Authors: Julie Hockley
“And once Advantis and Chemfree are able to reach demand and sell drugs at a cheaper
rate, we will either have to sell pharmaceuticals at little to no profit or go broke?”
Pops ar
gued.
“Advantis and Chemfree will be too greedy for that. Besides, they will have a hard
time ever getting enough steam to ever get any bigger, what with the cyber hackings
and the major fire that will burn down their main fac
tory.”
Hawk was grinning now. “The
fire?”
“With the unification of Native American tribes, we will have significant resources
and manpower across the land. We will have the ability to make things happen quickly
and efficiently and most of all, quietly. Native lands are virtually untouchable,
at least by local police. And if the feds want in, they can’t do so without creating
a political nightmare. At least, without us ensuring a political night
mare.”
While Hawk had been growing more excited with every word I uttered, Pops’s frown deepened.
He had watched every movement Griff and I were making. Swing of the hand. Itch of
the nose. A cough. A shift of the body. If I hadn’t been wearing an oversize sweatshirt,
I could have sworn he had noticed my swelled sto
mach.
“What do you think, Pops?” Hawk asked his father. He was foaming at the mouth. I thought
he might jump up and hug me. Or at least give me a high
five.
Public speaking had never been my forte, to say the least. Stepping up—on purpose—in
front of a crowd, your every word to be judged, like some new form of sadistic self-sacrifice.
To me, it was tantamount to a virgin climbing the steps of the Mayan temple and offering
her neck for Aztec examina
tion.
But the more I spoke in this small room with Pops, Griff, and Hawk listening to my
every word, the more confidence I gained. I knew what I was talking about, and I knew
that my idea was, well, a total work of genius. It all felt r
ight.
“Our life’s path is not always the one that is illuminated by the morning sun,” Pops
answered as his wife came in carrying a tray of cookies and tea. He got up and pulled
my map away so that she could rest the tea on the coffee table. He gave her a kiss
on the forehead before she exited the
room.
While Griff stuffed his face with cookies, Pops poured the tea. I looked at Hawk.
He looked at me. Neither of us had any inkling as to what on earth Pops m
eant.
“I don’t understand,” I admi
tted.
“Tea?” the old man aske
d me.
I didn’t want tea. I wanted an answer I could unders
tand.
Pops sat back down in his chair, holding his saucer with a shaky hand, before enlightening
me. “No. This business venture is not right fo
r us.”
While Pops’s words repeated in my head and I tried to determine if he had really just
flat-out turned me down, Hawk was about to protest his father’s decision before being
shushed with the raise of his father’s wrinkled index fi
nger.
“Is it me or is it the business idea that has you unwilling?” I asked him, anger sharpening
my
tone.
“You will find your way, young Emily. Of this, I have no doubt. But this path is not
your
own.”
“I’ll cover the first shipment. You won’t have to risk any of your own money. And
I’ll still split the pro
fits.”
“I’m s
orry.”
“You’re sorry,” I echoed. “So that’s it
then?”
He smiled a pitying s
mile.
I tried again. “I thought you of all people would understand my plight. You’re the
only one who can hel
p me.”
“Not every path is lit by the morning sun,” he repeated in different words, as though
it would make more sense, and took a sip of tea, keeping his eyes on the wall behin
d me.
“Let’s go,” I told Griff, pulling him up before he had time to lick the empty plate
of cookies. I stormed out to the driveway, where Meatball was patiently waiting for
us in the
car.
“There’s an old Cherokee saying,” Pops called out from the doorway of his tiny house.
I stood by the car, my hands gripping the edge of the door, my hair catching the winter
wind. “‘Don’t let yesterday use up too much of t
oday.’”
I snorted and shook my head in disbelief before getting in the
car.
“Now what?” Griff asked me once we were back on the
road.
“Now nothing. This was it. Pops was my last hope. I’m about to have a baby, and I
have no way of defendin
g us.”
“You’re not alone. We fight together. We’ll find our way, Em. Like Pops said, this
wasn’t right for us, but something else wil
l be.”
I sighed. “Griff, I have no money and no way to make money. I’m not going to be able
to work at the admissions office much longer, and your money will run out eventu
ally.”
“It already has,” he confessed, keeping his eyes on the
road.
I had known that the information on Pops would have cost him. I just hadn’t realized
that it had cost him all the money he had left. “I’m sorry, Griff. I bankrupted you
for nothing. Getting information on Pops turned out to be completely point
less.”
