Текст книги "Water from My Heart"

Автор книги: Charles Martin

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

I made up my mind that when the right chance presented itself, I’d open the door and turn on the light. Tell her everything. And save her from the truth of me.

Problem was, I never got the chance.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I’d often heard the warning but never really understood: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Valle Cruces was holding a funeral for one of Nicaragua’s most beloved farmers. Word spread. Carrying with it the news that two gringos—one young with tattoos, recovering from a beating—were on the mountain and had been instrumental in this. Evil men reacted to that news differently from the majority of the population. You’d think that after looking over my shoulder for more than a decade that I’d have thought about that, but I had not. It had never crossed my mind. And while the majority of Nicaraguans joined the party and filled themselves at the table and drank their fill and laughed and sang and danced, others were not quite so happy. And those select few hid beneath the mango trees.

I never saw them coming.

*  *  *

Paulo waved me toward the punch table, where they’d run out of punch. I grabbed two five-gallon buckets and headed to the well. Zaul followed a few steps behind. Just beyond the lights of the festivities, where the road narrowed and leveled out slightly, I heard a shuffling. I thought maybe Zaul had stumbled but he had not. When I turned around, he was smiling. Whistling even. Stepping from rock to rock in the moonlight. I thought it might be kids playing in the trees. It was not.

Three muscled bodies appeared in front of me, one on either side made five, each held something in his hands that looked like a stick of some sort. Maybe one carried a machete. Without so much as a sound, the guy in front of me—either the leader, the most brazen, or both—swung for the bleachers, threatening to send my head with it, but I ducked, turned, and told Zaul, “Run!” When I did, two more appeared behind me—their silhouettes suggested they were bigger. While the first guy had acted prematurely and mistimed his swing, they were patient and timed theirs perfectly. The next blow took me off my feet and I felt something break in my face. The pack quickly followed and pounced on me. I felt something slice the side of my head, then again on my face, followed by a third deeper cut above my eye. I tried to stand, to make an escape, but my eye had swollen shut so fast I couldn’t see. Something hard smashed down across my collarbone, snapping it and dislocating my shoulder. I rolled, pushed myself up on my good arm, but I couldn’t see out of either eye. They used my hesitation to their advantage, regrouped, and somebody struck me from behind.

You know all those movies where the outnumbered and overmatched underdog gets hit from behind and then manages some Herculean return to stand back up, fend off, and conquer the marauding horde? As if the head-splitting concussions and consequent beating only served to make him more mad, more dangerous, and finally release the superhuman character that’s resided in his soul his entire life? Well, forget that. There’s a reason Hollywood deals in make-believe and all the fight scenes are staged. I didn’t know much about my present situation, but I did know that there were too many. They were too strong. And they’d gotten the jump on me. A quick inventory told me that I wanted no part of them. Further, following the skull-splitting pain from my shoulders up, all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and pull the covers over my eyes.

Then they hit me again, and I didn’t have much choice.

*  *  *

When I woke, people were screaming and I had a sense that lights were shining on me, but when I tried to focus, to open my eyes, I could not. I could move my fingers and toes, but my head was splitting and I could not stay conscious. I kept fading in and out. Someone was cradling me, screaming incoherently, holding my head while someone else was putting pressure on my face. In the background, I heard a truck engine. Leena’s voice sounded close in my ear. She was saying, “Stay with me,” but I had no control over my ability to do so. My mind was a fog. Her voice was cracking, and I felt like someone was pouring warm water over my head. Finally, I heard Zaul. He was screaming. Crying.

I reached out a hand, and somewhere in the dark, he took it. He couldn’t stop apologizing. I tried to quiet him but he was inconsolable. Finally, I pulled him to me, put my hand on his head, and pulled his hair, bringing his face inches from mine. “Zaul!”

“Uncle Charlie, look what they—”

Leena was whispering to someone over my shoulder. I think it was Paulo. She was in midsentence. “…die in Managua. They’re not qualified to—” Some screaming drowned them out. “…bleed to death on the way there.”

Chaos had set in all around us. “Zaul….Call your dad. Send the jet.” Blood puddled in my mouth, making it difficult to talk. “Land it”—I pointed west—“on the highway.” I spat. I meant to say “Get me to Miami,” but the only word that actually made it out of my mouth was “Miami.”

