The Paper Swan

by Leylah Attar

  Damian stood at the foot of MaMaLu’s grave. The new tombstone was simple, not too big or ornate, exactly as she would have wanted it. A sense of peace settled over him as he read the inscription. He had made sure her prisoner number was removed. She was not a thief, and shouldn’t be remembered as such. Damian was never able to determine the exact day she passed away, but her date of death was now filled in. He had chosen the day he had last heard her singing, in the shade of the trees across from Valdemoros.

  “Who brought the candles and flowers?” asked Rafael.

  MaMaLu’s grave was decorated with colorful paper garlands and pillars of candles flickering in glass jars. In the center was a papier mâché skull on a bed of bright marigolds.

  “Hey, Bandido!” Damian felt someone tugging his sleeve.

  “Sierra!” He grinned and scooped her up.

  She was wearing jeans, a black hoodie, and sneakers with neon green laces.

  “Please put me down,” she said, rather solemnly, as if he had just embarrassed the crap out of her.

  “Of course.” Damian obliged.

  “Finally, a girl you actually listen to,” said Rafael.

  “Who are you?” Sierra squinted up at him.

  Damian introduced them, before turning to Sierra. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here with my mama.” She pointed to someone in the crowd.

  “I thought your mama was in prison. Is she out now?”

  Sierra scratched her head.

  “You said she was in Valdemoros.”

  “She works there, silly.”

  “So you don’t live there . . . with her?”

  “Live in Valdemoros?” Sierra laughed.

  “But your hair. The lice. I thought you got it from the prison.”

  “That’s coz I go there with her sometimes. And sometimes I forget what she tells me. I let one of the girls there braid my hair, and I did hers, and we shared the same comb.”

  Damian had not realized just how much his misplaced assumptions about Sierra had affected him, until he felt the weight lift off his shoulders. The little nut-busting girl had managed to worm her way into his heart.

  “I still have some graves to decorate.” She lifted up the two buckets she was holding. “My grandma’s and grandpa’s. Want to help?”

  “You two go ahead,” said Rafael. “I’ll wait here.”

  Damian let Sierra drag him through the crowd, to another grave on the far side of the cemetery. The plots were bigger and marked with tall slabs of marble and smooth granite. Definitely not the prison lot.

  “Here,” said Sierra. She started wiping the dust off the marker and gave him the buckets. “You do the flowers and other stuff.”

  “Yes, boss,” said Damian, smiling as he arranged marigolds on the grave.

  He reached into the other bucket and pulled out some candles. And a papier mâché skull much like the one he’d seen on MaMaLu’s grave.

  “They must sell a lot of these,” he said, holding it up.

  “I made that,” said Sierra, stepping back from the tombstone.

  In Loving Memory of Adriana Nina Sedgewick, it read.

  Damian dropped the skull he was holding. “Adriana . . . Sedgewick.” His head was spinning so hard, he could barely speak.

  “She’s my mama’s mother. My dad’s mother is buried on the other side. I made her a paper skull too. And this is my grandpa.” Sierra moved to the adjacent grave. It was newer and didn’t need as much cleaning.

  Damian didn’t see anything beyond the name carved in stone:

  Warren Henderson Sedgewick.

  “I didn’t know them, but my mama says Grandpa Warren loved Grandma Adriana very much,” Sierra chattered on, oblivious to the fact that her words were coming at Damian like rogue asteroids, knocking him out of orbit, sending him dizzy and disoriented into total, boundless chaos.

  “When he died,” she continued, “he wanted to be buried next to her. My mama and grandpa lived in San Diego. That’s in the States. But when she came to bury grandpa, my mama stayed. She says it’s because she grew up here, but I think it’s also because three of my grandparents are buried here. I don’t know my other grandfather. I don’t know my father either. His name is Damian. He’s the one in prison. Real prison. Not working there, like my ma—”

  “Sierra! I’ve been looking all over for you. I told you to meet me by—” Skye skidded to a halt. She was holding candles, one in each hand. They snuffed out with her sharp exhalation.

  They stood paralyzed, Damian kneeling on a bed of marigolds, and Skye between her parents’ tombstones, holding on to them, as their daughter introduced them.

  “This is my new friend, Mama. I visit him after school sometimes . . .” she said, but neither Damian nor Skye were listening.

  All around them, families were gathered in little units around lost loved ones, and there they were, lost to each other, but brought together by MaMaLu, and Warren, and Adriana. For a moment, it felt like the dead really had joined the living, like they were all gathered in that one spot, at that one time, and all of their flaws and choices and mistakes didn’t make them any less perfect. It didn’t matter why Warren did what he did, why Damian did what he did, why Skye kept Sierra from Damian.

  In the grand scheme of things, we do the best we can, all of us, and we make up our stories as we go along; we write them and direct them and project them into the world. And sometimes we get other people’s stories, and sometimes we don’t, but always there is a story behind a story behind a story, linked in a chain that we can only see a small part of, because it’s there when we’re born and it continues after we’re gone. And who can comprehend all of it in one lifetime?