“It wasn’t just the information on Pops that was expensive. It was all the other stuff
too. The debts plus interest, the rent, the plane ticket to England. It all added
up in the end. I barely had any money left by the time I went looking for information
on
Pops.”
Griff gripped the w
heel.
“You had to give something else up, didn’t you?” I knew what it was. Something he
swore he would never go bac
k to.
He sighed. “The good thing is that I’ll be able to make money. Good money. Fo
r us.”
“And give up your fre
edom.”
“Let’s face it, Em. There isn’t much else a guy like me can do. I’ve been fighting
my whole life. It’s all I
know.”
I grabbed his arm. “I’ll be right there with
you.”
He smiled bravely and let me pull our hands together over the con
sole.
When we got home, Griff pulled the mattress out of Hunter’s and Joseph’s room and
dragged it into mine. He jammed half of it under my bed, and the other half came up
to the doorway, taking up the rest of the floor s
pace.
He hadn’t asked my permission to do this. Because he didn’t need to. It was how I
wanted it as well. I needed him wit
h me.
We slipped under the covers and eventually closed our eyes. Before I knew it, I was
standing in the bathroom under a cloud of steam. I brought my hand to the mirror and
wiped the steam, standing still as it clawed its way back up the mirror. I wiped it
again and started pulling my hair back into a ponytail. Cameron came behind me, pulling
my hands down, watching my reflection. He tucked my wet hair behind one ear and then
the other. Watching me in the mirror, stroking my ruddy cheek with the back of his
hand. He leaned in and kissed my shoulder, holding my reflected eyes. He pushed my
hair over and ran his lips down the nape of my neck. His hands came around and pulled
my towel off, letting it fall to our naked feet. He watched me in the mirror as his
hand slid down my back. I wiggled and tried to keep my composure until I just couldn’t
stand it anymore and laughed. He chuckled triumphantly, his face lighting up. I loved
when his face lit up like that. His smiles were an endangered spe
cies.
As our eyes locked in our reflection, we became serious again. Cameron’s hands looped
to my chest, pressing against my br
east.
And he watche
d me.
He always watche
d me.
He brought his hands to my waist and spun me around to face him. He lifted me up onto
the bathroom counter, pressing me against him, pressing his face against mine, pressing
his lips to mine. I ran my fingers up his neck and up through his hair, wishing that
this moment would last forever. But it ended, as did the d
ream.
My eyes flickered open to a room that was solely lit by the glow-in-the-dark stars
on my ceiling. I turned my head to find Griff sitting against the wall, arms on his
knees, head leaning over his solid
arms.
“You’re not sleeping,” I murmured. It had come more as a question because I couldn’t
be sure. He hadn’t m
oved.
His head finally looked up, and he stared at me for a minute until he finally spoke.
“You were talking in your sleep.” His features were emp
tied.
My dreams, my memories were draining
him.
Something bumped against the inside of my skin, and I nearly fell off the
bed.
I brought my hand to my belly, which sent Griff springing off his mattress onto my
bed. There were three more knocks from the baby—one against Griff’s hand and the others
against
mine.
I wished that Cameron had been there to feel his child’s life for the first time.
But he wasn’t t
here.
Griff
was.
I may have had doubts as to whether Pops had actually figured out that I was pregnant,
but in the end, it didn’t matter. I finally understood what he had meant about letting
the past, missed opportunities, take up the good things that lay now and in the fu
ture.
“For what it’s worth,” Griff said in a half whisper, keeping his hand on my stomach
even though the baby had settled again, “I was proud of you today. The way you spoke
about your idea to the old guy. Brilliant. I know you would have been able to pull
it all off and make it work. With everything that’s happened, with everything that’s
been done to you, you still always find a way to survive. You’re a really amazing
woman
, Em.”
He slid back and laced his fingers under his head. Together, we watched the fluorescent
stars on my cei
ling.
****
As soon as the sun was up, I was out the door with Meatball. Griff insisted on keeping
watch over us. It was freezing out but we walked quickly, keeping warm with purpose.
It didn’t take as long as I had expected to get to the ceme
tery.
I asked Griff to wait for me as I went to find Bill’s grave and kne
eled.
It took me a while to get started. I had to say something. To Cameron. To Bill. To
Rocco. To all these men who had come into my life, leaving their mark, and
left.
