She was still agitated, and he wondered if that wouldn’t trigger security concerns, but possibly by virtue of that first-class ticket, or the basic oddity of life, she passed through the first ID check in the line with no trouble. Rese had regained her composure, naturally. But he held her admission and its expression inside him like a torch.
He’d done it. He’d won. Rese loved him—and admitted it. He wanted to crow like Bobby, strut like Tony, dance and sing and tell the whole world Rese Barrett loved him. But on this triumphant pinnacle, he had to let her go. How else could he get Star out of trouble and keep Rico from worse?
And himself, since Rico’s fights were his fights, and he had enough to deal with already. How long could it be before he finished with Nonna, brought her whatever peace they could find in it all, and joined Rese in Sonoma? He knew exactly the spot he wanted to use, the ill-fated picnic spot, site of their first disastrous date, the one that almost got him fired and had him eating dirt for weeks. He’d drive her out there on the Harley—an ache seized him at the thought of his own bike between his thighs, the Petaluma Road beneath his wheels, and Rese hanging on behind.
It had to be sunset. He imagined the hills dotted with cows and patchwork vineyards, the wind-bent tree where they’d spread their leathers and sit. Would the irony annoy her, or would she see the humor of it? Either way, she wouldn’t resist. She couldn’t.
Rese suddenly turned. “Lance! Monica expected us for dinner.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Her concern touched him. His family was no longer a threat or a burden to her.
“And tell Rico.”
“I will.” But as Rese started toward the point he could no longer follow, he caught her arm. “Wait.”
Passengers behind her stepped around as he closed her hands in his. “Just … one more time.”
“What?”
“I want to hear it.”
She rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged her lips. “I love you, Lance.”
Power surged. He leaned to kiss her. “Hold that thought.”
“That works both ways.”
“You know it.” He’d made it as clear as he could.
Their fingers slipped apart. She had to go. It was the right thing. He’d withheld the probable details of Star’s ordeal from Rese, things he suspected given her diminutive size and fragility. If Rese couldn’t imagine someone drugging her, she didn’t need to contemplate worse.
Thank God Star hadn’t fought them about leaving. She must have been scared enought to let go. He and Chaz had contended with something the other night, something with teeth. He wasn’t sure they were through, but for tonight, at least, he prayed it was enough.
S
tar had not spoken one word in the two days they’d been back.
She had alternately slept and raged, but she would not say anything when Rese tried to talk it out. Now she sat shaking and silent in the Rain Forest room, sipping tea through a straw. She’d eaten three times in two days, gorging like a wolf, then losing it all.
Not even her terrible cooking could be blamed for that, Rese told herself as she set down a saucer of Minute rice that for once had not come out like glue. “Try this.”
A metallic odor hovered over Star. She looked up with brittle eyes. “Thanks.”
Surprised, Rese sat down on the bed across from her. She hadn’t expected a response, but she could see by her heightened color that Star might talk and be better for it. She waited without prodding.
“He said I had ‘it’—that thing that makes a star.”
“Who said that?”
“Faust.”
Right. “And who is Faust?”
Star’s face pinched. “Someone I believed.”
Rese sighed.
“He watched me sing and dance. He said I could be a star, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted—to be … Star. You know? To really be Star.” Her voice cracked.
Rese didn’t know what to say. None of the things she’d told her in the past had made a lasting difference. And the one thing that might last had set her off. So she said, “I’m sorry.”
Star rubbed the needle marks on her arm, frowning.
“Lance thinks he drugged you.”
“With what?”
“He was guessing heroin.”
Star emitted a whine and gripped the fragments of hair that looked as though they’d been hacked off with a handsaw.
“It’s out of you now. It’s all out.” At least her tremors and hysteria, stomach issues and fatigue seemed to have subsided.
Rese stood and moved Star’s hands, then smoothed the strands with gentle strokes. No more rosy spirals. “What happened to your hair?”
Star jumped up. “I thought there was something in it. I felt things crawling.” She shuddered.
Hard to say whether she’d imagined or acquired something. Rese didn’t want to think where Star had slept those five days she was gone.
“They kept crawling, and there was a knife, so I cut them out.”
Thank God it was only hair she’d cut.
