by Hester Young
He’s right, of course. Though I suspect Quico was involved in Lety’s death, I don’t believe he actually pulled the trigger. My money’s on Marilena. The way she looked at me with that one dead eye and offered me a shower—it was her. It had to have been her. But I don’t know why, don’t know if Lety’s death was somehow linked to Donna’s, to Jasmine’s.
“Next time you find out where someone was tragically gunned down, maybe give me a heads-up,” I say crossly. “Is there anything else I should know about? Anything else the kid told you?”
“I don’t think so.” Noah turns on the faucet and rinses the whiskers from his razor. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Oh, a few things maybe.” I lean against the bathroom doorway. “Like, I found Lety’s sister.”
“You found Yulissa?”
“She’s about ten years old,” I tell him. “Lives in a garbage dump, of all places. I think Lety’s been bugging me because she wants me to get Yulissa into the US. Honestly, though, I don’t see how we can pull that off. Even if we could battle through the whole adoption process, I’m at my limit with two kids.”
“Glad we agree,” Noah says with a frown.
“Also, the marijuana CBP found? I don’t know how, but I think some Mexican official named Quico Ortega planted it. He happens to be friends with Marilena, the woman who owns the Hotel del Viajero. Where Lety died.”
“Well, look at you, Nancy Drew.”
“Nancy Drew?” I sigh. “No way. Is this the body of a sixteen-year-old girl detective? More like that pregnant cop in Fargo . . .”
Cracking a smile, Noah wipes the last bit of shaving cream residue from his face with some water and grabs a bottle of aftershave. “So that’s where we’re at? We think some random guy in the Mexican government has it in for us?”
“He’s not random. I just told you, he’s connected to Marilena. And I think she’s the one who killed Lety. My guess is that Marilena’s kid mentioned you were asking about Lety, and she and Quico didn’t like it.”
“Sounds . . . pretty messed up.” Noah rubs his eyes, and I wonder how much of this he’s even absorbing, tired as he is. “We can fix this if we just stay outta Mexico, right?”
“Maybe,” I say. “I don’t know.” When I tell him about Quico’s visit to Micky, his face hardens.
“I don’t like this,” he says. “How the hell does this guy even know about Micky? Has he been followin’ us in Tucson?”
“I don’t know, but you see what all this points to,” I say.
Noah gives me a blank look, officially too sleepy to connect the dots.
“Jasmine and Donna getting shot—it must be related.”
“Why?”
I roll my eyes. “Donna knew Marilena through Sonora Hope. Marilena killed Lety. And then Donna turns up dead, too.”
He makes his way to the bed, only half hearing me. “So?”
“So . . . maybe Donna had a little side business going with Marilena and Quico. Running recreational drugs. That would explain the marijuana and the Rohypnol found in Jasmine’s apartment. And it fits with Donna’s history of drug use.”
“I don’t know, Charlie.” Noah yawns. “A little Mary Jane isn’t quite the same as a date-rape drug. And Pam said Donna never had any extra money comin’ in.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, eager to hash out the details even if he’s not fully with me. “Maybe Donna was getting paid in prescription drugs,” I suggest.
“Sounds like you want your mother to be the bad guy.” His tone is mild, but I can see the obnoxious hint of amateur psychologist in his eyes, and I don’t want to go there.
“I think it’s more than a coincidence that Donna and Jasmine and Lety were all shot within five, six weeks of each other,” I tell him. “Pam and Vargas, they’ve been assuming Jasmine was the main target, but it could’ve been Donna.”
“Could’ve been,” Noah says with another yawn. “Although I wouldn’t sell your sister short. From everything we’ve seen, she had a way of pissin’ folks off.”
• • •
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, a monsoon hits. The sky darkens, and the steady stream of airplanes booming overhead stops, soon replaced with the rumbles of distant thunder. When the clouds finally open up, it’s positively biblical. Rain crashes to the earth in sharp lances, flooding the courtyard in less than ten minutes, its sound reverberating off every surface it touches: concrete, metal, glass. I watch from the window of our hotel room as the palm trees bow and shiver in the wind and a bench blows onto its side. Something tells me Carmen won’t make it out of Tucson tonight.
