Authors: Sally John
“Sheridan.” Luke stepped in front of her, causing her to halt, and removed his sunglasses.
She returned his gaze and sensed he wanted to tell her more. “Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t go there.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t have this between us.”
“It’s not. I know you came for other reasons that have nothing to do personally with Eliot or me. And you know I know. It’s who you are. Leave it at that.” She took a side step, but he blocked her again.
“Calissa said I would be interested in what she wants to tell you. For professional reasons.”
“Fine.” She swept past him and this time he let her go. Her only thought was to get inside the church, tourists or no tourists, Luke or no Luke.
They reached the bottom of her hill, went by the sculptor’s shop, rounded the wrought-iron bandstand, and entered the square. Despite traces of her mother’s Spanish bloodline in her eyes and complexion, she could never be taken for anything other than American. Her dress labeled her as a local. She most likely appeared to be an American villager. It was an odd combination that invited strangers to speak to her, and so she averted her eyes from them. Most days she totally avoided going down the hill during the busy times.
Some of the boys approached, their sights on Luke as they loudly greeted her.
“Señora maestra!”
It usually made her smile, their “teacher” nickname for the woman who took every opportunity to shove an English lesson in their faces.
Not today. She held up a finger at them in warning. They got the message and went another direction.
The church bells began ringing. As often happened, the insistent clang set off memories of her mother.
Ysabel Cole had loved the sound. She would grasp her daughters’ hands and run with them toward the large cathedral in their Chicago suburb. Laughing, her eyes dancing beneath dark wavy hair, she would call out excitedly above the loud peal in her mishmash of English and Spanish. “
Vamos!
Hurry! Jesús is calling us,
mis niñas
! He is calling us!”
Sheridan had known her mother for only thirteen years. Not nearly long enough, but it was thirteen solid years of Jesús calling to them in bells, in the bread, in song, in a hug, in beauty.
After Ysabel’s death, Sheridan gradually lost the ability to sense Jesús calling her. She still found inexplicable solace, though, in the old liturgy. Sometimes she wondered if it was God Himself or if it was simply the memory of a mother’s love.
Not that it mattered what it was exactly. All that mattered was the promise of a momentary escape from fears that gathered like thunderclouds over her, threatening once more to drench her with the inconceivable.
She made a beeline for the front doors, hoping Luke would stay outside and keep all the camera toters with him.
* * *
“Why so downcast, my child?” Padre Miguel greeted Sheridan after the service outside the church.
The old man’s soft voice, compassionate smile, and velvet eyes were a magnet to her. They almost hinted at times that Jesús still knew her name.
She bent to hug the short priest and sighed. It was as if he drew thoughts straight from her heart and off her tongue before she could censor them. “My father is ill. The doctor said he will not last long.”
He clasped both her hands between his. “You will go to see him.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t know.”
He stared at her, his eyes like laser beams.
“Padre Miguel, it’s a long story.”
“No, not so long a story. Refusing to forgive is a short, uncomplicated story.” He smiled again and squeezed her hands. “Go and make your peace.”
Then there were times when his magnetic personality absolutely repulsed her. “I—”
“Oh! You worry about señor. Of course! He does not want to travel. We will watch over him. You can depend on us.” He gestured broadly as if to include the entire town.
Eliot considered the priest a meddlesome fool and escaped to his bedroom if he heard his voice anywhere near their house. The image of her husband’s response to seeing villagers and Padre Miguel on their doorstep made her cringe.
“I-I’ll think about it.”
“And I, señora, will pray.” He squeezed her hands one more time and let go, turning to greet someone else. “Bless you.”
Sheridan moved away and spotted Luke. He leaned against a low wall that bordered a sidewalk around the old building. Ignoring the gorgeous vista behind him, eyes hidden by sunglasses, he appeared to be watching her.
During the service, he had sat in a back corner, giving her space. It hadn’t helped all that much. Tourists had disrupted her quiet time, moving in and out of the church, clicking cameras even during the serving of the Eucharist. There was no getting lost in the ancient words of love and hope or in the texture of unleavened bread dissolving slowly on her tongue.
