Dust Devil (22 page)

Hungry
for news of Renzo, despite how she had told herself time and again
that he was nothing to her—and that she had never been anything
to him—Sarah had nevertheless avidly followed his meteoric rise
in the field of journalism. She had read every article he had ever
written and that she could get her hands on, combing both the
archives of the town’s public library and the old metal shelves
of the journalism department at the local state university, where
newspapers from all over the country were stacked high. Regardless of
the quiet rage and resentment she harbored even now toward Renzo, she
had in her heart been proud of him and of what he had achieved.
Despite his humble beginnings, he had, with talent and determination,
made his boyhood dream come true. But because of his success and
wealth, he was now a threat to her where Alex was concerned.

To
her relief—for she had had some crazy, terrifying, half-formed
notion that Renzo had already snatched her son away from her—Sarah
spotted Alex at last. He was sitting inside an arcade car, his eyes
glued to an electronic race track, his foot jammed on the
accelerator, his hands spinning the steering wheel deftly. A wide
grin split his face as he drove, and every now and then, he cried,
“Out of my way, scum bucket!” and other similar epithets.
Normally, Sarah would have been angered by the fact that he had
either lost track of time or else had deliberately disobeyed her
instructions and hadn’t been waiting for her outside. But today
she was so happy to see him that her only thought was to get him
home, where he would be safe.

“
Alex!”
She hurried toward him, pushing her way past the youngsters who
crowded the arcade. “Alex, it’s time to go!”

“
Ha,
ha! Crash and bum, evil dweeb!” He grinned with wicked delight
before braking. Then he stamped on the accelerator again, turning the
steering wheel furiously.

“
Alex!”
Sarah said more sharply, tapping him on the shoulder.

Her
son glanced up, startled, his concentration broken. With a screech,
his electronic race car skidded on the track, then rolled over and
over, smashing into one of his imaginary competitors’
vehicles.
Game
Over flashed
brightly on the screen.

“
Mom!”
Alex wailed with disgust, scowling at her. “Look what you made
me do! I only had one more lap to go, and then I would have won!”

“
I’m
sorry, but it’s time to leave now.” Sarah didn’t
remind him that he was supposed to have been waiting out front for
her. Renzo might have spied him standing on the sidewalk, and looking
at Alex now, Sarah knew with certainty that for Renzo, seeing their
son would be like gazing into a mirror and seeing himself as a boy
again.

“
Oh,
all right,” Alex said, climbing out of the machine. “I’m
hungry, anyway. We’re still going to Fritzchen’s Kitchen
and then to Wal-Mart, aren’t we?”

“
No,
I—I thought...” What she had thought was that the two of
them would go straight home. But what reason could she give Alex for
changing her mind when she had promised to take him to lunch and then
shopping afterward? If she broke her word, he would be hurt and
hostile. She took a deep breath. “I thought we’d go over
to the Chicken Coop instead of to Fritzchen’s Kitchen.”
The Chicken Coop was on the outskirts of town, not far from Wal-Mart,
while Fritzchen’s Kitchen was just down the street from
the
Tri-State
Tribune.

Alex
shrugged nonchalantly. “Sure, Mom. Just let me cash in my
tickets first.”

Sarah
stood by anxiously while, at the glass counter displaying toys, games
and other trinkets, her son traded the tickets he had won for a
rubber lizard that, when wet, stuck to any smooth surface, and a
yo-yo that lit up as it traveled along its string. She told herself
she was being foolish, that there was no reason for Renzo to step
foot inside the Penny Arcade. But it didn’t help; she still
fretted impatiently as Alex made his choices. When he had finished,
she rushed him outside and into the Jeep.

“
Gee,
Mom, what’s the big hurry?” Alex glanced at her curiously
as he fastened his seat belt. “You don’t have some other
appointment or something, do you?”

“
No...no.
I guess I’m...just hungry, too,” she lied, flashing him a
tremulous smile. There was a lump in her throat as she looked at him
and thought of losing him to Renzo.

She
knew nothing about the law, nothing about her rights. Would it make a
difference that on Alex’s birth certificate she had listed his
father as “unknown”? These days, there were DNA tests to
prove or disprove paternity. Would Renzo, seeing Alex, insist on
taking such tests? Would she and Alex be compelled to submit?

Undoubtedly,
she was working herself up over nothing, Sarah tried to reassure
herself. Renzo had no interest in her. He had never once in all these
years attempted to get
in
touch with her. She didn’t even know what he was doing in town,
why he had come back. It was possible he was here only for a few
days, to visit his parents, and that he would be gone before she knew
it.

