Cries of Penance (24 page)

“Yes, I am. Look, I can’t sit around here…waiting for the worst to happen.”

I wake up Hektor and ask him to get Atso and buckle her in her car seat.

Picking up Nikkos, I pray he won’t wake and start crying. Thankful y his head rol s against my shoulder like a drunken man’s. He is out.

Gently as possible, I awaken Olympia. “Wake up, sweet girl. We’re going for a ride.”

“To see Daddy?”

“Not yet, but soon you wil see Daddy.”

I buckle Nikkos and Olympia into their seats. On the other side of the car Hektor buckles in Atso.

Behind me, Enrique begs, “At least cal Garrett.”

Frustrated, I turn toward him. “I did but he’s busy dealing with his own emergency. He thinks I’m imagining things and if my fears do materialize, I can’t wait for either of my men to rescue me.” Looking over the roof of the car, I tel Hektor, “Get into the front seat and fasten your belt.”

Thankful y, the boy doesn’t argue with me. Should I be concerned the children are taking my midnight madness in stride? Climbing behind the wheel, I try real y hard to convince myself that I’m not overreacting. I glance at Hektor, and the look he returns is stoic.

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“Is this an emergency Aunt Celia?”

I shake my head robotical y, not wanting to frighten him or the others.

“Because if it is, we have to fol ow the rules.”

“The rules?” I ask dumbly as I turn in my seat to double check each of the children’s car seats. I try to not think about the fact that my gut instinct was to choose this car for speed instead of the wagon.

“We have to fol ow the emergency evacuation plan. We’ve practiced it lots, like a fire dril at school but for home.”

Of course, my Thomas would have trained his children to escape in case of an emergency. I should have just asked the son if there were guns in the house. I would have probably saved some time, except I look at Hektor and see a little boy. He shouldn’t know about guns and escape plans.

“I’l be right back,” he says, leaving the car.

“Hektor! No!” I watch him hurry back through the garage door and into the house. “Enrique, stop him! We have to go now!”

But I needn’t have worried; Hektor is back before Enrique can even chase him. He returns carrying a duffle bag and four child-size backpacks. He climbs in and I help him maneuver the bags in the rear floorboard. He explains, “We can’t leave without our Go Bags.”

“Go bags,” I repeat.

He presses a lever overhead, opening the sunglass holder and removes a remote control. He tel s me, “Push the red button.”

I do. Nothing happens. I was expecting the garage door to go up.

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“Count to twenty,” he says, as if repeating it from memory and starts counting aloud with, “Two…three…four…”

I keep the count going in my head…eighteen…nineteen…twenty.

“Now what?”

“Is it stil an emergency?”

“Yes! Hektor. What do I do now?”

Swal owing hard, he opens the glove box and pushes a button on the garage door opener he finds inside. He braces himself, squinting his eyes closed. “Start the car and as soon as the door is up push the black button and floor it.”

“What happens when I press the black button?”

“I don’t know, it’s what Papa told Mama to do.”

I push the black button and go, burning rubber out of the driveway and onto the residential street. I look in the rearview mirror to see that Enrique did what I told him to. Fol owing in the BMW, he turns at the first intersection that wil lead him to the interstate but is immediately blocked off, surrounded by black SUVs.

Shit, oh shit. Did I just send Enrique to his death? I accelerate, expecting a pursuit and not knowing what to do to help Enrique. This was a stupid plan.

Beside me, Hektor stil has his eyes tightly closed.

Keeping my eyes on my rearview mirror, it appears no one is fol owing us. I sigh with relief as I pause at a stop sign, but then from nowhere two black SUVs appear, barreling toward us. I push the accelerator to the floor, leaving behind more rubber…and then al hel breaks loose behind me. The house explodes.

Four smal er explosions fol ow, taking out each of the nearest fire hydrants.

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The closest SUV dodges fal ing debris. The second vehicle isn’t so lucky, a chunk of fal ing metal hits its hood, stopping it cold.