Nor was there comfort in Padre Miguel’s compassion. On the contrary, he had saddled her with the charge that making peace with the loathsome man she called Dad was
her
responsibility. Hers. Why would she care about making peace with Harrison Cole?
It wasn’t about making peace with him. It wasn’t even about him. It was about that note. That note for her eyes only. That note that she could not show or explain to Eliot.
Could not explain because she didn’t understand it herself. It was about her father’s past, something Calissa thought she should know, something that would take her into emotional tunnels she’d left behind when she was seventeen.
“Sher?”
She blinked, surprised to see Luke standing in front of her at the edge of the square, across the street from the church.
“You okay?”
She glanced around, unable to remember walking there, unable to collect her bearings.
Her left arm ached, the one broken when it hit the sidewalk as her husband and coworker were shot. Her chest felt as if a thick rope cinched it. Her throat went dry. She could not swallow, could scarcely breathe. Colors spun before her eyes.
It was over. Her security in Topala, her solace in the old church, her comfort in the simplicity of watching the sunrise or teaching the kids or relating to Mercedes like a daughter. Over. All of it.
Luke pulled her to himself and held her tightly.
At that moment she knew of only two things for certain. He would hold her until she stopped shaking. And then . . . then she would go to the house and pack her bags because her sister asked.
Chicago
“Is she coming?” Calissa paced back and forth as far as the phone cord stretched, all of half a step in every direction.
Nearby a nurse harrumphed for the umpteenth time. Nurse Harrumph-umph. She must have used up all of her good graces in allowing Calissa to take a call at the nurses’ station outside the intensive care unit. Evidently moving about the small space pushed the phone privilege too far.
Calissa turned her back and did her best rendition of a soggy patch of moss. Knees locked in place, she pressed a tissue against tear ducts which had lost any ability to stem the flow. Her father lying on his deathbed had nothing to do with the crying jag. Nope. This untidy, damp situation was due to sheer anger.
“Luke, are you there?” She snapped the words.
“Yeah.”
She wanted to reach through the line to wherever in the world he was and squeeze his Adam’s apple. The guy could speed-talk faster than an auctioneer when he wanted to. “Well?”
“I can’t say yet.” The words came slow as honey squeezed from that plastic bear’s fat little paunch. “She’s not exactly confiding in me.”
“Surprise, surprise.” Calissa bit her lip. Luke was her best shot at getting her sister to town.
Best
shot? Try
only
. “Look, I’m sorry. So what
has
she said?”
“‘Ask me if I care.’”
“That one was predicted. Anything else?”
“Not really. The church service affected her. Put a crack in her defenses.”
“Church service? What church service? What is today? What month is it? March—it’s not Easter, is it?”
Luke chuckled. “That usually falls on a Sunday.”
“I knew that.”
“You just don’t know what today is.”
Calissa concentrated on bringing herself under control. Ten days ago she had confronted her father—vertical and breathing on his own at that time—with information she had found by accident. In quick succession he turned beet red, sputtered incoherent statements, blanched, and collapsed in a heap on the Persian rug in his living room. Since calling 911, she’d had no idea of the date, let alone any religious holiday.
“Calissa, she needs a little time. Things are complicated. I don’t think Eliot would travel. She’ll have to arrange care for him.”
“Where are they?”
“Mexico. A small village that appears lucky to have running water.”
She had expected as much. Mexico had always been Sheridan and Eliot’s favorite vacation spot, especially the remote areas. It was his birthplace. The language would pose no problem for either of them.
But why, oh why, couldn’t they have just stayed in Chicago? Or at least in the States? Why was it her baby sister had to flit all over the hemisphere in pursuit of whatever it was she pursued?
Her throat felt thick. It wasn’t from anger. “Is she all right?”
“She’s . . . she’s like a porcelain vase sitting on the edge of a very high, unstable shelf.”
“What a crock. It’s been a year and a half.”
“Meaning recovery time has maxed out?”
