PB Fic: The Most Beautiful Flower On Earth - Chapter Seven (Part One)
Title: The Most Beautiful Flower On Earth (7(1)/8)
Author:
burntcircles
Characters/Pairing: Michael Scofield/Sara Tancredi, Jane Phillips, Original Characters
Genre/Rating: Gen (this chapter) / R (for language)
Spoilers: S1, S2, S3
Length: ~ 6,000 words
Disclaimer: Prison Break and its characters are a property of Fox Studios. The original characters and this AU storyline are mine.
Summary: Michael's journey, years after the escape from Sona, through the eyes of an original character.
Author's Note: First work of fan fiction. Another long chapter, so I've cut this into two.
Previously: Chapters 1. Joe, 2. Us, 3. Confluence, 4. Remembrance, 5. Michael (Part One), 5. Michael (Part Two), 6. Ann
“Yeah,” she said, hardly missing a beat, her voice managing to make the single word surprisingly melodious. It was enough to make me forget the slight but definite faltering I sensed just seconds before. “Nice to meet you, Ann.”
And just like that, we began our own muted dance of war.
I, a general’s daughter, rode off, confident, sure of my victory. But a string of skirmishes does not make a war, and I would soon learn that you could take your smartest men, your most formidable artillery, an indomitable will and the element of surprise, and still lose--simply because the foe, not seeing you as one, met your blows with different tools, the kind against which you had nothing.
It was a war she won before we even began.
oOo
7. Down the Saddle Path
First I take you back to that noon, in the humble hut where it would all end, me with the radio and Joe’s surprise visitor choosing, despite my invitation, to stay outside with her backpack by the steps to wilt in the heat. I turned up the radio’s volume and the scratchy, old-fashioned violin-and-piano histrionics that preceded the daily post-lunch vernacular drama sprung lustily from the small speakers. I realized then that I’d missed DJ Magnolia’s five-minute public service segment and that I had an hour to kill until I heard from her again. So I rose, placed the radio on the table, stood in the doorway like the heiress to the manor born, and invited her to lunch.
She was hugging herself under a blazing sun so unusual for July, was slightly hunched over even, as if caught in a blizzard without a coat. Briefly I wondered if she was nervous, but she straightened up, met my eyes, and smiled, and I forgot about it. “I already ate,” she said.
“Strange,” I said. “I didn’t see you on the plane.”
“Oh, I took a falowa from Banaag,” she replied.
That was a surprise. It was a route close to none of the outsiders took, because although Banaag was not only poignantly beautiful but also much closer to the mainland, most tourists, with the bay’s choppy waves, preferred the comfort of planes, and Banaag had no airport. So this made her...what? Audacious? Brave enough to offer her life for a sixteen-year-old boy’s? Only under a minute and already so many questions, but the need to rankle the hell out of her overpowered the more pragmatic option of an interrogation.
Disarm now, grill later.
“They left only this morning,” I told her, visualizing a tiara on my head and a scepter in my hand as I leisurely made my way down the steps. “If you’d skipped Banaag you might not have missed him. Just sayin’.” The delivery was perfect; by the time I said, “Just sayin’”, carried with a self-assurance fit for any Head of State, I had come to a complete stop in front of her, my steps underscoring me word for word--except that, vastly miscalculating, I ended up looking up at her, with her, my minion, looking down at me, and I sharply regretted relinquishing my position at the head of the stairs. She merely shrugged, and I was not surprised.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I can wait.”
“Have it your way, then.” Feeling singularly disadvantaged I walked away from her quickly, eager to put some distance between us. Looking up at Joe all the time had given my neck, it seemed, a permanent crick, and she would be the death of me. “Let me guess,” I said, pausing at the hedge and going for one last jab, “you had the lunch special at the Grand Vista Hotel.”
For a moment she seemed truly confused, and then, wonder of wonders, she laughed. “God, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I had stir-fried noodles. The best kind.”
“You mean the ones near the church?” I tossed back, refusing to give her any credit. It was a Lonely Planet feature, even a day-tripper would have known.
“Huh? Uh, no.” She’d sat down on a wooden step and was busy reaching for something in her backpack. “Esther, the lady down the street? I joined her and her husband for lunch. We had bananas, too.” With a soft, “Aha!” she pulled out her hand from inside her bag, and I made sure I’d wiped the surprise from my face by the time she held it out to me. “Want one?”
I looked at the boiled green banana on her upturned palm, distinctly nonplussed. In all my stay in the island I’d never had lunch with Esther--not by design of course, I suppose I just never had the chance to--but the knowledge that this woman had within minutes of her arrival came with a pang, and it was as if by offering the banana she’d thrown down the gauntlet between us. “That’s okay,” I said nonchalantly while mentally unsheathing a sword, “Esther gives these to me all the time.” I rolled my eyes for good measure. “I’m fed up with them, in fact.”
She raised her eyebrows and her smile faltered a bit, but it stayed, and with a slight shrug she withdrew her hand. Just then a commotion of raised voices and frantic running roared from inside the hut, and her eyes widened at me questioningly.
She looked nice, I thought, she really did. She had that doe-eyed look about her that spoke not so much of gullibility as of guilelessness and candor. And, quite possibly, all for show.
“It’s the noon-time drama,” I told her. “I’ll leave the radio here so you can at least have something to listen to. Today Esperanza is resisting the advances of Enrico. Happens every week, but that should keep you entertained.” Her lips formed a silent, “Oh,” and although I thought it served her right to come to an empty house when she was so confident in her welcome that she dawdled, I did feel slightly sorry for her, sitting on the steps of a hut out in the middle of nowhere in the midday heat with nothing for company but a radio spewing words she couldn’t understand.
But there was no room for pity. “I’m having lunch in town,” I said. “I’ll come back in an hour for the radio, if I still have to.” I left without waiting for a reply. When I’d gone far enough I snuck a backward look at her and found her still sitting on the step, watching me go. She gave a quick but jaunty wave, and that settled it.
She won that round. Witch.
oOo
My notebook was waiting for me in the radio station, handed over by DJ Magnolia who was at that moment to me as beatific as Moses come down from the Mount Sinai with The Ten Commandments. Apparently I’d left it on a bench in the town plaza where I’d flagged down a motorcycle-for-hire to take me to Raul’s, and a boy who sold baskets had chased after me and the driver, hollering and waving the notebook aloft to no avail. From the radio station I proceeded to the plaza and I found him in the store with his mother who firmly refused any monetary reward for his son’s good deed, and with that out of the way I had no choice but to resume combat. With stir-friend noodles in my belly and notebook safely in the carrier, I biked back to Joe’s hut.
