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“Nothing. Actually, it seemed odd to me that Virginia would put something so obviously personal in with documents that were all business-related.”
“It’s from Mexico,” Lorraine said unnecessarily.
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“Postmarked seven years ago.” She withdrew the single page inside. After scanning it, she turned it over and read the signature. Gasping, she lifted her head to stare at Dennis Goodwin.
“You’re…you’re sure you didn’t know about this?” She was unable to conceal her shock.
“Lorraine, I don’t know anything about that letter. I was your mother’s lawyer, not her confidant. What she chose to place in the safe-deposit box had nothing to do with my role as her attorney.”
Lorraine sagged against the back of the chair and raised her hand to her throat. “Could…could I have a glass of water please?” Her mouth felt incredibly dry and her voice had gone hoarse. This couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be real. This was crazy.
“I’ll be right back.” Dennis stepped out of his office and quickly returned with a large paper cup.
Lorraine drank the contents in several noisy gulps and briefly closed her eyes, trying to take in what she’d learned.
“I’m sorry if something’s upset you,” Dennis said.
“You really haven’t read the letter?” she asked shakily.
“No, of course not. It would’ve been highly unethical to do so.”
Lorraine waited until she’d regained her composure enough to sound unemotional. “It appears, Dennis,” she said calmly, “that my father isn’t dead, after all.”
Two
T he nightmare woke Thomas Dancy out of a sound sleep. He opened his eyes and filled his lungs with air. A breeze wafted in through the open bedroom window and a full April moon cast fingers of cool light into the room. It’s just a dream, he reminded himself. One that came to him periodically. It was always the same, and despite the passage of almost thirty years; it hadn’t lessened in intensity. He relived every gut-wrenching detail—and always woke up at the same point, trembling with fear and terror. Again, as he did every time, Thomas felt unabashed relief that it had only been a dream. Again, he reminded himself that the worst was over. He’d walked through that hell once, and lived.
Thomas threw back the sheet and sat on the edge of the thin mattress as the darkness and the effects of the nightmare closed in around him. Even now that he was wide-awake, the fear refused to release him, had seeped into his bones.
He’d lost so much, back in the early seventies. By far his greatest and most profound loss had been his wife and daughter, but the dream had nothing to do with them.
In an effort to combat the lingering traces of depression—the dream’s legacy—he formed a mental picture of Ginny and tiny Raine the day he’d left for Vietnam. Ginny had been so young, so beautiful. Her face had been streaked with tears as she held their daughter in her arms. Despite everything that had gone wrong in the years since, that particular image never failed to lighten his heart.
She’d come to the airport to see him off to war. A war he didn’t understand and had no desire to fight. It had nearly killed him to leave his family that day. But in the end he’d been the one to do the killing.
Guilt surged up in him and he shook his head, refusing to allow his thoughts to stumble down that path. He rubbed his face with both hands, as if he could erase the last residue of the dream and all the memories it brought back.
He couldn’t.
The trembling started again, and he stood and walked over to the window and stared into the night. He gazed at the reflection of the moon over the smooth water of the bay, off in the distance. He needed a reminder that the war and its aftermath were far behind him.
As memories of the war faded, they were replaced by thoughts of Ginny. Despite the years, despite her abandonment, he still loved her. He’d made a new life for himself here in El Mirador, and he’d come to think of Mexico as his home. He was a simple man, living a simple life. He’d never be rich, but then, money wasn’t important to him. Ginny had understood that.
Ginny…
Earlier that night, before his dreams had erupted into the sights and sounds of a brutal war, his wife had come to him. He’d seen her as she was at twenty, and their love had seemed as real as the windowsill beneath his fingers.
His heart sang at the sound of her name in his mind. He remembered the first time he saw her on the university campus and how he’d dismissed her as virginal and uptight. But the cliché about opposites attracting was certainly true in their case. He’d embraced the beliefs of the late sixties—like student power and “doing your own thing”—ideologies she’d regarded with contempt.
As it happened, they’d attended the same English class and sat across from each other. Thomas took it upon himself to break through that barrier of reserve she held between herself and the world. Ginny was the challenge he couldn’t resist. He didn’t mean it to happen, but before he knew it, he’d fallen in love.
So had she.
A slow smile relaxed the taut muscles of his face as he recalled the first time they’d slept together. She’d been innocent, and while he was far from a virgin, that afternoon with Ginny was the first time he’d truly made love. The honesty of their lovemaking had forever changed him. Instinctively he’d known that, despite his other lovers, she was the only woman he’d really loved.
He wanted to marry her. His feelings had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with his heart. They met every day after class and took crazy chances to be together in either his dorm or hers. Once they’d made love, it was impossible to stop, and their physical need for each other grew until it dominated all common sense.
He realized Ginny was pregnant long before she suspected it. Good Catholic girl that she was, she’d refused to let him practice birth control. God knows, he’d tried not to get her pregnant…. But Ginny would wrap her legs around him in a way that drove him to the brink of insanity, refusing to let him withdraw early. It was as if she was purposely trying to make it happen.
