Nature Of Desire: Mirror Of The Soul Read online

  “The moment she turned eighteen, she packed her bags and left. I lost track of her for ten years except for the shock of receiving two postcards from her over that time period, telling me she was learning about the tea trade, traveling through India, Asia. And then as you know, she came back here to open Tea Leaves.”

  “It’s strange, that she would come back here.”

  And thank God she did. Or I’d never have met her.

  “It’s not strange at all.” She regarded him. “This is where David was. Is. Will always be, in her mind. So now you know.

  “Marguerite chose to manage her own emotions. I give her credit for how well she has done. But from what I’ve observed and learned, she has dealt with that unresolved anger by a combination of the obsessive-compulsive, controlling behavior we discussed and outright suppression, an even more destructive method. And you already know that she has a tendency toward violence when pressed.” Her gaze flickered over his damaged face.

  Her voice spoke dark truths, truths he didn’t want to hear, but she pressed on, ruthless. “When I look at you, I can tell you want to give Marguerite happiness. But I want you to consider carefully that she may have found peace and sacrificed happiness for it. As I said, that may be the best she can do.”

  Tyler closed his eyes, put his hand on the bridge of his nose to relieve the tension pounding there and winced when he hit the tawser strike. “Mrs. Gupta—”

  There was a quiet clink of china as she pushed cup and saucer farther back on the table. His eyes opened, surprised as she reached over and captured both of his hands in hers, linking them in an intimate and almost familial pose. Her dark eyes searched his. “Those are my best theories. Counseling experience, textbook cases, research articles. But here’s one more. And this is the most important thing I want to say to you.

  “I believe that faith and love can heal things science says are impossible. Marguerite Perruquet has haunted me for all these years. She has always been in my prayers as I hoped for her happiness. So hear my words as a counselor and be guided by them. But also be guided by your love for her. For if we can’t bring a child out of darkness and save her soul with love, then I’m afraid there’s little hope for the world.”

  Chapter Five

  Marguerite threw herself into her routine. If she too often found herself sitting at her desk staring into space, entranced by the way it felt to let her fingers drift over the upper slope of her breast, that was fine. Or tracing her lips, imagining Tyler kissing her there. Passionately, that hard male demand. Coaxing, with seductive persuasion. Casually, with the brief intimacy of committed couples that said “we belong to each other”. I’m yours.

  She hesitated, picked up a pen and drew the letters of his name carefully on her steno pad. T.Y.L.E.R. W.I.N.T.E.R.M.A.N. Winterman and the Ice Queen. An absurd coincidence which meant nothing really, but to a fanciful mind it could. One that still had girlish hopes.

  She crushed the paper in her hand, holding it tightly. Brought it to her forehead, closed her eyes and sat that way for some time until she gradually became aware of a hand on her shoulder.

  “I don’t think—” Gen’s voice.

  “It’s all right. I appreciate you showing me to her office.”

  Marguerite looked up into the face of Komal Gupta. She looked like one of her Mrs. Allens, her face bearing the lines of wisdom and experience. The tidy hair, the smock shirt and slacks sitting comfortably on her pear-shaped body, a neckline of jade stones around her neck.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Marguerite said. She pressed her face into that soft, motherly midriff under the pendulous breasts and began to shake.

  Soft smells, talcum powder. Like her mother, only without the odor of alcohol that would come through her pores. This was simple. Soap, something curry-smelling.

  She breathed deep, shuddered. So many new things had happened to her in the past week. This was the most alien of all. Something inside her was simply crumbling away and she didn’t know in which direction to scramble before the whole ground slid away, tumbling her into quicksand.

  Komal’s arms went around her shoulders, her head lying down on top of hers. So much like Tyler, as if she had the right. People who loved you, truly loved you, they could touch you. It was okay. It was good. It had been a long time since she’d remembered that.

  “Oh, my sweet little girl,” Komal murmured. “I have missed you so very much.”

