Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings (20 page)

“I love you, Deena,” Gloria said.

Deena fled. From the table and between a bookend pair of guards who snatched her back and patted her down properly. The moment they released her, Deena broke for the hall, rushing, ever rushing, to make it to sunlight. She stumbled into the parking lot, blinded, fleeing for her car, until an emphatic thud and slice of pain made her howl and fall back.

Tak emerged from the passenger side of the car she’d run into.

“Hey, whoa, slow down, honey bun.”

He scooped her with firm hands, and she submerged in his embrace shamelessly, sobbing, nauseated by a sudden upturning of life.

Long moments passed, moments where he soaked up her tears and held her in silence. 

“What are you doing here?” she managed into his chest.

Tak tilted her chin so that she faced him. His smile was unmistakable. “Hey, you said I couldn’t come with you. Not that I couldn’t come after.”

She smiled faintly.

“That’s better. So much better,” he said, nodding in approval.

It was then that Deena noticed John Tanaka behind the wheel of Tak’s BMW, drumming out the beat to some muted and awful-sounding metal song.

“He’ll drive my car,” Tak said. “I’ll take yours. Let’s go.”

It was as if he’d known what she’d discover that day, as if he knew how uprooted she’d be. But even she hadn’t known.

But on the car ride, she made sure to tell him.

  Deena stared at the ceiling of a bedroom whose price tag comfortably sat in the six-figure range. Next to her lay a husband who tossed frequently and woke every hour or so to see if he could help in some way. In his willingness was but one more reminder of the sweepingly dismissive attitude she’d taken with everything and everyone.

Never had she thought to ask the “why” of her father’s murder, or to fathom that he might’ve somehow played a role in his own demise. For her, it was enough to dismiss a once-loved mother as evil and move on to the next concern. If she were honest, she knew that to be the mantra of her life: Lizzie was determined to be a prostitute and drug user, decisions her sister made willingly long ago; Tak was a once celebrated artist whose glory had waned; certainly he had time to pick up the slack at home. Hadn’t those been her beliefs? How faithless had she been to the truths of her heart, to the truths that lay bare before her, in thinking that way?

Lizzie’s decisions were a predictable by-product of neglect and abuse. In fact, it amazed Deena that a young girl which the law deemed a victim unable to give sexual consent on the one hand, could suddenly become a willing participant worthy of prosecution with the acceptance of a few dollars. But Deena was as guilty as society for such obscenely flawed thoughts. After all, hadn’t she believed Lizzie disgusting, or at the very least, wholly culpable, for what was happening to and with her? But what had she, her own sister, done to protect her? Never had she sought to eradicate the source of Lizzie’s ails; Deena had only sought to bandage them with rehab and shouting. Some part of her feared she knew little of her sister’s real life; rumors and innuendos pointed to a relationship with Snow that shouldn’t have been. When he became her pimp, Deena berated herself for not doing more to intervene. Eventually, though, she sank back into her cocoon of dismissiveness, insistent on a sister who lived in accordance with what made her happy, thereby freeing herself of any real assessment of reality.

It was the same way with Tak. When his art began to wane, Deena thought him not working hard enough, losing interest, or both. After all, he’d never had her fire, her desperate ambition. Food and shelter had always been predictable mainstays for the son of Daichi Tanaka. And so, in her easy way, she’d dismissed even her own husband’s woes, though she could never bear for him to do the same. Never had she questioned where his creativity had gone and why or whether there was anything she could do to change that.

She could go on, of course. Her dismissals of Tony acting out; her insistence that something or someone else had to be at fault. Never had she been one to wrangle with an issue that couldn’t be fixed in a single setting. Hadn’t that been what her long drawn out affair with Tak was all about? She hated the difficult—no, scratch that—
loathed
the difficult, drawn out impositions of life, especially those that called on something other than keen intellect to solve them.

Which brought her back to her parents. Lying awake, Deena pieced together the cheerful puzzle of her childhood and found that the missing portions were absent of her own accord. However, now that she’d seen her mother’s face, they came back willingly, accusingly; calling her out for her faithlessness to the mother she once loved. How had she let others determine her mother’s worth? How had she let others write the story of their existence, when all along, her memories insisted on another version?