“I just can’t do it anymore,” I whispered to them. “The dreams. The pain. Holding
on to all your memories with a pointless hope, as if something will change. As if
you were going to come back. It’s not fair to Griff.” I took a breath of cold air
into my lungs. “It’s not fair t
o me.”
I started digging my fingernails into the ground, but it was frozen s
olid.
“Meatball, dig,” I ordered him, pointing to a spot on the g
rass.
Meatball sniffed it and wagged his
tail.
Ugh. “Meatball, don’t dig,” I properly ord
ered.
So he dug. I let him go until the hole was big enough. I took the
Rumble Fish
book and the
Rumble Fish
movie and placed them in the hole. I hadn’t had anything of Rocco’s, so I had stolen
a dry lasagna noodle from Hunter’s cupboard to memorialize Rocco’s love of food. I
placed this on top of the other two other i
tems.
Bill. My parents had forsaken him. Pushed him aside so that he had no choice but to
l
eave.
Rocco. His life cut short before he ever had a chance to really liv
e it.
“Cameron …” I had to gulp down the tears that were working their way up my throat.
“You had all of me, and you chose to end it. I gave you everything I had. I wanted
to fight for us, even after you were gone. You broke my heart. It hurts so much, sometimes
I think the pain will explod
e me.”
I pushed the loose dirt over the lot. I patted the earth and let my hands rest over
the bump for a little while. Nothing I did would ever bring any of them
back.
“There will come a time when I will get revenge. I promise you that I will not let
your death go unnoticed. I will not let you be forgotten ever again.” This I knew
for sure. “But … for now … I have to let go.” I closed my eyes and leaned closer to
the e
arth.
I let them go. I let them rest in peace so that I could live to do the same, so that
I could heal, so that I could survive, so that I could learn to love a
gain.
Someday, there would be rev
enge.
But not right
now.
GHOSTS
“Emmy won’t get over you. No matter how hard you try.”
Carly’s words were still echoing inside my
head.
I was in the back of a bulletproof limousine outside Mexico City in the midst of a
motorcade. Manny was crashed out next to me. Her legs were curled under her, and her
head bounced against the window with every bump on the road. She didn’t look so evil
when she s
lept.
I rolled up my jacket and stuffed it under her head so that she’d have a softer lan
ding.
We had been up all night, traveling, trying to lose the tail that the Mexican cartel
had sent us. For them to get wind that the leader of the Coalition was officially
meeting with the Mexican president was a declaration of war. At my insistence, not
even the captains knew exactly when we were mee
ting.
We finally managed to burn our cartel shadow in Ari
zona.
I had a book in my hands that I had picked up off a bench at a small airport somewhere
in California. I had opened it and read it before our plane had even taken off, but
would keep it until I found or stole another one. Then I would replace the book I
would steal with the book I had already read. It was a habit, though some people might
have called it an eccentricity or an oddity. Then again, a normal person wouldn’t
have chosen a life of drugs and murder over a scholarship to
MIT.
For as long as I could remember, I had a book within arm’s reach. As a kid, I used
to sneak into waiting rooms around Callister—dentists, doctors, lawyers—they almost
always had some book or magazine left behind. Eventually, receptionists would start
recognizing me and shoo me away. Then I was stuck going to the library, though there
wasn’t much fun in stealing books that they wanted you to
take.
My first vivid memory was of me sitting in someone’s bathroom, waiting for my father
to come get me. I must have been maybe five years old. The bathroom had little blue
and white tiles on the floor and gold faucets attached to gold double sinks. There
was a toilet and a matching bidet that I thought was a water fountain for dogs. Everything
was covered with a layer of grime that only comes from abuse and neglect of oneself.
Hopelessness. My dad had recently realized that I could read any brick of a book within
twenty minutes, and he started to bring me along to these grimy places—his coke parties.
I was the entertain
ment.
“Pick a book, any book,” he would call out to the party hosts. And then the adults
would go running around the house, looking for the biggest, most boring books they
could find. They would lock me in a bathroom with a stack of books, and I had an hour
to read them
all.
Then they were supposed to come find me and test me to see if I really was the prodigy
my father had made me out to be. But they almost always forgot to come back (or they
were too high to care), and I would end up falling asleep in someone’s bathtub. At
least I had access to a to
ilet.
