Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (23 page)

Chapter Fifty-Two

Outside the storm raged, a beast of injustice hell bent on righting perceived wrongs. Deena listened in the dark, glad for the thing that gave voice to her feelings. When her bedroom door opened, she turned away from it, facing the boarded patio doors instead. The eternal darkness beyond it howled.

Tak stepped in, illuminated by the glow of a slim white candle.

“Deena.” He said as if her name as if it pained him. “Deena, please don’t—”

“How far did he go?” she said, jaw tight. “How much did your cousin do to me against my will?”

Her skin tried to flee her body at the thought.

“He touched you.” Tak said. “He…kissed you. I swear, if he hadn’t tried to kill—”

“You didn’t tell me,” she cried. “Why? To protect him?”

“What? No! Baby, I—”

His hand found her shoulder. She shrugged it off. No one could touch her just then.

Tak drew back, pain painted in bitter swipes across his face. Life drained from him like the color from a picture set to sepia.

“All this time,” Deena said and felt the rage rise like high tide. “All this time, you’ve been giving me hell about every little thing. And you—you with your house from your lover, with your cousin you’ll protect at my expense. To hell with you both.”

“Deena—”

He reached for and she gave him her hardest shove. He stumbled back a step and righted, more incredulous than anything.

“I’ve made my own way and forged my own life. I have never asked for anything from you. Yet, you stand here, stand here knowing what he did…” She shook. Shook with the rage of uncertainty, shook with range of possibilities. She could have been violated in any number of ways.

“And what?” Tak whispered. “Say it.”

“And you decide what he deserves? That he should just go? No input from me? It was me that he touched! Me that he hurt! Maybe I want vengeance. Maybe I want to see his pain. Ever thought of that?”

Tak looked weak just then, as if wrenched in a dozen different directions, and succumbing to the notion that he would be unable to keep his body intact.

“I kept things from you because I didn’t want to burden you or see you hurt,” Deena said. “But you, you kept things from me because it was the neatest and most convenient of options. Or because you didn’t want to see your grandmother, aunt, and uncle hurt.”

There was the truth. Deena saw it in the pinch of his face, in the way he went inward, as if retreating from accusations he wanted no part of.

She realized it then as she thought back to Daichi’s words. “Your question is not one of Aubree Daniels or not. It’s of Deena Tanaka or not, isn’t it?”

Or not. That was what he’d chosen when he took the only weapon she valued. Choice. Choices were what took her from the ghetto to where she stood. Choice was what made her her.

He’d delivered a final kick to an already crumbling marriage, a marriage heavy-laden with secrets.

A marriage, Deena realized, that had finally found its end.

The wild look in his eyes said he knew this. She side stepped him amidst a clamor of protests.

Chapter Fifty-Three

Tak told himself that she didn’t mean it. That it was anger talking, an outrage that she had every right to feel. He had deceived her—about his one-time relationship with Aubree and about Mike. He’d wanted to protect her, to free her from the onslaught of pain that followed wherever she went. But all he’d done was wound her again.

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

He wouldn’t let her scorch the earth like this, or smite everything like some vengeful god. They had years together, flawless years and memories still to be made. If anything, she had to see—he’d make her see that innate protectiveness of each other was to blame for their downfall, not some purposeful malice.

Tak thought of God while he sat there alone in their room. God with a little ‘g’ and God with a big ‘g.’ Maybe the years had been too good for someone who could never conjure more than a disinterested nod in spiritual matters. The wooden butsudan at home saw only rote ministrations; unlike his father, he neither prayed to deceased family members nor expected their intervention. Tak envied his wife in that way; envied her unwavering faith and resolute belief that her murmurings to an unseen god would be answered. How she, of all people, managed that was but a testament to the fire within. Interesting, he thought, how the thing that should have divided them irretrievably, was what drew him irretrievably. She had something to believe in, to draw strength in, to move mountains with…still. He saw strength in her when she didn’t and knew that strength intimately. It was what led her to protect her husband instead of confide in him, to shield him instead of lean on him. His wife would have to change all that.

