Tangled Ashes (23 page)

Beck went up to his apartment to shower and change, telling Jade he’d be right back for the coffee she’d promised. Over half an hour later, he heard her footsteps on the stairs. She went to his bedroom first and knocked lightly on the door, calling his name when there was no answer. He heard her move to the bathroom next. The door was open, and he wasn’t there either. Her footsteps moved back toward the stairs, then paused. He heard them come back in the direction of the extra bedroom where he stood, motionless.

Jade reached the doorway and stopped. “Becker?”

He didn’t move. His wet clothes clung to him, a cold straitjacket that mimicked the vise grip of shock that had seized his mind shortly after he’d reached his apartment. He’d stood in his bedroom for a while, his thinking blanked by the assault Philippe’s accident had waged on all his senses. He’d told himself to move—to go to the closet and take out dry clothes, to head to the bathroom for a long, restorative shower. . . . But the shrieking static in his mind had propelled him instead to the bedroom where five bottles stood lined up on the windowsill. He felt as if his eyes bulged and his skin throbbed from the intensity of need.

“Becker,” Jade said again, stepping into the room.

A constricted breath quaked into his lungs, then hissed out again. His eyes were riveted on the lineup of bottles as if by a powerful magnetic force. He couldn’t shift his gaze away from the source of guilt and solace that waited, dull amber and diluted gold, for his capitulation. He felt Jade move out of sight for a moment. Then she reentered the room and draped a blanket over his shoulders. “Becker,” she said, her voice firmer, more demanding this time. “Look at me.” She tugged at his arm. “Look at me,” she repeated. He looked down at her small hand where it gripped his arm, and something in that connection weakened the power of the static over his mind just a fraction. When she tugged again, he swayed, stumbling a little as he lost his balance, his gaze skipping from her hand to her face. Her eyes were steady and her expression unyieldingly soft. “You don’t want to do this,” she said.

“Yes, I do.” His voice sounded frayed.

There was an undertone of worry in her voice when Jade coaxed, “Come on, Becker. Just take a shower. Get warmed up. I have hot coffee for you downstairs. We can talk about this. . . .”

At that, his mouth twisted into a rictus that might have been a smile under different circumstances. “We can’t talk about this,” he said. “We’re not that kind of friends.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath and was somehow pleased to have hit home. After a moment of silence, Jade said, “Right now—this moment—we can be that kind of friends. I’m not leaving you here to mess up your life.”

His eyes darted back to the bottles on the windowsill, the static growing in his mind again, swelling behind his eyes. He saw a flash of Philippe floating facedown in the river, then another of the boy’s lifeless body as it might have looked had Beck gotten there just a few seconds later—blue lips and open, empty eyes. “Just go away,” he said to Jade, the static rising to new pitches.

“Philippe is going to be fine. Mrs. Fallon just called, and aside from that bump on his head—”

“Get out.”

“Becker.”

He felt the relief of rage building inside him and didn’t begin to resist it. “Get out of here!” He spat the words in Jade’s direction as he stalked to the window and grabbed a bottle of whiskey, pulling out its cork. He pointed at Jade with the hand that held the liquor and growled, “Don’t give me that look. Just . . . don’t!” Then he raised the bottle to his lips and took a deep, burning swallow of the amber liquid.

The look on Jade’s face when he glanced at her again made him pause in the act of raising the bottle for another swig. The pallor of her skin accentuated the depth of sorrow in her eyes. She watched him as if he were a jumper leaping to his death from the railing of a bridge. Horror and grief dueled in her gaze, but Becker saw nothing comforting in the concern they expressed. He kept his eyes defiantly on hers as he tipped the bottle and took another swallow of tranquilizing shame.

Jade took a step toward him, so much compassion on her face that he held her off with a pointed finger. “Don’t!” he barked.

“But, Becker—”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

“But it’s been days. You’ve managed to go without for days, and you’re going to give it all up for this?”

“Were you there?” he asked, his voice edged with acid. “Did you see what happened—what nearly happened in the river this afternoon?”

“I did,” she said softly, tears choking the words. “But he wasn’t seriously hurt. He’s probably home with his parents by now, demanding to have ice cream with his dinner to reward him for his bravery.” She was at his side, covering the hand that held the bottle
with her own. “I know it rattled you,” she said, “but . . . Becker . . . you don’t have to do this.”

Her hand on his was torture. Her voice, her eyes, her nearness were too. “Get your hand off me,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re neither my best friend nor my counselor, remember?” he grated, sending her a look so filled with venom that she released her hold and took a step back.

“I . . .” She looked as if his words had physically struck her. Her shoulders seemed to slump and her focus to turn inward. There was something so broken about her that Becker nearly retracted his words—nearly begged her to forget them. But the familiar balm of fury prevented him from surrender.

“What do you want from me?” he sneered, tension mounting. “What is it you’re so convinced I can do?”

She swallowed. “I just want you to . . .” She reached out a hand and steadied herself on the wall. “I want you to know that you can cope without . . .” She pointed her chin at the bottle in his hand. “Without hiding away inside that.”

“This is coping!” he bellowed, the alcohol beginning to loosen his clenched muscles and shocked nerves. “This is being able to deal with life when kids like Philippe come this close—” he held up his thumb and finger, a fraction of an inch apart—“this close to drowning in a muddy river. This is being able to forget that I punched an old guy who was trying to save the kid because I’m too much of an idiot to—” He didn’t finish. The memories were causing the static to start up again. He moved to the window and looked out over the castle grounds. “This is the only way I can do it,” he said after a moment, his breathing ragged and shallow. “It’s the only way I know.”

“Then it’s all you’ll ever have.”

