Next Time You See Me (19 page)

“That’s right.”

“And then she had you brought back to her—”

Like a piece of tenderized meat.

“—and she asked me to go to bed with her.”

This was new information. I folded my arms over my belly and listened.

“I knew that if I refused, there would be consequences.”

“I understand.”

“And I would have failed in my mandate from the Feds to do whatever I had to, to get in as deep as I could.” He visibly cringed at the metaphor. “I’m sorry, you know what I meant.”

“So did you?”

“I followed her to her bedroom—up on the second floor of the house, a room with red walls and windows all around, curtains billowing when there was a breeze. Very dramatic. Very Ana. We had a few drinks, talked. It started getting dark and she lit candles everywhere.”

He raked his hands through his hair and stood up. It was a Sunday, early afternoon, and we had been in our pajamas all day. Mac started to pace and I worried that his footsteps would wake Ben, who was napping downstairs.

“
Shh
.”

He stopped and faced me at a distance of a dozen feet.

“But don’t stop talking.”

“She put on music. She’s a seductress, Karin. It’s what she
does
. It’s what drug trafficking is about: creating desire, feeding off it.”

“How many times?”

He looked at me as if the question confused him.

“How many times did you have sex?”

“She unbuttoned my shirt. I was out of it, hungry, terrified. All I could think about was that she’d had my parents murdered, and if I didn’t do what she wanted this time . . . I didn’t think she’d just toss me back into the hole, you know?”

I nodded.

“In my mind, if I didn’t play along, she would make a phone call and in an hour you and Ben would be dead.”

“You said she unbuttoned your shirt. What happened next?”

“She saw the scars. She kind of froze and got this awful look on her face. The mood changed and she told me to leave. That was the last time she tried. After that she put me to work, mostly supervising the men who worked in her house, and I went along—surviving, scraping for evidence, keeping her away from you. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?”

“I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t have the scars. I feel like I betrayed you.”

“You would have done whatever you had to do to survive. I shouldn’t have asked about you and Ana, it was selfish; I thought I needed to know, but I didn’t.”

“I needed you to ask me because I knew what you were thinking. I could see it in your eyes.”

We kissed. And just like that, my nightmare stopped.

But it wasn’t really over.

As our first week home came to a close, Mac’s own nightmares grew darker, and his ghosts threw longer shadows. He seemed so tired in the days that I suspected he wasn’t sleeping much, though he denied it. Then one night I woke up just before three
A.M.
and found he wasn’t in our bed. Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, I could see a light on the parlor floor. I crept quietly up the stairs.

“Mac?” I whispered. “Where are you?”

I heard a shuffle in the kitchen, followed by a reluctant answer: “In here.”

He was sitting at the table, a crumb-covered plate pushed aside, an open magazine in front of him, and on top of that a pad of lined paper and a list I had apparently interrupted as he was writing it. He covered it with a hand.

“How long have you been up here?”

“Awhile.”

“You can’t sleep?”

“Well, if I could, I wouldn’t be—”

“Okay,
ask a stupid question
. . . What’s that?” I indicated the list.

“Nothing. Just some stuff I need to do.”

I sat down. “What kind of stuff?” It wasn’t as if he had been doing much of anything lately. Mac’s days had mostly consisted of reading the newspaper and trips to the playground with Ben. It didn’t bother me; he needed a good, long rest and I knew he’d get back on his feet eventually.

“Nothing that concerns you, Karin.”

“What doesn’t concern me?”

He pushed the list toward me, saying, “I can’t sleep anymore.”

The list was titled
Diego.
Beneath that was an inventory of places in and around Playa del Carmen: residences, businesses, clubs, restaurants, shops, beaches.

“What is this?”

Mac’s sigh sounded like a collapse, as if he had given in to a dread that had infected him in Mexico. It was awful. Instinctively I put my hand on his arm, but he shook it off.

“What’s going on?”

“I have to help Diego.”

“What?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s not fair!”

As he stared at me his pupils visibly shrank. He started to sweat.

