Beyond the Storm (9780758276995) (13 page)

She hesitated a moment, staring down at the ears of corn at their feet.

“What, is something else the matter?”

“Adam, I have a confession to make.”

“Okay . . .” he said, hesitantly.

“I'm a terrible cook.”

Having feared the worst, Adam felt relief wash over him as he let out a laugh that rivaled the wail of whatever creature had howled them back into reality. He assured her he would boil the corn and maybe find something more in the kitchen to satisfy their cravings. If she really didn't know her way around the kitchen, perhaps she'd missed some tasty morsel earlier. Maybe even another bottle of wine was hidden in a bottom cabinet just waiting to be uncorked. Like the past, it would provide a velvety comfort. She admitted that the latter would be a great find.

“I'm on the case.”

As they headed through the soaked yard back toward the rear porch, Adam's foot tripped on an upturned root. He fell to the ground, crying out with sudden pain.

“Is it your ankle?”

“No, no . . . I bumped my head against something. Something hard.”

Vanessa reached down to help him up. As he righted himself on the ground, he touched the wound on his forehead he'd incurred during the accident. He still felt the sharp piece of glass imbedded beneath the open skin beneath his hairline. He hadn't reopened the wound, thankfully, as no fresh blood dripped. Just a sharp pain had wafted through his system, no doubt from the impact of his head hitting hard against the stone.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I'll be fine. Just, what was that I hit?”

He looked, and Vanessa looked, and what they saw was unmistakable.

“Oh my God,” he said.

What revealed itself to them in the glow of the moonlight and in the high grass was a lone grave marker. Jutting out of the ground was a thick granite stone, a simple inscription chiseled onto its hard façade. With the aid of the freshly emerging silver moon's glow, they were able to make out the letters. Each of them read the epitaph silently, their minds giving quiet reverence to their discovery. What they saw was this:

Finally, the wind quieted down and the silence was all the more apparent.

Vanessa was the first to speak. “Adam, look at the date . . . it's today.”

“More than fifty years ago . . . but you're right, August nineteenth. That's kind of creepy. And an odd coincidence.” Adam paused. “If you believe in such things.”

“I think you do,” Vanessa answered. “All your talk of fate, and it lands us here.”

“The fact of the grave's existence still doesn't answer who lives here now. Aidan Barton died long ago, the house could have changed hands countless times.”

“And yet his grave remains.”

“What a curious epitaph—‘death is just the beginning'?” Adam said, his mind turning over meanings for such an enigmatic phrase, like it was offering up hope of tomorrow. “He must have loved this house or Danton Hill itself to have asked to be buried here. Do you think he's the guy who wrote all those letters? That woman . . . whom he called Venture, she must have been the love of his life, but I don't see a grave for her. He lies here, alone.”

“What I think is I want to go inside now,” Vanessa said, again wrapping her arms around her for needed warmth. Or perhaps, she thought, for protection. Adam watched as she stared down at the stone, wiping a single tear from her mud-stained cheek. “To think he's all alone here, how sad. I'm glad that on the anniversary of his death someone is here to remember him. Thank you, Mr. Barton,” she said, “for giving us shelter. We'll take good care of your home.”

Adam smiled at her, reaching out to clasp his hand in hers. “Come on, let's get you some food. I think you'll feel better after we eat. You shower again, I'll cook. And then maybe we'll go see what our Aidan Barton wrote about in all those letters.”

“Aidan Barton, how strange,” Vanessa said, testing the name out on her tongue, feeling a sense of the familiar. “Adam Blackburn. Do you realize the two of you share the same initials?”

 

Vanessa returned to the kitchen after having taken her second shower of the night, looking younger, red-cheeked, and fresh as a daisy. Her dark hair was still wet and clinging tight to her head, and a rare, genuine smile gracing her face let Adam know all his efforts had been worth it. She had also found a blue terry-cloth robe in a back closet, so she was warm and toasty and said she almost felt like she'd warmed up, that she felt all cozy.

