•
By nine o’clock Jack was on a second plate of
ropa vieja,
a shredded-beef dish with a name that translates to “old clothes.” According to his grandmother, the name only described the meat’s tattered appearance and had nothing to do with the actual ingredients. Then again, she’d fed him
tasajo
without disclosing that it was horse meat, and she would argue until her dying breath that Cubans do so eat green vegetables, as fried plantains were the tropical equivalent thereof.
Jack had a lot to learn about Cuban cuisine.
The stop at
Abuela
’s was yet another diversion. He’d tried to call Cindy but had gotten nowhere, which was perhaps just as well. Perhaps he needed to take a little time to refine an explanation that, as yet, sounded only slightly better than “Good news, honey, it’s been at least a decade since my last sex tape.”
“Más, mi niño?”
Predictably, A
buela
was asking if he wanted more to eat.
“No, gracias.”
She stroked his head and ladled on more rice. He didn’t protest. Jack could only imagine what it must have been like to enjoy cooking, more than anything else in the world, and yet have practically nothing in the cupboard for thirty-eight years.
Abuela
had a great kitchen now. The townhouse Jack had rented for her was practically new, and she shared it with a lady friend from church. She’d lived with him and Cindy for a short time. They’d sit around the dinner table every night, Jack speaking bad Spanish and
Abuela
answering in broken English, each of them trying to learn the other’s language in record time so that they could communicate freely. But having a place of her own made it easier to get out and enjoy herself.
Hard to believe, but almost three years had passed since Jack’s father called to tell him that
Abuela
was flying into Miami International Airport. Jack had nearly dropped the phone. Never had he expected her to come to Miami at her age, even on a humanitarian visa to visit her dying brother. He’d tried many times to visit her in Cuba, and while many Americans did visit relatives there, Jack was never approved for travel. His father’s staunch anti-Castro speeches as a state legislator and later as governor had surely played a role in the Cuban government’s obstinacy. She’d come over on a temporary visa, but she was on her way to U.S. citizenship and would never go back. Their initial face-to-face meeting evoked a whole range of emotions. For the first time in his life, Jack had a profound sense that his mother had actually existed. She was no longer just an image in a photo album or a string of anecdotes as told by his father. Ana Maria had lived. She’d had a mother who’d loved her and who now loved Jack, gave him big hugs, fed him till he could have exploded-and then served dessert.
“I made flan,” she said with a grin.
“Ah, your other invention.”
“I only perfected flan. I didn’t invent it.”
They laughed, and he enjoyed her warm gaze. All his life he’d been told that he resembled his father, a well-intended compliment from people who had never met his mother.
Abuela
saw him differently, as if she were catching a precious glimpse of someone else each time she looked into his eyes. Those were the rare moments in his life when he actually felt Cuban.
She served an enormous portion of the custardlike dessert, spooning on extra caramel sauce. Then she took a seat across from him at the table.
“I was on the radio again today,” she said.
Jack let the flan melt in his mouth, then said, “I thought we agreed, no more radio. No more stories about inventing
tres leches
.”
She switched completely to Spanish, the only way to recount with proper feeling the entire fabricated story. With a totally straight face, she told him yet again how she’d invented
tres leches
a few years before the Cuban revolution and shared the recipe with no one but her exbest friend, Maritza, who defected to Miami in the mid-sixties and sold out to a Hialeah restaurant for a mere twenty-five dollars and a month’s supply of pork chunks.
Abuela
was the only bilingual person on the planet who was patient enough to endure his stilted Spanish, so he answered in kind. “Abuela, I love you. But you do realize that people are laughing when you tell that story on the radio, don’t you?”
“I didn’t tell that story today. I talked about you.”
“On Spanish radio?”
“The news people all say terrible things. Someone has to tell the truth.”
“You shouldn’t do this.”
“It’s okay. They like having me on their show now. What does it matter if they tease the crazy old lady who says she invented
tres leches
? So long as I get to slip in a few words about my grandson.”
“I know you mean well, but I’m serious. You can’t do that.”
“Why can’t I tell the world you are not a murderer?”
