Monica shook her hand back with a surrendered smile, for the first time an honest, real smile. That was Monica’s true face, not the ice monster queen she used to bear at all times.
“So, you’re telling me that…”
“If you want me to, I can bring you proof. There’s no worse feeling in the world than believing something is happening and having your considerations delegitimized all the time by someone. Believe me, I’ve been there.”
“What are you asking in exchange? For you to prove me that…” She grimaced. “That I’m being cheated on.”
Clarice smile, gently shaking her head.
“Just you to know the truth. But you need to be prepared and most importantly: you need to keep your distance. Push him away, kick him out of home, make his life a living hell.”
“But… why would I do that?”
“To push him. So that he shows his true self during the moments of need, helplessness, tragedy.”
“I still can’t believe you’re willing to do it for… for a friendship that doesn’t even exist.”
“I’m not doing this for friendship. I’m doing because it’s the right thing to do, something I’d like that someone would have done for me. We may not be friends, but this could be the beginning of it.”
“We need to stay united.” Monica intoned, paraphrasing the main motto from Agnes’ meetings and online chats.
“We’ll stay united.”
They didn’t spend much time at the coffee shop. Monica had to work some urgent matters out about a subsidiary in another country and Clarice, now Georgia, had to get the other part of the plan on the move. She took a cab and her coffee along, which was still far from being over, and got out of the car a few minutes later, ready to face her target.
Right when she jumped out of the car and tossed some crumpled bills to the driver, without caring for change, the phone rang.
“I told you not to call me until I gave you a clear.”
“I know,” The young girl’s voice on the other side said, apprehensive. “But I had to. I can’t do it, Clarice. I can’t stay another second in here, Clarice. He’s leaving, he’s coming here, I know he will.”
“Laura!” Clarice froze before crossing the street and lowered her voice. “Listen to me. I’ll take you from there and, soon, it’ll all be over. But I need you to lay low.”
Clarice was worried about and for her. She feared what could happen in case her father really got released on parole. Even though she had faced the monster Nathan was and Jason, she knew that that man managed to be even worse, more rotten and vile. And she feared for Laura, more than the girl herself.
“Promise me you’ll calm down and wait for my sign.”
The silence on the line was only broken by Laura’s sigh, while Clarice observed the precinct on the other side of the street. She crossed, finally.
“I promise. Good luck and, please, be quick.”
“I’ll try my best.”
She turned the call off, but didn’t put the phone away. She pretended the call went on while walking, heading for the precinct door with the coffee cup in hands. The snow was falling again and it was cold, so Clarice started wondering how much longer she would last out there. She didn’t want to walk in and look for the guy without a plausible reason.
Through the glass doors she saw him. It was no coincidence, she had watched him previously. She knew that to be the time he usually ran to secretly smoke outside or have lunch, giving her the perfect opportunity to approach. Still holding her phone against her ear, she faked to listen someone on the line, waiting for him to walk out.
He was coming and she needed a plan, the only thing she still hadn’t thought through. The detective had no hero complexes and he wasn’t a manipulative asshole, willing to save a damsel in distress just to fall in love with the feeling of superiority that would take place in the moment. He was controlling, obsessive, detail driven. A personality that was quite difficult to explore and get to know. He liked women who exuded power, perhaps because it offered him a challenge to overcome before subduing. And she already had the perfect story to attract him, all she needed was for him to open himself up to her.
He bumped onto an officer who had just walked in and stopped for a few seconds, just then launching himself to the streets.
He was handsome, she couldn’t deny that. Although his perfectly square-shaped face had not a single strand of hair in it, there was an authoritative and even ludicrous charm with that custom-made suit and the usual dark trench coat of movie detectives. He seemed determined, serious, too tall, too distant. He passed by Clarice and barely noticed her, heading towards the opposite street corner. And she decided to follow him, maybe that meantime would give her a better way to start a conversation, a way to…
She hadn’t noticed how close she was to him. She lowered the phone and tried to put in inside her pocket, which seemed to narrow to hold the device in, when the detective abruptly turned on his heels and came against her in that tiny space that there was between them, crunching the cup of coffee in Clarice’s hand and causing a shock that, by the blink of an eye, didn’t bring her to the ground. Clarice screamed, both by the jump and the fear of getting burned by the coffee leftovers.
Luckily, most of the liquid spread all over the man, staining his shirt and his coat. Before Clarice could come up with anything to say, she lifted her eyes and saw him and, at seeing him, she held her words back for a while.
His eyes were locked onto her, petrified, almost hypnotized. He curved his lips slightly, not sure of what to say, while his coffee-wet hands hovered in the air, unsure whether to pull away the soaked fabric from the body or to look for help. If she looked for an opportunity, she had found the best one. With no efforts whatsoever, she was already pulling detective Anthon Gilles’ strings. She smiled back.
“I’m sorry.” She said, not sure how to proceed, but showing a shy grin, that way she well knew how to do to charm someone, when the tip of her tongue got stuck between her teeth and the eyes wavered, slightly naïve, delusively lost.