Overprotective, doting, affectionate, slow to rise in anger. She had so many recollections—of smearing on her mother’s Chanel lipstick ’til she resembled a drunken clown, of weighing her neck, arms, and fingers in precious pearls and gemstones before stumbling about the house, of pressing her face to her mother’s in a mirror, in the hopes of noting even the faintest resemblance. She’d always adored her, until she’d been given reason to do otherwise.

Deena’s gripe with herself had nothing to do with being angry about her father’s death—she certainly thought that still within her rights. No, her gripe had everything to do with her reluctance, all those long years, to find out the truth. Didn’t she owe it to someone she once professed to love, to at the very least know their motivations? Even then, the moment that propelled her forward and into Broward Corrections had been fueled by her own nightmares, instead of any sense of loyalty to her mother.

She thought she’d known her father well. Certainly, Deena knew things about him—like the zealous sweet tooth he harbored or the way he was prone to sleep in, but the more she looked back, the more she found jagged pieces unable to fit itself into the proper puzzle. For example, her father never missed a spelling bee, Young Architects Competition, or parent-teacher conference, no matter whether day or night. How could blue-collar work be so flexible?

She’d gone to the City of Miami’s website after that visit, and perused all jobs under the title “maintenance.” Half came back as positions for engineers and technicians, the sort that required a college degree. The other, as menial labor. Even a supervisory position, listed as senior maintenance, paid no more than what a department store clerk would get. Still, memories of a postcard-perfect home pervaded her. Mother didn’t work, and father, according to her research, should’ve been on public assistance. Even for a fool it became plain that something was amiss.

“Dee? You all right?”

There he was again, sweet as ever, giving her even then what she didn’t deserve. After all, hadn’t she made a mockery of his art, implying that creativity was simply an act of volition? Or worse, that it made no difference at all whether he created or not? As an artist herself, she knew better than such crass thinking and had resorted to it only because he had stopped producing. But by looking only at the bottom dollar, she’d implied that his work had no intrinsic value, other than that which could directly benefit her.

She couldn’t remember when her hunger for security had become a thirst for riches.

“I owe you an apology,” Deena said. But even in the dark, her next words wouldn’t come.

Had Tak been faced with the choice her father had to make, he never would’ve given her a choice either. In true life as in conjecture, Tak’s unequivocal priority would always be their children, their lives together, and their love. Those things had always come first for him even when career blinded her.

Dean Hammond had asked to die. In that unceremonious way that had always been his, he told his wife to “just do it,” as if already impatient with her hesitation. In the complicit moment when both mother and father sacrificed life willingly for Deena, Anthony, and Lizzie, Dean Hammond died—and not one, but two parents became willing martyrs for their unsuspecting children. 

Deena remembered little of what followed her father’s death. There was her mother’s arrest, almost immediately. An admittance of guilt. The foster home. But why? Certainly, police would’ve searched for suspects, found some corroboration for her story. Deena couldn’t even recall being questioned about the men at their door.

Unless her mother’s silence had been part of the agreement.

“Dee?”

Deena thought she might drown; drown in the pity of regret, of a want to forget a hatred so intense that it seized her like violent bits of nausea.

Her father’s murder had been born of love, it turned out.

Love and hard choices.

But a life led wrong had led to those choices.   

“Dee, baby, please. Get some sleep,” Tak said, and took her into his arms.

She was crying in her sleep. It was something he hadn’t seen in years, and it confused him, waking him out of a baffled stupor and causing him to grope stupidly. But when he realized where he was and what was happening, he reached for her automatically—as natural a thing as breathing.

She stirred in his arms, struggling, then stilling, body recognizing him without waking. He couldn’t help the smallest smile of satisfaction, prompted when she snuggled in without so much as opening her eyes.

“You comfortable yet?” Tak asked her teasingly.

“Almost,” Deena murmured and made a show of fluffing his shirt and adjusting him.

“You were crying,” he said.

She went still.

“I know.”

Hurt twisted his heart.

“You keep shutting me out,” he said. “Let me help you make it better, Dee. Tell me what I can do.”

She opened her eyes, and he could see little more in the dark.

“Love me,” she whispered. “Despite all the mistakes I’ve made.”