One of the adults once brought the New York State penal law for me to read. It was
supposed to be a joke, but it turned out to be the best book I had ever read. It was
fraught with inconsistencies, gray areas, incomplete definitions. I was ten years
old, and I thought I was going to become a lawyer. This makes me laugh
now.
In the end, someone would unlock the bathroom door sometime the next day when he or
she came searching for any leftover blow. I would go find a bus stop and make my way
home.
My mom may have been a drunk and totally oblivious to me, but at least she didn’t
know how to use me when I was a pathetic kid. That would come later, when she went
looking for a cigarette in my Transformers backpack and found stacks of cash instead.
She bought herself a case of gin and a membership to Costco and brought a new boyfriend
home. If I’d had a backyard, I would have buried the money t
here.
Manny stirred just as we were going through the gates of Julièn’s estate. When she
popped her head up, she glanced at my bundled jacket and put it on her lap. She still
had the marks of the zipper of my jacket imprinted against her c
heek.
We were in the desert, yet there was lushness on Julièn’s land that made it almost
hallucinogenic, like a mirage to the gates of hell. There were so many flowers that
they seemed to have rained down from the sky. The smell of vivacity was just inharmonious
with the death that surrounde
d it.
We were escorted in by Julièn’s wife. She was dressed in a one-shouldered, almost
see-through white blouse and white trousers. She was a tall, slim, statuesque woman—a
model turned one-hit-wonder pop star during the nineties—who had gotten ensnared in
Julièn’s flashy lifestyle. Her walk reminded me of a white elephant’s: slow, but every
step deliberate and resil
ient.
“My husband is still away,” she told us, her voice monotone. She eyed Manny from head
to toe. “Make yourselves at
home.”
She left us standing in the middle of the v
illa.
Manny showed me around, outlining intimate details with every step. She had clearly
been there before, and based on the reception we had just received, Julièn’s wife
had been absent then—though she clearly knew of M
anny.
In the main living quarters, full-grown palm trees grew through holes in the porcelain
floor. There was a fishpond that half mooned around the spiral stair
case.
“This is the indoor garden,” Manny explained. “The fish in the pond are Mangarahara
cichlid. Very
rare.”
I glanced over the edge at the captive fish. I had read about these; they were from
the Mangarahara River in Madagascar. And they were extinct. Thought to be ext
inct.
The sunken living room overlooked the infinity pool, where three boys were splashing
about as their model mother watched them from the sideline. I knew Julièn had three
boys, though I was surprised that he had brought them here. I would not have wanted
them anywhere near the likes o
f us.
From my peripheral vision, I saw something move at the back of the property. Manny
slipped her hand into mine as a chill ran down my spine. When I brought my gaze to
that place where I had seen that something, it was
gone.
I took my hand back from Manny’s grasp, despite the softness of her skin. Despite
the hollowness at the pit of my stomach that only fills with a woman’s t
ouch.
We moved through the rest of the h
ouse.
Every room had a view of the garden outside. And every time, I went to the window
and looked back to that place in the back. There was simply nothing t
here.
The heat, the lack of sleep, this place of hell were already getting to my b
rain.
It wasn’t until the evening that Julièn finally made his appearance. And an appearance
was exactly what he made. A convoy of at least fifteen cars. Enough bodyguards to
protect the Tower of London. And a truck just for his lug
gage.
Mariella, Julièn’s wife, came to greet him at the door without the children. He held
her at arm’s length and gave her a quick peck on the cheek, before his suit could
wrinkle. She disappeared as soon as he released her. His children would be brought
to him a little later at his request while we were in the middle of discussions. The
children stood erect, as though they were in the principal’s office, as he patted
each of them on the head and sent them
off.
Trying to talk business with Julièn was like talking to a toddler. He changed the
subject if he didn’t like what you were talking about. He threw tantrums at the staff
if his meal were too hot, if his wine were too cold, if it rained outside. He had
even planned playdates fo
r us.
“I have a few friends I would like to introduce you to,” he said on the second day
we were there. We were only supposed to be there two nights, and yet we still hadn’t
gotten to the crux of the business. It was going to take a lot longer than two ni
ghts.
I wasn’t surprised by this. That morning, I had noticed a dinner table that had been
set for at least twenty people. “Cancel,” I ordered Julièn. He listened, begrudgingly,
but would never gain any concept of keeping things q
uiet.
