I raised my hand, reaching for her, and she took my hand, kissing it.
All the world was right.
I couldn’t talk as there was a tube down my throat. I made a signal like I wanted to write something. Someone placed a pen in my right hand and paper in the left. I wrote, “Tube out, please.”
They laughed.
Throughout the day, I got bits and pieces of the story.
* * *
I was attacked by Zaul’s friends, who had somehow crossed paths with and been hired by the foreman. A nasty combination. Unfortunately for them, after killing me, their escape was hindered by several hundred Nicaraguan farmers. In pretty bad shape themselves, they were turned over to my good friends the chief of police and the mayor of León. Their futures are not bright.
Zaul called his dad, who immediately dispatched the jet, which landed on the highway about seven miles from the plantation. Paulo drove us down the mountain, Leena grabbed her passport from the house, and we met the plane as it was landing. They loaded me up, turned around, and took off before Nicaraguan authorities ever knew they had a plane in their airspace. Given the speed of the G5, we landed in Miami a little over an hour later. I died twice on the plane; both times Leena brought me back. I died a third time in the ambulance, where the paramedics shocked me until they got me to the hospital. In the truck and on the plane, Leena had cradled me while also attempting to keep pressure on the bleeding, keeping my face elevated; she’d also packed me in as much ice as she could get to lower my pulse—which explained the cold. At the hospital, Colin had the best trauma surgeons he could find on standby, and they immediately went to work. Colin also went to work finding B-positive blood, which he said he found in a myriad of donors. He laughed as he told me. One unnamed pop diva, himself, Zaul, my new friend Liv-ed (aka William Alfred Butler), and Leena. I’d lost most of my blood, so it took a lot of donors to bring me back. Colin said if I started speaking in rhyme, that’d be the Mr. Butler part of me. Once I’d been stabilized, and my collarbone set and my shoulder put back in its socket and the cartilage in my knee repaired, Shelly was brought in to put my face back, as the guys who attacked me had done a pretty good job of carving it off—which explained the blood. Shelly had done what she could and chances were good that I’d smile again, but it’d take a while. They were afraid that I’d lose my right eye, but she thought she was able to save it. We wouldn’t know that until they pulled the gauze off sometime in the next few days. Colin continued to say that Leena had not left my side since I’d been there and she had kept me alive—when she got off the plane, she was covered in me. And I’d been in a medically induced coma for a week in order to give my body a chance to heal.
I told him I felt rested enough.
He said Zaul had been living in the house. “No piercings. No friends. He’s been hanging out with Maria, and the first night we were all home together, Marguerite made dinner. When we were finished, he got up, disappeared into the kitchen, and had most of the dishes cleaned by the time we got there. Strange. What did you do to my son? Oh, and did you know he plays the drums? Pretty good, too.” He finished by telling me that everyone had been worried, and in an uncharacteristic show of emotion, he had teared up and said he, too, was worried I might not make it. I held up my left wrist and asked if anyone had seen my watch. He said Zaul had been wearing it, keeping it safe until I got well. I told him Zaul could keep it. I’d get another. Not sure that one was good for me. In the time that I’d had it, Maria had been hurt, I lost my fiancée, I nearly drowned in a well, and I had been attacked and nearly bled to death. I told him I’d find another or not wear one.
He also told me that once Zaul had explained the situation in Valle Cruces, he sent the jet back and Zaul returned with Paulo and Isabella. They’d been here ever since. Maria and Isabella had become fast friends. Colin explained that neither Paulo nor Isabella had passports, but that he had contacts in immigration who fast-tracked a visa. He shrugged. “It pays to have friends.”
Three days later, they unwrapped my face, and thanks to Shelly and her gifted hands, I could still see out of my right eye. Things were foggy, as was expected, but I’d recover. The first image I saw when I lifted my lids was Maria’s smiling face. She pressed her nose to mine. “In case you’re wondering, you look a lot worse than me.”
Later that afternoon, they had me up, walking the halls, and straining my muscles in therapy. After two weeks in the hospital, when I finally asked if I could go home, Shelly relented and said, “Yes—” She then looked at Leena. “Provided she goes with you.”
Leena knew the story of Shelly and me, so when she sensed Shelly wanted a moment with me alone, she disappeared in search of bad hospital coffee. When Leena left, Shelly held my hand and said that operating on me was one of the more difficult things she’d ever done. But she was glad she could do it. She laughed and said that putting my face back together helped patch up a few things in her. When she finished, I told her I was sorry for keeping the truth of me from her. That she deserved better. That if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t do it that way. And that I hoped she found someone that made her happy.
She nodded toward the door and said, “You can be kind of thick when it comes to women and the signals they send, so I’m going to help you out a bit.” I waited. “That woman—” She pointed in the direction that Leena had walked. “That gorgeous Nicaraguan goddess, who’s got all of the rest of us looking in the mirror to see how we measure up, has fallen for you. She’s crazy for you. You realize this, yes?”
“Well, actually—”
“Charlie—” She laughed. “You need a keeper.” The laughter was healing. For both of us. “Have you told her what you do for a living? Your occupation?”
I held up a finger. “Previous occupation. With emphasis on ‘did for a living.’”
