Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (13 page)

Chapter Thirty

Tak rolled in bed and collided with a patch of ice. A hand across white sheets confirmed that his wife had abandoned their hibernation. But she couldn’t have gone far. Gelatinous legs were no good for walking, and he’d given her a pair on that day.

He climbed out of bed. Mike in the house meant Mike into mischief and the need for a closer eye on his wife. Naked, Tak pulled on a gray tee that said “Big Easy” and slipped in wrinkled jeans from the floor.

A sweep of the house gave Tak a glimpse of John lying on a couch in the entrance hall staring at the wall. It took him to Tak’s father flipping through The Discourse That Sets Turning the Wheel of Truth in the library, smiling as if it were the Sunday comics; and it took him to Aunt Caroline and Aunt Asami, drinking beer in the reception room. Neither had seen Deena.

More searching brought him to his grandmother seated with Grandma Emma, both women caught in a smile. Tak resisted the urge to join them and hurried onward in his hunt. His wife had to be somewhere. That somewhere had better not be with Mike.

A head in the pantry revealed the backside of a tall, dark, thrusting figure, jeans pooled at the ankles. Pale legs wrapped his waist, arms wrapped his neck, and the face at his shoulder was familiar. As for the guy, Tak couldn’t think of which cousin he might be, but the girl was definitely Lauren. A tall white shelf stacked to overflow with cans, supported both their weights. It jerked and jerked and a can sprung free. Bush’s Baked Beans with extra brown sugar rolled to Tak’s feet.

He backed out the way he’d came.

And collided with Tony.

“Jesus, kid!” he cried and snatched shut the pantry door. Heart heaving, he looked back at it with an expectation of betrayal.

“Dad,” Tony said. “You’ve gotta come.”

It was then that Tak remembered who was who and that Tony, not him, should fear detection.”

“You’re out of your room. I told you that if you come out again—”

“Mike’s on the roof, dad. He’s gonna jump.”

“Wait.” Tak’s mouth snapped shut on a reprimand. “What?”

“Hurry,” Tony said and ran.

Chapter Thirty-One

They tore through the house, toppling a wild haired bust before sliding through the entrance hall and spilling into the driveway. Tony pointed upward.

“There,” he said. “Stand back to see him better.”

Tak kept his face skyward, but walked back, just as his son had instructed. On the roof of his house, Mike stood, a silhouette against the moon, hair flapping.

“Go get his dad,” Tak said.

“No! Get my parents and I’ll be dead before they get here. I don’t want them to see me.”

Tak dropped his gaze to Tony, who stood in taunt expectation. 18 years of life shrank to insignificance; he needed his father to tell him what to do.

Tak turned to the roof.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Let’s talk. We’re still family. It’s not too late.”

Mike came all the way to the roof’s edge. Only his head jutted out for Tak’s view.

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said.

Mike drew back, leaving Tak to stare at a gaping darkness, a void where his cousin had been.

“Mike.” Tak heard the fissures in his voice. “Mike, I’m going to come up now.”

He searched for how his cousin had done it, but saw nothing to aid understanding. A quick study of the house showed him grooves good enough for scaling. He stepped back, got a running start and leaped to latch on to the first floor balustrade. Their house, hoisted on a foundation, meant that even the lowest floor stood a little tall.

Tak pulled himself up with a yawn of muscle, before swinging a leg onto the ledge. He looked up, grabbed the grooved end of the French arch separating first floor from second, and used it to hoist up yet again. He repeated for the second floor, before feeling for a column that ran to the roof. Tak used it to scramble up to a smaller window, feet pedaling in the throes of a near-slip. Finally, he grabbed hold of the roof, pawed around for the parapet, and used it to heave himself up.

Chest heaving, Tak flopped onto his back and blinked at the multitude of stars.

“You climbed the house,” Mike said, voice strained, as if Tak were a lab rat who’d grown a massive penis. Disgust tinged with fascination.

Tak looked around.

“How’d you get here?”

Mike pointed to the side of the house, where the top prongs of a ladder rested.

Great.

He turned back to face Tak and studied him as if he hoped to learn.