“Oh! Shit! Oh no!” I blew up Thomas’s house! I drive like a maniac, zigzagging through residential streets until I am certain no one is fol owing us. The streets are deserted, except for the fire engines and police cars flying in the opposite direction. I keep driving away from the house. “Now what?”

Calmly, Hektor opens the glove box and takes out a GPS. He plugs the adapter into a cigarette lighter and scrol s through a list of favorites. I try to see the choices but the words make no sense, the letters seem combined nonsensical y.

He selects one seemingly at random.

“Where are we going?”

He shrugs.

“What were the choices?”

“I just picked the month from the list.”

I nod, sure. Pick a month, any month. “You picked May, right?”

He giggles beside me. “Yes, Aunt Celia.”

The GPS leads me out of San Francisco

“You are a seven-year-old boy, right?”

For some reason my question makes him giggle.

“So, your dad programmed the GPS?”

“Yes.”

I breathe a sigh of relief , because he’l know where we’re at…even if I stil don’t know where I’m going.

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As I fol ow Interstate Eighty, I figure out we’re headed toward Nevada. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than where I’d have chosen if left to my own devices. Four hours later on a long stretch of Interstate Fifty, I know I wouldn’t have chosen this road. There doesn’t seem to be another person anywhere. No cars, no houses. No artificial light sources at al , except for my headlights. I feel like a sitting duck. We’re out in the open, and although it’s stil hours until daylight I don’t feel the cover of mere darkness is enough. The GPS reveals we stil have four hours until we reach our destination.

Al of the children are asleep except the ones inside my bel y, and I think they have decided it’s time for a game of soccer. I hold the tender spot under my ribs, wishing the twins would at least give me a break from their constant kicking.

At eight-fifteen we reach the town of Ely. After a quick fuel stop I make a hard left off-road toward the mountains just as the kids are waking up. Hektor is a huge help, doling out juice boxes and snacks from their Go Bags in answer to their cries of “I’m hungry,” and “I’m thirsty.” I feel horrible for thrusting so much responsibility onto him and have to keep reminding myself he is only seven.

Forty minutes later, I am sure we are lost. We are surrounded by mountains and rocky fields that seem hardly capable of sustaining the cows grazing there. I haven’t seen a single vehicle or person since we left town. We’ve been off-road for twenty minutes, steadily climbing a rough, rocky route. Suddenly, the GPS

announces, “You have arrived at your destination.”

I stop the car in the shade of a gray limestone formation, idling, not bothering to get out because there isn’t anything to see. Dirt. Scrub. A few unidentifiable trees. I don’t know what I expected but rough camping in the desert wasn’t on the 227

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list. Looking closer at the pile of rocky terrain next to us, it starts to take shape. I put the car into park, climb out and walk around the hil , realizing as soon as I reach the other side that it is an adobe-earth house half-buried into a hil side. I breathe a huge sigh of relief.

An unlocked iron gate leads into a front courtyard, surrounded by a low stone wal . A gnarly olive tree looks right at home with its gray-green foliage, tucked as it is between stone wal and fountain. The fountain is dry and obviously hasn’t been used in years.

Not knowing what to expect, I knock on the front door, though it’s fairly obvious no one is here or has been here in a very long time.

Hektor joins me carrying his littlest sister. “She’s wet.”

Atso reaches for me, and as I take her I realize she’s soaking wet. “Oh!”

Prepared, Hektor hands me the diaper bag and together we manage to get her changed without having to lay her on the rocky ground to do it.

“Are we staying here?”

“Yes. I just don’t know how to get inside.”

Hektor points to a combination lock similar to the one at Sea Cliff Road. I try Sea Cliff’s combination and it works. “Wel , that doesn’t seem very safe. Your father should have them programmed with different numbers.”

Hektor laughs at my censuring tone as we go back to the car to get the other children. It doesn’t hit me until we’re settled inside the house that I don’t know if Thomas is okay or not. We haven’t heard from him. I am hiding out in the middle of the desert with four smal children, waiting for him to come and save the day, but what if he never shows up?

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And we only have enough food for a few days.

And I don’t have a cel phone.

What was I thinking?