  Skye and Damian could barely handle that one moment. It was loaded with too much—too many thoughts and emotions, revelations and separations. Too many years. Too much space. Everything expanded, straining at the seams, and then contracted, losing shape, losing form, until the moment hung between them, like a wobbly bubble ready to burst at the slightest shift.

  “Where do you want the rest of these?” Nick Turner caught up to Skye and dropped the bags he was holding.

  Damian felt himself snap back to reality. He had lost so much, and then gained so much—Sierra, Skye, within his reach, within his grasp—only to lose it all again. Skye might have had his baby, but she had gone back to Nick. And why not? She had dated him at one point. He was familiar and successful and stable. Her father had obviously approved. He was the lawyer who’d handled the case so he knew exactly what she’d been through. Had he accompanied her for Warren’s funeral? Been the shoulder she cried on, when Damian had shunned her in prison? How old had Sierra been then? A few months? Had they been together all along? Is that why Skye worked in the prison? As Nick’s partner, helping him with his cases? Had Nick stepped in and claimed Sierra?

  Each question tore deeper and deeper at Damian’s insides. Damian had grown up without a father and it killed him to think that his daughter was growing up without hers, too. Sierra obviously knew more about him than he did about her. What had Skye told her about him, apart from the fact that he was in prison? Had she ever asked to see him? Wondered why she never heard from him? What would she say if she knew the truth now? Would she be ashamed? Horrified? Would she shrink back from him?

  It took Nick a few seconds to realize who Skye was staring at and why she was standing so still. When his eyes fell on Damian, he looked from Skye to Sierra and back at Damian again. His discomfort was clear. He didn’t know how to handle the situation any more than Skye or Damian. Sierra was arranging paper garlands on Warren’s grave, oblivious to the tension around her.

  Damian saw the snuffed out candles in Skye’s hands, the bags of decorations by Nick’s feet, the stunned looks on their faces. He was the outsider, the wild card who had upset the balance of their perfect evening. He had been let out of prison a few months early but he wished he were still behind bars, so he could lock out the pain. Not knowing had been
hell, but this, this was a completely different level of torment.

  Damian got up, crushed marigolds sticking to his jeans, and turned into the swell of people surrounding them. He was thankful for the nameless, faceless sea of bodies around him. He imagined this was what it felt like to be dead among the living.

  “Get me out of here,” he said, when he found Rafael. “Get me far, far away.”

  I SKIMMED THE SURFACE BETWEEN sleep and wake, half submerged in wild, crazy dreams, where Sierra, Damian, and I were green iguanas, sunning ourselves on a deserted island. I was the one with the tail chopped off, but it didn’t matter because it was warm and beautiful. We were eating ice cream beans, and Sierra kept chewing on the seeds instead of discarding them.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  “Don’t,” I mumbled, the sound of my voice nudging me awake.

  It had been like that ever since I’d seen Damian at the cemetery two weeks ago—restless nights spent tossing and turning until the sheets ended up in a contorted pile at my feet. Seeing Damian again had set off tiny explosions that left me quaking in their wake. Learning he had bought Casa Paloma, and that Sierra had been spending time with him had come as a bigger aftershock. Being a single mum had always been a challenge, but now I felt both foolish and neglectful for thinking Sierra was going straight home after school, as instructed. The fact that there had been no sign of Damian since The Day of The Dead left me uneasy. On the outside it looked like I had it together, but on the inside I was a complete mess.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  There it was again. That damn sound. Exactly like—

  I bolted upright and turned on the bedside lamp.

  Damian was sitting on a chair by the foot of my bed, watching me. He didn’t move when the light came on; he just continued tossing peanuts into his mouth. It was impossible to ignore how he owned the space, how he molded it to suit his presence, a palpitation-inducing silhouette from my past, all dressed in black. He might as well have been sitting there all along, all eight years that he was away, because he was there in my head, insinuated in the cracks of my heart. I saw him every day in Sierra’s face, in the strong, white crescents of her nails, in the ends of her hair, that curled up when she twisted her finger around them. I heard him in her bedtime voice, battled him in the stubbornness of her spirit, and felt him in the warmth of her hugs. But pieces of him were nothing compared to the man himself—whole, real and commanding, a thousand suns fused into one, scorching me with his gaze, with whatever emotions were broiling beneath his coal dark eyes.

  I clutched the covers to my chest, as if the fabric would keep me from incinerating. I’d always known this day would come, this confrontation, and I’d dreaded it. If there was one thing I knew, it was that you never, ever lock horns with Damian. He had not forgiven my father for taking his mother away. What would he do to me, for keeping his daughter from him?

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” He put away the paper cone of peanuts he was holding with such calm and precision that goosebumps raced across my skin. For the first time, I noticed the folder on his lap. He opened it, scanned the top sheet, and threw it at me. It fluttered through the air and landed beside me.

