The Rhythm of the August Rain (34 page)

Every sofa and seat in the in-transit lounge was taken, even though it was midweek. The flight to Atlanta, the first leg of their journey, was filled, the clerk had told them at the check-in counter. “Jamaicans like to travel in the summer,” she'd said as she attached a
FRAGILE
sticker to the drum. “We can't take the winter, we have thin blood.”

Eric had stood a few feet away fidgeting with the keys to Lambert's Rover, borrowed for the trip to the airport, even though Shannon had said they could take a taxi. Jennifer had told her that Simone was coming in on the same flight, and the news that dropping them off was a matter of convenience had been met with a bitter laugh from Shannon, releasing the last thread of hope from her heart.

Much as she'd have liked to, she couldn't say that Eric had treated her poorly during her visit. He'd been kind throughout and even more solicitous since the Zadock incident. She'd always be grateful that he'd offered to trade himself for her and would never forget how, leaving the old Rasta sitting on the ground, he and Shad had linked their arms through hers and rushed her down the hill and through the abandoned camp. They'd followed I-Verse's flashlight in front, guiding her around bushes, catching her when she tripped, Lambert behind them with his gun. Driving back, Eric had made her lie with her head on his lap, and he'd stroked her hair every now and again while she, shivering, had kept her eyes closed.

“Don't drive so fast,” she'd asked Lam once, and Eric had repeated the request, as if it were his own.

Not once had he said,
I told you so
. Even when he'd carried her into the house and placed her on the bed—Eve clinging to her arm, Jennifer asking what had happened—he'd never made her feel foolish or guilty. While the women fetched an ice pack for her throat and massaged her feet, he'd shrunk back and finally left.

The next afternoon, Sunday, she'd been about to take a nap when he'd appeared at the door. Eve, lying beside her mother, had seen him first. “Come in, Dad.”

He'd stood looking down at Shannon with a crooked smile. “Welcome back to Jamaica, kiddo,” he'd said. She'd given a laugh that hurt her throat, but she'd liked that the comment had harked back to their past, to the name he used to call her in the early years of their affair, and she'd felt a surge of love for him. And in one of those clear-air bolts of lightning, the insight one gets after a shock, she realized that she had been as guilty of pushing Eric away as he had been of her—their estrangement had been mutually created.

To begin with, she'd wanted to get pregnant despite his clear statement that he didn't want another child, and she'd found excuses not to take her birth control pills (dark spots on the back of her hands). When he hadn't reacted happily to her news, when he hadn't suggested that she move down to Largo with the baby, her anger had created a barrier of frost between them. She'd stayed away on purpose, taking his money and not calling him, trying to hurt him from a distance—but it had backfired.

From the foot of the bed, he'd asked how she was feeling, and she'd replied in monosyllables, her throat hurting too much to talk. When she'd rolled over onto her left side, Eve had curled up behind her. “Like two spoons,” her daughter had said, stroking her arm, a different girl from the one who'd arrived on the island.

She'd already told her mother how much she'd worried about her. “I thought something horrible had happened to you, that you wouldn't come back,” she'd said while she was massaging her mother's feet, ready to cry.

“Nothing's going to happen to me,” Shannon had whispered.

“I'm sorry I'm so awful sometimes.” When her mother had said nothing, the girl had continued, squeezing her mother's feet tight as she talked, “You've been gone so much—all the traveling, I missed you so much. I know you do dangerous things when you're working, and I don't know what would happen to me if—if—and Dad didn't seem to care about me, either. I thought he wouldn't want me if—and—and Grandma just watches television when you leave me with her. I know I've been a mess, but I just wanted you to—to—be home. I'm sorry—”

“A fresh start, how about that?” her mother had wheezed, and they'd slept together that night.

While Eric stood looking down at them as two spoons and chuckling, Eve had urged him to lie down with them. She was trying for a reunion, a healing, Shannon could tell, and her heart ached for their daughter. To Shannon's surprise, he'd walked around and lain down on the bed behind Eve, covering the awkwardness with talk of Zadock and their adventure.

