Freedom's Price

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “I’ll learn to handle it,” he told her. He pulled her hand away from the controls and the doors slid shut. “See, I’m learning already.”

  She wrenched herself from his grasp and opened the door again. “I don’t want you to learn to handle anything! I don’t want you to hide what you feel! I want you to stop fighting your memories. God, we are both such liars.” She grabbed her suitcase and got off the elevator, heading instead for the stairs.

  Liam chased her. “Mara, don’t leave—I don’t understand. Talk to me!”

  She whirled to face him. “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want you to talk to me. I want you to stand up on a table and scream. If I were you, I’d kick over chairs and stop people on the street to shout about the horrible things human beings can do to one another in the name of politics. But you have taught yourself so carefully to let nothing escape! No feelings, no emotions. You hold yourself in such careful control—is it any wonder you can’t write?

  “What a pair we are. You go to your meetings and you sit there, pretending to listen. But I know what you’re doing. You’re still fighting the memories. On the surface, you’re so calm and in control, but I know you, remember? I know that you have all those nightmares inside of you, fighting to break free.”

  What could he say? Her accusations were all right on the money.

  She started down the stairs again. “Of course, I’m no better than you. I’m as big a liar as you are. You’re the one man I’d trade my future for.” Her words came out in sobs, and she could no longer hold back her tears. “You’re the one man I’d sacrifice everything for, just to be with. I might even be able to live with the lies I’ve told myself, but I can’t handle the lies I’ve told to you. Mother of God, between the two of us, Liam, I feel as if I’m drowning in an ocean of deceit!”

  She pushed open the door that led out onto the sidewalk, and Liam saw there was a cab waiting there for her.

  “I’m not that woman in the black dress you met at the charity ball,” she told him tearfully. “And I’ll never be.”

  Suddenly everything she was saying clicked. And just like that, it all made sense. The clothes, the hair, the careful way she’d been acting over the past few weeks. Marisala had actually thought Liam had wanted her to be someone other than herself.

  “Mara, God, you are so wrong about—”

  She opened the door to the cab. “And you know what hurts the most? It’s stupid, really, but you never bothered to tell me that you love me. You kept that hidden inside too.”

  She climbed into the cab, locking the door behind her, shutting him out.

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait!”

  But she motioned for the driver to leave.

  “I love you,” he told her, banging on the window as the cab pulled away. But she didn’t turn around, didn’t even glance in his direction.

  Liam’s car was on the street—he’d gotten another great parking spot last night. He ran toward it, thinking he could follow, but his keys were up on the top of his dresser. Without them, he was going nowhere.

  All he could do was stand in the street in his bathrobe and watch the cab’s taillights disappear.

  The real irony was that she had been trying so hard to be like him.

  He should have been taking lessons from her instead.

  “I love you!” he shouted, but it was far too late.

  Marisala was gone.

  “Sorry, man, I can’t help you. She’s not here.”

  Liam looked directly into Dan’s eyes. “Would you tell me if she was?”

  “No. Probably not. But she’s not here.”

  “I just want to know that she’s safe. Can you tell me if you know that she’s safe?”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Dan said, opening the screen door and stepping out onto the porch. “I wish she had come to me, but she didn’t. Saturday mornings, she usually goes to the library—did you look there?”

  “She didn’t show. She didn’t go to any of her classes yesterday, either.” Liam sat down on the steps, the fatigue from almost forty-eight hours without any sleep catching up to him in an overpowering wave. “I don’t know where to look. She could be anywhere.”

  Dan sat down next to him, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag. He turned his head away as he blew out a long stream of smoke. “Did you try that guy from the Refugee Center? Ricardo something? She introduced me to him a few weeks ago at an Amnesty International meeting. They seemed pretty tight.”

  “I don’t know where he lives. His home phone’s unlisted—I have the number but I have no way of getting his address. And his answering machine says he’s away for the weekend. I left about twelve messages, I even called the Refugee Center, but…” He ran his hands down his face in frustration.

  “So why did she leave? Whad’ya do?” Dan asked bluntly, squinting through his cigarette smoke. “Get medieval on her, try to order her around, tell her what to do?”

  “No,” Liam said. “I asked her to marry me.”

  Dan tried to hide a laugh and failed. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t get it,” he added. “She’s crazy about you. I should know—I tried to get her out of your evil clutches more times than you probably want to hear about, but she let me know, no doubt about it, that she was doing fine right where she was.”

  “I think she only agreed to marry me to make me happy,” Liam said. “In San Salustiano, marriage isn’t an equal partnership. Women don’t have many choices to start with, and after they marry, their husbands make all the decisions. I think she thought we would have that kind of relationship, because when I went through her desk and the notebooks that she left behind, I found a copy of a letter she sent to the university about her admission to medical school. She told them she wouldn’t be applying because she was getting married. I think she thought I would want her to leave school.”

  “Would you?”

  “No!”

  Dan took one last drag on his cigarette then crushed the butt beneath his boot. “Obviously you and she have had some kind of communication breakdown.”

  Liam shot the other man a look. “No kidding, Dr. Freud.”