Tak smiled. “Gladly,” he whispered and brought lips to the beat of his heart: Deena Tanaka.

Morning came and Tak parted his wife’s thighs for the third time since her nightmare. She giggled, but it was cut off by a kiss on the swell of her lip.

Eyelids heavy, she looked up at him in smoldering expectation, open to him and vulnerable in a way that was only his.

Tak ran a hand across the silken swell of her breasts and teased a single chocolate nipple to hardness. He ran lower, hand over the curve of her abdomen, a reminder of his seed, accepted, loved, and nurtured. He found her core and grinned when she purred in response. Though he’d planned on teasing, tasting, and tracing the length of her body all morning, apparently Deena thought differently. She pulled him to her with urgency despite the long night, back arching to hasten his entry.

Seared on entry, Tak slumped forward, hair sweeping into his eyes. Pumping, gliding, throbbing, he found an easy, familiar rhythm, as heady as their first time, as agonizing as any.

She cried out in delight. He threw a hand over her mouth, certain the kids might hear. But instead of stifling her cries, it emboldened her all the more, muffled moans fuel for the blasts from his hardness. Deena stiffened with her orgasm, her never-ending moans of fulfillment electrifying Tak and heaving him over the edge. When he did roll away from her, reluctantly, it was with an exhale of utter exhaustion.

C
HAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Getting Deena’s kitchen back from Mrs. Jimenez was no easy task. The woman was enamored with the duties of caring for “her Tak,” a task of which she constantly reminded them, had been entrusted to her since he was all but twelve. To say that she took pride in her work was to misunderstand Mrs. Jimenez together. The Tanaka family was no more her “work” than they were Deena’s work. As far as Mrs. Jimenez was concerned, the Tanakas were her own. Should anyone ever believe this misguided thinking, Tak had long since settled the issue of mutual amicability. Two years ago when their maid’s husband fell sick, Tak paid for his bypass surgery. When the Jimenez’s eldest daughter, Adriana, began her studies at the local community college, Tak paid for two semesters after their savings dried up. And when Mr. Jimenez had a second heart attack and passed away, it was Tak who’d paid for his funeral. After his death, he offered Mrs. Jimenez a room in the house where she was welcome to live should she need to or visit should she ever feel lonely. Their maid had cried herself to embarrassment at the gesture, causing Deena to follow suit, so moved was she by the magnitude of her husband’s heart.

But Mrs. Jimenez’s insistence that she’d all but birthed Tak made for a very steep climb between her and Deena. After the wedding, she decided to come and work for him and let his father look for a new maid. With her, she brought a whole set of hard and fast rules about what Tak would eat and how things should be cleaned. Each time Deena fought with Mrs. Jimenez, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was arguing with a mother-in-law instead of the person whose checks she signed. Finally, it was Tak who intervened, gently so, by setting out a clear series of compulsory practices that made Deena the unequivocal woman of the house. Only then did Mrs. Jimenez succumb to a life of employment under Deena.

With two weeks home, Deena decided that she would prepare dinner for the family each night. Mrs. Jimenez sulked, but busied herself scrubbing walls and fussing whenever the children sped by. Twice Deena noticed Tony chasing Mia and her laughing, slowed in her effort to escape him.

“There should be another visit from the social worker soon,” Tak said. “I’ve been thinking of asking how we could speed things up. Can’t really see any reason why it would be helpful to take forever.”

Deena looked up from the hall the children scampered through. She had no idea how long Tak had been there.

“Speed things up?”

“The adoption,” he said and headed for the fridge. “I think if we hurry up and get it over with, it’ll go a long way toward making Tony feel like he belongs here.”

Deena lowered her gaze. “You don’t think he already feels like he belongs?”

Tak took a carton of juice from the fridge, lifted it partway to his mouth, stole a quick glance at Deena, and went in search of a glass.

“I’ll bet he’s been in lots of houses, Deena. And I’ll bet lots of people have told him that they’ll adopt him. What makes us any different?”

Juice-filled glass in hand, he leaned against the counter.

Deena frowned. “Well, we’re his family. He must know—”

“How do you know there wasn’t ‘family’ before? Or someone who told him to think of them as family?”

Deena lowered her gaze.

He chugged down his juice in three greedy gulps.

