Authors: Andrew Gross

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No Way Back: A Novel (38 page)

BOOK: No Way Back: A Novel

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EPILOGUE

Four months later . . .

We’re all back together again now. We’re kind of a family again. In a way. Neil, Amy, and I. I know Amy can’t completely forgive me. And I don’t expect her to.

I don’t expect her to until I can forgive myself.

And both will take time.

I did a few TV morning shows, but that’s all calmed down now. Neil is back at Bates. Amy never returned to Spain; she’s back at NYU. I go into the city once a week or so, and we have dinner at some new spot she’s discovered in lower Manhattan. We talk a lot—about her classes, the new yoga class I’ve found. I still haven’t answered her question.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.

Harold and I see each other from time to time. We have coffee in Greenwich. Once I went with him to a street fair there, and he brought along his kids. We’re kind of tied together, he and I. I think one day he’s actually going to ask me out.

And you know, I might just say yes.

I mean, he is kind of cute—in a lawyerly sort of way.

And in a strange way, like I tried to tell Amy, we’re all we have.

I’m back in the house, of course. But I have it up for sale. That’s one decision I’ve made.

From time to time, when I hear someone drive up to the top of the drive, I have this urge to run to the door, sure that it’s Dave coming back from the train. Or from playing golf . . .

With his crooked, Woody Harrelson smile.

But it’s always only the UPS guy dropping off a package. Or the mailman.

Which is who it was today.

It always hurts a little to walk up there, to the mailbox. Knowing it was there I saw Dave roll out of the car . . .

So I try and do it quickly, and replace the image with one I like a whole lot better. Like him prancing around after the Giants won the Super Bowl. Or snoozing on the beach in Anguilla while I built a sand castle on his belly. Or the morning that we climbed Masada at sunrise and, reaching into his pocket, he said to me . . .

“Wendy, I know we’ve both tried this once before, but hell, I think we’re both a little smarter the second time around . . .”

But today there were only the usual bills and catalogues, and back inside, I went to toss them onto the kitchen island when I noticed something else.

A plain white envelope, sandwiched between a West Elm and a Brookstone catalogue. Stark, handwritten on the front. Addressed to me. No return address.

It was the postal stamp that caught my eye.

Navolato. Mexico.

My heartbeat stopped as if it hit a wall.
Oh my God . . .

I ripped it open eagerly, searching for the letter inside. But there was none.

Only a single photograph. The kind you might take in a booth at a CVS or somewhere. Except this one was taken outside.

It had a beautiful blue sky and dark hills in the background. There was a tree I couldn’t identify, but that I knew had to be a jacaranda.

And in the foreground, as alive as if she were standing before me, was Lauritzia. My heart nearly exploded with joy.

And for the first time I saw that beautiful smile.

And there was someone next to her. A man. Older. His leathery, rough face in a hard, proud smile. His eyes somehow reflected both joy and sadness at the same time.

I knew exactly who he was and how he was with her.

I always knew.

And she was holding something up to the camera—the gold necklace that Roxanne had given her. She held up the little charm at the bottom, held it up as if for me to see.

The butterfly.

For the second chances in life.
We all deserve them.

And I started to laugh, partly from joy and partly from sorrow. I started to laugh and shout and then cry, unable to hold it back, my cheeks slick with tears.

Second chances.
Hers was to go back home again one day. With her father.

Mine was to regain the trust of my kids.

We’d both found them,
I said.
We did.

I sat down at the counter and stared at her dark eyes and that beautiful smile that could finally, unrestrainedly shine.

Then I ran to the phone and called Harold.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M
y books always seem to start out as simply a story line and then grow into something far more personal. In this one, the transformation came about through the character of Lauritzia Velez, and the divulging of her tragic past. Lauritzia was loosely based on a newspaper editorial I came across about the travails of Edmond Demiraj, an Albanian immigrant who agreed to testify against a ruthless Albanian killer, who then suffered a bloody and terrible revenge enacted against him and his family. Cast aside by the U.S. government and denied asylum, the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, where rightly, during the actual writing of this book, the wrong was righted, and Demiraj was finally granted asylum in the United States. I’ve taken some liberties with his personal story and adapting it into Lauritzia’s. But to me it became an anthem of not only the innocent victims of narco-terror, but of the horrors of a worldwide criminal enterprise that is out of control.

Several published works were truly helpful in writing this book, and I name them with appreciation:
To Die in Mexico
,
Dispatches from Inside the Drug War
by John Gibler (City Lights Books, 2011);
Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder and Family
by Charles Bowden (Simon & Schuster, 2003); “The Kingpins” by William Finnegan, published in
The New Yorker Magazine
, July 2, 2012; and
“
Narco Americano” by T. J. English, published in
Playboy
magazine. All the writings graphically portray the tragedies of drug violence in Mexico and our own country’s ambivalent policies that have not curtailed the problem.

I’d also like to thank my dedicated team at William Morrow: Henry Ferris, Lynn Grady, Danielle Barrett, Cole Hager, and Liate Stehlik, along with Julia Wisdom in the U.K., not only for their wisdom in improving what is between the covers, but for their commitment and energies in advancing this, and all my books, to market. And to Roy Grossman for his perception in the early drafts. And to Simon Lipskar and Joe Volpe at Writers House for continuing to make me feel like the most important person in the room.

And to my wife, Lynn, who daily makes me feel like the most important person in the room, though I am usually the only one in it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANDREW GROSS
is the author of the
New York Times
and international bestsellers
15 Seconds
,
Eyes Wide Open
,
The Blue Zone
,
The Dark Tide
,
Don’t Look Twice
, and
Reckless
. He is also the coauthor of five number one bestsellers with James Patterson, including
Judge & Jury
and
Lifeguard
. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife, Lynn.

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ALSO BY ANDREW GROSS

15 Seconds

Eyes Wide Open

Reckless

Don’t Look Twice

The Dark Tide

The Blue Zone

Novels by Andrew Gross and James Patterson

Judge & Jury

Lifeguard

3rd Degree

The Jester

2nd Chance

CREDITS

Cover design by Mary Schuck

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NO
WAY
BACK
. Copyright © 2013 by Andrew Gross. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST
EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-165598-2

EPub Edition © MAY 2013 ISBN: 9780062196361

13 14 15 16 17
DIX
/
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Australia

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