Blood Relations Page 34

  “Forget it.” He saw a parking place along the curb, then put an arm over the seat to back up. “Ruffini and Lamont were arraigned this morning.”

  “Yes, I know. Ali told me.”

  “Their attorneys want to take your statement as soon as possible. You going to be around? I can accept a subpoena for deposition on your behalf.” The engine was still on. Cold air blew through the vents.

  Caitlin smiled archly. “What do you want? The pictures? Or are you making sure you still have a witness left on Ali’s case?”

  “Do I?” He took the keys out of the ignition.

  Her lips were set into a thin line. She said, “Ali went through hell that night. I won’t run away to New York and forget it ever happened.”

  “You didn’t tell me you’d moved out of your apartment. What was I supposed to think?”

  “I would have called you.” She got out and slammed the door.

  They walked along the narrow street, then onto Lincoln Road to the DeMarco Gallery, which was deserted except for a clerk reading a magazine. Caitlin told him she had to get something out of the back room.

  She led Sam past the office then opened a paint-spattered door and turned on a light, an overhead bulb that contributed little to illumination. The left side of the narrow room was taken up with metal cabinets and vertical wooden slots for paintings and prints. Not much was left; the season was over. Caitlin’s things were stacked to the right, a disorderly pile of cardboard boxes in varying sizes and shapes, picked up at a supermarket. They had once held cans, bottles, cereal, paper goods. Now the contents were noted in black marker. Kitchen stuff. Sheets and towels. Clothes. Film and paper.

  When Caitlin closed the door a tremor danced through Sam’s muscles and settled in his gut. Dust floated in beams of light coming through a small, barred window near the ceiling. No sound intruded. He looked at the stack of boxes, the deep shadows they made. There was no oxygen in the room. He pulled in a breath. “I won’t ask you to search through all this. When you get to New York and unpack, just put the photos in the mail.”

  Caitlin set her camera bag on the floor, then laid her hat and sunglasses on a cabinet. “No, it’s all right. I remember where they are. Help me move some of these, will you? They’re heavy. You never think you have that much, till you try to pack it all into boxes.”

  “Where’s the furniture?”

  “I gave some away. Most of it I left behind. It was secondhand, anyway. Let Frank worry about it.”

  Sam shifted boxes of books as Caitlin directed. She picked up a former pasta box marked winter clothes, leaning back to balance the weight.

  “Do you ever wish you could reduce your life to the barest possible? Maybe to fit inside one suitcase. Or a bag to throw over your shoulder. Then you could go wherever you wanted, whenever. Just float away as the mood strikes.” Laughing a little, she dropped the box beside audio-video. Then she studied the pile still left. She pointed. “There. That one.”

  The box was thick cardboard, about one foot by two. Zephyrhills Natural Spring Water. 6 gal. Now marked in heavy black, Prints and Portraits. It was against the wall, but away from the window and off the floor, protected. Sam looked around as if someone had come through the door. He gripped his right wrist and flexed his fingers.

  Caitlin said, “Sam? Can you get that?”

  “Sure.” He braced a foot and reached over the boxes spread out on the floor. Unlike most of the others, this one was sealed with packing tape. Caitlin sat on her heels and worked a thumbnail under a corner.

  Sam leaned against the cabinet.

  The tape came off and she folded back the flaps. Inside, under a layer of newspaper, were dozens of folders and envelopes. Her fingers moved quickly along the top edges, then stopped and tugged on a white envelope. Matthew Stavros Hagen.

  Caitlin stood up and turned around. She said Sam’s name and it took him a second to hear her.

  He raised his eyes.

  She said, “You don’t have to take them.”

  “Why not?”

  “You might not like them. They aren’t glamorous.”

  He smiled, held out his hand. “I’m sure they’re very nice. Dina will be pleased. I said we had photos, and we do, mostly from when he was a kid. We took loads of snapshots on vacation, both the kids, actually, but I don’t think we have any portraits. Dina’s got his book from his modeling days, you know, and she complains the pictures in there don’t look like him.”

  Caitlin stared at him. She still held the envelope against her chest. “Maybe you should see these before you take them home.”