“Nothing we say will matter anyway. For somebody who’s been disappointed, or lied to, or whatever, the only thing we can do is prove it to him. Maybe then he’ll slow down with the acting out.”

Deena bit her lip. “And you think hurrying through the adoption will help things?” In her mind, nothing but time could bridge a lapse of trust.

“It’s the best I’ve got. And in the meantime, we take
Heavyweight Knockouts
away. We don’t want him getting any better with the right hook.”

Deena shot him a look. She hadn’t approved that game.

Tak blushed with his blunder. “Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “In a few short years, we’ll be arguing over whether he’s going to UCLA or MIT.”

He looked up and locked eyes with a frozen, gold-flecked pair in the hall.

Tony.

He scurried away.

Tony turned a corner and collided with Mia, or Baby Mia, as he liked to call her, since she had the temperament of a newborn.

“I still have it, Tony! And there’s only one way to get it!”

A high-pitched giggle wafted down the hall, distant from the enormity of the house. Tony scowled. He was tired of playing with her.

“I’m not kidding anymore, Baby Mia! Give it back before I get mad!”

She disappeared into a room. Her head popped out. “No!” she squeaked and disappeared again.

Tony started down the hall, refusing to run after her again. Refusing to play her childish game.

“Give it back, Mia!
Now!
”

“No!”

Head popping out of another room, down the hall and opposite the other. They were in a fun house, minus the mirrors, it seemed. He would’ve broken any mirrors at that point, anyway.

“Mia!”

“No!”

She dipped into another room. He broke into a run.

She had his money. All three hundred sixty-two dollars of it. Stolen from the bathroom counter while he showered. She was always entering without knocking. How many times had he yelled at her about it? He should’ve known better.

Mia screamed at the sight of him barreling toward her and took off, sliding stupidly on hardwood in her Mary Janes. Thick hair bouncing, head whipping in horrified anticipation, she cut right, the frills of her lilac dress last to escape. Mia slammed the door shut, only to have Tony burst through it.

“Give it to me!” he roared on entry.

They were on the far side of the west wing in a room he’d never been in. Burgundy and gold swirls on the floor. Intermittent light and dark gold striped the walls glittering on its rise to the vaulted ceiling. Dangling chandeliers of a million crystal pieces hung like icicles waiting to pierce prey. Tony turned on Mia. A ballroom. In the house.

“Give me that goddamned money,” he hissed.

He would return it if she gave it back to him now. Scatter it around the house so that the maid found and returned it—anything to deflect blame from him. He couldn’t fuck up now, now that he was so close to adoption.

Mia blew a raspberry and bolted.

Tony sprang in fury, blurring across the ballroom and tackling the five-year-old to the floor. She hit it facefirst with a thud, him atop her.

For a moment he thought he’d got away with it. Or killed her. Silence stretched on.

And then she wailed.

A wail as loud and piteous as a grieving mother pierced the air. She was like a siren, never breaking, endless in her howl of sorrow.

Beneath Tony was Mia and sprayed out before them like a drug bust gone bad was an assortment of twenties, tens, fives, and ones, some splattered with blood. Tony stood, trembling as bad as the day police came home in the place of his mother.

He looked up. Both Tak and Deena were in the doorway.

It would end like this. With him having broken Mia’s arm or some other terrible thing, with Deena wanting back every hug she’d ever given, and with Tak looking down at him in disgust.

They would make him leave. And he wouldn’t take a dime with him.

Deena rushed to Mia, who bled from the mouth onto the lace bib of her gown. But Tak’s eyes were on him. Hard, scowling, harsh. Still, he said nothing.

It would be Deena who spoke first.

“Baby, what happened? How did you get like this?”

Feverishly, she prodded and inspected Mia’s mouth, before exhaling in relief. “It’s just a busted lip,” she murmured thickly.

Mrs. Jimenez appeared at the door, hissed something in horrified Spanish, and scurried off again.

“What happened?” Tak demanded. Still, his gaze was on Tony.

“We were—playing,” Mia managed through shuddering sobs. “Running through the house—”

“How many times have I told you about that?” Tak snapped.

Tony glanced at him in surprise. Was he really concerned about that with the evidence of robbery right before him? Robbery and assault and God only knew what else. He didn’t know how it all worked.