Anthon was not the hero. He was the man who believed fate had something to tell him, a man with such an inflated ego that a simple smile and a light touch to the arm would already make him believe he already had caught his new prey.
And that was exactly what she was going to do.
I discovered grief is necessary, rather urgent. And I needed that. I needed to go through the grief of my marriage, the mourning of my sanity, the grief of having lost all I had built with myself. Michell’s mourning. The mourning of now seeing the old me dying and being reborn, allowing me what I now have.
Michelle was an incredible woman. And she was a good woman. I know she would never take me side in this endeavor, for she always believed everything gets better in time, with patience and conversations. I do not disagree, but I do believe some things ought to be worked on as soon as they come to life. And I know that, although she’s no longer here to share my freedom, she’s somewhere, according to what she believed and taught, happy for the end. The end of the pain, the suffering. The end of an era that shouldn’t even have started to begin with. Wherever she is now, she’s aware that her memory will be always honored, clean, immaculate just like her entire life. She deserved it and I only offered what I had available in hands, though it was all I could ever offer. An exchange, once we sacrificed ourselves in her memory, but meaning she is and will always be in our own memories, forever.
The taxi parked in front of the airport. Clarice climbed down, allowing her once more red hair to dance in the strong air that area had, while taking her bags from the old mustache-man cab trunk. He smiled at her and she was quite sure he would stare at her ass while she walked away, but she didn’t mind – she was happy to realize the suitcase had remained closed as she had longed.
Without thinking twice, she put the wool cap again, covering her hair, and entered the huge building the airport was, being quickly engulfed by the excess noise, people, lights and
smells, both perfumes and food. It was madness for someone who had spent the last months secluded in hotel rooms or in the mountains, someone who had lost touch with mass civilization.
Clarice stopped. Amidst the people walking by her, in that real-life madness, where thousands of lives, futures and thoughts met without actually meeting. Thousands of pains and sufferings and joys and feelings that weren’t exposed or even explored right there, just a few inches away.
She took the phone from her pocket and dialed the first number on her contact list.
“Hey,” She said as soon as the other person picked up. “Where are you?”
“Here.”
Clarice turned her neck and, looking towards the waiting area, she saw the girl, who discreetly waved at her.
Laura smiled and stood up, grasping the backpack that rested on her Converse All Stars sneakers, and running towards her. As they met, Laura hugged her and Clarice took the girl in her arms, allowing herself being hugged too.
How comforting it was. A unique, soothing and freeing feeling. An experience she’d like to have shared with Michelle years ago, and not only that feeling of being safe with each other, but the feeling of freedom that waited for them a few steps from there, a few hours from then.
Laura moved away, quickly wiping her tears, trying to look tough. That was the way she saw Clarice, though the woman kept telling her that was not an accurate point of view.
When their paths first crossed, in one of the Agnes’ chats, Clarice got deeply moved by the girl’s story. Laura was no older than fourteen at the time and she had suffered the worst of the pains any woman could go through, increased further by the identity of her assailant.
Laura’s testimony shared on the chat and, posteriorly, on the face-to-face meetings of the women’s group, worked as a propellant to Clarice. Her plans had been taken away by Jason and Michelle’s death, her freedom was distant, but Laura gave her a new reason to move forward. And they met privately, during one of Clarice’s trips to the mountains, and they talked about themselves and their future and Clarice told her Michelle’s story. Laura had heard about Marco’s mother, one of her longtime friends, and she got astonished by hearing Michelle’s version of the facts.
When Clarice decided to change not only her life, but also the ones she had touched, Laura supported her, but only offered her support when Clarice promised her a future away from there, away from the family, away from the conformity and the selective blindness of the community in which she lived, away from her mother’s complacency and the father’s violence. She didn’t want him dead or her past avenged; Laura couldn’t promise she would be able to live with that burden and Clarice decided not to put her in that game. She just asked for help regarding the Flyce’s routine and any information that could come in handy to her, also relying on Laura’s actions to control Marco and his teenage anger.
And now, just like in the end of a movie or a show season, they were ready to leave.
“I wish I had seen you with black hair.” Laura said, her bangs bouncing over her eyes while her hair, pulled up in a high ponytail, danced behind her as they walked to the check-in counter.
“It was good while it lasted.”
Clarice stopped then and delivered the big red suitcase to Laura, who was near a column and a garbage bin.
“Wait here.”
“But where…”
“I’ll be right back.” Clarice said, kissing the girl’s face. “I promise.”
“And then we go to Ireland?”
Clarice shook her head in a frown, with a mocking smile.
“Hell no.”
Snaking around the people that passed by, some in a hurry and some not that much, Clarice reached the check-in counter and, probably due to the time – the beginning of the morning – there were no waiting lines. She smiled to the airline agent, already handing her the tickets.
“My friend is a little late, but I’d like to check-in.”
She handed the tickets and her ID. Well, Georgia’s ID, at least.
