[Early February 2004]

HEATHER

I wasn't sure I liked what it said about me that when I picked up the phone to call Lach, I didn't have to look up his number.  I chickened out and hung up the first time.  The second, I got his voicemail.  He called me back an hour later, a little breathless from having hurried through security at some airport whose name escapes me at the moment. 

All he said was: "It's me."  I crumbled.  God, if he'd been with me in person, I would have stepped into his welcome embrace and just let him hold me, drinking in his strength- as we had in England... and in Oz so long ago.  I didn't need him because he made everything better for me.  No, it was deeper than that.  I needed him because he helped me find the strength to make things better for myself. 

It is a natural instinct.  Get hurt.  Run home.  Run to someone you trust.  I was estranged from my father.  My mother was dead.  I couldn't go to Terry.  Not about this.  He was too close to Dino.  And God, Dino.  I couldn't face him at all.  I was too ashamed.

The only other man in the world who'd seen me at rock bottom was Lachlan.  What we'd shared hadn't been the stuff of romantic fantasies.  It had been gritty and real.  Both nights I spent in his arms we had shared our naked hearts.  Exposed to each other our most private selves.  Shared vulnerability as much as- if not more than- passion.

He has no illusions about me.  He has never put me on a pedestal.  If anything, at his lowest moments, I have been beside him on my knees, not watching from high above in some perfect glass house.  And now, in my lowest moment, I needed him.

I heard him swear quietly under his breath.

"Lach?"

"I've a heavy schedule, love... I took extra.... you know- after I got back.... Can't fucking stand being 'in residence' any longer than I bloody have to...."  Poor Lach.  I knew it killed him to be away from his boys.  "Christ!  I'm booked solid..."  I heard the telltale bleep of a palm pilot.  "I can swing the 25th.... if I trade up my Paris run for London instead."

"What?  God, Lach... wait!  I never expected you to-"

He cut me off.  "I'll be in D.C. on the 25th, love.  Two p.m. at the Willard Room.  Do you know where it is?"

I nodded stupidly and then realized he couldn't see me.  "Yes."  It was in the hotel where Dino and I had gone for our last anniversary.  "Lach-"

He hushed me.  "Whatever you say, you wouldn't have called unless you needed me."  My protest died on my lips.  He was right.  I did need him.  Terribly.  "Maybe I need too, girl."  Such hurt in that one soft whisper.  "Be there."  My head spun.  "Promise me."

"I promise."  Two little words.  Why did it suddenly feel like I'd just stepped off a cliff into freefall?       

[25 February 2004]

DINO

I couldn't take much more of this.  I missed my wife.  Since that goddamn night she fought me in the bathroom, she'd withdrawn inside herself.  She's a ghost of the beautiful vibrant woman she once was.  It was like all the light had gone out of her.  She didn't smile or laugh.  She ate too little and slept too much.  Sometimes I think she didn't want to wake up.  Sometimes I felt like curling up with her and doing that myself. 

It had all the classic signs of deep depression.  She hid inside herself.  I hid in my work.  I wanted to help her.  She wouldn't let me.  She hardly even looked at me.  Mostly she just took care of Andy.  It was like she was going through the motions of living, like she'd handed herself over to some inner autopilot and just checked out of life.  It freaked me out.  I mean- I knew she was sane.  I knew she wasn't a danger to Andy... but she was unpredictable.  And that was not a good feeling.

Both of us seemed unable to go forward.  We were stuck in this way we never had been before.  She was lost in a world of her own pain.  I was lost too.  Again and again my mind would go back to that morning I woke in a whore's bed.  I thought I'd be able to move past that.  To put it behind me and just go forward.... but now?  God, now I couldn't stop thinking about it.  Couldn't stop imagining all of this was somehow punishment for what I'd done.  Guilt ate at me.  Guilt and failure.  I was a shit husband.  What the hell kind of man cheats on his wife?  Hell, I couldn't even give her a baby.  I was disgusted with myself.  I felt worthless.  Worthless and useless.  And so fucking alone it made my heart ache with it.

Night after night, I lay beside her in bed.  It felt like there was a chasm between us.  We didn't touch.  We hardly spoke.  Mostly she just curled up with her back to me.  I kept mine to her too.  I didn't want her to see my pain.  It felt like quicksand.  The more we struggled, the deeper we sank.  Never in my life had I felt so impotent.  My usual optimism and dogged determination felt muted somehow.  Like it was being slowly smothered. 

I fought back the way I always do.  Trying to figure all this shit out by covering every angle.  I threw myself into finding out every last thing I could about that bitch Isobel.  Dug up some pretty serious shit.  It was confirmed by what Interpol sent us.  She was a user, just like we thought.  Maybe some kinda witch, too. 

Terry and I talked about it a couple of nights back.  I hadn't been able to get the conversation out of my mind since then.  Fucking curses and voodoo, bad juju, black magic bullshit.  Is that why I couldn't remember what happened when I woke up in that whore's bed?  Is that why Andy was having nightmares about Isobel?  Is that why Curry had suddenly remembered he banged my wife after a decade of ignorance?  Did that explain why this Pull shit had suddenly gotten out of control? 

