Page 100 of Reckless Woman
“Edier, of course!” she cries, patting her chest. “I’d forgotten how talented he is at drawing. It must be him.”
“Edier?” I ask, frowning.
Any joy at solving the mystery drops from her face. “He arrived with his mother, Salome, a few months ago,” she confides. “She was married to a man high up in the Hurtados Cartel, before he was arrested in one of the raids by the Special Operations Command.”
“What happened to her?” I ask, sensing an incoming tragedy.
“She died soon after. Her husband treated her very badly for years. Sometimes a free bird cannot cope with her newfound liberty.”
Like me.I would have killed myself with drink and drugs, if Joseph hadn’t saved me.
“She took her own life. Edier found her, and he’s refused to say another word since. I can’t bring myself to send such a traumatized child away to an orphanage in Bogotá. Instead, I make sure that he’s fed, and that he has a bedroom in one of the apartments. He’s a devil to catch and wash, though,” she confides with a sigh. “And he refuses to change his clothes. I just hope that the space and security here will be enough to mend his broken heart.”
“He’s so young to have had such awful things happen to him.”
Gabriela nods in agreement. “I worry about the effects of his mother’s death. A boy’s childhood paints a picture of the man he becomes.”
I think of Joseph.
I think of a farmhouse in Texas.
“Gabriela,” I say, pulling her up again. “Do you have a cell or a laptop I can use?”
“But you have your own,” she replies, looking confused. “Señor Grayson left them in your room the day you arrived. I put them in the top drawer of your dresser.”
“Do you have the internet, too?”
She nods, again puzzled by my sudden agitation.
“Do you mind if I cut our walk short tonight? There’s something I need to check.”
“Of course, I’ll get one of the girls to bring the internet code up to you.”
“Thank you.” I slip my arms from hers and give her a kiss on her smooth cheek. She looks tired again tonight. Worry lines are etched into the skin around her eyes. There’s something wrong, but she refuses to say what. Every time I ask, she bats away my concern with a delicate eye roll and a gentle slap on my arm.
The next hour is an extreme test of my patience. I can’t run yet, so the journey back to my room is a ten-minute hobble of grit and frustration. Then, I have to find an adaptor for my iPad and wait for the damn thing to charge…
With shaking fingers, I type in the name of the small town that Joseph took me to in Texas. Cheap real estate listings flash up, along with some kind of planning application, the outrage over the closure of a local school…untilfinally, I find what I’m looking for.
A shiver blasts up and down my spine when I see the photograph. It’s the same place where he fucked me on the hood of his black Dodge as if the world was going to end.It’s where he told me he was coming to die.
With my heart burning, I read about a boy with gray-blue eyes whose entire family was murdered by a father with undiagnosed Schizophrenia. I read about how the father tried to shoot him, as well, but that he’d missed and ended up killing himself. I read about how no one found him for a whole night and day, and when they’d finally arrived, he was sitting like a frozen statue on the front steps, next to the dead body of his mother. I read about how he’d refused to speak afterward, his hurt and confusion wider than an ocean. And when I finish, I can’t see the iPad screen anymore through a veil of my tears.
Oh God, Joseph. How are you still living and breathing with so many ghosts chained to your soul?
I understand now. I understand his wall of silence. The clues have been there all along, he just couldn’t tell me about it himself. He hasn’t recovered that part of his voice yet, because those knife-like sentences are still stuck in a nightmare.
Scraping the tears from my eyes, I type in his wife’s name.
More heartbreak.
More pain.
I see a boy who’d died at barely a year old.
Caleb.
I see a laugh in action, with baby teeth and arms outstretched.