Walking up to the open door I could hear DJ Magnolia, in her broken English, wade slowly through a list that must have consisted of the usual: toiletries, Swiss Army knives, pairs of festive Havaianas and sunglasses, digital cameras. Other than that, the hut was silent. I made my way up the steps and on the second to the last rung stopped to take a peek into the room before proceeding, my hand pausing in the air before I could knock on the reed wall.
She was asleep, out cold, it seemed. I doubted that she was, at first--her upper body was on Joe’s bed but her legs hung from the side, as if she’d been merely resting. But after a few seconds I heard her slow, rhythmic breaths, and when I took the last steps to the door she did not stir. Lying on her side, her face was nearly buried in the pillow, a corner of which she’d clutched with her fist, and her hipbone jutted out almost painfully under the skin exposed by the loose waistband of her jeans. Too thin, I couldn’t help thinking. With hands like his, Joe needs someone with a little bit more to hold.
I knew it wasn’t fair. How could one compete with a ghost? Perhaps, drugged out on spices I’d combined at the stove in too many failed permutations, I’d clung to the notion that there was even a halfway point in this road to deliverance I so wanted for him. My mind was as torn as my allegiance. It pleased me, this twisted but impressive ideal made flesh in Joe: a fidelity that, seemingly eternal, exceeded all reasonable expectations--hell, even in marriage one vowed to stay together only until death, and she was not even his goddamn wife. But if Joe kept a firm grip on Sara’s memory, it was if he teetered forever between life and death, and that was no way to live.
And yet--
If comfort came in the form of a woman who loved him, that woman would inexorably come under the shadow of the one who had come before her, and would she be happy then, with this indefatigable truth of never quite being enough? Her unhappiness would be his failure, and the futility would further, if not fatally, tear him apart.
Apparently, alone with my thoughts, I did not want for migraine-causers.
I took a step back. The bamboo floor creaked. Her eyes flew open in alarm, and in no time at all she’d grabbed a flashlight and held it with obvious intent.
“It’s just me,” I said quickly, “I was just leaving. I didn’t want to wake you.” Her grip on the flashlight relaxed. Smiling sheepishly, she mumbled an apology, set the flashlight back on the bed, and stood, running a hand through her hair. It had come free of her ponytail, and fell softly, artlessly around her face. I did not expect to like it.
On the radio the parade went on: umbrellas, a baby’s shoe (I could imagine the other half of the pair, rendered useless without its partner, shaking in terror at the prospect of a future in the dustbin), a rosary. She glanced at the radio and the beginnings of a smile tugged at her lips. She looked at me quizzically. “Is this--"
“Yup, our very own lost-and-found.”
The smile broke out, unfettered now, and she said, slightly incredulous, “A shoe.”
“Uh-huh.”
She looked out the window to the sea, and the way the light hit her face made her eyes dance. Standing there by Joe’s bed, looking like she just might belong, I frankly did not know what to make of her.
It wasn’t fair. As Joe had said himself, she was simply a close friend. And though it was tempting to think that, with the dust finally settling, she’d come to pursue a love that she’d secretly nurtured all those years, perhaps she held Joe in the exact same light.
Well, you know what they say about friends and enemies--time enough later to figure out if she was one or the other or, the deadliest kind, both--and how they can never be too close. So I asked her to stay with me while we waited for the boys to return, and if there was any doubt at all that she had set her sights on Joe, it was unequivocally erased in the minutes that followed--for in the half-hour that it took her to follow me to Raul’s house, I stood by the second-floor window that had never, ever, failed me, and I saw her run her fingers over tabletops, chairs, bed, hammock, and books, slowly, tenderly, as if to catch a trail long gone, and she half-laughed, half-cried as she buried her face in a discarded shirt I’d seen on Joe more times than I could count.
oOo
I am filthy, and I got what I deserved. No, it’s true. This thought never leaves me, and that’s only right. Even the priest saw through me, even he couldn’t forgive me. I only wish I’d spared Consuelo the torment of that moment. For as long as I live I will never forget how she nearly came to tears when she held me back, the look of pity and defeat on her face. The children--sometimes I’m afraid to touch them, to taint them with my filth.
But not today. I got a little gift today. She raised her arms up to me, looking at me with so much trust that I saw the past and the future at the same time. Then I took her hand, and you know what she said? She said, “Papa,” and it was as if time stopped, and then you were everywhere, everyone, at once, all over again. Something barged in unbidden, but the second it came to me I knew it was true, like something in my bones, in my blood.
It was happiness I had never known, a happiness I wanted for myself.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a day like this, a day I wake up to asking why you had to die and I get to live, wondering if there was any way to see you again. I don’t know how I made it through all those days. I remember punching a wall in Goa until my fist bled when the question wouldn’t go away, but you didn’t come to make it all better, not like before. I waited, and you didn’t come.
But now, you’re here. You fill this little house, you’re in every face, I hear you in every voice. You whisper in my ear, I hear you above the storm, and your words, your words...You’re here. Don’t leave. I love you. I promise to take care of you now.
You stay yet I can’t touch you. Are my words wrong? If I find the right ones, will you let me? It’s all right, I won’t hurt you. How can I, when you give me so much joy? I promise to take care of you. Give me one last chance.
I’m sorry for all the times I failed you. Please stay. I love you. I love you. I love you. Don’t ever leave me, Sara. Please stay. Just tell me what you want. I’ll do whatever you want. Just stay.
oOo
When she sat down to dinner with me, her eyes were dry and her manner calm, as if nothing had happened, and at that moment I knew how dangerous she could be. She’d brought the radio with her, and as the night-time ballads came on and in the preternatural silence reached into every corner of the house, there was not much need to speak.
I accepted her offer to do the dishes. I offered her a beer but she demurred. Not wishing for alcohol to undermine my wits while she kept hers, I warmed up some milk, settling for masala tea.
Returning from the pantry, I stopped by the counter and tried to see the house as she would have, entering it for the first time. Thankfully, it was tidy; not spotless, like Joe’s, but Raul had taken the effort, as always, to clear up the worst of Jay’s and Ed’s clutter before heading out. There were definite signs of active, fascinating life: seedlings in the kitchen, well-worn running shoes and sandals by the door, Jay’s tripod by the stairs, a deck of cards next to thick, dog-eared books with sticky notes poking out between the pages, towering piles of CDs. And of course, Raul’s note on the table, held in place by tape, three lemons, and a large glass bead.
