All the Love in the World: A Holiday Anthology Read online

  He and Diego go their separate ways, both of them in bedrooms on the opposite sides of this ground floor.

  That leaves me alone. In the giant living room, the only light coming from the fire. I can see the faint reflection of myself in the windowpane that reaches up to the cathedral ceiling.

  From the way the flames flicker, it looks like I’m in hell.

  I take a sip of the smooth scotch and settle back in the leather couch, staring at the fire like it’s hypnotizing me.

  My eyes fall closed.

  I drift off to sleep. I don’t dream. There is only this blackness that pulls me under.

  Then the feeling of someone in the room with me.

  My eyes open.

  Darkness.

  The fire went out.

  There isn’t even an ember.

  How could that be?

  I rub at my forehead, trying to think how long I’ve been asleep for.

  Then I feel it.

  The presence on the end of the couch, adjusting itself.

  Out of the corner of my eye it looks like no one is there at all, but I feel it.

  I swallow, the hairs at the back of my neck standing up, my skin prickling.

  I slowly turn my head.

  Esteban Mendoza is sitting on the edge of the couch.

  I think I’m having a heart attack.

  I blink at him, my chest tight with fear and confusion, and then I look away, at the fireplace, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.

  It’s my reflection in the window, distorted by the moonlight.

  It’s not my ex-business partner who betrayed me, slept with my wife, brutalized her, and who in turn was graphically murdered by the two of us.

  I take in a deep breath and look again.

  He’s still sitting there.

  That fucker.

  Just sitting there as he always did, with his stupid Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, like he just got back from the motherfucking beach. His hair is wavy, brittle, his face ugly as a rhino’s ass, with a scar running down the side.

  That Esteban.

  “Hola, Javier,” he says to me. “Bet you thought you’d never see me again, eh?”

  This is a dream. Some awful fucked up dream.

  I look down at my hand, thinking about pinching it, to wake me up.

  Then Esteban reaches over and does it for me.

  I watch in slow motion as his hand, his very real and corporal sun-spotted hand, comes for me, pinching the skin on my forearm between my fingers until it stings.

  “What the fuck?!” I yelp, jumping to my feet, rubbing at my arm.

  “Shhh,” Esteban says, raising his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake Luisa. We both know how…curious she can get in the middle of the night.”

  “What the fuck.” I can’t stop saying it. “What the fuck?” I press my hands into my temples, trying to rub sense into myself. I look around the darkness of the cabin. Why the fuck are all the lights out anyway, shouldn’t they be on? Where is everyone?

  “Just calm down,” he says, patting the space next to him on the couch. “Have a seat. I won’t take up too much of your time.”

  “This is a dream,” I tell him. “You’re not real.”

  “Want me to pinch you again?”

  I shake my head. “No. Just…stay where you are.”

  I need a knife. Why don’t I have a knife on me?

  Ah, the fireplace poker.

  I reach for it, grasping it in my hands.

  “I wouldn’t do that yet,” he says to me. “You need to listen to what I have to say first.”

  I raise it up, brandishing it like a baseball bat. “Why the fuck should I listen to you? You’re dead.”

  “That’s exactly why you should listen to me, brother,” he says. “Because I’m dead. No thanks to you.”

  “You fucked my wife!”

  “She was willing.”

  “You had her raped!”

  He sighs and, fuck me, if that doesn’t look like regret on his face. “There’s a reason why I’m here, Javier. It’s that there’s a place for people like us. A place where you wear chains. A place where your soul is eaten alive, shit out by things that your brain can’t even describe. It’s a place of pure horror and pain. Relentless. Eternal.”

  “Oh god, please don’t tell me you’ve become a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  He gives me a sharp look. “I’m dead, you prick.”

  I raise my brow. “Speaking of pricks, do you still have yours? Did it grow back after Luisa cut yours off?” I can’t help but grin. I mean, I know I’m fucking crazy now because I’m standing here holding a poker, trading barbs with the very dead man I saw die right in front of me.

  Even so, he died dickless, so that counts for something.

  “Javier, I’m only going to say this once and then I’m out of here. If you continue down this path, you’re going to end up just like me.”

  I scoff, lowering the poker. “Dead, you mean?”

  “In hell,” he says emphatically. “Wearing much heavier chains than I am.”

  “You’re saying I’m worse than you are?”

  “I’m saying…yeah. You are. You always have been. You were my victim, Javier. That’s the only difference. You’re not used to having it the other way around, eh?”

  “Fuck, you’re still annoying.”

  He gets to his feet and I hate that even as a ghost, or in a dream, or whatever hallucination I’m having, he’s still taller than me.

  “And you’re going to be in trouble if you don’t listen to me. You’re going to be visited by three spirits after this. You’re going to have to listen to each of them, I mean really take what they’re saying to heart, or else you’re going to be confined to a worse fate than mine.” He pauses, studying my face. It feels like he’s really looking into my soul here, which isn’t good. “You can change, Javier. Just a little bit. Just enough. And that might be enough to save you.”

  “Why do you care about saving me?”