“You came to stop me,” Mike said. “After all I’ve done. But if you knew the half of it, you’d shove me off this thing instead.”

Tak’s stomach instinctively clenched. What he shoved back was a myriad of possibilities. Mike had done something or a series of somethings so vile that he wanted to die. Couple that with his general inability to conjure up contrition and Tak’s hands wanted to cover his ears.

“Tell me,” he said instead. “Tell me why you’re up here.”

Mike shoved both hands in the pockets of his jeans and turned to face an oversized moon. It was the kind that a kid on a bicycle pedaled by, with an alien in a basket heading home.

“I think about old stuff,” he said. “Swimming in Blue Lake Reservoir. John hurling on Mister Twister. Us running away to try and sign up as rodeo clowns.” He shot Tak a grin. “That meat we tried to feed the lions at Denver Zoo. You were there for all of it, I realized. Me and John’s best memories.”

Mike turned on him abruptly.

“I want you off this roof.”

“No.”

Tak clamored to his feet.

“What am I supposed to tell my best friend when you jump? My aunt and uncle? My grandmother? That I left you up here so you could kill yourself properly?”

“So, you’re here for them.”

“Yes, I’m here for them!” Tak cried. “I’m here for you, too, you moron.”

Mike’s nostrils flared.

“You’re not here for me. You don’t even like me.”

Well, he had a point there. Tak sighed.

“Not liking you is not the same as wanting you dead.”

He had the same memories as Mike. Splashing in lake waters at summer time, gnawing on candy coated apples by the bushel. Once, they’d camped in the backyard and told ghost stories, after which Tak felt too paranoid to sleep. On telling Mike, he sat up, flashlight in hand and guarded the tent with darting eyes until Tak found rest at last.

“I misled you,” Mike said. “When I said I knew Deena. I did, but she didn’t know me. I admired her, left gifts for her sometime, but never did I find courage enough to speak.”

Tak felt none of the usual burn that accompanied Mike’s confessions of unrequited love. Instead, a slow sorrow spread through him.

“You don’t have to tell me this,” Tak said. “You don’t have to—”

“I think about her,” Mike said. “I have, every day since college. She magnified in my mind, until no other woman could compare. Deena couldn’t compare to the woman I made her out to be.”

“Mike—”

“You feel sorry for me,” Mike said. “I hear it in your voice. But if you knew how much I fantasized about—”

“Shut up,” Tak said. “Stop trying to make me push you.”

Mike fell silent, chest rising and falling as if dragged.

“You said you wanted to know.” He paused, as if giving Tak the opportunity to refute this.

“After she left your bedroom,” Mike went on, “she asked me if we could talk. We went into the sitting room, for privacy, and shared a bottle of vintage wine. She only loves you, was what she wanted to tell me, as if I hadn’t gathered that for myself. She fell asleep as we talked after drinking too much.”

Tak’s breathing suspended mid-inhale, giving him a floating, buoyed sensation. He saw Mike before him, but didn’t see him, staring through and numbed by his words.

“I would have done it,” Mike said, gaze level on Tak. “I didn’t do it, but God knows I wanted to. I touched her—a little—and kissed her—and then…”

Nothing moved for Tak. Not the air in his lungs. Not the blood in his veins. Everything, cemented still.

“I stopped myself,” Mike said. “I saw myself and I stopped. But then this girl came along, this maid, and I took it all out on her. I hurt her, Tak, and I liked it. I liked not caring what she felt. I hurt her and hurt her and hurt her and God help me, I couldn’t even stop.”

“Where is she?” Tak said. “Who is she? Tell me something so I can get her some help.”

Mike didn’t bother to wipe the tears, snorting instead with derision.

“She liked it, too,” he said. “If you can believe that. She liked me treating her like shit. Turns out, I can’t even get being a monster right. I belong right here on this roof.”

She liked it. That gave Tak one reason to exhale, even as he backpedaled to another thought.

“My wife, Mike…”

Every inch of Tak’s body felt vice tight. His fingers curled into hammers. He had flung himself onto the roof; he could easily fling Mike off.