  Damian didn’t give me the chance to pick it up. He flung another sheet at me, and then another and then another, until they were floating like feathers around me. I grabbed one of them and skimmed over the contents. From the private investigator’s logo on the top, it looked like a report on me: my address, financial records, marital status. I picked up another one. It was a copy of Sierra’s birth certificate. The next one outlined my job, my schedule, my work in Valdemoros. Where I’d been, what I’d done, where I’d lived, my credit card statements, magazine subscriptions—everything and anything pertaining to the last eight years was laid out before me in letter-sized black and white pages.

  Damian emptied the entire folder on me. When it was done, and the last sheet flitted to the bed, the fear I’d felt about his reaction was replaced by something else, a sense of outrage that he could presume to stuff everything I’d been through since the island, into one shiny, glossy folder and throw it all in my face.

  “You want to know why I didn’t tell you about Sierra?” I asked. “Because this is what you do, Damian.” I scrunched up the papers in my fists. “You research, you plan, you plot your way to vengeance. I had a photo of Sierra when I came to see you in prison. I wanted you to know we had a daughter. My father was gone. I thought there was no one left to fight, but I was wrong. I was wrong, Damian, because you were still fighting. You’re always fighting! You put my father in the grave, but I came anyway, to give you a daughter. But there was no room for us because you were still the same. Still wrestling with your demons. And if you think you know everything there is to know about me from this report, I have news for you. You don’t have a clue, Damian.”

  I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I went for a follow-up appointment for my shoulder, and the doctor asked me the date of my last period. I had thought it was stress-related, or perhaps my cycle was off because I had missed a few weeks of my birth control pills, but the blood test confirmed it. It had been a bittersweet revelation, given that the baby’s father and grandfather, Damian and Warren, were embroiled in a ceaseless battle that was being played out in the courts.

  Everywhere I went, photographers flashed their cameras in my face. How would they twist the story if they knew I was having Damian’s child? If they knew I was in love with my kidnapper? What would my father say? He was convinced I was going through some kind of mental and emotional breakdown. Would he try to coerce me into having an abortion? Failing that, could he have a psychiatrist declare me incompetent? Force me to give up the baby? How would Damian react to the news? He was going to prison. For how long, I didn’t know, but I knew that it would only make it harder.

  I kept the pregnancy to myself, and as difficult as it was, the thought of a new life emerging out of all the chaos was like a beacon of light that got me through the darkness. I sat through long sessions with Nick and my father, hugging my little secret, while they discussed the charges and legal strategies. I wanted the case wrapped up before I started showing so I went through the motions. Yes to this, no to this, yes to this. I sat through Damian’s sentence hearing, four months pregnant, knowing that I had a piece of him, and no matter how wrong or warped or crazy everyone else would think it was, it felt right.

  When my father realized I was pregnant, he could not hide his disappointment. He was convinced Damian had used me to get back at him, that getting me pregnant had been a part of his plan, his ultimate revenge against my father. How deluded we become when we start believing that everything in the world is about us. How hard we work to make things fit into our made-up theories. How blindly we follow our worked-up emotions, the good, the bad and the ugly. My father would believe what he wanted. Damian would believe what he wanted. I could either let myself be ripped in half between them, or accept that I would never be able to change their way of looking at things.

  At times, I questioned my own sanity. Was I wrong? Had I been naive and trusting? Had Damian played me all along? He couldn’t bring himself to kill me, so had he done the next best thing? Drive a wedge between my father and the one person that meant the most to him? Me. Had he really planned to send me back, carrying his child, so my father would have to live with it the rest of his life?

  Used, my father said.

  I thought of what Damian and I had shared, the way he looked at me, the way he touched me, and I thought no. An absolute, soul-rooted, emphatic no. I couldn’t think of anything more beautiful, more life affirming than Damian’s lips on mine—his body, my body, melded into one. And now I had a part of him, a part of MaMaLu, to look after, and that’s exactly what I did. Damian had hurt me, my father had hurt me, but I loved them both. No doubt, they felt I had let them down too, but I didn’t want to stay lodged between them, not when I had a new life to think about.

  When someone started under
cutting Sedgewick stock by selling significant shares at a lower cost and devaluing the company, I suspected Damian was behind it. Investors panicked and started offloading their stock, alarmed by plummeting figures. It didn’t take long for my father to trace it back to Damian, but Rafael had done such a good job of covering up the paper trail that there was no substantial evidence against Damian.

  At the time, I didn’t know that Damian was reacting to something my father had done. My father had accepted that I was going to have Damian’s child, but he was never going to accept Damian in my life, child or no child, so he’d sent him a message in prison, a message that had provoked Damian into replying with one of his own. Theirs was a feud that put one man behind bars and another in his grave.

  Sierra was a few months old when my father passed away.

  “She has your mother’s eyes,” he said to me one morning. He’d been uneasy around Sierra for the first few weeks, but that day he bent over her crib and looked at her for the first time. “Yes. Adriana’s big, brown eyes.”

  After a while, he picked her up and gave her three kisses when he thought I wasn’t looking. Our relationship had been strained, but he doted on Sierra. Eventually it proved impossible for him to hold a grudge against me for having her. She was the one thing that made him smile when everything else was collapsing around him. I was thankful that he died in his room, with his dignity intact, before we lost the mansion.