The Summer Children

by Dot Hutchison

  The front of a sneaker nudges my shin. “Hey,” Eddison says. “We’ve got you.”

  “I know,” I reply, voice a little too high to make it believable.

  “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “Mercedes.” In a trick the dirty bastard learned from Vic, he waits until I look up at him. “We’ve got you.”

  I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, then do it again, this time on a count. “I know,” I say finally. “I’m just . . .”

  “Will this help?” asks a new voice, and Eddison stumbles back with a yelp, catching himself on his crutches almost too late.

  Sterling stands beside him with a small smile and a cardboard carrier with four hot drinks.

  “Bells,” mutters Eddison. “I’m putting bells on you.”

  “Promises, promises.” She hands Vic a cup that smells strongly of black coffee and hazelnut creamer, then hands one to me with the rich scent of chocolate. “I figured you’d be jittery enough,” she says with a shrug, “but if you’d rather coffee, we can switch.”

  “No, hot chocolate is good. Hot chocolate is . . .” The hand not holding the cup is still tapping rapidly against my phone, a little rabbit heart about to burst from fear. “This is good. Thank you.”

  Eddison eyes the two cups remaining in the carrier. “One of those is mine, right?”

  “Yes, black as your soul even. You can have it once we’re inside.”

  “Decaf?” asks Vic.

  Sterling shrugs again. “I’d be worried about the caffeine if he was taking his drugs, but he’s not, so . . .”

  “I am taking my drugs! Vic, don’t give me that disappointed look, I am taking my drugs.”

  “Not all of them,” Sterling announces in a singsong voice, and from the beautiful look of disgust and betrayal Eddison gives her, I’m going to guess that she’s the one who sprung him from the hospital, and this is her price. I’m also going to guess she didn’t tell him that price up front.

  “I will take the painkillers when we’re done for the day, but I’d like to not be a drooling, incoherent mess in front of IA, thank you very much.” He reaches out for the nearer cup, but she pulls it away.

  “And how are you going to manage it with your crutches?”

  “I’ve seen you do it.”

  “You don’t have the figure to do it the way I do.”

  The tips of his ears turning pink, Eddison sends a quick look down both stretches of hallway. “Do you mind? I’m trying to limit myself to one sexual harassment seminar a year.”

  “Children,” Vic rumbles. Eddison glowers, but subsides. Sterling doesn’t bother with the glower; even at her most mischievous, she pulls off the innocent look too well to manage anything else well. For the first time, she’s wearing color here at work, her blouse a vivid royal blue that makes her eyes pop. It’s still a power color, not soft or especially girly, but I’m glad she finally feels comfortable enough to stray from straight black and white.

  Does it say anything about me that this is helping me center? If they were genuinely worried about how this investigation was going to turn out, they’d either be very quiet (Vic and Sterling) or blatantly obnoxious (Eddison. Always Eddison). This is business as usual.

  Behind the two agents on their feet, the door creaks open. Every conference room on this floor has a door that creaks, no matter how much WD-40 maintenance applies. Rumor has it some enterprising agent went through and put pins in every hinge, so anyone waiting in the hall for an IA deposition or disciplinary meeting has warning when the door opens. I have no idea if the rumor is true or not, but I also know that no agent will ever try to find out.

  We’re not immune to superstition even if we are supposed to know better.

  A young man, probably fresh out of the academy, stands in the doorway and clears his throat. “We’re ready for you, agents.”

  Vic squeezes my knee. “Mercedes?”

  I nod, take another minute to breathe, and finally stand up.

  Eddison bumps his shoulder into mine, nose pressed into my cheek. “Remember, we’ve got you,” he murmurs. “You’re not alone in there, chula.”

  I breathe him in, his familiar scent altered by lingering hospital smells. For ten years, these two men have been my family, and Sterling is part of it now too. I’d have their backs through hell and beyond.

  And they’ve got mine.

