Cloudburst

  I stared at her. It was sad the way people who were supposedly once so in love, who had shared so many happy moments and once cherished each other, got to a point where they could happily inflict pain and suffering on each other. Was love only one side of a coin, the other side being hate? Was it this easily flipped? It was something I had wondered about with my own parents, of course. I could understand why Jordan was so upset, so hurt, and why that fit snugly into anger. Like my mother, she had been betrayed. She had eagerly risked the most intimate and vulnerable part of herself, her heart, her faith in someone else, someone she believed would love and protect her forever, and now she was deeply wounded. How would she ever believe in anyone or anything again? This was really what Donald had taken from her and what my father had taken from my mother.

  “I’ll see to your food,” she said. “And bring it up to you myself. Just keep resting.” She paused. “What exactly is that in the bed with you?”

  I looked at the ship in the bottle. “A gift Ryder had left secretly in my locker before he ran off to join me,” I said. “This was one of the things he made, his hobby.”

  “How beautiful.” She smiled. “At least he left you with a treasured memory,” she said in the tone of someone who longed for one herself.

  She headed out. I put my hand on the bottle and closed my eyes.

  Jordan didn’t return with my food. Mrs. Duval brought it up instead. I could see from the look on her face that all hell had broken loose downstairs. She didn’t want to say anything about it to me, probably worried that I was too weak or fragile to take more tension.

  “Are they fighting? You can tell me, Mrs. Duval. I know what’s going on here.”

  “Like cats and dogs,” she said. “I’m to prepare one of the guest rooms for him. Thank goodness this house is big enough for them to avoid each other until it’s all settled.”

  “You and Mrs. Caro knew this was coming?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know Mrs. Caro’s powers,” she replied. “You want a nice piece of freshly baked apple pie, maybe with some ice cream?”

  “No. I think this will do, thank you.”

  “Just ring if you want something else,” she said, and left. I ate almost all of it. I thought I would get up, even go downstairs, but I was still wobbly, maybe more from the sedatives than anything else. I drifted in and out until Jordan appeared again, looking quite flustered.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. You don’t worry about me. His bluster won’t work this time. He’ll avoid us both until everything is settled.”

  “And Kiera?”

  “He says he’ll speak with her tomorrow, but I have my doubts. How do you feel?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Well, you’re not going to school until next Monday. That’s settled. I’ll have your work brought home. Don’t worry.”

  I didn’t argue. She looked more exhausted than I was, and I didn’t want to give her any more trouble.

  “I’m going to go take something myself and get some sleep. I need my strength for what’s to come,” she said. She kissed my cheek and left.

  The next two days were difficult for everyone at the March mansion. Donald took his anger out on the servants, complaining about work done on the grounds, the pools, anything and everything. He had no meals here, not even breakfast. Jordan’s initial glee and satisfaction with her legal actions against him waned. I could see the depression seeping into her face. Every phone conversation with one of her friends, despite how they sympathized, seemed more like salt rubbed into a wound. At dinner, she told me how she could hear the joy underlying their words.

  “Joy? How could they be happy about what’s happened to you?”

  “It makes them feel superior. Some of them actually came out and said they knew Donald was having affairs, making it seem as if I were the stupid one. Some claimed he even flirted with them, and one of my so-called friends told me he had propositioned her once. Everyone claimed she had kept it from me to avoid upsetting me. If that was true, if they really cared about how I felt and what the news would do to me, they would never have told me.”

  “Has Kiera called you?”

  “No,” she said, “and I’m not calling her. She’ll only upset me more by making me feel like this was somehow my fault. How about you?”

  “Nothing, not even an e-mail,” I said. I did think that was odd.

  “Well, you’re better off, too. You look much stronger. I know what we’ll do. You and I will go out to dinner tomorrow night. How’s that sound?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Thank goodness I have you here,” she told me. I saw how sincere she was and nearly cried myself.

  Afterward, I went to my room to do my schoolwork and read. My phone rang a number of times, as it had for the last two days, but as before, I let it go to the answering service and never even checked to see who had called. I wanted to be away from it all for a while. I kept checking my computer, however, looking for something from Kiera, but nothing came, and I didn’t want to contact her first. She was too indifferent and cold about Ryder’s death. For a while before I went to bed, I thought I might need another one of those sedatives, but I calmed myself and had only a cup of warm milk that Mrs. Duval brought to me at Mrs. Caro’s insistence.

  “Is Mr. March home?” I asked out of curiosity.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  I thought he might not come home, that maybe he had gone to spend the night or the next few days with one of his girlfriends, but he did come home very late. He woke me up when I heard him practically pounding the stairs and the hallway floors. He must have been drinking, because he shouted something nasty, too. I listened to see if Jordan was going to come out to confront him, but she must have taken one of her sedatives. I lay back again and closed my eyes. I really was looking forward to returning to school now. I needed to get back into the world out there, if only to escape from the turmoil here.

  Hours later, I woke when I thought I heard my door open and close.

  “Jordan?” I called. She didn’t respond.

