Dust Devil (44 page)

“
Mom?”
he said again, in his eyes as he glanced at her the same question
that burned like a dreadful, dark flame in Renzo’s own gaze as
it raked her ruthlessly—demanding an answer, an explanation.

Still,
Sarah couldn’t seem to speak, could only think, stupidly, how
she must appear, with her hair in unaccustomed disarray, wildflowers
tangled in its strands, and her lips bruised and swollen from Renzo’s
kisses. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry that she
couldn’t. She couldn’t force down the lump of trepidation
and pain that had lodged in her throat, either. Her heart beat
erratically in her breast. With hands that trembled, she combed
desperately at her hair, thinking dully that she mustn’t appear
before Alex like some wanton fresh from her lover’s bed—even
if she was. The wildflowers fell to the hardwood floor at her feet,
wilted and forlorn. The silence was deafening, ominous, horrible.
Tears stung Sarah’s eyes. She forced herself to blink them
back, to draw a deep, ragged breath, to speak. The truth—because
there was no point in attempting to lie. In her heart, she knew that,
knew with certainty that both father and son were already sure of the
answer to their unspoken question.

“
A-A-Alex,
this is—this is Renzo Cassavettes... your—your father,”
Sarah said quietly.

She
heard her son’s tiny gasp of acknowledgment in response,
Renzo’s sudden, harsh, sharply indrawn breath. It was the
boy—who, unlike his father, had had some inkling at least that
this day would come, some preparation for it—who recovered
first. Sarah had never been prouder of Alex than she was in that
instant, and she bit her lower lip hard in fear that his gesture
would be rejected when, in the manner she had taught him to do when
meeting an adult for the first time, he manfully stuck out his hand
and, suddenly shy, uncertain, stammered, “How—how do you
do, sir?”

After
a long, tense moment, Renzo slowly took the boy’s outstretched
hand in his, gripping it tightly. Then, unable to restrain himself,
he abruptly pulled Alex into his strong arms, hugging him close.
Sarah could hear her son sobbing now with joy and relief against his
father’s broad chest, could see Renzo’s shoulders shaking
with silent emotion; and instinctively, she turned away, knowing
somehow that this moment belonged to father and son alone, was too
special and private even for her to share. She stared quietly out the
screen door, blinded by the tears that now streamed, unchecked, down
her face. She didn’t know bow much time passed before at last
Renzo spoke.

“
Alex...
Son,” he said gently as he stared, marveling, down into the
boy’s good-looking face, a smaller, paler replica of his own.
Smiling falteringly, Renzo drew his arm roughly across his eyes, then
brushed Alex’s own tears from the boy’s cheeks. “'Would
you mind very much going outside for a little while? Why don’t
you... why don’t you wait for me in your tree house?”
Because, of course, Renzo realized now—so much made clear to
him—that was why the tree house was in such good condition, why
Sarah had kept it up. It belonged to their son, just as it had once
belonged to him and her. “I need to talk to your mother alone.”

“
Are
you—are you very angry with her? Are you—are you going to
hurt her?” Alex demanded bravely, suddenly fearful for his
mother. “Because you’ve already hurt her enough! And she
still loves you—I know she does! — and she knows it was
wrong not to ever tell you about me. She told me so.”

“
Did
she? Well, she was certainly right about that. But no, I’m not
going to hurt her, so you don’t have to be afraid. Now, please,
run on along, Son. I’ll join you outside in just a bit, I
promise.”

“
Mom?”

“
It’s
all right, Alex. I’ll be fine.” Sarah reached out to
stroke her son’s shaggy black hair, kissed him gently on the
forehead. “Please, do as your father says.”

Worriedly,
the boy glanced from her to Renzo, and then back at her again.
Finally, biting his lower lip, Alex nodded and reluctantly slipped
out the screen door, leaving the two of them alone in the silence. It
stretched as taut as a thong between them. Despite his reassuring
words to their son, Sarah still half expected Renzo to do her some
violence, and she shivered irrepressibly at the thought, at the
menacing, turbulent thing that seethed and roiled like a thunderstorm
between them, as though it would explode at any moment, tearing them
asunder.

“
You
had no right to keep him from me, Sarah.” Renzo spoke at last,
his voice low, hard and deadly with emotion. The muscle in his jaw
flexed fearsomely, warning her of the murderous rage that continued
to assail him. “No right at all! My God! How could you have
done such a thing to me? He’s my son, too!
Mine,
Sarah!
And you stole
eleven
years
of
his life from me! Were you
ever
going
to tell me about him?”

“
Yes...
yes, of course.”

“
When?
Damn it!”

“
Before
you—before you came back here to this town? When he was... when
he was old enough to make his own decisions.” Which meant that
Alex would by then have
been
a young man, eighteen, or perhaps even twenty-one, at least.

“
Jesus
Christ! Damn you to hell and back for that!” Without warning,
unable to restrain any longer the dark, savage thing that coiled
within him, Renzo reached out, grabbed her, and shook her roughly. Of
its own volition, his right hand shot up to smack her backhanded
across the face, then froze in midair, fingers clenching and
unclenching, making the powerful muscles in his arm tauten
frighteningly as he stared down at her. Sarah’s face was ashen;
she trembled with fear, and tears spilled from her huge, haunted
eyes. Still, she did nothing to fight him, to stop him from striking
her, spoke no word of protest against him. Renzo understood then that
she wouldn’t, that she actually intended to stand there
acquiescently and let him beat the hell out of her, to kill her, if
that was what he wanted. And that realization made him so furious
that it was all he could do to prevent himself from doing just that.
He was abruptly sick and ashamed that he had nearly slapped her. This
was Sarah, the woman he loved, the other half of his soul. Sarah, who
only a short while ago in the tree house, had made love to him with
every ounce of emotion in her body, heart, and soul. “Oh, God,
Sarah... Sary, I am so sorry! I would never hit you, hurt you!”

