The girl looked down.
Raja reached across and touched her arm, and the girl flinched, then jerked away violently.
“I think we need to stop,” he said finally.
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at her face,” he said. “There’s clearly something wrong.”
“Probably just carsick,” Chloe said.
“Do you want her puking in here?”
She looked away. He had a point there, and though she didn’t want to stop, didn’t want anything at this point to disrupt what had otherwise been a fairly smooth journey, she finally nodded and agreed.
“Do you have the phone?” he asked.
“What phone?”
“The cell phone.”
She nodded and then reached into her backpack for the small, temporary cell phone that Dupree had given her the night before. The girl was starting to dry heave now.
After Raja dialed the number, there was a long pause, and then he said. “We got a situation back here, bud.” There was another long pause, and then he explained to Teo about the girl, about how he thought they should pull over. She watched his face as he listened to whatever Teo was telling him, then he finally said, “Okay,” and hung up.
“What did he say?”
“He said he’d stop in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“That’s the next exit.”
Meanwhile, the girl in front of them was covering her mouth with her hand now, her eyes filled with fear.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Raja said to her, reaching out again to touch her, but then stopping himself just before the girl jerked back. “We’re gonna pull over,” he said. “Okay? Twenty minutes.”
The girl stared at them both blankly, and then there was a long period of time, maybe twenty minutes, when neither of them spoke and when Raja, she’d realize later, must have been devising his plan.
But at that moment she was only thinking about the girl and what was wrong with her, what they’d eventually have to do with her once they got down to Mexico, whether Raja would insist on caring for her, as she suspected he would, or whether they’d just abandon her at some bus station outside Laredo. It was this that she was thinking about when the van eventually slowed down and then, a few minutes later, ground to a halt.
Raja turned off the flashlight, and then a few seconds later, she heard the lock on the back of the van being unlatched, and then a few seconds after that, the back door flew up, and she had to squint against the brightness of the early morning sunlight. The girl looked startled now, and when she turned to Raja, she said, No, no, then gripped his arm tightly.
“We’re just going to get you some air,” he said, and then motioning toward his mouth, he said it again. “Air,” he said. “You know, oxygen?”
Teo was standing now at the front of the cargo space, clearly annoyed, glancing at his watch. “Five minutes,” he said to Raja, and then he stepped back down and disappeared around the front of the van.
Raja helped the girl up and then led her down the narrow aisle, Chloe following close behind.
“Why don’t you take her around to the bathroom,” Raja said once they’d stepped down from the van. They were parked around the back of a small building, a mini-mart, Chloe assumed, with a gas station attached to the front. She could see a Dumpster and a few empty cars parked behind the building and, beyond that, in the far distance, the lonely stretch of highway and the brown, dusty fields that seemed to go on forever. She had no idea where they were. Somewhere between San Antonio and Laredo, she assumed.
“I don’t think she wants to go,” she said finally.
“Just take her hand,” he said. “She probably has to puke.”
Chloe looked at the girl then and smiled, but when she tried to take her hand, the girl jumped back violently, then walked all the way back to the edge of the cargo space and stood there by herself.
“We’re not going to leave you here,” Raja yelled to her.
But it was no use. It was clear that this girl’s distrust of strangers was too deeply ingrained.
Raja looked at her then and shrugged, and it was this that she would think about hours later, the expression on his face, how calm he’d been. “Why don’t you see if you can get her something,” he said. “Maybe some Dramamine and some water. Something for car sickness.”
“I doubt she’ll take it.”
“Well,” he said, shrugging again. “We have to do something, right?”
She looked at him. To be honest, she didn’t see why they had to do anything at all, why this girl’s troubles had suddenly become theirs. “We need to conserve our money,” she’d said finally.
“Oh, come on now.” He’d laughed. “Dramamine is, what, two bucks?”
And so she’d left, started around the side of the building toward the front of the mini-mart, not realizing then what was happening, not realizing then that this would be the very last conversation she’d ever have with him.
When she returned with the Dramamine a few minutes later, the back lot was completely empty, no sign at all of the van, just an empty expanse of concrete and a small rock with a piece of paper pinned beneath it. She looked at the rock, then out at the rest of the parking lot, and what she felt at first was not panic, not fear, but a cold, sobering numbness, the realization of what had just happened gradually settling in. Later, she would describe this sensation as a kind of sickness, a confusion, a disorientation, but at that moment there were no words to adequately describe what she was feeling, no words that could adequately capture the level of devastation she felt. After a moment, she walked over to the rock and picked up the piece of paper that he’d left, the words on it scribbled in haste, like the writing of a young child.
Chloe,
You know me and so you know why I’ve done this. Please don’t hate me. Later you’ll be grateful, I promise. This is not the end. Yours devotedly, in love forever, Raja
For almost half an hour she had sat there on the ground, on the cold concrete surface of the back lot, completely stunned, rereading these words and trying to imagine what they meant. Though, of course, she knew what they meant, why he’d done this. To protect her, he would probably reason later, just as he had when they’d first fought about it in Brandon’s apartment. To give her another chance at a better life, he would say. To keep her out of his own misfortune. But how had it come to this? How had she not seen it?