Spread-eagled across the bed on his stomach, Noah sleeps through the roar of rain and thunder.
As I listen to the drops pattering against the roof, I think he’s got it right. I steal one of his pillows and begin building up my nest. Nap time.
I don’t know how long I doze—it’s a light, half-conscious sleep, with hazy thoughts that dissolve like cotton candy on a tongue. My awareness of the storm, of Noah’s heat beside me, fades in and out. At some point, I notice the rain has stopped, and it’s there, in the sudden, sleepy quiet, that I feel a beckoning.
Goddamn it, Lety, I think. Not again. I’m pretty sure that in the past two weeks, I’ve dealt with more of these visions than in the entire preceding year. I hope this is temporary, a bizarre side effect of late pregnancy and not my new normal.
For a moment, I resist the pull. Grab a pillow, trying to anchor myself in the hotel room. Dig my fingernails into the palm of my hand, hoping pain will keep me present. It’s no good. I can remain conscious, but I can’t dismiss that tugging need. It’s like having to pee; you can delay but never defeat the urge.
I sigh. Let’s get this over with already.
And then I’m under. Really under. Swimming, in fact.
Night. My arms, long and strong, carve through dark waters. The gently bobbing waves part as I plow through. Above me, the sky is a black sphere without starlight. Only a thin slice of moon cuts through the gloom, a slash of light against a canvas of nothing.
For a moment, I don’t know why I’m swimming, what I’m swimming to, but then I see a shape. Bouncing on the sea’s shiny surface, a baby. My baby?
I dive toward her, terrified that she will sink, that I’ll lose her to the softly slapping waves. When I reach the child, however, I know it’s not my daughter. Not Lety’s unborn girl, either. This is a boy, a black-haired infant boy with strange, unblinking eyes.
I reach to gather him in my arms, to protect him from drowning, but my hands find nothing solid to grasp. He’s water, I realize. No form, no flesh, just rivulets running from my fingertips, insubstantial as a reflection. And yet the baby continues to stare, his eyes both alert and indifferent. I don’t like it. Something in me knows this dream is not like the others.
What are you? I whisper.
The reply comes to me not as sound but as thought, a whisper from within. A possibility, once.
I don’t understand, I say. Did you die?
I was never born.
The infant vanishes, wiped away like sand-scribbled words in an oncoming tide. On the horizon, I spy a faint blush. The inky night sky turns to blue. All around me, the ocean drains away, swiftly absorbed into the earth, leaving me on an open plain of warm sludge. I kneel in the muck. Wipe my soiled hands against my thighs.
The dark-haired child is back, sitting cross-legged across from me in the mud. He’s bigger now, older—about Keegan’s age, I’d guess—but I know it’s him from those empty eyes. He sits perfectly upright, no tension in his body, just a peculiar stiffness, as if he were carved from wood. I lean forward, getting a closer look at him in the rising light. Though his features seem to shift upon inspection, I detect a common element, a face they seem to borrow from.
I draw in a sharp breath when I realize. This is Carmen star
ing back at me. Her nose, mouth, cheekbones, chin, and forehead arrange and rearrange themselves, mutating in endless combinations.
What do you want? I ask, now on my guard.
Again he speaks to me without words. I want nothing.
Then why are you here? I demand.
She can’t forgive herself.
I know he’s talking about Carmen. I know this boy is hers. That has nothing to do with me, I tell the boy. Whatever it is you think she needs—I’m not the right person to do it. I don’t even like her.
As I’m lining up my arguments, preparing to explain the precarious nature of my relationship with Carmen, the boy melts. Turns to mud. A totally unfair and yet effective way to end a debate.
