn’t his fault. Maybe. But he could have done something. If not prevented it, then at least help Crosby to keep his breather in place until he could be taken to safety. They were the best special forces team ever trained. For Alex it had been like losing Crosby to “friendly fire.” And
he
had held the gun.