Girl of Lies (26 page)

Sister Kiara leaned back in her seat and murmured, “Now we’re getting somewhere. Do you really feel like their lives are perfect?”

“No,” Jessica replied in an empty voice. “Carrie’s a widow. She just had a baby.”

Kiara looked startled. Somehow her briefings from Jessica’s mother hadn’t included this bit of information. “Tell me more.”

Jessica said, “Car accident last summer. I was in the car too. Sarah was hurt really bad, and Ray—that’s Carrie’s husband—was killed.”

“Drunk driver?”

“No. Murder. Or… murder-suicide, I guess.”

“I see,” Kiara said, her eyes wide. “Were you hurt?”

“Just some glass fragments. Scratches.”

“So what is home life like now? Is Sarah in school? Do you two get in much conflict since the accident?”

Jessica shook her head. “I don’t really see her. She stayed with Carrie and my mom in Washington after the accident. I came home with Dad.”

Sister Kiara looked troubled. “Are you and your father close?”

Jessica snorted. “Are you kidding me?”

The dream always started the same.

It was 1981. She was in what should have been her normal seat, violin at her chin, eyes fixed on Antoni Ros-Marba, principal conductor of the
Orquesta Nacional de Espana
in Madrid. Eyebrows arched over his rounded glasses, his hair swept back on his head, he held his conductor’s baton high in the air. A broad smile on his face as his eyes met her. She knew that he knew she had talent that would one day land her in the first chair. They all did. She held her breath, and the audience stirred in anticipation.

Ros-Marba’s arms fell, signaling the music to begin, but she froze. Her stomach twisted in pain. Richard was there, in the audience. Thirty-one years old to her sixteen. Handsome. His dark hair fell down over his forehead, his lips curled up in a cruel grin. He stood, but no one else in the audience noticed as he made his way down the aisle. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Richard reached Ros-Marba and shoved him out of the way effortlessly, and the other members of the orchestra turned away.

Adelina dropped her precious violin. The instrument cracked, fragments of wood flying everywhere. Her right hand uncurled and the bow fell to the floor with a crash.

Richard finally reached her. Almost gently, he reached out a hand and wrapped it around her throat.

“What are you doing up here, Adelina? You know better.”

The room was dark and smelled of ammonia and sweat. In the first row of the audience, her mother and brothers slowly turned their backs.

She woke up choking.

A blanket was stuffed in her mouth, balled up in her fist, keeping the pain inside, where it belonged. She lay on her side, curled up, knees drawn up to her chest, the chest pains familiar. She slowly pulled the blanket away from her mouth, once she was sure the accumulated regret and terror wouldn’t force its way out in the form of sound.

She was drenched in sweat. It was nearly six o’clock, and the day wasn’t going to get started on its own. Out of habit, she rolled over and picked up her phone. No messages. No signal still. Ironic, she thought. For years she’d done everything she could to make sure she was never out of cell phone range. Checking for messages, checking for
that
phone call, was second nature. But when she’d arrived at Saint Mary’s ten days ago with Jessica, she’d noticed there was no signal and just shrugged it off. It had been sixteen years. If the call was going to come, it would come. Jessica came first. Richard had the number for the retreat center if there was an emergency.

Not that her children wanted her around anyway.

She slid out of the bed and padded her way to the shower. The rooms here were simple, but more than adequate for her needs. This retreat had been to save her daughter. But she was beginning to wonder if—just maybe—there was hope for her too.

The dreams had been troubling her increasingly in the last few months. Except for a few days at Thanksgiving and Christmas, she’d not slept in the same bed—or even the same city—as Richard. Not since last August. She would have thought the nightmares would get better. She would have thought the anxiety would get better. But it hadn’t. In fact, it had been worse, sometimes so bad that she lay paralyzed in bed, unable to function at all.

It didn’t make any sense. It was like she was a prisoner, just out of jail, just looking for an opportunity to go back. To go back to safety. To go back behind locked doors.

Ironic, because for thirty years she’d believed that when her children were grown, she was going to leave him at the first opportunity. Instead, her reprieve would soon be over. Jessica would graduate from high school in June (probably) and she would no longer have a legitimate excuse to avoid her husband. She would go back to Washington, the city she hated most of any in the world, and smile and be the diplomatic wife to the new Secretary of Defense and one day she would give up, walk into her bathroom and bleed out because there was no longer any point.

But for now, at least, Jessica needed her. This was their last day at Saint Mary’s Retreat. The retreat center was situated on the edge of the Sequoia National Forest, and had provided the most peaceful ten days Adelina had experienced since her childhood. She didn’t want to leave.

The days had a structure here. Each morning she awoke and joined one of the three meals served in the common area, sitting next to Jessica, her sullen, resentful daughter. The first three days Jessica didn’t eat at all, but since then, she’d begun to astonish everyone in the center, putting away two or three meals at a sitting and sleeping almost all the rest of the time. She’d gained weight, a lot of it, in the last few days. It wasn’t enough—even after the weight gain, she was only approaching 90 pounds, and looked dangerously unhealthy.

Their next stop, had this not worked, would have been a psychiatric institution.

After the morning meal, Jessica typically slept most of the morning, then met with Sister Kiara, the no-nonsense nun and therapist who had so impressed Adelina.

Adelina herself walked every morning on the well-marked path through the forest. The sequoias were staggering in their beauty. She found herself stopping for long periods of time. Sometimes to sit. Sometimes to pray. Sometimes to weep. For years she’d held herself aloof, but here, it was impossible to deny the immensity of God. Here, she felt Him just in reach, in the deep shade below the trees, in the glades and the deep foliage, in the flowers that unfolded in the windows of sunlight that shone down to the forest floor.