  He gives me a crooked grin. “I’m in hell, aren’t I? Trying to save you is just extra punishment.” He walks past the couch, giving me a dismissive wave. “Take care, old friend.”

  I watch him as he walks toward the front door, opens it, and then disappears into the night.

  What the fuck?

  I keep holding the poker and run outside into frozen air. My breath freezes into a cloud, but Esteban is nowhere to be seen.

  My god, I am truly going crazy.

  I’m overworked.

  I’m stressed.

  I’m having some sort of mental breakdown.

  That has to be it.

  I walk back into the house, locking the door a million times.

  I need to go to bed, for real.

  I start walking to the fireplace to put the poker away when I stop dead in my tracks.

  Someone is sitting on the couch, back to me.

  It’s a woman.

  Long brown hair, highlighted blonde streaks.

  The air fills with the scent of freesia.

  Achingly familiar.

  “Who are you?” I ask. I’d love to say my voice isn’t shaking, but it is, because fuck, what now? Was Esteban right? Has he ever been right? “Hello?”

  The woman doesn’t respond.

  But she doesn’t need to.

  I find myself walking toward her, drawn like a moth to a flame, driven by curiosity because my heart is filling with pain and I know that this can’t be her and yet it is her.

  I walk around the couch and stare down at the woman.

  My sister is sitting there, wearing a white dress. Her legs crossed, looking up at me with a curious look on her face.

  I should be more specific.

  This is my dead sister.

  Violetta.

  “Javi,” she says to me, lips curled up into a smile. “Are you surprised?”

  A trick of the mind, that’s all this is. That’s all this will ever be.

  I close my eyes,
breathing in deep through my nose, my chest feeling tighter and tighter.

  I open them.

  She’s still there.

  Sitting right there.

  She looks exactly the same as the day I last saw her in a motel in Aguascalientes, moments before she blew up in a car bomb. Her eyes are ringed with the dark eyeliner she wore to try and make herself look older, but it only made her look emo instead.

  “You’re not real,” I tell her.

  But fuck, I can smell the perfume she always wore.

  “I’m as real as you want me to be,” she says sweetly. “I don’t think it really matters in the end.”

  “What do you mean?” Then I shake my head, look away. I’m talking to nothing. I’m talking to my distorted reflection in the window. That’s what Esteban was, that’s what this is.

  I’ve officially lost my god damn mind.

  “You’re not talking to nothing,” she says. “It’s me. Your sister. The one you failed to protect.”

  My heart drops into my stomach and I look at her again.

  Why the fuck is the pain so real?

  “I didn’t…”

  “Didn’t fail, Javi? You’ve failed many times. Your greatest flaw and your greatest strength is that you pretend you never do.” She pauses. “I know you just talked to Esteban. I know you think you’re going crazy, but if you have a chance to be saved, Javi, you need to pretend that you’re not. You need to listen. And I need to show you something.”

  She gets to her feet and holds out her hand.

  I stare at it for a moment.

  It looks so damn real.

  She cocks her head toward the door. “Come on,” she says softly, a faint smile. “We don’t have all night.”

  Reluctantly, I put the poker down and I grab her hand.

  She’s solid.

  So solid, so real.

  I feel the weight of tears forming in my chest, rising up through my throat, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.

  I collapse to my knees on the rug, still holding onto her hand, and I cry. I cry because not a day goes by that I don’t think about my baby sister, about how it was my fault that I lost her, that I dragged her back into my life and put her at risk. For the longest time I blamed everyone else but, in the end, I only had myself to blame.

  She was right. I had failed.

  She was my biggest failure.

  “Javier,” she says softly, squeezing my hand. “I am not your greatest failure. But I am about to show you what was.”

  I feel her tug at my hand and I look up, quickly wiping away my tears.

  How can she feel so real?

  Maybe because what I’m feeling inside, the guilt, the shame, the sorrow, that’s all real. That’s what’s creating this, this…illusion.

  And I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse.

  I get to my feet and she leads me out of the living room and back toward the front door.

  She opens it with ease, no need to unlock it, giving my hand another squeeze, shooting me a reassuring smile over her shoulder.

  It’s snowing outside.

  Big fat white flakes spiral from a dark, cloudy sky, the moon shining from a clear patch of stars.

  “My god,” I say, watching the flakes fall. “Is this real?”

  “It’s all real, Javier,” she says.

  She continues to lead me out into the cold, and I’m shivering in no time, my balls shrinking from the frigid air. If I’m actually out here, following shadows and dreams into the frozen night, there’s a chance they’re going to find me in the morning like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

  She takes me toward a patch of pine trees in the corner and, as we walk beneath them, the Christmas-scent of their branches assaulting my nose, everything starts to dim.

  “Violetta?” I ask.

  “Shhhh,” she says, and now I can’t see her at all.

  All I feel is my hand in hers.

  The only thing tethering me to this world as it goes black.

  And then, a light.

  Faint. Like we’re coming to the end of a tunnel.

  Except what we’re walking into is a house.

  A familiar house on the coast of Mississippi.

  My stomach lurches as I’m suddenly transported back in time.

