“Nope! The series dumped him before he could dump drama on their set. It didn’t help that the woman’s now ex-husband is a producer...”
I told her seedy insider stories until my voice grew hoarse and she could no longer crouch on her hands and knees. A nurse eased her to her side. Tears spilled down Dani’s cheeks. “I’m so, so tired, Kaye. I wish to God that Angel was here.”
I gripped her hand. “Your child will be born very soon, and he’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay, too. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
She sobbed harder, and I glimpsed a Dani I’d rarely seen. “I want Angel so bad. I need him here, with me, not half a world away!”
I looked straight into her eyes. “Dani, listen to me. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.” I closed my eyes. Please protect her. Protect this baby.
“What are you doing? Don’t you dare punk out on me with a panic attack!”
I jerked my hand away as her fingernails embedded themselves in the flesh of my palm.
“Watch the talons! I’m just praying, you hormone-riddled hag.”
Her own panicked eyes softened. “Oh manita, thank you so much.” Determination flashed through her face as she shored herself up for battle. “Right. It’s all going to be okay.”
At ten-forty-two a.m., twelve hours of labor and one C-section later, Christina Sofia Valdez made her yowling, shrieking-mad entrance into our bright and airy world. As her doctors suspected, her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, effectively bungee-ing her up every time she tried to bust out of the womb. I stood beside Danita in Angel’s place, phone aloft, stroking her hair and laughing with her when we heard the first high-pitched power wail that was all female. She became my special little princess the moment the nurse placed her in my arms and I realized: I’m the first familia to hold this tiny, squirming body. Love wrenched through me.
I crouched next to a weeping Dani, my own eyes overflowing. “Mi hermana, meet your daughter.”
I hung back as my nearly incoherent sister-in-law introduced Christina to her four grandparents. Gabriel bounced in Samuel’s arms, his young eyes glued to his baby sister, and I hadn’t realized a toddler was capable of so much love and adoration. Yet again, he taught me not to underestimate a two-year-old.
Next to me, the nurse watched. Then she leaned forward conspiratorially. “Your turn will come someday.”
Mild irritation mingled with sadness. “No it won’t. You shouldn’t say that to people you don’t know.”
“Oh, you’ll be a mom someday. Trust me.”
I scowled, ready to go report the woman when I saw Sofia catch my eye and give a shake of her head. Later, she found me as I filled my thermos at the water fountain.
“The nurse was right. Someday, somehow, you’ll be a mom.”
Anger clouded my brain. “Not you, too! Do you know how painful it is?”
“Kaye. Keep your heart and mind open.”
I screwed the lid on my thermos, tightening it until it broke past the thread. Bite your tongue. I breathed deeply, counted to ten.
“Look, I appreciate your optimism. And I get that when someone in the family has a baby, all eyes then turn to the woman who doesn’t yet have kids. But it hurts my marriage, my husband, and me. The best way you can encourage me is to help me fill this void.”
Sadness touched her expression. “I can do that, mi corazón.”
Later, I rocked my sweet niece as Dani slept in her hospital bed. Sofia and Alonso had taken el changuito home. Samuel was down in the cafeteria, buying food for dinner. I grazed her paper-thin eyelids, watched as her mouth moved and sucked, listened to her mewls and sighs.
With each touch, each sight, each sound, I said goodbye to my imaginary child.
The weight of the bundle in my arms... Goodbye, warm little body.
Wisps of air on my neck... Goodbye, tiny lungs.
Swift thuds beneath my palm....
I placed the swaddled newborn in her bassinet, brushed the black down of her head and tucked on her cap. Then I pressed my knees against my chest to stifle the pain of its rending, cracking, buried my face and braced my body as it shook with silent, uncontrolled sobs. Just for a minute, I indulged myself in overwhelming grief. I swam and pushed as if it were a pond of black molasses, soothing and sweet and suffocating. Then I toweled off.
Sometime later, my stiff, drowsy body was unfolded from the chair and settled into a warm embrace. His hands stroked my head as if he comforted a child.
“You’ve got me, firecracker,” he whispered. “God knows, you’ve still got me.”
“That man hasn’t been by again, has he?” asked Dani. “The one who approached you outside The Garden Market?”