Still,
fear gnawed at her. She could hardly choke down her meal at the
Chicken Coop, the crispy fried chicken and Italian potato salad and
coleslaw sticking in her throat. She carried most of it home in a
doggy bag, only to wind up throwing it away later because it sat so
long in the Jeep, in the summer heat, while she and Alex were in
Wal-Mart. There, she bought him not only the new Power Rangers figure
he had wanted, but also a water bazooka, a pack of baseball cards, a
comic book and a bag of pogs. As she watched the clerk span the
items, then put them into a plastic sack, Sarah knew deep down inside
that she was guilty of attempting to ensure Alex’s approval and
affection, in case his father should try to take him from her. She
felt ashamed of herself and nearly insisted the clerk return
everything to the store shelves.

Once
home, she informed Alex that she had developed a dreadful migraine
from the summer heat, leaving him to enjoy his new acquisitions in
peace, while she retired to her bedroom. The lacy sheers at her
windows and French doors were drawn against the brilliant light of
the blistering sun outside, and the fan hanging from the ceiling
turned, stirring the air. As though in a trance, Sarah slowly opened
her jewelry box to withdraw from the very back the slender gold chain
on which Renzo’s high-school class ring still hung. Clutching
the necklace in her fists, she lay down on her high tester bed in the
cool semidarkness, closing her eyes and pressing the ring to her
lips. Only then did she at
last
acknowledge that it was not just panic about her son that had
assailed her when she had spied Renzo Cassavettes standing before the
office of the
Tri-State
Tribune.

She
still loved him.

Turning
her face into her pillow so Alex would not hear, she remembered her
lost youth and innocence—and wept.

This
news is old enough,

yet
it is every day’s news.

Measure
for Measure

—
William
Shakespeare

The
newspaper office was just as Renzo remembered it— small,
cluttered and old-fashioned in appearance—although sometime in
the past twelve years, Joe Martinelli had at least managed the
transition from typewriters to computers. As Renzo stood there just
inside the doorway, he was transported back to his childhood, when he
had used to come here with his father, fascinated by the process of
writing, typesetting and printing. In those days, the office had
always smelled of fresh black ink, and Renzo had loved the scent. He
had loved, too, to play with the blocks of type in various point
sizes, as well as with the compartmentalized wooden trays in which
they had been stored, before technology and Joe’s profits,
reinvested in
the
newspaper, had made them obsolete. Nowadays both type and trays were
sold at antique stores, a collectible reminder of a bygone era. In
his apartment in Washington, D.C., where he had lived for the last
few years, Renzo had had one of the trays, filled with type, hanging
over his desk. The type had been arranged so people had had to study
it for a moment to realize it had spelled out
Butterfly.
Now
the tray, like everything else he owned, was packed away in a moving
van en route to his hometown.

Once,
Renzo had never intended to return here. But that was before he had
happened to view a piece that had run on CNN’s
Headline
News,
a
sixty-second clip of a campaign fund-raiser for former governor J. D.
Holbrooke, who was now vying for a seat in the United States Senate.
At first, seeing the film, Renzo had thought his eyes were playing
tricks on him. So, because
Headline
News
was
broadcast every thirty minutes, he had watched the tape again. And
then again, until he had been certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that
it was Sarah Kincaid he had spied on Bubba Holbrooke’s arm, the
two of them standing just behind J.D., who was speaking from a
podium.

Renzo
had felt gut-wrenchingly sickened and angered by the sight. Surely
when he had fled from town all those years back, it wasn’t
Bubba Holbrooke whom Sarah had wed barely three months later! Renzo
couldn’t believe that. He didn’t
want
to
believe it. That she could have turned so quickly from him to Bubba,
of all the men she might have chosen, seemed incredible, agonizing.
The pain of Sarah’s betrayal, which Renzo had thought he had
buried finally and forever long after receiving his mother’s
letter more than a decade ago, had once more welled like a flood tide
inside him, bursting through the barriers he had so carefully and
deliberately erected around his heart.

He
had known no peace after that.

At
last, he had forced himself to call his mother, to confront her, and
the way Madonna had stammered and hesitated on the telephone at his
questions had done more than stir up Renzo’s desire to learn
the simple facts. It had aroused his suspicions, for his finely honed
investigative reporter’s instincts had told him his mother was
lying to him, that she had probably lied to him in her letter when
she had claimed Sarah had married and moved away from town to parts
unknown.

So
Renzo had come back. Because he couldn’t bear not knowing the
truth. Because no matter how hard he had tried, how many women he had
been through, trying to purge himself of the memory of Sarah Kincaid,
he had never got her out of his system. Hardly a day had gone by in
the past twelve years that he had not thought of her.

“
May
I help you, sir?” The newspaper’s receptionist, a young
woman scarcely out of high school, spoke, startling him from his
reverie.

“
No.
Yes. Well, actually, I’m Renzo Cassavettes, Joe’s son. So
if it’s all right, I’ll just go on back.” Renzo
indicated the rear of the building, where Joe Martinelli’s
office was located and through whose windows Renzo could see his
father hunched over the desk. “He...ah...doesn’t know I’m
in town, and I’d kind of like to surprise him.”