by James, Ella
A door on the plane’s side opens, and, with great care, we file inside. It smells like leather and fine things and flowers, and it looks like something from a magazine. I spot bunk beds carved into one of the walls, a table sporting a yellow bouquet with an anchored vase, and a sleek screen displaying urban images as crisp as those on Declan’s phone. The floor is short, tan carpet. Hanging from the ceiling is a lamp that looks as if it’s made of crystal.
Two female crew members emerge from a dark hall-like space. They’re wearing crisp, navy blue uniforms and high-heels that draw Dot’s eye.
“Welcome aboard,” one says.
“Which one of you is Finley?”
I raise my hand, and from there they’re fussing over Baby and me, and I’m saying more goodbyes.
“Call immediately—the moment you land in America,” Dot murmurs.
“I demand a call tonight,” Anna says. “The very moment you reach Cape Town. I know you’ll fly out again nearly immediately, but please do call.” Anna’s face crumples, and that’s all it takes. I’m weeping as I cling to Baby, and slowly—and too quickly—the Albatross clears out.
Mr. Carnegie—Charles, he keeps insisting—offers me a tissue, and I wipe my eyes and try to smile kindly at the crew members. He shows me to the bottom bunk bed, and I find it’s piled high with pink pillows and soft-looking blankets. There’s a glossy screen in the wall beside it and a bucket of what’s perhaps snacks perched in a corner. I sit on the bed’s edge, and he hands me a bottle of water and a small pill.
I frown at it, and he gives me Declan’s smile, sans dimples. “It will only last a few hours. He wouldn’t hear of you being uncomfortable.”
Charles tells me how to work the TV and what movies it plays, but I don’t start a show. After we’re finished talking—he’s assured me I’m safe and the pill will only make me sleepy—I swallow it and curl over on my side. Baby hunkers down beside me. I cross myself, pull the soft covers over my shoulders, and before the plane leaves the water, my eyes close.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Finley
I awaken feeling…soft. And a bit thirsty. When I blink around the small, pastel-colored space, I feel a muted jolt of shock. I note the dull sound of an engine, and the way my bed bumps a small bit, and my belly clenches with fear.
Oh, what have I done?
Something presses at my ankles, and I realize with relief that it’s Baby.
“Hi there…” I sit up and rub her head and check her lappy—all well—and one of the plane’s employees appears.
She has long, brown hair and looks perhaps ten years my senior. “Hey there, Finley. How are you feeling?”
I yawn. Still quite tired, although I say, “Quite well.” I look around the luxuriously appointed space, but I don’t see an uncovered window. “May I ask…where are we?”
“We’re approaching Cape Town.”
I laugh in disbelief. “Are we?”
She nods, smiling. “You slept through most of the flight. Completely understandable, by the way. Would you like some dinner? We’ve got everything from all-American cheeseburgers to Wagyu ribeye.”
When I frown, her eyes widen solicitously. “I can do an all-green smoothie…every kind of sandwich.” She reaches behind her, turning to me with a booklet. “Here you are. This is our menu.”
In the end, I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, one small orange, and water that’s been flavored slightly minty, and watch out a window as the glittering carpet of South Africa begins to creep across the dark landscape below us. The lights are so numerous, I can’t begin to count them. I believe I’m seeing lanes between them—large, dark veins of no light. Some of them look red and white. Perhaps from hundreds or even thousands of automobiles?
I ask Mr. Carnegie—Charles, he reminds me—and he confirms it. Those lights are from automobiles.
Unbelievable.
He sits by me as the plane descends, explaining what to do to fix my ears, and telling me about the sounds the plane is making so I won’t be frightened.
I sweat a bit as the plane’s wheels come down, making a grinding sound, and we bump onto the airstrip, but then I feel a rush because we made it. We step off the plane, and I smell…something odd. I catch Charles looking at me. He smiles as I meet his eye.