  The first sob burst out of her like a hard cough, rough, jarring her lungs, then came another and another. Her fingers sank into the woman’s hips as Marguerite held her face tight to her, hiding the hideous folding of all her facial features drawn so taut her head began to pound. But then there was salt on her lips, wetness sliding through those folds, making her lashes soft and wet on her cheeks. She was shuddering, afraid a bone was going to break or a muscle tear, but the seventy-year-old woman was holding her in close, not letting anything break.

  “Oh, baby girl,” she whispered, over and over, a light rocking that went on forever, the bliss of a mother’s womb in a hug. Marguerite remembered how often she’d wished she and David would have always stayed there, that nebulous memory that rare children had, a subconscious prenatal memory of love. Happiness. The touch of her father’s hand on her mother’s stomach as she’d seen in pictures. So happy. Loving. Not possessed by evil, though she could see in those pictures now the dormant potential, waiting for the events that would release the darkness in him to its true purpose. Her mind went away from him, turned to Tyler’s amber eyes. Tyler, who had faced crisis and trauma, had weathered it and offered love and protection instead of hate and punishment.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there in Komal’s comforting hold, letting all the worry, fear and anxiety spill out of her in tears and muffled sobs. She only knew the plump hand never ceased its stroke and the squeezing reassurance of her hold did not ease. Not until she herself felt the compulsion of a lifetime kick back in to make her straighten, ease back, wipe her own eyes and fumble for a napkin beside her half-finished cup of tea.

  “I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat, heard the hoarseness in her voice. “I didn’t…please, have a seat.” She pressed the tissue to each of her eyes carefully, wiped her nose, crumpled it and placed it in the wastebasket next to her desk, stared at the surface for long minutes. Inventory records, her blinking computer screen with her financial software, the three tiny teacups holding sample teas sent to her by a company in India.

  “India is beautiful, you know. I’ve been.”

  “Have you? Is it the first place you went overseas?”

  She nodded, still focusing hard on everything before her. “The first time I got off the plane, I thought, ‘This is different. Separate.’ Somewhere else, where no one knows me, no one ever has to know me.”

  “For it is through others we know ourselves.”

  Marguerite closed her eyes. “That’s what he’s done. He held a mirror up in front of me. It’s me, but it’s not the me I thought it was. He loves me. I know nothing about love except the pain of losing it.”

  “You know love, Marguerite. You had it in David, your mother. Even at one time with your father.”

  “Then it’s a temporary, transitory thing, as substantial as standing on water.”

  “There was once a man who so believed in the power of love that he did walk on water. Love is not temporary. It endures everything even if it changes form. Even when it must be put away to handle harsher things, it’s always there, ready to be called.”

  Marguerite made herself turn her head a millimeter at a time, fighting her natural compulsion all the way to avoid looking at Komal. The woman’s eyes were wet, cheeks stained with tears. She swallowed, handed Komal an extra napkin. “I’m sorry. I… You don’t even know who I’m talking about.”

  “Tyler Winterman, I suspect.” The woman nodded at Marguerite’s surprised expression. “He came to see me.”

  Marguerite pushed back from the desk, stood up.
“He what?”

  “He’s a very determined man. And very protective when it comes to you. He came out of love, not to harm. And that’s why I’m here as well. I feel you have a right to know he talked to me, though I believe he would have told you eventually. For though he’s an arrogant, overprotective male—” her mouth was touched by a smile, “he’s also an honest one. He was already feeling a little boy’s guilt standing on my doorstep. He’s quite something. A good match, for so are you.”

  “He’s a pain in the ass. Meddling…”

  “Arrogant,” Komal supplied again, helpfully.

  “It needs to be tattooed on his chest as a warning to all women.” Which gave her an interesting picture of him in a cape, particularly the tights. She was losing her mind.

  “Oh, God, I’m losing my mind.”

  “No.” Komal laughed. “You’re in love.”