  31

  Two and a half days later, the interviews are basically done, and Agent Dern dismisses us for lunch. The verdict, such as it is, will come down when we reconvene. We retreat to the conference room off the bullpen to wait, and the girls are there, visitor badges clipped to their shirts. They brought the food, insistent on giving us moral support. Inara and Victoria-Bliss actually had to return to New York on Friday, but they came back down last night to be here, and that means a lot.

  Eddison pokes at his food. He hasn’t had much of an appetite since he got shot, which is normal but still not great. He’s almost squinting against the pain, and the muscles at the left side of his mouth keep twitching. As gently as I can, I hook my foot under his and lift his leg until I can discreetly grab his ankle and prop it across my lap. Proper elevation won’t make it stop hurting, but at least it’s something. He lets out a soft sigh and nudges my elbow with his.

  To be honest, I thought we were being wonderfully subtle, but Vic catches my eye and smiles slightly, shaking his head at Eddison’s stubbornness.

  Priya slides a pair of scrapbooks in front of me, folding her hands on the table. “Vic, Eddison, you have copies coming of the first one, but it felt important to get this one done in time.”

  I lift up the front cover, aware of Vic and Eddison pressing closer on either side. Sterling smiles and starts cleaning up the boxes. The first picture is of Inara, in those first few days after the Garden, the wings of the Western Pine Elfin emblazoned on her back in pale browns, jewel-like pinks and purples, her sides and hands cut and burned from the glass and explosion. She looks back over her shoulder, slightly, eyes narrowed at whoever else was in the room. On the opposite corner of the page, though, is a newer picture of her, topless and from behind, a few thin scars showing where the wounds used to be, a rainbow mess of full skirts heaped around her as she peeks over her shoulder. She’s teasing in this one, the colors of the wings only slightly faded, her arms crossed in front of her with just the tips of her fingers curling over her shoulders. Tiny butterflies and stacks of books decorate the blank corners of the page.

  The next page is Victoria-Bliss, the brilliant blue and black of the Mexican Bluewing as dramatic as the rest of her coloring. Like Inara’s, the first picture was clearly taken at or just after the hospital, but in the second, she’s at a beach, wearing the bottom of a bathing suit, blue ruffled boy shorts, jumping off a squat rock into foaming waves. Her arms are up like she’s jumped from a greater height, her feet kicked up behind her.

  There’s Ravenna, her leg swathed in bandages from a heavy chunk of falling glass, white and palest yellow and orange picked out against her dark skin. In the new one, maybe Ravenna, maybe Patrice, or maybe something wholly new delicately balanced between them, she’s dancing en pointe in cropped leggings, one arm crossed over her chest, the other arm and one leg fully extended. Strong, graceful, secure in her stance despite the pouring rain. There’s hope for her, with luck and the formidable attention of the Sravasti women.

  All of the surviving Butterflies, then and now, healthy and mostly happy. Healing. The last of the first set of pages has Keely, just twelve years old when she was kidnapped. She wasn’t in the Garden long enough to be tattooed with wings, so unlike the other girls, her current photo is fully clothed. She struggled for a long time with the aftermath, not only with being assaulted and kidnapped when so much younger than the others, but with the widely varying public responses to her. Now, a few months shy of sixteen, she’s beaming in the photo and holding up her brand new learner’s permit.

  This was Priya
’s project this summer. I continue slowly flipping through pages showing the girls in parts of their new lives, and some where they’ve clearly gotten together for group shots. There’s one of Inara and Keely that makes my eyes burn with tears. Inara protected Keely in the Garden, and did her best to help her afterward, and here they are on the page, sprawled out on a blanket in the sunshine with eyes closed and mouths smiling.

  Completely unaware of the water balloon about to land on them. That’s . . . that’s really a hell of a shot.

  But it’s so normal and healthy, and God, these amazing girls have come so far.

  The very last picture has all seven of the survivors, caught midjump in a yard or field, all of them wearing white sundresses and their hair down, with the filmy, brightly colored butterfly wings kids use for dress-up or Halloween catching the sunlight. They’re all laughing.