“Your mom is a trouper, I'm telling you. I think the old man was in love with her.”

Shannon had cleared her throat. “Your dad was very brave.”

“What did you do?” Eve asked him.

“I helped Uncle Lambert.”

“I'm glad,” Eve said. “You know, you're not like how I expected you to be.”

“What were you expecting?”

“A total asshole.”

“Eve!” Shannon had growled.

“Well, it's the truth.”

“And?” Eric asked.

“You're pretty cool.”

“That's big praise, coming from you.” Shannon could hear him relishing the compliment, having surpassed his expectations of his parenting skills.

“Can I come back next year?” Eve asked.

“You have a ticket, don't you?” He rolled over toward them. Three spoons.

“Dad, do you know what we are?” Eve had suddenly said, her voice carrying a broad smile. “We're a whorl, like that nautilus shell Mom gave you.”

“You're right,” he'd said after a second. “We're a whorl.” He'd followed with words that burned into Shannon's mind, that day and every day thereafter. “Better than that, we're a
family
. Your mother and I may not ever be together, but we are your parents and we love you. Nothing will change that. And that means I will always care for you, and you're welcome to come and visit anytime. I'll do whatever I can to make it happen. And now that I'm going to have a fancy hotel again, you'll be staying in a fancy suite next time.”

“I can deal with that,” Eve had quietly commented.

Despite the shadow that had descended upon her, Shannon heard herself saying the unimaginable. “We love you, Eric,” she'd whispered, for Eve's sake, of course, not his.

“I love you both,” he'd answered right away, reaching to pat Shannon's arm and then Eve's.

The message had been clear. The romance was at an end, her bitterness toward him contributing to her loss and another woman's gain. While he hadn't had the guts to speak to her directly, at least she knew where she stood. From here on, they were to be a family and nothing more, the love between them
agape, not erotica
, as her father, a historian at York University, used to say.

Shannon breathed in the new normal, the pain in her chest settling in for a stay, while Eve reminded her father he was to write at least once a week.

“I want to know everything that happens in Largo. Casey is going to let me know when Sheba has puppies again, so you don't need to tell me that.”

“You're forcing me to do emails.”

They could try skyping, Eve had suggested and had to explain what that meant. They would be in touch, he agreed, every single week, because he wanted to hear about her drumming lessons in Toronto and how she was doing in school.

“And no more shoplifting or anything like it, you hear me, young lady? Or no trip to Jamaica for you next summer.”

“I hear you,” Eve had muttered, and Shannon had managed a smile into her pillow.

After he left, she'd asked Eve to get her some of Miss Bertha's lemongrass tea for her throat, and while Eve was gone, Shannon had allowed herself a few moments to accept the finality of Eric's statement, allowed a few tears to grieve the end of their love affair. One door had closed, but a window of truth had opened: they were to be a family, a separated family. Like Zadock, she thought, she'd have to live with the cruel reality of separation from the love of her life.

Shuddering at the memory of the stick at her throat and his unwanted intimacy, she'd written Angie a long email about him later on Sunday, downplaying the previous day's drama, but telling her what she'd pieced together with Shad's help:

Katlyn fell in love with a Rastafarian and they were man and wife in the very best sense. She became a Rastafarian herself, even changed her name, and knowing that her parents would never understand or approve of her radical new direction, she stopped writing everyone after she left Gordon Gap. Her lover had been akin to a terrorist in his day, when it was illegal to be Rastafarian. He'd been locked up after the police had broken up Pinnacle, his community near Kingston, and he'd spent time in prison and a mental hospital.

Shannon recounted how Katlyn had refused to go to a doctor when she got diarrhea, how Zadock had tried to treat her himself and finally took her to the hospital, hoping to save her, and kept hidden because of his fear of the authorities.

He had no rights as her common-law husband to claim her body or bury her where she wanted to be buried, and he would probably have been under suspicion of murder with his record and a foreign woman involved.

