Redemption Song

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  No, it wasn’t. By God, it wasn’t.

  And, yes, okay, so maybe she did want him to have to go identify that child’s body. She wanted him to cry himself to sleep every night. Every. Night. She wanted him to refuse to eat and lose twenty pounds, so all his friends would worry about his health.

  She wanted him to sicken his partner with overwhelming and endless grief, and then she wanted everyone to abandon him for what he couldn’t forget.

  But how could anyone expect Caía to forget? Really, how did one carry a baby in her belly for nine whole months, watch him grow, year after year—thirteen to be exact—and then just . . . forget? How do you do that? How did you change diapers, buy little shoes, pinch toes . . .?

  “How do they feel, Jack?” she remembered asking him when Jack was three. The memory was as clear as the Mirrenish nose upon Caía’s face.

  “Good,” he’d said, clapping his little hands.

  Of course, it was “good.” As it always had been for Caía, everything was always good for Jack. He was a bright, carefree child.

  “Hmmm,” she’d said, examining those brand-new sixty-dollar sneakers. They were fire-engine red. “I don’t think there’s enough room, Jack.”

  He would outgrow them in but a few short months, at most. Even at half off, they were still expensive. As much as they had loved her, her thrifty old-world parents would never have splurged for pricy brand-name shoes for a three-year-old, especially since he was bound to outgrow them so soon. Caía might have considered herself a bit more spendy, but she still had an awful lot of her parents’ frugality. When she and Gregg went looking for houses in Chicago, Caía had been drawn to the more modest homes in Roscoe Village, fixer-uppers that needed TLC. It was Gregg who’d insisted their neighbors all be white.

  “I wike dese, Mommee!” Jack’s excitement was evident in his rosy little cheeks.

  Caía had pursed her lips then, trying not to grin, wholly resigned to buy her son the sneakers, whatever the cost. But she peered up at the saleswoman and asked, “Do you have these in a seven, please?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, sorry. That’s all there is . . . what you see here on the rack . . .”

  Beside her, Jack did a little dance of joy, if you could call it dancing. He looked like a toddler jogging after a tangle with tequila. Once again, he said, “I wike dese, Mommee!” Fist closed, all his heart in the declaration.

  Of course, any resistance Caía might have contemplated crumbled on the spot. “Okay,” she’d said, relenting. And she’d smiled up at the saleswoman, and said, “We’ll take them.”

  “How could anyone say no to that sweet little face?” the woman replied. “He’s so adorable, I could just eat him up.”

  Apparently, wanting to eat up children and puppies, and anything else too cute to bear, was a thing—a scientific thing. Caía read somewhere that a researcher at Yale had discovered—by what means she had no idea—that these dimorphic expressions were a helpful tool for parents in helping them constrain out-of-control emotions.

  Unfortunately, nothing could help Caía control the fury she was feeling now. And only now did she realize that she should have learned to say no. Gregg should have said no. Nobody had ever said no.

  The lime-green dress was scarcely visible now amidst a sea of earth tones. No longer bound by business suits, Nick Kelly had traded his Chicago streets for cobbled lanes and modestly dressed men and women, strolling to and from a mercado, instead of the Mercantile Exchange. Straining to see through the gray, Caía lost the pair when a tall, willowy Spanish woman swept into view, wearing a swingy red Gitana skirt that effectively obscured the last trace of green.

  Caía sat back, frowning. So, that was that. Her job was done for the day, her raison d’être complete until 8:45 a.m. the following day, when she would once again make her way to the plaza beside Colegio la Sala Santiago. And there, she would wait until he arrived to walk the girl into her class, and then she would wait, again, here at this café to watch them pass in the afternoon.

