CHAPTER 22
CARLOS
Five Years Ago
August 16
Los Gatos, California
Lunch with the Tierneys was . . . awkward. Catherine kept up a steady chatter during the meal of grilled salmon and summer greens. She sat at the end on my left, opposite her husband, Hugh. Natalya, who picked at her fish like a bird, sat on my right, her hand clutching my thigh. I didn’t think anyone at the table was comfortable and I knew Natalya was having second thoughts about my spending time with Aimee. I was, and I sure hadn’t expected to have an audience when I met with her.
Aimee sat across from Natalya. She didn’t look at either of us, and she didn’t participate in the conversation. Ian was opposite me. He didn’t take his eyes from me as Catherine peppered me with questions. How many children do you have? What are their ages? What sports do they like? Do you enjoy Mexico? Are you still painting? What do you paint?
Safe questions, that is until Ian leaned forward on his elbows and clasped his hands. “Why are you here, Carlos?”
Aimee set down her fork with a loud clatter. “Ian, don’t.”
Hugh cleared his throat and dipped his head. His hands were loose fists alongside his plate.
Ian looked at his wife. “It’s a fair question, and one we all want to know.” He looked around the table.
Natalya flipped her hand over on my thigh and grasped mine. I gave hers a squeeze. This was it, the reason we came. It was time to lay it on the table, literally.
“I’m sure you’re aware of my condition.” I spoke to everyone, but kept my gaze level with Ian’s. “I can remain like this, as Carlos, for the rest of my life. Or, I can revert to my original identity as quick as a finger snap.”
Natalya made a low noise in the back of her throat when I snapped my fingers for effect. I stroked my thumb across her knuckles.
“Aimee told me a little about what happened to you.” Catherine’s gaze shifted briefly to Aimee. “What can trigger you to be . . . oh, I don’t want to use the word normal . . . ugh, which I just said. But what can make your identity revert to James?”
“It’s different for each person, and usually when that person is ready to deal with the trauma that caused the fugue. Really, though, anything can trigger me to surface. Familiar surroundings, visiting with family and friends.”
“You’re taking a risk coming here,” Hugh stated.
“Yes,” Natalya immediately said.
“Which makes me wonder why you are here.” Ian folded his arms on the table edge. “You were darn adamant last December. You didn’t want anything to do with your former self.”
“I don’t trust anyone in the Donato family. Including James,” I added, sneaking a glance at Aimee. She exhaled a choppy breath and stared at the barely touched food on her plate.
“You shouldn’t trust them,” Ian agreed.
“If I revert to James, I lose every memory of my sons. James won’t know them, he wouldn’t have asked for them, and he may not want them, yet he’ll still be their father. I can’t ask anyone in the Donato family about James and the type of man he is. Will he be a good father? Is he a decent human being? Or, is he like his brothers? Can I trust him to raise my sons?”
Ian leaned back in his chair. “Thinking about what you’re dealing with messes with my head. No offense.” He held up a palm.
“None taken.”
Catherine reached over and laid a hand on my forearm. “James was nothing like his brothers. We adored him.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. But I have questions.”
“I can’t do this.” Aimee rose quickly. She tossed her napkin on the table and shoved back her chair. Ian grabbed it before the chair back hit the buffet cabinet.
“Excuse me.” Aimee left the room.
Ian watched her go. When the front door opened, he stood and, excusing himself, quickly followed after her. The door slammed behind him, rattling the dining room window.
Through that window, we watched Aimee and Ian argue on the front lawn. Their arms flailed in exaggerated gestures, mouths moved, chests heaved, and faces turned red and stern.
“Do something, Hugh,” Catherine said.
“Like what?” He stuck a forkful of salmon in his mouth, manipulated a bone through his lips, which he set on the edge of his plate. “Ian’s got a handle on this.”
Outside Ian fisted his hair, elbows raised. He walked in a tight circle.
Catherine sighed, a mixture of concern for Aimee and exasperation with Hugh. Aimee started to cry. Ian tried to comfort her and she pushed him away.
“Hugh,” she snapped, “you’re her father.”
“And he’s her husband. There isn’t any way I’m getting in between that.” He jabbed a fork at the window.
I folded my napkin. “We shouldn’t have come.”
“Nonsense,” Catherine said. “You’re family. It’s that we never expected . . . your being here . . .” She sighed. “We’re just surprised, that’s all.”
Aimee thrust out her hand. Ian shoved his hand into his pocket and held a set of keys above her hand. They stared each other down until Ian dropped the keys in Aimee’s hand, where they disappeared in her fist.
Ian returned and stopped in the dining room doorway, arms crossed. He stared at his feet until Aimee came inside and stood beside him. Then he lifted his face, directing his attention at me. “I don’t agree with what she’s doing, and I’m not comfortable with her taking you anywhere. Seeing you has been quite the shock. For all of us.”
“For God’s sake, Ian,” Aimee bit out, her eyes red rimmed and face puffy. “I want to show you something, Carlos. Will you come with me?”
Natalya swiftly rose to her feet. She glanced down at me, panicked. We both knew what happened the last time I went off alone.