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” I explained to her when, finally sitting down to tea, the radio silent, she pointed out the lemons guarding the note conspicuously at one end of the table. “Jay likes to rub it in when life gives me shit.”
“And the pendant?” she asked.
“The bead, you mean. Ed made it himself, as a characterization and fingerprinting test.” She was doing a mighty fine job pretending not to know a single thing about us, and I fought to keep my anger in check. “He’s an archeologist, you see,” I continued, and I was proud of the way I sounded--so relaxed, even as I uncovered the pot and pressed the seeds inside it with unnecessary force.
She made a move to pick it up. “May I?”
“Sure.” She held the bead between her thumb and index finger, rolling it this way and that against the light. It glinted prettily. She reached across the table to set it back on the note and I returned to crushing the cinnamon, but her breath hitched so audibly that I looked back up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I nearly dropped it, that’s all. I thought I’d broken it.” But I knew she’d seen the “Bye, Consuelo,” Joe had written, so neatly, as far as he possibly could from Jay’s sketch of a cow’s ass that occupied pride-of-place in the middle of the note, and oh, the urge to call her out on her bullshit was so strong that the cinnamon died a thousand deaths under my teaspoon.
I waited for her to run a loving fingertip over Joe’s words. Instead, she looked at me, her eyes steady. “I thought your name’s Ann,” she said, with a hint of accusation.
“It is,” I replied, inwardly taken aback by the extent to which she would carry the pretense of being in the dark. But I was as determined to play along. “It’s short for Anecita.” I lifted my cup to my mouth, watching her for the slightest reaction. “Actually, my full name is Consuelo Anecita Aguirre Villanueva. What’s yours, Jane?”
Her face gave nothing away. “Jane Phillips.”
So, Jane, do you know what you’re getting yourself into? “So, Ms. Phillips, think you can wait for four days?”
Another small smile teased her mouth and she quickly cast her gaze down to her cup. “Yes,” she said, breathing in the tea. Her eyes widened in amazement. “I knew it,” she gushed, “it’s masala.”
“You’ve had this before?”
“Oh, yes, but only the cheap sidewalk kind. I had to make the money last.”
God, is she Joe’s bodyguard? She’s followed him practically everywhere. “You’ve been to India, then?”
“Yes.”
She left it at that. Holding the cup with both hands, she looked up at Raul’s chart on the large whiteboard on one kitchen wall. On it were the names of all of the channel’s islands, arrows branching out from each to indicate the genera, and all the corresponding species and sub-species, of orchids it hosted: Spathoglottis, Phalaenopsis, Paphionedilum, Aerides, Bulbophyllum, Vanda, Dendrobium...It seemed to me meaningless, random squiggles on white, but I remembered all too clearly how Raul agonized over each name, as he would over a lover.
“Plants,” she said after a patently thoughtful silence. “They’re looking for plants.”
“Not quite,” I replied. “They’re looking for the most beautiful flower on earth.” Her eyes whipped back to me so quickly, you’d have thought her astonishment was genuine. She fell quiet, and her next question came like a bolt out of the blue.
“Why three?” she asked.
“Why three what?”
“Why three lemons?”
Yes, why indeed? I gave it a thought then decided to go for the jugular with a supremely confident blanket statement. “Well,” I said, keeping my smile sweet with a light sprinkling of smug, “that must mean they love me.”
All that earned me was a mellow laugh, which made me hate her, because I could clearly see Joe lighting up at the sound. Later that night though I did wonder: Why three lemons? And the image of three lemons dancing in a row, the sparkly words on their little chests spelling out I LOVE YOU, for all its silliness did warm my heart, and it would not have occurred to me if it had not been for her, and then I was ashamed, that I could hate someone so easily, so unreasonably.
We stayed under one roof, this visitor and I, and for days I watched as she waited in a manner so different from Joe’s that almost immediately I abandoned the quest to spot hidden agendas, ulterior motives, and sinister machinations. She was rarely still, her hands never idle, and by the end of the weekend all I could do was watch her and think, hazily, “E pur si muove.” Under her solicitude the bungalow, hut, and terracotta house gleamed impossibly, the tropical dust never given a chance to settle; the flowers and the vegetables in the greenhouse quivered merrily under her untrained but careful ministrations; and all chores were dealt with a cheery, almost mystifying efficiency. Tap, tappity, tap, she briskly went, leaving a path of palpable energy in her wake which made my head spin--and which also, ironically, kept me sane, but that was something I never told her.
She learned to cook the food I told her Joe liked, prevailing blissfully through the stringent instructions I tossed her way in an attempt to derail her, to make her doubt the strength of her affection. On the day the boys were due to arrive she cooked the stuffed milkfish all by herself--deboned it, carved out the meat, sautéed it, sewed it back in--and her masala tea was close to authentic. She also faced the mothers with their babies in the clinic, sitting in Joe’s place, and patiently withstood the endless loop of “Where’s Joe?” and “When is he coming back?” She went to the market and talked with the vendors in their language, winning them over with her small smiles when she ran out of words, her victories corroborated by the unfailing rate at which she brought home the largest bulbs of garlic, the best cuts of beef, the free bunch of stringbeans. Little children would flock around her and she fidgeted in the circle of their gap-toothed, frank appraisal, but she had to laugh when their usually shy fathers, before their checkerboards in mid-afternoon, fought to out-smile one another in a bid for her attention as she walked, head down and pink with embarrassment, past them through the plaza.
All that would have been impossible to do in four days, but you see, we did not have four days. On Tuesday, the milkfish and the tea turned cold as afternoon folded into night, the boys did not arrive, and her wait lengthened to five days, then a week until, left to face our misgivings, we struck an uneasy alliance, and in the face of such proximity the truth had no choice but to come to light.
oOo
Ever since Raul slipped off a boulder and sprained an ankle, we haven’t been able to cover as much ground as he would have wanted. Which suits me just fine, although I’ll never tell him. We get to sit and look around at whatever catches our fancy, and the rainforest in these parts is so beautiful it takes my breath away.
It also means that we break earlier for dinner, and I like that more, because I have more time to talk to you, and with the fireflies and the fog settling in the valley and the scent of fruit and earth I feel as if I can write forever.
This is our fourth night in Vavuudis, and the third in a row we’ve spent in the mountains. Raul feels we might be onto something so instead of walking back to town yesterday, we stayed. This is the first time we’ve been outside this long but so far we’ve done okay. Ed traps well and despite the rain I’ve been able to set up camp easily. I can even say I’m having fun.
