Authors: Sally John
He removed his glasses and covered his eyes with a hand. His fingers were soon soaking wet. His chest heaved. He gasped for each breath.
“Eliot.” Sheridan took the glasses from him and held his hand.
He looked at her through his tears.
Seated now on the ottoman beside his chair, she gazed back at him, her face gentle with compassion and resolve. “Talk to me. What was your motive?”
“Pride.” He steadied his voice. “I told myself I was protecting you, but I was only protecting myself. If my past mistakes became public knowledge, I would never be appointed an ambassador. I would never keep such a position. I would shame the Montgomery family.”
Sheridan stiffened, her entire body rigid, her hand cold as ice on his. “They were all dead by then.”
He nodded. How could pride have had such a stranglehold on him? How could he have been such an idiot? To not tell the love of his life the truth because he might lose prestige?
Sheridan let go of his hand. “You’re saying that your dead parents and grandparents and your career were more important to you than being honest with me.”
Again he nodded.
“You smuggled for my father.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Sheridan handed him his glasses and stood. “You had it all wrong, Mr. Montgomery. I wouldn’t have bothered to tell a soul.”
Eliot watched her pace the room in jerky strides, praying that she not decide to do what she would have done years ago. No, she would not have told a soul. But neither would she have stayed with him.
After Eliot’s confession that he smuggled for Harrison, Sheridan paced the room in silence, letting the truth she had suspected settle into her heart.
At last she plopped onto the couch next to Calissa. Her sister gazed silently into midair as if shell-shocked at the information.
Why was it Sheridan did not feel the same?
Because she had spent the last three weeks fearing it. There simply was no other reason Eliot would not have told her that he had met her father. For three weeks she had pondered her mother’s letter. It had become clear how someone in Eliot’s position might be caught. Young and foolish, he went to the bar like the other cool foreign guys. On the fast track to a lofty position, an incriminating photo would carry a threatening wallop.
She looked at him. He’d gotten his emotions under legendary Montgomery control, a finger over his lips.
She had to ask. “Was there a photograph?”
He started.
She said, “Did you know that twenty years before you fell for that trap, our mother worked as a prostitute and lured diplomats into similar setups?”
“No. Oh, dear God.”
Calissa leaned forward. “Eliot, tell me it’s not still going on.”
“It’s not.” He cleared his throat. “When we lived there—Sher and I—I made inquiries. Discreetly, not through our people. According to the local authorities, diamond smuggling has grown more sophisticated.”
Sheridan closed her eyes briefly. She thought he had shared everything with her. She had no idea what he had done as ambassador, the connections he maintained.
Eliot said, “How did you know about me?”
“We didn’t,” Calissa answered.
“So no one knows?”
“Eliot!” Sheridan nearly spat his name. “Are you kidding me? You’re still concerned about who knows what you did almost thirty years ago?”
Calissa laid a hand on her arm. “Hey, give him a little space until we explain everything.”
Sheridan seethed. She may as well let Calissa do it her way. Eliot had known her identity when she was thirteen. When she was thirty, he met her, knowing full well she was Harrison Cole’s daughter and not saying a thing. What else mattered?
Calissa said, “Eliot, we put two and two together and guessed the answer had to be four. We found out what Harrison was up to. We learned he was in Caracas when you were there the first time.”
Eliot nodded. “All right. Can you start at the beginning?”
Calissa began to talk about the incriminating papers she found in the attic. She explained Bram and Luke’s hunches about his past relationship with Harrison. She described the meeting with their mother’s friend, Helena Van Auken.
Sheridan listened with one ear.
Of course Eliot needed to hear from them. He was still in the dark about what happened when she was in Chicago, although she assumed he had guessed at much of it. Once she left Topala, he would have pondered the unusual scenario. Calissa, a dying Harrison, and Luke Traynor? A note Sheridan would not discuss and a sudden departure? His reaction to Mercedes’s probing of the fund-raiser revealed that he was worried.
The day she spoke with Eliot, when she was by herself downtown in the city, she heard the hints. Had she talked to her father? Yes, before she asked him if he’d met Harrison, Eliot had figured out that his past had been unveiled.