“Perhaps this robe gave some lady friend of Mr. Barton's some comfort,” she said.

“Kind of ratty, then, if it's that old. But the sight of you wrapped inside the robe makes you look like you live here. The mistress of the house.”

“Home. Not a concept I'm completely familiar with at the moment,” she remarked.

Adam allowed the cryptic comment to slide by. She was full of these curious phrases that dropped into the ether without explanation, making him all the more curious about the life she had led, the secrets she kept. She obviously had issues to deal with, and with his patience they were getting there. “You hungry?”

“Duh. Starving.”

He smiled at her. “Good, we're ready.”

That's when she saw that the wooden kitchen table, which seated eight people easily, had been turned into an intimate setting for two, with place mats and linen napkins that he'd found in the side cabinet, and two thin, scented candles that flickered and burned, their smell wafting through the dimly lit room. Silverware, plates, utensils, all had been set out, each one kitty-corner to the other. No opposite ends of the table here, this was a dinner served up close and personal. Adam escorted her to her seat, pulling out the chair so she could slide in with ease. He got her settled, and then took the vacant seat.

“What have you done?”

“Well, for starters . . . under this towel is a basket full of banana bread. There was a mix in the cupboard, and thankfully some cooking oil and some butter in the fridge—I checked the date, it was fine. Alas, no milk or eggs, but I think it'll taste just fine enough. And under this one, the corn we picked, freshly shucked and steamed perfectly. And last but not least . . . it's not a red, but a white wine will have to do.”

Vanessa looked at him with bemused wonder. “What is this, the story of the loaves and fishes? I think perhaps, Adam Blackburn, you have the ability to walk on water.”

“If that were the case, neither of us would be here now,” he said, thinking back to his car and how it had hydroplaned on the highway just moments before the crash. The rainwater had not been his friend then, so why should some preternatural power possibly possess him now? He pushed the images aside and concentrated instead on the meal, the wine, and most especially, the company.

“So,” he said, “let's dig in and get some food in our systems, and when you're ready you can tell me your story. Let me guess where it begins. How about the day after the prom, as you were getting ready to leave for Europe? You were so excited that night, your first trip out of Danton Hill. I'm anxious to know what happened next.”

Vanessa was buttering her bread, when all of a sudden she dropped the knife to the plate. She gazed back at him, the light in her eyes doused. “Why there, why start there?”

“I don't know, it's just what came to mind. It's where we ended, the prom, even though we'd barely started. Not that I was expecting us to, it was just one night. But this is your life. I want to hear all about it, so feel free to begin wherever.”

She nodded her head, resumed spreading butter on the piece of bread while stealing glances at him. “Thank you, Adam, and I'm sorry to . . . jump all over you. This isn't easy for me. And no, my story does not start after the prom. This one is different. You told me about Sarah Jane, so I want to tell you about the man who shook my world . . . are you ready for this one? His name was Dominick di Paolo Alighetti.”

“That's quite a mouthful.”

“He was quite a man.”

“Was?”

“Oh no, it's nothing that tragic. He's alive, that's for certain.”

“Ah. So your use of past tense . . . describes his personality.”

“Something like that.”

“Did he hurt you?”

She paused to take a sip of the wine, never letting her eyes leave the inside of the glass. Like answers floated inside among the fermentation, confused by the intoxicating aroma. Adam felt his heart constrict with sorrow as he waited for her inevitable, unfortunate answer.

“Yes, Dominick did hurt me, he hurt me very much,” Vanessa said, and in a surprisingly tender voice that belied her earlier words, continued with the dual personality relationships can possess. “But before he did that, first he dazzled me and then he loved me and invited me to be the center of his life, to be his everything. But I'm getting way ahead of myself, though. Before you can understand Dominick, you have to understand Vanessa. To know where I was coming from. What I'd been doing all those years.

“And what I'd been searching for.”

Vanessa began, her own mind drifting back, finally, to yesteryear.