After her walks, she often returned to the retreat center in a state of tears. Nobody commented on it, except for Jessica. On the third day of her withdrawals, she’d seen her mother crying, and said, “What the fuck is wrong with
you
?”

In the afternoons, she met with Father Ross, one of the spiritual directors.

Ross generally dressed casually in blue jeans and thick flannel shirts, except on the days he performed Mass. All the same, he challenged Adelina.

“Everybody gets forgiveness, Adelina. Even you. That’s what grace is.”

She just shook her head. They argued. He gave her verses in scripture to read. Some of them helped. Some of them decidedly didn’t. But all of them made her think. All of them made her question. She was deeply concerned with both the spiritual and the temporal questions. She couldn’t solve the temporal ones… not today, anyway. But her soul, and the souls of her children… that was something else.

But she knew she didn’t rate forgiveness.

“Jesus didn’t talk about grace,” she said.

Ross sighed when she said things like that. “He talked about forgiveness, Adelina.”

“He talked about law. He said adultery was forbidden. That even
thinking
about adultery was forbidden. He said that
wanting
to murder was the same as murder. ”

“You haven’t committed murder, Adelina.”

But she wanted to.

Ross took her hands. “Adelina, listen to me. We are all sinners. But you, me, all of us, can be forgiven.”

She knew better. But she still prayed.

Her discussions with Father Ross were challenging on a host of levels. Intellectually and spiritually. It was apparent that he genuinely cared about her welfare. It was equally evident that he was hopelessly naive and didn’t have the first clue what she was talking about. He lived in a retreat center amidst the sequoias, where God was apparent right outside his front door. She didn’t get to live in that world. She lived in a world where charming diplomats turned out to be liars. She lived in a world defined by anxiety and fear. She’d lived in that world for thirty-three years.

Thirty-three years she’d protected her daughters from that bastard. Thirty-three years she’d suffered, alone.

For Adelina Thompson, it was time to leave that world. No matter what it took.

A
delina Ramos felt her cheeks heat up. The American diplomat, Richard Thompson, had stopped in the shop for the third time in a week. He wore a dark double breasted pinstriped suit with a narrow black tie, and his hair, too long for Spanish tastes, was swept back on his forehead. He had a broad face, blue eyes and a strong chin. She guessed he was somewhere in his late twenties, and by the look of the suit, he was quite rich. Whenever he was there, she stammered and acted like a fool.

Adelina wore an ankle-length white linen dress with embroidered flowers, hand sewn by her grandmother.

The previous week, he’d come into her father’s flower shop, three blocks from the
El Palacio del Congreso de los Diputados,
the lower house of the Spanish parliament. He’d come in to place an order of flowers. Dozens of flowers in multiple arrangements to be delivered to the US Embassy, then on from there to the
Cortes
.

Her father, Manuel Ramos, a dour and serious man, took the order. Always polite, but never charming, her father made halting conversation with the diplomat. Richard Thompson, from San Francisco, California. Thompson had a ready smile, startling blue eyes and charming manners.

Three days later Thompson was back to take the initial delivery. This time he wore jeans and a plain black t-shirt, which highlighted a lean but muscular frame. Her father, unfortunately, was out at the time, leaving Adelina to mind the store. She helped him load the flowers into the back of a boxy looking yellow SEAT Bocenegra. The back seat was folded down, so there was just room for the flowers.

“What sort of function are the flowers for, Señor?” she had asked. In Spanish. Most of their rare American customers spoke no Spanish, but Thompson spoke functional, if not perfect Spanish.

“We plan to deliver them to your
Cortes
as a goodwill gesture,” he replied.

A week passed after his second visit before he returned again.

“Señorita Ramos,” Thompson said when he stepped into the shop.

“Señor Thompson,” she replied. “Can I help you with something?”

He smiled, a crooked, wolfish grin. “I came here looking for a flower. It seems I found one.”

Her eyes dived for the floor. “You’re too kind, Señor.”

“Señorita Ramos. In all seriousness, I’m here to see you. I have tickets to the theater for Friday evening. I would be grateful if you would attend with me.”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Sir, I’m sixteen.”

His eyes widened. “I hadn’t realized, Señorita.”

Her tone prim, she said, “Even if I wasn’t, I have an audition for the National Orchestra on Friday. I’m sure I’ll be too busy for you.”

“Well, then. Another time.”

With that, he whisked out of the shop, and at that moment, she assumed out of her life.

Forty minutes later, the phone rang. She knew who it was. At fifteen minutes before six, it could only be her father, calling to tell her to lock up at six o’clock. That happened once or twice a week, usually when he got caught up having one too many glasses of fino with his friends and cousins.

It was fine. She’d grown used to it. Every day she went directly from school to the shop, where she would do homework at the counter until closing time, often while eating a snack. Her father worked hard. Born the Marquis of Cerverales, he’d lost everything during the Franco dictatorship because of his support of the leftists. He started over in the early 1970s with nothing but a flower cart, but by the time Franco was gone and King Juan Carlos began to implement democratic reforms, he’d built a new life.

He’d lost his title—and nearly his life—but her father still had his bragging rights. He often drank too much at the cafe down the street from the
Cortez
, where he talked of old political battles long since won and lost. During the spring, summer and fall, the cafe spilled out onto the sidewalk. Since November, though, it had been buttoned up tight. It pained Adelina to see her father when he was lost in nostalgia. But she also felt pride for him. Her parents were separated—her mother had returned to live in Calella with two-year-old Luis—but her mother still taught her to take pride in her father.