  “All right.” He felt his pocket, pulled out his glasses. Caitlin gave him the envelope, and Sam moved closer to the light coming in through the window.

  There were a dozen photographs, big enlargements, all black-and-white, eleven by fifteen.

  Interesting lighting. High contrast. Good balance, use of negative space. Caitlin had told him about photography. What to look for. They were all taken the same day, apparently. In her studio, a drape of white in the background. But no attempt to hide what was behind that: the concrete walls of the studio, the lights, the bare floor.

  Matthew in a pair of worn-out jeans hanging off his hips. His hair needing a wash, coming just to his shoulders. A young man’s stomach, every muscled defined. Some hair on his chest, which Sam recalled he had waxed off for a swimsuit ad. The vanity of these kids.

  The pant legs were too long, hems frayed. Big, high-arched feet. Standing there with his thumbs hooked in his pockets.

  Next photo. Matthew off the ground, legs tucked under, hair flying, covering his face, blurred by the movement. Arms stretched out, hands wide open, reaching. A tattoo just above his left nipple. Sam peered closer. A half moon. When the hell had he gotten that? It must have been covered with makeup for his bookings.

  Then Matthew standing still, arms crossed over his chest. Heavy biceps. He’d put on some muscle that summer. He was staring into the lens. Angular face, sharp nose. Not the pretty boy in the ads. Age already tracing faint lines into his wide forehead.

  What was he thinking of? So serious. Not a kid you could scare easily. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. A man. But not that, either. He was somewhere between. But where?

  Sam took a breath. The floor seemed to tilt.

  More photos. Matthew laughing, God only knew at what. Smile gone, then back again, a soft expression in his eyes. Gentle. Then a profile, hair thick and wavy on a pale cheek. Then again looking into the lens. Sam touched Matthew’s face and was surprised to feel only smooth paper under his fingertips.

  Lights making bright dots in Matthew’s eyes. White space around him getting less and less. Sam falling into the photograph.

  The camera had focused so closely. Each hair in his dark, straight eyebrows, each eyelash. A chip in one tooth, a blemish on his cheek. Full lips, a glint of saliva. Stubble on his chin. Not a heavy beard, not yet.

  Sam realized, after a time, that he was sitting on one of Caitlin’s boxes. He felt her lightly bump his shoulder, reaching to take the portraits. They vanished upward. He heard the paper whispering against the envelope.

  Then her hand was on his hair. He turned and reached for her, pressed his face into her stomach and cried. She wrapped her arms around his head.

  “I loved him.” Sam took a heavy breath, then another. “Whatever Matthew did or was or would have become, I loved him. And I never told him.”

  “He knew,” she whispered.

  Sam shook his head.

  “Yes. Believe me, Sam. Please.” She lay her cheek on his head. “Matthew told me. He said that’s how you are. He even laughed about it, said one day you’d get off his case. But he respected you so much, as a father. As a man.”

  Sam felt something shift and crumble in his chest. He ached from the pain of it. Caitlin knelt to take his face in her hands and say his name. She put her arms around him and kissed his eyes, his mouth. He groaned aloud, tasting salt and heat.

  He sh
ifted on the box to pull her between his thighs, and she pressed into him. He let her go long enough to look behind them, to find the box of towels, brace himself, and stretch out an arm. He flipped the box over and the folded towels inside spilled out, disarrayed.

  He couldn’t hold her closely enough, get into her far enough. She cried out, muffling the noise against his shoulder. Blood roared in his ears, shutting out everything but the feel, the sound, the smell of her. The tightness giving way. Sparks behind his eyelids, then a long, sweet, breathless fall.

  When Sam finally opened his eyes, his left leg was under a box that had tumbled down. Caitlin looked as if she’d been knocked unconscious, her hair in her face. He was still inside her. Everything wet. He thrust slowly, felt her tighten in echoes of the spasms that he’d felt before.

  Her breath was raspy. She still had her yellow shirt on, pushed up now above one breast. He kissed its peak, then straightened her shirt and pushed her hair off her face.

  She locked her arms around his waist. “No. Don’t get up yet.”

