She looked puzzled, and for a few moments she didn’t hold out her hand to take the proffered letter. She eventually did, turning it over so she could see the return address … and then the night went quiet. He knew that, logically, the music, laughter and chatter were still rising from downstairs. He knew the night owls were still hooting and cars were still rumbling past, but he couldn’t hear them. Because for the second time in less than an hour, he was seeing the blood leech out from under this sad woman’s dusky skin, and he didn’t like it.
The middle-aged man standing two steps below squinted at her through thick glasses. “You well?”
She nodded, but just barely. “I’m fine, Mr. Pak. Thank you.”
The man waited, Elliot waited, for her to tear open the envelope, to do something, but she held it in both hands and stared at it, weighed it, ran her fingers along the address label as if they were sensitive enough to feel the indentations of the printed letters, but she didn’t open it.
Eventually, Mr. Pak nodded and returned downstairs. After he was long gone … it could have been seconds, it could have been minutes … Shani still hadn’t made any move. Elliot watched her, not even pretending not to stare, taking full advantage of the fact that she was barely aware of his presence. Her dark skin had that mellow smoothness that came from good genes, although he could tell, too, that she groomed herself carefully. He was sure she did everything carefully.
She’d nervously licked off most of the frosty lipstick she’d been wearing, leaving her lips bare. The lower one was full, almost pouty, making him think of moist fruit. Her dark, straight hair had been neatly pinned up at the start of the evening, he guessed. Now it fell in wisps about her face. He found himself wanting to reach out, wind it up at the crown of her head and pin it back into place for her. He had to put his hands into his pockets to quell the impulse.
He brought his head close, stifling his curiosity to read the envelope that so mesmerized her, more interested in reading her eyes. But in them, he could see nothing. Gently, he called her name.
She looked up, startled to find him still there. “Huh?”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Open what?”
He tapped the heavy paper object in her hands. “Your letter.”
She looked down at it again, contemplatively, and then shook her head. “I don’t have to. It’s from my attorney. I know what it says.”
Why was it that letters from attorneys never bore good news? How come nobody ever got a letter from an attorney saying congratulations, you just inherited three million dollars from an uncle you never knew you had?
He asked with a chill of anticipation, “What’s it say, then?”
Her eyes held his, and the agony in them kept him riveted. “It says I.” She tried again. “It says my divorce is final. My marriage is over.”
Chapter 3
No job. Sick daughter. And now … this. Shani read and reread the names and addresses on the envelope, both hers on the front and her attorney’s on the back. Inside it were the shredded, tattered, decomposing remnants of the past five years of her life. Knowing it was coming didn’t soften the blow any.
And a blow it was; a sucker punch to the gut that obliterated any fancified notions she might still be holding about Christophe and the love she’d had for him. Where was he anyway? Back home in Martinique, most likely. And, if she knew him—and she did—out celebrating his freedom in a Fort-de-France bar, or in the bed of some young Martiniquaise with more libido than sense.
She felt the cold rails of the balcony under her fingers, steadying her as she swayed. Aching so deep inside she wished she could reach in and tear out the organ that was causing her so much hurt. Her wedding band, a little loose these days since she’d lost a few pounds, constricted. If the vein in the fourth finger led directly to the heart, as the ancients believed, she wouldn’t need to rip her heart out. It would shrivel and die all on its own for lack of blood flow.
There was a movement next to her, a light hand on her forearm and a voice in her ear. “Shani.”
Elliot. She knew he was there, but his touch and voice startled her anyway. She tried to focus on his face.
“Yes?”
“Maybe you should go inside. Have a glass of water. Sit for a minute.”
Her rattling thoughts aligned themselves in some semblance of order. Inside. Right. She nodded. She patted herself down for her keys before she remembered they were clutched in her hand. She tried to fit the key in the lock, but it wouldn’t go. Wrong one. She tried again, the soft scratching sound of metal against metal amplified ten times.
“Let me.” Elliot’s cool hands pried the keys from her incompetent fingers and he slid them into the lock. Easily. As though he was used to it.
The tumblers rolled over inside the lock, but he didn’t have the chance to open the door. It was snatched from his hand, startling them both. Gina Pak was standing there in the minuscule hallway, panting a little. She was even tinier than her father, glossy hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a red T-shirt and jeans, both of which were damp.
“Shani!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry I didn’t get the door right away. I was giving Béatrice a sponge bath. She’s up to a hundred and five. And she threw up, twice.”
Bee! Panic and shame. For a full five minutes, Christophe had managed to shove her poor baby from the forefront of her mind. Did he still exert such a power over her, that on a night as awful as this, she could forget she was on a rescue mission?
“Where’s she?” she asked, even though she knew.
Gina pointed. Without looking at the wretched envelope again, she threw it to the floor and hastened to the bedroom, which she shared with her daughter. The room was decorated more like a child’s nursery than a room in which an adult slept. It was bright yellow, her daughter’s favorite color, and strewn with enough bee motifs to make Sting himself gag. A bee mobile swayed over the bed, cartoon bees smiled down from the walls and bee suncatchers dangled behind drawn curtains. Bee lived up to her name.
She was lying on her back. Her thick hair, which usually sprang up all over in a cheery mop, was damp from the bath. She had nothing on but a pair of panties and a yellow cotton Winnie the Pooh T-shirt. Her limp limbs were carelessly sprawled, her small, dark, pointed face slack. Eyes fire-bright. Bee spotted her and managed a smile. “Mama!”
Shani reached to smooth the hair from Bee’s brow, but Elliot was in the way, on his knees at the child’s bedside, lifting each eyelid with his thumbs and examining her eyes, then her nostrils and mouth, tilting her head to each side to look into her ears, too.
Shani was too stunned and confused to move.
“How old is she?” he asked.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“How old is she?”
Not wanting to be left out of the conversation, Bee piped up. “I’m three and a half!”
“You are? You’re a really big girl!” Elliot was soft-voiced, indulgent, his hands still working on her.
Bee watched him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, her bleary eyes trying to focus. “You a doctor?”
“No, I’m not, but I’m just gonna check you out, if you let me.” He tenderly ran his fingers along her throat then lifted her shirt and carefully looked over her torso.
“No