“What does it smell like to you?”
“Automobile exhaust…bread…” I sniff again, laughing myself now. “Dirt, I do believe. It’s…an absence of water.”
From then on, I can feel Charles watching me for my reactions, though I don’t have time for many as two large men and one of the women shuttle us into a sort of wall-less car—a golf cart, Charles offers—and we’re ridden across a smooth, paved road to a new plane. This one is bigger.
I forego the bed and sit in a seat by a window. Baby frolics all about as I watch all the people. Through the window, I see people servicing the other planes, and some at our plane. I’ve been counting since we exited the Albatross; I’ve counted no fewer than twenty-nine people—all here moving about the airplanes! Oh, and that doesn’t count our crew.
Before we take off, the men—Steven and Hans—introduce themselves as bodyguards.
Like that movie, I wonder, but I don’t ask.
“We’re just here to help get you and Charlie make it to Seattle without any trouble.”
I chew my lip. “There could be trouble?”
They laugh, but it’s not unkind. “Some people use a bodyguard to clear the way for them when they go somewhere. Sometimes we’ll drive for Charlie or get him breakfast. Not because there’s trouble.”
“We’re just gophers, basically,” says the one called Hans.
I smile, though I’m a bit puzzled. “That sounds lovely then.”
Charles appears, raising his brows. It tugs at my heart, for he looks so much like Declan. “What are you two saying about me?”
“Just explaining what we do, boss man.”
Soon we’re all in seats and buckled. Baby’s in my lap again, and I’m experiencing my first coherent liftoff. It’s…quite frightening. But then it’s better as we stabilize. I realize after we’re in the sky that I never called Anna, but Charles says he spoke with Mayor Acton and he’d promised to update the entire island. My eyes tear a bit at that, and Charles passes me a tissue.
When it’s seatbelts-off time and our wee crew has dispersed about the cabin, Charles invites me over to a table, and the woman with the brown hair serves us eggs, bacon, and toast.
“It’s ten-thirty your time,” he says. “Maybe after this, you’ll want to sleep.”
I nod. Unlikely.
After a brief silence, he looks at me cautiously, and I can sense he’s working out a way to say something.
“You know…I hope this doesn’t seem presumptuous. But I’m hoping you might see me as a father figure…over time. Someone who wants to look out for you. Help you when I can.” He glances down briefly before meeting my eyes. “Your mother was the best thing in my life. Brief though it was.”
As it turns out, I don’t sleep until after we stop for a re-fueling in Amsterdam.
I listen with a tissue pressed perpetually to my eyes as he talks about his time with Mummy, answering my questions frankly—when at last I’m bold enough to ask them—and with tact and kindness. I learn they kissed beneath the arches that trapped Declan and I in the burrow. He begged her daily to return to New York with him.
“So…why didn’t she?” It’s perhaps my biggest question.
He smiles sadly. “I think she was scared. Too scared to leave her mother. And then the more we talked about it, through letters—” I arch my brows at that, because I’ve got them in my crates— “she felt more comfortable. But by then she knew I had a family setup for marriage. Like being promised to someone.” He adds, “To Declan’s mother, Katherine.”
“Oh.” I nod slowly.
I see him swallow. It’s a brief thing, but I know the contours of his face so oddly well, for they’re so like my Dec
lan’s. It’s a bit of pain leftover…lasted decades.
He lifts his brows. “Your mom didn’t want to interfere.” After a moment of silence, he says, “I think she was too aware of the differences…in our economic situations. It was probably my fault. I talked so much about what I could give her. Trying to court her, you know?” He smiles wistfully. “I think it intimidated her.”
He’s so kind, talking through the entire situation with me when we both should be sleeping. I confess I read some of the letters.
“You were coming for us, weren’t you? You and Declan.”
He hesitates before he confirms what I knew to be true. “We were going to take the two of you back to New York. Whether the powers that be agreed with it or not. Your mom was married, but that shouldn’t make someone a prisoner.”