  “Some of the others were getting frustrated,” Inara says, leaning against Priya. “Sometimes your recovery plateaus, and it was hard to convince them that they were still improving. Priya and I cooked up this idea, so they’d be able to see it. But we wanted it for you guys, as well. We’ve haunted you for a while, and you adopted us, and I think we’re the only ones who’ve been watching to make sure you heal, too.”

  Victoria-Bliss balls up a napkin and tosses it at Eddison, purposefully shorting it so he doesn’t have to grab for it. “We’re grateful. We know you haven’t seen most of the others since just after the trial, when Mrs. MacIntosh told us about the scholarships she was setting up for us. So we wanted to give you new pictures, so you don’t only think of back then.”

  “This is amazing,” I whisper, and I lose the battle with the tears that slide down my cheeks. But Vic has them, too, and even Eddison is trying very hard to look stoic.

  “The second one, Mercedes, is just for you,” Priya says.

  “Does that mean I should open it in private?”

  “Up to you. I just meant the boys aren’t getting copies down the line.” She sticks her tongue out at Eddison’s fake pout. “No one else gets vacation photos from Special Agent Ken.”

  “Although,” Inara muses, “his book is going to have a few extra pictures of when Special Agent Ken and my little blue dragon traveled to meet the girls.”

  He looks both flattered and horrified. “Christ,” he wheezes.

  All three girls give him wicked smiles.

  Stacking the other book on top of the first, I open it and find a picture of eight-year-old Brandon Maxwell, the kidnapping victim in my very first case as an agent. He sits with his parents, teary but beaming, a bright green bear in his lap. Next to that is a new picture, a little grainy like it wasn’t entirely focused, of an eighteen-year-old in an orange-and-white cap-and-gown graduation set, beaming with a mouth full of braces and a battered, faded green teddy bear on top of his mortarboard.

  “What is . . .”

  Every page. Every page has a picture from our case files of one of our rescued children with their bear, and a picture from this summer. The kids range in age from twenties to single digits, and they all . . .

  “We got permission from Agent Dern,” Priya says as I keep turning pages. “We weren’t sure if contacting the families was actually allowed, but she said as long as Sterling did it and no private information was shared, it should be all right.”

  “Eliza?”

  “It’s your ten-year anniversary with the Bureau,” she says with a smile and a shrug. “I told them we were putting something together for you, and if they were willing, if they still had the bear, would they mind emailing a picture of kiddo with the bear. We probably got about twenty-five percent. Pretty awesome, really. They emailed them and we printed them off.”

  There are pictures of Priya in there, twelve years old and on the too-skinny edge of a growth spurt, blue streaks in her dark hair. There’s one where she’s sitting curled around the bear, scowling at the journal in her hands, a never-ending letter to Chavi. There’s another one her mother must have taken that perfectly captures Priya’s fury, Eddison’s shock, and the bear in midair on its collision course for Eddison’s face.

  Eddison sighs, but it’s too fond to be convincing.

  And then there’s the new picture, Priya at a restaurant table, her shirt cut at an angle below the bust so her tattoo shows bright on her side. The bear sits on a plate wearing a tiny white shirt with red lettering that says “I Survived Dinner with Guido and Sal.”

  We didn’t give bears to most of the Butterflies; they were a bit too old for it, and we didn’t want to seem patronizing. We gave one to Keely, though, and she’s there in her mother’s car, the bear sitting on the dashboard.

  There aren’t any pictures of the kids from the past month, and I am so, so grateful for that I can hardly speak.

  Vic stands up and walks around the table, kissing their cheeks all in a row. “This is wonderful, ladies. Thank you.”

  I nod, too close to bawling myself stupid to be able to form words.

  “Okay-ish?” asks Priya, and I nod again.

  The baby-faced agent who’s been taking minutes in the IA interviews sticks his head into the conference room. Erickson, that’s his name. “Agents? When you’re ready.”