H
opeless romantics will tell you that there's no greater notion than love at first sight, when that instant and unsuspecting attraction immediately sinks deep into your pores and into your heart and down deep into your soul, shifting your perspective on the world, on yourself. For too many years, an adult, wounded, vulnerable, and uncertain, Vanessa Massey had resisted what others believed. The fantasy that, when it came to love and sex and men, was just that, something born of the fantastical. She hadn't exactly been living a sheltered life during her transformative years in Europe, but as she worked, partied, lived—her free-spirited twenties somehow slipping into her early, sobering thirties—she refused to settle down with anyone, much less settle for anything but the very best that life had to offer. She had left Danton Hill on her own terms, determined to see herself grow beyond those imaginary but ever-present walls of small-town life.

She recalled her last night there.

“I can't believe you're leaving. When will you be back?” asked her friend Tiffany.

Vanessa assured her that she would be back, soon, “because my parents expect me to go to college eventually, and I guess I have to honor their request, and besides, we promised years ago that we would attend school together.”

Even to herself, she sounded thoroughly unconvincing. A broken promise, and not the first she would fulfill.

When her other best friend, Jana, showed up, she produced from her overnight bag a bottle of wine and a fifth of cheap vodka to celebrate the “gang's” final night together. In Vanessa's basement, they talked for hours. They drank, Jana and Tiffany, but not Vanessa. She wanted to remain fresh for her long day of flying, she explained. She wanted to keep her wits about her and experience the thrill of liftoff. The friends hugged, and a pang of regret hit Vanessa as she felt her friends' warmth. Because she knew she'd been lying to them all night.

And then came that next day, just three weeks removed from the prom and high school graduation and all the juvenile insanity that came with being an entitled senior: being dumped by the cutest boy in school whom she imagined was the boy of her supposed dreams, going to the prom with a near-stranger and enduring the embarrassment of that night, being handed a diploma that felt as light as it did hollow. It was under such cover of darkness and remorse that Vanessa Massey said good-bye to Danton Hill.

Vanessa had gone on to live in the great capitals of Europe—London, Paris, Brussels—for the better part of a year and was glad she had done it. Wanderlust was a feeling never satisfied. Back home, no one had understood her desire to seek out a life without borders, and after a few months the wordy letters to her friends had become postcards, and then they had ceased. She moved around too much for any letters to find her in return. Taking a year off before college had been a great way for her to taste what was possible, to know what she really wanted and discover who she was, where she was going. An exotic sojourn in life, the result meant recharged batteries and a zest and zoom to life that she hadn't previously thought existed. Frankly, living on the crowded streets of Europe where anonymity ruled had given her a chance to get away from all she'd known in Danton Hill and become not a merely more mature version of herself but a different one altogether, her eyes widened by experience found beyond the shores of Lake Ontario. Now, having lived near the banks of the Thames and the romantic Seine, and in the bohemian neighborhood of Saint-Gilles in Brussels, drinking, smoking . . . living, amidst students and revolutionaries who spoke languages that spanned the globe, she realized there was so much more to the world than Friday fish fries and bingo tournaments in the church basement on Saturday nights with your mother and grandmother looking to see if they had five in a row. There was excitement here, bright lights and strange languages and strong drinks and aromatic cigarettes. What there wasn't, she knew, was love, and certainly not at first sight.

