by Hunt, Angela
“But why has my brother’s daughter been kept in a hospital all these years?”
“Because she needed several surgeries…and many months to recuperate between them. We brought in a maxillofacial surgeon to work on her mouth and teeth because we knew she’d need a functioning jaw in order to eat and talk. That surgery had to be accomplished in stages, of course, because a young child grows so rapidly. A craniofacial surgeon used pieces of her rib to shape her skull; a plastic surgeon fashioned a rudimentary pair of ears. Another surgeon implanted the cochlear device that allows her to hear—”
“Wait—she’s deaf?”
Dr. Mewton lifts her hand. “Not when she’s wearing her headset. She had no ears at birth, no auditory canals. The microphone of her implant picks up sound, the speech processor arranges the sounds, and a transmitter converts those sounds into electric impulses. The electrode array sends those impulses to different regions of the auditory nerve, allowing Sarah to hear.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I’ve heard of such things, but I’ve never known anyone who uses one.”
“Sarah was one of the first people to have a Nucleus multichannel implant—she received hers when she was eighteen months old. Her current model is state-of-the-art. In fact, I’m quite sure she’s received better care at our facility than she would have received anywhere in the world.”
Dr. Mewton doesn’t elaborate, but I can read between the lines. I don’t know how much money is funneled into the CIA’s off-book operations, but with no one to look over the division’s shoulder, who limits their budget? As a civilian, Sarah would have had medical decisions made by insurance companies and HMOs; here her needs have been met without question.
I flip through the pages of the album on my lap. The little girl changes from picture to picture—the bulging eye sacs recede, the lump that was meant to be a nose is shaped with tubes, the forehead becomes defined, the jaw descends.
In one picture, I see a much younger Dr. Mewton holding the baby in a rocking chair. She cradles my niece’s head as chubby arms cling to her.
“She couldn’t cry, not for months,” the woman says, her voice only a shade above a whisper. “Oh, she’d try to, but she couldn’t because of the trach tube. When she was in so much pain after the surgeries, I would rock her for hours. I cried for her.” A rueful smile quirks her mouth. “It’s so hard. When we get an officer who needs plastic surgery to alter his appearance, he understands that a few days of suffering might save his life. A baby can’t comprehend why we sometimes have to hurt her.”
I swallow hard and turn another page. With a potato-sized lump in my throat, I flip through the remaining photographs, marking the progress of years and additional operations. Sarah grows hair, Sarah learns to walk, Sarah has her trach tube removed, Sarah gets her first tooth.
The last page in the album features a photo of a child who appears to be five or six. The eyes are firmly seated in the head, a nose is apparent, and I can even see the hint of a smile on that face. But the skin is quilted and scarred, the nose pinched, and the little girl lacks eyelashes and brows. The lips are thin and malformed, and something about the dimensions of the face remains noticeably unbalanced.
“What do you think?” Quiet pride shines in Dr. Mewton’s eyes. “Sarah can now hear, breathe, eat, and smile. She’s exceptionally bright and has demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for computer programming. Her intellect has always been above normal, and even though our surgeons have had to manipulate the skull, she has suffered no brain damage. You’ll find her a remarkable young woman.”
I bring my hand to my mouth, afraid to say what I’m thinking. “She—This is what she looks like now?”
“She’s grown-up, of course. She has her father’s height and slim build. And despite being confined to this facility all her life, she’s remarkably conversant in American culture. We’ve imported every book, DVD, and recording she’s requested. She probably knows more about American movies than you do.”
“I don’t get out much,” I answer, vaguely disturbed by the woman’s pride in Sarah’s accomplishments. “Dr. Mewton—did Sarah have any surgeries after this last photograph?”
The doctor’s mouth spreads into a thin-lipped smile. “Sarah was eight when that photo was taken…old enough to tell me she didn’t want any more operations. We discussed it and I agreed.”
“But surely you might have tried to convince her to consult with a plastic surgeon. Knowing that one day she would need to live in the real world…”
“Sarah has never expressed a desire to leave this facility, so I saw no need to push. Besides, where would she live? She had no family in the States, nowhere to go.”
“She had me.”
“Did she?”
I stare at Dr. Mewton. I have no answers, no excuses that can make up for twenty years of silence. But I do know one thing—my brother was such an adventurer that I can’t imagine any child of his being content to remain on an island barely large enough to contain a football field.
But I have not met the girl. All I know is what Dr. Mewton has told me, and the woman is far from unbiased. She has developed a relationship with my niece…and I suspect it’s an attachment that must be severed if Sarah is ever to live a life of her own.
“What can you tell me…about who she is?”
“I’ve just given you a history.”
“I don’t want a history, I want to know her. What’s she like?”
Dr. Mewton tilts her head as a smile plays at the corner of her mouth. “She loves cherries. She has a real talent for mathematics, but she’s slow with foreign languages. She’s brilliant and logical, but even now she sleeps with a lamp burning. She’d never admit it, but I think she’s afraid of the dark. The fear probably stems from something in her childhood, but I’ll leave the psychoanalysis to you.”