And yes, she still was his wife.

****

Remy fiddled with an old transistor radio recovered by the help when they were gathering supplies. Never ending static met his every turn and at the moment he seemed to give up, a signal came through.

“Hurricane force winds in excess of 100 miles an hour have been clocked as far south as Martinique,” droned in a polished yet weary voice. “While torrential rains continue to devastate the ABC islands of Aruba, Bonnaire, and Curaçao, life-threatening flash floods and mud slides have been reported as far north as the Dominican Republic and as far south as in-land Venezuela.”

Deena reached over and turned it off. Irritated, Lloyd extended a hand to power it back on, only to freeze at the sight of Crystal’s silent tears.

“I went out into the hall,” Crystal said with arms around herself as if to ward off frigid conditions. “The water’s climbing the stairs. Tyson’s down there. Tyson was down there.” She choked. “God—what am I going to tell his mother?”

An arm went around her. It was her brother, Tariq’s. But as soon as it landed, she shrank with a recoil of disgust, as surely as if a cockroach had attempted affection.

“Crys—” Tariq said.

“Don’t touch me. You know I don’t like it.”

“Okay, fine. I only thought—”

He reigned his arm back in.

“You see, this is why I didn’t want to come. I don’t want people trying to touch me. I can’t stand people touching me.”

Deena stared. Everyone stared.

If she knew the absurdity of her words, she didn’t let on.

As the hour grew late, most everyone found some variation of awkward sleep. Blankets and pillows from the bedrooms were strewn about all over the floor. Makeshift pallets meant that they slept lined head to feet in a room not designed for so many. With a body pining for rest and a mind trucking on overdrive, Deena lay awake, fitful. Noah laid snug against her stomach and Mia at her back, with Tony flanking his sister’s other end, then Tak on the other side of him. No words past between them since she’d said they were over.

“Can’t sleep either?” Crystal said in the dark.

There was no way Deena wanted to have this conversation. No way she could be the sort of selfless comfort her cousin needed when her own life burned down around her. Deena wanted to feign fatigue, mimic sleep, but somehow that seemed cowardly and mean-spirited.

“I keep trying to imagine Tyson dead,” Crystal said. Lying on her side, she walked fingers back and forth across the carpet, following them with her gaze as she did so. “But it feels impossible. He was so strong and tough.”

Deena said nothing. She didn’t trust herself to speak on the topic just yet.

“He had a…friend,” Crystal said. “Named Ash. He died last year. I’ve been telling myself that they are somewhere, enjoying each other’s company. And that, in a way, he must be happy now.”

Deena swallowed. “They were close then.”

Crystal nodded.

Deena opened her mouth and snapped it closed. There was something she wanted to say only it was the worst possible time for her to say it. Hence the dismissal of the words.

Except Crystal saw it and urged her to speak. It made Deena cringe.

“I thought that,” she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I thought you and Tyson lived together.”

“Yeah?”

“Okay. And his friend Ash, he lived with you, too?”

A nod.

“So, the three of you lived together,” Deena said. “And there was never any…?”

She shut her mouth. Why did she care? She didn’t care. It was only the disbelief in her that propelled her to speak.

Lovers did things without thinking—lingering stares, a touch of the hands, all told the tale of what they were to each other. How had Crystal never felt like the third wheel?

Crystal looked at her.

“What do you want me to say, Deena? That I dated a gay guy on purpose? I didn’t.”

“Yes, but in five years time you didn’t…” She caught herself. “Never mind. This is so insensitive of me to bring this up.”

Crystal opened her mouth only to hesitate when Lauren hacked out a cough. Dragging minutes passed before she spoke again.

“He didn’t like certain things. Things that it would seem a man should. But then, I didn’t question it because… I had my own quirks.”

“Well, you can’t leave it at that,” Deena said.

