by Willow Rose
For now.
Ella hummed as she walked down the road. In the distance, she could still hear the ocean as the waves crashed onto the shore and she enjoyed the smell of it. That was one thing she was going to miss once she left. The ocean. The turquoise blue ocean and snorkeling at the reefs. She had done that since she was just a young child and would definitely miss that part.
The rest? Not so much.
She walked in the grass on the side of the road, letting her toes sink into the thick grass and chuckled when it tickled her. She and Henry were neighbors, but since both properties were so big, there was a long way for her to walk home. Henry's estate went all the way to the end of the island. Sakislov Pointe it was called now. His dad had convinced the local government to rename it, much to most of the inhabitants at Lyford Cay's regret. Ella chuckled when thinking about all the trouble that man had caused in the neighborhood. It had been quite entertaining to watch while growing up along with his son. Ella didn't understand what the fuss was about. She liked Mr. Sakislov. He had always been very nice to her.
Ella felt a sudden shiver and sped up. She passed the main entrance to Henry's estate—what was often referred to at her household as The Russian Invasion. It had pompous marble statues outside, almost monuments that were staring down at her, making her uncomfortable. It was like they were scolding her for being out so late.
Ella hurried. It wasn't so far anymore. She had never been out this late in their neighborhood, and what usually made her feel safe and almost smothered, now gave her an uneasy feeling. The huge statues suddenly looked like monuments on graves.
Ella took a deep breath and sped up more. A flock of black vultures took off from a treetop and startled her. She was running now. Running to get home faster, hurrying through the darkness, jumping from streetlight to streetlight.
Almost there, Ella, she reassured herself. Just a little further down the road.
An iguana stared at her while sitting on a rock, its eyes flickering back and forth on the side of its head. Ella ran past it, her heart pounding in her chest. There was a smell of rain in the air, and she worried a storm might be coming.
Ahead of her in the road, she spotted a shadow. Ella stopped running. The figure stood still, glaring at her. It suddenly took off and rushed toward her. Ella gasped and stood like she was frozen at first, until she realized this person was coming after her.
By then, it was too late.
Ella turned around and ran while the perpetrator's shoes were clapping loudly on the asphalt behind her, coming closer and closer.
Part I
Chapter 1
Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018
"I can't find anyone by that name anywhere. I am sorry."
The woman behind the old computer didn't look up at me as she said the words. I stared at her, doubting she had even tried. She had barely touched the keyboard in front of her.
"Please," I said and pointed at Emily sitting beside me. "I’m trying to find her family. I’ve tried online; I’ve been to three different official buildings here in Nassau just this morning. No one seems to be able to locate anyone from her family. Her mother is dead, and so are her grandparents. I know they came from the Bahamas. They migrated to Florida in nineteen seventy-five, right before her mother, Lisa, was born. All I know is that the grandmother was called Valentina Rojas and her husband was Augustin Rojas. Could you please try again? Please?"
The woman looked at me over her glasses, then exhaled. I could sense she didn't care much about having to do this, but I wasn't going to give up. We had been sent around to so many different public authorities; I couldn't even tell them apart anymore. No one seemed to be able to access the records. As soon as I mentioned how old they were, they all gave me that same look.
The woman glanced at the note where I had written the two names, then tried again, tapping with her long—very fake—fingernails clacking along the keyboard. I sighed, then looked at Emily. She was biting her nails, and I could tell she was about to lose hope. I had thought it would be easy to find her family, but as it turned out, it wasn't. I just really wanted her to find someone she was related to, but so far, we had been in the Bahamas for three days and still hadn't found a single soul. Nothing about this trip had been as easy as I had thought it would be. Emily and I had fought a lot, and the tension between us seemed worse than ever.
I sighed and rubbed my sweating forehead. It was hot in the building, as it had been in all the other public buildings. The Bahamians had AC, but it didn't seem as effective as the ones we had back home. I turned and looked at Emily, who didn't even want to look at me. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This was supposed to be a trip of bonding for us, a trip where I made her feel loved like my mother had told me to. This was a trip for her to get better. But still, she was hardly eating, and she seemed more annoyed with me than ever. What was I doing wrong?
While the lady tapped on her computer—not putting very much effort into what she was doing—I wondered about my former colleague Mike Wagner and what we had just gone through. How he had been able to hide his true nature from us all while killing all those people. It was still so hard to comprehend. I had trusted him all my adult life while on the force. He had been a friend. I still couldn't fathom the things he had done. Who could I trust after this? Who did I dare to trust?
I could still see the rage in his eyes as I shot him in the forehead. It was the hardest decision I had to make in my life in uniform, but it had to be done. Still, it gave me nightmares, and during the day, I could drift off, thinking about him and that feeling that had rushed through me as I fired my weapon. It was so definite, so fatal. I kept wondering if there could have been another way to end it, whether I should have done something different.