I just don't believe in that crap.  But part of me wanted to.  Wanted an excuse.  Something to blame for the shit I'd done.  Something to blame for the shit I'd seen going on around me.  Maybe even something to blame for the shit that had been done to me.      

Oh yes.  Did I not mention that?  All my digging had also turned up a few other details.  Like the fact the same morning I woke in a whore's bed, my wife was seen by a maid returning to our room just before sunrise.  Where did she fucking sleep?  Or did she?  And then there were the calls.  Two of them.  From this house to Curry's cell the morning after her meltdown.

God, had she fucked him that night in England?  Did I have any right to accuse her when I'd woken up with another woman's lips on my dick?  Had Heather hoped she carried his baby?  Did he know I'd kill him for it?  Did she know it would kill me?  Would she snap altogether if I brought this up?  I didn't have definitive proof.  Would I lose her forever if I made the accusation without it?  Did I really want a woman who would fuck another man?  Would she want me if she knew I fucked another woman?

And how much did that fucking curse shit have to do with all of this?  Terry and I had been working our asses off and the more we dug, the worse it all got.  We deal in concretes and this was anything but that.  And yet... the more we uncovered, the more sense that explanation made.  And considering how we all arrived in this place.... we'd be pretty fucking stupid to dismiss the possibility of a curse.  I mean, Christ.... If a power exists that can pull a man through time and bring him here.... then anything is possible.

The truth was out there.  I just had to find it.  I felt like fucking Mulder.  I'd have started calling the old man 'Scully' if I didn't think he was as close to cracking as I was.  Something was off with him.  He hadn't been this evasive with me since that shit with Alice in Tecala.  I had my suspicions... but I'm smart enough not to voice them.  Not this time.  Not when I can't be sure what's based on real emotion and what's the result of some bad juju directed at this family because some greedy little bitch wants revenge.  Try this one on, sister.  Maybe more people might be willing to embrace you if you didn't ultimately fuck over every person you ever came into contact with?  There's a thought, hey?

I sat at my desk at work, playing it over and over in my head.  And in my heart.  By noon I'd made my decision.  No more hiding.  No more running.  I decided to come home early.  To bring her flowers.  To sit down with her and just talk.  To decide together what we wanted to do.  It was a hard decision to make.  I was aware she might have some painful things to say to me.  I was aware I might hear she fucked another man.  Or worse- that she wanted to leave me for another man.  I knew I had some pretty hard things to say, too.  But I think it was time we both came clean. 

It took a little while for me to screw up my courage.  Like I often do when I need to think, I went down to Pershing Park and just sat for a while.  Watched the cherry blossoms blow in the wind and the waterfall trickle into the pool below.  It was a beautiful place, nestled between the White House and the hotel where we'd spent our honeymoon.  God, our third anniversary was only a week away.  How had we ended up here? 

My memories of that night were so strong.  How she'd come to me in nothing but that sexy little wrap.  How she'd given me all of herself.  Body and soul.  I remembered how it felt to be inside my wife for the first time.  How safe and sheltered it felt.  And how erotic. 

My feet seemed to echo my thoughts and I looked up to find my path through the park had brought me to the steps of the hotel.  The last memory I had of this place made me smile.  We'd spent our anniversary here.  The first time we'd made love trying to get pregnant had been here.... and later, much later... we'd ordered up a lemon mousse.  Very sticky, very tart, and very decadent sex had followed.  My mouth watered just thinking about it.  Not for the food or the sex, but for the feeling it triggered.  Closeness.  Intimacy.  Passion. 

I checked my watch.  Almost two.  Plenty of time to go in and have them box up a mousse for me to take home.  So I'm a romantic sap?  I'm also practical.  I wanted to talk to my wife tonight and anything that tipped the scales in my favor of that happening was definitely a good thing. 

The hustle and bustle of DC gave way to this tranquil Tuscan feeling the moment the lobby doors closed behind me.  Soft music played in the background, blending pleasantly with the warm colors and the rich feel of marble floors and elegant furnishings. 

A hundred thousand little details about our environment surround us at any given moment.  Most of them fade into the background and we notice what is right in front of us.  In my case, it was a pair of working stiffs like me who were having a discussion about the latest Capitol Hill sex scandal while they were waiting to be seated. 

And then, out of those hundreds of thousands of details, one caught my attention.  The sound of an Australian accent.  Which might, on a good day, have just faded into the background.... except this time, for a moment, I could have sworn I also heard a voice twined with it that sounded a lot like Heather's.  Part of me wondered if maybe I wasn't just a little paranoid.  Another part snapped to immediate and full attention.  I heard an elevator ding and turned my head in enough time to see Lachlan Curry for about half a second before the elevator doors closed. 

