Chapter 613: Cecile XLVIII—Public Isolation
Mitchell clung to her waist when Cecile arrived at the Sakic house in the morning, squeezing her so hard that Cecile actually feared she’d snap in half. “Why did you leave us? I was so lonely!” The boy moaned, and Cecile leaned over him, kissed the top of his head and patted his back.
“Mitchell, honey, I had to take a little vacation, even grown ups get tired you know.” She tried to keep her voice casual, but her heart pulsed fast and her breath even deepened. The strangest part about leaving the Sakic house was knowing that the children were nowhere near her at night anymore, and realizing exactly how much she’d allowed herself to become entangled emotionally to them. This is something Mrs. Sakic would never appreciate.
“Oh, I KNOW all grown ups get tired,” Mitchell scoffed, his little boy voice straight and firm, a charming imitation of his father’s. “But you weren’t with us!”
Cecile rubbed his back and then nudged him off her. She crouched to his level and pinched his cheek. “I can’t be with you all the time, teddy bear.”
Mitchell wrinkled his nose, “Yeah but I had to spend a lot of time with Jana! And it’s all your fault!”
Cecile frowned, sat back and crossed her arms. “Why is that so bad? I thought Jana was your friend?”
Mitchell rolled his eyes. His round little face had lengthened over the past few months, losing the charming plumpness that resembled his mother’s cheeks, and mirroring more the long features of his handsome father. His mannerisms, however, were one hundred percent Jana. “She is my friend! But, Cecile, we got in SOOO much scary trouble without you!”
Cecile grimaced. “Oh yeah, I heard something about that. I’m sorry!”
“Hmph!” Mitchell snorted. He tilted his chin up and aped to perfection Jana’s haughty, accusing manners. “You don’t know the HALF of it!”
Cecile laughed and hugged him.
As for the twins, they didn’t seem to mind her absence so much, being so small they were still for all intents and purposes comfortable with their mother and any other adult in charge. They greeted Cecile with giggles and squeaks, but thankfully without the same attached fervor Mitchell had. Mr. Sakic was off to his team practice and other errands all day, and Cecile spent quite a bit of time with Mrs. Sakic and the children. Debbie took the opportunity to fill Cecile in on every last detail of the infuriating debacle that made the Sakic All Star vacation.
“…it’s the sugar! You leave the kids with a man in charge and the first thing he does is fill the kids up with starches and lets em loose. Can you imagine how humiliated I was? In front of the Gretzky’s and everything, Cecile! It was terrible!”
Cecile squinted pensively, she recognized a desperate accusation when she heard one, and she made sure to apologize quite readily to Debbie about not being there. And then from the bottom of her heart she thanked Mrs. Sakic for the vacation, and gushed to her about how relieved she felt, and how generous Mrs. Sakic was for allowing her some time off. Obviously, it had been a great sacrifice to her, and she’d make it up by being on-call at any moment, even if she was not at the house!
Debbie really liked that. “I’ll remember that, dear!”
After lunch they talked about her living arrangements. Debbie wanted to know if Danny had been treating her horribly, and Cecile did not waste time in defending Dan to her. If anything, Cecile felt to blame for her exhausted mind and distracted life, and she felt that perhaps Dan shouldn’t know where she lived right now. In fact, she still felt the need for privacy and could Debbie please not share her address or phone number with anyone else on the team or with any of the wives. Please?
“Of course!” Debbie promised, patting her hand. “You poor thing! Rest assured, only Joe and I will know where to get hold of you, okay Hon?”
Aside from terribly missing the children, Cecile did enjoy her new living arrangements. The place was so big that she really did not know what to do with the space, and really she did feel on the spot and guilty about the help she was receiving in monthly rental payments. Still, being alone, closing her eyes, and feeling the empty space all around her gave her so much needed silence and peace. Her prayers felt stronger, her heart stronger, everything renewed.
This is what she needed all along.
During the night, however, Cecile found it increasingly difficult to fall asleep. In the blackness her mind haunted her. During her waking moments she could not keep her body and her mind from remembering that wicked pleasure Patrick had inflicted upon her. Only a taste, a sip, of what he wanted to take from her boiled at the base of her belly and her chest, egged her to search for a way to recapture that feeling and hunt him out. Pillow clamped over her head, she could only pray, and even in praying she could not fall asleep.
Cecile had talked about her sleeping issues with Mrs. Trepanier, who’d been so nice as to lend her a little continuing emotional support over the last week. Feeling cowardly, she confessed that the only sleep she’d found over the last month seemed to come at the heels of pills. Prescribed to her the night of the attack upon her by the intruder, and meant to take the edge off her bruises and the gash under her eye, they were dwindling. Oh, it’s such a simple thing! Mrs. Trepanier had laughed, and she assured Cecile that everyone went through sleep issues after such traumatizing events as she’d gone through, why waste money on another doctor visit? She could help with that problem easily, and Cecile was frightened and amazed when the next day Mrs. Trepanier produced her with a bottle of pills…oh, not illegal, she assured her, they are similar, but not the same thing.
