Authors: Sally John
Sheridan clutched the chair arms.
“Eventually Malcolm informed me that he’d taken care of it. Harrison never asked anything of me again, but I worried. I watched and stayed mute on trade policies that were slanted in ways I could not fully support. It was vague, no monumental matters, nothing specific to which I could point a finger. But I could have—I should have—raised questions in certain circles. Instead, I minded my own business and married Noelle, who never saw the photos.”
“But what about Malcolm?”
“He visited Harrison.”
“And so in essence, Malcolm blackmailed
him
.”
“I never asked what was said between them. Malcolm is a powerful man, not violent, but not faultless, either. I assume he approached Harrison as he did others. They had a civil chat. Malcolm described his vast network of resources. Harrison understood. This stranger could ruin him with one phone call.”
“Oh, Eliot. It’s all so slimy.”
“It comes with the territory, as we’ve talked about in the past. I tried not to wallow in the slime, but there were situations when I had no choice. I had to take the low road because it was the only route to get to the higher one.”
It was convoluted reasoning, but true. Eliot was right. He had told her about such situations. Despite circumstances, he had a goodness about himself that was obvious to most. Even in the midst of negotiating with people who did not have a shred of integrity, he exhibited it in abundance.
“However it went down, Harrison met his match and our paths never crossed again.”
“Until you met me.”
He inhaled deeply. “I was an idiot. I put myself into the situation at the bar with Harrison. Then I didn’t have the nerve to tell my father, and so I went to Malcolm. I was a ninny but an angry one. I began a file of my own. I harbored no motive beyond wanting to know my enemy.”
“A file?”
“About Harrison Cole. Public record stuff. Newspapers, magazine articles. He and his wife had two daughters. They lived near Chicago. The year I started my file, the year I met him, the year your mother passed away, you were thirteen.”
She shivered.
“Dearest—” he reached over and touched her hand—“it wasn’t a literal file. I simply read whatever I could find. There was nothing sinister in what I did. The fact that Harrison had a family was a small part of the profile I studied, a minor fact that exited my mind as soon as it entered. I was more concerned about his politics.”
“Did you keep track of us?”
“No. My curiosity was satisfied. A few years later Harrison was in the media. It was reported that his older daughter worked as his assistant and his younger was seventeen, off to college in Chicago. That’s it. End of story.”
“Until the fund-raiser?”
“Years and years later.”
She met his gaze. “Malcolm brought you.”
“Yes. As you know, he was an anonymous donor to the association, long before you were involved with it. There was no early connection in that way. All right? He did not sign on to follow your activities.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m not holding anything back.”
She nodded.
“You know this part too. I was in the States. In Chicago on business. I planned dinner with Malcolm. It happened to be the week of your fund-raiser. Sheer serendipity. No, not that. Padre Miguel would say God arranged it.”
God could arrange all sorts of things, even return trips to Topala, but she wasn’t buying this one. “You told me that Malcolm invited you to the party because he thought you might want to donate. It was a cause he knew you cared about.”
“Right.” He paused. “It truly was happenstance that I was in town for two days, one of which was the date of your event.”
“Okay.”
Happenstance
left God out of the equation.
“That night on our way into the hotel where it was being held, Malcolm said to me, ‘Oh, by the way, I never did shut the file on a certain House rep. His daughter will be here. Sheridan Cole does amazing work through the association.’”
Sheridan gasped. This was worse than she had imagined. “Eliot! I don’t want to hear it!”
“Please, Sher. Let me finish.”
“I liked Malcolm! I trusted him with our mail! He’s the only one I told about moving to Mexico! He knew who I was all along?”
“Yes.”
“How could you? How could you stay there and actually meet me and not say a word?”
“Plain old curiosity again. I deeply despised Harrison. I could not grasp the thought that such a contemptible person could have a family. What in the world would his grown daughter be like? And good heavens, she was involved in good works? How could that be?”
“I don’t believe this.”
