But something odd happened the following morning that changed her mind. She found herself back at Rincon, at her usual table, only as it happened, not during her usual hour—the hour during which Nick Kelly might be walking his niece to school.
On this morning, Caía showed up around 10:00 a.m., and when she took her seat, she proceeded to peruse the café menu, wondering what to eat. Yep, that’s right; she was starving. Last night’s meal had awakened something—what exactly, she didn’t know, but there it was.
Unfortunately, the morning choices weren’t all that diverse. Jamón ibérico and bread. You could have this one thing with aceite de oliva, or you could have it with mantequilla roja—a spicy Crisco-like spread that came with or without what amounted to be liverwurst. Or, you could have tostada, which had no relationship at all to the Mexican variety. It was simply bread, two pieces, slightly toasted. Caía ordered hers with jamón. Her usual waiter took her order, and he smiled at her unexpected interest in the menu, answering all her questions patiently.
He returned a short time later, with a steaming cup of café con leche, and he brought with him a sample of mantequilla roja for Caía to taste. “Gracias,” she said.
“De nada,” he returned. “Está muy rico,” he assured her. “Eet es very good,” he said. And just in case Caía didn’t understand, he placed a hand to his lips and kissed the tips of his fingers. “Muy bueno,” he said, again.
Caía nodded, picking up the knife as he turned away. She was spreading her mantequilla roja—which wasn’t red at all but some peculiar shade of orange—when Nick Kelly spotted her from across the street. Caía noticed him nearly at the same time. She held her breath as he crossed the road. He was coming straight toward her. So, as life would have it, she had come here countless times before, each time looking for him—hoping to work up the nerve to finally confront him—and now, the one time he wasn’t on her mind, at least not predominately, he was nevertheless heading her way.
“Good morning,” he said. He was dressed in faded blue jeans today, with a powder-blue T-shirt that made him look more tanned than he was. In truth, he was no more so than Caía, after sitting out in the sun—at this very café—every day for the past three weeks.
“Umm . . . good morning,” Caía said. Her hand tightened about the knife she held in her hand. She wondered idly how hard she’d have to stab if she meant to do so. She smiled up at him and set the knife down as he stood looking down at her. After an awkward moment, Caía was forced to offer him a seat.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and promptly sat.
Caía wasn’t sharing her food this morning, but the pigeons might have recognized her because they swarmed around her table. The sight of them made her cheeks burn. What if the waiter said something to give her away? What if Nick already knew she was a regular here? What if he’d spotted her on another day during his walk home, despite the fact that his gaze never lingered?
Caía avoided Nick’s gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment, tucking away her secrets, and then she finally tilted up her head. “Funny we should meet here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Funny.”
Why did that seem so full of innuendo?
“Actually, Caía, I was hoping to run into you,” he said as the waiter reappeared. Caía held her breath as he ordered a café cortado before returning to his confession . . .
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen Marta so happy,” he said. “Whatever you two talked about yesterday—whatever the connection you made, she likes you. A lot.”
“Well . . . that’s . . . great. I like her, too,” Caía said, taking a bite out of her tostada. And it was true. Her dislike of Nick Kelly needn’t preclude any positive feelings for Marta. They were not the same person, after all, and Marta had nothing to do with Jack’s death. Neither did Laura.
“She’s in a vulnerable place,” he continued.
Caía nodded, listening. Chewing.
“I sense you two are kindred spirits in more ways than one . . .”
Caía furrowed her brow, swallowing. “Really? What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know . . . it’s just a feeling,” he said.
“Well, we definitely connected.”
“Yeah, well . . . that’s why I hope you’ll go ahead and rent that room downstairs.”
Caía screwed her face. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He winked at her. “Because it’s empty,” he said, grinning winsomely. The sight of that smile might have even disarmed Caía if only she didn’t realize who he was: her son’s murderer.
Vehicular homicide. Wasn’t that what they’d called it? Regardless of where guilt might lay, that was, in fact, the official name of a traffic investigation.
