A moment of vertigo, then everything comes swimming back. Center Street, in front of her. Her car, roughly where she’d left it before her quick trip to the ground. A total stranger beside her, holding her up.
“Are you okay?” the owner of the strong hands asks.
The words echo in her head for a few moments before registering. She takes a deep breath, and looks. It is a man. A nice-looking young man.
A very nice-looking young man.
And, it appears, he has just saved her life.
18
LAKEWOOD, OHIO
TWENTY-SIX YEARS EARLIER…
Lydia del Blanco sits on a thirdhand rattan love seat, by the front window of her small apartment on Lake Avenue, a glass of warming lemonade in her hand. It is just after noon on the Fourth of July and the sheers are blowing in the windows on gentle waves of sweet alyssum, followed by a lush duet of just-mowed grass and smoldering briquettes.
Fina is on the living room floor, teaching her little brother how to fold paper napkins for the picnic they will have later. A car cruises slowly up Lake Avenue and Lydia can hear the strains of a Def Leppard song float up from the car’s stereo. She begins to cry, softly, a strange habit of hers of late.
She cries because she has survived a brutal marriage.
She cries because her two children are healthy and bright and curious and beautiful.
She cries because they are safe here. It has been three years since she has seen her ex-husband. Two years since she’s had to hang up on him in the middle of the night and park herself by the front door, dozing off with a baseball bat in her lap.
She cries because, at long last, she and her children have a real life. Sure, the clothes are from Value City, not Higbee’s, and, true, she herded her little brood into McDonald’s more often than she liked, but they were making ends meet.
Plus, for the first time in her life, she has four hundred dollars saved. Four hundred. A miracle. It is stashed in the living room inside her favorite book of all time: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
The dream house with a yard? Now that is a still a few years away, she thinks.
She senses a presence, looks around to see that Fina is standing in front of her. A very concerned Fina.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“You okay, Mom?”
Am I okay? Lydia thinks. What does she mean? Lydia looks behind her daughter. Her son is standing there, grave apprehension narrowing his small face. Then it hits her. The tears. They think she is crying because she hurts.
“Come here.”
The children crowd around. She wraps her arms around them, holds them close. Her daughter, the tall, slender tomboy. Her son, the solid little man.
“Hey,” she says, breaking the huddle, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “Who wants ice cream?”
The boy and the girl both raise their hands. She finds her purse in the dining room, hands them two dollars.
“Come right back,” Lydia says. “We’re leaving in an hour.”
“Okay, Mom,” her daughter says.
As the back door closes, Lydia walks to the front window. She looks out, watching her children walk down the steps, hand in hand, then down the sidewalk toward Dinardo’s Superette, two blocks away. In an hour, the three of them will head to Edgewater Park to stake their place on the beach in order to watch the big fireworks display later.
Lydia busies herself, retrieving the basket from the hall closet, counting out napkins, plastic forks, paper cups. They will have hot dogs, potato salad, and root beer, her children’s favorites. Hers too, if she had to confess. Of all her talents, the culinary arts were screamingly absent. Maybe one day.
Let’s see, she thinks, is that everything? No. They’d need mosquito spray, of course. On the windowsill over the sink. She closes the wicker picnic basket, lugs it to the kitchen. When she turns the corner, her heart leaps into her throat.
Anthony del Blanco is standing just inside the back door. He is older, heavier, clean-shaven, and well dressed, but the demon is still in his eyes. Cocaine is still his bottom bitch, as he used to be fond of saying. She could smell the Early Times bourbon from ten feet away.
“Hi, babe,” Anthony says, closing the door behind him.
“Please,” Lydia says, her voice sounding small and weak and nothing like it had sounded in her dreams for the past three years, that booming, powerful voice of vengeance she had used as she pummeled her ex-husband to a bloody pulp.
“I need a couple of bucks, Liddie. Can you help me out?” He begins to cross the kitchen.
“Anthony… please. The kids will be back any second.”
“The kids. How are they?”
“Anthony.”
“Kinda hard to find you guys, you know?”
“It’s over between us,” Lydia says, taking one step backward for every step forward her ex-husband takes. “Over.”
“I understand that, sweetheart. And I’m willing to work with you on it. I really, truly am. Today, though, I need a couple of bucks. Okay? Today it’s about finances. So, why don’t you, for the first time in your stupid fucking life, do the smart thing?”
“I don’t have any money, Anthony. Look around. Does it look like I have money? We’re eating hot dogs for God’s sake.”
“You save, Lydia. You always did. Don’t know how you did it, but you always managed to put a couple of bucks away.”
“Please. Can’t you just be a man and walk away?”
The fire spreads in her ex-husband’s eyes.
She’d said the wrong thing.
Anthony pins her to the wall, holding her by the neck with his powerful left hand, a hand that easily wraps all the way around her throat. “I’m the only fuckin’ man you’ve ever known, Lydia. The only man.” His right hand goes to his belt buckle. “Want me to fuck you right now on the goddamn kitchen floor? Want me to show you what a man I am?”
Before Lydia can stop it, the revulsion rises within her, then boils over. She spits in his face.
Anthony rears back, sets himself, and explodes her nose with a pile-driver right hand.
Lydia sags, her vision clouded by a thick, crimson fog. Anthony holds her up with his left hand, threatens her again with his right, the timbre of his voice rising with his rage, his breath a warm breeze over a landfill.
“You gonna tell me where it is? Because there’s plenty more. You know that, right? Plenty more. I got all fuckin’ day.”
Lydia, at the very brim of consciousness, cannot speak. But she can raise her eyes. And her eyes speak volumes to a man with whom she lived for four years.
Anthony steps to the side and smashes her in the kidney with his right fist. Once. Twice. Three times. Hard, leveraged punches, expertly thrown. Anthony del Blanco was once a promising amateur middleweight boxer. “I’m sorry, what did you say, Liddie? ’Cause I coulda swore I just saw the cunt look and I don’t remember asking you no questions like Are you a cunt? Please show me.” He tightens the grip on the bloodied bodice of her dress. “Now where’s… the fucking… money?”