Calissa kneaded her forehead. Sheridan was falling apart south of the border and with a man she never should have trusted in the first place ten or whatever years ago. Hadn’t she warned her? Hadn’t she said, “You don’t really know him, Sher”? Hadn’t she told her to wait? to not hotfoot it down the aisle and off to some dangerous foreign capital city with a virtual stranger? Where had it gotten them? Almost killed. Not working.
Luke said, “You want her home.”
“Yes, I want her home.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
She knew he would do all he could, because that’s who he was.
Talk about trusting a virtual stranger. Calissa had met Luke Traynor once and intuitively understood—even before he handed her a State Department business card—that he moved in dark circles. Despite his carefree personality and what some women would consider boyish good looks, he was at home in an underworld nobody wanted to talk about.
And besides that, he loved her sister.
Stranger or not, what better combination could she hope for? If anybody could bring Sheridan home, it was this guy.
Topala
“Señora!” Mercedes beckoned from the doorway of the sculptor’s shop.
Already past due getting home after the midday church service, Sheridan shook her head and kept walking. She had no time to stop. Eliot’s agitation would be in full swing, not the best scenario for discussing travel plans.
“Please!” Mercedes mouthed in English.
The girl’s efforts to speak the language always sparked a response in Sheridan. There was a swell in her pride as a teacher. There was even a nudge to her old passion to fight the status quo of underprivileged women.
There was, too, another response—that peculiar twinge in her heart that had nothing to do with any role she’d ever played in her life. Simply put, she felt toward Mercedes what she imagined a mother might feel toward her child.
Sheridan turned from the street, sidestepped some tourists, and climbed the stairs to the covered walkway that ran in front of handicraft shops. She followed Mercedes into Javier’s display room, a small, rectangular space of shelves and tables. At the moment he was showing one of his beautiful dolphin figurines to a couple. He ignored his friends passing through into the private courtyard behind the store.
Mercedes sat on a bench beneath a tree and pulled Sheridan down beside her. Her brown-black eyes were large pools of fear. “What is happening?” She switched to her native tongue. “What did that man want?”
Sheridan assumed “that man” was Luke, although she hadn’t seemed disturbed earlier by him. What had changed? “You mean Señor Traynor?”
“Yes! Oh, my! I went home and Señor Montgomery was so upset. He threw a book onto the floor. He called Señor Traynor very bad names. He spoke too fast in English. I couldn’t follow most of what he said, but I understood those words.”
The scene she described was almost too bizarre to believe of Eliot. But then, Luke Traynor had not shown up on their doorstep before. She tried to downplay it. “Honey, you’ve seen both of us upset often enough.” They’d never win an award for Emotionally Stable Couple of the Year.
“He threw a book and cursed! He never throws things. He never, ever curses. Even when he is in the worst of pain, he is polite. He is a true gentleman.”
The girl’s take on Eliot amazed Sheridan. True gentleman? She wondered why she herself did not see him through such eyes anymore.
“And you—” Mercedes clamped her mouth shut and made the sign of the cross.
“I what?”
Mercedes glanced nervously around the yard. She leaned over and whispered, “You hugged that man, that Señor Traynor,
in the square
!”
Hugged? Sheridan thought of Luke’s embrace and how it must have looked to others. What to her was a life preserver could appear like anything but to an observer.
“Señora, are you leaving Señor Montgomery?”
“Oh, honey, no!” She paused and, like any good amby’s wife, mentally parsed her words.
Yes, she had been attracted to Luke. It was ancient history, a fleeting misstep during a time of turmoil. Anyone would be attracted to such a man given the circumstances. It was over. Whatever “it” was. A silly crush.
But how much was proper to reveal to the young woman, a live-in employee who never commented on her employers’ strained relationship and separate bedrooms? With each passing day, though, she seemed more and more like a daughter in whom Sheridan could confide personal details.
Like any good diplomat, she chose a middle ground. “Mercedes, this is not a marital issue. You remember what I told you about the time when Eliot was shot?”