  We stop to put the albums in Vic’s office for safekeeping, then escort the girls out. All three give me tight hugs and murmured thank-yous, and if the trip down the elevator had me a little closer to composure, well that just knocks it right the fuck out of the park. Vic hands me a handkerchief without looking.

  When we file back into our seats in the conference room, my credentials are on the table in front of what has become my seat over the past three days, the folder flapped back so the badge faces up. I sit down, wrap my hands around the badge, and inspect it.

  Someone, probably Agent Dern, managed to get the blood out of the U. I’ve been trying to do that for four years, with everything from Q-tips to needles to dunking the whole damn thing in soapy water, and there it is, finally clean. There’s Justice, and the eagle, there’s where the gold is dull from being rubbed too many times, surrounded by where it’s too shiny from being touched a lot but not yet too much. For ten years, this badge has been a piece of me.

  “Agent Ramirez.”

  I look up at Agent Dern, who regards me with a terrible sort of compassion from the other end of the table. “It is the finding of this investigation that your actions were not only appropriate, but necessary. Though we grieve at the loss of a life, you did what had to be done to protect not only your fellow agents but the child being held hostage, and we thank you for your service. Your administrative leave is lifted, and although we are recommending a set course of counseling to assist with the emotional aftermath, you are cleared to be returned to active duty.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Eddison’s mouth disappears behind his hand, and he stares at the table with an expression so blank he has to be hurting himself trying not to scowl. Sterling’s hands are folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on them, but those eyes are bright and wet.

  Vic . . .

  Vic carried me out of hell when I was ten years old, and has carried me so many times since. He meets my eyes and smiles, sad but calm, and nods.

  I study the badge in my hands, take a deep breath, and look back at the IA agents on the other side of the table.

  “Agent Ramirez, have you made your decision?”

  Another slow, deep breath, and all my courage. “I have.”

  Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of hurting others.

  It was strange in context, and she knew that. For so long, the people who were supposed to love her, take care of her, keep her safe, had hurt her instead. She yet bore the scars and always would inside and out. She could trace them with her fingers, with her memories, with her fears.

  There’s an outer limit to how much you can heal. There comes a point where time just isn’t a factor anymore: it’s done as much as it can do.

  But she survived it,
came through it alive even if she was battered, and slowly put together a life for herself. She got away, she made friends, she worked her way into a job she loved.

  She just wanted to help people, to help children.

  That was all she’d ever wanted, nearly from the moment she’d realized it would be possible. When it finally sifted down through all the years and layers of fears that she had a future, she knew she needed to spend it helping others as she’d been helped.

  One night, after years of her being hurt, an angel came to rescue her, and carried her away.

  It wasn’t the end of her pain—wasn’t even the end of her injuries—but it was still a life-changing event. She’d looked into the angel’s eyes, kind and sad and gentle, and known that the rest of her life had a path, if she could only get her feet on it.

  And she had helped, hadn’t she? More than she’d hurt?

  Sometimes it was out of her hands. She tried to keep them safe, to get them into better situations, and she’d done that mostly, hadn’t she? Or had she been so focused on getting them away, she’d forgotten—her, of all people—that where they were going to was just as important?

  She wasn’t sure how the scales balanced. Had she helped more than she’d harmed?

  But Mercedes knew—she hoped, she prayed, she knew—that the fear made her a better agent. It made her care about what came after, not just what came before. There were children she’d failed and children she’d saved, and children she had yet to save (children she had yet to fail), and she’d be damned if she was walking away from any of them.

  There was another scared little girl who chose a different path, but Mercedes chose this one, and she’d choose it again and again.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every book has its own challenges, and breaks your brain in a different way, and this book was no exception.

  So, massive thank-yous to Jessica, Caitlin, and the incredible Thomas & Mercer team, you guys are amazing and supportive and an absolute hoot, and I still can’t believe you met the please-don’t-hate-me email with laughter. Agent Sandy, who laughed twice as hard, and I’m starting to think this may say more about me than I intend it to.