“Are you okay?”

“I need some air.”

He got up from the table, opened the kitchen door, and went out onto the deck that overlooked our garden, which at this time of year was a gray patch of dry, frozen weeds. Through the kitchen window I watched him pace the deck a moment before joining him.

“I’m going to make an appointment for you to talk to Joyce.”

“Karin, we can’t have the same therapist.”

“I don’t see her anymore.”

“Even so.”

“Will you talk to someone else?”

He paused a moment before answering, “I guess so.”

“There’s nothing wrong with needing help.”

He nodded, but unconvincingly.

“Mac, I think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“That’s occurred to me, too.”

“Okay, so we’re on the same page. That’s good.”

“The thing is, Karin.” He stopped pacing to look at me. Behind him, across the length of two adjoined backyards, a window lit up: another insomniac raiding his refrigerator. “The thing is, all the therapy in the world won’t make Diego safe.”

“Diego again.”

“
My other son
.”

He said it with such force that a fog of frozen breath gathered in front of him. And the way he said it: owning the idea of the relationship. He must have given it an enormous amount of thought; but then why wouldn’t he, having learned he had a grown son he hadn’t even known existed until just over a week ago? Standing in the freezing night, I closed my eyes a moment and imagined myself in the same position. It was difficult; a woman generally grew her children inside her body, gave birth to them, nurturing a connection you couldn’t deny. How
would
it feel to suddenly, one day, find out you had created a child a quarter of a century ago?

“What would make Diego safe, Mac?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“He’s Ana’s son, too. Which makes him either very safe or very unsafe.”

“I just can’t stop thinking that right now he’s on the
very unsafe
side of that equation.”

“She wouldn’t hurt him. He’s her child. She loves him.”

“Karin, she doesn’t love people the way you and I or most other people do. She isn’t capable of it.”

“I got the feeling she loved you, way back when.”

“She possessed me. It wasn’t love.”

“So what’s the solution?” The window across the yard went dark. And I felt my heart drop.

“I have to go.”

“How can you? After what we’ve already been through.”

“I
know
, but Karin, I
have
to.”

“What about Ben? He’s only two. If you leave him and you don’t come back, he’ll never know you, either.”

“I’ll come back.”

“
Maybe
.
Or maybe not
.”

“Don’t be hysterical.”

“Don’t be
insane
. She’ll kill you if you go near her
or
Diego. You
know
that.”

I turned to leave, disgusted by the suggestion that he might abandon us again. But Mac came at me so fast he knocked over a summer chair, its metal edge clanking against the iron deck, ringing into the quiet. He grabbed my wrist, stopping me from storming back into the house.

“
Listen to me
. Diego risked his life letting us go and giving me the ring. The more I think about it, the more I realize that
his
life is in danger now. Ana isn’t stupid; she probably knows exactly what he did. So how can I
not
go back? Think about that: How can I
not go
?”

“But Ben—”

“Someday Ben’s going to know about this—all of it, including Diego. What will he think of me when he finds out I left his older brother to . . . to . . .” The word was
die
but he couldn’t say it, it was as if he was choking on it. I felt so bad for him. I understood his conflict, but Ben was my son. I couldn’t stand back and let him lose his father.

“Don’t decide tonight,” I said. “That’s all I ask.”

Mac exhaled another frozen breath. “Okay. I can agree to that.”

We went back inside together. Locked the door. Cleared his list and plate off the table. And went to bed. Tomorrow I would find him a therapist who would talk some sense into him. I waited until he had fallen asleep and then, listening to his slow, heavy breathing, allowed myself to drift off until morning, having convinced myself that Mac could never bring himself to leave us again.

T
he next thing I knew, a doorbell was ringing, integrating itself into an already incoherent dream.

And Mac was getting up, going upstairs to the front door.

And Ben, suddenly, was crying.

I shook off the dream, hauled myself out bed, and went to Ben’s room. He was in the act of climbing out of his crib; it was the third time I’d found him doing that.

