by Ani Keating
His grip on my wrists slackens. “Don’t, Elisa.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
“You don’t think you deserve to hear it, do you?”
He places his hand gently over my mouth. “Not now,” he says and, before I can protest, he opens the door and lifts me by the waist, and we climb out into another drizzly morning.
Aiden’s stride picks up speed as we charge through the automatic glass doors of Norman Reeves LLP and into the private elevator off the corner. We’re not late but the motion gives us both a sense of accomplishment—the body doing something even if the heart cannot.
I watch Aiden’s reflection on the polished door. He’s wearing a pinstriped charcoal suit and a slate-blue tie that matches his eyes. His sniper focus is similar to his determination the last time we came to this office.
How will this time end?
The moment we step into the twenty-sixth floor lobby, the same Adriana Lima look-alike receptionist springs to her feet. For a second, I think my red-rimmed eyes scared her, but her blush and drool at Aiden say plainly she has not even registered my presence. Her eyelash flutter is wasted.
“We know where we’re going, Miss Patterson.” Aiden raises his hand and marches straight to the conference room with opaque glass walls.
Bob is pacing by the window, a pen twirling in his fingers. The moment we enter, his eyes flit to our joined hands and he smiles.
“Options!” Aiden fires without any preamble. I sink into the closest chair I can find. He takes the seat to my right, still gripping my hand.
“Before that, we have an update.” Bob plops onto the chair across the marble table from us. “Just ten minutes ago, our contact at the DOJ called. Things got a little more complicated. They’ll want to question Elisa under oath. Probably before her deadline.”
“Why?” Aiden snarls and I gasp at the same time.
“Well, they’re very interested in your knowledge of Feign’s work. As they’ve seen repeated footage of you, they reasonably assume you’ve witnessed his affairs.”
“Yes, but she knows nothing about that fucker’s finances,” Aiden hisses. “She got paid peanut shells, and not from the asshole himself. Couldn’t even be in the fucking lobby. That sleazeball has a history with fraud. Cheated in college, defrauded his ex-wife in alimony. And now, he has concocted this scheme, taking advantage of people with no power.”
Bob assumes the expression of a pallbearer. “That may well be true but, given the fact that Elisa also shows up in his sketches, I suspect that she does know something about Feign and his paintings.”
“What sketches are these?” I whisper. “I never modeled my face at Feign’s.”
Bob flips through a tall stack of papers in front of him and hands me a thick envelope. Aiden leans over to look, his breath hot on my cheek. I open it with shaking hands, and we both gasp. The sketches are practice runs for Aiden’s painting. I set them facedown on the table, unable to look at Javier’s rendition of my eyes. He has given them a happiness I may only ever find in paintings.
Bob turns his full body to face me. “I think it’s time you tell me the truth, dear. So I can help you. And remember—it’s all attorney-client privileged, except as to Mr. Hale here. Whatever you say, it’s safe with me.”
I look at Aiden. He nods without hesitation and fills me a glass of water from a curvy pitcher on the table. But what about Javier’s secret?
“I’ll tell you what I know but I won’t give you any names,” I say.
Bob nods and I start explaining, taking a sip of water every time I skip over Javier’s name. In the end, Bob’s face is pale. Aiden’s is hard steel.
“My dear,” Bob sighs and straightens the stack of papers. “You have no choice but to tell the DOJ the truth. If you don’t cooperate, the green card denial is the least of your worries. They may charge you with aiding and abetting or perjury or obstructing justice. There’s jail time for that. And you haven’t done anything wrong. Why hide?”
The floor is shaking under my feet. “Because they’ll want to know my friend’s name!” I choke.
Bob nods gravely. “Yes, they will.”
“And what would happen to him then? To my family?”
A deep silence descends on the conference room. “He’d likely be deported and not able to return for at least ten years. They can also charge him with fraud too, and a jury would decide whether a fraudulent artist or an illegal immigrant is lying.”