She could imagine what he’d done, how he’d run around to the front of the truck and talked to Teo, maybe slipped him a few extra bills, explained to him why he was doing it, how it was honestly in her best interest for them to leave her. Or maybe they had planned it all out the night before while she was in the bathroom at the icehouse, talking about it in hushed whispers. Or maybe this had been his plan from the start, his plan all along. All she knew now was that he was gone and that she had let him go. She had let him disappear. And yet, as angry as she was at Raja for leaving her, she was even angrier at herself for not seeing it, for not recognizing how obvious it had been. I mean, of course he wasn’t going to actually let her go down to Mexico with him. Why had she ever thought he would?
All around her the world was quiet and bright and perfectly still, the sky above her a bright, expansive blue, the wide-open Texas sky that they showed in movies. In the distance, across the street, she could see a few dilapidated ranch houses and an abandoned storefront with a faded sign, advertising fresh empanadas, and beyond that a long stretch of fenced-in field grass, browned and brittle still from winter. From time to time, a car from the interstate would pull into the gas station, or a truck from the fields would drive by, but otherwise this place felt empty, empty and abandoned, a nowhereland, a place that had maybe one time been important but had long since been forgotten.
Later, in the mini-mart, she had learned exactly where she was. A few miles north of the Cotulla border, the gas attendant had told her, halfway between San Antonio and Laredo. He had sa
id this with a slight smirk, as if this fact alone had made his gas station important, and then later, when she’d asked him the best way to get to a bus station, he had looked at her askance—as if the concept of bus travel in America were a foreign concept to him. Finally, he’d explained to her that the only one he knew of was in Cotulla, a few miles away. Six, to be exact. A walkable distance, if you were willing to do it, which she suddenly realized she wasn’t. And without a credit card, and with only a few dollars cash to her name, she wasn’t sure if she would even be able to afford a bus ticket once she got there. Opening her wallet then, she saw that she only had about fifteen dollars cash, the majority of their money now traveling with Raja down to Mexico, and it was then, staring at those few flimsy bills, that she finally processed what had happened, that it finally hit her, the cold reality of it all, the full extent of his betrayal.
“Are you okay?” the man behind the counter had asked her, because she was crying now. She was holding her stomach tightly and crying into her hands, though she wasn’t sure if she was crying out of anger or sadness, if she was crying because the man she loved most in the world had just betrayed her or because she realized at that moment—with a certainty that made her stomach ache—that she would probably never see him again, maybe never even speak to him. She would never again get to touch his skin or run her hands through his hair or sit with him in a smoky bar over drinks. She would never again get to imagine having a house with him or a child with him, would never get to grow old with him, as she’d always envisioned, and take care of him. She’d never get to see the person he’d become or the person she’d always imagined he’d become, because he was already on his way down to New Laredo, already transforming himself into someone else, a new person with a new identity and a new name. A name she’d never even know or be able to look up, because he hadn’t told her what it was.
“Maybe you’d like a paper towel?” the man behind the counter continued, but she had shaken her head and then reached for two of the forty-ounce beers in the ice chest beside her. Then she’d asked him for two packs of cigarettes and a pack of matches.
The total came out to more than she actually had, but the man behind the counter simply smiled at her, then slid the beer and cigarettes into a bag.
“Are you sure you don’t need some help?” he’d asked.
But she had shaken her head and then dried her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and, without saying another word, had walked out the door and across the road to a shaded bench, where she had sat down and proceeded to drink the beer. In fact, it wasn’t until she’d finished off the last sip of the second beer that it even occurred to her that she still had the cell phone on her, the cell phone that Dupree had given to her the night before. Still, she waited almost a full hour, staring out at the empty road, still believing that they might turn around and come back for her—she had waited there almost a full hour before she finally picked up the phone and sent her brother a text.
8
INSIDE LORNA’S APARTMENT, the late-afternoon sun is forming strange geometric patterns along the floor and across the walls, and as Elson sits there at her kitchen table, sipping his cold iced tea, watching her as she paces back and forth across the back veranda, talking on the phone, he feels momentarily numb. He wonders who she’s talking to, what she’s saying, but mostly he finds himself trying to recall the conversation they’d had only moments before, trying to replay it in his mind, as if replaying it might reverse the outcome, might change the sobering truth of what she’d said. That she was not two weeks, not three weeks, but six weeks late. Late. She’d said the word as if she could have been referring to anything: an overdue library book, a late-afternoon lunch, a meeting at work. And he had almost misunderstood her at first, had made her repeat herself twice, before it finally sunk in, what she was saying and what it meant. And then he’d asked her the one thing he should have never asked her. He’d asked her if she was sure it was his, and she had answered him by walking into her bedroom and closing the door.