I stand up, knees coated in filth. The sun rises rapidly in the sky as if in time lapse, and the ground loses its moisture, hardening and cracking in the heat. I spin in a circle, searching for something on the horizon, a destination. I see nothing but a small and withered tree in the distance, its twisted limbs in silhouette against the bright sunlight. I jog toward it.
When I’m just a few yards away, I spot the boy again. His body unfolds from the shadow of the tree trunk. He’s even older now, taller, his hair cropped short. A child, but not so very far from adolescence. And he still has those unsettling eyes that refuse to blink.
I fold my arms across my chest. Let me guess. This time you turn to dust, right?
His expression remains neutral.
You could just leave me alone, I suggest. It would be easy. You don’t even exist.
I exist in her mind. That’s enough.
It’s maddeningly intimate, these words inside my head. I draw closer to the figure by the tree, peer at the oddly morphing face. In one instant, a nose like Carmen’s. Then a shift, and it’s her round cheeks I find in his unstable face. I squint at him, and all his features ripple at once, a watery surface struck by a stone. When they’ve solidified again, I see an echo of someone else. My stomach begins to hurt.
Noah. This boy would’ve been Noah’s.
Why are you showing me this? I kick at the tree’s thick roots. They aren’t even together anymore. Why can’t you go away?
The young boy stares directly at me, his gaze blank. No feeling, no humanity at all. He doesn’t care about Carmen or Noah or me because he isn’t real. He never was.
She won’t let go of me, he says. She won’t let go.
• • •
IT’S EVENING WHEN I WAKE UP, nearly eight o’clock. Noah remains blissfully unconscious, and I can only imagine the sleepless nights in a holding cell that have produced such exhaustion. I’m drowsy myself, but my stomach demands food. I wriggle into one of my shapeless sundresses and head downstairs to the hotel bar and grill.
The place is nearly deserted when I arrive, but I recognize one of its patrons immediately. She’s sitting at the bar hunched over a beer and a plate of potato skins, shoveling cheese-and-sour-cream-laden chunks into her mouth with self-hating abandon. I’m not surprised to see her here. Somehow I expect it.
“Carmen.”
Although she flinches at the sound of my voice, she doesn’t look especially astonished to see me, either. “Please take these away.” She pushes her plate at me. “I’m a danger to myself.”
“I take it your flight got canceled?”
“There was flooding from the storm. I leave first thing in the morning.” She hesitates and then taps the stool beside her at the bar. “You can join me if you like.”
I can’t tell if she actually wants me to stay. Don’t know if I actually want to. Fragments of my dream play in the back of my mind, uncomfortable and insistent. The son she and Noah might’ve had but didn’t.
I’m supposed to talk to her, of course, yet something in me resists. I don’t know what our conversation might set in motion, don’t want to serve as some inexplicable instrument of fate if the ultimate purpose is one I can’t live with. What if she and Noah still love each other? What if mentioning this child somehow brings them back together?
“Sit,” Carmen tells me, annoyed by my indecision. “I won’t bite.”
I sit. “Did Noah tell you we were at this hotel?”
“No,” she says. “But I should’ve guessed. Frequent-sleeper points, right?” She rolls her eyes as if to communicate his tiresome predictability. I manage the ghost of a smile, but frequent-sleeper points are just another reminder of their long history together. There are so many things she knows about him that I don’t.
The bartender approaches and I order a Shirley Temple. It’ll be my first in a long while—my time in Louisiana turned me off to that particular drink—but tonight I’m feeling brave. Could use the sugar rush.
I clear my throat. “Thank you again for making the trip out here. I don’t know what we would’ve done without your help.”
“Yeah, well.” She doesn’t know what to do with the compliment. “I’m not sure what y’all stumbled across, but I’d watch your back. You used up your Get Out of Jail Free card this time around. Next time could get ugly.”
I nod, thinking of Lety. I know how ugly it could get.
The bartender arrives with my drink, a glass of ruby-colored liquid topped with an orange slice and a pair of maraschino cherries. I take a cautious sip, trying to figure out a good entry point to the conversation I want to have. In the end, though, she’s the one who finally speaks.