She smiled. “Well?”
“Yes. She knows.”
“You may as well know now…we may have patched you back together, but she’s the reason you made it here alive. Somehow”—she shook her head—“she kept you alive on that plane. And she hasn’t left your side since you arrived.”
I turned the tables. “Thank you for what you did for me.”
She kissed me. “My pleasure, but I’d rather not ever do it again. Now don’t change the subject, you do understand why she’s still here?”
“Well, I guess—”
“Charlie?”
“I don’t know, I—”
“Let me put it in terms you can understand: She’s ‘all in.’”
That did make sense.
* * *
The hospital discharged me and Colin took us to his house where, in about fifteen minutes, I’d convinced him to take us in the helicopter to Bimini, that the saltwater and ocean air would do us some good. Leena helped persuade him, as she’d never ridden in a helicopter and never been to the islands. By sundown, fifteen days after the attack, unstable on my feet and trying to wean myself from pain medication, I was walking on the beach in Bimini, Paulo and Isabella plucking lobster from the rocks, and Leena’s arm tucked in mine. And while her heart tugged on mine, so did the one thing I had yet to confess.
For the life of me, I just could not figure out how I was going to tell Leena.
Colin left us alone for three days, allowing me to introduce them to the island. I showed them where Hack had lived and where we worked. Paulo was incredibly interested in his tools and how we used them. I showed him the unfinished skiff that lay in his shack collecting dust, and he just could not get over how smooth the edges were and how seamless the boards met one another. He wiped his fingers along one of the joints and said, “It’s magic.”
Morning and evening, the four of us spent hours walking the beach. I tried to get my strength back, which was slow in coming, and Paulo and Isabella sought to catch every lobster on Bimini, as they’d developed quite the taste for large crustaceans. I taught them how to drive my boat and discovered that not only was Leena good at it but she enj
oyed going very fast. At one point, idling back into the dock, with her hair blown into a wild state of disarray in which she looked like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket, she turned and joked with Isabella, “You know, life just gets so much better at a hundred and ten.”
Leena’s love of speed was exceeded only by that of her daughter, who looked like someone had not only plugged her into an electrical outlet, but set her hair on fire and looped the sides of her smile around her ears.
Colin offered to return them in his jet, which they’d accepted. Leena was hesitant to be overly forward, but I could tell from her body language and from Isabella’s outright requests that she was wanting to make plans for my return “visit.”
The clock was ticking.
The night before they left, Paulo orchestrated circumstances in which Leena and I had time on the beach to ourselves. She could tell I was trying to get something out of my mouth so she walked quietly beside me—evidence of how comfortable she’d grown around me. There was no easy way to do this, so I finally just dove in. “Leena, do you remember, prior to Hurricane Carlos, when an American company made an offer to buy Mango Café from your father?”
She was surprised I knew the name. “Yes.”
“You remember how much they offered?”
“Ten cents.”
“You remember the second offer.”
“Twelve.”
“And do you remember when someone bought the competition and flooded the market with coffee so cheap that you couldn’t sell your own?”
A surprised nod.
“You remember your father slaughtering his own animals to feed his workers?”
“I remember.”
“You remember him working without sleep to harvest what would be his last crop, thinking by some miracle that he might salvage something and be able to feed his family and his workers?”
“Charlie, what are you getting at?”
If I hadn’t hurt her yet, the last question certainly would. “Do you remember climbing down from a mango tree, placing a rain jacket across your father’s shoulders, and crying in the mud next to him as the world he’d built crumbled around you both?”
Her eyes turned cold and welled up with tears. Her voice rose as she spoke. “Charlie?”
“Leena, I did that. I am that company.”
We had walked knee-deep into a tidal pool rolling in gentle waves. Disbelief spread across her face as she shook her head. “How?”
I told her. I told her everything. Told her how I’d caused it, then hired people to spy on their misery and report back so we could strategize how to capitalize on that, turn the screws, and make it worse. Then do it again.
When I’d finished, Leena was staring at me. Remembering events and the pain that accompanied them. My voice fell to a whisper. “Do I scare you now?”
Somewhere in there, Paulina and I came face-to-face with the real me. No more smoke and mirrors. She took a step back, put her hands on her hips, and considered me. Her face told me she didn’t like him any more than I did. But this is where her reaction to me and my reaction to me parted. This is where she did the unexpected.
Leena had a tenacity unlike any woman I’d ever met, and it was about to surface. While her emotions were very real and they gnawed at her with a raw sincerity, she was listening to something deeper. She was listening to her will, not letting what she felt dictate what she would do. Didn’t let it dictate her life.
And given my experience—with both myself and other women—I wasn’t expecting that.
She shook her head like she was shaking off a perception. Or swatting a gnat. As if something in her gut was having an argument with her eyes and ears. Her will was telling the rest of her what was about to happen.
