CHAPTER 13
JAMES
Present Day
June 27
Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii
James can’t sit still. His fingers tap the chair arm separating his seat from his sons’, and his knees bounce. He borrows a colored pencil from Marc just so he can hold on to something. It isn’t a paintbrush, but his fidgety fingers don’t care. What he doesn’t care for is why he’s nervous.
Toward the end of the flight, Julian looks at him, annoyed, so James stands and paces the aisle. When the pilot puts on the seatbelt sign and announces their descent, his chest muscles spasm. He’s finally meeting Natalya face-to-face. A woman who knows him intimately. Up until six months ago, their relationship was serious, like sexting and up-all-night-naked-under-the-sheets serious.
James groans and sinks into his chair, snapping the belt across his lap. He tells his sons to start packing their backpacks and helps Marc organize his colored pencils, picking up the ones that rolled onto the floor. Five of them, about the number of times he and Natalya have spoken on the phone since he surfaced. The first time had been the morning Julian climbed into the closet then dropped a metal lockbox on his lap. His son punched in the code and left the room. James found him downstairs bawling on the phone. While Natalya, back home in Hawaii, tried calming her nephew, James had been reading the documents and letters in the box. He then vomited in the toilet and called Thomas.
James felt like he would pass out. Panic and disbelief practically cut off his air supply. He wanted to book the first flight home. Instead, he reached a shaking hand toward the son he just met and demanded the phone.
“Who is this?” His voice came out strained, stretched rubber-band thin.
“I’m Natalya Hayes, your sister-in-law, an American like you. I live in Hawaii,” she explained. He liked her voice. The last name sounded familiar. It evoked images of wetsuits and surfboards, of mornings riding waves in Santa Cruz. Julian ran upstairs, wailing. A door slammed. James took the phone outside. He needed air and light and a one-way ticket home. He needed Aimee. His breath shuttered out of him.
God, she was the one person he desperately needed to talk to, that he ached to hold to the point that the emptiness in his arms left him gasping. He had to stop himself from crying out in anguish.
“I know you’re confused and I know Julian is upset,” Natalya was saying in a voice that sounded barely under control. “He’s angry, and he’s going to be angry for a very long time. But he is your son. He knew this could happen. You prepared him for the possibility.”
“What possibility?” he snapped, rubbing his forehead with the base of his palm.
“That you’d forget who he is. You’ve been living in a fugue state for over six years.”
That’s what Thomas had told him. It seemed preposterous. Unreal, like something out of a science fiction movie. He needed to research his condition and find a doctor as soon as he got himself out of Mexico.
“What about that other kid?” The one who woke him up jumping on the bed.
“Mar—cus?” Her voice cracked like hot glass when filled with ice. “He’s your son, too.”
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with them?” He winced. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“The same thing you’ve always done. Be their father.”
“And their mother? My wife?” The word soured on his tongue. “She’s dead?”
“Yes,” she said simply. But James caught the notes of pain and loss over the roar of his own turmoil. Raquel had been Natalya’s sister. He’d seen the marriage and death certificates. Despite his shock, he noticed she died on Marcus’s birth date.
“I’m sorry.” The apology was automatic even though he thanked God he wasn’t hitched. It was a callous thought. But, holy shit, he could only take so much.
“Julian wants to come to Hawaii. I told him no, but I can be on the next flight there.”
“No,” he said too quickly. He paced the yard. “No, I need to think. I need time.” She sounded nice on the phone, but she was a stranger to him. Could he trust her?
“You left yourself a journal. Take the time to read it. I think the answers to most of the questions you have will be there. And . . . James? I know you’re scared, but so are your sons. They love you, and I hope you can find within yourself a way to love them again. They’re good kids.” She was crying by the time she finished; then she disconnected the call before he could thank her.
During their follow-up conversations, she was pleasant, even helpful. But this last one a few days ago? She was frozen-lake cold when he told her he was taking her up on her offer to bring the boys to Hawaii. Despite the icy reception, he reminded himself she had loved the man he used to be.
As Carlos, he had loved her and made love to her. But as James, he had read and reread every passage about their shared moments. He knows she eats an orange in the morning, peeling the fruit in a circular motion so the rind comes off in one long curl. He knows her scent is just as citrusy, and when mixed with the coconut sunscreen she applies throughout the day, that the aroma is intoxicating, even arousing.
The journal excerpts fascinated him, as did the woman. But they also screwed his stomach like a drill on an oil rig boring deep into the earth. The guilt he felt from being intimate with not one, but two women when he should have been with Aimee, often left him drowning in self-disgust. He almost stopped reading the journals for that reason alone. He already hated himself enough.
Once the plane lands, and as they file off, James wonders if he’ll recognize Natalya by sight. Carlos had been sympathetic toward Aimee, but he hadn’t been drawn to her. Will it be the same with him and Natalya? His heart bangs against his sternum like a gloved fist. He takes deep, meditative breaths, letting the air fill his cheeks as he exhales. Nerves and humidity dampen his armpits and the curve of his lower back.