On a dark night while sitting outside the Parvis de Saint-Gilles metro station was where Vanessa would look back no further. Only tomorrow mattered, and it came in the guise of a woman who became her best-ever friend on the planet, the unconquerable, unpredictable Reva Jenkins. Two years older than Vanessa, adventurous to a fault and filled with knowledge that belied her years. Reva had done the same thing upon leaving school that Vanessa had done, and by happenstance had landed in the unheralded city of Brussels, living with a wild-haired, bearded guy who liked to smoke pot and speak out about the corrupt government and imperialistic king, but in the end just didn't have the fortitude or guts to attract any kind of following. They parted ways, he gone to the fragrant freedoms of Amsterdam, with Reva staying behind, often hanging out at the cafés where she would meet men, women, whatever she was in the mood for. Attraction was found not in the sexes, but in the people. So on that fateful night in September, as the sun went down and the night air chilled the great European capital, Vanessa and Reva found themselves sitting next to each other as their mutual friend Elio celebrated his birthday. It was a Sunday night, and few of the outside tables in the square were occupied. Just a few random folks lost in their own passions, a writer busy with his pen and notepad who sipped at a beer and jotted furiously; a local, gray-haired man who puffed too hard on his cigarette, like it was his last one; a couple once in love but now disconnected, lost in their own thoughts. The group Vanessa was with kept expanding as new people arrived and additional chairs were brought over, drinks were replenished and Jupiler beers were downed, a cloud of smoke gathered above them. Finally the curly-headed blond girl named Reva looked at Vanessa, she in the midst of a coughing fit, and said, in English, “You don't smoke?”

“No.”

“I sense an American accent.”

“So do I.”

“Don't ever say that again.”

Vanessa was intimidated. This Reva was a force, one who was thrusting a hand-rolled cigarette her way.

“Consider yourself a smoker now. This is Europe. Get used to it. Everyone does it.”

Vanessa had experienced her own small-world version of peer pressure back at Danton High, usually resisting. This was different. You couldn't say no.

Vanessa accepted, she tried, she puffed, coughed, coughed more, then settled down as she realized no one at any of the crowded tables was judging her. That's what she liked most about these Europeans, they were so consumed with having a good time they couldn't be bothered with other folk who weren't. From that night on, as midnight came and the drinks continued, she and Reva became inseparable, so much so they eventually shared a tiny apartment around the corner on the narrow Rue de Rome. They told each other everything about themselves, leaving nothing out, not with such freedom of speech afforded them, and for the first time Vanessa felt like a terrible weight had been lifted from her hunched shoulders. She found herself standing proud. Never again would she have to shy away from certain topics, and never again would she have to go through anything alone. Reva was there, Reva was always there.

It was another fateful night about six months after they had met and named themselves best friends for life that had the two ladies gambling the night away, or as Reva liked to refer to it, “earning next month's rent.” When the idea of venturing to a casino had first presented itself, Vanessa's base instinct was to say no, thinking of her parents and bingo nights, then thinking of her dwindling bank account. “I don't have the money or the clothes for Monte Carlo, much less the cost of the flight.” Wasn't that where anyone who was anyone went?

“To hell with Monte,” Reva responded with her usual sobering disdain. “Where we are going is much closer and much more exclusive. We're going to Luxembourg City. Just wait, it's perfect.”

Whether that three-hour train ride to the Grand Duchy was a good idea or not, it certainly ended up changing Vanessa Massey's life for forever. As the two women crossed over the expansive Pont Adolphe, Reva, laughing, smoking, dared her friend to look down deep at the lush, verdant park set deep in the gorge beneath the bridge. As Vanessa clung to the railing and felt a hit of vertigo possess her, Reva suddenly embraced her friend and said, “Whatever happens tonight, say you won't ever leave me.”

“You're crazy. What could possibly happen?”

“You could be swept off your feet.”

“I get swept off my feet, all I'm doing is falling into that ravine.”

“Forget the gorge. The men here, they are all gorgeous.”

“Awful, Rev.”

“Like I said, promise you won't ever leave me.” Her voice was tinged with sorrow.

Those were prophetic words, and words Vanessa would have trouble living up to.

Inside the bright and busy Casino Luxembourg on the Rue du Notre Dame, just blocks from the train station, Vanessa was attempting a simple game of blackjack when she realized her gin and tonic had gone dry, ice melting. Needing something to occupy her nervous hands during the tense standoff with the dealer, she reached for a cigarette, only to notice her lighter had gone missing. She heard a soft voice whispering in her ear, and she had to admit that she liked the accompanying accent, his statement inflected with the hint of a question.

