Page 15 of Severed Heart
“You were busy,” I say, picking up the reason for her distraction and holding him up for my inspection. Ezekiel stares back at me with his father’s firelight eyes and pats my cheek with his open hand. “So much of Abijah in you,” I tell him, and he giggles.
“Don’t remind me,” Celine sighs.
“No, that bruise will remind you,” I say, turning to her.
“For the last time, Abijah is not violent with me,” she insists. “Just the once, and it was an accident.”
“If it happened once, Celine, it will happen again. I have seen how he behaves—his paranoia—and he is not well.”
“Since when did you become an expert on men? You’ve dated only one.”
“So have you,” I point out, and she sighs again.
“But Alain, he is good to you?”
“He’s perfect to me,” I tell her, my attention still on Ezekiel as he jabbers on about one of his toys. “He treats me like I matter more to him than anything else, even his cause.”
“Abijah was like that too,” she relays in warning, “and he hasn’t been the same since . . .” She trails off, but I know exactly what she’s referring to.
“All they did was make their stance known. It was just.”
“Not the right way,” Celine says in a whisper. “Not the right way, Delphine, and you know it.”
“Alain lost his father in a bombing,” I argue. “If he didn’t think it was necessary, he wouldn’t have done it. You have to trust them.”
“Trust them?” She gawks. “Alain fled because—”
“I know what he did. He’s honest with me and wouldn’t have left if Abijah hadn’t overreacted and exiled him.”
“As he should have. Say all you want about Abijah, but Alain is far more dangerous.”
“I believe his reasons and ... I’ve been helping him. Since we met.”
“What?” Celine pales. “Jesus, Delphine. What have you done?”
“I was not there that night, but I go to the meetings and hear of their plans, their ambitions. I run errands for them, messages, trade guns, things of that nature. All they want is audience and—”
“Don’t,” she shouts, scaring Ezekiel, who jumps in my arms. “Don’t tell me anything else! I will not lose my son for any cause! Not for Abijah or you and Alain! Do you hear me? I’m done with it all!”
“Fine,” I say, tired of the same argument we’ve been having since Alain left—which is also why I don’t visit when Abijah is here.
Though we both want to drop it, she shakes her head. “Jesus, Delphine.”
“It’s what soldiers do.”
“Soldiers sign up to be soldiers and serve in the French Army. Why can’t you do that?”
“It’s going to be a different world when the Berlin Wall falls, and minds will change with it! They’ve already seen many politicians forever stuck in the old ways, leaving soldiers to obey exhausted orders of oppression and control. The new soldier has become the common man who turns street warrior to fight for a new world without selfish motive. That is the soldier my Alain is and the soldier I want to be.”
She shakes her head gently. “Maybe, but I don’t agree with you, Abijah, or Alain with the tactics you choose. The Pardi has already denied any of those inciting violence like Alain. I am for peace.”
“Peace,” I scoff. “Since when has peace brought change? The cost of peace is being compliant to whatever our government decides without our say. That’s not peace, that’s enslavement. Alain says the same corruption stands just beneath the veil of American capitalism and is ready to join the fight to liberate them.”
“Fight how? Violence only leads to more violence. So, I don’t agree with you. Or Abijah. In fact, I don’t agree anymore on anything with Abijah.” She wrings the towel in her hands. “I am afraid, Delphine.”
She takes Ezekiel from me and presses a kiss to his head, and I fear the conversation will only get worse with my next admission, but she speaks first. “As long as we’re confessing, I’ve met someone. I don’t know how ... but it just happened.”
Shock instantly fills me. “My God, Celine—”