Crystal scanned her cousin as if trying to determine her allegiance.

“He was a neat freak.” She frowned. “My God, I’m referring to him in the past tense.”

Deena squeezed her hand. Crystal flinched but bore it. When Deena retracted, she remembered her earlier words. She remembered how it was before.

Crystal didn’t like being touched.

Ever.

A thousand memories clamored for domination in Deena’s mind. Her cousin melting from embraces, stiffening under the simplest of touches and feigning illness whenever relatives paid a visit. Why hadn’t she seen it and questioned it sooner? What kept her from questioning it now?

“Why do you do that?” Deena said and surprised herself with the sharpness in her voice.

“Do what?” Crystal said, though her hesitancy meant the question was unnecessary.

Deena slapped a hand on top of hers. Crystal jerked away.

“That.”

“Deena—”

“No B.S. Just tell me what—”

Clarity snapped into place and she gasped with the realization.

“You and Tyson,” she whispered. “You’ve never had sex.”

Crystal shot up like a dart. Her gaze swept the room in a single frightened motion. When she turned to Deena again, it was with a forbidding look.

And then the second revelation came down on top of the first, leaving Deena in staggered disbelief.

“You’ve never had sex, have you?”

Was that even possible? Crystal was her older cousin.

But color leaked into her cheeks, flooding it, meaning it was not only possible, but true.

“Deena, I don’t want to—”

“Crystal, you can’t be a virgin. You’re gorgeous. You’re—you’re 42.”

“This conversation is over.”

Crystal collapsed onto her back.

“But you’re 42!”

“Will you shut up? I’d talk to you if you’d only shut up.”

Deena’s mouth clamped shut, tucking away her latest protest.

Her cousin let out a gust of air.

“I’ve always been this way. Always straining just to tolerate what other people enjoyed. Grazes grate my teeth. Hugs churn my stomach. Anything more…” she shook her head. “I can’t stand anymore. I live in fear that someone will touch me and I won’t be able to stop them.”

“Has that ever happened before? Has someone ever—”

“No,” Crystal said. “And I’m not a virgin either.”

She wore a smile devoid of any humor.

“Can you remember Corey Rhodes? He was in my grade growing up.”

A dark and rawboned boy came to mind. He had the face of a rodent. Not particularly handsome, of course, but warm enough that kindness shined in his smile.

“He was your best friend, wasn’t he?” Deena said.

Crystal nodded.

“We tried to fix this thing that’s wrong with me. This thing that…curdles my insides.”

Deena knew what she would say, sensed it and wanted to cover her ears in anticipation.

“We figured that the person I cared about most would be the one whose touch I could bear the easiest. We thought that sex would cure me. So we tried it.”

“In high school?”

“In college. He came to FAMU with me.”

The story had the weight of bad news on its back; she sat in expectation of its fall.

“I let him do it. I let him do it because we were so convinced that it would fix me, that if I could get past my hang ups, I would actually enjoy it. Enjoy with him. But I didn’t. The second Corey climbed on me this wave of revulsion consumed me. At the end, I vomited. I knew I never could do it again.”

Deena’s magic bag had no words. No amount of bumbling and fumbling could turn up a response to that.

Crystal sighed. “I might as well tell you the rest of the story.”

“There’s more?” Wasn’t the rest that Crystal made up her mind never to let another human being touch her again, thereby creating the ideal relationship for Mr. Tyson Down Low?

“We have a daughter.”

“Who has a daughter?”

Crystal gave her a long look. It was a deciding one, with trust and distrust battling for domination on her face.

“Me and Corey. Her name is Hannah. She’s 22 and goes to Duke.”

Deena blinked.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said that—”

“I know what you said, damn you! But you can’t have a child. I’d know. I’m your cousin. How could I not know?”

Except she wasn’t listening. She was looking. Crystal was looking at Caroline, her mother, who stared right back at her.

Apparently, Deena wasn’t the only one who’d just found out.