Unfortunately, to be found guilty of vehicular manslaughter—which was not the same as vehicular homicide—one had to be found criminally negligent, a fact that worked in Nick Kelly’s favor. Witnesses to the accident all claimed he wasn’t negligent. How fortunate for him.
It changed nothing for Caía.
Caía forced herself to return a smile. Whatever appetite she’d had before Nick’s arrival was gone now. Still, she coerced herself into taking another bite, if for no other reason than to have a reason not to have to talk. In the meantime, Nick sat patiently, watching Caía eat, and all Caía could think was, How rude. How rude! Any other time, had they been dating perhaps, she might have thought it charming that he wore that tiny smile as he observed her—maybe even somewhat admiringly. But this minute, all she could think was, How rude.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for being so frank,” he said. “I sense you like Marta a bit more than you like me . . . I hope you won’t let your dislike for me affect your decision.”
“I don’t know why you would say such a thing,” Caía returned. Like a hypocrite, she shook her head in denial. “I don’t know you well enough not to like you.” She snapped another bite of her toast, wishing she hadn’t stopped chewing long enough to utter big fat lies.
Nick Kelly regarded her more curiously yet as the waiter returned, setting down his steaming cup of espresso. Unlike Caía’s, his “leche” was formed into the shape of a heart, and her gaze was drawn inside to the woman standing behind the counter, wondering if the gesture was by accident. Caía didn’t get a heart. In fact, she came here every day, and she’d never once gotten a heart.
“Call it a feeling,” Nick said.
“Well, don’t worry, I’ve already decided,” Caía announced. Do you know who I am? she asked silently. Look into my eyes, Nick Kelly. Do you know who I am?
“And?”
She held Nick’s gaze so long that the steam from his coffee dissipated. She shrugged as though her decision meant nothing. “Why not?”
“As in you’ll take it?”
“Well, I don’t see why not,” she said again.
His answering smile appeared genuine. “That’s great,” he said, taking a sip from his cup. “Marta won’t admit as much, but the truth is that she needs the extra money as well as the friendship. A bit of rent coming in will go a long way.”
“The room is worth more than two hundred euros,” Caía told him, maybe to ease her conscience over the probability of taking advantage.
“True, but she won’t take any more,” he said. “Don’t worry. She’s working again. Two hundred extra euros a month goes a long way here.”
Caía held his gaze. “What about you?”
He seemed to realize what Caía was asking. What about you? Why don’t you help provide for them? Isn’t this why you’re here, after all? He shrugged. “I do what I can.”
Do you, really? Well, he could work in Spain with a proper visa, if he chose to, but she supposed it made more sense for Marta to work in her own country. Certainly, it wasn’t Nick’s responsibility to raise his niece and fund
his dead brother’s household. The fact that he was willing to play nanny for Laura should go at least part way toward redeeming him, but Caía preferred to think of him as a mooch. She picked up the top layer of her tostada and glared at the salted ham. “So . . . what does she do?”
“Marta?”
“Yeah.”
She could read the pride in his voice as he answered. “She’s a marine engineer, teaching at the University of Alicante, León, Cadiz.”
Caía’s brows lifted. “Wow.” She swallowed. “Impressive.” So now who was the slacker? Certainly not Marta. It put things into perspective, since Caía was the one who’d once had high hopes, and sold them all away for a nice, soft couch in Roscoe Village. Parenting wasn’t easy, but Marta somehow seemed to be mastering that as well—with a dead husband and a precocious child, at that.
“She took time off after Jimmy’s death,” he was saying. “But now she’s back to it.”
Caía peered up at Nick through her lashes. She dropped her bread. “So, you stayed to help with Laura?”
He scraped a thumbnail over a spot on his chin, the sound chafing like sandpaper. “Partly.”
And what’s the other part? Caía wanted to know. She narrowed her eyes. “So . . . you don’t believe it’s odd renting rooms to strangers when you don’t even know their last name?”