“Faust was incensed.” Star gripped her throat. “He said my hair was his. That I’d cheated him.”
Cheated him?
“Someone thinks she owes him.”
Star had picked some winners, but Faust—or whatever his name was—must have topped the list.
“He charged at me, but I had the knife. I reached the door.” She started to shake.
Lance was right. Someone like that might have come after her. Rese took her hands and sat her down on the bed.
Star curled up and moaned. “This most loathe`d life. Why can’t it end?”
“Shh.” Rese soothed her like a child.
“The worst thing—” Star sucked in a sob—“is they’re gone.”
“Who?”
“The fairies. The colors.”
Her hand stilled on Star’s head.
“I looked for them, Rese. I looked so hard. Maybe it was the drugs, I don’t know.” Tears were rushing, and her words poured out in gasps. “But I had to face it all without them.”
Rese chilled. “Face what?”
“Everything they did to me, Faust and the others.” Star started to shake. “I looked and looked, but they didn’t come, Rese. They weren’t there.”
Rese could hardly breathe as a thought took hold. “Is that why you do it, Star? To see the fairies?”
“I need to know they’re there. To see the colors.”
So Lance was wrong. It wasn’t for the pain or for the sex, but to produce the effect, to trigger her imagination or … Her throat squeezed. She’d been willing to think maybe angels came, or some manifestation of the Lord taking a form Star recognized. But God wouldn’t lure her into being used just to experience it.
A heaviness filled her limbs as she heard Chaz’s voice binding spirits, saw Lance lost in prayer at such an intense level she’d been afraid for him. Had they blocked Star’s “fairies”? Beings that “comforted” her when her body was abused, but made her seek the abuse to find them?
She squeezed Star’s hand. “Maybe it’s better.”
Tears washed her eyes. “How can it be?”
Rese stroked the ragged tips that would curl as they grew but now stood out in peaks like a harvested field. “Because without them you’re Star. You shine.”
Star closed her eyes. Her shoulders rose and fell as she tottered on the brink of sobs. Then sleep descended. Rese took the rice down to the refrigerator, went to her own suite, and called Lance.
He had phoned the first night to tell her Rico was relieved and furious and melancholy. But she could hear his relief and guessed Rico would put it all behind him. Chaz sent his prayers and told her to stay on guard, whatever that meant.
The second night Lance had called to say Momma was in an uproar. How could he send her back alone? What was so important with Nonna, so mysterious that he risked his future and her grandbabies? He had imitated her scolding so accurately that Rese laughed aloud, then missed him so much it hurt.
Michelle had also brought Baxter home. And what a comfort it was to have Lance’s dog, partly as surety for Lance, but mostly for Baxter’s sweet self. As she pressed the buttons, she looked at Baxter lying inside on the small rug beside her bed and smiled. Guests were just going to have to deal with it.
Lance answered and she said, “Hi.”
“No fair. I wanted to call you.”
“It’s an equal opportunity world.”
He laughed. “I swear Lancelot had an easier time romancing Guinevere.”
“And look where it got him.”
“I was hoping you hadn’t read the story.”
“I saw the movie.”
“Which version?”
“They all end pretty much the same.”
“Okay, bad example.”
She laughed.
“You can’t be ready for bed this early.”
“Thought I’d save you waiting until midnight.”
“I like talking you to sleep, having you under my control.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay. Pop offered me a job.”
Her breath caught and refused to find any sort of rhythm.
“Someone’s retiring, and Pop recommended me for the position. Rese?”
“He must believe you can do it. That’s great, Lance.” He’d wanted rings and a robe.
“I told him I had a position already, as soon as I finished with Nonna.”
The air pushed out in a flood.
“You didn’t think I’d take it, did you?” There was laughter in his voice.
“Lance Michelli …”
“Wish I could see your face.”
“You’d be seeing my back.”
“I’d be rubbing your back.”
The rush that turned her to jelly was not fair. “Lance, I called you for a reason.”
“You’ve replaced me with a Mexican maid?”
“Stop it.”
“What’s up?” His tone sobered.
She told him about Star. “It was you and Chaz, wasn’t it.”
“The power is God’s, Rese. We only wielded it.”