  “And as long as I’m pointing fingers, might I mention the total un-coolness of you going through her desk and notebooks?”

  “I was looking for some kind of clue for where she went. I wasn’t just randomly snooping.”

  A trolley car went past, rattling noisily on the tracks that ran in the middle of Commonwealth Avenue. Dan watched as it stopped, let several passengers off, then continued on its way. “I don’t know Marisala that well, but something tells me if she doesn’t want you to find her, she’s not going to be easy to find.”

  “So what are you suggesting? That I just sit around and wait for her to come back?”

  “I’m suggesting that you’ve got your job cut out for you.” Dan appraised him coolly. “But you’re some kind of crack investigative reporter, right? This should be right up your alley.”

  “I was an investigative reporter,” Liam told him. “But for the past few years I’ve written nothing but Sunday columns.” He snorted, disgusted with himself. “And for the past few months I’ve written nothing new at all.”

  Liam froze. Wait a minute. What had he just said? Nothing but…

  Sunday columns.

  “My God.” He turned to Dan. “I need to use your phone.”

  Dan stood up. “Why? You figure out where Marisala is?”

  “No.” Liam stood up too. “But I’ve figured out how to find her.”

  “Let’s see if I’ve got this straight.” On the other end of the telephone wire, Lauren Stuart was coming the closest Liam had ever heard to losing her cool. “You want me to stop the presses for a column you haven’t even written yet?”

  “Two hours,” Liam said. “Come on, Stuart. How often have I asked you for a favor like this?”

  “Never—obviously this is the first time you’ve ever gone clear out of your mind!”

  “Please, Laur
en, this is life-and-death. I’m not sure I’ll be able to live until next Sunday. Damn, I’m not sure I’m going to make it to tomorrow.”

  Silence. Liam closed his eyes and prayed.

  His editor sighed and swore. “You know I can’t give you two hours, but if you can get me the column in one hour—”

  “An hour! God, I’m fifteen minutes away from the office as it is!”

  “That’s the best I can do for you, Lee. Take it or leave it.”

  Liam looked up at Dan. “You got a pen and some kind of paper—a legal pad or something that I can borrow?”

  “Yeah.” Dan disappeared into the other room.

  Liam took a deep breath. “I’ll have it for you in an hour.”

  “I can’t wait even a minute longer,” Lauren told him. “If you’re not here, if it’s not in my hand, you’re out of luck.”

  “I’m on my way.” Liam nodded his thanks to Dan, who’d returned with a yellow pad and a cheap blue pen.

  “Lee, wait—keep the word count down to around seven hundred. Oh, and can you at least give me a hint as to the topic?”

  Liam told her.

  Lauren cut off her own surprised silence. “Forget what I said about word count. Make it as long as you want. But I need it on my desk in an hour!”

  Marisala looked up as Ricardo’s wife, Linda, cautiously knocked on the open door.

  She didn’t try to smile. There was no need to hide the fact that she was miserable. She’d sat up talking with both Linda and Ricardo until late the previous night. She’d told them everything.

  Almost everything.

  She hadn’t told them how, without Liam by her side, she felt as if her heart had been torn from her chest. She hadn’t told them how desolately her life stretched out in front of her. She hadn’t told them that she would have liked—at least once—to have made love to Liam with all of the passion she carried inside of her.

  “I brought you some coffee and a bagel. I hope you like cream cheese.” Linda carried a tray heavily weighed down by a plastic-wrapped bundle. “And Rico thought you might want to see the Sunday paper?”

  The Globe. Liam’s paper.

  “No,” Marisala said. “I don’t want to see it.”

  Linda set the tray down on the guest room’s bedside table and hefted the heavy newspaper. “As you wish.”

  “Wait.” Marisala closed her eyes. “Yes. I do want to see it. Please.”

  Linda handed her the plastic-wrapped paper with a smile.

  “Maybe there’s something in here about San Salustiano,” Marisala continued, opening the bundle and searching for the editorial pages. “But of course you know that’s not really why I want to look at the paper. We both know I can’t bear not to search for Liam’s column and the little stupid picture they have of him in the corner, even though both the picture and the column are three years old and—”

  SOME THINGS ARE WORTH SHOUTING ABOUT. The headline next to Liam’s little picture was not one she had ever seen before.

  At first she didn’t believe it. It was only a headline. So they rewrote the headline of an article that had run before. Big deal.

  Five years ago, I spent eighteen months of my life locked in the dark.

  Marisala looked up at Linda in shock. “It’s new. Liam wrote a new column.”

  For eighteen months I lived the uncertain life of a political prisoner in the deepest dungeon of a San Salustiano mountain prison. For eighteen months I was kept alive by my undying belief that justice would prevail, that democracy would be restored as the people of that tiny island nation rose up to reclaim a government that was for the people and by the people—not against the people. And for eighteen months I was sustained by my visions of an angel, a young girl who had tried to protect me and keep me from that very prison cell.