“But he’s innocent! He didn’t participate in Feign’s fraud! He just paints so he can eat!”
Aiden’s arm tightens around my shoulders and he glares at Bob. “What about witness protection visas—S-5, S-6?” he hisses again. “Could they apply to him? Maybe he himself can testify and relieve her of the burden?”
Bob shakes his head. “The government reserves those visas for terrorist or organized crime witnesses. Not an isolated fraud case.”
“What about another witness? Can someone else come forward and render the need for her testimony irrelevant? The smoking gun if you will—so the investigation stops before they get to her.”
“Who else would know about this?” Bob asks, squinting his eyes.
“No one,” I say. “Feign would not have trusted anyone with this.”
“We’ll find someone.” Aiden arm flexes around my shoulders. “I’d do it myself but I’d only implicate her further.”
Bob shakes his head, squinting more at a vein in the black marble. The longer he is silent, the more my airways tighten.
“It’s a good thought,” he says at last. “But we can’t bank on it. Not with only days left. Besides, she has to explain about her modeling work. Otherwise, she’d still lose.”
The deep V cracks between Aiden’s eyebrows. He rests his chin on his fist, narrowing his eyes at the same marble vein.
Bob turns to me. “Elisa, I know this is an impossible position. But my only concern is your best interest. My advice is that you talk to the DOJ and tell them the truth. It will actually help with your green card. By mid-June, you’ll have what you’ve always wanted.”
My head whips up. Despite Bob’s twinkly eyes, all the anguish makes room for anger. What I’ve always wanted? The chair starts shaking again. My teeth snap together before I can scream. The violence turns inward and propels me to my feet.
“Please, listen!” Bob says, raising his liver-spotted hands. “That’s not what I meant, dear.”
“Elisa? Please?” Aiden says very quietly, rising next to me. I meet his eyes. How can I listen to this with my heart imploding? How can I sit when everything inside is shivering like it did in that morgue four years ago? He puts his hand on my shoulder, pressing down gently. I drop. His arm wraps around me again like a rampart.
While we were looking at each other, something changed in Bob’s face. It has creased as though whatever he saw desiccated it. The lawyer is gone. An ancient man sits before me.
“I know what I’m asking you to do,” he sighs. “But I want to talk like a seventy-eight-year-old man to a…a granddaughter.”
I meet his gray aged eyes. Like the first time I met him, I think of Grandpa Snow.
“I won’t lie and tell you this won’t be the biggest regret of your life. It will be. Some days, it will hurt so much that you may even come to my grave and kick it. I won’t blame you. But then one day, holding your husband’s hand, you’ll bring to life a little boy or a little girl. You’ll hold them in your arms and you’ll think everything was worth it so they could be in this world. You’ll raise them with all the love you’ve been missing, and they’ll go on to do good things, change laws, save a friend. And this thing that feels so monstrous now, will hurt a little less because something beautiful will come from it.
“And maybe someday, you can fix things with your friend. Sneak him back in, make things right for
his family. You’ll survive this one, just like you survived your parents. Not whole, but still good in the end.”
The room falls silent. I close my eyes, trying to see what Bob sees. A bright hospital room, Aiden in blue scrubs, a sapphire-eyed boy or a Clare-eyed girl in my arms. I love you, Aiden says. The nurse turns to put a little hat on my baby. Bendita, she whispers and becomes Maria. The door opens and the girls burst inside to meet the baby. My baby. Antonio wheels in too, a pile of Maria-knitted baby sweaters on his lap. And Javier at last. With a beaming smile like the first time I was able to tango again. Sweetheart, you did it, he says.
My face drops on my hands. Sobs start and I can’t stop them. The floor tilts as it did on that January night, four years ago, and I start shivering. Which love am I losing this time? My family or my life?
I hear a harsh oath from Aiden and his arms tighten around me, tucking my face in his neck. “Give us some time, Bob. We’ll let you know tomorrow,” he says.
