Can't Breathe: A Novella

Can't Breathe: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was too much to hope for...he was too smart and tenacious not to ask about it sooner or later.  “The Brooks Curse,” Robin said, gathering her courage with her breath.  If he thought she was crazy before, now he’d be sure of it, and he might do what every other man did in six generations of Brooks women -- take off like a bat out of hell.

“So, it’s more than just you,” Brent mused aloud, crossing his arms across his chest, making the blue fabric of his shirt strain over his wide shoulders, and he lowered his feet to settle an ankle on the other knee and slump further down in the deck chair.

    “Yes, it’s more than just me,” Robin said, drifting off to almost one-hundred-ten years ago.  She told him of her great-great grandmother and of how she married the wrong man, and what had happened to every Brooks daughter since then.  At the end of her tale, she found her fingers clutching Lucy around her neck, and Brent’s shrewd eyes studying the action with a stoic expression.
    “Ah...” he drew out, “That explains...well, nothing at all.”  He grinned at her.  “So, let me get this straight.  For six generations, the women in your family haven’t been able to find a good man, and you’ve been broke, and your hair is a symbol of your curse?  How am I doing so far?”
    Robin glared indignantly at him.  “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”
    “I just find it hard to believe that in a hundred years, there hasn’t been one good man in your family.”
    “I didn’t say there hasn’t been good men,” Robin argued.  “The men born into my family have been great, but the women born a Brooks has had the worst luck in love in over a century.  Two or three generations might be a coincidence, but six?  And it’s not just the six women before me.  I have great aunts and distant cousins who have experienced this curse.  I would very much like to believe that one day it will be broken, but that would mean giving the curse validity and I’m not sure I want to do that.”
    “Whoa, wait a minute,” Brent said, sitting upright.  “You know you’re family is cursed, but you don’t believe in it?”
    Robin sighed and sat down in her deck chair.  “Listen, I don’t really know what to believe, but there has been too many coincidences to ignore it all.  Since my great-great-grandmother, there hasn’t been a Brooks female who has not been cursed with unlucky love--”
    “Including yourself, I’m assuming,” Brent interrupted.
    “Including myself,” Robin agreed.  “I did tell you once upon a time that I never married, and yet I had a baby.  Lucy’s father was a married man, and I didn’t know at the time.  Unlucky in love -- that was me.  But there has been so much more to the history of our family.  In six generations, not a single female died before she could be duped by a man--”
    “Except for Lucy,” Brent pointed out, interrupting again.
    Robin stared down at the warped skin of her left hand.  “Yes...except for Lucy.  It seems that with her death, some of the traditions of the curse have been broken.”
    Now, Brent got an interested glint in his eyes.  “How so?” he asked in a solemn, almost-reverent tone.
    Robin raised her gaze to his face, intrigued by the warmth in his brown eyes.  They were quite a lovely color...like melted chocolate swirled with honey.  And as she lost her place in the conversation by staring into his eyes, they darkened a shade and dilated a fraction.  “How so, Robin?” he asked again, gaining a husky quality to his voice now.
    Robin finally averted her head and leaned backward in her chair, closing her eyelids.  “Lucy died,” she answered.  “That’s part of the curse broken right there.  She would never live to know how if feels to be heartbroken over a man...and of course, because of that, I now have more money than I know what to do with.”
    “So, you think Lucy broke your family curse?”
    “Maybe, I don’t know.”
    “Then that would mean that you’ll get another shot at falling in love, but with the right guy next time,” Brent said in a suspiciously hopeful voice, and Robin cracked an eye at him.  For a long second, she considered what he said, but as the moment passed, that familiar anger and sadness entered her, soaking her, taking over her breathing and pulse to the point where she couldn’t fill her lungs and her head grew dizzy.
    Standing up, she decided to go lay down, but she stumbled against the railing, and immediately Brent stood in front of her, bracing her with two firm hands on her elbows and murmuring steadying words.  He was so close, and smelled so good, and her traitorous heart beat frantically for a minutes, but Robin pushed him away.  “I’m fine,” she told him, moving toward the doorway into their cabin, but she halted right there and turned to him.  “And just so we are clear, Mr. Poole,” she announced coolly, “if Lucy had to die just so I can find love again, then I don’t want anything to do with love -- or any man -- ever again.  I’d suffer through a billion cursed heartaches, over and over, just to hold my baby one more time, hear her laugh, and see her smile.”
    Brent stiffened at the implication that he might try to get involved with her -- which was a silly notion; no man as handsome and kind as him wanted someone like her -- but Robin couldn’t think about how she probably hurt his feelings and went to her bedroom, closing the door firmly and sliding under the lush comforter, in hopes of drifting off to sleep for a few hours, where she knew Lucy waited for her.