We found two orchids today. Raul, despite the sprained ankle, is upbeat, because he suspects the species might be new. He’s looking through the guidebooks as I speak. This is not the first time he’s thought we’ve finally stumbled on a real find, but it doesn’t make his optimism any less delightful to see, even if this turns out to be another false alarm.
During dinner he said we just need to stay one, two more nights tops, and that’s it. We need to send word to Consuelo about the change in plans, and Jay and Ed left this morning to make the three-hour trek back to town to find someone to do just that. Less than a week and already I miss her cooking. With the heavy rain the trail would definitely be tricky. But they should be back any time now.
Just before stopping for lunch two days ago (we had just started making our way up) we came upon a clearing by the cliff, and the view of Taiwan took me by surprise. I’d forgotten all about it, and there it was, so near. Then I realized that I’d forgotten all about the next hour, the next day, the next town, the next border, the next island. I’d stopped counting the days. The guys started talking about this cargo ship that takes people to the next country--for the right price, of course--and I knew instantly what they were trying to tell me. But no, I no longer wish to flee. As well as I can, changing what I can of the bad in this world into good, I will wait for the end, if that takes me to you.
oOo
She insisted on waiting by the roadside that Tuesday, in a pretty sundress, barrettes in her hair. When it struck midnight and the boys still had not come, she finally came in, and we put away the food, not a single word passing between us. She did not speak until I went up to Raul’s room to turn in for the night. Standing at the end of the hall by the large stained-glass window her words came to me as if from a great distance, but there was no mistaking the fury simmering beneath her voice.
“Do you even know when they’ll be back?” she said.
I was so drowsy that it took me some time for the words to sink in, but when they finally did the shock was enough to make my jaw drop. “My God,” I said, “are you telling me that I’m lying to you?”
She seemed to bristle with barely-bridled rage. “I’m going to Vavuudis tomorrow.”
“What?”
“I’m going to Vavuudis tomorrow. Unless you lied to me about that, too.”
“What the--How on earth can I lie to you?” I spluttered. “You saw the note!”
She looked away and shook her head, let out an unsteady breath. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I saw a note,” she said, softly, “but I don’t remember seeing a return date.”
I put a hand on the knob and pushed the door open, fighting for calm. “We have a system, okay?” I told her, mellowing. With our mutual distrust out in the open, something had definitely shifted in the air, and we were both regrouping, scrambling to get back our bearings. “When they leave and I’m not around, for example, they tell Ben, over at Bigby’s, just to be sure. And I have instructions for the fifth day, the sixth, the seventh. I know what to do.” I felt dog-tired, the long day finally catching up with me. “Good night,” I said wearily and started to step into the room.
“And after that?” she said, and I stilled. “After that, what?”
I stepped back out and looked at her straight in the eye. “I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
“You won’t tell me.” Even in the dim light I could see her jaw clench. But she was right: I can, but I won’t, and I felt a mild surge of admiration at her for calling a spade a spade.
“That’s right. But I agree,” I said, and her eyes flickered, “we need to go to Vavuudis. We’re going tomorrow.”
I must have surprised her, because for a few seconds she didn’t move. Then she walked to her door where, with just a foot between us, she let me feel the full force of her gaze. “Good,” she said, and closed the door quietly behind her, pre-empting the grand exit that was supposed to be mine.
oOo
My instructions for Wednesday, written on a note sealed in an envelope that had been tacked on the inside of the door to the pantry, were clear.
“I have to wait for noon,” I told her, “as instructed.”
She blinked. “Noon? By whom? Raul?”
“By Joe, as a matter of fact,” I said, avoiding her gaze. “Feel free to go to the pantry to check the note there.”
She’d gone even before I was done speaking, her ponytail swinging wildly as she hurried off. “You might want to bring Raul’s note along,” I called to her retreating back, trying to keep my tone neutral, “to see if the handwriting matches.”
I heard the pantry open then close much more slowly, an exact replay of how I read the note for the first time just a few minutes earlier, down to the slow, shuffling, shock-laden steps of return into the kitchen. There she stood by the counter, then with a slight nod of her head indicated the blue envelope on the table. “What’s that?”
“The instructions for 12:01.”
“And in the meantime,” she said in a tight voice, “we sit here and wait?”
“Uh-huh.”
She stood still--our conversations had a tendency to do that to her, the words throwing a wrench into the assiduous pace to which she subjected herself--and only after some time did she lean against the counter, her arms crossed over her chest. I could feel her eyes on me. Pointedly ignoring her, I kept on stirring my coffee slowly and watched the eddy spin in the center of the cup, stirring my coffee again once it died. Finally, she let out a loud sigh. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. “I’m going to check the tomatoes.”
She disappeared into the greenhouse, forsaking breakfast and the pleasure of my agreeable company. She wouldn’t talk to me again until noon.
With five minutes to go my finger was poised under the corner of the flap of the envelope, ready to tear it open. She was at the kitchen door the moment the clock struck twelve to the tune of the first nine measures of Fur Elise, and she kept a tight lid on her anxiety as I read through the note.
“We need to go to Joe’s house,” I told her, “to Jay’s, and to Ed’s. And send for help.”
She snapped off the gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket. “Let’s go.”
“In that order.”
She spun on her heels to face me. “That’s crazy.”
I shrugged. “It’s all here.” Already I was tuning her out, my mind jumping several steps ahead.
“Let me see.” She took the note and scanned over it quickly, then stopped, her eyes sliding back to the top of the list. She threw me a surreptitious glance that, as quick as it had been, failed to hide her curiosity. “Had to even write it himself,” she muttered under her breath. “Why am I not surprised?” She slapped the note down on the table.
I went to the pantry, took the house keys the boys left with me, and strode back to the kitchen to fill my canteen with water. “Leave it,” I said, walking by her as she lifted her backpack. “We are not going with the search-and-rescue. Nor are we going to Vavuudis.”
A million unasked questions flashed across her face. She lifted a hand to her head, as if to forestall a nascent headache. “And why?”
“I’m going to Congressman Amarillo. He will know what to do.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue, then changed her mind. She must have thought it was wiser to save her energy for what lay ahead. I knew I did, because Joe certainly knew how to kick off a list, unleashing, with so few words, a hundred wild horses in my chest.
Consuelo, he’d written, straight away, open the blanket chest, take the letters, and guard them with your life.
oOo
Jay and Ed are a day late, and our nerves are shot. Raul and I have switched back and forth between going after them and staying put. If something had happened to them before they got to town, then people would’ve been looking for us right now, and we need not worry. But that’s the problem. We didn’t stick to the plan.