“When Malcolm first told me, I was appalled. I chewed him out for keeping his file open. He reminded me that he was covering my back. Why would he quit? My father had saved his son. He owed it to me.”
Sheridan shook her head.
“He pointed you out through the crowd. I avoided you for a long time that evening. Then somehow we were in proximity and I overheard you, and then you said something and I couldn’t help but agree and someone next to you overheard me.”
She remembered. Oh, she remembered the exact moment. “I looked over at you.”
“I looked into your eyes.”
“You made me laugh.” She had been such a somber person back then, much like she was now. Eliot had entered her life, a burst of fresh air into a locked-up room, and made her life. “We started talking.”
“And we kept on talking.”
Yes, they kept on talking. Until . . .
“You didn’t tell me. My father didn’t tell me. You two met in his office as if you’d never . . . Oh, Eliot. How could you pretend like that?”
“By then he was out of the international game. Why bring it all up and jeopardize everything you and I had?”
“You and I had? You were the one with the family name and the high-profile career.”
“It was all yours, too, Sheridan. I sometimes feared you married me for those reasons alone. Embassy life appealed to you, as did my heritage. If they were gone, you might be too.” He paused. “Like now.”
Suddenly overwhelmed with it all, she stood. “I can’t listen to any more.”
She hurried through the house, ran upstairs to her room, and lay down on the bed. Within moments, her head too full and her heart shut down, she sank into a deep sleep.
Mesa Aguamiel
Calissa snagged her cell phone from her skirt pocket and flipped it open. “Unbelievable!”
Sheridan smiled. “Told you so.”
“I thought you were joking.”
“Liss, you’ve been in Topala for a week and you haven’t figured out yet that when it comes to modern-day technology, I am probably not joking?”
“But we’re in Mesa Aguamiel. The
city
.” Calissa glanced around from where they stood by the car. Compared to Topala, the place bustled.
There was traffic. The town square was a true square, not a spot to walk across in order to save a few steps. There were vendors on the sidewalks. People filled the area—real people, not the cruise ship folk. It was too early in the day for them.
It was a far cry from a city.
“Come on,” Sheridan said. “I’ll take you to the coffee shop.”
“Dial-up Internet and public phones?”
“All the conveniences of home.”
“Ooh.” Calissa smirked and followed her into the street. “And look at this. Pavement and curbs. Wow.”
“You better behave or I will leave you all alone to order coffee.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Sheridan chuckled.
Calissa sighed to herself. The chuckles had been few and far between in the Montgomery household. Most of them came from that darling girl Mercedes and her cute artist friend Javier.
Despite the fact that the cell phone did not work even in the nearest city, it was good to get out of town. Town? Topala was a burp in the desert air.
Calissa felt worn down after seven straight days of watching Sheridan and Eliot dance some sort of weird tango. They aired all the dirty laundry, in a dignified manner, naturally. No knockdown drag-outs with them. Eliot appeared genuinely contrite. She believed what he said. They both slept a lot. Separately.
Calissa considered moving to the little inn down by the church, until she thought of the language barrier and the hike up the hill to the house that always made her sweat.
They reached the coffee shop. Sheridan helped her place a call on one of the public phones. With a promise not to leave her stranded, her sister went off to use a computer.
“Darling, is it you?” Bram said once the operator got out of the way.
“Bram.” Calissa melted. Even if it hadn’t been ninety degrees, she would have. “Hello.”
“Hello.”
They cooed for a bit. Seven days without speaking to each other was a record she did not care to repeat. She listened to the news of Chicago and then gave him the highlights of her week.
Bram said, “When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know. And I can’t believe I said that.” She sighed.
“Do I hear Big Sister putting in overtime?”
“I suppose. Sher is so fragile. I told her she’s taken off her big-girl boots. She said she was knocked right out of them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ve seen him do what she calls his deaf-mute act. It’s like he checks out. He’s in the room, he talks, he hears, but not really.”
“What sets it off?”