  For more than three weeks this had been Caía’s schedule—simply observing, mind you. This was all she was doing. In fact, she liked to think of herself as a private investigator, despite no one paying her to do the job. She was good enough to be one, because, after all, she had located Nick Kelly here against all odds. He’d left no forwarding address, no client number, nothing.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” the receptionist had said when Caía worked up the nerve to call his office. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Beth Smith,” Caía lied, because there must be a million Beth Smiths living in or around the Chicago area. At least one of them must have been Nick Kelly’s client.

  “I’m sorry, Nick Kelly is no longer with us. But I can transfer you to Sam Starr, if you’d like. He’s taking Mr. Kelly’s clients.”

  Sam Starr? What kind of a name was Sam Starr?

  Sometimes, it seemed to Caía as though names might be labels—as though God—or one of his administrators, filed people into categories. Starr, yep. He’ll be successful. Give him everything he wants. Paine. Nope. Poor thing. Go ahead, kill her son.

  “Uh, no, thank you,” Caía had said politely, and hung up the phone.

  Undeterred, she’d sent Nick Kelly an email that bounced back with a message to please direct all future correspondence to s.starr@starrwealthmanagement.co. And then she’d sent an actual letter—the kind that couldn’t be marked as spam—on the off-chance someone might know where to deliver it. For all intents and purposes, Nick Kelly had vanished so swiftly that by the time Caía was released from the hospital, there was no sign of him, except for the For Sale sign in his front yard. Well, she took that number down, and called. And called. And called. Disguising her voice every time, she’d called until she’d gathered enough information to deduce where he’d gone. Lying was so easy, once you realized it’s what you had to do. So, here she was . . . across an ocean, and she still hadn’t quite figured out what to do . . .

  Where do we go from here, Jack?

  A junky silence was her answer. Cars buzzed past. Bicycle bells rang. Women chattered. The busker played on. But the one thing Caía needed to hear—her son’s voice, even if it was only in her head—was missing, leaving her with a deafening silence.

  Please, Jack . . .

  Caía blinked her tears away, focusing on her mission. The girl might be Nick Kelly’s daughter, but she looked nothing like him. Besides, Caía had no reason to believe he had ever had a wife or child. Somehow, despite everything, he didn’t seem the sort of guy who acquired one without the other, mostly because he didn’t seem the type to leave anything to chance. He would carry a rubber with him, always. He would make sure his girlfriend stayed on the pill. And he might even ask before sex, every single time, “Honey, did you take your pill?”

  So, of course, he would be selfish and self-concerned. Children wouldn’t fit into his “plan.” He would have a neat, clean house, with servants to polish his hardwood floors. Brazilian hardwood, no doubt, because he wouldn’t care about the environment, or the legalities of obtaining it. And then he would keep his cell phone right up his ass so he never missed a call.

  But . . . if all this were true, who was that child?

  Sweat trickled between Caía’s breasts, and a cold, damp film materialized above her upper lip. It was blistering hot today—too hot to think.

  “¿Algo más?” the waiter asked.

  Caía turned her gaze up to meet the waiter’s dark eyes, plucking her blouse away from her damp flesh. “Gracias, no,” she said, and laid a guilty hand over the rolled-up newspaper she had twisted in anger.

  The waiter smiled, indicating the bowl in front of her. It was still full of gazpacho and probably tasted wonderful, but Caía had barely touched it. “Delicioso,” she lied, and added, “So good I will be back again tomorrow.”

  The waiter furro
wed his brow.

  That’s right, she would come again mañana. And every day thereafter. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was compelled to do something. For Jack’s sake. For the time being, this was it. This was her cowardly, screwed-up way of dealing with her son’s death.

  Caía pushed the bowl away, and the waiter took it, setting it alongside the table to brush the crumbs from Caía’s tabletop into her wasted soup. Pigeons waddled about his feet,and he glanced up through dark lashes to meet Caía’s gaze, as though to scold her for the congregation. There were at least six pigeons now, waiting for more crumbs. “Son como ratas,” the waiter groused, locking eyes with Caía as he finished wiping her table.

