“I got your e-mails. Sorry I didn’t get back.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the airport, getting ready to get on a plane.”
“To where? The place you can’t tell me?”
“Leslie, they’re pulling me out of here. I really don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Not funny.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Silence.
“Are you there?”
“Yeah,” she said. “So, uh, was this sudden? Did you know about it? We could’ve gotten together. You didn’t let me say good-bye.”
“You know I’ve been out of town. There wouldn’t have been any time. I’m sorry.”
“Well, this sucks.”
“I know.”
“Maybe I’ll just quit my job and follow you around.”
He almost smiled. “You’re not a stalker.”
“Really? I guess you’re right. So what am I supposed to do now?”
“We’ll stay in touch.”
A moment of awkward silence, just the hum from the connection. Moore’s shoulders drew together …and then it was more difficult to breathe.
He closed his eyes and heard her cry in his head: “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”
“I think I was starting to fall in love with you,” she blurted out, her voice cracking.
“No, you weren’t. Look, we were just in it for the fun. You wanted it that way. And I told you this day would come. But you’re right. It sucks. Big-time.” He softened his tone. “I want to stay in touch. But it’s up to you. If it hurts too much, then okay, I respect that. You can do better than me, anyway. Get somebody younger, with fewer obligations.”
“Yeah, whatever. We played with fire and we got burned. But it felt so good along the way.”
“You know, I’m not sure I can do this again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Say good-bye, I guess.”
“No more relationships for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hey, remember how you told me I was helping you with the nightmares? When I told you the stories of when I was in college while you were trying to fall asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t forget that, okay?”
“Of course I won’t.”
“I hope you can sleep,” she said.
“I hope so, too.”
“I wish you would’ve told me what’s bothering you. Maybe I could’ve helped even more.”
“That’s okay. I’m feeling much better now. Thanks for that.”
“Thanks for the sex.”
He chuckled under his breath. “You make it sound so dirty.”
She breathed heavily into the phone and said, “It was.”
“You’re a crazy bitch.”
“You, too.”
He hesitated. “I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.” He closed his eyes and broke the connection. I’ll talk to you soon. He wouldn’t. She knew that.
Moore gritted his teeth. He should walk away from this gate and go back to her and haul her out of that job and quit his, and they could start a life together.
And in six months he’d be bored out of his mind.
And in eight months they’d be divorced and he’d be blaming her and hating himself all over again.
The boarding announcement came. Moore stood with the other passengers and started halfheartedly toward the agent accepting their tickets.
8 JORGE’S SHADOW
The morning after the fund-raiser, Miguel took Sonia to the library before breakfast. He hadn’t intended to show her the room until after they’d eaten, but en route to the main kitchen they had passed by and she’d caught sight of several framed photographs on the wall and had asked if they could spend a few moments inside.
The stone fireplace with great arch and black-ash burl mantel, along with the floor-to-ceiling bookcases constructed of more exotic hardwoods, took her breath away. Rolling ladders and tracks stood on each side of the room, and Sonia mounted one to take in all one thousand square feet.
“Your father likes to read!” she cried, her gaze playing over the thousands of hardcover texts. No paperbacks. His father had insisted that all books in the library be hardcovers, many of them leather-bound.
“Knowledge is power, right?” he replied with a grin.
A small wet bar stood near the entrance, from where Jorge often served cognac produced by houses like Courvoisier, Delamain, Hardy, and Hennessy. Leather sofas and tiger-skin rugs imported from India formed an L-shaped seating area in the middle, with smaller islands of heavy leather recliners positioned around them. On several broad coffee tables sat magnifying glasses for reading and stacks of old Forbes magazines, dog-eared by his father. Beside them, the coasters stacked in their holders were inlaid with eighteen-karat gold.
Sonia climbed down from the ladder and returned to one of the photographs that had caught her eye.
“What was her name?”
“Sofía.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“She was,” he said with a slight tremor, imagining what her funeral was like, the one he’d not been allowed to attend because it would have been “too traumatic for him.” He wished his father was aware of the guilt he suffered because he was on an airplane while others were paying their last respects to his mother. He’d cried all the way to Switzerland.
The photograph of his mother had been taken on the beach in Punta de Mita, and, with an expanse of turquoise water sweeping out behind her, Miguel’s mother stood there in her black bikini, smiling broadly for the camera, looking like a glamorous movie star from another era.
“My father loved this picture.”
“And what about this one,” Sonia said, drifting over to a smaller photograph of father, mother, and baby wrapped in linen and silk. They stood before a sea of candles and stained glass and icons adorning the walls.
“That’s my baptism. And the one over there is my first Holy Communion. Then my confirmation later on.”
Sonia stared deeply at the pictures of his mother. “She looks like …I don’t know …She just looks strong.”
“No one could tell my father what to do. No one but her. She was the boss. I don’t think I told you this, but one time we were in Cozumel on vacation, and she was snorkeling. We were looking at this sunken airplane, and she thought something bit her, and then we lost her and she almost drowned. We think she might’ve hit her head on some coral. My father went in after her, and he pulled her out and gave her mouth-to-mouth and she came around and spit up water, just like you see on TV.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. He saved her life.”
“When she told him that, he just said, ‘No, you saved mine.’”
“Your father is a romantic.”
“That’s true. He told me that night that if she had died, he didn’t know what we’d do. He told me he’d be lost. A few months later they found the cancer. It was like the trip was a premonition or something, like God was trying to prepare us for what would happen. But it didn’t work.”
“That’s just …I don’t know what to say …”
He smiled weakly. “Let’s go eat.”
They did, and their omelets with salsa, jack cheese, cumin, and garlic powder were prepared by his father’s private chef, Juan Carlos (aka J.C.), who’d said that Jorge had gone off to the beach for a run and a swim. Alexsi was at the pool, already into her third mimosa, according to J.C.
When they were finished eating, Miguel showed Sonia their workout facility, which she remarked was better equipped than most five-star hotels. He said his father was very dedicated to fitness and did two hours per day, five days per week, with a personal trainer.