I hear Bob’s footsteps, a hand clutching my shoulder and the conference room door opening and closing. Still, Aiden does not move or speak. He just holds me and lets my tears soak his jacket. The only thing still right in my world is he.
Chapter Forty-Six
Salvo
In the Rover, I curl on Aiden’s lap, his arms a vise around me. I can’t remember getting out of Bob’s office or into this backseat. I just know Aiden’s sandalwood-and-cinnamon scent. It makes me cry harder as fragments of thought form in my head. Thoughts I’d rather not have. Which love wins?
“How long is jail for obstructing justice?” I sniffle against his throat.
His muscles quiver. He doesn’t answer. Maybe he doesn’t know. Or maybe he doesn’t want to tell me.
“M-m-maybe it’s b-better that w-w-way.” My voice shudders. “Javier will be s-safe. I’ll still be h-h-here for a while. And maybe you can come visit m-m-me?” My tears soak his skin even though the words feel surreal. A plot for imagination, not life.
Suddenly, the Rover stops. We’re home.
Benson gets out and opens our door. Three wrinkles crease his forehead—exactly like Javier’s. I stumble out, Aiden gripping my waist. Benson reaches for my hand.
“Thank you, Benson,” I croak.
“It’ll be all right, Miss S—Elisa.” He exchanges a look with Aiden. “I’ll park and check in with Feign’s tail, sir. Then send out Cardoza to scour for witnesses.”
Aiden nods once and clutches me to his side, and we tread down the fieldstone path to the double doors. I enter the foyer in a trance. He leads us past the living room to his library, never releasing my hand. The moment we step inside, he closes the door.
“Elisa,” he says before the lights have stopped flickering. His voice is quiet.
I turn to face him, to walk into his arms. But his eyes stop me. They’re not midnight anymore. They’re solid cobalt.
“Love, you have to turn him in.”
I see his lips move. And I hear his voice but the words are foreign. “What?”
He takes a step toward me. “You have to give him up.” He speaks very slowly.
There’s no mistaking the words this time. The air turns icy. Sharp like a January night.
“No!” The word whips out of my mouth, piercing and bare. “No! I can’t do that! I won’t!”
My staggering volume startles me but not him. He takes another step toward me, hands out as though to catch me. I step back.
“Elisa—”
“Why don’t you just give me an IED and tell me to tuck it under their pillow, Aiden? That should spare you whatever speech you prepared while I sat there on your lap, thinking you’re on my side!”
He flinches this time. When he speaks, his voice is very soft—counterpoint to mine. “I am on your side. I’ll be there even when you don’t want me to be. But this…this self-execution isn’t right. Think about your future, your dreams, your life, your health. If those die, your parents might as well die again. But this time, you’re behind the truck’s wheel, love.”
His words suffocate me. Because they’re the truth. And they change nothing.
“Did those reasons work for you, Aiden?”
He frowns in confusion.
“When you bartered your life for Marshall’s, did they work?”
His jaws clench. The tectonic plates shift instantly as his eyes darken to slate. “No, they didn’t.” His voice is guarded. Almost cold.
“Then why should they work for me?”
“Because Marshall didn’t break the law. He had a right to be back here.”
I gasp, taking another step back. “And Javier’s life somehow matters less because of that?”
“Not his life. Only his right to be here at your expense when you’ve played by the rules while he took shortcuts.”
“Shortcuts? He works harder than—” I say through my teeth.
“Stop!” His voice fires like a gunshot in the air. “I will not engage in a political debate with you. This is only about your future, your life. And I refuse to watch you go to prison for the mistakes of some Mexic—”
“Mexicans? That’s all they are to you?”
“What they are to me is irrelevant. All that matters is what they are to you. I know you love them but right now, they’re a threat.”
“They’re my family! They’re the people who saved the life of the woman you claim to love!”
I take a step forward to walk away but the change in his eyes locks my feet. A flash of fury strikes in the dark irises—over and over, like an electric current over the heart, failing to revive it. But the plates don’t shift. They’re still as though my words broke them.