“The laws are archaic. They’ve been changed now. I think they were never meant to be a chain. Or so I was told…after.”
He nods. “That’s good.”
We drink tea and talk until my throat is tired. We talk of Declan…of his mother. How she left when he was four, and nannies cared for him while his father worked long hours, pining for my mum. I ask how Declan’s mum passed and am floored to learn she died by suicide. She jumped off a building in Manhattan following years of alcoholism and addiction struggles.
All the things he didn’t tell me…
“I’m so sorry.”
His lips press together. “Declan was at Carogue. It was New Year’s Eve. She texted him before. It was 2005. Newly 2005. After that…” He shakes his head. “Everything was harder for him after.”
Charles says Declan wouldn’t speak of it with him—not ever.
“He wanted to pretend that he was…less affected than he really was. I don’t know why. Sending him to Carogue was a mistake, I think now. We left Tristan and I never even took him back home.” His face twists, and for a moment, his hand tunnels into his hair. He meets my eyes, and I see his are desolate. “I couldn’t go home without—” He shakes his head, and I know he means my mum. “So I took him to Carogue. I told myself at the time that he’d be better off there.”
“Perhaps he was.”
He shakes his head. “The staff there ignored a lot of problems. With the kids. Drugs…and drinking. One of Declan’s friends—he died, and I think Declan found him. Actually, I know he did.” I think of Nate. “That was after I found out he had been having problems himself. Using…downers, for anxiety—or partying. Who knows. But I think it really affected him…what happened to his friend. After Nathan passed away, I don’t think he was the same kid. Declan. And I didn’t do a good enough job after his mom died. I was flying over when they told him—someone at the school. So he didn’t even hear it from me.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
He throws his head back laughing, and chills prickle my arms. “You don’t need to reassure me. I should be alleviating your fears. What can I tell you about America?”
“He would always do that same thing,” I say softly. “The surprised laugh.” I add, “I don’t want to hear about America. I want to hear about Declan.”
And so he tells me. Things I don’t know, like how my Carnegie potty-trained in two days— “That kid was determined. I think it was the superhero underwear. ” How he fared quite decently when his mum left because already, he was mostly watched by nannies anyway.
“She loved him,” Charles tells me. “She just had her problems. As he got a little older, I think he knew that.”
Somehow, he mentions Declan’s favorite restaurant in New York.
“Is it tacos?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Un Romance Con Tacos.”
A romance—or a love affair, perhaps—with tacos.
Every shred of information he doles out, I snap up and file away. Declan’s favorites: tacos, motorcycles, fast cars, swimming, learning to fly airplanes, scaling massive mountains, baseball, soccer (football), parties with his thousands of dear friends (I was correct—it seems he’s obnoxiously well-liked), roller coasters at “theme” parks, reading, foot rubs, saunas, yachts, Scotch whiskey…and, from his father’s perspective, anything that can be snorted, swallowed, or injected.
I’m pleased to see that Charles seems to understand it, though—that addiction is a sickness much more than a choice.
“I could tell he was really trying,” he says. “For a long time.”
“I think that’s true.”
By the time I fall asleep a wee bit later, watching the screen by my bed as it shows the European light grid below us, I feel as if I’ve gained a friend—someone to help me through this odd new life. And my heart bleeds with wanting Declan.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Finley
Two Days Later
My pulse begins to gallop as the line that inches down the road depicted on the GPS screen nears the red dot.
102 Infinity Cir., Leavenworth, WA
.5 miles
Stone the cows!
It’s Charles driving our rented sport utility vehicle. I’m in the middle row with Baby, who’s got her nose toward the window, which is rolled partway down. The smell is heaven—like sunlight, if sunlight had a scent. There’s a certain richness about it: a blend of dirt, water, clean air, and a lovely, slightly spicy, earthen aroma I believe must be the smell of all the tall, green-needled trees. It’s like nothing I’ve experienced.