Leena understood that I was actually making pretty good sense. If he made the call, I could be in Miami in three hours, and if we started driving now, we wouldn’t be in Managua for almost four with no guarantee that they’d admit me or even be able to see me when I got there. Knowing what I was trying to do, she turned her attention to him.

“Zaul, call your dad.”

I turned toward Leena’s voice. Something was choking me so I again said one word, “Miami?”

She was crying now, too, and shaking her head, “Charlie, I don’t—”

I heard a ruckus a few hundred yards off. It sounded like a lot of men hollering in very loud voices. In a few short minutes, I’d lost a lot of blood. I pressed her hand against my face. “Just keep me—”

“I don’t—” She wasn’t making much sense, either. No one was making sense.

I was growing dizzy, and it was getting more and more difficult to focus. I reached in my pocket, fumbled for my phone, and offered it to whomever. A hand took it from me. Leena’s, I think. And I tried to recite Colin’s number.

I passed out shortly thereafter.

Details are sketchy after that. I remember a bumpy ride in a truck and something cold on my head and face. I remember Leena wrapping my head in something. I remember Isabella crying and I remember the sound of Paulo’s voice, but I couldn’t hear what he said. I remember bright lights, the feeling of being cradled in someone’s arms, my head pressed to their chest, and the sound of their heart pounding real fast in my ear. I remember a voice whispering to me, but I couldn’t understand what it said and I’m not sure I could make out who the voice belonged to—though it seemed familiar. Then I remember the feeling of being carried, lying down flat, and then the floor tilting up and my being pressed back hard against the floor. Leena was crying, pleading with anybody who would listen, and her voice was cracking. Urgency rippled through the air like electricity.

In a final moment of lucidity, aided by what was probably my last shot of adrenaline, I placed my finger on her lips to quiet her. Leena pressed her face close to mine and held both my cheeks in her hands. I felt her breath on my face. She was shaking and her hands were slippery. “Sometimes, we pay for our sins.”

She was screaming when the world went silent.

*  *  *

Somewhere above forty thousand feet traveling close to Mach 1, beneath screams and radio traffic and requesting clearance for landing and something about “B positive on hand,” the slide show played across my mind’s eye. I’ve always liked movies so I enjoyed watching one about me. I wasn’t expecting that. I saw my mom; caught a rare glimpse of my dad in his cab and for once he was smiling, saw myself surfing and delivering pizzas, watched a wrestling match in high school, hovered over the finish line in several track meets, visited classrooms in Boston, played poker with the big boys where I won a car, landing in London, meeting Amanda on a midnight run, dinner with her parents, Marshall, Brendan, watching through the window as Amanda opened the envelope and screamed at Marshall, watching her disappear in the rearview mirror, rebuilding my hurricane shack in Bimini, bumping into Hack in the hardware store, watching him chain-smoke while I nursed a cup of coffee, building a skiff, fishing the flats for bonefish, Colin giving me a tour of his boathouse and looking down on the world he’d created but had little interest in, Marguerite, Maria singing, Zaul driving the boat, tripping over a mound of cash in my shack and hiding it on the island, hearing Hack’s cough, my first glimpse of Shelly, late night deliveries in Miami, fast boats, Agents Spangler and Beckwith, Shelly as she placed my watch in my hand, Maria’s mummified face in the hospital, Colin hanging his head in his hands, skirting Cuba in the Bertram, the Panama Canal, the swimming pool in the living room of the house, Isabella pulling back my eyelid and saying “borracho,” Paulina, the chicken coop, mango juice dripping drown my chin, the oscillating lion breathing on my face, Paulo’s forearms as he swung a machete and stacked sugarcane, pulling teeth and the smell of pus, “el doctor,” Leena’s arms wrapped around me as we rode dirt roads on a motorcycle, the best coffee I’d ever had in my life, the biggest mango tree in Nicaragua, Isabella slipping her hand in mine, descending the well shaft, white bones sticking out of the rock, swinging a hammer in the dark, a trickle of water on my neck, cold water swallowing me, the sound of laughter, Paulo’s bloody hands, a long-sleeved white dress shirt, the smell of campfires, and the way the light reflected off Leena’s sweaty face as she danced and twirled, campfires across the mountainside showering sparks like fireflies.