  “What I need to do is chain him to a wall and stripe his interfering ass raw. What did you tell him?” Marguerite paced, stopped to stare out her two-way mirror at her afternoon clients. A frown crossed her face, her eyes narrowing.

  “Only what I thought he needed to know, to understand what an incredible woman you are to have achieved so much for yourself. He already knows that about you. But he was afraid of hurting you with a misstep. By pushing too hard. I’m afraid as well. That you’ll—”

  “Excuse me just a moment,” Marguerite said abruptly. She laid a hand on Komal’s shoulder before she stepped out of her office. Komal rose from her chair in time to see Marguerite through the large window, moving out into her dining area to a young boy at her front door. He sported a basketball shirt to the knees of his baggy jeans. Speaking very quickly, he made nervous gestures, his eyes wide, an anxious child. Marguerite spoke to him briefly, gave him a reassuring smile, then pivoted toward the kitchen. As she passed her last occupied table, her expression changed from professional pleasantness to a malevolent intent that startled Komal. She was still on her feet when Marguerite stepped back into her office.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just something I need to address. It will only take a moment, then we can continue our discussion.”

  She reached around her office door, picked up the baseball bat behind it, hefted it and strode across the kitchen.

  “Ah, hell. Marguerite.” Chloe dropped a tray to the counter and dashed after her boss, colliding with Komal. Both women recovered, hurrying after the fluttering blonde strands of Marguerite’s hair as she slapped her hand against the side screen door and strode down the path toward her community garden and playground.

  The man in expensive gangster wear—gold chains, tennis shoes worth three figures and an oversized football jersey—had his back to her. Marguerite assumed he sensed danger in the way that the worst scum of the earth did, for he spun when she was still over two yards away. A tiny strip of children’s stickers were in his hand, still half extended to ten-year-old Aleksia, one of the neighbor children who watched her brother while their mother worked two jobs.

  “This is private property,” Marguerite snapped. “You get your ass out of here.”

  “You get out of my face, bitch, if you don’t want it messed up.” The sticker fluttered toward the ground as he reached under his shirt.

  Marguerite heard Chloe’s scream, but as the gun flashed out, she was already swinging the bat, connecting with his hand hard, sending the firearm clattering into the monkey bars.

  “What the fuck—”

  She moved in, slammed another stroke on his raised forearm. He howled, she swung again, beating him to his knees, fast, brutal, repeated strikes, no room for mercy or hesitation. He was crawling away, scrambling, stumbling. She got him in the ribs, the kidney. She hoped she was killing the son of a bitch, making his internal organs bleed, giving him a slow death.

  “Get the hell off my property. You will never get these children here. Never.” It thundered out of her, her scream like the fury of a storm.

  He rolled into the street bleeding, struggling to his feet to move as fast as he could away from her park. His eyes were stark white with terror, the knowledge in them that he was staring at death. Marguerite stopped at the fence entrance by a picket gate where she’d planted spring flowers several days ago. There was even a lovely welcome sign that Chloe had stenciled with a teacup and an orchid curling over it. Watching him stagger down the street, she didn’t move until he disappeared, until the rage receded and she could feel the eyes of those in the neighborhood who’d come out on their porches to see what was going on.

  She turned back to the park. No parents present, not in a neighborhood where the responsible adults often had to work multiple jobs at all hours to make ends meet, trusting their children’s street savvy to keep them safe. Tomorrow she’d call a security agency and have a camera installed so she could watch the park area at all times. Shifting her gaze, she registered a white-faced Chloe and a stunned-looking Komal.

  She clasped both hands around the bat’s fat top and struggled to center herself as Komal took a tentative step toward her.

  “Miss M?”

  She became cognizant of Aleksia touching her forearm. The child’s short brown fingers, the pink skin beneath her nails. In her other hand she held a fistful of the stickers. “I told him I’d give them out to my friends, so’s he gave me a bunch. That way he can’t give these to nobody. And I picked up the ones he dropped, too.”

