Toward the Light

by Bonnar Spring

  Inside the refrigerator. Everything she remembered being there was still there—milk, eggs, peanut butter, a few onions, a package of cheese—and nothing she hadn’t bought.

  Into the freezer. Ice cubes. Two pepperoni pizzas she’d bought on a whim at the super-mercado. Homesick for New Hampshire, which had to be the strangest phenomenon of this journey back to the place she once called home. An almost finished quart of coffee ice cream. Another homesickness remedy. Somewhere along the line, without knowing when or how she’d crossed that line, she’d turned into a New Englander. Her coffee in a big bag. The sugar in a Tupperware container. Leftovers—Luz popped the lids—black bean soup, roast chicken, cooked carrots almost obscured by freezer burn.

  On to the counters—clean and bare, except for the line of empty red canisters along the back wall. Luz displayed them only for the splash of color they provided. Still she checked each one. Yesterday’s mail, stacked in a pile, unread.

  On to the cabinets above.

  “So did you get what you wanted?” Evan asked, shrugging off his jacket and dropping his satchel onto the kitchen table.

  Richard sprawled in the old green chair. He had a sheaf of papers on his lap, pen in hand, reading glasses perched atop his head. A wineglass at his elbow, argyle socks. The picture of nonchalant executive ease—not of a gun-toting prowler.

  “All set,” was his uncle’s only reply, and Richard’s attention returned to the papers.

  Evan’s footsteps had slowed to a crawl as he’d gotten closer to home. He’d pretended to admire the tidy paint job on the façade of his house while he looked into the windows for signs of Richard, but he wasn’t visible. Finally, Evan hoisted a foot onto the bottom step, advanced to the second. Took the doorknob in his hand. Looked through the front window. His uncle sat frowning in the living room. Get it over with.

  There’d been no explosion of outrage. No indication Richard had retrieved graphic video featuring Evan as the leading man. Or one showing Luz giving aid and comfort to an outlaw. Just that laconic reply.

  Luz, back in her apartment, might have spotted it, whatever “it” was, but given their paranoia, they’d agreed not to contact one another until the market the next morning. Except in an emergency.

  Once Luz’s tears had subsided, Evan had kissed her, and she’d almost responded. Almost—but that was okay for now; her pain in struggling to acknowledge those long-denied emotions was almost like she was peeling off layers of her skin.

  Evan had no idea what he would have said if Luz had asked him to talk about his feelings. He didn’t have any more practice than she did. He was used to affairs of convenience and scorching sex, used to saying goodbye when it became inconvenient or tepid. So Evan had sat Luz down on the cold stone bench, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, and as they sat hip-to-hip, she’d opened up a little more.

  He understood what she’d said about holding on to hate to avoid the torment of loss. With her experiences, he’d do the same thing. Whether he could go through with murder—that was a question without an answer.

  Luz was obviously terrified about returning to work. He’d tried to talk her out of going. She didn’t need the job. Her insistence focused on obtaining some information damaging to the Benavides drug operation. She seemed to be casting about for the right thing to do with it—whether Richard should still get it or if she should give it to the Frente Popular to use as leverage.

  If he’d arrived home to a confrontation with Richard over his involvement with Luz or Luz’s involvement with the guerrillas, Evan was clear he’d spill everything—even if Luz later objected. He intended to protect her. What “protecting” meant was evolving, however. Yesterday, it was helping her advance her vendetta. Today, he hoped she’d veered away from violence. Tomorrow—well, he’d deal with tomorrow when it arrived.

  But he would keep her safe. From all quarters.

  Richard had plausible answers for every single question Evan asked: He was ordered to pretend to be from the State Department to keep an eye on Josefina. Okay. He liked her and her lonely daughter, so he kept up the subterfuge to maintain the connection, even after he knew there was no danger. Fine. He met with vicious generals responsible for human rights abuses in order to find out what they were doing, with an eye toward compromising them. Sure, why not.

  But to use Luz, no matter how sick she was, to commit murder for him—for that, Evan could not imagine any acceptable justification.