“If you start talking publicly about this case, people will want to interview you. Not just reporters. Police and prosecutors, too.”
“I can handle them.”
“No, you can’t.” He was serious without being stern. She seemed to get the message.
“Bueno,”
she said, then switched over to English. “I say nothing to no one.”
“It’s best that way. Any media contacts need to be approved by my attorney and me. Even Spanish radio.”
Her eyes showed concern. Jack pressed her hand into his and said, “It was nice of you to try to help.”
She still looked worried. Finally, she asked, “How are you and Cindy?”
“We’re… okay.”
“You tell her you love her?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
“All the time.”
“When last?”
“Tonight.”
Just before she kicked me out of the house
, he thought.
“Is good. Is
muy importante
that you tell your wife how you feel.”
“I did.”
She cupped her hand, gently patted his cheek. “Maybe you should tell her again.”
From the moment Jack had walked into her apartment, he thought he’d managed to keep his problems with Cindy to himself. It amazed him how well
Abuela
had come to know him in the short time she’d been in this country. “Maybe you’re right.”
He rose to help with the dishes, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Go to your wife. Your beautiful wife.”
He kissed her on the forehead, thanked her for dinner, and left through the back door.
Jack had a renewed sense of energy as he followed the sidewalk around to the back of the building. He definitely had some smoothing over to do with Cindy. But for the moment it was refreshing to step outside the cynical world and let himself believe, as
Abuela
did, that love conquers all.
His car was parked in a guest space, two buildings away from
Abuela
’s townhouse. He followed the long, S-curved sidewalk through a maze of trees. A rush of wind stirred the waxy ficus leaves overhead. He reached for his car keys, stopped, and glanced over his shoulder. He thought he’d heard footsteps behind him, but no one was in sight. Up ahead, the sidewalk stretched through a stand of larger trees. The old, twisted roots had caused the cement sections to buckle and crack over the years. It was suddenly darker, as the lights along this particular segment of the walkway were blocked by low-hanging limbs.
Again, he heard footsteps. He walked faster, and the clicking of heels behind him seemed to quicken to the same pace. He stepped off the sidewalk and continued through the grass. The sound of footsteps vanished, as if someone were tracing his silent path. He returned to the sidewalk at the top of the S-curve. His heels clicked on concrete, and a few seconds later the clicking resumed behind him.
He was definitely being followed.
Jack stopped and turned. In the darkness beneath the trees, he could see no more than twenty meters. He saw no one, but he sensed someone was there.
“Abuela
? Is that you?” He knew it wasn’t her, but somehow it seemed less paranoid than a nervous “Who’s there?”
No one answered.
Jack waited a moment, then reached for his cell phone. Just as he flipped it open, a crushing blow to the center of his back sent him, flailing, face-first to the sidewalk. The phone went flying, and his breath escaped with nearly enough force to take his lungs right along with it. He tried to get up and wobbled onto one knee. A second blow to the same vertebrae knocked him down for at least another eight-count. This time, he was too disoriented to break the fall. His chin smashed against the concrete. The hot, salty taste of blood filled his mouth.
With his cheek to the sidewalk, he counted two pairs of feet. Or was he seeing double?
“What… do…” He could barely form words, let alone sentences.
His hand exploded in pain as a steel-toed boot smashed his fingers into the sidewalk. He tried to look up, but it was futile. In the darkness, it would have been hard for anyone to make out a face. In Jack’s battered state, the attacker was a fuzzy silhouette.
“Consider yourself warned, Swyteck.”
The voice startled him. It sounded female.
I’m getting whooped by a woman?
He laid still, playing possum. The boot extended toward him, gently this time, poking his ribs, as if to see if he was conscious. Somehow, he found the strength to spring to life and grab an ankle, pulling and twisting as hard as he could. His attacker tumbled to the ground, and Jack tumbled with her. His arms flailed as he tried to get hold of another leg, but she was amazingly strong and quick. They rolled several times and slammed into a tree. Jack groaned as his attacker wiggled free. He started toward her, but she threw herself at him, legs whirling like a professional kickboxer. Her boot caught him squarely on the side of the head, and down he went.