  I started to sit up, and Donald suddenly appeared at the side of my bed. I was shocked. He was standing there dressed only in his underwear. In the light from a moon caught behind the haze of thin clouds coming through my windows, his eyes looked luminescent. He stared down at me with a crooked smile on his face. For a moment, he wobbled, and then he sat hard on my bed. It was more as if he collapsed on it.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh, don’t you worry,” he said. He looked back toward the doorway and then at me again. “You’ll be fine no matter what she and her lawyer do. You’re too precious to abandon.”

  “Why are you here?” I wanted to add, and in your underwear, but I didn’t dare.

  “I was thinking about you, just lying there above you, right above you, and thinking about how alone and frightened you must be down here.”

  “I’m okay,” I said quickly, trying to dismiss him, but he acted as if he hadn’t heard me. He leaned toward me, and I could smell the whiskey on his breath.

  “You have had bad luck when it comes to men. You just haven’t had the right guidance. Remember? Remember how I said I was going to take better care of you, spend more time with you, take you places, wonderful, beautiful, expensive places? I will,” he said, and he put his hand on my shoulder and fingered my hair. “You’re too precious to abandon or to leave with her.”

  “I’m all right, Donald,” I said more insistently. “Please, just go to sleep.”

  “Sure, you’ll be fine. Sure,” he said. “Don’t worry. I bet you’ve been full of worry about what would happen to you now since she created this Third World War. You don’t worry,” he muttered, and then brought his lips to my forehead so quickly I couldn’t avoid him. His hand slipped down my arm to my waist as his lips went to my nose. I started to pull away, but his grip on my waist tightened, and then he practically fell forward on me, pressi
ng his mouth against mine while his hand moved up and over my breast. I struggled, pushing up on his chest with all my might.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “I’ll show you how you’ll be cared for and loved. You’ll know you need not worry. Let me show you.”

  “Stop!” I cried. He had moved my blanket back to slide his legs under.

  “I’ll keep you with me. You don’t have to stay with her,” he said, pressing his cheek against mine.

  I continued to push and squirm, but he was so heavy, and the stink of his whiskey was turning my stomach. Then he suddenly licked my face as if I were an ice-cream cone, and that put me into more panic. When his hand started to pull at my nightgown, I turned my head and screamed as loudly as I could. I knew these walls were thick, and as I thought before, Jordan was putting herself to sleep every night now with a pill. No one would hear me and come to help me. I was crying harder and still pushing at him, even trying to dig my nails into his body, but nothing was working.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he pleaded. “Shh, shh . . .”

  His hands were groping me everywhere. I was growing exhausted with the effort to push him away. I felt myself slipping, and I was terrified that I would pass out. When I felt his hardness searching between my legs, I reached out to my right and grasped the neck of the bottle. I had been sleeping with it beside me. He was moaning and mumbling all sorts of promises when I swung the bottle and struck him in the back of his head. Miraculously, the bottle did not shatter, but Donald was stunned enough to stop. I was able to slip out from under him.

  “Get away from me!” I shouted. “Leave me alone!” I held the bottle up like a club, shaking, gasping.

  In his clumsy effort to lift himself, he fell off my bed. I sat back, turned on my nighttable lamp, and clutched my knees against my chest defensively. I watched him as he battled to get to his feet. He looked at me, realizing what he had done, I think, because his expression changed. He looked more like himself. He shook his head and turned and stumbled toward the door. Just as he reached it, it opened, and Jordan stood there in her bathrobe.

  “What are you doing in here like that?” she shouted at him.

  He stumbled past her and out. She flicked on more light and looked at me. I was sobbing hysterically.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, and rushed to me. She embraced me and rocked with me. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  She didn’t have to ask for any details. I was still gasping too hard to speak anyway.

  “He won’t come near you again. I’ll make sure of that. I promise. Oh, you poor child, you poor child.”

  The tears rushed from my eyes so quickly that I thought I would never stop crying. Nasty and ugly images from the past came attached to every tear. I saw my nearly unrecognizable mother trekking along on the beach, dragging her bag of old clothes and tools for calligraphy. I saw us being hit by Kiera’s car that rainy night, and I saw the images of my hospital stay. I saw Kiera and her friends tricking me into getting that painful tattoo, and I saw myself struggling to avoid being raped on the boat.

  “I’m afraid,” I finally said.

  “Yes, you are, and you should be,” Jordan said. “Don’t worry. I’m staying with you. He’ll be out of here in the morning or else,” she promised, and she took off her slippers and robe and lay beside me.

  It took quite a while for me to calm down. She spoke to me softly, held me, stroked my hair. When I looked at her, my mother seemed to slip in and out of her. Finally, I fell asleep again, this time with her hand in mine.

  When I woke in the morning, Jordan was already up and gone. I heard footsteps in the hallway, and I heard Jordan shouting orders at someone. I rose slowly and went to my door to peer out. Alberto and two of his men were carrying suitcases and garment bags down the hallway. Mrs. Duval followed, and then I saw Jordan and opened the door wider.

  “What’s happening?”