And then it occurred to him. This
was
robbery. Robbery, assault, abuse of a minor. And those were only the charges he could think of. They wouldn’t be sending him to a group home. They’d put him in prison.

“Well,” Tak said dryly, gaze even with Tony’s, “if nothing else, we’ve found the missing money.”

Deena looked up in surprise, and instinctively, Tony took a step back and made a survey of the exits. There was the one that Tak blocked and another, eons away. He could make for it, but would have to slip past Deena. He wondered if he could slow down enough to snatch a little money from the floor on the flee.

Jimenez returned with the first aid kit. Deena took it, leaving the old lady to scowl. She was good at it, anyway.

“Why don’t you go with Mrs. Jimenez, Mia? We need to talk to Tony,” Tak said.

“He didn’t mean to hurt my lip!” Mia burst. “We were only playing!”

Tony’s heart twisted in response.
She
was only playing. He had been figuring ways to murder her and dispose of the body.

“It’s okay, baby,” Deena said, eyes on her child.

Now she was standing, too. Both she and Tak faced him. They moved in closer.

Mia followed Mrs. Jimenez out. Once at the door, she turned back once more. “I shouldn’t have played with his money. I should’ve stopped like he said.” 

“Agreed,” Deena said. “We’ll discuss it more in the hall.”

Mia looked up fearfully. Deena nodded toward the door, and both mother and daughter exited from sight.

He was alone with Tak.

“Pick your money up, Tony.”

He didn’t dare move. “What?” he said weakly.

“Your money. I said, ‘pick it up.’”

Tony blushed. “It’s—it’s not mine. It’s yours. I took it.”

“You mean stole it.”

The boy turned a rich shade of ruby. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

“What?” Tak took a step closer.

Tony couldn’t get back fast enough.

“Yes, I stole it,” he whispered, heart jackhammering.

Tak shrugged. “Go ahead and pick it up. It’s yours now.”

Terror stiffened Tony. Nobody let you rob them and get away with it. But when the punch line didn’t come, Tony bent to get the money, an eye on Tak and an expectation of a blow to the back of the head.

“Count it,” Tak ordered once Tony collected the bloodstained bills. “Out loud.”

Tony could think of nothing scarier than the calmness with which Tak ordered him. Quickly, he did as he was told.

“Three hundred and sixty-two dollars.”

Tak let out a low whistle. “Lotta money for an eleven-year-old.”

Tony lowered his gaze.

“But I’m gonna let you keep it,” Tak said. “Minimum wage is about seven bucks or so. How many hours you think it’ll take you to earn that much?”

Tony’s eyes rolled upward with the math. “About fifty hours,” he said. He’d always been good with the thing he never had enough of: money. “Maybe fifty-two.”

Tak shrugged. “Sounds about right. Now, Mrs. Jimenez is your boss. You’ll cut grass, pull weeds, scrub windows, and polish silver till you’ve earned every bit of your three hundred sixty-two dollars.”

Tak snatched it from Tony’s hands. “
Then
you can keep it.”

Just outside the door, he heard Deena fussing at Mia about not purposely annoying people.

“All right,” Tony said softly.

Tak jammed the money in his front pocket. But when Tony headed for the door, he put a hand up to stop him.

“Help me understand you, Tony. Three hundred and sixty-two dollars. What could it possibly be for? What haven’t we given you already?”

Tony sighed. There was no point in lying. No point in manipulating. Neither had helped him so far.

“If I had to leave, if you wanted me gone, I’d have something. Something to eat, maybe something to wear. I don’t know. Just in case you got tired of me.”

He looked up to see not just Tak but Deena in the doorway.

Tony’s vision blurred. To his horror, hot, humiliating tears threatened, then spilled over onto reddened cheeks. He swiped them before attempting to shove his way through Tak and Deena and onward to his room. But he couldn’t get through. Struggle as he might, he simply couldn’t. It had to be Tak restraining him with muscles only a private gym could make. He fought and thought to scream, so enraged was he at the notion of being held hostage.

“Tony! Tony!” Deena cried.

He opened his eyes.

He’d mistaken his uncle for his aunt and a hug for imprisonment.