Somehow
she was in his arms then, and he was kissing her feverishly, sweeping
her up, carrying her to one of the kitchen chairs, where he sat down,
cradling her against his chest. She was sobbing uncontrollably now,
and hysterical words were tumbling from her lips, all about her
father dying and her mother blaming her for his death, about the
horrible, hateful telephone calls and mail she had received, how she
had thought Renzo had abandoned her, had never loved her, had only
used her and then callously cast her aside. He felt deeply angry and
ill as he listened silently, comprehending finally some of what Sarah
had lived through—alone—in his absence. He thought of how
hurt and terrified she must have been—just seventeen years old
at the time—and of the quiet courage she had always possessed,
which had seen her through what would have broken another, lesser
woman. And he ached for her, wanted to weep for her. To wrap himself
around her and tell her fiercely that so long as he lived, nothing
and nobody would ever hurt her again. He stroked her hair soothingly,
rocked her gently in his embrace, his terrible, brutal rage at her
draining from him at last.

“
Shh.
Sary, sweetheart, hush. I’m not mad at you anymore. I know what
you thought, that it wasn’t your fault, that it was your mother
and mine who were to blame for what happened between us, for why you
never told me about Alex. Hell. Now, I realize my own parents knew
about him and didn’t tell me, either! My poor mother tried....
She just couldn’t get the words out. She was afraid, too—just
as you were.... Alex is what you were hiding from me, isn’t he,
Sarah? He’s why you wouldn’t see me, wouldn’t go
out with me when I came back here?”

“
Yes..
.yes! Oh, Renzo, I was so terrified you’d hate me! So terrified
you’d try to take him away from me—and he was all I had!”

“
I
don’t hate you. I could never hate you. And I wouldn’t
dream of trying to take Alex away from you, not ever. I just want to
be a part of your lives, for you never to
shut
me out again. That hurt me, Sary. You’ll never know how much
that hurt me—especially when I thought you’d turned to
Bubba. Just thinking of you lying in his arms made me want to kill
him! It was that damned news clip of you hanging on Bubba at J.D.’s
fund-raiser that brought me back to town. I saw it on CNN, and I went
crazy! I couldn’t eat or sleep for thinking about you....
Please, Sarah, I can’t bear for you to cry like this. You’re
making yourself ill.”

Still,
she continued to sob, albeit more quietly now, against his chest. And
when he made out the muffled words she gasped softly between
sniffles, he swore violently, cursing himself. Because she had said
anxiously, “Oh, Renzo, what if—what if I’m pregnant
again now?” He realized then that in his overwhelming desire
last night and this morning to possess her, to be inside her, a part
of her once more, he had never given a single thought to protecting
her from the consequences of their actions. His hand swept down to
her belly; he imagined his child growing there, as Alex had, and a
wild, savage yearning for that suddenly filled him. Perhaps,
subconsciously, it always had.

“
Well,
if you are, I certainly hope you’ll tell me this time,”
he rejoined lightly.

“
Oh,
Renzo, how can you—how can you joke about it?”

“
What
do you want me to say? Damn it! It’s done now, and I can’t
undo it. And honestly, Sarah, if you want to know the truth, if you
keep hanging on me this way, I’m very much afraid I’m
actually going to be compelled to do it again!”

She
gasped at that, trying to scramble from his arms and wiping the tears
from her eyes in a hurry. But he held on to her, kissing her deeply,
running his hands over her body and beneath her shell and bra to
fondle her breasts, aroused by the hardening of her sensitive
nipples, the way she quivered and shuddered his embrace.

“
Renzo,
don’t. Please, don’t. Alex is waiting for you at the tree
house,” she reminded him gently. “And if you don’t
go out to him, he’ll grow anxious and come back here.”

“
The
boy has to learn sometime about the birds and the bees. Or does he
already know?” Deep pain shadowed Renzo’s eyes as he
asked the question. Sarah knew it was because he was realizing how
much he didn’t know about his son, how much had been lost to
him through the years—because of her.

“
He
already knows,” she told him quietly. “Kids today have
access to so many avenues of information we never had, it seems.
PG-rated movies that would have got an R years ago, in our day.
Sophisticated electronic games, computers, the Internet....”
Her voice trailed away. Tears

brimmed
in her eyes again. “Renzo, I
am
sorry...
so very sorry. I’ll regret what I did to you and Alex for the
rest of my life! If I had it all to do over again—”

“
Shh.
Hush, Sary. I know. But you don’t, and it’s done now. And
there’s nothing either of us can do to change that. We can only
go on from here. So why don’t you fix us all something to eat,
while I go out and get to know my son?” Renzo spoke these last
two words marvelingly, as though he still couldn’t quite
believe them.

“
All
right.”

He
let her up then and stood. At the screen door, he glanced back at
her, his eyes dark and serious, all trace of lightness gone. “Sarah,
you do realize, I hope, that we still have a lot of things to discuss
between us, don’t you?”