“Javier? Not a trace.” I rubbed Christina’s back as she snuggled into my neck. Dani flipped through a picture book with Gabe, wincing every time he jabbed his small bony knee into her tender midsection.
Samuel’s lawyer had cracked down on NixieNet.net and Alan Murphy for publicizing his beloved author’s daily whereabouts, and after they filed a strongly-worded cease-and-desist, he agreed to share only Sam’s ‘official appearance schedule.’
“After all I’ve done to mobilize his fan base, you’d think he’d be grateful!” Alan had snipped, when I ran into him outside the Lyons Diner. He furiously swiped blonde hair from his eyes.
“It’s not like he has security detail, Alan. What if someone wanted to hurt him?”
He was too offended to see reason. “I thought he appreciated his fans, but he’s just a jackass like the rest of them…”
Since that difficult confrontation, Samuel’s Nixie fans were scarce, but so was Javier.
Samuel had been scarce, too. Baja California was the current destination. It was difficult to keep his trips straight as he traveled across the border states and Mexico (despite Javier’s ugly warning), met with missing persons agencies, followed cold trails and poured cash into local economies for tips that ultimately led nowhere. He just needed something to offer beleaguered Mexican law enforcement that didn’t have the time or resources to search for a “drug-addicted cartel mule.”
Marieta had just…disappeared.
Sometimes Alonso and Uncle Carlos traveled with him, sometimes Santiago. He racked up so many border crossings on his passport, I was certain he’d be flagged. (No one does that many international trips for ‘book research.’)
I switched tiny Christina to my other shoulder as she worked up a burp. Ugh. Dani grinned, pleased it was my shirt this time that was sullied by her little minion. She waved the burp cloth I’d forgotten to place over my shoulder.
“Take this to Auntie Kaye, chulo.”
Gabe tossed the cloth in my lap and I tried to scrub spit-up off my shirt while bobbling Dani’s child. She finally had mercy and took her infant out of my arms.
“Is Sam still hunting for that girl?” Dani’s voice was flat.
“He thought his sister might have sought out your great aunt Belinda in Baja, but that was a dead end.”
Dani was not sold on Marieta’s claims. I wondered if it had more to do with sharing the ‘sister spotlight’ with another woman who, if you took mutual childhood experiences out of the equation, actually had a closer blood claim than Danita. Her nose crinkled.
“I know that expression.”
“I don’t understand. He has family here, obligations here. If this woman wanted to have a relationship with him, she would have found him a long time ago instead of waiting until— surprise!—she needed money.”
I handed Dani a diaper as she cleaned a gurgling Christina. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“She’s a con artist and a leech.” She wadded up the fouled diaper and chucked it in the pail.
“Maybe she is, but Samuel still needs to try. Remember what happened when he was a child? It has shaped so much about him.”
“Because he was adopted?”
“Yes, but first he was abandoned.”
I struggled to r
emind myself of the things I’d told Dani: Samuel needed this, he was doing something good. But with each trip he left me behind, my resentment grew. My longing for him also grew, which made our interactions awkward to the point of ridiculousness.
“How was Baja?” I asked, a touch too snarky.
He replied in Spanish so quickly, he obviously knew I couldn’t keep up. Something about fishing for sea bass with Carmen Miranda and eating grapes from her fruit hat.
“Hilarious.”
He gave me a biting grin. “Your Spanish has improved over the summer.”
“Your attitude hasn’t.”
“Likewise.”
“Having the last word is something teenagers do.”
He simply raised an eyebrow. Dammit. I retreated to the kitchen, taken down by an Olympic heavyweight. But he was right, I always had to have the last word, which was why, an hour later, I served up a meal laden with passive aggression.
He stared at the pot of hearty, steaming, carb-heavy spaghetti I’d placed between us on the trivet. Without a word, he scooped a pile onto his plate, swiveled his fork through the mess of jarred sauce and bleached white flour noodles.
“Oh! I forgot the garlic bread.” I hopped up from my chair, grabbed my oven mitts, and removed the most delicious, buttery, Parmesan-sprinkled loaf of bread imaginable. I slapped that sucker on the table like a handful of aces.
Another eyebrow raise. “I’m shocked you didn’t break out a bottle of red wine.”