Eliot remained quiet during Calissa’s story. He did not jump in to defend himself or explain. But it ravaged his face. The seams and pallor were worse even than the first time Sheridan saw him in the hospital after the shooting.
When Calissa finished, she leaned forward and her demeanor softened. “Eliot, I have to tell you that my father’s actions make me want to throw up. I idolized him. He was my mentor.”
He nodded.
“Bram and Luke have been investigating. They went to D.C. Luke is in Caracas right now. The government is in on it. I don’t know what this means for him. I don’t know what this means for you.”
He nodded again.
Sheridan saw it coming then. The physical pain was digging into him, taking over, replacing his ability to focus on anything else.
“Oh, don’t you dare,” she said, although he could not comprehend her words. “Don’t you dare check out on me now.”
He looked her direction, but she knew he was gone.
* * *
Sheridan and Calissa had no choice but to let Eliot be. They walked down the hill that afternoon to join tourists and explore the village.
“At least he can sleep,” Calissa said. “How long will the nap last?”
“No clue. Let’s buy you a flouncy top and skirt.”
“Do I look like the flouncy type?”
“All women are the flouncy type. It’s very feminine. Bram will like it on you.”
“I just want some sandals. Yours are a little tight on me.”
“They’re better on the cobblestones than your heels, I hope.”
“Yes. You know, it doesn’t sound like revenge.”
“You’ll want a sculpture too. Javier has some nice pieces that would fit your decor.”
“Javier is cute. I said, it doesn’t sound like revenge. Eliot did not go to the fund-raiser to seek revenge against Dad by harassing his daughter. He was just curious to meet you. Then—I can’t believe I’m saying this—then I think he fell head over heels in love with you. He didn’t give a rip who you were after that. He was just nuts over you.”
“You heard him. It was about pride. He wasn’t going to jeopardize his future or his family name.”
“It went beyond that. The man just doesn’t know how to express his heart.”
“You’re taking his side again.”
“It’s nothing to do with taking sides. It’s about collecting all the facts, and those are not in yet. Yes, he deceived you. Yes, you two married way too fast. But he gave you your dream life, Sher. From what I’ve heard, he’s been your best friend all these years. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.”
“He knew who I was when we met. He would have known you, too. Have you thought of that? He would have known that our mother died.”
“Sher.” Calissa halted and grabbed Sheridan’s arm to stop her babble. “You lied to him first. Remember? You told him hardly anything about me and Dad and Mamá when you met. You didn’t tell him about your father’s career for months.”
“That was different.”
“How? Neither one of you wanted to acknowledge that Harrison Cole existed. It’s exactly the same thing.”
Sheridan shook her arm free and continued walking, not wanting to think about anything except putting one foot in front of the other.
Eliot did love her. He couldn’t express it easily, but she knew it. Now he cried, something she’d never, ever seen him do. And Calissa defended him.
It was way too much to tuck away into her aching heart.
Sheridan spent the remainder of the day with Calissa, filling the hours with mundane activity, waiting for Eliot to wake up. With each passing hour, a straitjacket of fear laced itself tighter and tighter around her until she could scarcely move.
Later that evening, Calissa and Mercedes went down to watch Javier sculpt.
Alone in the kitchen, Sheridan puttered about, wishing and yet dreading that he would wake up. She wanted to hear all the facts. She did not want to hear all the facts.
At last she heard him stir in his bedroom. She headed down the hall, wondering which version would greet her. The B.C.E. Eliot who’d been gone for over a year? The deaf-mute she’d lived with all that time? Or the strange man who thanked God and cried?
“Eliot?” She pushed open his door.
His gaunt frame reclined against a stack of pillows on the bed. His glasses were on the nightstand, its lamp lit. The window shutters were open and cool air wafted in with a bird’s evensong.
“Hi.” He smiled.
Open shutters and a smile. The strange man took shape.
He said, “I can’t quite make it farther than the bathroom. Thought I’d stay put.” He shifted and the smile slid into a grimace.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“You should have something. Maybe some soup. I’ll get it.”