Poverty, cultural history, and isolation had caused Katlyn's death, Shannon had added. But Zadock had spent all his money to get her body back, and he'd buried her in her favorite bedspread exactly where she'd asked to be buried. For thirty-five years thereafter he'd kept every memento that reminded him of her—and longed for her return.

By the time she sent the email, Shannon knew why she'd gone easy on the lunatic who'd almost choked her to death. It was out of respect for Katlyn, who had found a love that had more meaning to her than her own family and friends, and for Akila, who wouldn't have wanted an evil word said about her lover. Based on what Redemption and the heartsick Zadock had said, the last year of the dancer's life had been filled with a new philosophy and a loyalty so deep that she wouldn't leave the Rastafarian community or betray Zadock when she got sick. Her death had been a sacrifice for him, and his life had been a commemoration of hers.

“Just as I thought,” Shannon had told Jennifer huskily as they sat on the patio that evening. “Finding the answers to Katlyn's death has—it's clarified what I want my own future to be.”

“Obviously not with Eric,” Jennifer had said over her soup.

“No, it's not. But I know now that I want to be loved the way Zadock loved Katlyn, steady and true. Not this on-again, off-again thing I've had from Eric all these years, which just leaves me off-balance, never knowing where I stand.”

“You're worth a lot more, girl.”

“I want to be the
beloved
, you know what I mean, of a man who adores me.” The journalist had been a little embarrassed by her own immodesty, but it didn't stop her. “I want to be loved from the top of my gray hairs to my big toe with the fungus.” She raised her wineglass. “I want to be the last name the man whispers before he dies.”

“Amen.”

They'd clinked glasses.

On Monday morning she'd asked Jennifer to find out what St. Ann's Bay Hospital had on their records about Katlyn. A call to a physician friend of the Delgados' was rewarded a few hours later: Katlyn Carrington had died of amoebic dysentery with attendant dehydration. Her body had disappeared, and the Jamaican authorities had never found out who the body snatcher was. And they wouldn't be hearing it from her, Shannon decided, so that Akila, as the Rastafarian she'd become, could continue to rest in peace under her Julie mango tree with the ocean view. The young woman's short, idealistic life deserved nothing less, Shannon would tell Angie, and if she wanted to see the spot, Shad could show it to her.

Richard Ransom had called later that morning with apologies for not having returned Shannon's call on Sunday. He'd been entertaining a colleague from the Netherlands who'd come into town (again not using a pronoun) and hadn't had a spare moment to call until then.

“What happened to you?” she'd asked. “They said you'd gone already when we got back—”

“I woke up in the Port Antonio Hospital. Carlton was sitting beside me. They gave me a cup of coffee and I was fine after a couple hours. I didn't even wait to see the doctor.”

“How'd you get back to Kingston?”

“I dropped Carlton in Largo and went on home. What happened with you?”

She gave him the short version, her voice straining.

“Oh, my God, I had no idea!” he'd exclaimed. “Carlton told me everything was
under control
. If I'd known, I would have driven straight back.”

“You couldn't have done anything, but the mystery of Katlyn's death and disappearing body has finally been cleared up.”

“Does that mean you're going back to Toronto?”

“We couldn't get a direct flight, so we're going through Atlanta on Wednesday. We've started packing up.”

“I'm sorry we won't—”

“You've helped so much already, Richard.”

“I didn't do much, just got in your way and into trouble.”

“Stick with me at your peril.” Shannon laughed, and he with her. “Abandoned the first time, drugged the second.”

“Giving me stories to tell.”

“I'm glad you came with us, though, and the information you gave me was terrific.”

“Quite welcome.”

“I have a few follow-up questions, but I'll email them, if that's okay?”

“Sure, anything you want to know.” He'd paused as if he was gathering courage. “I might be coming up to Toronto in October, by the way. There's a conference I want to attend.”

“You have to call me when you come. Do you have my phone number?” They'd exchanged contact numbers, and he promised to send her an email with dates.