It wasn’t so much the words that made Becker turn toward Jade as the tone in which she’d said them. The compassion and
concern he’d seen on her face before were gone. There was a hard tilt to her chin that reflected the glint in her eyes, and though tears hung on her lower eyelids and threatened to drop onto her sallow cheeks, the set of her jaw belied no weakness. She took three steps that ended just a few inches from where Becker stood, prying his fingers from around the bottle with more strength than he’d suspected she possessed and slamming it down next to the others on the windowsill.

When she spoke again, her voice was higher and harder, her words deliberately chosen for maximum impact. She pointed at the alcoholic lineup and sneered. “Take a good look, Becker,” she commanded. “Those bottles? They’re all you’re going to have left when this is all over. They’re going to be the only friends you ever have—the only family—the only children—the only woman. You want to dive into their oblivion because life is too hard?” she demanded, sneering the last two words as if they were the excuse of an idiot. “Well, dive away, Mr. Becker. Go ahead and lose yourself again. Give in to whatever demons made you into a drunk. You’re a fool. A first-class coward who’s going to die completely alone because you’re too weak to get a grip!”

Becker held a finger an inch from her face. “You don’t know anything about my life! You know nothing about me!”

She swatted his hand away with enough vigor to startle him. “Oh, shut up!” she spat. “Stop your whining! You want your life to turn around? Start living it—not avoiding it! There is nothing this life can throw at you that gives you the right to waste whatever years you have left on booze!”

“What do you know about that? What do you know about pain and suffering? You’re a nanny, Jade,” he said, hands on hips, his voice derisive. “You’re a perfectly capable woman who chooses to spend her life wiping kids’ noses and cooking for guys like me when you could probably do anything you set your mind to. So don’t
lecture me about retreating to a bottle when you spend every day of your life hiding away in a kitchen!”

“Shut up!” she yelled at him, tears overflowing her eyes and coursing down her cheeks. “Just . . . shut up!”

“Why? Why should I shut up when you’ve spent the better part of my time in the château lecturing me about my character flaws? Why should I shut up when all you’ve done is yap about how I need to change and become a better person and conform to whatever standard it is you have for the perfect strangers who cross your path? You’re a fraud, Jade! You know nothing of what surviving in this world really demands! So don’t tell me to shut up, and stop preaching at me about being a coward!”

He was so engrossed in his verbal lashing that he didn’t see her vacillate until she’d nearly reached the ground. His arms shot out to help her the moment he realized her knees had buckled and her face had gone ashen, but she was a deadweight. All he succeeded in doing was going down with her and breaking her fall. She never fully lost consciousness, but her eyes were blank and her body listless as she leaned, half-sitting, in the corner formed by the bed and the wall.

“Jade,” Becker cried, searching her face for signs of returning awareness. “Jade!”

Becker was trying to decide whether he should leave her alone long enough to go downstairs and call an ambulance when she took a shuddering breath and focused her eyes on his face. “Jade?” She seemed to be fully aware again, her eyes darting around the room.

“Did I . . . ?” she asked, her impossibly pale lips stiff as she tried to form the words.

“You passed out . . . I think. Sort of.” The blood was pounding in Becker’s ears. His hands shook as he helped Jade straighten into a sitting position against the wall. “What do you need? What can I . . . ?” He eyed the bottles on the windowsill and cringed. “Would a sip of something strong—?”

“No!” She held up her hand as she leaned her head back against the wall. “It’ll pass,” she said. “Just give me a minute.”

“I’m calling an ambulance,” he said, rising to a standing position.

“No, you’re not.” Her tone was unyielding.

“Jade, you just—”

“Had an episode.” She inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“You virtually passed out!”

“Yes—but not for any reason an ambulance could cure.”

“You need to see a doctor.”

“No,” she said, pulling herself up a little straighter and expelling another deep breath. “What I need is to get enough strength back to yell at you.”

Becker took a closer look at the pale and shaken woman on the floor. “I’m pretty sure there are some more pressing things you could be doing with your time.”

“You’re a moron, Mr. Becker,” she said.

He was tempted to agree. “Can we shelve the rest of our argument until you’re well enough to put up a decent fight?” he asked.

“No,” she said, her gaze serious. “I’m not much for shelving anything these days.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But if you take another sip from any one of those bottles before I’m finished saying what I have to say, I promise you that you will never have to put up with my ‘preaching’ again.”

Becker looked away and mumbled, “I hoped you were already unconscious when I got to that part.”

“Oh, I heard every word you said.” She took another breath and patted the floor next to her. “Have a seat, Mr. Becker.”

He couldn’t very well refuse a woman who had passed out moments before, but it was with a certain amount of trepidation that he lowered himself to the floor next to Jade and leaned back against the wall. “You’re sure you don’t want to wait until . . . ?”

The eyes she turned on him held the kind of clarity and certainty that made his question moot. “I heard every word,” she said again. “And I particularly enjoyed the bits about hiding away in my kitchen and wasting my life caring for children.”

“Jade, I—”

“Did you miss the part where I told you to shut up?”

Whatever traces of weakness had been there moments before had vanished. Becker clamped his lips shut.

“You might think caring for children is a dead-end career for dunces, and you might think taking a job that keeps me chained to the castle’s stove is one step up from slave labor, but I assure you that both of those choices were made not out of fear but out of purpose.” She turned her head against the wall so she could lock eyes with his. “I have a degree from the Sorbonne in international relations and was, until six months ago, working on a doctorate in business management from Oxford. So yes, you were right when you suggested that I could probably do anything I set my mind to.” She paused while Becker absorbed the information, his mind reeling. “But when you said that I had no idea about the tough stuff this life has to offer, Mr. Becker, you were way off base.”