  Marisala, you’re not a girl anymore. You’re a woman now, and you don’t know it, but I fell in love with you the first night I met you. I didn’t know it myself at the time, but what I felt for you was as strong and as pure as the truest of loves. I love you still, not because of the way you look—and you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, whether you’re dressed in a gunny-sack or a designer gown (secondhand, of course, Marisala. And no doubt bargained down to an acceptable price!). But I love you because of your generous heart and stubborn pride and your inability to stay quiet when injustice rears its ugly head.

  She heard the door click as Linda left the room. But it wasn’t until she looked up that she realized her friend’s wife had left to give her privacy. Because Marisala was crying. There were tears running like a river down her face.

  He loved her. Liam loved her. And he was writing again. He was writing to her. An entire column in the newspaper—just for her.

  You know I was tortured in prison even though I’ve never talked about it. Men from the government and the army came every so often to ask me questions about the rebel guerrillas—about you and your soldiers. They thought I knew more than I did, and they would beat me and torment me to persuade me to talk.

  Of course, I had nothing to say—not to them, anyway. And when they tossed me back into my dark, stinking little cell, I would fight to stay alive, no matter how badly they had hurt me. Because I had hope—hope that someday I would see your smile again. I was uncrushable. I was unbreakable because I had that powerful hope to keep my heart beating.

  But then one day, they broke me.

  I was brought up to the glaring brightness of the courtyard. But instead of questions and a beating, I was told that someone—a young girl—had been caught trying to smuggle some food and a message in to me.

  I was terrified, because I was certain that girl was you. I demanded to see you, and the captain of the guards laughed in my face. He took great delight in telling me that the girl had been killed in the struggle with the guards. And then I saw your body, lying in the dust. I ran to you, but they stopped me before I reached you.

  I didn’t see your face, they never let me see your face, but I was certain that girl was you and that you were dead.

  And that day, after they beat me and threw me back into the darkness, I lay on the floor and I tried to die. They’d crushed me, Mara. With you dead, my hope was gone.

  But as empty as it was, my heart wouldn’t stop beating, and four days later you were part of the rebel forces that broke down those prison walls and set us all free.

  You were still alive. It wasn’t you who had died that day. It was some other girl—someone else’s hopes and dreams.

  I lived in the darkness for eighteen months, but it was those last four days that damaged me nearly beyond repair. Because no man can live without hope.

  Today my hope is that you’ll come home. I’m shouting from the tabletop, Mara. Please come home.

  Marisala put the paper down. She pulled back the bedcovers, climbed into her clothes, and taking her suitcase, she headed for home.

  TWELVE

  LIAM WAS SITTING on the stairs when he heard the key turn in the lock. He knew it wasn’t Hector or Inez. He’d lent them his car so they could spend the day out in Hartford, visiting with Inez’s cousin, showing off baby William.

  It had to be Marisala. Dear God, please let it be Marisala.

  He stood up as the door opened, and…

  She looked up at him as soon as she stepped inside. She was wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a leather jacket over an oversized T-shirt. Her hair was unbrushed and her face was pale and streaked from tears, and Liam was certain he had never seen her look more incredibly beautiful in his entire life.

  He didn’t bother to say hi. He simply jumped right in, Marisala-style. “I love you.”

  She smiled, her eyes welling up with tears that she didn’t try to hide from him as she set her suitcase on the tile floor. “I know. I read it in the Globe.”

  He moved down one step and then another. “I’m going to try, Mara. I’m going to try to talk about the prison. I’m going to try to write about it. I know that’s not m
uch of a promise—”

  “It’s enough for me.”

  “I’m terrified,” he admitted. “I’m scared to death that once I open my mouth I won’t be able to shut up. I’m scared that everything I’ve kept inside for all these years will avalanche and bury me alive.”

  “Then I’ll dig you out.”

  He laughed, stepping down onto the foyer’s tile floor. “I know you will. God knows you’ve dug me out before.”

  “I’ll hold your hand when you want me to,” she told him. “I’ll sit with you when you write, if you want me to. I’ll hold you all night long and keep the nightmares far away. If you want me to.”

  “I want.”

  She stepped toward him and all he had to do was open his arms and he was holding her, kissing her. He tasted the salt of her tears on her lips along with the sweetness of her love for him.

  The sharp pull of desire was so familiar and so instant, and he kissed her again, fiercely claiming her. He knew she felt his arousal because she laughed.

  “Now, this is what I like.” She reached between them and cupped him boldly in her hand. “Real, solid proof of how badly you missed me.”

  Liam was shocked—Marisala had always been so reserved, so passive when it came to making love.

  Her eyes were sparkling as she looked up at him, but the sparkle faded quickly along with her smile when she saw the look of surprise on his face.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized quickly, stepping away from him, a blush tingeing her cheeks as she looked away. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Marisala.” He caught her chin in his hand, lifting it so that she had to look him in the eye. “How could you think I wouldn’t absolutely love for you to touch me that way? How could you think I wouldn’t want you to show me how much you want me?”

  Tears had filled her eyes again. “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. You thought you had to be different, that you had to change. You thought I didn’t want you the way you are. You thought I wanted what Santiago wanted—someone to fade into the background, to do what you were told, to look pretty and stay silent when the men talk.”