I stood and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her breast pressed into my side. “I’ll be fine,” I whispered in her ear. “I doubt she’ll try to hypnotize me.”
Natalya pressed a flat hand to my chest. “That’s not funny.”
“We won’t be long, Natalya,” Aimee said with an unmistakable edge to her tone. She might be married to and in love with Ian, but she didn’t like Natalya with me, not with the way she visibly seethed underneath her barely controlled exterior while she watched us.
Ian glanced at his watch. “You’ve got an hour; then I’m coming to get you.”
Aimee lifted her face to the ceiling, exasperated. “With what? I have the car. Dad, make sure Ian stays put.”
Hugh’s brows lifted over the rim of the wineglass from which he was drinking. He waved a fork at Ian’s empty chair. “Have a seat, son. You and Cathy can now interrogate Natalya.”
“Hugh,” Catherine huffed, annoyed. Ian kissed Aimee’s cheek. He whispered to her, then returned to his chair. Catherine got up from hers. “Would you like another glass of wine, Natalya?”
“No, thank you.”
“Well, I need one. So do you, Ian.” She patted his shoulder as she passed behind him, heading for the kitchen. “Actually, I think we need another bottle.”
I cupped Natalya’s cheek. “I’ll be fine.”
Her eyes searched mine. “What if where she’s taking you triggers James?” she asked in a low voice meant only for me. “And then you’re with her and you forget about me . . .”
I kissed her mouth hard, stopping her words. “I love you, Nat.” Then I left with Aimee before either of us could change our minds. Besides, I was tired of having an audience. I came to California to meet with Aimee. She was the one I wanted to see more than anyone.
Aimee drove their minivan, taking sides streets to a freeway. She was not Thomas, and she’d been a pawn in his game to keep me hidden, but my palms were still sweating. I couldn’t stop my heart from hammering. She hadn’t told me where we were going despite my asking. “You’ll see,” she’d answered, fighting her tears from falling. I figured it was too difficult for her to explain. Yet, I still went with her.
She exited the freeway a short distance later to an expressway. She talked sparingly, pointing out landmarks here and there. I didn’t notice anything that might have meaning to me, and from her tone, they weren’t of consequence to her. Her comments were solely meant to fill the void between us.
After a few miles she turned uphill, weaving along residential roads. I had a moment of panic, thinking she was taking us to the meadow she once told me had been her favorite place to be with James, a place that meant much more to both of them. And the one and only place I imagined could yank me from my fugue state. James had proposed to, and Phil had accosted, Aimee in that meadow. It was an emotionally intense spot for everyone.
But my worries slipped away to be replaced with another form of panic. She turned onto the driveway of a cemetery.
I clutched the door handle, knowing exactly where she was taking us.
We followed the road through the grounds and she eventually pulled into a parking space and killed the engine. “It’s over there.” She pointed across the lawn, then opened the door and got out of the car. She tromped across the lawn without looking back.
I unfolded from the car and followed. She stopped about twenty-five meters in and moved aside when I joined her. She pointed at a granite headstone.
JAMES CHARLES DONATO
BELOVED SON
Birth and death dates followed.
I slid my hands into my back pockets. I should have felt angry looking at the stone, and I should have felt some sort of connection to, or sense of loss toward, the woman standing beside me. The man I used to be had lost everything. Instead, I felt a bone-deep fear that Natalya could be right. Would I recognize her when I got back to the Tierneys’ house?
I glanced from the headstone to the car and back and swallowed the rising panic. “Is anything buried here?”
Aimee hummed a laugh. It sounded cruel and was filled with loathing. “A coffin full of sandbags.” Part of Thomas’s stratagem to fake my death, she told me, and I had to remind myself she didn’t know the full story. Based on what Thomas explained to me yesterday, Aimee and anyone else close to James had been told the bare minimum of what they needed to hear.
“Leaving you behind in Mexico was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was the right thing.”
Afternoon sunlight peeked through the tree canopy. Shadows of leaves danced on her clothes. Warm light played off the outline of her profile. It reflected in the shimmer of tears that moistened the soft tissue under her eyes.
“I love James. I will always love him. And for the most part, he treated me very well. In the end, though . . .” Her voice slid away. She swiped a finger under an eye and hummed uneasily. “You know what happened.”
“I wish I could apologize on his behalf.” I wished I could beat the crap out of James for what he’d asked of her. How he’d expected the love of his life to bury what happened with Phil until Thomas and the DEA could carry out the sting operation. For not allowing her to heal the way she needed to.
She sucked in her lower lip. “There are three reasons why I’ve been able to forgive James.” With her arm down by her side, she splayed three fingers. “One, I had to put the past behind me. Two, James was fiercely loyal to me. He was protecting me the best way he knew how, and that was by doing what he thought he could to keep Phil away from me. But Carlos,” she lifted her head, her eyes a piercing blue in the shadows, “I have to believe James is dead. He is dead to me.”
My chest rose and fell with a deep, settling breath. “That’s the third reason, isn’t it?”