“Allow me.”

Shit, Reva had been right. Vanessa turned to gaze upward into the dark eyes of perhaps the most gorgeous man she'd ever set her eyes upon, his handsome, appealing face thick with a week's growth of dark beard and brown eyes that looked like Belgian chocolate. She nodded at him after catching her breath, approving his want to light her cigarette. After all, he was the one who had hijacked her lighter, and now he held it before her in his large hand, tempting her with the promise of desired heat. What he did instead surprised her and annoyed her and ultimately delighted her. He cavalierly slipped the lighter into his pocket and then plucked the dangling cigarette from her pursed lips, crushing it underneath what turned out to be a pair of very expensive Italian leather boots.

“You may thank me now.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I just added five years to your life.”

“Why would I want five more years of life? So I can just gamble my savings away?”

“So you have more time to spend with me.” He said it like he meant it.

Intrigue punched her in the gut, and so, having been forewarned by Reva, Vanessa decided to play along with this hunk, wasn't that what happened in such exclusive places as this? You indulged whoever caught your eye, you played your cards, and you gambled on a whim and hoped you came up a winner. She swirled around in her seat, ignoring the dealer even when he asked if she wanted another card. “Spend time with you? And why would I want to do a ridiculous thing like that?”

“Because, as they say, life is a gamble, and sometimes you take that other card,” he said, an aimless finger stroking his stubbled chin. “But sometimes, you stay, confident in your hand.”

“Oh, and what are you recommending I do?”

“I'm a very safe bet.”

“And who, may I ask, are you?”

“Dominick di Paolo Arghetti. Can you say that three times fast?”

Her heart skipped a beat, maybe twice. “I'm not sure I can say it once,” she said. “Can I just call you Dom?”

“My mother calls me Dominick.”

“Then Dom it is, most definitely,” she said, flashing a playful smile that seemed to further intrigue the sexy stranger standing before her.

And sexy he was. Half-Italian, half-Portuguese as it turned out, which would account for his smooth, near mocha-like skin. His dark, expressive eyes hidden beneath thick brows gave him an appearance of having to look up, even when his six-two frame stared down at her. He invited her then for a drink, and just before she accepted she turned around and asked the patient dealer for that next card, just to close out her hand. She'd been holding firm at a measly sixteen, but now she took that gamble. Queen. Dealer wins.

“Guess you're buying,” Vanessa informed him with a batting of her eyelashes.

Problem was, Vanessa hadn't taken the hint Dom, or life had given her. She'd lost her bet, could she afford to play this next hand? Even as he held his out to assist her down from the gaming table.

They flirted the rest of the night, with “Oh My God” expressions being mouthed all night from Reva, who was hovering nearby with newly made friends, whether at the bar or at the craps table. She tried eavesdropping as best she could on their hushed, intimate conversation and grew frustrated when Dom would lean in and practically whisper into Vanessa's ear. When later that night Vanessa showed up, alone, at her and Reva's meager hotel room, the question asked was, “Why are you here, and why is he not?”

“A girl's gotta play it the way she sees it.”

“Chicky, I saw that man and I saw the way you looked at him. Everyone did. He's not interested in playing games, despite the fact he was in a casino,” she said. “Not the way he was into you. He's talking real life, big dreams. Even though you just met, I could see it in his eyes. He sees you in his future for better, for worse, for richer.”

“What happened to poorer?”

“Don't think a man with four names knows the word.”

“This is ridiculous,” Vanessa said, even though she was still a bit tipsy from the champagne they had consumed and feeling like a girl at the prom with the right guy. “I'm not the type to fall for that overly romantic crap and killer accent and I'm surprised to find that you think I would—or that you're smitten for this guy for me. I mean, who but you taught me the joys of cynicism? Reva, honey, everyone promises they'll be there in good times and bad, but truthfully no one really wants to deal with worse. That's why divorce was invented.”