The bottle was unmarked, the pills round, and white and identical to the ones she’d been used to. Cecile had been terrified of the pills at first; she shoved them into a drawer and tried to sleep without them. Two nights later, she took half of one, and that seemed to work. Whatever they are, it wouldn’t be so bad if she took only half a dose. It’s not so bad…
Really, Cecile felt so much better during the day anyway that it didn’t egg on her conscious as much as it should have.
Amazing how only the previous day had been the All Star game and now the team was back on the ice. Cecile had spent the hour before the game on the phone with Danny. Debbie and Joe has taken the kids to dinner and in the time she had alone, she called him. Dan sounded so relieved to hear her voice at first but had soon fallen to the morose tone she’d heard so much from him in recent weeks when she refused to divulge her location to him. “It doesn’t have to be so bad, Danny!” Cecile exclaimed. “Nothing is different! We can still meet, and go out, and do the things we’re used to. It isn’t as if you were accustomed to having complete access to me in the evenings anyhow!”
Dan sighed. “Wow, you really don’t trust me, do you?”
Cecile closed her eyes. “Danny! I just need some alone time! I need to think!”
So that had not gone as well as she would have hoped.
It didn’t matter much. She carried the twins into the suite while Debbie walked hand and hand with Mitchell. Brandi Blake greeted them, clutching her gorgeous designer bag and resting her hand on her tummy. Jennifer Foote was also with Brandi, balancing a plate of smothered nachos on her lap. The three small children dashed into the dining area, peeping for a taste of cheesecake or donuts. They certainly seemed to have a lot more independent energy than Cecile could ever remember from them. “Should I let them have a taste of something, Mrs. Sakic?”
Debbie sighed and put her hands on her hips, “Christ, I’m sick of hockey rinks!”
Cecile raised her eyebrows. “Oh…I’m sorry….I…”
Debbie blinked rapidly and ran her fingers through her soft brown hair. “Oh, forget about it, Cecile, it’s nothing to do with you. I just really…really need an actual break. It was crazy…so crazy…”
“Speaking of crazy,” Brandi sighed, “Debbie have you gotten hold of Josefina? I’ve been trying to call her all day, and there’s no answer from her, poor thing.”
Cecile caught her bottom lip in her teeth. Oh, yeah! And there’d been that incident. She’d caught a clip of Peter’s strange faux pas on the news and her cheeks reddened with confused embarrassment for him. “How is Josefina doing?”
“Oh, she’s fine now,” Debbie nodded. “She’s really embarrassed about Peter, but we took her on the flight home and I’ve been talking to her on the phone today. Honestly gals, she’s just as confused as we are about what happened with Peter. So everyone, please, don’t hold anything against her okay? She’s afraid that everyone hates her now, and she’s real fragile. So let’s be nice!”
Cecile nodded eagerly, and Jennifer and Brandi both agreed solemnly. “We don’t hold a thing against her, Debbie. We like Jo too much.” Jennifer said.
“Excellent!”
The suite door opened at that moment and in came the beautiful Josefina. Cecile greeted her warmly, and Jo waved at the room. “Hi everyone!” She said cheerfully. “So when’s this game gonna start?” She rubbed her hands together. “Cause if we’re lucky, Peter’s gonna get a massive concussion!”
Cecile gasped and the other women laughed, albeit in a nervous way. “Oh, honey,” Jennifer said kindly. “Um, none of us would want that to happen to Peter. I’m sure he won’t get hurt like that today.”
Josefina lifted her eyebrow. “Really? What a shame. Because I paid that voodoo priestess some good cash for a concussion!”
“Oh…wow…” Jennifer gasped.
“Oh look at that!” Cecile exclaimed. “I think I’ll check on the kids!”
Things did begin to get tough for Cecile as the game began. First of all, she was relieved that Patrick was playing so that she wouldn’t have to be faced with Michele and the children. She didn’t think her bleeding conscience could take a heart to heart with poor Mrs. Roy just yet. All this time she’d feared that Michele had been the one not to trust, the one after her fiancé when all the while it’d been Mrs. Roy putting up with that lout of a husband. Then again, it also meant that she was forced to take note of Patrick on the ice… and she couldn’t help but take notice of him.
Normally, she only paid as much attention to a game as needed to catch a glimpse of Danny. She did not understand the mechanics of hockey other than goals needed to be scored, and sometimes tempers flared to fisticuffs. But now, she felt compelled to watching Patrick in the net, the strange St. Vitus of a man. He seemed much larger from a distance, puffy in his seemingly over-sized gear, and not at all like a man. He reminded her more of a strange fiddler crab or some other sort of territorial creature. It almost seemed….well, cute.
At one point in the game Patrick seemed frustrated after allowing a goal and he made a big show of sighing and putting his hands on his hips. It seemed so reminiscent of Jana that Cecile stifled a giggle.
“You seem pretty fascinated with goaltending today, aye?” Debbie said good naturedly, “I’ve never seen you so into a game before.”
Instantly, shamed scarlet flushed Cecile’s cheeks and she blinked, and she tore her eyes from Patrick. “No…not at all. Not more than usual.”
Debbie didn’t reply, she turned her attention back to the game.
Cecile
swallowed hard, her throat hurt badly and she turned herself back to the
children. How could she have been so distracted so easily like that? That’s how
powerful that man was.
Links to other sites on the Web