“Not if you already found one of them dead,” she murmured. “It doesn’t seem to make a difference to anybody. Death is just one more thing they’re prepared to do for whatever this whole thing is about. This was just stupid governments playing against governments.”
“What’s this about finding a man dead?” her mom asked curiously.
Gizella looked at her in surprise. “That’s right. You don’t know.” She turned to Baylor and said, “Can you bring her up to speed?” And she listened, while he recounted finding the body of one of the men who had kidnapped them, likely the one trying to get Gizella.
“Interesting,” her mom said. “I can’t say that I’m at all upset that he’s gone. He had eyes on my daughter right from the beginning.”
“It wasn’t right, but you can see why it could happen,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”
Her mom looked at him in surprise and then gave a delighted laugh. “She is, indeed, but she doesn’t believe it.”
“She hasn’t been told enough then,” he said.
“Maybe so, but, then again, she’s very much a realist,” she said, with a bright smile. “And she doesn’t take what other people say very easily.”
“Well, I did at one time,” she said. “I was young and naive once, just like everybody else, but I grew up,” she said. But even saying that, it didn’t change anything. She had been young and naive, and she had grown up, and she had certainly appreciated all the changes that she had gone through, but it was such a strange state to even look back at that earlier stage of her life. It just seemed so long ago and also useless. She groaned, and she looked down at her father.
Then she leaned over, kissed him gently on the cheek, and whispered, “Goodbye, Dad.” And dammit if there wasn’t an odd heavy rattling sound working up through his chest. She stared in shock as it exhaled through his lips, and he fell silent.
*
Baylor held her close against his chest. As soon as he saw what had happened, he pulled her back ever-so-slightly and just hung on. When the realization actually worked its way through, and she realized her father had just died while she was holding his hand, she turned and buried her face into Baylor’s shirt.
Even now, he looked over at her mother to see her standing there, still holding her husband’s other hand and gently stroking the skin on his fingers. And he knew that she wouldn’t make the rest of that ninety days. They’d be lucky if they even got her home alive. It was such a sad state, as Gizella had said.
He wrapped his arms a little tighter around her and just held her close. Obviously the two women were dealing with a very difficult emotional time, but he was more worried about the mother than he was the daughter. He was actually afraid she would collapse on the spot. He gave Gizella a gentle hug and whispered in her ear, “Better see to her. She’s about to drop.”
Gizella pulled back slightly, looked up at him, then pivoted to look at her mother and raced to her side. “Mom,” she said, “come here. Come sit down.” Her mother let herself be placed in the seat beside her father’s bed.
She stared at her husband, shook her head, and whispered, “I really didn’t expect him to go before me.” She looked over at her daughter, then gently reached up, stroked her cheek, and said, “But now I feel like I can go.”
Gizella just shook her head, wordless, as Baylor looked on. He walked over, bent down beside the mother, and said, “Do you think you can you make it back to the US?”
She gave him the briefest of smiles and shook her head. “I didn’t quite tell you all of it,” she said, casting a glance to her daughter. “I said the ninety days was given four weeks ago. I saw the doctor again, just before we left on the trip, and that’s why I really wanted you to come. He told me that I probably wouldn’t last the week.”
Gizella just stared, her mouth dropping open. “A week?”
Her mother said, “I likely won’t make it through the weekend.”
“Can I get you anything?” Baylor asked.
She sighed gently and said, “What I’d really like is a chance to say goodbye to him and to the world around me. I’m not saying I’m ready to die right this moment,” she said. “And I don’t know that it’ll be a week versus a month versus maybe even a year,” she said. “Doctors are not always right. But can you take my daughter outside, so I can just sit here alone with him for a moment?”
At that, Gizella wanted to protest, and he saw it, but he held out a hand and said, “Come on. It’s your mother’s wish.” Gizella nodded slowly, then walked over and gave her father another kiss and whispered goodbye, then gave her mom a long hug and kissed her too. Gizella let Baylor lead her outside. He stood at the doorway, as he watched the old woman get up very slowly and move her way closer to stand beside the man she’d spent so much of her life with.
Even as he watched, she lay down and placed her head against his chest. Gizella stepped up to look through the window, and he heard her catching her breath.
“It’s amazing to see them like this, isn’t it?” he said. She nodded, overcome by tears. “It’s a good thing,” he said.
“It’s a good thing for them,” she said. “But it’s damn hard for anybody left behind.”
He held her for a long moment, then pulled out his phone and quickly sent a text to Hudson, letting him know the news and asking him to pass it on to the rest of the team.
“What are you doing?” she asked, still resting against his chest,