  “No,” I say to Violetta, shaking my head. “This can’t be.”

  “It is,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re here. And you know what’s going to happen next.”

  I’m standing in the middle of the old house I used to share with Ellie…or Eden, her alias back then. It’s dark and empty as we stand here in the kitchen, and my sister is right. I know what’s going to happen.

  I know that if I went down the hall, I’d see myself in the bedroom.

  Fucking some whore.

  Cheating on Ellie without a care in the world, all in the name of business.

  Then I hear a sound coming from the garage. The faint purr of an engine.

  My breath stills.

  The door from the garage opens.

  Ellie steps out into the house.

  I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.

  It’s her. She’s so young and so innocent and so…beautiful. My god, no wonder I never stood a chance with her.

  She walks toward me, her hair long and blonde, her limbs tanned. Music notes are tattooed around her bicep, and I remember so clearly the day we both got tattoos done for each other on our one-year anniversary. The notes represented the song “On Every Street” by Dire Straits, because I told her I’d never let her go, that I’d look for her on every street if she ever left.

  I kept that promise, as I always do.

  And here she is, in the flesh. She looks right at me, right into my soul.

  “Ellie,” I say to her.

  “She can’t hear you,” Violetta says, leaning with her elbows on the counter, face in her hands. “We can only watch the scene. What’s done is done.”

  “Why are you showing me this?” I ask her, my eyes back to Ellie, watching as she puts a six-pack of Tecate right beside us and takes one of the beers off the ring.

  Jesus Christ, she’s close enough to touch. I can practically smell her, the suntan lotion she’d put on, the Herbal Essence shit she washed her hair with.

  I can’t even put a lid on my feelings, there are too many of them slicing and dicing inside me, ruthless and slick.

  “I don’t want to see this,” I tell my sister.

  But my sister just gives me a sympathetic smile while Ellie starts walking down the hall with her beer, heading to the bedroom.

  “Fucking hell, don’t do it, Angel!” I yell at her, surprised at the nickname coming back. Surprised at everything that’s coming back. Feelings. Motherfucking feelings that should have stayed buried in this house.

  “She can’t hear you, Javi,” Violetta says again.

  It doesn’t matter. I’m running down the hall after Ellie.

  That is, until she suddenly stops dead in her tracks.

  The beer slips out of her hands and she catches it at the last minute.

  A loud moan escapes from the bedroom.

  My moan.

  I’m fucking that redhead hard and here is Ellie, the then love of my life, listening to us.

  I remember that day, but naturally I never saw any of this.

  It makes me feel sick.

  Then Ellie opens the door.

  Because that was her problem. Always too curious.

  And I don’t need to see what she sees.

  I know.

  I know what I did.

  She closes the door quietly and then turns to face me. For a moment I swear she sees me, her face starting to crumble. Then she slips on the mask that always served her well. Picks up the six-pack from the counter, strides toward the garage door.

  Part of me wants to go back in the room and kick the old me in the face, but I know it would do no good.

  I listen to the other part instead.


  The one that runs after Ellie and into the garage.

  She gets in her truck and backs out, heading down the street.

  I expect her to drive off, but halfway down she stops.

  The car turns off.

  I start running.

  My feet are soundless against the pavement, telling me I’m not really here, I’m not really here, this is a dream, a terrible bad dream.

  And yet I am here.

  I smell the ocean, hear the waves.

  My heart beating erratically in my ears.

  And I see Ellie slumped over her wheel, bawling her eyes out.

  I go around the hood of the truck and peer at her through the windshield, fascinated and horrified.

  She lifts up her head, the pain and anguish on her face hitting me square in my chest. She hastily wipes away the dark streaks of mascara and then adjusts the rearview mirror, watching the house.

  Ellie opens a beer and has a couple of gulps, and fuck, I almost smile. To observe her as she was then, knowing what I know now. She was so young and in over her head and I…I ruined her.

  Violetta comes up the street and stops beside me.

  “Had enough?” she asks.

  I shake my head, knowing there’s more.

  Then the door to the house opens.

  The redhead comes out. I think her name was Michelle, but it’s hard to remember now. She walks across the street to a Mercedes. I made her park far away to seem less suspicious.

  Ellie’s eyes follow her every move, her mouth twisting with bitterness, then pure disappointment. I know what she’s feeling, that the love I had for her wasn’t real, but that wasn’t the case at all. I loved her more than anything…and that love became my greatest fear.

  The woman drives off in the Mercedes, and Ellie…she explodes.

  She screams, the sound ripping out of her, slamming into me. I have to grip the hood of the truck to keep myself on my feet.

  She thrashes in the seat, biting the seatbelt, hitting the dash and the wheel with her fists. She cries and she cries and she cries, in so much pain that I have no choice but to feel it.

  “How long does she do this for?” I ask Violetta, my heart breaking.

  “Hours, Javi,” she says. “She does this for hours. Then eventually she goes back inside and pretends like everything was fine. And then she leaves. For good.”

  I can’t even swallow the brick in my throat. “This is my greatest failure, you said.”