“Eat up, darling.”
Gaze locked on mine, he lifted his fork, slurped the noodles into his mouth, and chewed. He winced as starch coated his mouth for the first time in years.
“Good?” I innocently sipped my water.
“Hmm. I’m wondering what happened to the roach bait in the utility closet.” I snorted and, to my mortification, water came out my nose.
Samuel’s steely face cracked as he tossed me a napkin. “Am I going to die soon?”
“I promise, there’s nothing more sinister than gluten and carbs. I’ll microwave a pouch of quinoa.”
He placed his hand on my forearm. “Nah, don’t. I haven’t had spaghetti in a long time, so let’s just enjoy it.”
Once again, we managed to patch up a spat, but tension was an underground train rumbling below our feet. Some evenings, our two-bedroom apartment was as crammed as a passenger car. I’d hear his breath, the click-clack-click-clack of his keyboard, and an unexplainable and deeply disturbing urge to smother him with a tasseled throw pillow would overtake me. So I’d jerk on my sneakers and suck in fresh air. First-world complaints, but I couldn’t deny it: our giant new home would be awesome.
The contractor promised we’d have the outside completed before the first snow, which came early in the foothills, usually October. While Samuel traveled, I spent time on our new property exploring, hiking, watching the frame go up, then the roof, the walls, the floors. Solid. Sturdy. I even hauled our whitewater stuff out to the new storage shed and reacquainted myself with the twists and turns of Left Hand Creek.
Samuel was a man obsessed with combing the seedy streets of underground Mexico in search of a damsel in distress.
I was a woman obsessed with conquering mountains on that fourteeners list: Shavano, Kit Carson, Bierstadt, Chimney Peak.
One by one they fell as Hector, Luca and I clawed our way to their summits. My hands and knees were raw. My muscles were stiff. My face was red and chapped with wind burn. Adrenaline coursed through my body so frequently, it was as if an IV dripped espresso into my veins. But after each climb, the IV drip switched to morphine and I collapsed into bed, blissfully unaware that, once again, I was losing Samuel Cabral.
Oh, we still wore each other’s rings. He still kissed me goodbye before he boarded another flight. He kissed me, but he was already two thousand miles away.
The last thing I wanted was an ‘Ex Ex-Ex,’ and I knew what needed to be done:
Don’t be selfish.
Let each other into the ugly parts of life.
So why didn’t we? Frankly, we were nearly depleted. I didn’t need Samuel Caulfield Cabral to climb a mountain. He sure didn’t need me with him in Mexico.
“Explain,” I begged as he crammed his carry-on with clothing, yet again.
“I don’t know if it’s possible. It’s as if I’m being pushed from the inside-out. I don’t expect you to understand—”
“If you don’t help me understand, then how can I possibly understand?”
“Have you ever had a gut feeling that wouldn’t go away, that you were meant to do something and if you didn’t, no one else would?”
“Yes.” Be a mother to the child I dreamt about. I kept silent, but he heard anyway, my heart pounded so loudly. He paused, then quickly kissed my lips. Oh yes, I understood this gut feeling all too well. And I saw—we both saw—the destruction of our marriage in those gut feelings.
How sad, that I’d fallen back into that hydraulic of thrill-seeking self-slaughter from which I’d climbed, nearly four years ago. The end of summer approached and I was thoroughly drenched from my spins in that inescapable river.
It was there, caught in the hydraulic, that the rain began.
Literally.
The lead Samuel was desperate for ultimately came from Jaime Guzman. I scrolled through the text, hardly believing what I read:
IT WOULD HAVE HELPED IF YOU’D TOLD ME SHE WAS A CABRAL!!!! M. Cabral & D. Rodriguez, detained in Brownsville w/ false docs & illegal entry into U.S. Status: Deported.
“Sam!” I scrambled to the living room where he was glued to a Red Sox game and bashed my shin on our coffee table.
Samuel winced. “Ow, done that a few times. You okay?”
I gripped my leg and forced words through my teeth. “She was deported, that’s why she returned to Mexico.” I shoved my phone in front of his startled face. His eyes widened as he read.