“I caressed her face as she slept. I kissed her. I ran a hand up and down her body. I—”

Tak shoved him. A rocket of a move not even he anticipated had Mike pitching back. A plummet on his ass. A fistful of tile. A wide-eyed realization of truth. He’d almost fallen off the roof and he hadn’t wanted to.

Tak stormed for the ladder.

Mike screamed after him. First his name, then the begging, and finally, the pleas for forgiveness. Not just for Deena, but for candy, marbles, old lies.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Deena sat at an Oceanside café, twisting a napkin until her hands turned red. Furtive glances at the window revealed nothing. Her waitress returned with a fourth refill of coffee.

Women like the one she waited for were used to an anticipating audience. They made fashionable entrances and were forgiven, though Deena didn’t feel so forgiving.

White. Of course she showed up in all white. Tall, tanned, and with a body so narrow, so slender, that the wisps of white she wore did nothing but flatter, emphasizing flawlessness. At the swell of pert breasts, at the flat of a perfect stomach, at the width of hips that were barely there. Aubree Daniels was perfect. Damn her for knowing it.

Aubree sat down across from her and smiled. A piteous thing, really, heaped on Deena in a flash of common courtesy. A wave of a hand brought a once disinterested waitress, who took her order with alacrity.

She wore the ring.

The Tanaka ring.

And smiled when Deena noticed it.

Deena looked down at her own hand and noted she wore it as well.

Her cappuccino arrived, but she ignored it.

“Deena,” she said in a voice that mocked sympathy. “You must find a way to cope. After years of letting him…drift, you mourn now that your husband’s lost at sea.”

“I did not let him drift,” she hissed, only to have Aubree smile small. “Our problems are no worse than any other couple’s. I don’t see why you’re here.”

Aubree began to fiddle with the Tanaka ring, spinning it round and round her finger as she admired it.

“Deena. Let’s be reasonable here, shall we? You were so inexperienced. Your virginity must have been an enticement, I suppose. But after that? You can’t think a man as skillful as Tak would be…pleasured by your fumbling?”

Deena’s cheeks caught fire.

“If you know what’s good for you—”

“Oh, but I do know what’s good for me. See?

Aubree held up the hand with the ring.

“You’re inattentive, angst-ridden, self-involved and…”a critical gaze swept over Deena. “Only moderately attractive. You couldn’t have expected to keep your husband forever.”

Deena stared at her blankly, certain that her every pimple, blemish and scar had magnified one hundredfold. Her oversized breasts sagged, her stomach softened to pudding.

“You’re talking about my career,” Deena said. “You’re alluding to some backwoods misogyny that criticizes female work ethic and aspirations.”

Aubree blew a raspberry with plump, Marilyn Monroe lips. “I’m talking about you sucking at being a wife. I’m talking about you sucking at everything but your husband’s—”

“Shut up,” Deena said. “Shut up before I slap you. Who are you, anyway? Some tramp my husband’s forgotten?”

Aubree smiled as if delighted at finally being asked.

“Who am I? Why, I’m your better, Deena Hammond. You should always note your betters.”

Deena woke to a twist of sheets. Mummified, her limbs flailed until she found a suitable escape. She was in her own bed, in yesterday’s clothes, though the thing last she remembered was wine with Mike.

Tak sat in a chair drawn up to her nightstand. Fatigue made shadows of his face. In his lap was a tattered copy of Architecture Digest, face up, unopened.

“What did you dream?” he said.

She sat up.

“Nothing.”

He looked at her, expression revealing nothing except fatigue.

“Your phone rang,” he said and tossed it to her. “First thing in the morning, non-stop.”

Deena caught in mid-air and turned it up right before swiping through to the missed call screen.

A Miami number. Unrecognizable.

“Well?” Tak said.

“Nothing. It’s no one.”

She tossed the phone aside.

“They left messages.”

“OK.”

“Check them.”

“Later,” Deena said.

“Check them now,” Tak said.

She stared at him.

“No,” she said quietly.

Tak tossed aside the magazine and walked out the room.