“You know, I came from nothing,” he reminded me every time the subject of money came
up, which it always did as often as he could possibly bring it up. He would wave his
hands around, pointing at a piece of crappy, overpriced artwork on the wall or some
mahogany serving tray he had acquired from wherever. “Some tiny little village,” he
would add, as though this would create some kind of kinship between us. As though
I were one of his constituents and I didn’t know that he had actually been raised
in the States in a middle-class suburb of Phoenix. Hardly outdoor plum
bing.
What he did have, however, was intel on the comings and goings of the three cartel
families within Mexico. Where they lived; where their wives, children, and mothers
lived. Where they shopped for groceries. The Christmas presents they had purchased
for their children last year. Julièn was concentrating his efforts on finding and
killing the cartel, creating a name for himself across Mexico and the world as a leader
who was tough on drugs, while making money hand over fist on his own drug production.
He was the Mexican version of Sh
ield.
But I had still heard nothing of how he was going to manufacture and distribute the
promised goods. He either had no plan or he wasn’t sharing this information. This
was worrisome. And his obnoxious personality was wearing me down. I just wanted to
put a bullet through his fashionable brain and be done with it. I couldn’t. Not yet.
But when the cartel came for revenge, I promised myself to do his children a service
and be the one to end his miserable
life.
The more I watched his interaction with his children, the more I understood his reasoning
for having them there at the same time as us. Julièn liked to flaunt his power, whether
it was over an entire country or over his three young children. And perhaps he hoped
that I wouldn’t blow his brains out and paint his walls with them while his wife and
boys were there. I was tempted, more than
once.
Manny had observed as much of Julièn’s behavior as I had, but she had a different
perspec
tive.
“My father never wanted a daughter,” she told me one evening. “He wanted an heir.
Not a girl.” We were hunched over a blueprint of the Munoz compound. Julièn had just
made his eldest son spend two hours standing in front of us with a whole steak sitting
in his mouth after he had refused to eat it at dinner. Julièn had left us to go after
his wife, after Mariella had grabbed her son and walked out of the
room.
“My mother had four pregnancies before me. All girls, based on the ultrasounds. My
father would make her get abortions as soon as he’d find out. When she got pregnant
with me, she hid it from him. Until she had me. She had to get all the wives of the
underlings involved so that he wouldn’t kill me. When the men threatened defection,
he promised to keep me, but he left my mother and kept me away from her. She killed
herself when I was five. My father married the nanny after she gave him his first
son.”
I went to bed that night with no doubt in my mind that Manny had killed her father.
And that one of Julièn’s sons would do the same to him someday if I didn’t get to
him first. People like us shouldn’t have children. This was c
lear.
****
I had kept the air-conditioning off in my room because I couldn’t hear anything over
the hum. I needed to be able to listen for anything out of the ordinary. An ambush
in the n
ight.
It was like sleeping in a
BBQ.
I went to open the window a little wider, as though this would make a difference,
and saw something, a shadow, moving in the g
rass.
It was there. I could see it. The figure of the woman in a flowing dress, red hair
that seemed to glow in the darkness like its own October moon and flew behind her.
I wasn’t imagining it, and I obviously wasn’t slee
ping.
I ran out of the house and headed in the direction I had seen the woman go. I looped
around the staff kitchen and toward the garbage bins, where I could see smoke rising
over one of the spotli
ghts.
I did find a lady. But her hair was darker than the n
ight.
Mariella was sitting in a lawn chair, sucking on a cigarette and staring at me. She
still had her evening dress on and a bottle of wine next to
her.
I was in my boxer br
iefs.
I nodded hello. She took a puff of her smoke and glanced away. She saw me as one of
her husband’s confrères. If only she knew how badly I wanted to spoon his eyeballs
out.
I headed back where I had come from, feeling sickly and disorie
nted.
Manny was walking down the staircase in a black silk baby-doll. “Cameron? Are you
okay?”
I went to find her in the darkness. “Fine. Can’t s
leep?”
“I hate this place,” she told me in a whisper. “I hate the smell. I hate the heat.
I hate how quiet it is. I feel like I’m going crazy
here.”
The shimmer of the pond water was reflecting over her face. Her hair was up in a messy
ponytail, and she had a pendant that fell into her clea
vage.
I let the back of my hand come to her neck and make its way down to the silver pendant,
pulling its weight between my fingers. It looked like three leaves intertwined over
a ci
rcle.