“Claim to love?” His voice is low, guttural. His head jerks slightly to the side. “You want to know the full truth, Elisa? If I’d had you back here the day Marshall died, if I knew you were waiting for me to come home, I might not have bartered my life with his. I might have torn through those steel cables sooner. Just so I could see your face again. Even if I already remember every pore of your skin and every strand of your hair. Once I love, I love forever!” He stops talking but his voice reverberates in the library silence.
Once I love, I love forever.
I take a step toward him and reach to caress his scar but he turns his head away.
“Do you want to know the truth?” I say. My voice doesn’t echo; it’s a whisper of air as though it wants to float inside him. “I love you like that too. You’ve brought me to life. But even if there’d been no accident on that January night and we had met another way, I still would have moved here for you. We’re not that different, love.”
Something flits in his eyes—as though the electric charge finally obtained a heartbeat. “Then you can have me,” he says. His voice is no longer cold. It has a soft note, almost like defeat. “Turn him in and you can have me.”
I play his words in my head—once, twice—but they make no sense. “What?”
“Turn him in and I’m yours. Forever. However you want me. But not this way. Not with prison visits and phone calls while I sit there helpless watching you lose everything for someone who may end up being deported anyway. If I brought you to life, I want you to live it.” He takes a shuddering breath and swallows. “Please, Elisa.” His words are a hoarse whisper. As if this is all he has left to bargain—all he can give.
Tears blur my eyes at the searing agony in his eyes because I know I can’t ease it. Because I am causing it. I look down at his Oxfords. “I can’t,” I whisper. “I love you. I love you more than my own life. But I love the Solises too. I can’t betray them any more than I could have crashed into my parents’ Beetle. Or any more than I can leave you. I can’t choose between you.”
Sobs start and torrential tears gush to my chin. I’m the one who should be under marble and roses. I’m a plague to everyone who’s ever loved me.
“No! Never! I—I—I’ll stay here illegally. I’ll give up s-s-science. My d-d-dad. All of it—” I pause to breathe over the sobs as a cold shiver chills my neck. Like a breath from the grave. I know it’s my imagination. But it doesn’t make it less real.
“I’ll just w-w-work with Maria at the hotel. I’m a good cleaning lady. It’s worth it if I can still have all of you… If you’ll s-s-still have me then…” I can’t speak anymore from the sobs. Behind the blurry tears, Bob’s scene transforms. I’m still in a hospital, but I’m mopping the floor. Through a cracked door, I see Aiden with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, all-American girl who didn’t come with my baggage. Who made him happy. Who gave him a sapphire-eyed boy.
“Oh, fuck!” His torn voice barely seeps through the roaring sobs in my ears. Through the curtain of tears, I see his Oxfords turn. He’s walking away. Away from me.
“Please, don’t go!” I gasp, and grip his arm from behind.
For a split second, time freezes and I realize what I’ve triggered. But it’s too late. He moves blindingly fast.
He spins around and his elbow slams like a cannonball in my chest. I fly across the library—something heavy wrenching my left side, the room a blur, a ripping, tearing sound—and hit the bookshelves against the wall. Sharp pain cuts across my back and a gut-wrenching agony radiates from my left arm. Books crash around me, their thuds drowned by a piercing scream. My own. Through the pages and blinding pain, I see Aiden’s hand gripping my arm. From his crushing hold, I’m dangling above the floor.
His eyes are locked somewhere behind me, wild and distant. He jerks his head side to side like a horse against a tether. His breathing is fast and shallow. His face twists in anguish and his neck and shoulders strain against an invisible bridle bit. A feral roar rips through his teeth.
“Aiden!” I scream, but my voice shatters from his strength. “Aiden! Please! Come back to me…you’re here, you’re home,” I plead, but he is beyond reach. The pain in my arm becomes bewildering, and I start thrashing to get out of his grip.