By that time he was renting a two-room apartment off campus. His sole piece of furniture had been a worn-out mattress tucked in a corner. What cooking he did was on a hot plate. The lack of material wealth was of little concern to either of them. They were too much in love to care.
Ginny’s conservative family was shocked by the changes in her when she arrived home for the holidays with him in tow. Her hair was waist-length and her attire consisted of long cotton dresses and sandals. Her parents hadn’t liked him then and liked him even less when they discovered he’d gotten their honor-student daughter pregnant. It didn’t surprise him that her family strongly disapproved of their marrying. One of the things that distressed Thomas most in the years that followed was the rift he’d caused between Ginny and her family.
They wrote their vows themselves and at Ginny’s insistence found a sympathetic priest who agreed to perform the ceremony. Their lovemaking had been good before they were married, but afterward it was incredible.
With a wife to support and a baby on the way, Thomas had been forced to drop out of college and find full-time employment. At one time he’d seriously considered medicine as a career, but that had been an unlikely dream from the beginning. He and Ginny both knew that. Besides, the only way he could’ve attended medical school would have been on a scholarship, and his marks had fallen since his involvement with Ginny. Still, he wouldn’t have traded his marriage for even a full-ride scholarship to the best medical school in the country.
Although they lived below the poverty level, Thomas and Ginny were blissfully happy. At Lorraine’s birth, he was with Ginny as much as the doctors would allow. It’d been hell not to go into the delivery room with her. When the nurse came out and told him he had a daughter, Thomas broke into tears of joy. His heart had never known that kind of happiness.
Two days after they brought Lorraine home from the hospital, Thomas walked into a U.S. Army recruiting office and handed over his life to Uncle Sam. It wasn’t what he wanted, but he had no real choice. Little did he realize when he put on that uniform how much he was about to lose.
The nightmare was about Vietnam. Again and again he relived the day he’d held David Williams in a blood-filled rice paddy and watched him die. He’d been helpless to do anything but scream in anguish.
He wrote Ginny about David, but words were inadequate to describe his loss. More than a friend had died that day. Part of Thomas Dancy had died, too. The young man he was, the innocent twenty-one-year-old who believed in the power of love and goodness, also bled to death in that rice field. From then on, he was able to kill without conscience.
He’d gone to war a kid, trying to provide for his family, and returned a killer. It’d taken Ginny’s love to wipe away the ugliness of those long months in Vietnam. Halfway through his tour he’d flown to Hawaii on leave and never returned to the war. He despised what he’d become.
The army referred to him as a deserter, but Thomas knew that walking away then had saved his life. He would have lost his mind if he’d gone back. He’d hidden in San Francisco for a while and Ginny had come to him there, loved him, given him back his sanity. The bitterness and hatred inside him had slowly melted away until he was almost whole again, almost able to put all the horrors he’d seen out of his mind. But he felt a moral obligation to save others from what he’d experienced. Instead of fleeing to Canada as so many before and after him had done, he made it his mission to work toward ending the war. He joined an extremist group and made friends with its leader, José Delgado, who had family in Mexico. Because Thomas had some fluency in Spanish after four years of study, José insisted they speak the language when talking about their plans. It had started out as a safety measure and then later become a necessity.
“Thomas?”
Reluctantly he turned at the sound of his name.
“The dream again?” Azucena asked in a low whisper.
He nodded, not wanting to explain that his thoughts had been of Ginny and the daughter he no longer knew.
She slipped out of bed and walked to his side, her bare feet silent against the stone floor. “Come back to bed,” she urged in Spanish as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Soon,” he promised, unwilling just yet to let go of the memories.
“Come,” she enticed once more, splaying her fingers across his chest. “I will help you forget the bad dreams you have.”
“Azucena…”
Her response was wordless. She kissed his neck and pressed her heavy breasts against him.
He needed her then as he’d needed her so many times before. Despite the advanced state of her pregnancy, he kissed her with little gentleness and she responded with a hunger that quickly ignited his own. When he would have stopped, she pulled him to the bed and drew him close.
Azucena deserved a much better man than he would ever be. She deserved someone who would love her completely for herself. A man who could give his name to the child who grew inside her. It shamed him that she was only two years older than his daughter, but that didn’t stop him from burying himself between her thighs. In the moment of his release he cried out Ginny’s name. It wasn’t the first time, and he suspected it wouldn’t be the last.
Lorraine had read the letter so many times she’d memorized it. She’d given up sleeping at her own place and spent the nights at her mother’s house instead. While she stayed there, she slept very little. Exhausted and angry, she sat in the dark living room night after night and tried to make sense of what she’d learned.
She was vaguely aware that two weeks or so had passed since that afternoon in Dennis Goodwin’s office. Morning dawned and bright light spilled into the room and still Lorraine hadn’t slept. She wasn’t capable of dozing for more than an hour or two. The deep satisfying sleep of those at peace with life seemed forever lost to her.
The mother she’d known and loved was someone whose existence had virtually disappeared. Virginia—or the person she’d pretended to be—was completely out of reach now. Her actions were beyond Lorraine’s understanding—or forgiveness. Lorraine felt as if the foundation of her entire world had crumbled beneath her.
