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Together with Nolan, Lucrecia stayed at the hospital for a long time. Mr. Redman had many stories to tell her, and she soaked them up like a sponge. Fausto was nothing like his father, and Lucrecia wondered if perhaps he had inherited the bad traits from his mother. Mr. Redman never once spoke of his wife, and Nolan never offered to fill her in, so she assumed that her suspicions were true. There was no other explanation for how such a sweet man like Mr. Redman had reared a child as horrible as Fausto. Clearly it wasn’t his parenting skills, as Nolan had turned out perfectly well.
At a quarter to five, a doctor rapped on the door three times with his knuckles and then entered the room. He was a kindly looking young man, with sweeping blond hair and golden, sun kissed skin. He looked perfectly at home in his white doctor’s robes.
“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to ask the two of you to leave,” he said. His voice was gentle, and Lucrecia appreciated the way he kept his tone soft for his patients and their visitors. “Mr. Redman needs his sleep. I know that it has been a very long day for him.”
It was true, and Mr. Redman was already half asleep by the time the doctor had entered the room. He had tried to stay awake as best as he could, but he soon found himself unable to keep his eyes open for much longer.
“I’ll come back and visit you another time,” Lucrecia promised. She leaned over the bed and placed a tender kiss to the crown of Mr. Redman’s head. He smiled at the gesture, and closed his blind eyes.
“That’s right, Father, we’ll be back tomorrow,” Nolan agreed. He patted his father’s hand, and then stood.
He and Lucrecia took their leave, glancing back as the doctor flicked off the lights in Mr. Redman’s room and walked behind them. He was shepherding them in a way, but Lucrecia didn’t mind. She knew that she had no doubt overstayed her welcome.
“Where do you think Fausto has gone to?” she asked Nolan, glancing at him as they left the hospital.
The air was still broiling hot, an incredibly uncomfortable temperature. Lucrecia hadn’t noticed it inside of the hospital, but now she could feel her clothes sticking to her body. A sheen of sweat had formed on Nolan’s forehead that was a touch too large for his face, and his thin hair was clinging to it.
“He’s probably gone back home,” he said. “Or maybe to a bar. He likes to drink when he gets angry.” As if realizing what he had said, Nolan turned to Lucrecia with wide eyes. “Not that he gets violent! Sure, he’s angry and drunk, but I’ve never seen him raise a hand to anybody when he’s like that. It doesn’t matter who they are. He’s too much of a gentleman for that kind of thing, or so he says.”
“You don’t have to defend him to me,” Lucrecia said with a little sigh. “I know that he must be a horrible person. If anything, I’ve learned that more and more over the past few hours.”
She didn’t know where they were heading, but Nolan had begun to walk in one direction and she decided to follow him.
“I can’t believe that he was awful like that even when the two of you were children,” she said with another sigh, a larger, longer one that time. “I wonder why he turned out like that.” She didn’t dare to bring up Nolan’s mother. The last thing she wanted was to disrespect him. She didn’t sense it in him, but she didn’t want to test his anger and see if he was the same type of man that Fausto was.
“No one knows for sure,” Nolan replied. He took his hat off of the top of his head and began to fan himself with it as they walked together. The sun was behind them and steadily setting, but it didn’t do anything to cut the heat that had permeated through the air all day long. “He’s just the way that he is. Maybe God made him to be an awful person.”
Lucrecia had no arguments. She could believe that he had just been made horrible, even if God was meant to never make anyone horrible. A silence fell between the two of them, but it wasn’t like the silence that she had been forced into with Fausto. With Nolan, it was comfortable and she knew that at any moment, she could say whatever it was that she wanted to say. She had no doubts that Nolan would love to engage in a conversation of stocks and the economy with her, whereas Fausto would have called her a stupid woman.
“Where is it that you live exactly?” she asked after thirty minutes of walking with Nolan. The scenery had yet to change, since they were heading away from town. There were no buildings in sight, and the lights from the buildings behind them were growing dimmer by the minutes.
“We live a few miles out this way,” Nolan said. “I should have thought about it sooner before making a lady walk all this way. It wasn’t very polite of me.”
Lucrecia laughed and shook her head at Nolan, offering him a broad grin. “I appreciate the exercise,” she said. “You don’t have to treat me like a porcelain doll. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean that I can’t handle walking a few miles. Actually, I think it’s really pretty out here and I like it a lot.”
“I hope that Fausto doesn’t scare you away from liking it so much,” Nolan mused. He set his hat on top of his head once more, using the brim of it to shield Lucrecia from his wandering eyes.
She had said that she didn’t want to be treated like a doll, but Nolan couldn’t help but think of her as the most beautiful treasure that he had ever seen in his life. He wanted nothing more than to hold her close and to keep her safe for the rest of time.
Chapter Eight
“Fausto?” Nolan called, opening the door and stepping into the house. It was more properly a mansion, but he had lived in it for so long that it had become his one and only home. He tried to ignore the way that Lucrecia seemed to have become completely star struck by the place. “Fausto, are you home?” he nearly yelled.
Lucrecia didn’t care if the man was home or not. What she cared about was getting a formal tour of the place. She had dreamed of the day that she would get to live in a place like this since she had been a child. After meeting Morgan, she had decided that that idea was more than a little ridiculous. There was no way that someone like her would ever get the chance to live in a place like this.
As she stepped past Nolan and traipsed in gentle circles in the front room, she allowed the idea to truly sink into her head. What had once been a fantasy, something that was so far away and unrealistic, was finally becoming true. She was going to be married to one of the wealthiest men in America, and she was going to live in his mansion. She would never want for anything. Fausto would always be there for her, in his strange sort of way that left her feeling empty and unimportant.
“I guess he’s not here,” Nolan finally said, a little frown on his face. He furrowed his eyebrows and glanced around, looking for any sign of his brother. “I’m not surprised.”
“He said that he would be here to give me a tour,” Lucrecia mumbled, a little pout creeping onto her features. “Would you do me the honors?” she asked, turning towards Nolan and offering him a smile.
Nolan couldn’t have agreed faster. He was tripping over his tongue, and Lucrecia was laughing at him, and it was making him blush even more than usual. It wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t the best with words. After growing up with somebody like Fausto, he had learned to keep his mouth shut from day one. It wasn’t as though Fausto really noticed. He appreciated having a brother that was totally and completely silent. It made his life easier.
“I would love to give you a tour,” Nolan agreed.
He held out his hand, and Lucrecia took it in her own delicate fingers. Together, hand in hand, they toured the house. Nolan showed her the upstairs first, and all of the rooms that it had to offer. Next he took her downstairs, and in the kitchen, where several maids and butlers were hard at work making dinner, they discovered the answer to their questions.
“He’s already gone to New York?” Lucrecia asked, taking the note from Nolan and looking it over.