  Caía nodded, realizing only belatedly that she had lured them into the café from the fountain. Son como ratas, he’d said. They’re like rats.

  Gathering up her purse and her newspaper, Caía ducked inside to pay her tab, and then she made her way over to the fountain.

  The stone fount was empty. There were droppings all over it. One lone bird shat as Caía watched and scooted over to unveil its dubious artwork. The busker smiled up at Caía, winking as he snatched his cigarette, and Caía turned away, annoyed by the puffs of smoke that wafted up into her face.

  She’d read in the paper that they were installing bird feeders with Nicarbazin, a form of birdie birth control to control the population. City council members had originally advocated rounding up the birds and shooting them—a far more immediate answer to their problem.

  She imagined Nick Kelly at the end of a shotgun barrel, and the image made her neck tight. Now, he was a rat. And what do you do with rats? You exterminate them.

  Two

  Anger is a brief madness.

  – Horace

  Chicago, Thursday, June 9, 2016

  Nick

  “Nick . . . some person keeps calling and won’t leave a message.”

  Nick Kelly rolled his chair back from his desk—a Parnian with a hundred-thousand-dollar price tag. It was the ultimate power desk, and the desk, more than the location of his office, broadcasted his partner track. “Some person?”

  “A woman, the same one.”

  “How do you know it’s the same woman, Amy?”

  His secretary arched perfectly shaped brows. “Because, Nick, I recognize her voice.”

  Annoyed by her sarcasm, Nick fished a set of keys out of the top desk drawer and stood, slipping them into his trouser pocket. He eyed Amy as he pushed his chair beneath his desk. Would she have bothered mentioning the caller if it had been a man? Likely not. Repeated phone calls weren’t an anomaly in this line of business. “I asked you to hold my calls, so just keep asking.” He lifted his jacket off the back of his chair. Australian navy merino wool by Ermenegildo Zegna, also with a price tag that would make his Irish Catholic mother cross herself twice. It was getting snug. “Eventually, she’ll leave a message,” he said, struggling to put the jacket on.

  “Where are you going?”

  Nick lifted a thumb to his temple, pressing hard. If he was annoyed with anyone, it was more himself. “Lunch,” he said.

  Amy followed him out of the office, into a sea of cubicles. “Will you be back?” She sounded worried, and he made the mistake of turning and looking at her. Her emotions were on the verge of unraveling, but to her credit, she held it together, expressing what she could through her pretty green eyes.

  “Not today,” he said, and turned away, feeling her eyes bore into his back. But now he felt like an ass. How had he ever allowed himself to get involved? Maybe he’d believed she could be the one to pull him out of his funk? Stupid move.

  At this point, he’d accomplished everything he’d ever set out to do in life, and at thirty-seven, there wasn’t much left on his bucket list. He had a brand-new 7-series BMW—two days old—a house in Roscoe Village, a firm willing to make him a partner in less than a year . . . but he had to go and put it all at risk.

  What the hell are you doing?

  Living, because you can?

  He quit the office, with all its ringing, dinging phones and moved toward the elevator. Before stepping inside, his cell phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket, answering, though not before checking the caller ID. It was his sister-in-law. Without a word, he hung up again, returning the phone to his pocket, unwilling to talk to Marta while he was in an elevator surrounded by people.

  “Damn it,” he said.

  “You’re a wanted man,” joked his elevator companion.

  Nick turned to meet the man’s gaze—a coworker he didn’t know by name. “Yeah?” he said, and otherwise held his tongue, because he recognized the look in the guy’s eyes. He was just a kid, maybe twenty-two, looking up to Nick the same way he’d once looked up to his dad. But Nick didn’t deserve veneration any more than his father had. How true it was that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Except in Jimmy’s case. His brother had turned out to be the better man, living life without reproach. If people got what they deserved, it would be Jimmy living the high life, not him.