I’m not sure why I didn’t realize this would be the case, but when our plane landed in New York, and I felt the warm, soft air, I realized—it’s summer here. We’re in the northern hemisphere. It’s lovely summer, and I’m in America. Baby is in America. Last night for dinner after having my vaccines and physical in New York, I ate a hot dog. It was lovely. Everything has been so lovely.
New York was lovely, but I think Washington is quite a bit more so. Charles thought the trees might make me feel a bit odd or perhaps out of place, but I adore them. I adore their canopy, the hiddenness of this pine-needle-paved lane. I’ll confess I don’t adore the asphalt, but I see its practicality. And all the same, I quite like this softer road.
When Charles turns the wheel and we start down the short driveway, I can scarcely draw a breath. We’re rolling toward a green and yellow cabin in a clearing with tall trees above it, bending in the wind.
“You good back there?”
I nod, but that’s not quite true. Everything is glittery and wobbling in the prism of my unshed tears. I squeeze my eyes shut, wipe them.
Then the car has stopped. We’ve parked. Charles says, “I’ll take Baby for a look around.”
I nod slowly, understanding. And I’m opening the heavy door. I’m passing Baby off then stepping out onto the spongy, needle-covered ground with its impossibly thick grass. I notice two red rockers on the cabin’s porch. The entire front wall, where it’s not door, is windows.
Knowing that he bought this property for my mum—for both of us, I suppose—hoping we might come here to adjust to American life bit by bit, these trees protecting us from people and their foreign germs while we adjusted to this vast, more modern world…it gives me chills. And fills me with such gratitude. And yet it’s all so odd, because I realize now…if we had made it here I was seven, I’d be doing something very different now.
I try the knob and find it gives. I turn it slowly with my trembling hand and push the door open. I notice the room’s vastness first. The roof’s rafters, all the polished cedar. It smells…earthen. Like wood. The space is flawlessly appointed with fluffy couches, leather chairs and—
Him.
I see his tired eyes first. At first glance, I think they’re bruised below, so dark are the circles there. I see the horrid paleness of his face—what of it isn’t covered by his beard. I see the shock of white gauze all about his chest and shoulders. Both his arms are tucked against his chest in dark slings. He’s propped up in a recliner with a pillow around his neck and a red blanket over his lap.
And then he’s spotted me. I can tell
the moment he does. His mouth trembles and tugs sharply downward at the corners as his eyes squeeze shut. Tears stream down his face as I walk to him.
Then I’m there beside him, and I don’t know how to hug him, so I simply touch his hair. He breathes deeply, and then he groans, as I suppose the movement hurts his shoulders.
“Oh…my darling…” He groans again, more a bark of pain, and I take his face in my hands and lean down, pressing my cheek to his.
He’s breathing deeply and shaking so terribly. “My sweet love…”
“Sorry.” It’s groaned.
“No. We won’t be sorry…remember?” It shreds my heart that he can merely press his cheek against mine as he nods. He takes a few deep breaths, and then a low sob shakes his shoulders. I cling to his neck and hold his forehead against my throat. After each sob, he makes an awful, pained gasp, and I’m wrenched with worry.
“Cover my mouth.” It’s a low rasp.
I realize what he means, but my lips can’t help a gentle kiss before I do as he asked. I hold his head and cover his mouth and stroke his hair and forehead and his neck. His hair is damp, and I’m stricken by his new fragility—the way he trembles and his tears drip down his face.
When he’s breathing fast and shallow, but a bit more steady, I wipe his cheeks with my shirt. I wipe his lovely welling eyes, and when more tears fall, I kiss his temples and his forehead and his soft, tremulous lips.
I’m half atop him now, one of my knees up on his chair and my right arm around his neck, my hand in his hair.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I murmur.
I lean back a bit, so I can see his sweet Carnegie face.