  She stopped in front of me. “I want him out of the house. After what he tried to do to you, he put up no resistance.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “I don’t care. If he wants to come back for anything after this, he has to call first to let us know. It’s either this or I call the police and have you talk to them.”

  Of course, she was right to be in a rage. I was still more frightened than angry about it. Jordan looked at my face.

  “Don’t you get like some of these women who find a reason to blame themselves. You did nothing to encourage this, Sasha. I had a bad feeling about his attitude toward you when he bought you that expensive necklace and talked about taking you places. As it turns out, he was unable, if I’m to believe him, to get three tickets to the concert he wanted to take us to. Remember that? Turns out that there were only two tickets, and guess who would be left home?”

  She looked toward the stairway.

  “It’s his way,” she said. “He often cut me out of things after Alena’s death. He was always taking Kiera here and there and coming up with reasons why I couldn’t or shouldn’t go along. He gave Kiera plenty of expensive presents, too.”

  What was she saying?

  “But surely, you don’t think . . .”

  “I don’t put anything past him,” she said. “I’ll send Mrs. Duval up with your breakfast.”

  “No. I’d rather get dressed and go down,” I said.

  “Good. Neither of us will be sickly, pathetic, and weak now.”

  She walked off with a determined gait, the anger, grit, and fortitude so evident that I thought I could see it floating down through her legs to strengthen each step she took. My mind was spinning because of the speed with which everything was happening. It was as if I was in a real California earthquake, only in this one, the trembling was coming out of my heart, where the fault line had always been.

  I closed the door and hurried to shower and dress. Just before I went down to breakfast, I paused at my computer. Maybe I did have Mrs. Caro’s sixth sense. I turned it on and waited for my e-mail to show. There were a number of messages from the girls at school, three from Jessica alone, of course, but there it was, Kiera’s.

  I highlighted it and went to it.

  Like before, it was short and nasty.

  I bet you’re happy now.

  20

  Recovery

  One of the first things Jordan decided to do was literally take over Donald’s office. She was in there first thing in the morning to begin her education. She wanted to be as intelligent as she could be whenever it came to any aspect of their fortune. I went in to watch her after breakfast. She had papers piled on the desk and was sorting them out in separate piles on one of the tables. As she worked, she mumbled to herself. Finally, she realized I was there, too.

  “Oh. Did you have breakfast?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked around. “I can tell you this, Sasha. I am not going to be one of those weak, pathetic women who look like terrified, injured kittens when the whole thing is over. And if one more of my so-called friends tells me how sorry she is for me, I’ll scream so loudly in the phone that it will break her eardrum. Feel sorry for Donald, I’ll tell her. He’s the pathetic creature, not me.”

  She paused, seeing the look of shock on my face. I had never seen her this intense. I hoped her anger wasn’t making her so crazy that Donald would get the better of her.

  “Sorry I’m shouting,” she said, and sat hard in the desk chair. “You know, I actually found some names and numbers of the girls he was seeing in different parts of the country. They were right here in his top drawer. How’s that for chutzpah? You know what that is?”

  “Bold, nervy?”

  She smiled and took a deep breath, finally calming herself a bit. “Seems like you’re in the middle of a hurricane, I know. I am sorry about that,” she said. “I really am.”

  “I don’t see how you could be blamed for anything.” I hesitated and then decided to say it. “Besides, Kiera is already blaming me.”

  “What do you mean?”
/>
  “She sent me a one-sentence e-mail this morning.”

  “Which was?”

  “ ‘I bet you’re happy now.’ ”

  Jordan lowered her head to think a moment and then looked up. “I don’t know what I’ll do about her now. She’s old enough to make her own decisions legally, and she has quite a trust fund that Donald insisted she be able to access when she was twenty-one, even though we knew she would not be finished with college, if she ever finishes. Now that I no longer want to be the obedient little rich wife and mother, I feel obligated to make her see how imperfect her supposedly perfect father is. I gave in too quickly on everything, and I felt sorry for Donald, too, after we lost Alena. I guess I let him get away with far too much. He took advantage of my sympathy.

  “I am sorry now about the way he treated Ryder Garfield,” she continued. “Perhaps if I had been more sympathetic to Ryder’s problems, none of this might have happened.”

  “You did what you thought was right,” I said. “Anyway, you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  I thought I knew what was bothering her. It was understandable.

  “When you called Kiera and spoke to her roommate, you couldn’t keep that information from Ryder’s parents. It would have been irresponsible of you, maybe even illegal.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, pulling herself back in the chair. “Kiera’s roommate? When did Kiera get a roommate? She had such trouble with the girls in her dorm ever since she was enrolled that I didn’t think she would ever get another roommate.”

  “But she went to Europe with them last summer.”

  “No, she didn’t go to Europe with them. She went on a group trip Donald arranged to match the one the school was doing. Did she tell you something different?”

  “She has to have a roommate now,” I insisted. “Whom did you speak with when you called looking for us?”

  “I never called, Sasha. I don’t understand what you’re saying. I thought you knew what had happened.”