by Andrew Gross
“Lauritzia,” Roxanne said, reaching for her hand.
“Then they killed my sister Maria, who was living with my cousins in Juárez. She’d been raped and all cut up—”
“Lauritzia, you don’t have to go on,” Harold said, exhaling a grim breath.
“Yes, yes, I have to go on. You should hear. This is the life we lead. This is what it is like for us there. My brother and sisters and I tried to come with my father when he was granted asylum in the States. But by that time, the trial against Cano had fallen apart and your government no longer had a need to accommodate him, so we were all denied. They said we had not proven that a threat existed directly against us, only against my father. Now they are all dead. All of them. My father could not even come back home to bury them.”
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” Roxanne said, and leaned forward to hug her. Lauritzia pulled back and shook her head.
“Do you think it stopped there? No, it did not. It still goes on. These men, they are more vicious than animals. Animals would never stoop to do such things. They even killed my cousin, the one who conducted their own hit, that started this. Lupe. He was just a boy, nineteen. Yes, he was on the wrong side of things, but in Mexico there are two sides to life: those who are victims, who are poor and scared and cannot afford even the smallest luxury in life; and the ones who say yes and get involved. Who see the others driving big cars and carrying wads of bills and carrying on with the women. Plata o plomo, as we say. Silver or lead. That is their choice. He chose silver. Doing what they tell you to do is just the way. Do you think he knew any better? He was just nineteen . . .
“Then just before I started to work for you, they found my sister Rosa . . .” Lauritzia’s eyes started to fill up with tears. “Mi gemela. My twin.”
Now she had to stop. Roxanne moved over and finally took hold of her hand, squeezing it tightly. But Lauritzia just shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, saying, “You wanted to know why I have to leave? So you should hear. You remember I had her picture here by my bed.”
“I remember,” Roxanne said, tears building in her eyes now as well.
“She was older. Six minutes. We used to laugh. She always insisted how she was that much wiser than me, six minutes, and no matter how much older I became she would always have that over me. She met a man. They were married. She was living in Texas. Dallas. She had a job, as an administrator for an insurance company. And she was pregnant. Five months pregnant. With my little nephew. They found her in the elevator of her building. I won’t even tell you what they did . . .” Tears shone in her eyes, tears of anger now. “He would have been named Eustavio. After our older brother, who they . . .”
She stopped and turned to Roxanne, her dark eyes glistening with rage. “This is why I told you to let me go! Do I need to finish the story? Do you understand now? What happened at the mall? That the only reason I am alive and the others are dead is because the killer began shooting and a policeman happened to be there.
“Yes, I saw them!” Lauritzia said. She turned to face Harold. “Of course I saw them! Los Zetas. I saw the look of the devil on the killer’s face and the dead man’s tattoo on his neck, and when I dragged your children to the ground, I prayed, Please, God, whatever you have for me, do not take them too! I swore that I would leave, so that is why I must. That is what I meant, that bullets and tragedy, they will never let up. These men, they carry their vengeance to the grave. Now you see why I have to go. It is my fate. I cannot put you or your children at risk. You should not have come after me. I’ve already said my good-byes. I should have gotten on that train!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harold asked where Lauritzia’s father was now. She merely shrugged and said she didn’t know.
Only that he was in this country somewhere. But that even the U.S. government no longer knew for sure. “He grew afraid. Cano was trained in this country, by your own agents. Why did the trial against him just fall apart? Influence is something that can be bought on both sides of the border, is it not? My father thought it best for me not to know his whereabouts. In order to protect me. I haven’t spoken to him since my sister was killed. More than two years now. We both protect our whereabouts.”
He shot Roxanne a look that suggested maybe they could try to locate him.
“No. No!” Lauritzia shook her head, reading his intention. “Do you really think I’d be safer with him? I would only draw him to them. Which is what they want.”
Roxanne asked her where she was heading to when she stopped her at the station.
“I have a cousin. In New Mexico. On my mother’s side.” Lauritzia shrugged. “I was going to see if she would let me stay there for a while.”
“And if she wouldn’t?”
“If she wouldn’t, then I do not know what I would do. I am in violation of a court order to return home. I have no job, and without a job I can no longer remain. I would go home.”
“Home?” Roxanne looked at her in shock. “Home is a death sentence for you, Lauritzia.”
“My life is a death sentence, Mrs. Bachman, don’t you see? Tell me what other choice I have! Live on the streets here and beg? Sell myself?”
Roxanne reached out and clasped her hand. “That’s why you never allowed us to sponsor you for your green card, isn’t it? Because you were afraid?”
“Yes. I was in violation of a court order to leave the country. They would have found out who I am and sent me back. And even if they didn’t, look what happened to Cano. He is Zetas. He is very connected with the United States. He would have found out where I was. I am sorry that I never told you these things.” She took Roxanne’s hand in hers. “I never wanted to place my worries on you. I never wanted to put your family at risk. You must believe that. But now that you know, the children will be coming home soon. I should leave . . .” She started to get up.
“No,” Roxanne said.