  “Caitlin. My pants are around my knees. What if that guy walks in here?”

  She made a low chuckle. “I think that would be as funny as hell.”

  “For who?”

  “Give me a towel,” she said, opening one eye.

  They dressed. Then Sam lifted the boxes into place again while Caitlin brushed her hair.

  She’d had them arranged in no discernible order before, but now he worked at getting the heavier ones on the bottom and the entire stack closer to the wall, out of the way. He watched her as he worked.

  “I should never have left you, Caitlin.”

  She paused, arms raised, hairbrush behind her head. She pulled it through her hair.

  He said, “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

  “It was,” she said. “You had a family. We wouldn’t have been happy.”

  “Neither of us is happy now. Nobody is. What if I’d had the guts to take what I wanted? Matthew called me a hypocrite. He was right. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so angry. Maybe he wouldn’t have self-destructed.”

  “Don’t, Sam. You’ll make yourself crazy, talking like that.”

  When she turned to put the brush away, he kissed her neck. “I want to start over with you.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “As if nothing had ever happened?”

  “We have to talk about it.”

  “All right. But not now.”

  “I know. When?”

  “In a day or two. Call me. I’ll give you the number.” She glanced at the white envelope on the cabinet. “What about the pictures of Matthew?”

  Sam looked at the envelope, frowning.

  Caitlin laughed. “I guess it would be hard to explain to your wife where you got them.” She bit her lips. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean that.” She picked up her camera bag, then put it down again. “I don’t know what to do, Sam.”

  “It’s more my problem than yours.” He grabbed her wrist. “I don’t want you to worry. I love you.”

  She stared at him. “Don’t say that.”

  “I love you, Caitlin. You want to hear it again?”

  Her face was pale. “What’s going to happen?”

  He said, “I don’t know yet, but it’s going to work out.” He pulled her close. “When can I see you?”

  “Not right away. We both need some time to think.”

  He tightened his grip on her arms. “Don’t go back to Frank Tolin. I’ll kill him before I let him touch you again.”

  “Sam!” She was horrified and pleased.

  “If he comes near you, I want to know about it. You hear me? Caitlin?”

  She nodded.

  Sam went over to pick up the portraits of Matthew. He held the envelope, turned it one way, then the other. Finally he said, “You’re right. I don’t know what to tell Dina. I’ll have to think about that, do it the best way for everybody.” He extended the envelope to Caitlin. “Keep them for me awhile. I promise you, it won’t be for long.”

  chapter twenty-seven

  Running at dawn, Sam pressed his forehead into his upper arm to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. The humidity was so thick he could chew it. His clothes were soaked and clinging to his skin.

  It had been a day and a half since he’d made love to Caitlin Dorn, forty hours, and there hadn’t been one of them when he hadn’t thought of her. Asleep, he had dreamed of her. He couldn’t look at a telephone without wanting to pick it up and hear her voice. He had called her close to eleven o’clock last night from a convenience store, keeping it brief. Hello, how’s it going? This was so fresh he didn’t want to jinx it. Before he made love to her again—and it wouldn’t be on the floor in a storage room—he’d have to straighten things out with Dina. Things would be done the right way. Or as close to right as he could get. Tuesday afternoon he’d come home just before Dina arrived, his emotions slamming between exhilaration and dread. He’d thrown his underwear and shirt into the washer, showered and dressed, then took his slacks out to the car to drop off at the cleaners. Neither Dina nor Caitlin deserved to be lied to; he wouldn’t do it anymore. There had to be some honesty. Some consideration.

  The lawns of the houses he passed were dewy, and the cars dripped as if it had rained last night. Silvery drops of condensation hung suspended at the point of every leaf and pine needle. Closer to his own house, Sam could see how overgrown the yard was getting. The grass was mowed, because the yardman came every week, but he hadn’t trimmed the flowers and hedges. Dina reserved that job for herself. Lately, though, she hadn’t shown much interest. Her obsession with gardening was gone, and she’d been putting in more hours at the office, the way she used to. Sam considered this an indicator. He had spent a considerable amount of time trying to predict how Dina would react when he told her he wanted out. She would be angry, but she wouldn’t dive into another depression. Since their raging argument about Caitlin Dorn three weeks ago, Dina had turned her back on him in bed. He hadn’t touched her, and she hadn’t seemed to care.