“Can I ask you something?” She tilts her head to the side. “I don’t mean to be rude, but . . .”
I steel myself. “Go ahead.”
“Are you excited? About the baby? I know it wasn’t really planned.”
I wonder if she and Noah discussed this while he was in jail. Wonder what he said. “Of course I’m excited. Nervous, obviously, too, because everything’s going to change. But mostly excited.” The words sound false and defensive even to me. I bite into the orange slice, strip away the flesh from the peel with my teeth. Allow myself a shade more honesty. “Like, sixty percent excited and forty percent scared out of my mind.”
She gives me a quizzical smile. “That’s pretty scared.”
“I know what I’m getting into this time. I don’t have that new-parent arrogance in my corner anymore.”
“Noah told me about your son. I’m sorry.”
It’s a well-intentioned apology, like so many others, that I don’t know how to answer. “Me too.”
“You must think there’s something wrong with me, not wanting kids.”
The comment irritates me. “I don’t know what kind of person you think I am, Carmen, but being a mother has never been the sum total of my identity. And I certainly don’t expect everyone else to make the same life choices I do.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re one of those godless Manhattanites, aren’t you?” She gives me a wry smile. “You guys have it pretty good. But I’m Catholic. My mother has been pushing for grandkids since I was eighteen. And with my abuela . . . reproduction is like a responsibility. In her eyes, my sister and I are failing in our most basic civic duties.”
I don’t respond. My mind is on the pregnancy test I saw her holding at the restaurant last night, on the boy who looked like Noah. A possibility, once, the boy said. And I know. This is my opening. She has brought up the subject of her own accord; now is my chance.
“You were pregnant once, weren’t you?” I keep my eyes focused on my ice cubes.
“What?”
“A long time ago, you were pregnant.” I picture the older version of the boy in my dream and try to guess his age. “Thirteen years, is that about right?”
Her eyes widen. She runs her thumb along the rim of her beer, circling it over and over, debating whether or not to answer. “Twelve,” she says at last. “Twelve years.” She’s still for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is unsteady. “How would you know that?”
�
��I’m crazy, remember? I see things.”
“That doesn’t . . . I never told anyone. Not Noah, not anyone. I know you’re a journalist, but even you . . . how could you possibly get access . . .”
“I couldn’t.”
She folds her arms, deeply unsettled, no longer sure of herself. “I don’t understand. That wasn’t just a lucky guess.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. It was a long time ago. I’m sure you’ve put it behind you.”
We’re both quiet for a moment. I know, of course, that she hasn’t put it behind her, but if she doesn’t want to talk about her pregnancy with me, I can certainly understand. We are hardly friends. I’m probably the last person in the world she wants to discuss this with, and I’m not convinced I want to have this conversation myself.
And yet, for some reason, she doesn’t shut me down. “I guess . . . I’ve been thinking about it lately,” she says.
“Was it . . . a miscarriage?”
Carmen’s quiet for a second, privately weighing her reply before she turns to me, half defiant and half terrified. “It was an abortion,” she says. “I had an abortion.”
She looks far more startled than I am at hearing these words spoken aloud, and I have to remind myself that she grew up in Texas. She’s Catholic. Not a cafeteria Catholic like my aunt Suzie, but a first-generation-born-to-Mexican-immigrants Catholic. Having moved in largely liberal circles, I’ve known women who spoke matter-of-factly about their abortions, without guilt, without sadness. I was sixteen and he was an asshole, an acquaintance once told me, and that was all the justification she needed. But that is not the culture Carmen grew up in.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry.” I rest an elbow on the bar. “Usually when I see things, I’m supposed to . . . act on them in some way. I guess in this case I don’t know what to do.”
“I thought it was crazy,” she says, “what Noah said about you. It is crazy. I don’t get it.” Her attention snaps back to me. “Are you going to tell him?” she demands.
“Tell Noah? No way. This isn’t mine to tell.” Frankly, I can see no upside whatsoever in sharing this with him.