It was simple: walk to town, send the message, stay there, and wait for us to return. They were not supposed to come back. Should something happen to them on the way, the soonest we could expect help to arrive would be on Day 6, when Consuelo doesn’t get another message from us and sounds the alarm. But a lot can happen in two days. It was too risky.
But they both insisted on going back. A few hours of sun and clear skies made them overconfident. Raul agreed with them (four pairs of eyes are better than two, he said) and I couldn’t help bring that fact up today. I shouldn’t have. But it had been raining for hours and we were cold and running out of food and I was tired. We argued, Sara, and with the way we nearly came to blows it was like this one time I fought with Linc, and I don’t want to remember that. All this thinking and waiting makes me remember and I don’t want to.
I remember the lifeless eyes of the Company operative Jane shot at close range in Hatyai. All those hours I spent in the dark. Blood on the floor, my father’s wound under my hand. Mom’s voice coming from a woman I barely recognized. Beads of sweat on Linc’s forehead at the fence when he told me about you. Consuelo looking at me but not quite seeing me, then her hand tightening on the knife with this look of resignation on her face. Was that how you looked, Sara, when you asked them to take you instead of my nephew? Was that how it was?
I don’t want that to be my last thought, Sara. Help me think of you the way I did in Calcutta. There, you were to me a brave, generous, beautiful woman in a crowded street--happy, because finally you were making a difference, smiling, because you had just decided to stay for good and make the orphanage your home. In this way we would never have met, and you were saved.
Chapter Seven (Part Two)
Author:
burntcircles
Characters/Pairing: Michael Scofield/Sara Tancredi, Jane Phillips, Original Characters
Genre/Rating: Gen (this chapter) / R (for language)
Spoilers: S1, S2, S3
Length: ~ 6,000 words
Disclaimer: Prison Break and its characters are a property of Fox Studios. The original characters and this AU storyline are mine.
Summary: Michael's journey, years after the escape from Sona, through the eyes of an original character.
Author's Note: First work of fan fiction. Another long chapter, so I've cut this into two.
Previously: Chapters 1. Joe, 2. Us, 3. Confluence, 4. Remembrance, 5. Michael (Part One), 5. Michael (Part Two), 6. Ann
“Yeah,” she said, hardly missing a beat, her voice managing to make the single word surprisingly melodious. It was enough to make me forget the slight but definite faltering I sensed just seconds before. “Nice to meet you, Ann.”
And just like that, we began our own muted dance of war.
I, a general’s daughter, rode off, confident, sure of my victory. But a string of skirmishes does not make a war, and I would soon learn that you could take your smartest men, your most formidable artillery, an indomitable will and the element of surprise, and still lose--simply because the foe, not seeing you as one, met your blows with different tools, the kind against which you had nothing.
It was a war she won before we even began.
oOo
7. Down the Saddle Path
First I take you back to that noon, in the humble hut where it would all end, me with the radio and Joe’s surprise visitor choosing, despite my invitation, to stay outside with her backpack by the steps to wilt in the heat. I turned up the radio’s volume and the scratchy, old-fashioned violin-and-piano histrionics that preceded the daily post-lunch vernacular drama sprung lustily from the small speakers. I realized then that I’d missed DJ Magnolia’s five-minute public service segment and that I had an hour to kill until I heard from her again. So I rose, placed the radio on the table, stood in the doorway like the heiress to the manor born, and invited her to lunch.
She was hugging herself under a blazing sun so unusual for July, was slightly hunched over even, as if caught in a blizzard without a coat. Briefly I wondered if she was nervous, but she straightened up, met my eyes, and smiled, and I forgot about it. “I already ate,” she said.
“Strange,” I said. “I didn’t see you on the plane.”
“Oh, I took a falowa from Banaag,” she replied.
That was a surprise. It was a route close to none of the outsiders took, because although Banaag was not only poignantly beautiful but also much closer to the mainland, most tourists, with the bay’s choppy waves, preferred the comfort of planes, and Banaag had no airport. So this made her...what? Audacious? Brave enough to offer her life for a sixteen-year-old boy’s? Only under a minute and already so many questions, but the need to rankle the hell out of her overpowered the more pragmatic option of an interrogation.
Disarm now, grill later.
“They left only this morning,” I told her, visualizing a tiara on my head and a scepter in my hand as I leisurely made my way down the steps. “If you’d skipped Banaag you might not have missed him. Just sayin’.” The delivery was perfect; by the time I said, “Just sayin’”, carried with a self-assurance fit for any Head of State, I had come to a complete stop in front of her, my steps underscoring me word for word--except that, vastly miscalculating, I ended up looking up at her, with her, my minion, looking down at me, and I sharply regretted relinquishing my position at the head of the stairs. She merely shrugged, and I was not surprised.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I can wait.”
“Have it your way, then.” Feeling singularly disadvantaged I walked away from her quickly, eager to put some distance between us. Looking up at Joe all the time had given my neck, it seemed, a permanent crick, and she would be the death of me. “Let me guess,” I said, pausing at the hedge and going for one last jab, “you had the lunch special at the Grand Vista Hotel.”
For a moment she seemed truly confused, and then, wonder of wonders, she laughed. “God, no,” she said, shaking her head. “I had stir-fried noodles. The best kind.”
“You mean the ones near the church?” I tossed back, refusing to give her any credit. It was a Lonely Planet feature, even a day-tripper would have known.
“Huh? Uh, no.” She’d sat down on a wooden step and was busy reaching for something in her backpack. “Esther, the lady down the street? I joined her and her husband for lunch. We had bananas, too.” With a soft, “Aha!” she pulled out her hand from inside her bag, and I made sure I’d wiped the surprise from my face by the time she held it out to me. “Want one?”
I looked at the boiled green banana on her upturned palm, distinctly nonplussed. In all my stay in the island I’d never had lunch with Esther--not by design of course, I suppose I just never had the chance to--but the knowledge that this woman had within minutes of her arrival came with a pang, and it was as if by offering the banana she’d thrown down the gauntlet between us. “That’s okay,” I said nonchalantly while mentally unsheathing a sword, “Esther gives these to me all the time.” I rolled my eyes for good measure. “I’m fed up with them, in fact.”
She raised her eyebrows and her smile faltered a bit, but it stayed, and with a slight shrug she withdrew her hand. Just then a commotion of raised voices and frantic running roared from inside the hut, and her eyes widened at me questioningly.
She looked nice, I thought, she really did. She had that doe-eyed look about her that spoke not so much of gullibility as of guilelessness and candor. And, quite possibly, all for show.