  Richard stood and stuffed papers into his briefcase. With a low whistle, he stretched his arms overhead and rotated his neck. “That’s enough of that.” He came to stand by Evan, draping an arm casually around his shoulder. “I want to take you out to dinner.” Richard added his familiar hearty squeeze to Evan’s shoulder. “Let’s find the best steaks in town. Some good music. Scotch. Too bad things didn’t work out with you and Margo.” With his free hand, Richard jabbed Evan with a couple of man-to-man right hooks. “Okay, yeah, she busted my chops a few times—that bleeding heart of hers, always on about some humanitarian crisis or another—like, why can’t the United States put more effort into ending conflict than sending weapons?”

  Margo was right. As usual. But without disclosing his shifting allegiance, Evan was stuck. Might as well see what he could find out. Evan moved out of his uncle’s embrace. The cool air circulating around him was a constant reminder of Luz’s absence. It was precisely the lacuna he’d imagined after he met her on the bus. And more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Luz dreamed of the waterfall. She stood at the top, right on the edge, where she’d never been in real life. Water flashed by, a deep sapphire torrent, so close it splashed her feet. She was barefoot, the rocks mossy, soft, and slippery. Someone held her hand to keep her from slipping. Her dream-feet moved in tiny increments from one unsteady stone to the next, ever closer to the brink. Pressure on her hand warned she’d overreached. Still she tried another step and then another. The hand yanked her back. Luz turned to see it was Evan—so tall, a giant really, his own feet firmly planted. But the ricochet from pulling her toward him unbalanced Evan. His body swayed, his legs came out from under him. He let go of her hand and pitched into the water. She bent forward to grab him, but the pebbles underfoot wobbled. Cold water spilled through her fingers. Evan slid past and disappeared.

  Luz sat up in bed. A deep pain gathered in her chest. No difficulty deciphering that warning from her subconscious: She’d dragged Evan into a fight that wasn’t his, a struggle that would be his undoing.

  Her neediness had made him vulnerable. Ay, Dios, don’t let it be too late to keep Evan safe. He’d gone home to Richard. Evan, with his guileless face and his curiosity, might’ve said too much already. When she saw him at the market, she’d warn him to be careful. Look at how easily Richard had caught her lies, and she was used to being wary.

  And then—get the thumb drive, of course. What had once been an afterthought now took on central importance. Even if she handed the original over to Richard, she should make her own copy. If it really incriminated Bobby …

  Bobby.

  Today she must make her feet walk through those gates. Somehow, she must separate affection for Cesar from revulsion toward his father.

  Luz slid her feet into slippers and headed for the kitchen. It was early, but there’d be no more sleep tonight. She’d make coffee and try to envision that elusive best path forward. A path that would allow her to settle her scores—old and new. Do the least harm to the innocent. And leave her in peace.

  Then she saw it. The slanting early morning sunlight revealed what had been invisible in the flat glare of the overhead light fixture the previous afternoon: scattered sugar crystals—perhaps no more than twenty or thirty—forming a circle about six inches in diameter on her kitchen counter.

  She made that pattern every time she snapped the top onto the sugar canister. She had not left those grains of sugar. She’d sponged the counter after she returned the canister to the freezer yesterday morning. She alw
ays did.

  Goose bumps raised on her arms. She exhaled slowly. Here was the answer: Richard had opened her sugar. Luz clapped her palm over her mouth and stared.

  This was the answer, but she had no idea what the hell it meant.

  “Can you talk?” Luz spoke in a breathy whisper.

  Evan clutched the phone tighter. Reflexively, he half-turned. Richard stood a few paces away, buttering toast in the kitchen.

  He hadn’t gotten any useful information out of Richard at dinner—a lot of old stories, Richard rehashing youthful exploits with Evan’s father. Without anything conclusive to share with Luz, he’d stuck to their plan of not communicating, but this morning he was sneaking glances at the wall clock. Eight fifteen, only half an hour until he could excuse himself and run to the market.

  “Sí, sí. Aquí Evan MacManus … no, señor … pero …”

  “I understand. Listen, Evan,” she whispered, “I know what he did, but why doesn’t make sense. Can you get away? I need to see you before I leave for work.”