“But what do I do if—Lance, she’s not happy they’re gone.”
“Listen to me. Satan wants you to doubt, but you can stand in the gap for Star.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Pray for her.”
“She’ll go ballistic.”
“Pray silently. Lay hands when she’s asleep. She’s crying out for help, Rese, or she wouldn’t have come back to you, knowing you believe.”
Rese sank back against the pillows. “I don’t think I can do that. I saw you.”
“Forget about that.”
Right. Like she could forget Lance beside her, gripped by something so deep he had to recover.
“Just keep praying for her protection.”
“What will that do?”
“Keep them away.”
“What if she goes looking for them?” Rese stroked Baxter, who’d brought his snout up to the bed.
“Pray even harder. If we keep them bound, she’ll find no reward in the pain.”
“Won’t it hurt more?” Baxter brought his front paws up on the bed and lowered his head between them. She rubbed his neck and shoulders.
“It has to hurt, or she’ll keep looking for comfort there instead of finding it in people like you and Rico.”
“Rico!”
Baxter raised his head and licked her hand.
“Rico didn’t touch her, and believe me, that took an effort. He brought her into his music, his soul. He read her sonnets in the park!”
She hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Lance was right. She remembered Rico’s face the night they went looking, the stark hope in his eyes. Star had burned him. But was it all her fault?
She pressed a hand to her face, then startled when Baxter leaped onto the bed, snuggling up against her, plunking his shaggy head across her waist.
“What? What happened?”
She laughed. “You didn’t tell me Baxter was a snuggler.”
“What?”
“He just climbed into bed with me.”
“No way.”
“So I’m imagining this big shaggy thing sprawled up against me?”
Baxter licked her hand as real as anything.
“You have him in your room?”
“Quite.”
“And he climbed into your bed.”
“Leaped is more like it.”
“He knows better than that. Put him on the phone.”
She held the phone out to Baxter and heard Lance’s, “Baxter, down.”
Baxter whined, looking at her with soulful eyes. She stroked his head. “It’s okay.”
“Rese!”
She brought the phone back to her ear. “The damage is done. He likes it here.”
“Tell him to get down.”
“You’re jealous.” She heard his expelled breath and bit her lower lip.
“You’re undoing my training.”
“You’ll have to get out here before he’s completely spoiled.”
“Rese.”
“Go to sleep, Lance. I have a dog who needs attention.”
He growled. Lance, not Baxter. She hung up the phone and snuggled down beside the animal. She hadn’t dreamed of letting him into her bed, but took wicked pleasure in it now. “Yes.” She rubbed Baxter’s ears. “That Lance better get here soon, huh, buddy?” Baxter sighed hugely, and she laughed.
————
Alone on the anniversary of my wedding to Marco, with our firstborn in my arms and a dose of self-pity, I think of Nonna Carina, of the violence she suffered, the baby she lost. Carina Maria DiGratia married Quillan Shepard in a mining camp in the Rocky Mountains. She married for protection a man she half feared, who, for fear, deserted her.
And I think of Nonno Quillan loving her until his dying breath, the regret of that early desertion torturing him, even though he’d loved her thoroughly all the years after.
A tear drops to Celestina’s fingers coiled around my own. I draw them up and dry them on my cheek. She suckles in her dream, her lips sinking and puckering, the tiny chin bobbing up and down, content as I rock her back and forth, back and forth, her neck sweaty in the crook of my arm. “We are not deserted,” I tell her. I tell myself.
Footsteps. I blink away my tears. Momma Michelli hands me a telegram, her face sending one of its own, judging my weakness to need and expect such extravagance from her son. She waits expectantly, but I outwait her, and she leaves. Awkwardly around the baby, I unseal and open it.
KNOW THIS DAY HOLDS MIXED EMOTIONS. WISH I WAS THERE TO HOLD YOU. LA MIA VITA ED IL MIO AMORE. MARCO.
Eyes closed, I press his message to my heart. There is the grief of Papa’s murder, of Nonno’s death, and all my loss. The memory of a rushed and confused ceremony. There’s also Marco and something more real than words. When my voice can break through the tears in my throat, I tell Celestina, “See, cara? Papa’s here… .”