He didn't see me.  But I saw enough of him to tell he was with a woman.  I didn't see her.  It could have been his wife.... or a colleague... hell, he could be here with the fucking Queen of England- as long as it wasn't my wife.  Ignoring the disapproving stares of the concierge, I rudely whipped out my cell phone and called home.  No answer.  Fuck.  Called Heather's cell.  Got the standard automated response.  The customer you are trying to reach has traveled outside the service area....  Fuck, fuck, fuck! 

Think, Dean.  

If Heather was here, someone had to be watching Andy.  I'd have called every last one of his friends but I didn't have their numbers with me.  Heather had those programmed into her phone.  Shit.  I'd been meaning to add them to my phone but had never found the time.  I had Curry's number, though.  I called him as a last resort, thinking if he was with her then a call from me would be pretty Goddamn uncomfortable.  No answer.  I took a moment to collect myself and then checked at the desk discretely.  Cost me more than it usually does, but I wasn't in the mood to haggle for information.  No Curry was registered here. 

That made me feel worse not better.  I know what I saw.  With my heart in my throat, I checked under O'Leary next.  Nobody registered under that name either.  Short of pounding on doors, I was fucked.  So, I did what any man with my training would do.  I paid for a room so I wouldn't look suspicious, found a corner and an uncomfortable chair with a view of the elevators and sat down to wait.  What goes up must come down.  And I intended to be waiting for it when it did. 

LACHLAN  

Heather was early.  An annoying habit, but one I also share.  I'd been sipping at my tea for half an hour when I noticed her walking towards me in this pretty navy colored dress.  I felt that strange feeling in my chest again when I saw her wrapped up in that pale blue shawl.  It was like the Pull - I bloody well felt that as well - but it was different, too.  Deeper.  More quiet.  I can't really explain it.  But I knew something was wrong the second our eyes met.  Really wrong.

I took her into my arms and embraced her tightly.  Pressed a gentle kiss to her temple and just held her close for a long moment before we sat.  She looked so pale.  Eyes darting around uncomfortably as she struggled not to cry in front of all the other patrons.  I made my decision just that fast.  Tossed down a bill large enough to cover my tea ten times over and got her the hell out of there.  I had taken a room upstairs.  I'd no doubt get an earful from Brenda in accounting for using my corporate card for private business, but the truth is we all did it.  Some for more nefarious purposes than others.  The last time I'd used it for personal reasons was for a surprise Christmas present a few years ago.  As long as we paid it back, nobody really complained. 

Heather sniffed an apology to me for losing her composure.  I hushed her and we spoke quietly while I led her straight upstairs.  I felt that prickly feeling, like I was being watched as we got into the lift, but I just chalked it up to guilt.  Even though I had the best of intentions, I knew I shouldn't be taking another man's wife upstairs.  And I wouldn't have if I wasn't sure of my ability to keep myself in check.  I'd felt the Pull with her before and resisted.  Hell, I'd felt it with Darcy and resisted it for fucking months.  It didn't control me. 

I controlled me.

My connection with Heather seemed both strange and right.  Judging by the way most people quantified friendship in this modern world- we could be considered strangers.  I didn't know her favorite color or what kind of car she drove or any number of a thousand other details that define shallow relationships in this modern world.  But I knew the big things.  The deep things.  I knew how she felt about her mother dying.  I knew how badly she'd been scarred by her father's affairs.  I knew what she believed about God and the afterlife.  I knew her most private hopes and fears.

Think about it.

How many of the people that you know in your life can you say that about?  How many?  In my life, I can count the number of people I have had that deep a relationship with on one hand.  And I'm beginning to think I never knew one of those people at all if the reports I'd gotten from Terry were accurate.  I'm no green boy.  You think I'd leave it up to chance once I suspected my wife was having an affair?  Not bloody likely.  Only an idiot would have a man with Terry's skills at his disposal and not take advantage of it.  He was on the job before I left Jolly Old, mate.  Make no mistake about that.          

And let me tell you, what I'd read in the reports he'd sent disgusted me.  Copies of emails my wife had sent Bud, easily obtained by a password that took almost no effort to crack.  Phone records for the shop.  Darcy's little assistant was too loyal to talk, but White had string of secretaries he'd fucked, and then fucked over, who'd been more than helpful.  One of them had gotten her jollies listening in on his Wednesday 'date night' phone sex sessions with my whore of a wife.  I hadn't yet been able to bring myself to read the transcript she'd given to Terry.  I was simply too nauseated- and too hurt.            

And now you know why I needed to see Heather as badly as she'd needed to see me.              

My world was coming apart.  I'd only held on this long because of my boys.  And because deep down, I just didn't want to believe it.  I simply couldn't fathom how someone I loved and trusted could have wounded me so deeply.  Jesus.  How does any man recover from such a blow?  Is there even a way forward?  Did I want to save my marriage?  I had my pride- but was it worth tearing apart my children's lives?  Well, I reckoned their Mum had done that well enough on her own... But was what was left worth saving?  For them?  For myself?  I just didn't know.   

I felt like my thinking had never been so muddled in my life.  I went back and forth between hope and despair.  Trying to weigh everything.  My pride.  My children's security.  The good times I remembered so fondly.  The lies that tore my heart to shreds.  I loved her.  I hated her.  I wanted to throttle Bud White.  I wanted to have it all back to do over again.