When it becomes apparent that she will say nothing else, I close the album and offer it to Dr. Mewton. She shakes her head. “Why don’t you keep it awhile? It might help you to remember how far Sarah has come.”
I hug the album to my chest and stand. “As the only remaining member of the Sims family, I owe you our deepest thanks. But I’ve come a long way to meet my niece and assure her that she’s not alone in the world.”
Dr. Mewton rises and walks me to the doorway of the chapel. “I’ll send her to you soon. Is there anything you need? A snack, perhaps? Something to drink?”
“I’m fine.” I meet her smile with one of my own, but mine feels tight on my face. “Just send my niece to me as soon as possible. I’ve waited long enough.”
Chapter Twenty
Sarah
Fixated on the computer monitor, I watch without speaking as Dr. Mewton walks through the first floor hallway and my aunt returns to her room. When our guest moves beyond the range of the cameras, I rewind the security footage, zoom in, and study the flickering muscles of my aunt’s perfect face.
According to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Renee Carey was born in March 1972. Though she is thirty-five, I can see no signs of age in her skin. She wears her dark hair short, like mine, so I suspect she also lacks the patience for elaborate hairstyles. Wispy bangs fall across her wide forehead, and laugh lines radiate from the corners of her eyes, but only when she smiles. Her lips are full and round, her teeth are even, and her chin is square.
I think she’s as pretty as any actress I’ve ever seen in a movie, but she must be intelligent, too. I’m amazed that she’s able to hold Dr. Mewton’s gaze without flinching.
Renee Carey, whoever she is, is nothing like the nervous, weepy woman in one of my favorite movies. For the past few days I’ve been imagining her as The Shining’s Wendy Torrance, trying her best to protect her child in that forsaken old hotel. I was wrong, though—Dr. Carey is more like Ripley in Aliens, who glares at the razor-jawed creature as she thrusts the innocent child behind her and makes a desperate plan to escape.
I flinch as the intercom buzzes. “Sarah?”
&n
bsp; “Yes?”
“Your aunt is ready to see you. She’s in room 101 on the first floor…in case you didn’t know that already.”
I wait, wondering if Dr. Mewton plans to join me, but she says nothing else.
“All right. Thanks.”
Judson must have heard the squawk of the intercom, because he rolls past my open door and pauses. “You want me to go downstairs with you?”
“Um…thanks, but I should probably go alone.”
“I could wait in the hall and provide a diversion if you give the signal.”
He’s such a spy. I laugh. “What kind of signal?”
“You could cough. Shoot, you could just yell for help. I’d be at your side in a flash.”
“Relax, Jud, this isn’t a mission. She’s not the enemy, and I shouldn’t need extraction.”
“Then go on in and wow her with your charm and good looks. I’d go with you, but my social calendar is overcrowded these days.”
My voice is strangled when I stand and reply, “I’ll do my best.”
He scoots out of the way and lets me pass, but I can feel his anxiety following me as I head toward the stairwell.
They say that when an individual loses one of his senses, like Jud’s eyesight or my hearing, the other senses improve to compensate for the impairment. I know Judson’s hearing is excellent and his sense of touch keen.
Yet I don’t understand how he can be my best friend and not realize my chief handicap.
Chapter Twenty-One
Renee
When a knock interrupts the quiet, I brace myself and prepare to meet my niece. I open the door and see a slender figure dressed in sneakers and baggy surgical scrubs. The hand on the door frame is long-fingered and the arm lightly freckled, like Kevin’s.
But the face—
Despite Dr. Mewton’s effort to prepare me, I am shocked into silence when I lift my gaze. If this girl appeared at my door on Halloween, I would congratulate her on finding such a delightfully original fright mask.
It’s not that her features are missing—I can see two brown eyes, a nose, and a mouth. But there are no proper lips, there is no delicate cleft between nostrils and upper lip, no rounded chin. The cheeks are too compressed, the hairline’s uneven and jagged. The eyebrows are missing and so are the eyelashes. My niece may have functional features, but this is not a face. It is a random and incomplete collection of facial parts.
“Sarah.” The name catches in my throat as I focus on the wall behind her and extend my arms. “I’m your aunt Renee.”
She comes forward and clasps my shoulders, offering a stiff sort of shoulder-squeeze instead of an embrace. That’s all right; the girl doesn’t know me at all. I step back and gesture toward the only chair in the room. “Come in and have a seat, will you?”
She strides forward and drops into the chair with adolescent ungainliness, then crosses her legs. “So,” she says, speaking in the slightly hollow voice I’ve heard other deaf children employ, “you are my father’s sister?”
“That’s right.” I sink onto the corner of the bed and cross my legs, mirroring her posture to put her at ease. “Kevin was quite a bit older than me, but we were close when he lived at home…I think he thought of me as a pet. Do you…How much do you know about your mom and dad?”
She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “I know his name was Kevin Sims. My mother was named Diane. My father worked for the company and he died two days after my mother. My mother died when I was born.”
“After you were born.” I look her in the eye, stressing the importance of the chronology. “Your birth didn’t hurt her, but something went wrong later. You need to understand that.”