“It’s the noon-time drama,” I told her. “I’ll leave the radio here so you can at least have something to listen to. Today Esperanza is resisting the advances of Enrico. Happens every week, but that should keep you entertained.” Her lips formed a silent, “Oh,” and although I thought it served her right to come to an empty house when she was so confident in her welcome that she dawdled, I did feel slightly sorry for her, sitting on the steps of a hut out in the middle of nowhere in the midday heat with nothing for company but a radio spewing words she couldn’t understand.
But there was no room for pity. “I’m having lunch in town,” I said. “I’ll come back in an hour for the radio, if I still have to.” I left without waiting for a reply. When I’d gone far enough I snuck a backward look at her and found her still sitting on the step, watching me go. She gave a quick but jaunty wave, and that settled it.
She won that round. Witch.
oOo
My notebook was waiting for me in the radio station, handed over by DJ Magnolia who was at that moment to me as beatific as Moses come down from the Mount Sinai with The Ten Commandments. Apparently I’d left it on a bench in the town plaza where I’d flagged down a motorcycle-for-hire to take me to Raul’s, and a boy who sold baskets had chased after me and the driver, hollering and waving the notebook aloft to no avail. From the radio station I proceeded to the plaza and I found him in the store with his mother who firmly refused any monetary reward for his son’s good deed, and with that out of the way I had no choice but to resume combat. With stir-friend noodles in my belly and notebook safely in the carrier, I biked back to Joe’s hut.
Walking up to the open door I could hear DJ Magnolia, in her broken English, wade slowly through a list that must have consisted of the usual: toiletries, Swiss Army knives, pairs of festive Havaianas and sunglasses, digital cameras. Other than that, the hut was silent. I made my way up the steps and on the second to the last rung stopped to take a peek into the room before proceeding, my hand pausing in the air before I could knock on the reed wall.
She was asleep, out cold, it seemed. I doubted that she was, at first--her upper body was on Joe’s bed but her legs hung from the side, as if she’d been merely resting. But after a few seconds I heard her slow, rhythmic breaths, and when I took the last steps to the door she did not stir. Lying on her side, her face was nearly buried in the pillow, a corner of which she’d clutched with her fist, and her hipbone jutted out almost painfully under the skin exposed by the loose waistband of her jeans. Too thin, I couldn’t help thinking. With hands like his, Joe needs someone with a little bit more to hold.
I knew it wasn’t fair. How could one compete with a ghost? Perhaps, drugged out on spices I’d combined at the stove in too many failed permutations, I’d clung to the notion that there was even a halfway point in this road to deliverance I so wanted for him. My mind was as torn as my allegiance. It pleased me, this twisted but impressive ideal made flesh in Joe: a fidelity that, seemingly eternal, exceeded all reasonable expectations--hell, even in marriage one vowed to stay together only until death, and she was not even his goddamn wife. But if Joe kept a firm grip on Sara’s memory, it was if he teetered forever between life and death, and that was no way to live.
And yet--
If comfort came in the form of a woman who loved him, that woman would inexorably come under the shadow of the one who had come before her, and would she be happy then, with this indefatigable truth of never quite being enough? Her unhappiness would be his failure, and the futility would further, if not fatally, tear him apart.
Apparently, alone with my thoughts, I did not want for migraine-causers.
I took a step back. The bamboo floor creaked. Her eyes flew open in alarm, and in no time at all she’d grabbed a flashlight and held it with obvious intent.
“It’s just me,” I said quickly, “I was just leaving. I didn’t want to wake you.” Her grip on the flashlight relaxed. Smiling sheepishly, she mumbled an apology, set the flashlight back on the bed, and stood, running a hand through her hair. It had come free of her ponytail, and fell softly, artlessly around her face. I did not expect to like it.
On the radio the parade went on: umbrellas, a baby’s shoe (I could imagine the other half of the pair, rendered useless without its partner, shaking in terror at the prospect of a future in the dustbin), a rosary. She glanced at the radio and the beginnings of a smile tugged at her lips. She looked at me quizzically. “Is this--"
“Yup, our very own lost-and-found.”
The smile broke out, unfettered now, and she said, slightly incredulous, “A shoe.”
“Uh-huh.”
She looked out the window to the sea, and the way the light hit her face made her eyes dance. Standing there by Joe’s bed, looking like she just might belong, I frankly did not know what to make of her.
It wasn’t fair. As Joe had said himself, she was simply a close friend. And though it was tempting to think that, with the dust finally settling, she’d come to pursue a love that she’d secretly nurtured all those years, perhaps she held Joe in the exact same light.
Well, you know what they say about friends and enemies--time enough later to figure out if she was one or the other or, the deadliest kind, both--and how they can never be too close. So I asked her to stay with me while we waited for the boys to return, and if there was any doubt at all that she had set her sights on Joe, it was unequivocally erased in the minutes that followed--for in the half-hour that it took her to follow me to Raul’s house, I stood by the second-floor window that had never, ever, failed me, and I saw her run her fingers over tabletops, chairs, bed, hammock, and books, slowly, tenderly, as if to catch a trail long gone, and she half-laughed, half-cried as she buried her face in a discarded shirt I’d seen on Joe more times than I could count.
oOo
I am filthy, and I got what I deserved. No, it’s true. This thought never leaves me, and that’s only right. Even the priest saw through me, even he couldn’t forgive me. I only wish I’d spared Consuelo the torment of that moment. For as long as I live I will never forget how she nearly came to tears when she held me back, the look of pity and defeat on her face. The children--sometimes I’m afraid to touch them, to taint them with my filth.
But not today. I got a little gift today. She raised her arms up to me, looking at me with so much trust that I saw the past and the future at the same time. Then I took her hand, and you know what she said? She said, “Papa,” and it was as if time stopped, and then you were everywhere, everyone, at once, all over again. Something barged in unbidden, but the second it came to me I knew it was true, like something in my bones, in my blood.
It was happiness I had never known, a happiness I wanted for myself.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a day like this, a day I wake up to asking why you had to die and I get to live, wondering if there was any way to see you again. I don’t know how I made it through all those days. I remember punching a wall in Goa until my fist bled when the question wouldn’t go away, but you didn’t come to make it all better, not like before. I waited, and you didn’t come.
But now, you’re here. You fill this little house, you’re in every face, I hear you in every voice. You whisper in my ear, I hear you above the storm, and your words, your words...You’re here. Don’t leave. I love you. I promise to take care of you now.