He was flat on his belly as someone grabbed him from behind, took a fistful of hair, and yanked his head back.
“One more move, and you bleed like a stuck pig.”
Jack went rigid. A cold, steel blade was at his throat. The voice was a man’s. He hadn’t been seeing double; there were two attackers. “Take it easy,” said Jack.
“Silence,” he said with a slap to Jack’s head. “Like we said, consider yourself warned.”
“Warned-of what?”
“Pin Jessie’s murder on whoever you want. Just don’t pin it on us.”
“Who… you?”
The man pulled Jack’s head back harder. “We don’t like to hurt grandmothers, but if you keep putting her on the radio to point fingers where she shouldn’t, it’s on your head.”
He focused long enough to regret he’d ever told
Abuela
about the viatical investors. “She’s not part of this.”
“Shut up. You don’t know who you’re fucking with. Get your grandma off the radio, or there’ll be another bloodbath. Understand?”
“You don’t-” Jack stopped in midsentence. The blade was pressing harder against his throat.
“Yes or no, Swyteck. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Make sure you do,” he said, then slammed Jack’s head forward into the sidewalk one last time. Jack fought to stay conscious, but he was barely hanging on. He saw nothing, heard nothing, as his world slowly turned darker than night itself, and then all was black.
•
Cindy’s brain was throbbing. She lifted her head from the pillow, and it weighed a ton. She’d had even more wine after Jack left, putting herself way over her limit. She closed her eyes and let her head sink back into goose down, but it felt like a vise grip pressing at either ear.
She had to move, or, she was certain, she would die.
Her hand slid across the sheet and found the edge of the mattress. She pulled herself up onto her side and checked the digital alarm clock on the nightstand. The numbers were a blur without her contact lenses, and she couldn’t reach to pull it closer. There was no telling what time it was.
Just like in her dream.
That awful dream.
She didn’t think she was dreaming. But she didn’t feel awake, either. Never in her life had she been hungover like this, not even from those prom-night slush drinks spiked with Southern Comfort. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. The blinds were shut, but the faint outline of dawn brightened the thin openings between slats. She took a moment, then sat up in bed.
The sound of footsteps thumped in the hallway.
“Mom?”
No one answered, but her voice was weak, stolen by the effects of too much alcohol. Cindy looked around the room. The empty wine bottle was on the bureau, and the mere sight of it was enough to make her sick. She felt a need to run for the bathroom, but, mercifully, the nausea quickly passed. How ironic, she thought, all the school mornings she’d lain in this very room just
pretending
to be sick. She’d hated school as a kid, and, for the longest time, she’d hated this house. She didn’t think of it as the house she’d grown up in, at least not entirely. Only after her father was dead had the rest of the surviving family moved there, the widow, two daughters, and three very young boys. Yet it seemed full of memories. Or, at least, at the moment, it was filling her head with memories. Through her mind’s eye, she was looking at herself again, the way she could in her dream, except this wasn’t a dream-or it least it wasn’t
the
dream. The Cindy she saw was nine years old, in their old house, the one before this one, the house in New Hampshire.
•
The leaves rustled outside her bedroom window. As she lay awake staring at the ceiling, the wind plucked the brown and crispy ones from the branches and sent them flying through the night sky. Some were caught in the updraft and swirled high. The others fell to the ground, weaving the endless carpet of dead leaves across their lawn. Tourists came from all over the country to see autumn like this. Cindy loathed it. For a brief two weeks, the green leaves of summer turned themselves into something that no living thing could become without courting disaster, blazing flickers of flame at the end of twisted branches. And then, one by one, the flames were extinguished. It was as if the leaves were being fooled. Tricked into death.
A gust of wind howled outside, and a flock of dead leaves pecked at her window. Cindy pulled the covers over her head.
Stupid fools.
She heard a noise, a slamming sound. It was as if something had fallen or been knocked over. It had come from downstairs.
“Daddy?”
She was alone with her father in the house for the weekend. Her mother and older sister had traveled to Manchester for a high school soccer tournament. The boys, more than her father could handle, were with their grandmother.