The last image that played itself across my mind’s eye was something that happened when I was young. Maybe seven. Possibly eight. I’d been surfing. Or trying to. Just getting the hang of it. My mom was sunbathing, and rubbing sun tan oil on a guy I didn’t know and didn’t like. Gorilla hair covered his chest and back. His toupee sat canted at an angle, making me want to tug on one side to straighten it. He wore several thick gold chains, and a Speedo two sizes too small. But my mom was broken and blind. Had been. She was looking for a Band-Aid. I was, too. Only problem was this poseur lying next to her. When she finished greasing him up, he returned the favor and made a real show of it. I’d taken a spill in the surf and was walking up the beach dragging the two halves of my board. My head hurt. Blood ran down my leg. Mom saw me coming and waved me off. Attention elsewhere. “Go wash it off.” Standing there on the edge of that giant ocean, dizzy, the salt stinging my cut, holding two jagged pieces that would never again comprise a whole, an emotion pierced me. While the water around my shins turned red, and my broken board slipped from my fingers and drifted away, I whispered, “Charlie, you are alone and always will be.” Right there, nothing but a kid bleeding on the beach, life stained my soul.

The lights of the plane dimmed and I felt someone’s face close to mine. Tears dripped onto my cheeks. Lips pressed against mine. Breath forced into my lungs. Chest expanding. Somewhere in between this world and the next, I saw how the Loneliness had colored my DNA. Of all the days in my life, that day on the beach was the one day I wanted back. I wanted to grab that kid, wrap him in my arms, doctor his leg, wipe the tears and snot off his face, buy him a shiny new board, and cradle his very soul.

While the blood trickled out, staining the new carpet in that $7 million plane, the truth flooded in and laid bare the wound. The simplicity struck me. I’d spent my life medicating that wound. Since that moment, I’d bought into the idea that isolation would ease my pain and indifference was the remedy for rejection.

Clarity was quick in coming. Isolation is a prison and indifference is a lie. Neither work.

As the breath exited my lungs and the screams and cries faded above me like a passing siren, the video of my life ended with a sequence of sepia-colored slides. The first depicted me standing on the shore as that broken and bleeding kid, sun-bleached hair, bronzed skin, with the beginnings of hardened muscles in my back. I was climbing into the skiff Hack and I built and paddling out through the waves and onto open water. But as I tried to paddle out, all stoic and self-reliant, Leena held on to the stern, pulling back, digging her heels into the sand. She was shaking her head. “Don’t…” But she was no match for the current of my life so I slipped from her fingers. Out beyond the breakers, I turned back. Her mouth was moving but the pounding waves between us garbled her words. When I reached the horizon where the ocean fell off the side of the earth, I turned and found her still standing there. A dot on the shoreline. Hand shading her eyes. Beneath me, the boat jolted, rocking side to side, balancing on the same knife’s edge where I once so confidently and coldly held my life and those I valued. Straining to see her, I teetered on the same precipice where I’d once been so willing to nudge others if circumstances arose contrary to my freedom. As if they didn’t matter. She beckoned, “Charlie…Please—”

The bow dipped and the stern rose, blocking my view of the beach. The world had gone black but her breath washed my face. Charlie, let me give you me.

Two hands violently jerked my head toward Leena while powerful, stinging blows pounded my chest. I turned and readied myself for the frothy death by drowning on the rocks below when Hack appeared in my boat. Legs crossed. Not a care in the world. His hair had grown. Gone was the yellowed cigarette stain. Regal white had taken its place. His skin looked younger. No wrinkles. No crow’s-feet. He dipped Alejandro’s well bucket in the water and held it sloshing over my head. “Charlie, lonely washes off.” He waved his hand across the sea. “It’s why God made the water.” He laughed deep and long as he turned that bucket upside down. I expected hot and salty. What I got was cold, sweet, and tasted like mango. At first, the water that ran out of me was India-ink black. Just what I expected. Undeterred, Hack kept pouring. Flushing out the stain. Soon, the color changed, and as it did, the pain eased. When the color turned red, the pain was gone altogether.

Finished, he handed me the bucket and patted me on the shoulder, chuckling. He glanced at Leena on the beach and raised an eyebrow just slightly. “We’re made to walk ‘with.’ Not ‘without.’” Glancing over the side of the boat and down into precipice, he cocked his head at an angle and asked, “What’s that in your hand?”