“I have two available seats together, A2 and B2, since you’re first class.”
“That’d be great.”
The girl typed some information and waited for the boarding pass printing.
“Would you like to check your baggage?”
Clarice nodded, placing the dark case onto the counter scale.
In a matter of short minutes, the agent labeled the bag and sent it to dispatch, delivering the other tag to Clarice, along the tickets and the boarding passes.
“Here are your boarding passes and a tag for your handbag. In case your friend has something to check in, it’d be good she’d come as soon as possible. You don’t have any flammable, piercing or drugs in your carry-on, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Just make sure your documents are in hand, along the passports. The boarding will take place in an hour, at gate A6.”
Clarice just smiled behind the sunglasses that covered part of her face and left, returning to Laura. When she found her, she discreetly discarded the tickets and boarding passes, also getting rid of the fake documents of her previous life into the garbage bin.
“I don’t understand.” Laura said, still staring at the bin, appalled.
“Ireland is too cold and too far. I thought we could maybe enjoy something different, away from here. I’m open to suggestions.”
Laura smiled and guffawed, surprised by the turn of events. The coat and the jacket clearly showed she was ready for Europe. Clarice new that it would be a great refuge, but she didn’t want to spend so many hours in an airplane, just to find a distant and frozen landscape, just like the one she had seen in the recent times. No, she wanted something different.
“Where to, then?” Laura questioned, grabbing her backpack once more and following Clarice, who headed towards the crowd, trying to figure her next steps.
She didn’t know. She didn’t have a single clue. Her life had been a long and terrible nightmare and she had just woken up from it a few minutes ago, planned a few hours of it and, now, she didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t a plan for whatever came after, especially when she didn’t even know if there would be an ‘after’.
And Laura didn’t seem to care. Clarice understood the feeling of being safe they shared was bigger than any fears of the future, any risks, any haunting. They’d have to hide for a while, of course, more because of Clarice, since Laura had left behind to her parents a letter written by both of them, clarifying it all and asking them not to look for her, or they both would go to jail and, this time, with no chances of parole.
They were safe. And without a definite course.
I’m fine. We’re fine. I hope that, soon enough, we can see each other. There are no words to describe this place or the calmness and tranquility it brings to us. Laura suggested we entered the game of new identities, but I still think it’s better for us to keep it all as it is, at least for now.
It’s magnificent this feeling of finally seeing the sunset in its whole. Of being flooded by the morning light and the heat brought by it; the feeling of breathing without ties, of inhaling, exhaling and inspiring yourself without the pain of the violence and the choke, without fearing whatever may come in the next five minutes or five days. It’s amazing being able to look at yourself at the mirror, every morning, and recognize yourself. Smile to yourself and saying that another day has begun and that you don’t want it to end anytime soon, because you know you won’t be capable to enjoy it in its fullness. It’s invigorating, it’s necessary.
About my memories? Don’t worry. The past is being kept in its own little box, sleeping under the tons of snow I left behind, to rot in there until it doesn’t affect me anymore. I don’t want to think about it. The future is rather scary when we cannot see and comprehend our past, when we fear whatever may come basing ourselves on what we have already been through. My future, therefore, is bright and illuminated, an endless break of dawn. The other day, lying on the garden, I watched
the skies from above the branches of the trees and thought of how small and meaningless we are. Realizing that is also liberating, because only then you notice the insignificance of your pains and it becomes easier to forget them. There are no words to define what I want now, there’s no shape to describe it, no flavors to detail it. What I want I already have, and it is summarized in one single word: freedom.
Thank you, Anne. Thank you for the support, the hand that took me out from the darkness when I thought there were no more options or reasons to live by. I’m also thankful for Michelle or Laura who, although too young and innocent to know the weight abuses bring to our lives, teaches me every day how to see the world in a more straightforward and colorful way while I’m here, ready to protect her and show her life is not so attractive as it might seem. I know I cannot control fate or future, but as long as we’re together, we’ll be united, safe.
Thank you. And I promise I’ll keep constantly in touch, if it doesn’t harm you. We’re fine, in peace and happy – something I never thought I’d ever be able to say about myself. And all of this, I know, thanks to you.
I hope you’re fine and I’ll be waiting to hear from you.
From your friend who owes you more than you could ever imagine.
Clarice clicked ‘send’ and waited, until the funny noise echoed from the laptop, telling her the message was already on the way to is destination.
She smiled and closed the lid of the computer, moving it away from her on the white marble counter, also removing her glasses and folding them to rest onto the computer. She rubbed her eyes and sighed, exhausted by the memories, tired of writing, tired of thinking.
The teapot shrieked and when she jumped out of the stool, already running to the sink, she saw the beautiful sun over the sea from her window. The dawn was incredible, but the sunset was wonderful. Perhaps because its colors and shades brought that slight fear on the darkness to come, but also warmed the hopes that, after the darkness of the night, the morning would come, renewing the nature all around.
The Woman Hidden Page 48
