Vanished

“I apologize.” He looked at her unhappily, but he didn't sound as though he meant it. He looked down at Teddy then, who was peeking around his mother. “I apologize to you too, young man. I have been extremely rude to you and your mother. It's a bad habit I have, but I've known her for a long time, almost since we were children.” They had almost been children then. Eighteen and twenty-three …My God, they'd been babies. And then he looked at Teddy more seriously. “One day, I would like to get to know you.” Teddy didn't look as though he reciprocated the feeling, but he nodded politely. “I had a little boy once too … his name was Andre. …” Charles's eyes filled with tears as he looked at Marielle again. “I'm sorry …maybe it's just because yesterday was so difficult …and seeing you …dammit …” He looked away and sniffed to try to clear his head. “Why is it always just there? Why does it hurt so damn much? Is it like that for you too?” He looked at her questioningly, but he was calmer again, and she nodded.

She had told him that at church the day before too, but he'd forgotten. And he'd started drinking the moment he left her.

“We should go back now,” she said again. “It's getting late.” Teddy had to have lunch, and go to the birthday party he was attending with Miss Griffin. In the end, it hadn't been much of a morning. In fact, it had been horrendous. And she was sorry. Her time with Teddy was so precious. “I'm sorry we ran into you like this.” It had been easier the day before, before he knew about her son. Now he was filled with anger and resentment. All during the night, he had drowned himself in alcohol and self-pity. But now he had set his feelings ablaze with the incendiary fumes of jealousy and fury.

“I'm leaving next week. I decided yesterday. Will you see me?”

She shook her head, holding Teddy's hand firmly in her own.

“Why not?”

“You know why. You're angry at me anyway, if we see each other it will just make things worse. Why torture ourselves with what we can't have now?”

“Who's to say what we can't have? You're not happy, it's written all over you. You're nervous, taut, wound up like a tight screw, your insides all tied in a knot. We can have anything we damn well want, if we've got the guts to take it” He seemed threatening somehow, when he said it.

“That's a nice attitude, Charles.”

“I can do whatever I damn well please.”

“How fortunate for you.”

“I want you.”

“Don't say that.” Her eyes blazed at him. “And even if you do, so what? We 'take it,' as you put it, and you leave and go back to Spain. Where would that leave me?” She was trying to reason with him, but it wasn't easy in the state he was in.

“Maybe it'll leave you happier than you are today. Or maybe you'd like to come with me.” The simplicity of it almost made her laugh. After six years she was supposed to just walk out on Malcolm, and their child, and go back to Europe with Charles as though nothing had ever happened. He really was more than a little crazy. “You could even bring the boy.”

“Your hospitality overwhelms me. And Malcolm? What happens to him after all this?”

“You win …you lose … he loses …”

“That's a rotten thing to suggest, Charles, and you know it. You also know me well enough to know I wouldn't do it.”

“Perhaps,” he said, grabbing her wrist in his powerful hand, “perhaps …you could be forced. …”

“Charles, this is not Spain, and you are not fighting for my freedom. This is ridiculous,” but she was trying to cover the fact that the look in his eyes had scared her.

“How ridiculous would it be if I took something you wanted—or loved—very much …and then perhaps you could be …induced, shall we say … to join me?”

“What exactly are you saying?” Even the thought of what he was suggesting terrified her.

“I think you understand me.”

“You wouldn't do a thing like that.” He was suggesting that he kidnap Teddy in order to make her go with him, but he was mad, and even he wouldn't do that. Or would he? His eyes said he would. But history said he couldn't. Or could he?

“It all depends on how desperate I am, doesn't it? …doesn't it? …” He suddenly let go of her wrist and laughed, and she looked at him with terror. It would be a relief when she knew that he was gone again. She was suddenly sorry that she had run into him at the church the day before. Perhaps he still mourned for Andre too, but it had obviously twisted him into someone she no longer knew and didn't want to.

“If you ever did anything like that, I want you to know that you would never get away with it, and instead of making me follow you … I would kill you …and so would my husband.”

“You terrify me.” He laughed drunkenly again.

“You make me sick. We had something beautiful that I've cherished in my heart for twelve years …along with the memory of someone sweet and pure …and you use it in this vile way to poison yourself and everyone around you. That isn't what he was about, and it isn't what you were about then.”