He spots her immediately standing alone on the opposite side of the carousel in the Lihue Airport’s open-air baggage claim. Trade winds lift the mass of burnished copper hair Carlos had described in detail. Burnt sienna. Cadmium orange. Terra rose. Yellow ochre. Her hair has all those paint colors and more. And he can’t stop staring.
He doesn’t alert the boys, who are occupied with the bags cruising at a snail’s pace around the carousel, placing bets whose will appear first. He doesn’t tell them he sees her because he wants the chance to watch her, unguarded before she notices him. He studies her like a model for one of his paintings. The sharp angle of her bent arm and the play of sunlight on her tanned skin. The long slope of her neck as it curves into her shoulder above the swell of her breasts. She tugs at the silver bangles adorning her wrists and she twines her hair into a makeshift ponytail, letting it fall over her shoulder. Again he has that sense of déjà vu, as though he’s witnessed her quirks before. Though he knows that’s impossible. She only seems familiar because he read about her.
Her gaze jumps from one person to the next around their carousel until landing on him. Their eyes lock and for a minute they simply watch each other. His heart drums but he doesn’t move. Her chest rises sharply. She clutches the shoulder strap of her purse and walks toward him. His hands start to perspire.
Damn.
He breaks eye contact, wiping his hands against his jeans, then taps Marc on the shoulder and shows him who’s approaching. He needs a moment to collect himself and Marc’s a good distraction. Plus, he wants to observe how his kids react to her. Is she all that Carlos described? Does she love them the way he said she does?
“Tía Natalya!” Marc runs over and launches into her waiting arms. She covers his face in kisses and whispers in his ear. His son giggles and an odd sense of jealousy shifts through him. He wants Marc to react that way when he sees him.
Natalya clasps Marc’s hand and walks toward James. Julian notices her and his face turns on its stadium lights. Marc spots his suitcase on the carousel and James grabs the handle. He turns around in time to see Natalya’s reaction to his mother, who’s joined them in baggage claim.
Natalya’s face screws up. “Señora Carla?”
James drops the luggage. It lands with a thud on the tile. He holds his breath, waiting for his mother to sever the tenuous bond he’s building with his sons faster than the snip of kitchen shears. Julian watches the three of them, his expression calculating. Thankfully, his mother doesn’t correct Natalya. Rather, her entire demeanor changes. Claire smiles and pulls Natalya in for a hug. Natalya’s brows bunch. She throws him a questioning look. He shoves a hand through his hair and glances away. He didn’t plan having his mother in the picture when he met Natalya. How does he explain this to her?
“It’s wonderful to see you again. How’ve you been?” Claire asks Natalya, holding her at arms’ length.
“I’m . . . great. You?”
“Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.” She smiles at everyone. “We have much to catch up on. We’ll talk once everyone is settled.” Claire gives Natalya’s hand a friendly squeeze.
“Okay.” Natalya drags out the word. “I wasn’t expecting an extra person, but I guess you can stay in my room with me.”
Claire waves her hand. “Don’t worry about me. I have a room at the St. Regis. Do you mind giving me a lift to Princeville? Or . . . should I get a cab?” She looks at James.
“I can drive you,” Natalya says, then also looks at him as though wondering what to do about Claire.
James sighs and rubs his face with both hands. “Give us a moment,” he says to his mother.
Claire smiles. “I see my suitcase. Julian, help me out.”
Julian and Claire walk away in pursuit of the moving luggage. James turns to Natalya. “I didn’t know she was coming.”
“I don’t understand. How do you know each other?”
“Her name is Claire. She’s my mother.”
Natalya backs up a step. “Your mother?” She watches Claire with an appalled expression and James imagines she’s thinking about the amount of time Señora Carla spent with them. She’d fooled them all.
He scrunches his lips and nods.
Natalya just stares at him. “That’s messed up.”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Which about sums up my family.”
Marc pats James’s hip. He points at the carousel. “Your bag.”
“Thanks, buddy.” He taps the bill of Marc’s cap and turns back to Natalya. Her expression has changed, unreadable. James shifts uneasily. His mother’s duplicity is probably sinking in, as well as the fact that Carlos hadn’t trusted the Donatos, and here he is with their matriarch. It’s probably also hitting her that she doesn’t know him. He’s not her Carlos, just like Claire isn’t Señora Carla. But the difference is that he never lied to her.
He casts Claire a look. “The boys don’t know about her yet. With everything they’ve been through lately, I’m not sure how they’ll take the news,” he explains to Natalya, turning back to her. Their gazes meet again and he hears her sharp intake of breath. He feels it in an unexpected place deep inside him. He moves a step closer. She’s welcomed him into her home and he wants her to feel comfortable having him there. He wants her to get to know him.
“By the way,” he extends his hand, “I’m James.”
She clasps his hand, quickly covering the tremble in her lower lip with a tentative smile. “Aloha . . . James. I’m Nat. Welcome to Hawaii.”