You stay yet I can’t touch you. Are my words wrong? If I find the right ones, will you let me? It’s all right, I won’t hurt you. How can I, when you give me so much joy? I promise to take care of you. Give me one last chance.
I’m sorry for all the times I failed you. Please stay. I love you. I love you. I love you. Don’t ever leave me, Sara. Please stay. Just tell me what you want. I’ll do whatever you want. Just stay.
oOo
When she sat down to dinner with me, her eyes were dry and her manner calm, as if nothing had happened, and at that moment I knew how dangerous she could be. She’d brought the radio with her, and as the night-time ballads came on and in the preternatural silence reached into every corner of the house, there was not much need to speak.
I accepted her offer to do the dishes. I offered her a beer but she demurred. Not wishing for alcohol to undermine my wits while she kept hers, I warmed up some milk, settling for masala tea.
Returning from the pantry, I stopped by the counter and tried to see the house as she would have, entering it for the first time. Thankfully, it was tidy; not spotless, like Joe’s, but Raul had taken the effort, as always, to clear up the worst of Jay’s and Ed’s clutter before heading out. There were definite signs of active, fascinating life: seedlings in the kitchen, well-worn running shoes and sandals by the door, Jay’s tripod by the stairs, a deck of cards next to thick, dog-eared books with sticky notes poking out between the pages, towering piles of CDs. And of course, Raul’s note on the table, held in place by tape, three lemons, and a large glass bead.
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” I explained to her when, finally sitting down to tea, the radio silent, she pointed out the lemons guarding the note conspicuously at one end of the table. “Jay likes to rub it in when life gives me shit.”
“And the pendant?” she asked.
“The bead, you mean. Ed made it himself, as a characterization and fingerprinting test.” She was doing a mighty fine job pretending not to know a single thing about us, and I fought to keep my anger in check. “He’s an archeologist, you see,” I continued, and I was proud of the way I sounded--so relaxed, even as I uncovered the pot and pressed the seeds inside it with unnecessary force.
She made a move to pick it up. “May I?”
“Sure.” She held the bead between her thumb and index finger, rolling it this way and that against the light. It glinted prettily. She reached across the table to set it back on the note and I returned to crushing the cinnamon, but her breath hitched so audibly that I looked back up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I nearly dropped it, that’s all. I thought I’d broken it.” But I knew she’d seen the “Bye, Consuelo,” Joe had written, so neatly, as far as he possibly could from Jay’s sketch of a cow’s ass that occupied pride-of-place in the middle of the note, and oh, the urge to call her out on her bullshit was so strong that the cinnamon died a thousand deaths under my teaspoon.
I waited for her to run a loving fingertip over Joe’s words. Instead, she looked at me, her eyes steady. “I thought your name’s Ann,” she said, with a hint of accusation.
“It is,” I replied, inwardly taken aback by the extent to which she would carry the pretense of being in the dark. But I was as determined to play along. “It’s short for Anecita.” I lifted my cup to my mouth, watching her for the slightest reaction. “Actually, my full name is Consuelo Anecita Aguirre Villanueva. What’s yours, Jane?”
Her face gave nothing away. “Jane Phillips.”
So, Jane, do you know what you’re getting yourself into? “So, Ms. Phillips, think you can wait for four days?”
Another small smile teased her mouth and she quickly cast her gaze down to her cup. “Yes,” she said, breathing in the tea. Her eyes widened in amazement. “I knew it,” she gushed, “it’s masala.”
“You’ve had this before?”
“Oh, yes, but only the cheap sidewalk kind. I had to make the money last.”
God, is she Joe’s bodyguard? She’s followed him practically everywhere. “You’ve been to India, then?”
“Yes.”
She left it at that. Holding the cup with both hands, she looked up at Raul’s chart on the large whiteboard on one kitchen wall. On it were the names of all of the channel’s islands, arrows branching out from each to indicate the genera, and all the corresponding species and sub-species, of orchids it hosted: Spathoglottis, Phalaenopsis, Paphionedilum, Aerides, Bulbophyllum, Vanda, Dendrobium...It seemed to me meaningless, random squiggles on white, but I remembered all too clearly how Raul agonized over each name, as he would over a lover.
“Plants,” she said after a patently thoughtful silence. “They’re looking for plants.”
“Not quite,” I replied. “They’re looking for the most beautiful flower on earth.” Her eyes whipped back to me so quickly, you’d have thought her astonishment was genuine. She fell quiet, and her next question came like a bolt out of the blue.
“Why three?” she asked.
“Why three what?”
“Why three lemons?”
Yes, why indeed? I gave it a thought then decided to go for the jugular with a supremely confident blanket statement. “Well,” I said, keeping my smile sweet with a light sprinkling of smug, “that must mean they love me.”
All that earned me was a mellow laugh, which made me hate her, because I could clearly see Joe lighting up at the sound. Later that night though I did wonder: Why three lemons? And the image of three lemons dancing in a row, the sparkly words on their little chests spelling out I LOVE YOU, for all its silliness did warm my heart, and it would not have occurred to me if it had not been for her, and then I was ashamed, that I could hate someone so easily, so unreasonably.
We stayed under one roof, this visitor and I, and for days I watched as she waited in a manner so different from Joe’s that almost immediately I abandoned the quest to spot hidden agendas, ulterior motives, and sinister machinations. She was rarely still, her hands never idle, and by the end of the weekend all I could do was watch her and think, hazily, “E pur si muove.” Under her solicitude the bungalow, hut, and terracotta house gleamed impossibly, the tropical dust never given a chance to settle; the flowers and the vegetables in the greenhouse quivered merrily under her untrained but careful ministrations; and all chores were dealt with a cheery, almost mystifying efficiency. Tap, tappity, tap, she briskly went, leaving a path of palpable energy in her wake which made my head spin--and which also, ironically, kept me sane, but that was something I never told her.
She learned to cook the food I told her Joe liked, prevailing blissfully through the stringent instructions I tossed her way in an attempt to derail her, to make her doubt the strength of her affection. On the day the boys were due to arrive she cooked the stuffed milkfish all by herself--deboned it, carved out the meat, sautéed it, sewed it back in--and her masala tea was close to authentic. She also faced the mothers with their babies in the clinic, sitting in Joe’s place, and patiently withstood the endless loop of “Where’s Joe?” and “When is he coming back?” She went to the market and talked with the vendors in their language, winning them over with her small smiles when she ran out of words, her victories corroborated by the unfailing rate at which she brought home the largest bulbs of garlic, the best cuts of beef, the free bunch of stringbeans. Little children would flock around her and she fidgeted in the circle of their gap-toothed, frank appraisal, but she had to laugh when their usually shy fathers, before their checkerboards in mid-afternoon, fought to out-smile one another in a bid for her attention as she walked, head down and pink with embarrassment, past them through the plaza.