“Do you mind just sitting for a few minutes?”
Yes. No.
She sat in a bedside stuffed chair, one comfortable enough to rest in throughout long night hours.
“Tell me,” he said, “what did I miss?”
She waited for him to continue, a habit she’d formed over the past year. He no longer chitchatted with her, no longer conversed in a give-and-take manner without going off on some tangent that had nothing to do with her or the subject at hand. It had become less frustrating for her to just stay quiet.
He looked at her, apparently waiting for her to reply.
The strange man had indeed taken up residence in him.
“Um,” she said, “Mercedes and Javier invited Calissa to watch him work and then to go out for a taste of village nightlife.”
“The sidewalks are probably rolled up by now.”
“They didn’t want to tell her that. She was hoping for coffee and maybe another ‘sopie’ at the inn.”
He smiled.
Again.
“Sher, can I tell you my side?”
She nodded.
He shifted again, turning slightly in order to face her directly. “Calissa and Bram did an impressive job of putting together the puzzle pieces. It happened pretty much as she presented it.”
“Mamá’s letter confirmed most of what they figured out from Harrison’s notes. How . . . Never mind.”
“I was enamored by Harrison Cole. His credentials were impressive. When he invited me to see the real Caracas, I jumped at the chance. He ditched his security detail and we went to a bar. We had drinks. He hinted that there was serious money to be made if one knew where to look. Easy cash, he said.”
Sheridan almost laughed. Like Eliot would care about money. Her father could be so stupid.
“Naturally money didn’t interest me, but a young woman flirting with me did. Obviously in the aftermath I realized my drink was drugged. Compromising photos were snapped. I have no memory of the evening after a certain point. I don’t know how I got home. The next day Harrison showed me the pictures. I was a perfect candidate for blackmail. Who would believe my word over that of a representative who had ‘proof’?”
Sheridan heard his cut-and-dried tone, the one that did not make excuses for actions but only listed the facts. It was how he got opposing parties to sit down together in the same room and talk.
She said, “You were a low-level government employee who committed an indiscretion like countless others and happened to get caught. It’s not like you were running for president.”
“The photos were not with the woman. They were of me accepting diamonds and shaking hands with some faceless man as if I’d made a deal with him.” He paused. “I was a Montgomery; my father was still alive; my goal had always been to follow in his footsteps; I was engaged to Noelle.”
Sheridan swallowed, her throat suddenly parched. “Your future would have gone away.”
“Every last bit of it. You understand I’m not making excuses. I don’t want to be excused. I am guilty of smuggling and, worse, of turning a deaf ear to policy discussions that clearly favored the practice.”
She stared at him, hoping against hope that he was not talking about himself.
His forehead furrowed. “No photos were found, then? in the attic or from Helena? of myself or others?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Thanks be to God.” The uncharacteristic phrase floated from him like the sound of a breath. “I imagine if Harrison still had them, they would have turned up by now. I assume you and Calissa received all of his private documents?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” His forehead smoothed out.
Straining against the impulse to bolt from the chair, Sheridan waited. Her heart hammered, muffling the volume of his voice.
A pained expression filled Eliot’s eyes, as if he saw into dark corners of his mind. “Harrison laid it all out for me. The diamonds were in my sock drawer in my apartment. I would be sent to Washington the following month, hotel reservations made for me. I was to leave them in a drawer in my hotel room. It all happened as he said. I was unexpectedly sent stateside. After a day of pointless meetings, I returned to the hotel room to find the diamonds gone and the photos in the drawer.”
Sheridan’s stomach turned. “Did you destroy them?”
“No. I gave them to Malcolm.”
Malcolm, the loyal bulldog, old Montgomery family friend.
Eliot went on. “I was a wreck. I realized, of course, it wasn’t over just because I had the pictures. Harrison would have copies or negatives. Obviously others worked with him, people able to pull strings that affected my agenda. More would be expected of me. So I made a last-minute change at the airport and stopped off in Florida, where Malcolm was.”