“No, Missus, it is not right.” Lauritzia stood up, but her eyes welled with tears. “It will be very hard for me to see them again and have to—”
“No.” Roxanne held her back by the arm. “This isn’t just a place of work for you. This is your home. No one forces you to leave.”
Lauritzia smiled, a smile that was both pleased yet skeptical, and went to pick up her coat and scarf. “I’m sorry, but I do not have a home anymore.”
“Yes, you do.” Roxanne took Lauritzia in her arms, the girl attempting to pull herself away, to grab her coat, to break free, until she just surrendered, not knowing whether to resist or go, the torrent building in her eyes, until she just gave up and put her head on Roxanne’s shoulder and began to cry.
Roxanne looked at her husband over Lauritzia’s shoulder as she stroked her hair. “You poor child. God only knows what you’ve been through. Well, you damn well have one now.”
“I know what you’re going to say,” Roxanne argued to Harold outside, his lawyerly, gray-templed look of reason and restraint. “I know what’s happened. But we can’t just let her leave. That girl’s been through hell. If we let her walk out that door, we’ll be sending her to her grave. She’ll be dead in a week!”
“Rox, you heard her story . . .” Harold leaned against the wall. “We’ve got the kids. These people could try again anytime.”
“And speaking of the kids, look what she did for ours at the mall. She put them before herself. You saw how close that shot came. That could have been Jamie or Taylor. We can’t just abandon her, Harold. What kind of a thing would that be?”
“There’s a lot involved here, Rox. It’s not just a question of good intentions. She’s in violation of a court order to return home. She’s been illegally hiding here. For all we know her father may be at odds with the U.S. government. Not to mention the little matter that if these people actually now know where she is—”
“I realize they know where she is, Harold! But we can’t just walk away from her. This girl saved our children.”
“I was talking about our children
, Roxanne.” Harold looked at her sternly.
“I know. I know . . . But if she goes back and something happens to her, I couldn’t live with that. We don’t do those kinds of things, Harold. If what she says is true, the U.S. government has treated her every bit as cruelly as this Cano. They’ve got blood on their hands as well. She saved Jamie and Taylor. We can’t turn around and say, ‘Thank you very much, but you have to be on your way. It’s just too much of a risk. Here’s a little money.’ Not after what she’s been through. You’re a lawyer. The case can be reopened. We can represent her in some way. Or we can set her up somewhere. We can afford it. What the hell is it all for, anyway? We don’t just call her part of the family, and take her on vacations and trust our children in her care, and then when something comes out that interferes with our neat, orderly lives, give her fifty bucks and a train ticket and tell her we don’t have the heart!”
“Mexican drug enforcers aren’t exactly a minor interference in our neat, orderly lives, Rox. Not to mention taking on the U.S. government. Anyway, she’s not even asking for our help. She’s seen these people. She understands. She knows firsthand.”
“I realize she knows, Harold. But that doesn’t mean that we just back down. We owe her something. When those bullets were flying, her first thoughts weren’t for herself. They were for our kids. That’s my cuota, Harold. And I damn well intend to pay it back. You’re as smart a lawyer as I know, and you’ve got an office full of even smarter ones back there. So think of something.”
He had that look, that look when he knew he was worn down. Or at least strategically outflanked. He picked up his suit jacket. “I’ll ask around. In the meantime, I don’t want her leaving the house. And God knows, not with the kids. I’m going to hire a private security outfit, just to keep an eye over the house. The first sign of anything, Roxanne, and she’s got to go. Is that clear? This isn’t some stray dog you’ve picked up on the street. You heard her story. You know what these people are capable of—”
“Jesus, Harold, we live in a goddamned gated community in Greenwich. They can’t just barge in here . . .” She leaned against him and hugged him. “But I’m not abandoning her. As long as that’s clear too.”
He squeezed her on the shoulder and, when she looked up, took a long, admiring look into his wife’s glistening eyes. “You know somewhere in all of this is precisely the reason why I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
“You don’t need to look very far, Harold. It’s what’s right. And you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.” He nodded begrudgingly, putting on his jacket.
“Just find something. Something that gives this girl a chance. But, yes . . .” She centered his jacket on his shoulders and straightened his tie. “I know that, Harold. About why you love me.” Roxanne smiled at him. “I do.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Harold came home the following night, he spoke with Roxanne privately, and after a few minutes with the kids, helping Jamie do his fractions and Taylor download photos on Apple TV, he and Roxanne asked to speak with Lauritzia in their study.
It was his office at the house, littered with briefs and law books. She hardly ever went in there.
Harold sat in the high-backed chair at his desk, and Lauritzia on the green leather couch. Roxanne sat next to her. It was clear they had something important to tell her.
“Your family has a case file with an immigration court in their attempt for asylum?” Harold asked her.
“Yes.” Lauritzia nodded. “My sister filed it. In Texas, when we tried to move here. She wanted her son to be born in America.”
“Do you remember the name of the judge who presided on it?”
Lauritzia thought back. She hadn’t come here yet, and she was a minor back then. Her older sister and father had handled it. “It was Esposito, I think.”
“We’ll need to find it.”
Lauritzia stared, confused.
