Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale Read Free Page B

Deena said.
    “Well,” Tony said and gave his parents a one-sided smile on entering. “This should be fun. Like a rollercoaster with no brakes kind of fun.” He picked up his guitar case, balanced his horn case atop it and grabbed the handle of his rolling luggage for the journey. “Tell Mario I’ll find something in the fridge later.” He too started off.
    As soon as he’d left, a shout of outrage pierced the night.
    “The satellite isn’t working!” Mia cried. “No one can live like this. Call someone. Please.”
    Deena and Tak exchanged a look. In 24 hours, a handful of attitudes would transform into a hurricane of the same.
    “You get your grandmother settled in. I’ll take care of everyone else,” he said and disappeared just as the driver helped Grandma Emma over the threshold.

Chapter Five
    Rain.
    Despite the vast swaths of ocean enclosing Aruba, rain almost never happened. Twenty inches a year, they said. That made it ideal to visit, impractical to live in, yet gorgeous to look at.
    From the moment Deena slipped into her hot tub, drink in hand, she faced the shoreline—unable to look away. What was it about that vast expanse of nothingness that drew her in irrevocably? Timeless, was what those still waters were. Unconquerable, even.
    People used to believe that monsters roamed the seas. But what were monsters but those that which people were unwilling or unable to understand? There’d been a philosophy teacher back at M.I.T., Dr. Grossman, who’d said that philosophy was but the questions science had yet to answer, a recognition of man’s limitless ignorance.
    Deena spent a semester in Philosophy pondering how and why she believed everything she did and whether her beliefs could withstand philosophical inquiry. She didn’t leave with a feeling of certainty, either. While she’d never been fool enough to embrace the stink of her grandfather’s theological convictions, she nonetheless could smell their stench. Interracial marriage was unnatural, according to him, a slight against God, a sign of self-hate. Never mind the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth vitriol he passed off as sermons of love. No no, the world came to an end when folks forgot themselves and started mixing.
    How lame. How positively weak in the face of reality. Of all the evils in the world, all the greed, hatred, starvation, oppression, genocide, her grandfather’s lone issue had been which adults other adults were sleeping with.
    Deena set aside her shimmering pink drink and dipped low in the hot tub. Once, that rancid old man’s voice barked into her brain, hijacking her dreams, piercing her waking hours. She’d been so fearful of loving Tak because to love him wasn’t the easiest choice. But if regrets were billion dollar bills, then she’d go to bed a pauper.
    She could have laughed at her old self. Her grandfather, Edward Hammond, the man with all the answers. The man with one hate-filled daughter, another who flinched at his name, and a son who sold drugs until he was murdered. Of course, a man like that would have all the answers.
    All the wrong answers.
    Joy burst through her like rays of the sun, warm, illuminating, stretching. She had love, loads of love, family, friends, security. Hell, she had a husband with a gorgeous face, the stamina of a racehorse, and a body made for snug fitting jeans. Life was so delicious; she could have sent word to the kitchen for seconds and thirds.
    Life was too delicious, perhaps.
    Too delicious to last, that is.

Chapter Six
    The moon hung like a sliver on invisible thread, yellow-tinged and ominous in a star-lit sky. Tak stood under the hooded covering of the back terrace, eyes fixated on his wife. He could watch her, he thought, with those thick rivulets of hair in every shade of brown, already saturated to dripping in the water. Even, creamy skin with a smattering of freckles across the cheeks and full lips that turned up with a pout. He had traced those lips with a thumb, with a