You are one coldhearted man, Toby O’Dare, I thought, that you could so easily seek to exploit a new lease on life at the very crossroads where you destroyed another’s life with such abandon.
“I’ve lost you,” Liona said gently with a smile.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Too many thoughts, too many memories.” I looked at her and it was as if I were seeing her for the first time. Her face was so fresh, so trusting.
Before she could answer, we were interrupted.
One of the guides had come at my request, and I entrusted Toby to him for a tour of “the catacombs” and all the other wonders that the giant hotel had to offer. He was thrilled.
“We’ll have lunch when you get back,” I assured him. Though of course for them it would be an early supper as they had had lunch on the plane.
Now came the moment I had dreaded and most looked forward to, because Liona and I were alone. She’d taken off the red jacket, and she looked suitably shapely in the pink blouse and I felt an immense overwhelming desire to be with her, and to have nothing and no one interfere, and that included angels.
I was jealous of my son at that moment that he would very soon come back. And I was so aware of the angels watching that I think I blushed.
“How can you forgive me for disappearing like that?” I asked suddenly.
There were no tourists wandering the veranda. We were there alone at the glass table as I’d been so often in the past. We were sitting among the potted fruit trees and the lavender geraniums and she was the fairest flower of the lot.
“Nobody blamed you for going off,” she said. “Everybody knew what had happened.”
“They did? How?”
“When you didn’t show up for graduation, they figured you’d been out playing for tips. And it was easy enough to find out that you’d played all night. So you’d come home in the morning and you’d found them there. And after that, well, you’d just left.”
“Just left,” I said. “I didn’t even see to their burial.”
“Your uncle Patrick took care of the whole thing. I think the fire department might have paid for it, or no, your father was a policeman. I mean I think that they paid. I’m not sure. I went to the funeral. All your cousins were out in force. People thought maybe you’d show up, but everybody understood when you didn’t.”
“I got on a plane for New York,” I said. “I took my lute and the money I had and the few books I loved, and I got on a plane and I just never looked back.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“But what about you, Liona? I never even called to find out how you were. I never even called to tell you where I’d gone or what I’d done.”
“Toby, you know when a woman loses her mind like that, the way your mother did, when she kills her children—I mean when a woman does that, she can kill a boy your age too. There was a gun in the apartment. They found it. She could have shot you, Toby. She was just out of her mind. I didn’t think about me, Toby. I just thought about you.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time. Then finally,
“I don’t care anymore about it, Liona. What I care about is you forgive me that I never called you. I’ll get some money to my uncle Patrick. I’ll pay for the funeral. That’s no problem. But what I care about is you. I care about you and Toby and I care about, well, the men in your life and what all that might mean.”
“There are no men in my life, Toby,” she said. “At least there weren’t until you showed up. And don’t think I expect you to marry Toby’s mother. I brought Toby here for you and for him.”
Marry Toby’s mother. If I thought I could do that I would get down on my knees right here on this veranda and propose.
But I didn’t do that. I was looking off and thinking of the ten years of my life I’d wasted, working for The Right Man. I was thinking of the lives I’d taken working for “the agency” or “The Good Guys” or whoever the hell it was to whom I’d so cheerfully and exuberantly sold my eighteen-year-old soul.
“Toby, you don’t have to tell me what you’ve been doing,” she said suddenly. “You don’t have to explain to me what your life has been like. I haven’t had a man in my life because I don’t want my son to have a stepfather, and I was darned determined he was never going to have a stepfather of the month.”
I nodded. I was more grateful for that than I could put into words.
“There haven’t been any women for me, Liona,” I said. “Oh, now and then, just to prove I was a man, I suppose, there was some contact. But that’s all you’d call it: contact. Money was exchanged. It was never … intimate. It was never anything even approximating that.”
“You’ve always been such a gentleman, Toby. You were that way when you were a boy. You use all the proper words for things.”
“Well, it wasn’t very often, Liona. And improper words would give it an exuberant color it never had.”
She laughed. “Nobody talks like you do, Toby,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone like you. Never anyone who even remotely made me think of you. I’ve missed you.”
I know I blushed. I was painfully aware of Malchiah and my guardian angel, whether they were visible or not.
And what about Liona’s angel? Good Lord. For a split second I imagined a magisterial winged being behind her. Fortunately no such creature materialized.
“You still look innocent,” she said. “You still have that same look in your eye—like everything you see is a miracle.”
Me? Lucky the Fox, the contract killer? “You will never know,” I murmured under my breath. I remembered that The Right Man had told me the night we met that I had the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.
“You’re a bit heavier,” she said, as though she’d just realized it. “More muscular, but I guess that’s normal. You were so thin when you were a boy. But your head still has the same shape, and your hair’s as thick as ever. I could swear you’re more blond; maybe it’s the California sun. And your eyes look almost blue sometimes.” She looked away and said softly, “You’re still my golden boy.”
I smiled. I remembered now that she used to call me that, her golden boy. She would say that in a whisper.
I mumbled something softly under my breath about how I didn’t know how to handle the compliments of beautiful women.