  Evan was about to explode with curiosity about what Richard had done and how Luz figured it out. But he couldn’t ad-lib a single innocent-sounding question. “Me parece bien. Allá nos vemos.”

  “Please try.”

  “I’ll come by later,” said Evan as Richard ambled toward him. He bit off a hunk of toast, and sat across the table, chewing and looking quizzically at Evan.

  The voice at the other end of the line dropped to a gossamer whisper. “Evan, I was having second thoughts about involving you, but I can’t go on alone. Please come. Bye.”

  To the empty line, Evan said, “Ciao.” He stifled his incredulous smile of joy at Luz’s admission and replaced it with a grimace of impatience.

  “Problem?” asked Richard, looking up from his breakfast.

  “Not exactly. A man whose wife I’d agreed to paint—do a portrait, you know—needs to make arrangements this morning before he leaves on a business trip.” Make it as natural as possible. “I can do it after I rendezvous with the girl at the market?”

  “Leave the market to me.”

  “Okay, I’ll get dressed and be off.”

  When he returned from his bedroom, Richard had disappeared. Running water in the shower—and lying against a throw pillow on the floor, his uncle’s briefcase. Unlocked. Unlatched even.

  Turnabout is fair play. The old taunt echoed in his mind, and he crouched next to the briefcase before he had a chance to second-guess himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “He did what?” Evan stood in the center of Luz’s tiny kitchen, hands clasped behind his neck, elbows out in twin Vs, his brow furrowed.

  “He opened the sugar container,” Luz said. “The top is really tight. After I spoon out what I need, I have to push it down firmly, like this, to snap it back into place.” Luz lifted the Tupperware container. “See that pattern of sugar crystals? It’s just like the one I found this morning.”

  She and Evan bent over the counter, and Luz inscribed circles in space over both patterns, a few grains of sugar expelled from a too-tight lid, almost invisible.

  She had debated herself more than an hour after her discovery. Afraid to touch anything, she’d retreated to the living room and curled up on the sofa. Afraid to trust her observations, she’d replayed Evan’s recital of Richard’s actions and compared it obsessively to her morning discovery. She needed that second set of eyes. But she’d vacillated, afraid to abandon her new resolve to protect Evan.

  Afraid to probe too deeply into what this meant. Just plain old afraid.

  Fear. It licked around her, chilling her skin. It wormed into her thoughts. She couldn’t move forward, nor could she go back—until she learned what this meant.

  “Have you checked what’s inside?” asked Evan. The furrowed brow more pronounced. He wasn’t convinced.

  “No, I was waiting to try the experiment with you,” said Luz as she rummaged for a sieve. “I wipe those sugar crystals every day, but I wanted you to see, to confirm it.” She set the sieve on a large pot, and then tipped the contents of the canister into it. A white sparkling waterfall sluiced down. All the sugar slid through fine mesh into the pot. Nothing concealed. “Oh, Evan, this doesn’t make any sense.”

  She thumped the container onto the counter and looked over at Evan, but he seemed preoccupied.

  Evan rested against the refrigerator, standing stork-like on one leg. Luz’s demonstration had almost persuaded him. Richard had spent time in Luz’s kitchen, and he might’ve opened the sugar, but Luz had been under a lot of stress. She could have forgotten to wipe the counter. Or perhaps Richard had been looking for something he thought Luz had hidden, although searching through everything would have taken longer than the few minutes he spent in the kitchen. There had to be something Luz hadn’t discovered yet, something in that small area on the left side. Evan surveyed the space, aware of her eyes on him.

  “Your mail,” he said. “Was it here yesterday?”

  “Yep, sitting right there where you see it.”

  “Richard must’ve seen it, too.”

  A doubtful “yeah, but it’s just mail. You know, bills, flyers.”

  Evan lifted the pile of mail and read off the return addresses.

  “Teléfonos de Guatemala?”

  “Phone bill, duh.” Luz rolled her eyes.

  “Casa Alianza?”

  “They want money for their children’s shelter—I donated before and now I’m on a list.” She shook her head, probably disappointed at his skepticism.

  “Dr. Guzman?”

