The once humid summer air swarmed outside the apartment as he crept from its depths and headed for his car. Leaving her alone inside was one of the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life. He loved her, had loved her for years, but his duty to another woman had locked him into a loveless marriage. More than anything he wished for things to be different as he looked down the empty stretch of street. Harmony had grown over the years, but still at this late time the streets were devoid of any human life.

The rain fell hard and fast, drenching him in the time it took to move from the doorway to his car, which lay but seven feet from the entrance. He was stupid that night, parking right out front of her home. Anyone in the world could have driven by and identified his car outside her place and known that he was there, with her, like he had been every night for the last five years. How had he become an adulterer and lasted that way for so long? He didn’t know, but things would never change unless he left his wife.

And he couldn’t for his son.

The thunder shook his little car and lightning lit the darkened sky. He swallowed hard as the silver bolt dashed across the arc of the sky and shivered. Beth would be asleep by now, she had to be, and he could easily slip inside their bedroom. She would never know about his infidelity and he would never tell her. After all, he did care for his wife, just not the way he loved Sheridan. She was his entire world and he couldn’t last without her. He was foolish to pick his son’s well being over his heart’s desire. So many people had warned him but still he chose the wrong person. He was truly starting to feel like the slime he warned his sister about all these years: no better than a Crane.

Starting the car, he prayed that the storm would calm enough to let him make it home. If he took much longer there was no doubt his wife or son would be awake when he entered the house and no lie was going to get him out this time. He was later than ever before and the only thing that could save him now was the weather.

The thunder boomed outside and Beth looked around the living room. Their little house was lit brightly by every single light from her bedroom to the living room, save their son’s room that still lay dark with a sleeping occupant. She checked the mantle clock again, her feet barely stopping as she paced back and forth between the phone and the window. Her flannel nightgown, the one she had taken to wearing when he stopped treating her like a wife and more like a whore, brushed against the tops of her feet. Luis was out again. Again! She had heard him leave this time, the car started in the driveway and she heard the purr of the engine as he backed down the drive. He thought she was sleeping, was foolish enough to believe she was able to sleep when his warmth was missing from the bed. He must have thought her stupid. She felt stupid! How could she have been naïve enough to think he had truly put the past to rest?

Shaking her head, Beth took a deep breath and paused in her pacing for a moment. Picking up a picture taken three years ago of Luis, LJ and herself, she smiled. This was the man she loved, the one that had been a doting husband and father. He had treated her with respect, loved her with his entire heart and spent every moment with them as a family. She knew that Luis was still there somewhere, buried beneath the stress of working to make ends meet despite what she had inherited when her mother passed away. Finally years of taking care of that annoying old biddy had paid off, but Luis wanted no part of it. He wanted to be the provider and she refused to argue with him on that one point, even if she did use the money from time to time.

With a heavy sigh, Beth fingered the shape of her husband’s face. “Please God,” she murmured, hugging the picture to her chest. “Please let me be wrong,” she felt her hope renew. “Let the rain have kept him at the station. He had to go back in, I heard him mention it this morning!” It was easy enough to believe that Luis had been trapped at the office when the terrible storm had started that evening. Still, the thunder and lightning took their turns shaking up the outdoors and scaring everyone indoors. The streets were silent, the howl of the lighthouse horn warning ships that were coming to port. It was eerie, like the opening to a murder mystery movie and yet she had her house as bright as a Christmas tree. Her only hope was that Luis wouldn’t let her down now. She wasn’t sure she should take it.

Another loud clasp of thunder sent the neighbor’s dog into a fit of barking and little LJ wailed in his bedroom.

Beth saw the headlights as she returned from comforting their son. Little LJ was hard to get back to sleep when he learned his daddy was not home to protect him, but Beth knew that her son needed to be in dreamland when Luis arrived home. She couldn’t let her son watch her confront her husband and now that his car was pulling down the darkened street, she knew. Something inside her began to stir and as the thunder rolled outside, she could feel it chill her heart. Something wasn’t right; Luis seemed to be hesitating in the car, creeping down the street slowly and cautiously. She started for the door, something inside her pulling into the rain soaked night with her feet bare and her body unprotected from the chilly air though the rain had ebbed. Beth needed to hold him and feel his arms around her. It was the only way she’d feel warm.

Luis saw the lights on from a block away and shivered. He’d never get away with his lie now. Slowing the car, he puttered down the small street they lived on and paused once the car was parked. The front door flew open, the lightning brightening her as she ran towards him in her bare feet. He sighed, praying that he could deceive her this time. It would be easy enough to say the car broke down and he had to wait for the storm to pass to fix it. He could even say he was stuck at the station filling in for someone, but somehow his soul knew that she would figure it out. Beth wasn’t as stupid as she seemed to be sometimes and his body was on alert as he stepped from the car.

She threw her arms around him the second he climbed from the car. “Oh thank God you’re all right, I’ve been so worried!” she sobbed, holding him close. “With the storm so terrible, I was worried you might have gotten into an accident!”