“Pain, I guess, but not just physical pain. It was triggered when we told him about the papers and Mamá’s letter.”
“What’s Sheridan’s take on it all?”
“To tell you the truth, she’s so confused she can’t decide what to eat or wear. I know I never cared much for Eliot in the past, but he is a good man and she is married to him. This lifestyle in the middle of nowhere, though, could pulverize even Pollyanna. I don’t know how either one of them keeps it up.”
“What’s your advice, then?”
“For once I don’t have an opinion about what my sister should do. I’m just the referee.”
“So you’ll be staying.”
“Yeah.”
“Then I better come.”
“Really?” She smiled. “Really?”
“A few days at a resort on the beach in Mazatlán sounds awfully inviting. Then you can show me Topala. I’d like to see Eliot, if he’s up for it. What do you think?”
Calissa grinned. “I think Mexico just got a whole lot brighter.”
* * *
Mazatlán
Less than forty-eight hours after their conversation via pay phone, Bram arrived at the Mazatlán airport, wearing shorts, a flowered shirt, and a sun visor. The man was not prone to frittering his money away on last-minute plane seats. Either God was directing ticket purchasing again or Calissa was worth every nickel it took for Bram to zip down from Chicago so quickly.
Whatever. Both made her tingle with delight, and so she did not ask him. All that mattered was that she had missed him more than she thought possible, and now he was sitting beside her in Mexico on low-to-the-sand beach chairs, watching an awesome pink and purple sunset.
On second thought, it must have been God.
“Calissa, are you sure you can relax for a couple of days away from Sher and Eliot?”
“I’m not sure. They both thank me daily for being there.”
“You know it’s understandable if you want to bow out of the campaign for city council. There’s always next time.”
“What does that have to do with the price of beans? We were talking about my wacko sister and brother-in-law.”
He smiled. “Look at that sailboat out there. The ocean looks like lapis lazuli. What a gorgeous scene.”
“Bram.”
“Darling, your world has been turned upside down. Generally speaking, people give themselves time off after a parent’s death, losing a job, learning the worst possible things about a dad they idolized or sordid secrets about their brother-in-law. When all those things occur at the same time, polls show that a whopping 95 percent of people take an extended leave of absence.”
“I still have my job. I mean, not for long, but it’s not over.”
Instead of saying duh, he simply looked at her.
“Anyway, I am totally taking time off. I’ve been here a week with no plans to leave yet.”
“My point exactly. You’re here by default. Not in a million years would you choose to hang out in Mexico, most especially in a tiny village where people do not speak English and there are no cappuccinos. And how restful can it be in the Montgomery household these days?”
She sighed and went to the source of the problem. “He never took a day off.”
“You are not your father. And you will never please him.”
“So I should quit trying?”
He reached over and touched her cheek. “Yes. Forty-seven years is long enough.”
“I do have my own goals, you know. It’s not all about my father. I love politics and . . . and . . .”
Bram slid the short distance from his chair down onto the sand.
On his knees.
Right in front of her.
Until that moment she never truly believed that hearts could do cartwheels. “What are you doing besides getting sand all over yourself and missing the sunset?”
“I’ll watch its reflection in your eyes.” He smiled. The last rays behind him formed a halo of white hair. “Do you want to hear my suggestions for what you might do if you postpone the campaign?”
She pointed to her throat and shrugged. The last cartwheel had sent the heart right up into it and she couldn’t talk.
“We could take a long vacation together and see all those states that we’ve talked about wanting to see but never do. It’d be sort of like a honeymoon.” He reached into the pocket of his shorts. “Or it could be a true honeymoon.” A ring box was in his hand now. “Calissa, I love you. I will always love you, and whether you say yes or no, I will never leave you. Will you marry me, darling?”
She smiled. “This is your most intriguing proposal yet. What’s in the box?”
“A bribe. I thought I’d add it this time round.”
She laughed and leaned forward to hug his neck. “I love you, Bram. And yes, I will marry you.” She kissed him.
He sighed deeply. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”