“Hold it, little man!” I hurried to catch him before he fell.

“Oongry, wanna ee na!” He was hungry, wanted to eat now.

“Okay, let’s go up and have some breakfast.”

I set him down and he ran his wobbly run out of the room. I caught up with him at the foot of the stairs and walked up behind him in case he fell. On the parlor floor he veered straight to the kitchen and I was about to follow when I saw Mac.

Bright morning sun flooded the front hall, blanching the color out of his skin. He was standing in front of the mail table beside our front door, having just lifted the top off a flower box, and reached in to lift out an armful of purple dahlias.

Chapter 15

M
ac dropped the bouquet, scattering long purple petals across the floor, and dug through the box searching for a note. I knelt beside the bouquet and with trembling fingers found a small envelope tied to the white ribbon gathered around the stalks. I pulled out the card and read aloud:

“
Imagine this:
Best wishes to the memory of your son
.”

He grabbed the card out of my hands and read it again, silently. Then he crumpled it and threw it down among the petals. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Which son?”

We looked at each other.

“She wants it to be confusing.” Mac rushed into the kitchen, got the phone, and dialed from memory. “Jasmine?” A pause, followed by a torrent. “
Yes
, it’s early, I’m sorry. But listen:
Ana sent dahlias again
. Just now. I don’t know who left them. The doorbell rang and the box was on the stoop when I opened the door.”

I poured Ben a sippy cup of milk, then set about preparing his favorite breakfast of cream of wheat topped with thin slices of banana. He took the cup and stood there watching his father heatedly talk on the phone. I didn’t want to watch and I didn’t want to listen anymore. It felt so sudden and so intense: You could almost hear the force of the air
whoosh
ing out of our lives.

The rest happened quickly.

In what seemed like moments, Jasmine and Billy were at our door, having been roused from sleep with a single call to Jasmine’s cell (answering the lingering question about the state of their coupledom, and providing another dose of reassurance that some of the elements of herself she had shown me were genuine).

“All right, so here’s what we got on the flowers.” Jasmine parked her BlackBerry between her teeth long enough to shed her coat and then, standing in the front hall on a cluster of petals, finished her thought. “They came from Downtown Florists on Bridge Street, but the order originated at a public phone at a bodega in La Huacana in southwest Mexico.” She flung her coat into Billy’s arms and headed through the living room into the kitchen. “You got any coffee?”

After hanging the coats on pegs by the front door, Billy and I joined Mac in the living room while Jasmine took it upon herself to start a pot of coffee. Before we could say much of anything, the phone rang.

I remembered what Fred had said when they dropped us off at home last week: We would hear from them if there was “trouble” and we would then be “moved.” I didn’t want to answer it. Apparently neither did Mac. We sat there, letting the phone ring, our minds racing in opposite directions: mine looking for answers as to how I could keep my family safe on the run; Mac assumedly figuring out how he could get to Diego now. I tamped down an impulse to tell him,
Stop thinking about that, you’re not leaving us again
. If we had been alone, if Jasmine and Billy hadn’t been there forcing us to stay on task—the flowers, the threat,
right now
—I would have succumbed to pure emotion.

Jasmine crossed the kitchen and took the call. After a brief conversation, she hung up and told us, “That was Fred. Start packing, people.”

“I had a feeling.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“Sleeping.”

“Wake her up and tell her to pack herself a suitcase.”

I thought of what had happened to Mac’s parents and felt ill.

“A car’s coming in an hour. Better hurry.”

“Where are we going?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.” She crossed back to the coffeepot, which hadn’t finished dripping, and pulled out the glass carafe to intercept two full mugs’ worth. She handed both to me.

“But I’m going to find out when we get there.”

“Honey, it’s for your own safety. Come on, there isn’t much time.”

We stared at each other, two steel wills colliding.

“Can you at least tell me what kind of weather to pack for? Or do I need to bring everything we own?”

She hesitated, then offered one word: “Cold.”

