“Is he mental? Who does that?”
Rolling my eyes, I continue, “You know, he’d done so much shit to me over the years, and all I wanted to do was get him really good. So when we were seventeen, I stole my dad’s car and parked it in some gas station parking lot a couple of miles from our house. When I got home, I dumped the car keys in Ian’s room and waited for Dad to get up for work. Well, my little plan worked at first. Dad blamed Ian for the missing car and I told Dad I saw a dented-up Buick like his parked at the Conoco down the street. Anyway, long story short, I guess Dad had been late for work a few times when Mom had been sick and he was on his last write-up. His boss said if he was late again, he was fired, no questions asked.”
“My god. What happened?”
I pause. I’ve never told this story, not to anyone, not out loud. Maritza’s hand lifts to my back and she scoots closer.
“I told him the truth,” I said. “And he left. We don’t know if he was walking down to the Conoco to get his car or if he’d just had enough … caring for his sick wife and trying to support his six kids … but he never came home after that. The next day, we got a call. Someone found his body in a ditch off the highway a few miles from our house. He’d been mugged, assaulted, left for dead. He died for a Timex watch and the twenty-dollar bill in his wallet.”
My hands form a bridge over my nose and I take a few moments to compose myself.
“Isaiah …” Maritza nudges her cheek against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“My whole family blamed me for a long time. Now they don’t talk much about it,” I say. “Ma doesn’t know exactly what happened of course—she doesn’t know about the car keys thing and me trying to get back at Ian. But everyone else does. Ian made damn sure they all knew.”
“So when your brother said you had demons and that you ruin lives … is that what he was talking about?”
“I imagine so, yeah.”
Her hand lifts to cup the side of my face and for a moment we just sit and breathe, her warmth mixing with mine.
“I hope someday you’ll be able to let that go,” she says. “I hope you’ll be able to stop blaming yourself.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe someday.”
Sitting up, she rests her palm on my face and her eyes lock on mine. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
A moment later, her pillow soft lips graze mine and she breathes me in, but before we kiss, I have to say one more thing.
“I’m not a perfect man,” I say, my voice low and soft. “And I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. But letting you go? Letting you walk away without a fight? That might be the biggest one of all. And I can’t do that, Maritza. I can’t let you go.”
Pulling her into my lap, I hold her stare and reach for her face, guiding her mouth closer, until I taste her familiar strawberry lips and peppermint tongue.
“Then don’t,” she says a moment later, coming up for air. “Don’t let me go.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Maritza
It’s crazy how much life can change in an instant.
One minute I’m serving pancakes, the next minute I’m spending a week with an Army corporal who makes my stomach somersault every time I look at him.
One minute I’m writing him letters, the next minute I’m writing him off.
But now we’re here—in the present moment.
And all those minutes have added up, turning into days and nights and weeks and months and now that same broody Army corporal is standing in my grandmother’s trophy room listening to her wax poetic about her Hollywood golden years.
“And that’s how I knew Richard Burton was going to go back to Elizabeth,” Gram says with a melancholic sigh, twisting her pearls around her fingers. “They were just meant to be. But it’s all right. Everything worked out. Had I not met my husband, I wouldn’t have had my two boys or my two beautiful granddaughters.”
Isaiah turns toward me and I give him a wink.
“Everything always has a way of working out, doesn’t it?” he asks.
“Always.” Gram smiles. So far she seems to be quite taken with him, at least judging by the fact that she’s been leading him from room to room ever since breakfast this morning, showing off her awards and movie props and costumes. Isaiah seemed to take a particular interest in the white bikini from the Davida’s Desire poster, even going so far as to jokingly ask if she ever loaned out any of her costumes.
I smacked his arm when she wasn’t looking.