She draws an audible breath. “I know I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re worried about. These things happen sometimes.”
“Yes, they do.” I reach for my wallet, grateful for the opportunity to do something with my hands. “Let me show you one of my most precious pictures. Your dad was a handsome young man—people always said he looked like one of the Kennedys. Personally, I’ve always thought he looked better than any of the Kennedy kids, but maybe I’m biased.”
I unsnap the wallet and show her the first picture—me and Kevin, sitting side by side, crowded into the photo booth outside the local drugstore. Kevin is thirty-one, auburn-haired and lanky; with my hair cut short, I am a scrawny fourteen-year-old replica of him.
Sarah takes my wallet and stares at the photo for a long moment. “You’ve changed,” she finally says, her eyes not leaving the picture. “But you’re just as pretty.”
In any other circumstance, I would have said, “You’re pretty, too,” as casually as I’d follow a sneeze with “God bless you.” Today, however, the words catch in my throat, and I wonder if mentioning Kevin’s attractiveness was a thoughtless gaffe. I can see nothing of him or Diane in this girl, but maybe I’m not looking hard enough.
“You have his build,” I offer in a rush of words. “Kevin was tall and slim, just like you are. He could eat anything he wanted and never gain an ounce. Even as a kid, I always envied him for that.”
Something that might have been a smile lifts a corner of the slit that functions as her mouth. “You’re not exactly slim.”
I turn my startled gasp into a cough. “No, I’m what most people call ‘curvy.’ I have to watch every bite.”
“Too bad.” She looks up and notices the album on the bed. “I see Dr. Mewton has brought out my baby pictures.”
“Yes. They were…fascinating.”
“She wanted to prepare you for the freak show.” Her voice is flat and calm, but an involuntary muscle quivers at the corner of one lashless eye.
I am careful to keep my own face composed in straight lines. “I think she wanted me to see how well you’ve done. She said you are a remarkable young woman, and I can see she was right.”
“Are you surprised?”
Once again I’m startled by her candor. “Well…yes and no. I was astonished to find out you were alive—I’d been told you died with your mother. That’s why you’ve never heard from me through all these years. I’m so sorry about that.”
She shrugs. “I don’t blame you for anything.”
“Still, I feel terrible. I’m not surprised to find out you’re remarkable—I didn’t know your mother very well, but Kevin was the light of my world. He could make a party come to life just by walking into the room. He was smart, witty, clever—all the things I’m not.”
Sarah shifts in the chair and curls her legs beneath her. “Did he like the sea?”
“Kevin liked everything. He was a real ‘don’t fence me in’ kind of guy.” I stretch out on the bed and prop my head on my hand, relaxing in the security of my memories. “What else can I tell you? He was seventeen when I was born, but I adored him. He’d come home from college and take me to high school football games, showing me off like a little mascot. I’d ride on his shoulders…Mom always said I was too young to remember that, but I do remember feeling like a princess whenever I was with him.”
Sarah looks at the photograph one more time, then sets my wallet on the corner of the bed. “You must not have had much time with him.”
“But the time we had was good. After college, Kevin came home and worked, so I saw a lot of him in those years. I remember giving him a hard time when he started dating your mother.”
“Didn’t you like her?”
“I didn’t really know her. I was thirteen, Kevin was my hero, and Diane didn’t have any family, so she sort of wrapped herself up in my brother. It was childish, I know, but I hated her for taking him away from me. I was a junior bridesmaid in their wedding, but I didn’t smile in a single wedding photo. I think I sulked through the entire reception.”
I glance at Sarah, hoping for some expression of sympathy, but her face is like a mask. I’ve made a livelihood out of reading human expressions, but none of the usual markers are present in Sarah’s features. How am I supposed to know what this girl is thinking?
Mewton may be right about Sarah being well equipped for her job. But she’s not so well equipped for ordinary conversation.
“I’m sorry, is this what you want to hear? Would you rather talk about something else?”
“Please…” She wraps her arms around herself. “Please go on.”
I run my hand over the comforter as I search for some other conversational nugget. “Kevin was always entertaining…and kind of restless. My mom was surprised when he decided to go to college right after high school. She kept thinking he’d take a year off to backpack through Europe or some other kind of freewheeling gig. But he went through school, got a job, and got married. My brother the free spirit went the traditional route. Or at least we thought he did. Turns out we didn’t have a clue.”
“What did he study in college?”
“Political science, I think. And chemistry. Mom wanted him to be a doctor, but he found a job with a chemical company and took off for Spain with Diane. Now I realize, of course, that the CIA sent him to Spain, so he must have applied for a job or been recruited by the agency soon after he finished school.”
“You didn’t know he worked for the company?”
“That’s what you call it, right?” I shake my head, tracing the subtle pattern on the comforter. “I would never have dreamed that anyone in my family worked for the CIA. No one gave us any details when he died, either. I was fifteen when we got the news, and all I wanted to do was curl up and die, too. I felt so bad—I had barely spoken to him since he moved away. I kept thinking that soon he’d get homesick and come back. I was just a kid, you see. Now I would give anything to know Kevin as an adult. I still miss him.”