But I couldn't.  Life doesn't work that way.  It felt like my Crossing all over again.  I felt alone in the world.  All I had that I could really count on was one slip of a girl who was struggling under the weight of her own burden. 

I slipped the keycard in the slot and felt the touch of her hand in mine.  My God.  I am such a fool.  I thought I could handle this.  I thought I could come here and let her lean on me without leaning back.  Pride goeth before a fall.  All it took was a simple touch for me to find out how true that was.... and as the door closed behind us, we fell into each other's arms.            

DINO

My heart jumped into my throat every time the elevator doors opened.  Two hours...  Two hours and fourteen minutes.  Fifty-seven people had come down in that time.  It reminded me of how I'd waited for Heather outside the VA when I'd first found her.  How I'd watched the door then too, waiting.  Afraid to hope.  The cyclical nature of it disturbed me.  Like a wheel that had gone a full turn.  Back to the beginning again.  Or maybe it was the end.  All I knew was that with every 'ding' of the doors, I felt myself winding tighter.  Felt rational thought slipping further and further away as every possible scenario played through my mind. 

It started innocently enough.  Just another way to ease the boredom.  I hate waiting.  But somehow the image of Curry having a bit of afternoon fun with some hot little flight attendant became this image of him fucking my wife.  I'd read her journal.  Every word of it seemed to come back and haunt me while I waited.  I saw it all in my mind's eye.  Only I imagined it happening upstairs instead of in some junky little motel room in Oz.

Did she like his cock better?  It was the only one besides mine she'd ever had.  Did he make her come harder?  Did she give it up as sweet for him as she did for me?  And somehow worse than all these graphic images in my head was this deep despair.  Why could she reach out to him but not to me?  Was he better than me?  Did she love him more?  Trust him more?  Want him more?  Was it because he could give her a baby and I couldn't? 

The elevator doors opened, and again, I felt my heart jump into my throat.  This time, it shattered into a thousand jagged shards as I watched my wife walk out of the elevator.  Alone.  It's funny what you notice when incandescent rage is sweeping through you.  A dress.  She'd dressed up for him.  At home it was the bare minimum these days.  Tracksuit and tennis shoes.  Ponytail.  No makeup.  But now?  Her hair was down, messy but soft around her shoulders.  Her makeup was smudged.  It was the shoes that killed me, though.  Those were not nice shoes.  I'd know.  I bought them for her.  I couldn't breathe for the anger choking me. 

I trailed her silently and came up behind her as she was hailing a cab.  Curry was beyond my reach.  For now.  But she wasn't.  She gasped in shock when I put my hand on her arm and she turned and saw me there.  She smelled like lavender.  And another man.  Pain spiked in my chest.  I tightened my grip on her arm.  On the surface, it looked banal enough... but I knew I was holding her too hard.  I always know when she's hurting.  I let go and opened the cab door.  "Get in."  Two words.  Cold and flat.  She shuddered as I spoke them and got in without a fight.      

She didn't say a single word on the entire ride home.  Aside from giving the cabbie directions, neither did I.  I knew she'd been hurting since that night she lost it with me.  It was ironic that for as well as I read people, I hadn't understood that her unpredictable mood hadn't driven her to do herself harm as I had feared, but to veer towards something destructive to our marriage.  Total blindside. 

And to be honest, that was about all the thinking I did.  I waited until the cab had driven off and then turned to her.  "Where's Andy?"  I was a cunt hair away from being completely out of control.  I didn't want my boy to see me lose it with her. 

"He's spending the night at Jason's."  It would have been better if he hadn't.  Once I knew he was safe, I simply let the black rage take me.

HEATHER

He shoved me away from him the second we got inside.  "You stink of him."  Cold words, hissed low and nasty.  They frightened me.  He frightened me.  He was dangerous.  It was part of what attracted me to him.  Part of the thrill.  Feeling the tender touch of a man who could also kill with those same hands.  It made me feel safe and cherished.  He could hurt me- but he never would.  At least I never thought he would.  Now I wasn't so sure.  It wasn't pain on his face now.  Or anger.  There was almost a vacant look in his eyes.  Like he'd gone inside himself to escape the hurt I had caused him. 

I wanted to curl up and die.       

He pulled away my shawl and let it drop, grinding it under his heel as he closed in on me, using his imposing body to drive me back down the hallway.  I stumbled blindly over one of Andy's stupid toys.  He reached out and caught me and then jerked me to him roughly.  The physical connection seemed to jar him.  To spurn him on to an even darker place than he'd been before.  

"How could you do this?  To me?  To Andy?"  He was right.  How could I?  I choked on the lump in my throat and said nothing.  He wrapped his hand around my throat and pulled my face to his.  "How could you?"  I would have been less frightened if he'd shouted.  His voice was whisper soft.  I cried silent tears in fear and sorrow and despair.  The hand at my throat wasn't painful.  But it was proprietary.  And he tightened it in warning when I didn't answer him. 