So I started paddling back.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I’d always thought that when you died and came back that you were supposed to see people dressed in white and hear angels singing the “Hallelujah!” chorus. Not so. I couldn’t see a thing and the only thing I heard was hospital bells and alarms and a blood pressure cuff on my right arm. I woke to complete and total darkness. Not a ray of light touched my eyes. Despite that, I knew that I was holding a hand in each of my right and left hands.

Over me, to my left, I heard the whisper, “He’s awake.” Then I heard a bunch of shuffling and talking and it seemed like the room filled with people.

In my right ear, I heard Leena’s voice. “Charlie, can you hear me?” When she spoke, someone squeezed my right hand, causing me to think that she was holding my right hand. And in my left ear, I heard Shelly say again, “He’s awake.” When she said this, I felt someone both squeeze and pat my left hand. One minute I was paddling, rain on my face, and the next I was waking up with Shelly in one hand and Leena in the other.

Weird.

Somewhere beyond my feet, I heard the voices of Colin, Marguerite, Zaul, and then in my left ear, I heard the angelic whisper of Maria. “Uncle Charlie, Aunt Shelly says we’re twins now.”

I raised my hand, reaching for her, and she took my hand, kissing it.

All the world was right.

I couldn’t talk as there was a tube down my throat. I made a signal like I wanted to write something. Someone placed a pen in my right hand and paper in the left. I wrote, “Tube out, please.”

They laughed.

Throughout the day, I got bits and pieces of the story.

*  *  *

I was attacked by Zaul’s friends, who had somehow crossed paths with and been hired by the foreman. A nasty combination. Unfortunately for them, after killing me, their escape was hindered by several hundred Nicaraguan farmers. In pretty bad shape themselves, they were turned over to my good friends the chief of police and the mayor of León. Their futures are not bright.

Zaul called his dad, who immediately dispatched the jet, which landed on the highway about seven miles from the plantation. Paulo drove us down the mountain, Leena grabbed her passport from the house, and we met the plane as it was landing. They loaded me up, turned around, and took off before Nicaraguan authorities ever knew they had a plane in their airspace. Given the speed of the G5, we landed in Miami a little over an hour later. I died twice on the plane; both times Leena brought me back. I died a third time in the ambulance, where the paramedics shocked me until they got me to the hospital. In the truck and on the plane, Leena had cradled me while also attempting to keep pressure on the bleeding, keeping my face elevated; she’d also packed me in as much ice as she could get to lower my pulse—which explained the cold. At the hospital, Colin had the best trauma surgeons he could find on standby, and they immediately went to work. Colin also went to work finding B-positive blood, which he said he found in a myriad of donors. He laughed as he told me. One unnamed pop diva, himself, Zaul, my new friend Liv-ed (aka William Alfred Butler), and Leena. I’d lost most of my blood, so it took a lot of donors to bring me back. Colin said if I started speaking in rhyme, that’d be the Mr. Butler part of me. Once I’d been stabilized, and my collarbone set and my shoulder put back in its socket and the cartilage in my knee repaired, Shelly was brought in to put my face back, as the guys who attacked me had done a pretty good job of carving it off—which explained the blood. Shelly had done what she could and chances were good that I’d smile again, but it’d take a while. They were afraid that I’d lose my right eye, but she thought she was able to save it. We wouldn’t know that until they pulled the gauze off sometime in the next few days. Colin continued to say that Leena had not left my side since I’d been there and she had kept me alive—when she got off the plane, she was covered in me. And I’d been in a medically induced coma for a week in order to give my body a chance to heal.

I told him I felt rested enough.

He said Zaul had been living in the house. “No piercings. No friends. He’s been hanging out with Maria, and the first night we were all home together, Marguerite made dinner. When we were finished, he got up, disappeared into the kitchen, and had most of the dishes cleaned by the time we got there. Strange. What did you do to my son? Oh, and did you know he plays the drums? Pretty good, too.” He finished by telling me that everyone had been worried, and in an uncharacteristic show of emotion, he had teared up and said he, too, was worried I might not make it. I held up my left wrist and asked if anyone had seen my watch. He said Zaul had been wearing it, keeping it safe until I got well. I told him Zaul could keep it. I’d get another. Not sure that one was good for me. In the time that I’d had it, Maria had been hurt, I lost my fiancée, I nearly drowned in a well, and I had been attacked and nearly bled to death. I told him I’d find another or not wear one.