He smiled reassuringly. “Did your current landlord do a security check before renting space to you? Should we?” He arched a brow.
Caía blushed, peering into his coffee cup. His foam heart was still intact, despite his initial sip. “No. I rented online. She took my info when I arrived.”
“So, we’ll do the same. Anyway, we’re no longer strangers, are we? You can’t exactly call someone a stranger after you’ve shared a meal.”
“I suppose not,” Caía said, her eyes still fixed upon his coffee cup. She had the greatest desire to stick her finger in his cup and destroy his pretty little heart.
He thrust his hand out, as though to greet her. “Why don’t we get formal introductions out of the way . . . Nick Kelly . . . you?”
Caía swallowed at the sight of the hand intruding upon her space. Not dirty necessarily, but covered with tiny marker stains in various colors—the most predominant being red. Like blood. How ironic, because he had blood on his hands already—her son’s blood. Hesitantly, she reached out to grasp his hand. “Caía Nowakówna.”
His brows drew together. “Is that your married name?”
“No,” she said, withdrawing her hand. He didn’t get to know any more than that. Despite now having been a good time for disclosures, Caía couldn’t bring herself to speak the name she knew would give her away.
Paine. Paine. Paine.
My name is Caía Paine.
Do you know me now?
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re taking the room.” Pushing his chair back, he then stood.
“Yeah,” Caía said. “Me too.”
“I’m sorry for intruding.” He picked up his cup of coffee and gulped it down. He then set the cup back down on the table, nearly empty, and fished out his wallet, taking out too much money, and tossing the euros down on the table. “It’ll be great to have a fellow expat under the same roof,” he said, and winked at Caía. “Breakfast is on me, Caía Nowakówna. I’ll see you soon.”
Nine
It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it
would have been if it had never shone.
– John Steinbeck
Jeréz, present day
Really, don’t judge.
Given the hand Caía had been dealt, she would have made all the same choices again, albeit maybe not so easily if all her life’s possessions hadn’t been relegated to a single suitcase. Admittedly, it was maybe too easy making decisions on the fly, and while she would have liked to believe it was a wise decision to pare down her belongings to only those things she knew she couldn’t live without, she had been running on compulsion rather than logic, and the contents of her suitcase proved as much. Like, who needed a Micro Machine car?
She’d carried the small red pickup in her purse for so long, after discovering it upside down beneath the leg of the living room couch. She’d had the truck in her pocket that morning when she’d learned Jack made it into New Einstein’s Academy. It was her good luck charm, she’d decided, and she’d tossed the toy into her purse. Now that Jack was gone, it was more precious than ever.
She’d also brought along a scarf her mother knitted for her when she and Gregg moved to the Windy City, along with a rosary and prayer book Caía hadn’t opened since her first communion at the age of twelve. Given the epoch since she’d last opened the prayer book, she couldn’t claim to be the least bit religious, but these were things that reminded her of her mother.
For all the rest of her belongings, there was a storage unit in Chicago with Caía’s name on it, prepaid for a year, but at this point, she was so far removed from everything in her prior life that she didn’t have the least bit of anxiety over the thought of losing it all. Here’s the thing: Once you lost the one thing that ever meant anything to you, the value of everything else paled in comparison.
This was also true: While Caía couldn’t have cared less if they had taken the lock off her storage unit and offered a free-for-all to the entire city of Chicago, inasmuch as there was no real attachment there, she was inexplicably drawn to all three of Nº 5’s tenants, for reasons that couldn’t possibly be all the same. If Caía had to take a gander, she might try, but if she thought about it too long and hard, she might never follow through.