In less than an hour, Mac and Billy were hauling four suitcases and Ben’s stroller into the trunk of a pale blue sedan. It was all of seven-fifteen in the morning and people were just starting to emerge from brownstones, adults dressed for a day at the office, parents pulling children toward school buses, teenagers with book bags strapped to their backs.

My mother, who had packed just one small suitcase and wore a worried expression but so far hadn’t asked many questions, helped buckle Ben into his car seat and then slid in beside him. I got into the back, and Mac slammed shut the door. For a split second my heart raced; I thought he was going to leave us as we traveled to destinations unknown. But then he walked around to the front passenger seat and got in, turning to look at me as if he had read my mind. I thought I saw resentment flash across his face but wasn’t sure and in any case this wasn’t the time; I pushed it away, we were all under stress, no one liked what was happening.

The driver got out of the car and Jasmine slipped behind the wheel. Billy knocked on her window and she rolled it down.

“All set?” He leaned in to kiss her.

“Call you later.”

“Don’t drive like a maniac.”

She grinned. “Who, me?”

B
y early afternoon we were crossing the Sagamore Bridge onto the archipelago of Cape Cod and the islands and siphoning off a rotary onto Route 6, a two-lane road that snaked across the summer resort island that in winter was bright, gray, and lonely. After another hour we turned into the long driveway of a gated community whose sign announced itself as
Shore Haven, Brewster, Massachusetts
. A security guard emerged from his station to clear our entry.

Jasmine got out of the car to greet him. She showed him her identification and then brought him around to meet us. When Mac opened his window, frigid air swept into the car, waking Ben from a truncated nap.

“Kids,” Jasmine said, “this is Mike.”

Mac shook his hand, but before he could introduce himself, Jasmine cut in.

“And these are the Peltries—Sam and Joan; their son, Timmy; and Joan’s mother, Cornelia, but you can call her Corny. We all do.”

We sat there in stunned silence, digesting what must have been our new aliases. Of course. They wouldn’t sequester you from the world under your own name.

“Nice to meet you.” Mac, or Sam, shook Mike’s hand.

I nodded. “Hi, Mike.”

Mom just smiled.

“You need anything, the guard station’s extension zero on your phone.”

“Easy to remember,” Mac said.

“That’s the whole point.” Mike noticed a man walking nearby and waved him over. “That’s Doug, our groundskeeper—you’ll want to meet him, too.”

Doug wore dirty blue jeans, a black down jacket, and work boots with untied laces. He had thick snowy hair, a grizzled face, and a smile that revealed a broken front tooth. We were put through the same introductions, at the end of which Doug fixed his attention on Ben.

“Looks like I might have a customer for the old carousel.”

“I’ll point it out to them on the way up,” Jasmine said.

“Catch me around one of these days, I’ll unlock it, give you people the grand tour.” Then Doug stood away from the car so Mac could bring the window up and we could drive away.

“
Peltrie?
” I snorted.

“Names come out of the hat.” Jasmine shrugged. “Comes with social security numbers, a credit card, anything you’d need to stay awhile.”

“
Cornelia
,” Mom tested her new name. “When I was a girl, I used to wish for a fancier name.
Corny.
Cornelia.
”

“You got one now,” Jasmine said.

“But would a woman named Cornelia name her daughter Joan?” I asked.

“I think so,” Mom said. “Growing up with a fancy name, she would want the opposite for her daughter, something easier, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“Then don’t,” Jasmine said, earning a grin from Mac.

Half a mile along the wooded drive we came to a vast clearing of dead grass that in summer would have been a green vista undulating toward a mansion that was now a sort of manor house to the condo development and in summer doubled as a hotel. As we drove through the nearly deserted grounds we passed covered swimming pools and signs pointing to beaches, a golf course, playgrounds, restaurants.

“There.” Jasmine slowed the car and pointed at the gray-brown distance.

“What a lovely gazebo,” Mom said.

“No, behind it to the right. See that big shed thing?”