He didn’t reply, barely returning the hug he was receiving. He wished it had been an accident or the storm that had kept him from her arms. There was no doubting Beth’s love, she was painfully obvious in her obsession with him and their son, but it was missing something. For years he played the roll of the happy husband, the positive provider, but deep down inside something had been missing. When Sheridan called him one day out of the blue to tell him she returned to town as Antonio’s widow, having lost him recently to the disease that had been stealing his life away for years, he went to her. Antonio may have stolen Sheridan away because they were playing a role in order to protect him and Beth may have won her romance with Luis, but both Sheridan and Luis knew their love was undeniable. When she needed him, he went with no questions asked. He offered her a shoulder to cry on and in return received someone that wanted to be his companion again. Never had he meant for it to get farther than that.

And yet it had.

The wind whipped up around them as he whispered, “I’m fine, Beth,” and tried to shove her away. He didn’t want her to get too close; it would be hard to tell her then.

But she stepped back as an odd reminder of the past struck her. The heavy scent of expensive perfume filled the air and her eyes mirrored the angry flash of lightning behind him. Her eyebrows rose and her hands balled into fists at her side. She knew that perfume; it was the same one she had envied Sheridan for wearing all those years ago when she had first met her at the Book Café. The same beautiful, expensive French fragrance she had given her former sister-in-law one day after her wedding to Antonio. The same one that her deceased friend said he loved before he died; the one he begged Sheridan to wear everywhere they went.

“Luis,” she said breathlessly as the fragrance haunter her senses.

“It’s not what you think,” he tried to argue, but there was no denying it now.

Beth knew and there was no going back.

Before he could say another word, Beth ran inside. He thought she was only angry and looked into the pitch black night, the rain clouds still looming over head. There was a chance that this storm would pass, much like the one that was raging inside his wife. Then he could tell her. He could admit that he had been unfaithful and that he would never see Sheridan again, which he knew was a lie. Perhaps he would be honest and tell her that he loved their son but that Sheridan was the woman he planned to spend forever with. Or maybe, it would just pass and he would go back to his own form of reality: married to one, sleeping with the other.

But his wife had other plans. Beth rushed down the wood paneled halls, her bare feet padding on the hard wood floors as rain dripped off the end of her gown. She threw open the bedroom door and allowed it to swing into the wall, sending a picture crashing to the floor as the plaster cracked beneath the dented handle. She didn’t care. Her life was over anyway now. Luis had become what he promised he would never be: a user! She could have tolerated anything but this! Anything would have been better than his seeing that tramp again.

Digging through the dresser drawer, she laid her hand against the cold steel of the revolver she had kept hidden from the police. They never found the actual gun she carried the night she shot Julian. In fact, no one had even known she had been around to do so. She would do anything to protect Luis and his family and when Julian was trying to steal their happiness, she knew the town had to be rid of him. Theresa’s taking the blame back then had been harsh, but it had led her to Luis to protect him and help him through that dire time. A time when Sheridan was off on the sandy Bermuda beaches with Antonio; a time when she remembered nothing of her former life. She would have given her life for Luis back then and even now she’d die for him. However, she refused to lay down now. Her son was better off without a father than to have the worst role model alive. LJ was even better off without her.

Pulling the pistol from the drawer, she looked into the mirror as she held the weapon in her hands. Blue eyes turned dark with anger as the power went out with the next clasp of thunder. Lightening light the bedroom and she whispered into the mirror, her face drawn, “He won’t do this again, Beth. You won’t let him leave this house again and wonder where he has been hiding. Never again will you wonder where his body will be because only you will know.”

Retreating back down the hall and out the front door, she paused on the front step of their home and watched Luis. His head was raised to the skies where he watched lightning dance above his head. He heard the door close and looked up at her, noticing her rigid stature. “Beth, can we talk?”

She cocked the gun and pointed it at him, looking menacing as ever. “I believe the time for talking is over,” she told him, looking deep within his fear filled eyes. “Actions speak louder than words, Luis, and this is all I have to say in response,” she fired once.

He fell backwards to the earth, the bullet piercing his heart. Blood poured from the wound as he landed on the paved driveway. She walked closer, watching as he choked and spat out blood. His eyes started to droop shut as the last of his life poured through his wounded heart.

“If I can’t have you, no one can,” she whispered, watching him die.

With that she went inside, the lightning casting shadows on the dying man outdoors.

She would never wonder again.

The grave rested on the hill overlooking the town, beside him the woman that had helped him come to this early grave. Side by side the pair rest as his baby sister visits, her husband waiting in the car. She brushes her hand over the cold marble stones and shakes her head, wondering how Beth, her sister-in-law, could have killed Luis and Sheridan on the night she found out of their affair. Watching as her husband, Ethan, helped their nephew into the car, she sighed. It was over now.

The storm had ended.

The End

Disclaimer: This story in is in no way meant to infringe upon the rights belonging to , NBC, or any entity thereof. All rights to Passions and any related content, including characters used, belong to "Outpost Farms Production Inc", James E. Reilly, and NBC.
This story is the property of the author. Copyright 2002. Nothing may be reprinted in whole or in part without the written permission of the author.
The Thunder Rolls- Copyright © 2002 - All Rights Reserved.