Cry No More Read online

  She wasn’t fully aware of him, certainly not with the hyperawareness she normally felt around him. He was just there, like part of the furniture. The grief and pain that filled her blotted out everything except a peripheral acknowledgment of his presence.

  “Which do you want?” he asked. “Cereal or bagel?”

  He wanted her to decide? What difference did it make what she ate? “Bagel,” she finally said listlessly, because it wouldn’t involve having to deal with a spoon.

  He toasted the bagel and even spread the cream cheese on it, then put it on a saucer in front of her. She tore off a piece and chewed. And chewed. The bite kept growing bigger and bigger in her mouth until she thought she was going to choke.

  She was sitting here eating just as if she hadn’t given her son away yesterday.

  She shoved back from the table, overturning her chair. Catlike, Diaz whirled to face her, balanced to respond to any attack she might level at him. In a sudden burst of blind fury, she grabbed from the dish drainer the pot he’d used to heat the soup the night before, and threw it as hard as she could at the wall. It hit with a clang and crashed back to the floor. She grabbed the spoons and threw them, then the bowls. The bowls broke with a satisfying crash.

  Sobbing, she wrenched open the cabinet doors and began grabbing out whatever she could reach: plates, saucers, bowls, cups, and glasses. She threw each one with as much force as she could muster, screaming in wordless agony as she hurled plate after plate, sending shards of glass flying around the room.

  Diaz didn’t move except when a thrown missile came flying too close; then he merely ducked a little to the side and stood his ground. Silently he watched her systematically destroy the kitchen, staying out of her way until the enraged burst of energy was abruptly spent and she collapsed to her knees, sobbing.

  Then he picked her up and carried her back to her bedroom, placing her on the bed. Milla curled on her side and cried herself to sleep.

  When she woke several hours later and stumbled out of the room, the kitchen had been cleaned and swept, and once again Diaz was gone.

  He finally returned, carrying a cardboard box containing a mismatched set of dishes, including saucers and coffee cups. He went back outside and returned with another box, from which he unloaded about a dozen drinking glasses and several bowls. Nothing matched. He unpacked everything, then put it all in the dishwasher and turned it on.

  Her head pounded with a dull headache, her eyes were sore and swollen, and her throat ached. “I’m sorry,” she croaked.

  “No problem.”

  She took a breath. “Where did you get the dishes?”

  “I found a yard sale. It was either that or drive to Kitty Hawk to a Wal-Mart store.”

  Considering how deserted the Outer Banks were this time of year, finding a yard sale was nothing short of a miracle. In a moment of clarity, she had a sudden image of this dark-clothed predator prowling through a yard sale and buying up old dishes. He wouldn’t even notice how out of place he seemed, but anyone else who happened to be there certainly would have.

  He made sandwiches and she ate hers, then she put on her sneakers and coat and headed out to the beach. She walked for what felt like hours, with a cool breeze blowing in her face and her mind so numb she could barely think. Not thinking was good. At last she turned around to go back, and when she did she stopped short at the sight of Diaz following her. He had stayed back about thirty or forty yards, giving her privacy but still watching over her.

  He stopped and waited. He had his hands stuffed in the pockets of a black jacket, and his dark eyes were narrowed against the breeze as he watched her approach. She knew it was irrational, but his following her made her angry. As she walked by she snapped, “Afraid I’ll drown myself?”

  She was being sarcastic, but his quiet “Yes” stung her to silence. She walked on, blinking back tears. She didn’t want to cry. Her eyelids were so puffy and sore that she wanted never to cry again. She remembered thinking the night before about running into the ocean, and though the grief and pain were so agonizing almost any relief would be welcome, she knew she’d never do that. Surrendering wasn’t in her nature. If it had been, she wouldn’t have been able to hold on to her determination all those years.

  She’d always been the idealistic dreamer in her family. Who would ever have thought that just beneath her skin was a layer of stubbornness that went all the way to the bone?

  By the time they made it back to the house, her steps were dragging, and the sun was sinking low, taking the temperature with it. Exhausted, she lay down for a nap and woke only when Diaz shook her and told her it was time to eat.

  The succeeding days passed like that, in a blur of grief and numbness, punctuated by bursts of rage. The sameness blended them all together in her tired mind, so it seemed as if time was merely creeping. She ate, she slept, she cried. The fits of rage would take her unawares, exploding when she least expected it, and afterward she was always ashamed of her lack of control. She screamed, she beat on the wall with her fists, she cursed the fate that had let her find her son, but too late.

  She walked long miles on the deserted beaches, trying her best not to think of anything. At some point she realized she hadn’t called in to the office, and mentioned it to Diaz. “I called them,” he said. “When we were on our way here.”

  She remembered very little about the trip, except being mired in hellish misery.

  Some days she hated Diaz with an intensity that prevented her from even looking at him. Rage seethed through her, and the fact that they had both wanted the same thing for Justin in no way mitigated his actions. Keeping her from Justin hadn’t been his right, his decision. He seemed to know exactly what she was feeling on those days, because he would keep his distance from her, not speaking except for what was necessary when he called her for meals.

  He made certain she ate and slept. He did the laundry, because the thought of it never even crossed her mind. She would hear the washing machine or the dryer running, and it meant absolutely nothing to her. It was just background noise. Clean clothes would reappear in her bedroom, and she would wear them. It was no more complicated than that.

  One day she asked how long they’d been there, and he said, “Three weeks.”

  The answer stunned her, shook her up a little. She stared at him without the dullness in her eyes that had characterized her over these past weeks. “But . . . what about Thanksgiving?” Her comment was stupid, but it was the only thing she could think of.

  “They had it without us.”

  Three weeks. That meant this was . . . the first week of December. “I don’t have anyone to have Thanksgiving with,” she blurted.

  “You have your family.”

  “I don’t spend holidays with them, you know that.” Then she fell silent, because she’d found Justin and she hadn’t called her mom, who might expect her to forget and forgive all concerning Ross and Julia, and she just couldn’t. Not yet. Whether she ever could remained to be seen.

  Diaz shrugged. “Then you just spent your first Thanksgiving with me.”

  Doing what? Screaming? Crying? Beating the wall? She hoped it wasn’t the start of a new tradition.

  The days were very short now, and the temperature had dropped even more. Diaz brought her some thicker socks to wear when she was out walking. Being outside helped, even though the sunshine was weak. Staring at the ocean helped. Sometimes it was gray, sometimes it was blue, but it was a constant, immense presence.

  The periods of rage became less and less frequent, as did the bouts of horrible, devastating weeping. She was so tired mentally and emotionally that she functioned within a very narrow range. She didn’t know what she would have done if Diaz hadn’t brought her here. She hated being beholden to him, but maybe this was his way of making amends. The thing was, she didn’t know if his efforts made any difference in the way she felt about him. She could only deal with one thing at a time, and right now was not his time.

  Sometimes