He also told me that once Zaul had explained the situation in Valle Cruces, he sent the jet back and Zaul returned with Paulo and Isabella. They’d been here ever since. Maria and Isabella had become fast friends. Colin explained that neither Paulo nor Isabella had passports, but that he had contacts in immigration who fast-tracked a visa. He shrugged. “It pays to have friends.”

Three days later, they unwrapped my face, and thanks to Shelly and her gifted hands, I could still see out of my right eye. Things were foggy, as was expected, but I’d recover. The first image I saw when I lifted my lids was Maria’s smiling face. She pressed her nose to mine. “In case you’re wondering, you look a lot worse than me.”

Later that afternoon, they had me up, walking the halls, and straining my muscles in therapy. After two weeks in the hospital, when I finally asked if I could go home, Shelly relented and said, “Yes—” She then looked at Leena. “Provided she goes with you.”

Leena knew the story of Shelly and me, so when she sensed Shelly wanted a moment with me alone, she disappeared in search of bad hospital coffee. When Leena left, Shelly held my hand and said that operating on me was one of the more difficult things she’d ever done. But she was glad she could do it. She laughed and said that putting my face back together helped patch up a few things in her. When she finished, I told her I was sorry for keeping the truth of me from her. That she deserved better. That if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t do it that way. And that I hoped she found someone that made her happy.

She nodded toward the door and said, “You can be kind of thick when it comes to women and the signals they send, so I’m going to help you out a bit.” I waited. “That woman—” She pointed in the direction that Leena had walked. “That gorgeous Nicaraguan goddess, who’s got all of the rest of us looking in the mirror to see how we measure up, has fallen for you. She’s crazy for you. You realize this, yes?”

“Well, actually—”

“Charlie—” She laughed. “You need a keeper.” The laughter was healing. For both of us. “Have you told her what you do for a living? Your occupation?”

I held up a finger. “Previous occupation. With emphasis on ‘did for a living.’”

She smiled. “Well?”

“Yes. She knows.”

“You may as well know now…we may have patched you back together, but she’s the reason you made it here alive. Somehow”—she shook her head—“she kept you alive on that plane. And she hasn’t left your side since you arrived.”

I turned the tables. “Thank you for what you did for me.”

She kissed me. “My pleasure, but I’d rather not ever do it again. Now don’t change the subject, you do understand why she’s still here?”

“Well, I guess—”

“Charlie?”

“I don’t know, I—”

“Let me put it in terms you can understand: She’s ‘all in.’”

That did make sense.

*  *  *

The hospital discharged me and Colin took us to his house where, in about fifteen minutes, I’d convinced him to take us in the helicopter to Bimini, that the saltwater and ocean air would do us some good. Leena helped persuade him, as she’d never ridden in a helicopter and never been to the islands. By sundown, fifteen days after the attack, unstable on my feet and trying to wean myself from pain medication, I was walking on the beach in Bimini, Paulo and Isabella plucking lobster from the rocks, and Leena’s arm tucked in mine. And while her heart tugged on mine, so did the one thing I had yet to confess.

For the life of me, I just could not figure out how I was going to tell Leena.

Colin left us alone for three days, allowing me to introduce them to the island. I showed them where Hack had lived and where we worked. Paulo was incredibly interested in his tools and how we used them. I showed him the unfinished skiff that lay in his shack collecting dust, and he just could not get over how smooth the edges were and how seamless the boards met one another. He wiped his fingers along one of the joints and said, “It’s magic.”

Morning and evening, the four of us spent hours walking the beach. I tried to get my strength back, which was slow in coming, and Paulo and Isabella sought to catch every lobster on Bimini, as they’d developed quite the taste for large crustaceans. I taught them how to drive my boat and discovered that not only was Leena good at it but she enjoyed going very fast. At one point, idling back into the dock, with her hair blown into a wild state of disarray in which she looked like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket, she turned and joked with Isabella, “You know, life just gets so much better at a hundred and ten.”

Leena’s love of speed was exceeded only by that of her daughter, who looked like someone had not only plugged her into an electrical outlet, but set her hair on fire and looped the sides of her smile around her ears.

Colin offered to return them in his jet, which they’d accepted. Leena was hesitant to be overly forward, but I could tell from her body language and from Isabella’s outright requests that she was wanting to make plans for my return “visit.”

The clock was ticking.