Cindy waited for a response but heard nothing. Only the wind outside her window, the sound of leaves moving. She listened harder, as if with added concentration she could improve her own hearing. Swirling leaves were scary enough, all that pecking on the glass. But it was the crunching sound that really frightened her-the sound of leaves moving outside her bedroom window, one footstep at a time.
“Is that you, Daddy?”
Her body went rigid. There it was.
The crunching sound!
Someone was walking outside her house, she was sure of it, their feet dragging through the leaves. Just the thought frightened her to the core, brought tears to her eyes. She jumped out of her bed and ran down the hall.
“Daddy, where are you?”
The hallway was black, but Cindy could have found her way blindfolded. She’d run there many nights screaming from nightmares. She pushed open the door to the master bedroom and rushed inside. “Daddy, there’s a noise!”
She stood frozen at the foot of the bed. Her eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness to see that it was empty. In fact, it was still made. No one had slept in it, even though it was long past her bedtime, long past her father’s. At least it felt late. The digital clock on the nightstand was stuck on midnight, the green numbers pulsating the way they always did with the power surges on windy nights.
Am I by myself?
Cindy ran from the bedroom. Fear propelled her down the stairs faster than she’d ever covered them. Her father had fallen asleep on the couch many times before, and maybe that was where he was. She hurried into the family room. Immediately, her heart sank with despair. He wasn’t there.
“Daddy!”
She ran from the family room to the kitchen, then to the living room. She checked the bathrooms and even the large closet in the foyer, doors flying open like so many astonished mouths. He was nowhere. Tears streamed down her face as she returned to the kitchen, and then something caught her eye.
Through the window and across the yard, she could see a light glowing inside the garage. Her father’s car was parked in the driveway, so she knew he was home, perhaps busy in the garage with his woodworking. That could have been the noise she’d heard, his scuffling through their leaf-covered yard, the sound of her father carrying things back and forth from the garage.
After bedtime?
Part of her wanted to stay put, but the thought of being alone in the big house was too much for a nine-year-old. She let out a shrill scream and exploded out the back door, into a cold autumn night that felt more like winter’s first blast. She kept screaming, kept right on running until she passed her father’s car and reached the garage at the end of the driveway. With both fists, she pounded on the garage door.
“Daddy, are you in there?” Her little voice was even more fragile against the cold, north wind.
She tried the latch, but it was locked, and she was too small to raise the main door anyway. She ran to the side door and turned the knob. It, too, was locked. On her tiptoes she peered through the window. The light inside was on, but she didn’t see any sign of her father. The angle gave her a view only of the front half of the garage.
“Daddy, are you-”
Her words halted as her eyes fixed on the dark patch on the floor. It wasn’t really a patch. It moved ever so slightly, back and forth. A spot with a gentle sway. Not a spot. A ghostlike image with arms at its side. Feet that hovered above the ground. A rope around its neck.
And a hunter’s cap just like her father’s.
She fell backward to the ground, pushed herself away from the garage door, and ran back toward the house. Except she didn’t want to go back inside, didn’t know where to run. She ran in circles around the big elm tree, crying and screaming, the sound of fallen leaves crunching beneath her feet.
•
A pounding noise jostled her from her memories. She blinked hard, trying to focus. It sounded like the footsteps in the hall she thought she’d heard earlier, but it was louder, like galloping horses. Another round of pounding, and she realized it wasn’t footsteps at all.
Someone was knocking at the front door.
Her heart raced. She couldn’t even begin to guess who would come calling at this hour, and she didn’t want to think about it. She had yet to clear her mind of the memories she’d stirred up. That unforgettable image on the garage floor. The one that looked so much like the dark spot in her photograph of that little girl and her dog. The shadow that had never existed.
Or that had disappeared.
With the third round of knocking, Cindy’s feet were on the floor. A voice inside her told her not to answer the door, exactly like her dream. And just like the dream, she found herself ignoring the warning, putting one foot in front of the other as she slowly crossed the bedroom.
A light switched on at the end of the hall. Her mother peeked out of her room and said, “Cindy, what the heck is going on?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll get it.”