“Ah! She used ‘Cabral’ at the U.S. Border. I didn’t think to check for our father’s apellido, she hated him. That’s why we didn’t get any hits the first time. But who is ‘D. Rodriguez’? And why does Jaime Guzman know about my sister?”
“Because we need a lead and Jaime can get it for us. Can you believe she’s a hacktivist with ….Oh my God.” I replayed Sam’s question, then reread the text: she was deported with a ‘D. Rodriguez.’
I rubbed my bruised shin as I pieced together the news stories. “Marieta was with Daniel Rodriguez. He’s the Unknown who did the data drop on the Zacatón Cartel, the one from La Vereda. Sam…he was kidnapped weeks ago. Do you think that’s why she wanted your help? To get Daniel back?”
“And now Marieta is missing, too.” He flicked off the Red Sox baseball game, which meant serious business. “That’s why she was back in Mexico, living in the Tizilicho slum. Her bank account in the U.S. was seized because it was under a false name.”
“Maybe she was living in the slum because it’s a good place to hide…”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Call Jaime, find out as much as you can about Daniel Rodriguez—this is the proof we need, the Polícia Federal have been all over the Rodriguez kidnapping case. I’ll call Uncle Carlos and ask him to meet me in Brownsville.”
I gasped as I put weight on my sore shin. “No! You just got back. Angel’s stateside in a few days and you need to be here to welcome him home.”
“Kaye, my sister needs me.” He pulled his suitcase from the closet, but I was right there behind him, putting it back.
“Maybe she’s gone underground and doesn’t want to be found. For goodness’ sake, just pick up a phone and call the Mexican Feds!” I waved my phone in the air. “Your family needs you here. I need you here.” We stared each other down, the suitcase between us. Finally, he tossed it in the depths of the closet.
Jaime didn’t have anything new, save for speculation.
“I worked under the assumption that Marieta Sanchez and Daniel Rodriguez were acquaintances,” she said through my phone. “La Vereda is
a hamlet, you can’t empty your chamber pot onto the dirt streets without the entire village knowing about it. Marieta’s a rebel, Daniel’s a rebel…you do the math.”
“You think they were lovers?”
“You don’t get deported together unless you’re romantic or work at the same meatpacking plant.” She cut off my protest. “I’m just keeping it real, Kewpie.
“Here’s what I think: Daniel joins Marieta in the U.S., only to be deported two years later when they’re busted with false documentation. He finds work in Ciudad Victoria while Marieta lays low in Mexico City, and the Tizilicho slum is no Acapulco resort. He’s sick of the Zacatón Cartel terrorizing his friends and family, sick of being separated from Marieta. He decides to fight back, and what better way than cyber warfare? Daniel dumps the dirt on the Dark Web but first wipes anything about Marieta, and that includes Samuel’s data. Sadly, some ass-hat rats him out (there’s a million of them in Unknown). So the cartel kidnaps him.”
I hopped on her train of thought. “Marieta was going to ask Samuel to pay Daniel’s ransom, but she changed her mind. Or maybe she saw this Javier guy skulking around.”
“You find Daniel Rodriguez, you find Marieta.”
I bit my lip, asked what I didn’t want to ask. “Do you think the Zacatóns killed them?”
“I dunno. Their MO is broadcasting it to the world. That’s how they keep people in fear.”
“Bodies on the highways. Shallow graves. Is it any wonder Daniel Rodriguez wants them exposed?”
Death was heavy in the air between us, bleeding into our skin.
Chapter 16
Hot Aches
A hot ache is felt when fingers flair back to life after going numb in frigid temperatures.
Samuel bounced his knees with the restlessness of a little boy. Sure enough, on my other side, el changuito’s heels kicked the bleacher in a rhythm-less fidget. In fact, the entire row of Cabral and Valdez family members were wringing hands, squirming in their seats, or twirling hair.
Today, everyone had reason to bounce with an excitement worthy of Ritalin.
Any moment now, the 460th Wing would be dismissed to the arms of their waiting families. The room was draped with stars-and-stripes swags and flags, balloons and homemade banners, patriotic music. My fingers curled the corner of a banner we had painted in the backyard of the Cabral home. It was long enough for an entire football team to run through. Samuel had pointed out the logistical complication, but Dani had insisted.
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