Nova says, “You really going to go through with this?”
“I can’t stay here anymore.”
“But where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know. California, maybe.”
“Do you have money?”
“Enough to get me started.”
“And”—he clears his throat—“what about the other thing?”
“Atticus said he’ll give me a hand with that.”
Nova’s eyes get really big, and he pouts his lip. “What—you don’t want my help?”
“Like you said before, I’m starting to take advantage of you being a nice guy.”
“I was just saying that.”
“I know. But you’re not involved in any of this shit. I started it, which means I need to finish it.”
“It’s not going to be easy.”
“I know.”
“The man’s going to be very well protected.”
“I know.”
“But that’s not going to stop you at all, is it?”
I shake my head. “When he finds out what I did to his son, that truce my father set up will be finished. Nobody in my family will be safe. So I have to kill him before he kills them.”
Nova looks away at a stain on the wall. “And then that’s it?”
I nod. “That’s it.”
“You really think you can walk away from it, just like that?”
I think of that gradual decline I’ve been on, the slope so steep Walter said I could never find my way back. “I hope so.”
“Because … I mean, this is what you do. What you are.”
“Every time I take a life, a piece of me falls away. I don’t want to get to the point where there’s nothing left.”
Nova touches the stubble on his chin. “It could be the opposite. Every time you take a life, a piece is added on. You grow stronger. Did you ever think of that?”
“I have.”
“And?”
I step forward, place my hand on Nova’s arm. “And I’m still not changing my mind.”
The lobby door opens again; this time James walks through.
I nod to him, then think of something and glance back at Nova. “I’m glad you didn’t die.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“For a while there I thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, and let me guess—for a while there you regretted never sleeping with me.”
“Not quite. But I did miss you. You’ve been a good friend to me.” I pause, then say, “So what did they do to you in there?”
“Locked me in a room, asked me a bunch of questions.”
“How did you get out?”
“Walter came in.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He came in and sat down at the table and offered me a job.”
“What’d you say?”
“Me?” Nova grins. “I told him I’m retired.”
Coda
Despite the fact this is my car, it has a different feel to it, a car that is mine but is not mine. When I get the chance, I’ll get rid of it, buy a new one. A new used one, because it’s not like I have that much money. But still, first things first …
I pull into my mother’s driveway. It’s almost noontime. Thankfully this is one of her days off work. She’s probably sitting in the living room, watching her soaps, or some talk show, or some game show. Maybe she’s knitting. Maybe she’s reading. Maybe she’s playing video games.
Fact is, I don’t know much about my mother.
I don’t know her favorite song, her favorite color, her favorite meal. I don’t know what kind of prayers she says before she goes to bed. I don’t know how she spends her weekends or who her friends are. All I know is that she is my mother, I am her daughter, and to save her—to save my sister and my brother-in-law, my nephews, to save everyone I care about—I have to kill Ernesto Diaz.
How I’m going to do this, I don’t know. My mother will take one look at my face, see the bruises, and immediately start to worry. No matter what I tell her, she won’t believe me. In fact, it would be best to leave right now, send her a postcard, an email. But I can’t do that. She deserves more. Not the truth, exactly—I will not tell her about her husband, cannot tell her about her husband—but a half-truth, a quarter-truth, just enough so she will understand I am going away and will never be back.
I turn off the car and then just sit there, listening to the engine tick.
I glance at the phone on the passenger seat. Zane’s phone.
I pick it up and scroll through the recent calls list.
I highlight the number with the 011 + 33 in front of it, the foreign exchange.
I press SEND and place the phone to my ear and wait until it’s connected and then wait four rings before a familiar yet unfamiliar voice answers with one simple word:
“Yes?”
I close my eyes. Think about hanging up. Think about crying. Think about screaming.
I say, “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Zane is dead.”
Silence.
“I don’t know what you’ve become or why you became that way, but you disgust me.”
More silence.
“You are no longer my father.”
Even more silence.
“You should have killed me back in that alleyway in Paris, because the next time we meet …”
Still more silence, the quiet so heavy that I wonder if maybe the connection has been lost. But no, I can hear him breathing, a soft, shallow sound, and I picture him wherever he is in the world right this moment, sitting in a chair, by a window, staring out at a world he doesn’t agree with, that doesn’t make sense to him, a world in which everyone else are bad guys and he is the hero.
I open my mouth, start to say something else, but then decide I’ve already said enough.
I disconnect the call.
I turn off the power.
I toss the phone aside.
Then I get out of the car and start up the walkway to my mother’s house, up the steps to the porch, where I open the screen door and knock. I stand there, waiting,