Although she knew each word of the letter by heart, she removed it from the envelope and read it once again.
Dearest Ginny,
Today is our daughter’s twenty-first birthday. Where did all those years go? It seems only yesterday that I bounced Raine on my knee and sang her to sleep. It hurts to realize how much of her life I’ve missed.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but I never stopped loving you or needing you. I wish things could have been different for us. All I ask of you now is that you tell Raine the truth about me.
The decision to tell her I was dead is one we made together. At the time it seemed the right thing to do, but I’ve regretted it every day since. You know that. You also know I’m a man of my word. I’ve done as you wanted and stayed out of your lives, but I’m pleading with you now to tell Raine the truth. All of it. She’s legally an adult and old enough to make her own judgments.
I’m teaching at a small school in a coastal town called El Mirador on the Yucatán Peninsula. You can reach me by phone at the number on the bottom of the page. The school will make sure I get the message.
Are you well, Ginny? Do you lie awake at nights and think of me the way I do of you? Are you happy? This is my prayer for you, that you’ve found peace within yourself.
I’ll always love you.
Thomas
Three truths hit Lorraine full force each and every time she went over the letter. First and foremost, despite what she’d been told, her father was alive and well. Second, he loved her. Last—and what had the most profound impact on her—her mother had lied to her all these years.
There was a loud knock at the front door, yanking Lorraine from her thoughts.
She wasn’t surprised to find Gary standing on the other side of the screen door. “I thought you’d be here.” He glanced into the living room and eyed the disarray.
“What time is it?” she asked, although it was obviously morning.
“You were due at work an hour ago.”
“Is it that late already?” she asked. She drifted around the room, picking up books and papers and videotapes, piling them neatly on a shelf. Anything to avoid looking at him. Anything to delay telling him what she’d done.
“I don’t know what to do to help you anymore,” he said, lifting his palms in a gesture of helplessness. When she didn’t answer, he walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard, then pulled out a tin of coffee.
Lorraine followed him.
“It might be a good idea if you dressed for work,” he suggested pointedly.
Rather than argue with him, she did as he asked, taking a quick shower and putting on her uniform, although she had no intention of showing up at the clinic. The scent of freshly brewed coffee greeted her when she returned. Gary handed her a mug and poured himself one.
“Let’s talk,” he said, motioning for her to sit at the table.
Once more she complied, because fighting him demanded too much energy.
He took the chair across from her. “Sweetheart, I know this is difficult, but you’ve got to get on with your life.”
She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. “I realize that and I will.”
“That’s a good start.” He sipped his coffee, then sighed heavily, as if he’d dreaded this confrontation. “You haven’t been yourself ever since that meeting with your mother’s attorney.”
“I know.”
He hesitated, as if unsure how far to press her. “I realize the letter upset you. Hell, it would’ve upset anyone, but you’ve got to come to grips with reality. Sleeping here every night, watching the same videos over and over isn’t going to help.” He paused and changed tactics. “It’s been a month now, and you haven’t dealt with your mother’s death any better than when it first happened.”
“You’re right, I haven’t,” she agreed, cradling the mug with both hands, letting its warmth seep into her palms. Somehow she managed to go in to work most days, but she’d been late a number of times. Again and again she sat in front of the television and escaped into her favorite movies. Movies her mother had loved, too—romance, adventure, suspense, anything that would take her mind off the lies Virginia had told her. Lies both her parents had conspired in.
“What do you do here every night?” he asked. “Besides watch Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant movies.”
“Do?” It seemed he had only to look around for an answer to that.
He glanced back into the living room and frowned.
Lorraine tried to look at the house through his eyes and had to admit its appearance must come as something of a shock. She was as neat and orderly as her mother had been. Both were meticulous housekeepers, yet Lorraine had gone about systematically tearing every room apart. The house was a shambles.
“What do you hope to prove?” he asked.
Lorraine was stunned by his lack of comprehension. “I’m not hoping to prove anything. I’m hoping to find what else my mother saw fit to hide from me.”
He stared into the distance as if it took some effort to assimilate her words. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you thought about talking to a counselor?” he asked gently. He risked glancing in her direction.
“You mean a mental-health professional?”
“Ah…yes.”
Lorraine couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. “You think I’ve gone off the deep end? That I’m losing it?” As her laugh turned to a giggle, she wondered if he wasn’t far from right. At times the sense of betrayal and pain threatened to strangle her. That her parents, particularly her mother, had chosen to lie to her was incomprehensible.
“I know how difficult this is for you,” Gary added, rushing his words. “I’m trying to understand, and I know the people at Group Wellness are, too, but there’s a limit to just how accommodating everyone can be while you deal with this.”
“I agree with you.”
Gary’s eyes revealed his suspicion. “You do?”
“I’m booking the next month off work.”
“A month?” She could tell he was taken aback by the news. “That long? I think a week or two should be sufficient, don’t you?”
“Not for what I have in mind.”
“I thought we’d decided to save most of our vacation time for our honeymoon and—” He stopped midsentence and his eyes narrowed. “Have in mind? You have something in mind?”
“I’m going to see my father.”