She pressed her lips between her teeth as though holding the emotion inside and nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do, or how I’d feel, were you James, and you moved back here. That scares me. I’ve never told Ian, but I know it’s something he thinks about.”
I took two steps back and one forward, rocking on the lawn. What would James do? I had to assume he’d return home as soon as he could. Would he bring the boys with him or leave them behind?
“You’ve mentioned James wasn’t like his brothers. Other than how he handled the situation with Phil, was he a good man?”
“I wouldn’t have spent as many years of my life with him as I did if he wasn’t. There were things about his past, things that happened before he moved to California when we were kids, that he kept from me. I have to believe he did that because he was ashamed. But I’d trust him with my life, even after what happened in the meadow.”
“My sons . . . should something happen to me . . .”
“James will be angry and hurt. He will feel like everyone bailed on him, but he would never give them up.”
Aimee had built a new life with Ian, a man I sensed she loved deeply. What would happen to them when James returned? Would he try to win Aimee back? He’d already left Aimee behind, but then that hadn’t been intentional. It probably never crossed his mind he wouldn’t be back for his wedding.
What about Natalya? Would she give him up, or fight for him? James wouldn’t know her.
“Would you leave Ian for James?”
“I honestly don’t know. But I can tell you this. For Ian and me to be truly happy together, I can’t live near James. There’s too much history. Ian trusts me, but I know he’ll wonder, and that’s not fair to him.” She rested a hand over the lower region of her belly. “It wouldn’t be fair to our child.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. Her mouth turned downward and she looked at the headstone. She’d probably imagined for as many years as she and James dated telling him that news. For one day they would be married and she’d birth his children. But here he stood before her, but not really him, and she was pregnant with another man’s child.
Her eyes sheened and I agonized about what to do. This must be so damn difficult for her. I shouldn’t have come. Instead, I opened my arms. “Come here.”
After a slight hesitation, she leaned against me and I folded my arms around her as she cried on my shoulder.
A breeze swept through the trees, rustling branches, giving flight to Aimee’s hair. Sunshine brightened the tint of red threaded in her curls and suddenly, with Aimee in my arms, I longed to be with Natalya with an intensity I hadn’t felt before. To hold her tight while making promises I’d never let her go. That I’d never leave her, or forget her.
But on the heels of that need came an unbearable reality. While I could make those promises to Natalya, I wouldn’t be the one breaking them.
Aimee soon eased from my embrace and pushed the curls from her face. “Must be the hormones.” She wiped her damp cheeks.
I slightly nodded. “Congratulations.”
She reached a shaking hand for me only to let it fall to her side. She gestured at the headstone. “Anyway,” she said with a wistful sigh, “I wanted you to understand how I feel, and showing you this is the only way I knew how. Knowing this headstone is here helps me keep the past in the past. And James is my past. I had to let him go.”
The following morning, Natalya flew to Los Angeles and I left for Oaxaca. We didn’t talk much about our afternoon with Aimee, Ian, Catherine, and Hugh, but that night we’d made love fiercely and exhaustively, until the early-morning hours. I buried myself deep inside her, convinced that loving her this intensely, I could imprint her on my soul and it would be impossible to forget her when I surfaced from the fugue. Because how could James not sense how deeply I loved her?
In flight, I thanked the attendant for the tequila on ice I ordered and finished the drink in three gulps. The fermented agave sliced a heated path along the back of my throat and settled my churning stomach. It did nothing for the dull ache in my head I’d had since meeting with Thomas.
As we flew across the United States–Mexico border, my mind coasted over the past couple of days. Thomas surprising me at the airport and shocking me further over the machinations he helped the governments of two countries put together in a matter of a few short weeks—days, even—to keep me hidden in plain sight. I thought how Thomas had me hypnotized and the hours missing from my trip. There was something he believed I might have seen and he wanted that information. There was the awkward meal with the Tierneys and Ian’s fierce protectiveness toward his wife. I’d feel the same had I been in his place.
Then my mind cruised to Aimee’s parting words. On the way back to the car, she stopped me with a gentle touch of her hand. “James wanted children,” she told me. “He would have made a wonderful father. He was loyal to those he loves, and he’ll protect those he loves. He will do what needs to be done to keep them safe. He did so for me. But Carlos—” She tightened her grip on my forearm. Fear tinged her ivory cheeks, sharpened the blue in her wide, opened eyes. “James and Phil have unfinished business. One of these days, Phil will be out of prison, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes after James. He’ll be angry, and may still feel cheated, not just out of the family business, but from the years he lost in confinement. That’s how Phil will see it. He’ll use anything and anyone to hurt James. Whatever you do, keep your sons away from him.”
Outside the plane’s window, patches of clouds floating over the dry, brown hills of Mexico passed underneath the belly of the plane. I’d left home afraid I couldn’t trust James with my sons. But while I was returning with the reassurance James would make a good father, would even come to love Julian and Marcus as I did now, I still wasn’t sure I could fully trust him. I wasn’t sure he could keep the boys safe.
Hell, with the knowledge I now possessed, I wasn’t sure I could keep them safe.