Vanished

down at Teddy then, and smiled at him, and pulled him close beside her. “Teddy, this is an old friend. His name is Charles, and sometimes he acts a little crazy, but he's a nice man. Would you like to say hello?” Teddy shook his head firmly and hid in the folds of her fur coat. They had spoken much too freely, but at four, a lot of it had missed him. The tone hadn't, the anger, the passion, but the history was too complicated for him to follow.

“I'm sorry if I frightened him.” He looked briefly remorseful, but still like a madman. He hadn't shaved since the day before, and everything about him looked wild and woolly.

“You should be. And for what? Can you really hold this against me?” He looked at her and then at the boy long and hard, and when he looked back at her, the look in his eyes hadn't mellowed. Instead he frightened her more, and he seemed even drunker. For the first time in a long time, she knew real terror. It reminded her of the bad times when Charles had become a stranger.

“He should be mine. By all rights… he should be.” He was staring hard at Teddy, hidden in her coat, and Marielle looked at Charles firmly.

“But he isn't yours, Charles.”

“What right did you have to move on… to do this… to have a child without me?” As he said the words, his fury seemed to be growing.

“You agreed to the divorce, I had every right.” She refused to be bullied.

“You said that if I didn't, it would kill you.”

“It nearly did.” And they both knew she meant it.

“I'd rather you were dead than have this child without me.” His eyes were like daggers into her heart as he said it, and she shrunk back from him, frightened and disgusted, wondering how she had ever loved him, reminded of how irrational he could be, and why she had left him.

“Charles, stop it.” He reached out and grabbed her arm then, and Teddy let out a small shriek and jumped behind her. “You're frightening the child. It's not fair. Stop it!”

“I don't give a damn. He's mine… by all rights, he should be.”

“Stop!” She spat the word at him, no longer afraid of him or anyone as she wrenched her arm free. She was not going to watch her life fall around her. “He's not yours, and neither am I…and Andre wasn't ours either. No one belongs to anyone else in this world. We all belong to God, and we're here on loan to each other…and when the loan is up, it's over…and it's terrible…and it hurts like hell…and sometimes it comes much too soon…but we didn't own him…you didn't own me, or I you…and I don't own Teddy.”

“You love him, don't you?”

“Of course I do.”

“And he loves you?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you have that, and I have nothing?”

“Maybe because I'm lucky. Or maybe because Malcolm felt sorry for me… or maybe just because that's the way it is, or I'm willing to pay a price you aren't.”

“And what price is that? What price did you pay to marry him?” She had married a man she didn't love and who didn't love her and she knew it. It was not as easy as one might have thought. But it was also something Charles would never even have considered doing for a moment. “What exactly did you give up when you married him?”

Hope…love…tenderness…the kind of love and passion they had once shared…the kind of love that she knew existed. “Everybody gives up something when they get married.” Out of loyalty to Malcolm, she would never have told Charles the truth. “Perhaps I gave up the past.”

“I'm deeply impressed by your sacrifice,” he said scornfully, glaring at her through the booze.

“I'm deeply impressed by your behavior. You're as bad as ever.” He had upset Teddy and her, and they had resolved nothing. There was nothing to resolve anymore. It was over. “There's no reason to do this to me, or yourself. What do you think you're going to accomplish?” But he was staring at Teddy again, and the way he looked at him made her nervous. He was like that when he drank. It had happened in the old days too, he would drink too much and stay drunk all night and the next morning, and finally go more than a little crazy. He had destroyed an entire hotel room once, and a bar, and a restaurant, and nearly killed two men… and her, but only once. Only once…but she knew what he was capable of. It was hard to forget it.

“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.