Therefore, weak willed where this particular effort was concerned, Caía arrived at Nº 5 Calle Lealas around 11:00 a.m., and was promptly installed in the biggest of the downstairs suites, an enormous private quarter that included a spacious bathroom, a bedroom, a foyer with closets, and a nook outside the bedroom, on the fringes of the pool. If Caía were inclined to, she might even pretend she was here on vacation, although she wasn’t in that frame of mind. It was more like this: She was a spy, a double agent, searching for the truth.
Then again, if she’d had the mind to analyze any of it—especially the double agent analogy—she would have further examined her own growing ambivalence where Nick Kelly was concerned. But she didn’t.
The entry to her suite lay hidden behind chunky palms and creeping vines. A bit less camouflaged than the breakfast nook was a small seating area, also near the pool, complete with a wicker sofa, two wicker chairs, and a wicker and glass coffee table. But, really, these were all extensions of her room.
On the coffee table lay magazines, all in Spanish: Vanidades, which was probably Marta’s; Siempre Mujer, also probably Marta’s; and Ser Padres—a parenting magazine that she couldn’t fathom Nick Kelly had ever opened even once. In fact, all these magazines were barely handled, which only made Caía feel none of them had ever been read by the occupants of this house. Their position on the table further encouraged this theory. Positioned so that the spines faced the sofa, they were displayed in a perfect fan shape—like the Spanish fan Caía had given to Laura.
What was more, all the magazines were current. No old periodicals amidst the bunch. And this, Caía decided, must be Eugenia’s handiwork—the maid who lived up on the third floor.
For someone who needed the extra money, magazines were a wasted effort, but Caía would certainly make use of them to tighten her Spanish—except for the parenting magazine, which she would never touch. Thanks to Nick Kelly, those articles didn’t pertain to Caía anymore.
At any rate, she had rented much worse places for two hundred euros a day, much less two hundred a month, and if she wasn’t going to feel guilty about the reason she was here, she certainly didn’t intend to feel guilty about the cost of her room. Given that she was working with a fixed income—the proceeds from the sale of her parents’ home—the price suited her just fine.
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Left to her own devices, it took her all of five minutes to unpack. Her favorite clothes took up less than an eighth of the closet space allotted to her, and her underwear occupied a single drawer. She had three pairs of shoes: a pair of Doc Martens boots, a pair of sandals, and a pair of pseudo heels. She placed them all on the shelf beneath her clothing, then positioned the prayer book on the bedside table. Marta was very likely Catholic, she thought, and if she saw these things, she would assume Caía was God-fearing as well. More to the point, if she saw these things, she would never suspect Caía of anything—certainly not this.
Stalker, screamed a voice inside her head. She ignored it, hanging her scarf on a wooden hanger. The Micro Machine she left in a drawer, away from prying eyes, along with her iPad. She put both these items inside her dresser, with the iPad turned off. The iPad was her one remaining connection to her prior life, containing access to all her photos of Jack, and all her pertinent information. Although she used to use it to read, she never did that anymore. Her books were forgotten, her music neglected. Her interest in anything that didn’t pertain to her son—or Nick Kelly—was nonexistent.
For the first few nights after her arrival, Caía intended to keep to herself, to maybe get her bearings, but Marta seemed intent upon drawing her out, inviting her to dinner, and generally appealing to her better nature for help in the kitchen.
Caía didn’t mind; these were moments she felt free to be herself, when Laura and Nick were otherwise occupied, and she and Marta seized the opportunity to commiserate. Only someone who’d lost someone near and dear could understand how Caía felt. At least this is what she told herself when she gave in to the very real yearning for Marta’s company.
Even so, there was no pretense in her desire to spend time with Marta. Marta was a kindred soul. Marta understood when she needed to be alone. And if Caía ever chose not to join her, she never had to go up to the second floor, or see another soul. The house was big enough to get lost in. And sometimes, she pretended she was only a renter, and that she and Marta had met only by chance. People did meet that way, she reasoned—perfect strangers who later became dear, dear friends. Marta was precisely that sort of person—the sort of person who was warm and open, hugging everyone, with nothing to hide.
Redemption Song Page 9