  He stared down at his shoes. Marco Vittorio. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t even want to think about the price.

  The elevator doors slid open and Nick stepped out, putting his power stride to good use. It had the distinct advantage of discouraging conversation. Anyone who spotted him with this gait immediately understood he was a busy man—too busy to stand around gabbing. He had things to do, it said, places to be, although, in reality, he had nothing on his plate at all. No lunch dates. No fuck dates. No business appointments. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. He simply couldn’t sit in that chair an instant longer.

  Outside, he took his cell phone back out of his pocket, unlocked the screen, and returned Marta’s call, placing a hand to his ear so he could hear her.

  “Nico,” she said, answering on the first ring.

  “What is it, Marta?”

  She was sobbing.

  “Jimmy?”

  “Yes,” she said, still crying.

  Nick’s shoulders tightened. He stopped walking, smashing the phone against his ear. For a long moment, he couldn’t speak, because he was afraid of what she was trying to say. He stared at the brick-and-mortar building, focusing on a long, wide crack in the brick. Even the sturdiest foundations eventually cracked. Nothing lasted forever.

  “Please come…”

  “To Spain?”

  “Sí.”

  “I don’t know, Marta. I’ll try.”

  “But you must,” she insisted.

  “What about Jimmy?”

  “He will be furious, but I need you.”

  “Yeah, all right, I’ll see what I can do,” he said and hung up, slipping the phone back into his trouser pocket. For a moment, he stood, staring down again at his shiny Italian leather shoes, uncertain what to do. And then he turned and made for the parking garage with a sack of sharp nails sitting in the pit of his gut. He wasn’t hungry. It was too early for alcohol, so he opted, again, for endorphins, ready to punish his body and shut down his mind.

  Resuming his power stride, Nick sliced through a sea of faces, ignoring every one. Eyes, noses, mouths stretched into amorphous lines of kaleidoscopic flesh.

  *

  Jeréz, present day

  Caía leaned against the old brick wall of the corner super mercado, where she meant to buy coffee—American coffee, not that Spanish variety. Every café in this city served java that was far stronger than she was accustomed to, and this was the only market she knew of that carried a brand she recognized. It also so happened to be across the street from Nº 5 Calle Lealas.

  Of course, Caía had a right to shop where she pleased. Simply because this shop faced that house didn’t make one bit of difference. For the time being, this was her city as well.

  On the other hand, what might be more inauspicious was the simple fact that she�
��d come forty-five minutes early, before the mercado was due to open its doors.

  And perhaps more impugning, she was standing here puffing away on a nasty cigarette, because it gave her a reason to loiter. And she didn’t even smoke. If that wasn’t enough to make her rethink her motives, she didn’t know what was.

  It was one thing to wait at a public location, with the expectation that someone might walk by—or even if you knew they would walk by. It was yet another thing to case someone’s house like a cat burglar. Private investigations aside, the act of doing so gave Caía a twisty knot in the pit of her gut. But here was her quandary: She was convinced Nick Kelly was a bad guy, and she wanted desperately for him to have to look her in the eyes and acknowledge what he’d done.

  She wanted him to tell her that he hadn’t been sending trade orders, or texting some bimbo as he ran over her son. So maybe that was all she was looking for? Closure.

  Before leaving Chicago, Caía had asked around about him. She understood exactly what sort of man Nick was: He was a user. He accepted money from clients, promising returns on investments he couldn’t guarantee. Then again, all those Merc traders were sharks, weren’t they? One way or the other, whatever Nick Kelly was doing here, Caía couldn’t believe it was anything good.

  She eyed the house across the street. There was something surreal about the eighteenth-century house seated beneath the old maple’s dappled light. Something timeless and lovely. Something that softened the edges of her anger, even as it roused her resentment.

  The morning sky matched the salmon paint. The color contrasted nicely with the intense black ironwork on the upper balconies and windows—three upstairs, one below.

  She already knew whose house it was.