There she’d remained for the past half hour, ignoring his desperate pleas to come out, to talk about it, to forgive him for asking. Meanwhile, his voice mail was filling up with messages, messages from Cadence, he was sure, messages filled with vitriolic bile and accusations, messages wondering where he was and how he could have so callously ignored the situation at hand. And the truth was he didn’t have an answer for her, which is why he hadn’t answered her calls. All he knew now was that his responsibilities seemed to lie elsewhere, with Lorna and with the baby she was carrying, and that leaving Lorna now, after what she’d just told him, would be far, far worse in the end. Maybe even irreparable. That it would border on unforgivable. And so he’d rationalized it in his mind, told himself that he was doing the right thing, though even at this moment he isn’t sure.
Outside on the back veranda, Lorna is sitting down now, nodding solemnly and gripping the phone tightly with her hand. Only minutes before, the phone had rung loudly, and she had come rushing out of her bedroom door, passing him without making eye contact, then slamming the sliding glass patio door behind her. Staring at her now, he wonders who she’s told, whether she’s told her mother and what this might mean. Given her Catholic upbringing, and given the fact that she had looked at him with such scorn earlier when he’d asked her if it was his, he can only assume that she’s decided to keep it. And though he’d initially felt a kind of terror at this thought—a sobering realization that any type of future with Cadence would now be dashed—he now feels only sadness, sadness and guilt. He knows what this will mean, of course, knows what it will mean for Cadence and for the kids, knows what it will mean for any type of future plans he might have had. Whatever he might have been imagining that morning as he sat with Cadence out by the pool, whatever he might have fantasized about the night before as he lay beside her in the bed, all of that is gone now. Any hope for a second chance, a fresh start, all of that is gone.
On top of that, he has to consider the more practical matters at hand—the financial and emotional costs of raising yet another child, especially at such a late stage in his life, of saving up for college, of paying for child care, of rationing off what remained of his meager assets. And of course there is also the matter of Chloe and the guilt he now feels for ignoring her situation, for putting Lorna before her. There was virtually nothing in his life he would have ever put before Chloe, and yet here he is now, doing just that. How can he reconcile these two types of guilt, these two responsibilities? It seems like some type of cruel test that he is being given, one of those impossible conundrums that one faced in Greek mythology. No matter what he does, no matter what he says, he’ll be disappointing someone. And yet, hasn’t it always been this way? Hasn’t he always been the fall guy when things went wrong? And hasn’t it always been because of matters beyond his control? More and more, he is beginning to feel like an animal caught in a trap, and more and more he is beginning to realize that the only logical way out of this situation is to compartmentalize it, to deal first with Lorna, then later with Cadence. The cops, after all, will still be waiting there after Cadence is done talking to them, whereas Lorna surely won’t.
Leaning back now at the kitchen table, he watches Lorna as she finally turns off her phone and flips it shut. She looks at him with something like dismay, then slowly opens the door and enters.
“What’s going on?” he says as she walks past him, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, she goes over to the fridge and opens the door, then begins to pour herself some juice.
“Who was on the phone?”
Carrying her glass over to the table now, she sits down. “Your wife.”
“Cadence?” he says, staring at her. “How did she get your number?”
“That’s a good question,” she says, staring at him.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Well, then she must have called my work.”
“She knows where you work?”
“I told her,” she sa
ys. “You know, that night at the hospital.” She looks at him. “Anyway, she seemed pretty upset.”
“Did you tell her I was here?”
“No, but she wants you to call her right away.”
He looks at her. “Did she say why?”
“She said something about Mexico. I don’t know. She was kind of hysterical.”
“Mexico?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Something like that.”
He stares at her, trying to figure out what this means. Mexico? What the hell is in Mexico? Is Cadence finally losing her mind?
“You know, she’s a nice woman,” Lorna says after a moment. “Your wife. You’re lucky to have her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said. You’re lucky to have her.”
“What makes you think I have her?”
“I think you’ve always had her,” Lorna says vaguely. “Even when you thought you didn’t.”
Elson shrugs, wondering if this is yet another test.
“So are you going to call her now or what?”
“Are you still mad at me?”
Lorna looks at him and sips her drink. “Just call her, Elson.”
“I’ll call her in a minute, but first I want to talk about this, okay?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“On the contrary,” he says. “I think there’s a fucking lot to talk about.”
Lorna reaches for the magazine in front of her then and begins to page through it. “I haven’t decided anything yet,” she says finally, without looking up. “I just wanted to let you know, okay? That’s all this is.”
“And what if I told you I wanted you to keep it?”
“Then I’d say you were lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Elson,” she says, her eyes softer now. “Look, I appreciate what you’re doing, okay? I get it. You’re trying to do the right thing. I understand that. But it’s not that simple, okay? I mean, it’s not like I expect you to marry me or something.”
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