“We can represent you, Lauritzia.” Mr. B leaned closer to her, a serious but somehow hopeful look on his face. “We can file an appeal, to the Immigration Appeals Court. We can go for what’s called a ‘motion to re-open,’ which basically means you could stay here, if we win. And judging by what happened the other day, I can’t imagine a court in the country not agreeing that the clear threat against your father extends as well to you. You wouldn’t have to go back home.”
“Represent me?” Lauritzia asked, looking at them both. “This will cost a lot of money.”
“Let’s just say we won’t spend our time worrying about that right now. The firm can pick up the majority of the costs. And if there’s more, well . . .” He nodded toward Roxanne. “The first thing we have to do is familiarize ourselves with your case. You’re the one remaining plaintiff of record now. Then we have to find someplace for you to stay. Someplace that’s safe. You understand that, don’t you, that you can’t remain here?”
“Yes, I understand,” Lauritzia said, her insides warming to what she thought she understood they were saying. The darkness that had weighed her down like a leaden overcast sky began to clear. This was more than she could ever have hoped for. No one had ever been there for her before.
“We’ll win this for you.” Harold reached across and squeezed her hand. A faint smile broke through. “I promise we’ll win.”
“No one’s going to walk away from you, Lauritzia.” Roxanne took her hand. “When we said you were like a part of this family, we meant it. Like it or not, you’re stuck with us!”
Mrs. B’s confident eyes and warm, determined smile infused Lauritzia with a strength she had never felt before. “So I don’t have to go?”
“Not unless you want to,” Harold said, grinning. “And even then, I believe it’ll be over my wife’s dead body.”
Lauritzia looked at him and laughed. She didn’t know what to say. Suddenly she felt joy come out of her. As if out of every pore. A joy she hadn’t felt for years, since when they were all children, back at home, before everything happened. It was a joy she felt she could trust, not a fake one, like a governmentale kneeling over a body telling her they would look into it. Which everyone there knew was just a pantalla, a sham.
“Thank you!” she exclaimed.
“Not me,” Mr. B said. “I’m just the hired hand. Her.” He pointed to Roxanne. “This is all her doing.”
“Thank you both!” Lauritzia said, unable to hold herself in. She leaped up and hurled her arms around Harold and hugged him, taking him totally by surprise. And then Roxanne. A warm, deep, penetrating hug, as deeply as if Roxanne had brought Rosa back to life and her sister stood with her arms open in front of her.
Never before had anyone stood up for her. Stood up against them. She had only seen the pall bearers and those who grieved. Tragedy and death. Now she had something she’d had only a few times in her life: a feeling of hope. The last time was when Rosa had told her that she was pregnant. She was in the United States and would have a boy, and there was hope for a new life for them. Away from all the bloodshed.
That hope did not live long, but this one was real. One she could touch and count on.
Roxanne said, “I don’t know if you’ll be able to remain with us when it’s over. Purely for your own safety.”
“I understand.”
“But we’ll set you up in a place where you’ll be safe. You can visit. You can get a job, or go back to school somewhere. Don’t be so quick to leave those books behind . . . you still might get that store.”
Lauritzia couldn’t hold back from laughing.
Roxanne squeezed her hand. “Maybe you’ll even find your father . . .”
Lauritzia’s eyes filled up with tears. “A day ago I felt there was no light anywhere in my life . . . just terror, and I had to face it alone. Now, when I look at you, at you both, there is nothing for me but light. Excuse me . . .” She felt the tide of emotion rushing up inside her. “I’ll be right back,” Lauritzia said, rushing to the door.
“Where are you going?�
�� Roxanne asked.
She was going to cry. But she didn’t want to show that to them. “I want to tell the kids!”
WENDY
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I woke up, hearing the whoosh of rushing water outside. For a moment it filled me with peace, a sound I had awakened to a hundred times, one that always made me feel like everything was calm and right in my life. And that usually meant my family was around me.
Then I realized where I was, and the reality of the night before came crashing back to me. Not like the peaceful brook outside a country home. But like a raging flood of dread. A tsunami of darkness and nightmare I never saw coming, taking with it every plank and brick I had built my life on, sweeping it all away in an instant like a dark torrent of debris.
I blinked my eyes open. I sat up and looked around the familiar living room of our ski house in Vermont. The truth knifed into me, like a punch in the solar plexus. I had driven here in the dead of the night. Arrived here at four in the morning. Exhausted. Not knowing where else to go. I just needed a place to collapse and think. Think what to do. Who I could contact. I opened the door and hurled myself onto the living room couch and just passed out. I slept like a corpse, hiding from my haunting dreams. The sun cut through the room. My watch read 9:30 A.M. The truth dug into me that if I were here, and not back in my own home, then what I’d been praying was just an awful dream was real. Exactly the way my mind was rebelling against remembering it.
Please, please, don’t let me really be here . . .
I looked around and saw the antique signs we collected. CHEAP CORN, 5C. HOOF IT TO DIAMOND GRAIN AND CATTLE. The vintage board games Dave scoured flea markets for displayed on the wooden shelves.