The night before they left, Paulo orchestrated circumstances in which Leena and I had time on the beach to ourselves. She could tell I was trying to get something out of my mouth so she walked quietly beside me—evidence of how comfortable she’d grown around me. There was no easy way to do this, so I finally just dove in. “Leena, do you remember, prior to Hurricane Carlos, when an American company made an offer to buy Mango Café from your father?”

She was surprised I knew the name. “Yes.”

“You remember how much they offered?”

“Ten cents.”

“You remember the second offer.”

“Twelve.”

“And do you remember when someone bought the competition and flooded the market with coffee so cheap that you couldn’t sell your own?”

A surprised nod.

“You remember your father slaughtering his own animals to feed his workers?”

“I remember.”

“You remember him working without sleep to harvest what would be his last crop, thinking by some miracle that he might salvage something and be able to feed his family and his workers?”

“Charlie, what are you getting at?”

If I hadn’t hurt her yet, the last question certainly would. “Do you remember climbing down from a mango tree, placing a rain jacket across your father’s shoulders, and crying in the mud next to him as the world he’d built crumbled around you both?”

Her eyes turned cold and welled up with tears. Her voice rose as she spoke. “Charlie?”

“Leena, I did that. I am that company.”

We had walked knee-deep into a tidal pool rolling in gentle waves. Disbelief spread across her face as she shook her head. “How?”

I told her. I told her everything. Told her how I’d caused it, then hired people to spy on their misery and report back so we could strategize how to capitalize on that, turn the screws, and make it worse. Then do it again.

When I’d finished, Leena was staring at me. Remembering events and the pain that accompanied them. My voice fell to a whisper. “Do I scare you now?”

Somewhere in there, Paulina and I came face-to-face with the real me. No more smoke and mirrors. She took a step back, put her hands on her hips, and considered me. Her face told me she didn’t like him any more than I did. But this is where her reaction to me and my reaction to me parted. This is where she did the unexpected.

Leena had a tenacity unlike any woman I’d ever met, and it was about to surface. While her emotions were very real and they gnawed at her with a raw sincerity, she was listening to something deeper. She was listening to her will, not letting what she felt dictate what she would do. Didn’t let it dictate her life.

And given my experience—with both myself and other women—I wasn’t expecting that.

She shook her head like she was shaking off a perception. Or swatting a gnat. As if something in her gut was having an argument with her eyes and ears. Her will was telling the rest of her what was about to happen.

Careful not to bump the screws in my collarbone or tug too hard on a shoulder that was still pretty loose in its socket, she pulled me toward her and kissed me. Gingerly. Tenderly. Purposefully. Holding it long enough for me to taste the salt in her tears. When she spoke, she was close and I felt her breath on my face. She shook her head ever so slightly. “You’re right. You’re touching some deep places in me. They’re tender. They hurt. There is a part of me that wants to walk away from you so that you can’t hurt me anymore. As if my turning away from you hurts you in return and you get what you got coming. What you deserve. And you’re right, I don’t like the man who did those things.” She held my hand and wrapped her arms inside mine as we continued walking. “But can I tell you something you might not know?”

“Please.”

“My father used to hire men with troubled pasts. Prison. Everything. Give them a second chance when no one else would. One of them—a murderer—asked him one time while they were picking beans shoulder to shoulder, ‘How does a man wipe his life clean?’ You know what my father said to that man?”

I shook my head.

“He said, ‘With the one that you have.’”

She leaned her head on my shoulder and turned to look at me. We were walking along the northern end of the island—within a few feet of where Shelly had returned in the helicopter and given me my watch. Atlantis under our feet. She said, “Can you guess who that man was?”

“No.”

“Paulo.” She registered my reaction with a slight smile. “You look surprised.”

“I didn’t see that one coming.”

She nodded. “My father would have liked you.”

The amazing thing about Leena is that while I had pushed her away, she’d not recoiled. What I’d thought would push her away had brought her closer. I said, “I saw you one time.” A single nod—gesturing toward my past. “Back then.”

She looked surprised. “When?”

“After we foreclosed. You’d lost everything. Parents. Mango Café. Your husband. You were pregnant, walking down the mountain. I’d been in León packing up my office at the hotel. Before I flew out, I rented a bike and rode up in the mountains. I was wrestling with what we—with what I—had done to these innocent, unsuspecting, hardworking, beautiful people. And when I saw them walking down the mountain, and you specifically, I knew I’d done the one thing that Hurricane Carlos and the loss of everything else could not do.”