His eyes moved back to Alex’s. His voice was raspy with menace when he lowered his face close to hers and said, “No, the night she tried to abort you.”
Chapter 35
Alex stared at him blankly for several seconds. Then, she attacked him. She went for his face with her nails, his shins with the toes of her shoes. He grunted in pain and surprise as she landed one solid kick against his kneecap.
“You liar! You’re lying! Lying!” She took a swing at his head. He managed to dodge it.
“Stop it.” He grabbed hold of her wrists to protect his face. She tried to wrest her hands free, while still kicking out with her feet and knees. “Alex, I’m not lying to you.”
“You are! You bastard. I know you are. My mother wouldn’t do that. She loved me. She did!”
She fought like a wildcat. Fury and adrenaline pumped through her system, endowing her with additional strength. She was still no match for him. Holding her wrists together in his left hand, he shook her key out of her handbag and used it to open the door. They stumbled inside together. Reede kicked the door shut.
She bucked against him, shouting deprecations, trying to work her hands out of his grip, slinging her head from side to side like someone demented.
“Alex, stop this,” he ordered fiercely.
“I hate you.”
“I know, but I’m not lying.”
“You are!” She twisted and turned and tried to stamp on his feet.
He forced her down on the bed, and secured her there with his own body. Keeping an iron grip on her wrists, he placed his other hand over her mouth. She tried to bite it, so he applied more pressure, making any motion of her jaw impossible unless she wanted to break the bones.
Her eyes were murderous as she glared at him over the back of his hand. Her breasts rose and fell dramatically with each breath. He hung his head above hers, his hair falling over his brow, gulping in draughts of air until he regained his breath.
Finally, lifting his head, he stared deeply into her eyes. “I didn’t want you to know,” he said in a low, throbbing voice, “but you just kept pushing me. I lost my temper. It’s out, I can’t take it back, and damn me if it’s not the truth.”
She tried to shake her head no, the denial in her eyes vehement. She arched her back in an effort to throw him off, but she remained pinioned beneath him.
“Listen to me, Alex,” he said, angrily straining the words through his teeth. “Nobody even knew Celina was pregnant until that night. She’d been back from El Paso for several weeks, but I hadn’t gone to see her yet, hadn’t even called. My pride was still hurting. In a juvenile way, I was letting her sweat it out.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head ruefully. “We were playing games with each other, childish, foolish, silly, boy-girl games. Finally, I decided to forgive her.” He smiled with bitter self-derision.
“I went to see her on a Wednesday night because I knew your grandmother would be at prayer meeting at the Baptist church. After the service she always stayed for choir practice, so I knew that Celina and I would have a couple of hours alone to sort things out.
“When I got to her house, I knocked several times, but she didn’t come to the door. I knew she was there. The lights were on in the back of the house where her bedroom was. I thought maybe she was in the shower or was playing the radio so loud she couldn’t hear my knocking, so I went around to the back.”
Alex lay still beneath him. Her eyes were no longer narrowed with animosity, but shiny with unshed tears.
“I looked through her bedroom window. The lights were on, but Celina wasn’t in there. I tapped on the window. She didn’t respond, but I noticed her shadow moving on the bathroom wall. I could see it through the door. It was opened partway. I called her name. I knew she could hear me, but she wouldn’t come out. Then—”
He squeezed his eyes shut and bared his teeth in a grimace of pain before going on. “I was getting mad, see, because I thought she was just playing coy. She opened the bathroom door wider, and I saw her standing there.
“For a few seconds I just looked at her face because it had been so long since I’d seen her. She was staring back at me. She looked puzzled, like she was asking, “What now?” And that’s when I noticed the blood. She was wearing a nightgown, and the lower front of it was streaked with red.”
Alex’s eyes closed. Large, cloudy tears slid from beneath her quivering eyelids and ran onto Reede’s fingers.
“It scared the hell out of me,” he said gruffly. “I got into the house. I don’t even remember how. I think I raised the window and slipped through. Anyway, a few seconds later, I was in her bedroom, holding her. We both ended up on the floor and she just sort of crumpled in my arms.
“She didn’t want to tell me what was wrong. I was screaming at her, shaking her. Finally, she turned her face toward my chest and whispered, ‘Baby.’ Then I realized what all the blood meant and where it had come from. I scooped her up, ran outside, and put her in my car.”
He paused for a moment to reflect. When he picked up the story, the emotion that had racked his voice was gone. He spoke matter-of-factly.
“There was this doctor in town who did abortions on the sly. Everybody knew it, but nobody talked about it because abortions were still illegal in Texas then. I took her to him. I called Junior and told him to bring some money. He met us there. He and I sat in the waiting room while the doctor fixed her up.”
He gazed down at Alex for a long time before removing his hand. It had left a stark white imprint on the lower half of her face, which in itself was ghostly pale. Her body was now pliant beneath his, and as still as death. With the pads of his thumbs, he wiped the tears off her cheeks.