My boss, Weasel, head of the Cocoa Beach Police Department, had thought it was an excellent idea that I took some time off while they closed the case back home, but even though I was far away, I had brought it all with me emotionally, and I couldn't help but feel devastated from time to time.
"I'm sorry," the woman said and looked at me. "They don't exist in any of our records."
"You mean to tell me they never had a driver's license? They never registered to vote or even bought a house?"
The lady lifted her eyebrows and gave me a look to let me know she was getting tired of this conversation.
"It was in seventy-five they left," she said. "That was a long time ago."
"And the last name? You don't get anyone else showing up with that last name when you search?"
She shook her head, but I could swear she had no idea.
"So, no one is named Rojas on any of the islands?" I asked, sensing myself growing angrier. This lady seemed not to care one iota.
"I can't find them," she said.
"Come on. This girl just wants to find her relatives," I said, resigned. "Her family is Bahamian."
The lady gave Emily a look like she was sizing her up. "Don't look very Bahamian to me," she said with that strong accent most of them had to their English.
"Yeah, well, of course not. She grew up in Florida," I said.
"Don't think she's got much Bahamian in that skinny body of hers," the lady said and shook her head. "Bahamians are fat. We like to eat." Then, she laughed and jiggled behind the counter, and I sighed once again. It had been the same everywhere we went. No one seemed to be able to find Emily's family, and they didn't seem to understand the urgency. The idea in itself was an abomination to them. They all lived by that island mentality where you wait till tomorrow to worry about the problems while throwing around annoying sayings like We Bahamians are too blessed to be stressed. It was all very great and Zen-like if you were on vacation. I’m sure the tourist loved the laid-back attitude, and under normal circumstances, I probably would too, but when you wanted something done, it didn't really work.
I grabbed the paper where I had written Emily's grandparents’ names and gave the lady an annoyed look.
"Come on, Em. Let'
s get out of here."
We walked toward the front door, Emily following close behind me. I put a hand on the glass part of the door and then turned to look at her.
"I'm sorry. I really thought this would be a lot easier. I mean, there are less than four hundred thousand people in the Bahamas. How hard can it be to find someone?"
"Just let it go, Jack," she said, and we walked outside into the bright sunlight. "Maybe it was a mistake even to come here."
Jack? I hated when she called me that. I was her dad. I had never felt like anything else to her, yet she insisted on calling me by my name lately.
I paused. "A mistake? Is that what you think?"
She sighed, deeply. "Listen, Jack."
I cringed.
"I know you've brought me here because you think this will somehow fix me, that you can fix me or maybe solve me like one of your little mysteries, but I am not broken. I am not yours to fix."
Emily stared at me, her nostrils flaring. Her words felt like punches to my gut.
"You don't want to be fixed?"
Emily answered with an annoyed growl. "You just don't get it, do you?"
I shook my head. "No. I don't. I really don't."
She stepped forward. "I am happy, Jack. I am happy the way things are. Being skinny makes me happy. Not eating makes me happy. Getting on the scale and realizing I have lost more weight makes me happy. I like the way I look. I enjoy it. It's all I ever wanted. I hated being fat; I hated looking like a whale in seventh grade. Now, I don't. Now, I look good in my pictures when I post on Instagram. I feel good about myself. I don't want to get better because what you think is better is not my idea of a good life. I am a grown-up now, Jack. I can make my own decisions, and this is it. This is my decision. Call it an eating disorder, call it anorexia, call me crazy; I don't care. This is it, this is me now, Jack. "
I swallowed. I felt tears appear in my eyes. I never knew it was this bad. Was that why nothing seemed to help with her? Because she wanted this? She liked it? But how was she going to get well then?
I was at a loss for words.
Emily took off down the stairs, her skinny stick-like legs poking out of her shorts, making her look like a skeleton. I couldn't believe that she wanted to look like that. Why couldn't she see how terrible it was? How awful she looked? Was that part of the disease? The doctors at the clinic I sent her to said so, but I had never stared into her eyes and seen it like that or even heard her express it this way before.
It completely startled me, and I felt paralyzed.
"You coming?" she asked as she reached the rental car in the parking lot. "I'm freezing."
It's ninety degrees and so humid I can hardly breathe, and you tell me you're freezing?
A tear escaped my eye and rolled across my cheek. I knew she was constantly freezing these days, but I also knew that it was because her body wasn't functioning properly. It wasn't able to keep itself warm, and soon her organs would begin to give out. They wouldn't be able to sustain what she was doing to herself for much longer.
I was running out of time.
"Excuse me?"
The voice coming from behind me startled me, and I turned around quickly to find a small grey-haired Bahamian woman standing behind me. She was holding a newspaper in her hand and held it out to me.
"I couldn't help overhearing you in there," she said and pushed the newspaper at me. "Here. This might help."