  Her brother, the boy who had come to warn her, was now at her side. “Stupid ass. He shoulda knowed who he’s messing with. You don’t mess with Miss M’s place.”

  “Jerome.” Marguerite reached out to touch his head. “Remember I don’t allow cursing in the park. And you need to work a little harder on proper English. ‘He should have known with whom he was messing.’” She frowned, going over the grammar herself.

  “My way sounds better.” He grinned, confirming her discontent with the correction, his twinkling eyes unrepentant. “But sorry about the cussin’, Miss M. We did good, though, didn’t we?”

  “You did very well. So well.” She took the stickers, pocketed them and managed a smile for them both. “You were so brave.”

  He shrugged. “He was hittin’ on my sister with his junk. Don’t nobody mess with my sister long as I’m around.”

  His older sibling rolled her eyes but Marguerite saw her elbow his side with affection. “You’s all talk. I can kick your butt. We have to get home.”

  “First, run in and tell Gen you each get a piece of lemon cake. And have her wrap up one for your mother.”

  “Alll riiight!” The two children ran for the side path entrance to the kitchen, an access Marguerite had always made clear was a door that would open for any of the children or neighbors, the entrance for friends coming through the park. She suspected Jerome had used the front so the drug dealer wouldn’t realize he’d gone for help.

  She peered into her pocket as Komal approached her with Chloe. “Chloe, remind me I have these when our officers come by this afternoon for their green tea. I’m sure they can use them for training. Or at least dispose of them properly.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Marguerite raised a brow. “I’m fine.” She looked at Komal. “I’m sorry you had to see that. It happens occasionally.”

  Though she’d never gone off on one like that, Chloe had told her. When Komal studied her, Marguerite shifted her glance. “Chloe, will you excuse us a moment?”

  Chloe looked between them both, nodded, headed back for the kitchen.

  “If you’d hit his skull, you would have killed him.”

  “If I’d jammed this up his ass, I would have perforated his bowel wall with splinters and he would have died in a couple hours from internal bleeding. Seemed too quick that way. This way I can imagine his kidneys giving him hours of torment just to manage a piss.”

  Reaching out, Komal put her hands on the bat over Marguerite’s hands. “This is the side of you that worries me.”

  “What? The side tha
t says I won’t allow someone to harm the innocent?”

  “There are laws.”

  “Yes. And we both know how well they work to protect the innocent. I’m not afraid of death, imprisonment.” She laughed shortly, a harsh, angry sound. “I’m not afraid of having the blood of a drug dealer on my conscience.”

  “You can lose your soul by making violence your instrument of justice.”

  “My soul was lost a long time ago, Komal,” Marguerite responded bluntly. “And if I still had it, I’d rather lose it to that than have it obliterated by shades of gray.”

  “A person’s actions are not black and white.”

  “Wrong is wrong. There are extenuating circumstances, but this is a world that takes extenuating circumstances to such extremes that we’ve turning them into kindling for a sacrificial fire. And we’re feeding our innocents into it, one soul at a time. You think his extenuating circumstances make it acceptable to push drugs onto children, turn Aleksia into a crack whore that would perform a blowjob on her own brother for the next fix? You think I of all people have any sympathy for that scum’s extenuating circumstances?”

  Komal nodded, closed her eyes. “I’m not here to engage in a moral argument with you. I just worry that you think you’re like the person standing in front of the tank at Tieneman Square. Except maybe you’re not there just for the cause, but for the hope that tank will roll forward and over you. That if people live up to your expectations and are savage, brutal, you have nothing of hope worth staying in the world for.”

  She took her hands away, touched Marguerite’s chin, amazed at how tall her girl had gotten over the years. “And maybe that’s why you’re so afraid of Tyler. Up until you met him, you could have lived or died any given day and it wouldn’t have bothered you. He’s made you want to live. You’re experiencing the same shock and disorientation as a newborn, only in the very self-aware mind of a strong, determined woman.”