Part of me wanted him to hurt me.  I deserved it.  Another part of me knew what hurting me would do to him later when the black rage dissipated and left him broken and wounded.  I didn't meet his eyes.  And I didn't tell him I believed he would never hurt me.  Hadn't I hurt him?  Why should I expect a different standard from him?  What is pain?  How do we quantify it?  Physical.  Emotional.  Sexual.  It's all equally damaging.  Rape a heart.  Rape a soul.  Rape a body.          

I could feel it in him.  This driving compulsion to hurt me as he'd been hurt.  Blind and irrational, like an animal who savages the hands trying to free it from the trap before it chews its own leg off.  Like I had been with him that night in the bathroom.  And what had he done then?  He'd opened his arms and swallowed down every bit of pain and rage and despair that had come pouring out of me. 

Could I do any less for him?  

Lachlan taught me that one night more than a decade ago.  Love isn't what you say.  It's not pretty flowers and platitudes.  It's not even about how much you know about another person.  Real love is about sacrifice.  Pieces of yourself given up, given away without weighing what it will cost you because you know in your heart someone else needs them more than you do.

His voice rasped over me.  "Is it because he was your first?  Because he can give you what I can't?  Because I can't give you a baby?"  The words devastated me, but it was the tortured agony in his voice that wounded me most.  "Did you let him come in you?  Did you moan?"  He pulled up my dress and dragged down my panties to check for himself.  I was wet.  "Oh, God..."  He choked on a sob.  "Did it make him feel the way it makes me feel?  Christ!  How could you do this...." 

From there, the words got uglier.  Darker and more cruel.  A confession torn from him in his desperate desire to wound me as deeply as he'd been wounded.  Getting high.  Fucking a whore.  Waking with her mouth on his dick.  Pain juddered through me in waves until I couldn't breathe.         

And the rougher he got with me, the harder his hands became and the deeper the vile words he spewed cut, the more fully I understood the nature of real love.  In a flash, I also understood how very deeply he must have loved me to hold me so gently while I raged. 

His rage was different.  He is a man.  A very dangerous man who has a black place inside him.  He would not be able to do the things he does in his job otherwise.  He was in that black morass now, held down- drowning in it under the weight of misery and hurt and righteous anger.

He bit me.  Tore at my clothes.  Held me down.  I thought of his face as we broke the towel bar and of the soft grunt of pain he made as the sharp edge of the bathroom counter raked down the tender flesh of his side.  I bit my lip to keep from crying out when he pushed me down on Andy's bed and took me hard from behind.  Pushing in so deep again and again and again.  He was relentless.  And he did not want to see my face.  He had his hand fisted tight in my hair, holding my face away from his. 

It happened very quickly.  I felt sadness.  And fear.  And, yes, desire.  I was cresting at the wave of orgasm when he wrapped his hands around my throat and came with a sob.  The last time we'd done that, it had been about trust.  This time it was about power.  Both of us had wondered if we hadn't gone too far that night.  Now we both knew the truth.  That had been beautiful.  This was dark and ugly.  And somehow, strangely, still an act accepted in love.

Even before the last throb had subsided, he pulled out and shoved me away.  I felt his last weak spatter of semen fall onto my naked back.  My heart ached.  My body ached.  I curled into a ball and cupped a hand between my legs.  I felt raw and bruised.  The soft touch sparked off the orgasm he had denied me.  It felt empty and hollow without him inside me.  Warm semen trickled out from between my legs.  I whimpered.

He lurched away with a groan and was horribly, violently ill in the bathroom.  I could hear the raspy sounds of his heaves.  He was weeping openly when he returned.  It seemed like there was too much pain between us for either of us to bear.  I had turned to another man.  He had turned to another woman.  I wanted to find some way to rip myself out of my own skin.  How do you stand it?  Taking solace in the same person who has caused you pain?  Knowing you have wounded the person you love most in a way that will change what is between you forever? 

The bed dipped when he sat.  His pants were still open.  The flesh that had battered me now lay soft and spent against his thigh.  I could still feel the trickle of his semen.  A wounded animal sound was torn from his throat as he looked at me. 

"Oh, God..... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, honey... I never meant to hurt you...."

He picked me up so tenderly and carried me to the bathroom.  We undressed each other slowly, whispering apologies to each reddened patch of skin, to each bruise and scratch as we stood in the shower, scooping warm water over each other.  Each trying to make amends for what we'd done.  And each succeeding- and failing- in our own way.

In the days that followed, life went on.  Nothing is ever instant.  Both of us were bruised and hurting.  It would take time to decide what we wanted to do.  Where we should go from here.  We had barely begun to open up to each other when I woke up one morning, dizzy and nauseated.  I went and got a pregnancy test while he was at work.

It was perhaps the most acute twist of irony I'd ever experienced in my life.  Pregnant.  I was pregnant.  And there was no way Dean would ever believe me when I told him it was his.