Chapter 2
Bahamas, July 1977
She couldn't see anything. When the girl opened her eyes, there was total darkness and, for a few seconds, she completely panicked, thinking she had gone blind.
She was lying on a mattress of some sort. She could feel it underneath her, and she wondered for a minute if she was back home in her grandmother's house. But then she remembered. She remembered the men, the yelling men. And the boat, the big boat that she spent night after night on, while it made her sick to her stomach as it transported her to a destination foreign to her, but with promises of a better life. At least that was what her grandparents had told her it would be.
That was before they started to cough. After that, they barely spoke until they didn't even breathe anymore.
There were about twenty other people there in the bottom of the boat. So many of them laid down and never got up again. The girl watched them while she held her grandmother's limp hand in hers, pleading with her to wake up.
But she never did. She never made it to dry land. Neither did her grandfather. So, the girl had to leave the boat alone along with the few others who hadn't started to cough yet.
The girl cried when thinking about it and blinked her eyes, hoping it would make the darkness go away. She had done the same when they had shone flashlights in her face as she walked onto the ramp and off the boat. So many yelling voices, so many foreign men, such strange words emerging from their lips, words she didn't understand.
And then there was a woman.
The woman had been standing in the light of a streetlamp, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth, looking down at the girl. Then she had opened the girl's mouth, looked at her teeth, and pulled her shirt up to look at her stomach and back before nodding to the men holding her.
She had taken her with her. She had let her sit in the back of her truck while the strange landscape whooshed by, and the girl cried and called her grandmother's name into the night.
"¡Hola?" the girl now said into the darkness.
But no one answered. A long period of time went by, and the girl's eyes soon got used to the darkness. She realized then that she hadn't gone blind. There was a little bit of light coming from underneath a door at the end of the room, and soon the girl got up from the mattress and walked to it. She put an ear to the heavy wooden door and listened but could hear nothing. She grabbed the handle, but the door was locked. Yet the girl pulled at it while sobbing. She wanted to go back to the boat; she wanted to find her grandparents who were bound to have woken up by now. No one could sleep that long. Not even Uncle Pedro who always slept in when he came to visit at her grandmother's house.
The girl got tired of pulling at the door, then slid to the floor, feeling so scared and helpless.
The girl sat on her knees on the cold tiles and cried when suddenly there was a sound coming from the other side of the door. A scraping followed by the sound of hatches being opened.
The bright light coming from the other side as it was opened almost blinded the girl just as much as the flashlights had when she arrived in this strange country.
But as her eyes got used to the light, she realized it was the woman who was standing in front of her, wearing her long white dress. The girl first thought that she had died and gone to heaven and what was standing in front of her was an angel.
Little did she know at that point, but she had actually landed in hell, and the woman in front of her was the devil.
Chapter 3
Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018
Back at the hotel room, Emily was lying on the bed watching TV, while I read the article the old woman had given me outside city hall. I kept reading it over and over again, making sure I understood it correctly. I was trying to determine if it was good news or bad news and how to tell Emily about it.
Emily soon grew tired of the TV and turned it off. She sat up straight and looked at me.
"So, you found out what it’s all about yet?" she asked.
I took a deep breath, then leaned forward in the chair, not knowing quite how to tell her about it.
The room was small but had a nice view of the turquoise ocean and the white beach. When I booked it, I had believed we might be able to spend a few days just hanging out on the beach, maybe even with Emily's newly found relatives, but the way things were going, I feared there would be no time to relax. I was determined not to leave until I had found at least one person who was related to her, even if it meant spending every day of my two-week vacation tracking him or her down. I had promised Emily this since she was a young
child and I adopted her when my partner Lisa died. While she was growing up, I kept telling her that one day we'd go and find her family in the Bahamas. Now the girl was nineteen. I know; better late than never, right? So many years had passed. I couldn't believe where all that time had gone. These days I sure missed Lisa and being able to ask her what to do about Emily. I couldn't help wondering how different Emily's life could have been, had I only been able to save Lisa's life that day. It still haunted me senselessly.
Why her and not me?
"I’m not sure," I said.
"What's it about?"
"It's about a trial a couple of months ago. This woman was convicted of having murdered a sixteen-year-old girl on the Western part of the island. The girl was on her way home from a boyfriend's house when she was attacked and killed. She was found in her family's pool the next morning."
Emily sat up and shrugged.
"So?"
I took a deep breath. "So, her name is Sofia Rojas. As in Valentina Rojas and her husband, Augustin Rojas."
Emily lifted her eyebrows. "Really? Rojas? That was the name of the girl who was murdered?"
I shook my head. "The woman who was convicted."
Emily left the bed and took a chair across from mine. "You think she might be my relative?"
"It's the only Rojas we’ve come across so far."
Emily scoffed. "With my luck, she’s probably my relative and probably the only one around here. A murderer, ha. How fitting."