He hauled Dianna close, pulling her to a standing position, his eyes now doing the pleading. “Listen to me. Tell Martine to be happy. Tell her she doesn’t ever have to be alone if she doesn’t want to. Do this, Dianna. Do this for Martine. Give her the chance to finally find some happiness.”
Dianna took a deep breath, raising her hands, shrugging him off, muttering something in Latin he neither understood nor cared to understand. He just wanted Martine to get up off that damn floor.
The room began to move, tremble, picking up speed, shaking, cracking beneath his feet as Dianna paced, murmuring as if she were in some kind of trance.
The air grew thick, hard to inhale, smelling of sulphur and the cloying scent of jasmine.
The first knife to his chest burned, sizzled through his skin, digging deeply into him as though his flesh was nothing more than softened butter.
The pain brought him to his knees, made him clench his jaw to keep from screaming, capturing his muscles, plucking them so tight they grew rigid. He fell forward on his elbows when the next blow came, twisting his intestines as though a fist had gathered them up straight from his gut and squeezed them in a viselike grip.
And Dianna continued to mutter, her small, ballet-slippered feet passing before his eyes while the very breath in his lungs seeped out in slow, unbearable increments.
“Derrick!” someone screamed, someone muffled and far off.
Small hands were pulling at him then, screaming orders to Dianna. “Take Martine’s hand—take it now!” the female voice demanded while he struggled to resurface from the thick haze invading his head.
Someone took his hand, squeezing it, bringing it to the soft skin of a cheek, wetting it with tears. “Open the bag, Dianna!” the voice shouted. “Open it nowww!”
Derrick fought the enticing pull of blissful nothingness, fought the wish to find solace in darkness as myriad lights flashed behind his half-closed eyelids. The tile beneath him began to rock, pull away and crumble in protests of earth-quaking chunks.
There was a screech, long and piteous, and he knew he had to get up, move, do something. Yet his body refused to cooperate, refused to leave its dormant state.
“Say the words with me, Dianna—repeat after me!” a very familiar voice commanded.
Derrick found himself cocking his ear despite his immobility, straining to hear what was happening, trying to force his eyes open to see who was doing the ordering around. But the words were fading in and out like a radio station with too much static.
And then air whooshed to his lungs in a rush, jolting him upright to a sitting position before knocking him forward with such force, he put his hands out in front of him to stop the momentum.
Derrick gulped air, taking it into his lungs, hearing the rasping wheeze as he did, his eyes immediately scanning the room for Martine.
As things came back into focus, he saw Dianna kneeling over Martine, holding her hand, while the other clutched another, familiar hand, one he’d seen a million times in his life, making a sort of human chain. The familiar hand’s twin held Escobar’s pudgy, unmoving digits.
“Mom?” he huffed the word out, coughing as he rose.
Faith dropped Escobar’s lifeless fingers and threw herself at Derrick, relief flooding her face. “Oh, thank God. Thank God you’re all right!”
Martine roused now, pushing herself upward, letting Dianna help her to a standing position.
The vulnerability on her face, the fear, the uncertainty tore at him. Tore so hard, dug so deep, he held out his arms and she rushed into them, burying her face in his shoulder.
He shuddered against her smaller frame—grateful, so grateful.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to see you again,” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around his waist and squeezing.
Derrick’s hands cupped her face, tilting it upward, planting kiss after kiss on her lips. “You’re okay. Jesus Christ, you’re alive.”
Martine leaned back in his arms, her eyes confused. “Of course I’m alive, Farm Boy. What do you mean by that?”
Dianna put a hand on Martine’s shoulder from behind as she looked up at Derrick with unsure eyes. “Can I borrow my daughter for just a minute? I promise to give her right back after I explain everything.”
He pressed a kiss to Martine’s forehead, taking in another deep breath of relief. “Of course you can. But Martine, don’t leave my sight. Because you’re infamous for doing things you damn well know you shouldn’t be doing.”
Instead of the anger he expected, Martine chuckled and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “I’ll be right over there,” she said, pointing to the decimated corner of the apartment where the kitchen used to be.