[March 2004]

DINO     

Pregnant.  She was pregnant.  It honestly took a few days for that to sink in.  Jesus.  The fucking world was coming apart.  Not just with us but everyone...  Ann running from Terry, Uma disappearing.  Cort's death.  The curse had run amuck, twisting all our lives, that much was clear.  What I found interesting was how it affected everyone differently.  How it amplified the Pull in some and cast doubt in the hearts of others. 

It seemed silly, but the only way I could deal with it all was to try to make some sense of it, to find some pattern in a thing that defied logic altogether.  Why did it work outwardly on some and inwardly on others?  Terry slept with Uma.  Max slept with Ann.  Cort slept with Isobel.  Why was their destructive force projected outward whereas mine went inward?  Why did I turn on Heather instead of being drawn to one of the others?  What made her hit herself and sink into an unreasonably deep depression that drove her to Curry instead of feeling amplified, euphoric lust like Terry had the first time with Uma? 

I had listened to how he spoke of it.  Heather and I had only spoken briefly about it... but what they both described to me was vastly different.  I think it must be that the curse worked to hurt us all where we were most vulnerable.  Found the chinks in our armor and exploited it in the most rude way possible.  Maximus lost the stability of his family for the second time in his life.  Jack, a brilliant tactician, was made out to be the biggest of bumbling fools.  Cort broke the vows he made to God.  Terry hurt two women and was impotent to help either.  I violated my wife.  Raped the image of the girl I'd sworn never to hurt.

And knowing all of that.... here in the aftermath?  It didn't make a shit of appreciable difference in helping any of us move forward.  So we knew what touched off the twister?  It didn't do one damn bit of good in helping us pick up the damage it left behind.  I was still angry and hurt.  The fact that Heather was pregnant only added to the damage estimates.  Yet another foundation torn down, brick by brick.  Doubt by doubt.  Heather and I had hardly opened negotiations when this new ball was thrown into play.

Part of me was elated beyond anything I could possibly articulate.  And for me, that's saying something.  Another part of me simply could not believe that the child she carried was mine after we had tried and failed for a year.  Those two hours she spent alone with Curry in that hotel room will always haunt me.  She has never claimed innocence.  She has never told me what happened.  She has only said the child is mine.  I want to believe her.  God, I want it with all my heart.... but how do you prove it if trust is lost? 

I think I knew somewhere deep down inside me that we were strong enough to weather infidelity, especially with the curse providing force behind an inclination we would have otherwise been able to curb.  But I was unsure whether I could stand to find out the child she carried was not mine.  We could do a DNA test and have the results in a matter of days... but I feared the answer might break me. 

I went back and forth over it in my mind for days.  Terry bore the brunt of it, I'm afraid.  He has always been my sounding board.  The man who can talk me down.  He did this time too, over some good malt one night after work.

I was raging, well lit and in the middle of a blistering rant.  He butt in, like he always does.  "So, what do you want from her, mate?  Do you want her to get rid of it on the off chance another man might have fathered it?"  I couldn't help the shudder of revulsion that went through me at that idea.

I said nothing.  Just took another slug and crushed out my smoke with far more force than was actually needed to snub it out. 

He gave me that look he does.  Pensive fucker.  "Jesus, Dino.... she didn't turn her back on your child- although no one in the world would have expected her to take him on."

He had a point.  I didn't concede it gracefully.  I think I told him to shut the fuck up.  He ignored me as usual.   

"Can you see that woman foisting another man's child off on you?"

I shook my head.  "No.  But I can't imagine her aborting one either."

Shit.  He was playing with his scar.  I knew whatever he said next was going to be rough.  "And if she isn't sure, mate?  Say I'd impregnated Uma?"  He winced saying it but kept on going.  "You think we should kill a child just to keep Max happy?"   

Rage and helplessness filled me until I could hardly breathe.  That sensation where you feel like you have to strike out before you explode because you know rational thought when you hear it and some part of your conscience knows you have to give in to it in the end.  It's just a matter of making your heart accept it.

"If you love her... then you have to trust her.  If it has red fucking hair, then it's yours... and if it doesn't?  It still might be yours."

He gave me a hard look that softened to something else as he put his hand on my shoulder.  "And if it isn't, mate... then she brings up your son and you bring up hers."

I felt my eyes get watery and choked down another sip around the lump in my throat.  Trust was the hardest thing for Heather and I right now.  All of this stirred up so much for us.  Brought back up my deepest fear.  What if what we had wasn't real?  What if it was just because of Andy, or because we once knew versions of each other in our distant past?  I hung my head. 

"Fuck, Terry... what if this is all just the Pull?  Or because we knew each other way back?  What if it isn't real?"  My deepest fear.  The real meat of the matter.  The thing that made Heather the chink in my armor.      

"And what if this thing with Lachlan is just the spell and she fought it enough to be able to tell you with certainty the child is yours?  What if she resisted where everyone else fell?  Then you drive away the best thing you ever had cos you won't take a leap of faith with her as she did with you."  He sat back and took a deep swallow himself.  "And if you do that, mate, you don't deserve a happy ending."  Maybe not.  But then again, Terry didn't deserve the ending he got either. 