  The wrongful death lawsuit hadn’t come to anything, and wouldn’t, but it had at least given Dina a way to get over her grief. Now Sam could insist on ending their relationship with Frank Tolin. He didn’t know exactly what he would say to Frank, but he had promised Caitlin not to mention her name. Frank, it looks like this case is at a dead end—you come near Caitlin again, I’ll kill you—so let’s just call it off.

  Aware of his own calculations, Sam had thought about elections in November. Not smart, leaving a wife of twenty-two years for a former model, a prime witness in a highly visible prosecution. Better to wait—but till when? Till he was divorced? Till he was sworn in as state attorney? To wait would be a gross hypocrisy, but he didn’t want to rush into a decision without thinking it through. At forty-six, a man had to be a little more careful.

  As he jogged slowly up the driveway, cooling off, a minivan stopped in front of the house. He waved. The carpool mother inside, whose name he didn’t know, waved back. Melanie hurried out the front door with her book bag, pretending he wasn’t there. She finally gave him a grudging smile as she got inside the minivan, embarrassed that her father was out in the front yard dripping sweat into his socks.

  He didn’t know what to do about Melanie. Maybe she was at the age when kids had to be angry at the parents; he’d heard that somewhere recently. She didn’t get along too well with her mother, and if she wanted to live with him, that would be fine.

  There would be some adjustments to make, and maybe Melanie and Caitlin wouldn’t like each other at first, but with some reason on all sides, it would work out. Caitlin couldn’t have children herself, so she might become fond of his child. As for marriage—Sam couldn’t think that far ahead, but sooner or later the subject would have to come up. He couldn’t live with her unmarried. Not with Melanie to consider. Or his career. It couldn’t be done.

  It worried him that Dina would be vindictive. She had a tendency that way. He had thought of
divorce lawyers, property agreements, alimony. He would give the house to Dina, along with money to run it. Before Matthew died, she had been earning good money as a CPA. He’d have to pay alimony, but it wouldn’t last forever, once she was back on track. Sam would find an apartment with a good-sized room for Melanie, near here so she wouldn’t have to change schools. He would damn well have to be elected state attorney to afford it all.

  In the last day and a half, Sam had tried to apply some logic to the process, difficult because his own emotions were so shifting and tangled. But there had to be a solution, a way to balance duty, love, and common sense. If not a perfect solution, then at least an honorable one.

  Sam trotted upstairs with an old towel around his neck. In the bedroom, Dina glanced at him from where she stood by her dresser, naked except for her panty hose. She picked a bra out of a drawer. At forty-four, her hips and breasts had softened, and a C-section scar marked the pale skin of her belly. Sam had seen his wife’s body thousands of times, but now he felt embarrassed.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, and mopped his face with the towel. Walking past the bed he noticed her suitcase on the end of it.

  She said, “I’m going to drive to Tarpon Springs right after work. You don’t mind, do you? I’ve already told Melanie. I’ll be back Sunday.”

  Three days unexpectedly free. But three more days in limbo. He said, “Why do you have to go this weekend? I was hoping we could talk.”

  She looked at him a moment more, then took a white silk blouse off a hanger and put it on. “Tell me now, Sam.” She buttoned the blouse and waited for him to speak. Somehow she knew. She had guessed. I know what’s in your heart, she had once said. She had known before he had. “Is it the same woman or someone else this time?”

  Letting out his breath, Sam hung on to the towel around his neck. “Dina, I didn’t expect this. I never wanted—”

  “Let’s skip the part about how much you regret hurting me.” She went into her closet and came back out with a deep green suit.

  He said, “All right. Above anything, I want us to be honest with each other. We haven’t been happy. It started before we lost Matthew. Before I got involved the first time. You told me he knew about it. Maybe if I’d said something three years ago, if we’d worked it out then, things would have been different. So now what? Do we die along with him? Grow old with our backs to each other? Dina, we’ve got a daughter, and she has to know that love means more than that.”