Careful not to bump the screws in my collarbone or tug too hard on a shoulder that was still pretty loose in its socket, she pulled me toward her and kissed me. Gingerly. Tenderly. Purposefully. Holding it long enough for me to taste the salt in her tears. When she spoke, she was close and I felt her breath on my face. She shook her head ever so slightly. “You’re right. You’re touching some deep places in me. They’re tender. They hurt. There is a part of me that wants to walk away from you so that you can’t hurt me anymore. As if my turning away from you hurts you in return and you get what you got coming. What you deserve. And you’re right, I don’t like the man who did those things.” She held my hand and wrapped her arms inside mine as we continued walking. “But can I tell you something you might not know?”
“Please.”
“My father used to hire men with troubled pasts. Prison. Everything. Give them a second chance when no one else would. One of them—a murderer—asked him one time while they were picking beans shoulder to shoulder, ‘How does a man wipe his life clean?’ You know what my father said to that man?”
I shook my head.
“He said, ‘With the one that you have.’”
She leaned her head on my shoulder and turned to look at me. We were walking along the northern end of the island—within a few feet of where Shelly had returned in the helicopter and given me my watch. Atlantis under our feet. She said, “Can you guess who that man was?”
“No.”
“Paulo.” She registered my reaction with a slight smile. “You look surprised.”
“I didn’t see that one coming.”
She nodded. “My father would have liked you.”
The amazing thing about Leena is that while I had pushed her away, she’d not recoiled. What I’d thought would push her away had brought her closer. I said, “I saw you one time.” A single nod—gesturing toward my past. “Back then.”
She looked surprised. “When?”
“After we foreclosed. You’d lost everything. Parents. Mango Café. Your husband. You were pregnant, walking down the mountain. I’d been in León packing up my office at the hotel. Before I flew out, I rented a bike and rode up in the mountains. I was wrestling with what we—with what I—had done to these innocent, unsuspecting, hardworking, beautiful people. And when I saw them walking down the mountain, and you specifically, I knew I’d done the one thing that Hurricane Carlos and the loss of everything else could not do.”
“What’s that?”
“Broken your hope.”
She weighed her head side to side, considering my words. “Bruised it? Yes.” Then she cracked a smile and shook her head. “Never broke it.”
How I love that woman.
* * *
The next day, before they climbed into Colin’s jet, Paulo shook my hand and held it several seconds. “Gracias, hermano. You dig well.” Isabella clung to my leg. I kissed her forehead and the two disappeared inside the plane. Leena touched my hand and then began climbing the steps. Reaching the door to the plane, she stopped and returned. She lifted my Costas off my face so she could see my eyes and placed her finger on my lips. “You don’t scare me, Charlie. Never have.”
The plane lifted off and quickly disappeared into a blue sky, carrying a part of my heart with it. Colin, Marguerite, and the kids had gone with them, as they planned to route through Costa Rica and spend a week or two at the house. That left me alone on my island. As my heart disappeared into the sky, one emotion bubbled up: Her forgiving me is one thing. Me forgiving me is another.
* * *
I spent the week roaming the beaches of Bimini. Getting my strength back. Then a second week during which I’d walk for miles at a time. Somewhere in the third week, I actually went for a jog and ended up running several hours, clearing my head. Standing barefoot on the beach, sweat pouring off me, I knew what needed to be done.
* * *
I bought a ticket to Boston. Time to see the old man.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I didn’t bother to make an appointment, as I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get one. Besides, the only card I had left to play was surprise, and I would need it if I had any thought of winning this hand. Pickering and Sons had moved, so I gave the cabbie the address a
nd he dropped me off on the curb. Modern, trendy, the building reflected Marshall’s desire to remain relevant as well as Brendan’s desire to wrest the company away from him. Fat chance. The conflict between the design and the artwork was thick enough to cut with a knife.
The receptionist’s smile quickly turned to a frown as I walked past her toward the suite of extravagant offices. There were three. Amanda on the left. Brendan on the right, across the hall. Both doors were shut. Marshall’s door stood open in the center. The receptionist offered a verbal protest, but when I ignored her and walked past her, she began quickly dialing. It was too late.
Marshall sat behind his desk staring at one of his three screens covered in numbers that measured the value of his world. He was smiling. He’d aged but he’d aged well. Still trim. Fit. His hair had turned completely white. He stood to meet me. “Charlie, you should have called.”
Friendly as ever, he walked around the desk to shake my hand with his right and pat me on the shoulder with his left. His smile said one thing, the coldness in his eyes said another. He called past me, “Amanda. Brendan.” I heard a noise behind me as both Amanda and Brendan walked in. Brendan had plumped up a bit. Amanda had not. She walked up and hugged me, kissed me on the cheek. Amanda was as beautiful as ever, but she, too, had aged and the years had not been kind. She looked older, less vibrant. She, like her father, looked cold. Pilates, yoga, personal trainer, whatever, she’d obviously done them all and it showed. As did the plastic surgery both above and below her neckline, which did not mask the sadness beneath her eyes or in her chest. I almost felt sorry for Brendan. A decade “in the family” and the whipped look on his face told the story. He’d been conquered and, like a dog pulled on his collar by his chain, had become Marshall’s yes-man. His face was rounder. Belly, too. Bags beneath his eyes. I acknowledged him but did not offer to shake his hand. “Gunslinger. How’s that moving target treating you?”
He laughed an embarrassed chuckle.