I turned his words over in my mind.  By the time my glass was empty, I knew which choice I would make.  I think maybe I knew it all along; from the first moment I sat on Heather's couch and held Andy in my arms.  It was just that simple.  Still, it wouldn't be easy.  And there were no guarantees.  Not for any of us- spell or no spell.  But as I walked out of Terry's office that night, I knew his blunt words had been just the kick in the ass that I needed.  Hurt and anger might have clouded my judgment... but at the end of the day when it's just the Tinman listening to his own heart?  It only ever says one thing. 

They are my heart.  They are my life.  And there will never be a time when they aren't worth the risk. 

[March 2004  England- the aftermath]

LACHLAN   

Cort was gone.  And with him, the terrible confusion that had been blurring my mind since the night that witch cursed us all.  Shock and bitterness still ate at me, but as time passed, I saw everything with a clarity that had eluded me for weeks.  All my back-and-forth thinking.  The sleepless nights.  The days I spent in the agony of indecision.  What do I do?  Love.  Hate.  Fear.  Disgust.  Sorrow.  Passion.pain.anger... sadness.ragepeace..... I felt like Nash.  When the hundreds of random pieces suddenly blur and shift and the one true answer shines out with startling clarity. 

Freedom.  

As I had done before at the lowest points in my life, I took solace in a nameless pub.  Lost myself in memories.  In drink.  In the arms of a woman whose face and name was already fading from my mind.  In the morning, I trudged back to my hotel, feeling the cold English drizzle seeping down the back of my clammy jacket.  The rain kicked up spray on the ground all around me.  It seemed as if the whole world was painted in shades of gray.  There was no rose in my world except when I thought of my boys. 

Our world was in chaos.  My marriage was rent.  My brother was dead.  Part of me ached for the loss.  Part of me felt for him.  He was just another bloke destroyed by a vicious lying bitch.  There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.  And it fucking started with me.  God, Cort.  I felt shame too.  Guilty for being angry at him.  I can still hear his words in my mind.

She ain't been unfaithful to you, Lachlan.

 

And I heard Darce's words, courtesy of the transcript Terry had sent.  

I'm stripping for you Bud. Taking off my blouse, letting it slip off my shoulders. I'm doing it slowly, because I like to tease you. Like to make you wait. Now my bra...I can almost feel your hands on me, sweetheart. Cupping, squeezing me. Ah God, it feels so good.

 

Sticking her fingers up her cunt and bringing herself off while White worked his cock to her panting in his ear?  Jesus Christ.  Like fuck she hadn't been unfaithful.  What I couldn't decide was if Cort knew about that and had fed me a line, or if she'd lied to him too.  Tough call to make.  Do I believe the woman who's been systematically lying to me for years would be honest in confession?  Or the Priest who broke his vows to God to fuck another man's wife? 

Getting lectured on morality from a fallen priest who begins with: hey, I know confession is sacred and all, but here's what your wife said...?  That was as fucking disturbing as Darcy's claims she'd never been unfaithful.  I had almost lost it when Cort told me this thing with White was partly because of her giving nature, because she had such a big heart and just couldn't help but pick up the strays.  I wanted to snap back- 'Is she going to fuck them all as well?  Or just the ones who whore themselves out to all and sundry?'  And God help him, if Cort knew about those fucking phone calls and still told me she hadn't been unfaithful, I hoped his soul rot in Hell for all eternity.       

Jesus.  This curse.  I hate what it's done to us all.  Myself included.  I just can't get over it.  The last of Terry's reports had included his theories on that as well.  And now, in the aftermath, more stories were starting to trickle in.  Max and Ann.  Terry and Uma.  I already knew about Isobel and Cort.  And then there was Heather and me.

You think I didn't know about the curse when I took her upstairs to my hotel room?  I did.  I knew it was wrong to ask her to meet me.  I knew it was wrong to take her upstairs.  I knew it was wrong to use the curse to feel her in my arms one last time.  It felt like one of those depth perception tests they give to pilots.  They confuse the fuck out of you until the docs take it apart and show you how it works.  Then you can nail them dead on every bloody time. 

That's what happened to me.  Once I was aware of the curse or the spell or whatever the fuck you want to call it... it suddenly seemed to lose its grip on me.  I was by no means unaffected.  The clarity I felt after Cort's death told me that much.  But I was aware enough to recognize it in myself.  And in Heather.  I could see it in her eyes.  Feel it in her touch when I led her upstairs.

So what really did happen?  I held her while she cried.  She held me, too.  Partners in despair.  We both wanted what we couldn't have.  What we might never have.  She wanted to make a child in love.  I wanted a love to whom I could be everything.  First in her heart above all others.  Laying there with her, she came on to me.  Rubbed herself against me in a way she never had before.  Not even in our night of uninhibited passion.  I recognized it as the spell... and still I felt myself succumb at first.  I grew hard.  Wanting. 