“Looks out of place there,” Mac said, “like a gardener’s outbuilding.”

“That’s the carousel Doug was talking about. It’s an antique and the management put some money into restoring it. They cover it in winter.”

“Does it work?” I asked as Jasmine picked up speed, driving us away from the development’s center.

“I think so, but I never saw it in action. Place mostly shuts down for winter.” She pulled the car to a stop in the driveway of a small two-story building at the end of a staggered row of identical attached condos. “The Feds own this unit, use it off season.”

Mom unbuckled Ben and passed him to me, and together we got out of the car. We followed Jasmine down a short curved path to the front door, which she unlocked with a key she then handed to me as if I was the proud new owner.

“Thanks,” I said, sparing no enthusiasm. But what was the point pretending I was actually thankful to be here? Running and hiding were bitter pills you took because you had to. You sucked it up. Moved forward. When I was a kid my father’s army career sent us from place to place to place (until we were finally able to settle down in my grandparents’ big old house in Montclair, New Jersey) and so this was really nothing new. My mother and I had experience setting up house on the fly.

I walked all the way in and put the key on the white counter of a white galley kitchen that shared space with a white dining/living room. A white staircase led up to what I predicted would be a white upstairs. Through the living room’s picture window was a barren, icy landscape that we could banish by closing the white drapes. I wondered how long we’d be here, if it would be worth the investment in a colorful throw for the beige couch and maybe a few bright posters for the walls, which at the moment were decorated with bland seascapes that did little to enliven the place. I wasn’t a fussy decorator or much of a housekeeper, but even I had my limits. Though we’d arrived only moments ago, I knew we could be here a long time; like it or not, for now we’d have to make this our home.

“Three bedrooms,” Jasmine said, “and they brought in a crib so you’re all set. There’s food in the fridge so you can lay low before we clear you to go out—when and where, we’ll let you know.”

Mac came in, lugging suitcases, and set them down at the foot of the stairs with a heavy
thunk
. “Not bad,” he said, glancing around.

“I’ll be in touch.” Jasmine headed to the door.

“You’re leaving?” Without meaning to, I’d sounded like a disgruntled child, which earned a disappointed glance from my mother. I was tired and angry and scared . . . but so was everyone. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe we can get Ben back into his nap.” Mac put his arm around me and his warmth infiltrated the jacket I had yet to remove. “And take a nap ourselves.”

“That’s a good idea,” Mom agreed, opening the fridge, peering in to inspect its contents.

“You’re taking the car?” Mac asked Jasmine.

“You won’t need it. In a couple days someone will come by with a car if we decide it’s okay. Meanwhile there’s a book over there about Shore Haven”—she pointed to a blue three-ring binder on the counter—“telling you about amenities and whatnot.” She had been here and done this before, that was clear.

While Mom took Ben upstairs to get him acquainted with his new room and hopefully lull him back to sleep—I heard her singsong voice as she placed his favorite stuffed animals and toys around their “new home”—Mac and I found the master bedroom suite. More white: sheets, duvet, rugs, curtains, sinks, tiles, towels. It was certainly clean here, there was no doubting that. We kicked off our shoes, stripped off our pants, and got under the covers to warm each other up.

“What just happened?” I whispered. “My head’s still spinning.”

“Ana and her damned purple dahlias.” Mac rolled onto his back and rubbed at his tattoo. “I swear, as soon as this is over, I’m going to have this thing removed.”

“Now that I know its origin, I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

He turned onto his side to face me. “I got used to it. It stopped having anything to do with her until last summer. All her guys have the same tattoo.”

“I noticed.”

Mac shook his head. “Talk about youthful folly. There was this Dutch tattoo guy in Playa, I’m talking twenty-five years ago when it was a backwater town, and this guy—I can’t remember his name—was doing tattoos for five bucks. I chose a dahlia because it was Ana’s favorite flower and it was the national flower of Mexico. What an idiot. I was so busy rebelling I didn’t even think about how permanent a tattoo was.”