* * * *

“Watch your mouth!” I look up to see that he is unpacking the bag I loaded with guns and ammo. “And put that down!”

I hurry across the room and put al the weapons back into the bag. Hektor looks like he is going to cry.

Pul ing him against me, I hug him. “I’m sorry I yel ed. I don’t want you cursing, and I don’t want you to touch these guns. I shouldn’t have brought guns. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He hugs me tightly. “I want to protect you. I wil not let anyone put a bul et in your head like they did my grandfather.”

I sit in a chair and take his hands in mine. “Oh, Hektor. This has been so hard on you.”

“My mother is dead.”

“No. Your father has gone to rescue your mother.”

He shakes his head and walks away, leaving me overcome with emotion. The boy obviously believes his mother isn’t coming home. God damn it, Thomas. You should be here with us. What is taking you so long?

I can’t fault the boy for his fears. I’m worried too. I never dreamed Thomas would be gone so long. Or Garrett. If I hadn’t spoken with him yesterday I might 229

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be worried something had happened to Garrett too, but I did, and I can’t afford to let my imagination make me start thinking the worst.

Thinking quickly, I ral y spirits with a game. “Let’s search the house.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything. Everything. Let’s discover its secrets.”

It’s a very smal house. There is a main room that doubles as living room and dining area, a smal kitchen with a wood fueled stove, two bedrooms, one with a ful bed, one with bunk beds, and a shared bathroom.

I sit on the lowest bed, ready to cry. Staying here seems absolutely impossible. Maybe if it was just me…but kids need stuf . As I watch the four of them investigate each nook and cranny with wonder I realize they might be better equipped for this adventure than I am. Hektor discovers a door in the floor. A quick look reveals a below ground cistern. There is no electricity and no refrigeration, leaving us to rely on kerosene, battery operated lanterns, and a few candles.

Outside I find an electrical panel, generators, batteries, and cables leading to solar panels. Inside, there is no refrigerator. Why? I do find an ice chest. And an ancient web and aluminum lawn chaise which I drag from the cel ar to the front courtyard. Sitting in the sun always makes the most dire of circumstances seem not quite so bad.

Time ticks by very slowly in a desert, and it’s too quiet. Aside from the delighted squeals of the children chasing smal lizards around the courtyard for entertainment, we are surrounded by a most strange silence. Even the light breeze that comes through mid-day offers only a soft stirring of the leaves. After 230

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four hours I’m going stark raving mad. Worried about what happens after nightfal , I’m not entirely certain we can stay. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so isolated. Are there bears here? Coyotes? Rattlesnakes? Crap. I don’t know anything about Nevada.

I won’t al ow the children to explore beyond the stone wal .

After taking stock of our dwindling supplies—kids eat a lot—it appears a trip back into the smal town of Ely seems paramount to our being able to stay here. I wish I’d have thought of that while I was pumping gas, but then I had no idea where I was going.

Honestly, we could get by for a few days but I tel myself we need stuf , and we do. If nothing else, for my own sanity I need to feel prepared for anything and right now I don’t. Once in town I realize my shopable list is fairly short: rice, beans, canned goods, apples, bananas and granola not because they don’t have more to offer, but because without refrigeration, I seem at a loss. I make up for lack of variety with vast bottles of juice then as an afterthought add olive oil, salt, and some bottles of spice. Just because I’l be making simple meals, doesn’t mean they have to taste bad. For me, I add herbal tea because my nerves are shot. Several different types of crackers, cereal, powdered milk and peanut butter are added to the cart at the last minute.

We hurry in and out, but stil , a pregnant woman with four kids in tow gets noticed. I regret drawing attention to ourselves, but also know I couldn’t have left the children in the wilderness. I thought we were scot-free, but then the checkout girl asked, “New to these parts?”

Why do people in smal towns have to be so damn friendly?

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“Just passing through,” I lie, smiling widely. “Going home to be with my family.

You know, for when the baby comes.”

She nods, stil scanning items, and pops her gum. “You’l need some help.”

I laugh, lying through my teeth, “Between my mom, two aunts, and three sisters, I’l have plenty of help.”