But I knew it wasn't really me she wanted.  Not like that.  In the wake of yet another failure to conceive, she wanted proof that she was still a woman.  That she could still make a man want her.  She bloody could.  I told her as much and as gently as I could, gathered her hands and pulled them from my body.  Not like this, I told her.  I wasn't that mixed up young man anymore.  And she wasn't a girl on the verge of being a woman.  It was time for us both to grow up.  To find in each other the strength go on with grace. 

She cried harder at my words, ashamed of her behavior.  I hushed her.  I knew she hadn't come to seduce me any more then I had come to seduce her.  She wasn't a saint.  She wasn't a demon either.  She was just a woman.  A person who'd touched my heart, and who'd allowed me to touch hers.  We had tasted passion once.  And it was beautiful.  But it belonged in the past.  Darcy says she knew the first night she met me that I was the man she was going to marry.  I believed her.  And I believed what Heather and I had felt was similar.  Not better.  Not stronger.  Just similar.  Who knows what it would have been if fate and chance and given us a different hand to play?

I still wanted to rewind my life, now more than ever, but this time I was strong enough to keep that to myself.  I simply held her in my arms and we said a poignant goodbye.  That was the real reason she'd come to me.  She had found her way forward.  She wanted to say goodbye.  To return to me the little gold button she'd kept all these years.  I returned to her the flask that had been my constant companion since I Crossed.  I felt naked without it, but I knew it was time to cut the ties between us.

Time ran out too soon.  Before we were ready, it was time for her to go.  I couldn't help but kiss her goodbye.  It was our first kiss since that night in Oz.  And our last.  And it was a bloody good one, I can assure you of that.  A lifetime of love traded in a single moment.  We parted.  I kept the scrap of paper, but gave her back the three little words she'd given to me in the softest whisper against her lips. 

Ever and always.

She traced the words onto my palm with her fingertip and then closed my hand over it.  Into the stillness that followed, she thanked me.  For everything.  And when she slipped away, I knew it was the last time I'd ever see her.

I find it ironic that I was only here in England when the all of this went down because I'd traded flights so I could see Heather.  It was almost amusing in a macabre sort of way.  And so- here I am.  Sitting in a hotel room while the world burns down around me.  And you know what amuses me most?  Every single one of them had had their lives and relationships damaged by the spell cast over us all by that bitch.  A man had given his life.  Others had had their marriages torn apart.  All of us had suffered because of this curse- except for me. 

I was the one man who'd remained true to the end... and it was my wife who'd screwed me over long before the bloody spell had ever touched us.  The curse hadn't ruined our love.  My wife had already killed it.  I see that now with absolute clarity.  With no spells and no Pull to muddle my mind, it was all so clear.  The sad thing is that there was a time I could have forgiven her, even after what she'd done... but the real truth is that she never stopped lying to me.  Even now she can look me full in the face and still protest her innocence. 

It wasn't just the lies continually told to me over time.  It was also the fact she was someone who could truly stand before me convinced of her innocence.  She'd always been faithful?  Listening to a man grunt in her ear while she fingered herself and they mutually masturbated to orgasm?  Jesus.  What kind of a woman can convince herself that isn't breaking her vows?  Certainly one who would never again be granted access to my heart.  I may be a fool... but I'm not that bloody thick.   

I have tried, I really have.  But I simply can't swallow her little miss innocent act.... I kept waiting for her to come clean.... and now, I knew she never would.  Why would she if she had convinced herself it's all OK because Bud never really 'touched' her.  Jesus.  It's like the reasoning of a child.  I just couldn't take any more.  Every man has a breaking point.  And I'd reached mine.     

I set aside the gold button I'd been worrying in my fingers and pulled out the photograph of my family that I kept under my pillow, even here, in this cold sterile hotel room.  I kept it to remind myself why I stayed.  Why I kept going back.  My precious little babies.  My boys.  I took a deep drag off my cigarette and contemplated burning Darcy's face out of the picture.  Duty won out over desire.  I knew it would disturb my children if they ever found it.  It wasn't their fault they had a whore for a mother. 

It was mine.

In my heart, I knew it was the best thing for them to have a Mum and Dad.  And so, I would stay.  But I would never again open my heart to her.  I am not foolish enough to risk it again on a woman like her.  But I would go through the motions because I made a commitment.  Because I knew that real love was about sacrifice; that what my boys needed was more important than my own happiness. 

In the wake of all this, I was more committed to my children than ever... but the other vows I took?  My wife broke them when she came for another man with her fingers stuffed up her cunt.  And again when she lied to me about it.  I don't feel bound by vows she broke.... and if I find love again?  So much the better.  I have been lucky enough in this life to love two good women who were not mine to love.  And I loved a third who was mine alone.  Ironic that she would be the one to fuck me over good and proper. 

Maybe I deserved it.  Maybe I didn't.  But the heart is a funny old thing.  Someday, somewhere.... in that big room filled with disappointment and surprise, I may find love again.  Not the Pull.  Not a spell.  Love.  I am optimistic.  There may well be more golden moments with my name on them.  Until then, I would be the best father I could.  I would dream of finding that one special woman to whom I was everything.  And until I found her, I would cherish the peace I found with a girl still green on the vine.