  “That doctor I saw for the stomach bug. Another bill.” Luz turned and drifted toward the living room.

  “Radiovision?”

  “No freaking clue,” she called over her shoulder. “Isn’t that one addressed to ‘occupant’? They’re having a sale. Whatever.” She settled on the couch and hugged a pillow to her chest.

  Evan flipped through the rest without further comment. She was right—bills and flyers, nothing personal.

  “Could Richard have taken an envelope?”

  “How the hell should I know, Evan?” She didn’t bother to look at him.

  Grasping at straws, that’s what he was doing. Evan didn’t know what to think. Aside from this lunacy involving Luz, his uncle appeared normal. Their informal arrangement meant Richard occasionally arrived unannounced, as he had this time, and Evan was expected to put him up in the bed in his messy spare room. Richard came and went, had occasional staccato phone conversations, checked his email, read the endless stacks of paper he pulled from his briefcase.

  Briefcase.

  “Luz, I meant to tell you—Richard was in the bathroom when I left. I, um, poked through his briefcase. I saw the gun.”

  Luz turned then and fixed her big brown eyes on him.

  “And,” continued Evan, “one other oddity. His passport was stamped on December 14—almost a week ago. So he was somewhere else in Guatemala before he came to my place.”

  Her mouth opened to a circle. “Ooooh, what’s he been doing?”

  Juana beckoned when Luz strolled toward her stall. “Here, señorita,” Juana said, handing over an orange section on a paper napkin. “Try one.”

  Luz caught a glimpse of folded paper inside the napkin. Abandoning her pretext of marketing, Luz thanked Juana and ducked across the street to the café she’d visited with Richard. She unfolded the paper: A man you saw with your cousin will find you after work tonight. Please accompany him. Wow. News of Toño, a chance to see him perhaps. All she had to do was get through this day first.

  Luz bit her lip. A few hurdles, although not the most daunting, lay behind her. Running her theory past Evan hadn’t gone as well as she’d hoped—she knew she’d cleaned the sugar on the counter. Too frustrating he’d gone off on a tangent about the mail. At least she’d reproduced the pattern. Evan couldn’t deny that.

  A waiter came over, and Luz ordered coffee. The thing with the sugar—whatever it was, whatever Evan
believed—was central to the tangled knot she was trying to untie. There didn’t appear to be anything in it, but there had to be something.

  After the tenderness of the previous afternoon, she’d been awkward around Evan this morning. Perhaps it was due to the fallout from her waterfall dream or embarrassment at her emotional torrent. More likely, it was standing in the kitchen with him, the memory of standing there that first morning when he’d wound her hair into his hands, tilted her head, and pressed his lips into the hollow curve of her neck.

  So conscious of the thrill of how their bodies fit together. Conscious, at the same time, of her injuries. The cut on her ear had formed a thin scab; the bruise across her abdomen had darkened to deep purple overnight. But worst were the unhealed emotional scars that meant Evan must stay at arm’s length.

  After he left, she’d riffled through the mail once more. The bill from Dr. Guzman caught her attention. After her follow-up appointment with him, she’d had blood drawn at a laboratory in his building. While Luz waited her turn, she’d read their posted list of services. They did chemical analysis for industry as well as medical work.

  Luz had grabbed a baggie and scooped some sugar into it.

  Dropping it off at the lab was her next stop. One coffee became two. Luz had plenty of time to go home and change her clothes, but she preferred anonymity on the periphery of the market bedlam. Plus, nibbling around the edges of her mind was the idea that, here, she maintained the emotional façade of being “on her way” to work. If she went home, Luz risked losing her nerve. She’d lock her doors and pull the shades. And fail. To exact justice—or retribution—required at least a few more forays into enemy territory.

  So she stayed, ordered a third coffee she didn’t drink, and watched the minutes tick by on the ornate clock over the main entrance to the market. She had to avoid Bobby. Every fleeting thought of him brought back his smell, his prodding fingers, the sound of his grunts, his parting threat.

  In the end, her nerve almost failed her. It was curiosity about the sugar that finally got her to her feet. By the time Luz dashed into the lab and filled out the paperwork, however, she was running late.