All that would have been impossible to do in four days, but you see, we did not have four days. On Tuesday, the milkfish and the tea turned cold as afternoon folded into night, the boys did not arrive, and her wait lengthened to five days, then a week until, left to face our misgivings, we struck an uneasy alliance, and in the face of such proximity the truth had no choice but to come to light.
oOo
Ever since Raul slipped off a boulder and sprained an ankle, we haven’t been able to cover as much ground as he would have wanted. Which suits me just fine, although I’ll never tell him. We get to sit and look around at whatever catches our fancy, and the rainforest in these parts is so beautiful it takes my breath away.
It also means that we break earlier for dinner, and I like that more, because I have more time to talk to you, and with the fireflies and the fog settling in the valley and the scent of fruit and earth I feel as if I can write forever.
This is our fourth night in Vavuudis, and the third in a row we’ve spent in the mountains. Raul feels we might be onto something so instead of walking back to town yesterday, we stayed. This is the first time we’ve been outside this long but so far we’ve done okay. Ed traps well and despite the rain I’ve been able to set up camp easily. I can even say I’m having fun.
We found two orchids today. Raul, despite the sprained ankle, is upbeat, because he suspects the species might be new. He’s looking through the guidebooks as I speak. This is not the first time he’s thought we’ve finally stumbled on a real find, but it doesn’t make his optimism any less delightful to see, even if this turns out to be another false alarm.
During dinner he said we just need to stay one, two more nights tops, and that’s it. We need to send word to Consuelo about the change in plans, and Jay and Ed left this morning to make the three-hour trek back to town to find someone to do just that. Less than a week and already I miss her cooking. With the heavy rain the trail would definitely be tricky. But they should be back any time now.
Just before stopping for lunch two days ago (we had just started making our way up) we came upon a clearing by the cliff, and the view of Taiwan took me by surprise. I’d forgotten all about it, and there it was, so near. Then I realized that I’d forgotten all about the next hour, the next day, the next town, the next border, the next island. I’d stopped counting the days. The guys started talking about this cargo ship that takes people to the next country--for the right price, of course--and I knew instantly what they were trying to tell me. But no, I no longer wish to flee. As well as I can, changing what I can of the bad in this world into good, I will wait for the end, if that takes me to you.
oOo
She insisted on waiting by the roadside that Tuesday, in a pretty sundress, barrettes in her hair. When it struck midnight and the boys still had not come, she finally came in, and we put away the food, not a single word passing between us. She did not speak until I went up to Raul’s room to turn in for the night. Standing at the end of the hall by the large stained-glass window her words came to me as if from a great distance, but there was no mistaking the fury simmering beneath her voice.
“Do you even know when they’ll be back?” she said.
I was so drowsy that it took me some time for the words to sink in, but when they finally did the shock was enough to make my jaw drop. “My God,” I said, “are you telling me that I’m lying to you?”
She seemed to bristle with barely-bridled rage. “I’m going to Vavuudis tomorrow.”
“What?”
“I’m going to Vavuudis tomorrow. Unless you lied to me about that, too.”
“What the--How on earth can I lie to you?” I spluttered. “You saw the note!”
She looked away and shook her head, let out an unsteady breath. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I saw a note,” she said, softly, “but I don’t remember seeing a return date.”
I put a hand on the knob and pushed the door open, fighting for calm. “We have a system, okay?” I told her, mellowing. With our mutual distrust out in the open, something had definitely shifted in the air, and we were both regrouping, scrambling to get back our bearings. “When they leave and I’m not around, for example, they tell Ben, over at Bigby’s, just to be sure. And I have instructions for the fifth day, the sixth, the seventh. I know what to do.” I felt dog-tired, the long day finally catching up with me. “Good night,” I said wearily and started to step into the room.
“And after that?” she said, and I stilled. “After that, what?”
I stepped back out and looked at her straight in the eye. “I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
“You won’t tell me.” Even in the dim light I could see her jaw clench. But she was right: I can, but I won’t, and I felt a mild surge of admiration at her for calling a spade a spade.
“That’s right. But I agree,” I said, and her eyes flickered, “we need to go to Vavuudis. We’re going tomorrow.”
I must have surprised her, because for a few seconds she didn’t move. Then she walked to her door where, with just a foot between us, she let me feel the full force of her gaze. “Good,” she said, and closed the door quietly behind her, pre-empting the grand exit that was supposed to be mine.
oOo
My instructions for Wednesday, written on a note sealed in an envelope that had been tacked on the inside of the door to the pantry, were clear.
- Wait until noon.
- If noon comes and nobody arrives, read the note in the blue envelope (wedged by Joe between, I was surprised to discover, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World) in Raul's study.
“I have to wait for noon,” I told her, “as instructed.”
She blinked. “Noon? By whom? Raul?”
“By Joe, as a matter of fact,” I said, avoiding her gaze. “Feel free to go to the pantry to check the note there.”
She’d gone even before I was done speaking, her ponytail swinging wildly as she hurried off. “You might want to bring Raul’s note along,” I called to her retreating back, trying to keep my tone neutral, “to see if the handwriting matches.”
I heard the pantry open then close much more slowly, an exact replay of how I read the note for the first time just a few minutes earlier, down to the slow, shuffling, shock-laden steps of return into the kitchen. There she stood by the counter, then with a slight nod of her head indicated the blue envelope on the table. “What’s that?”
“The instructions for 12:01.”
“And in the meantime,” she said in a tight voice, “we sit here and wait?”
“Uh-huh.”
She stood still--our conversations had a tendency to do that to her, the words throwing a wrench into the assiduous pace to which she subjected herself--and only after some time did she lean against the counter, her arms crossed over her chest. I could feel her eyes on me. Pointedly ignoring her, I kept on stirring my coffee slowly and watched the eddy spin in the center of the cup, stirring my coffee again once it died. Finally, she let out a loud sigh. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. “I’m going to check the tomatoes.”
She disappeared into the greenhouse, forsaking breakfast and the pleasure of my agreeable company. She wouldn’t talk to me again until noon.
With five minutes to go my finger was poised under the corner of the flap of the envelope, ready to tear it open. She was at the kitchen door the moment the clock struck twelve to the tune of the first nine measures of Fur Elise, and she kept a tight lid on her anxiety as I read through the note.
“We need to go to Joe’s house,” I told her, “to Jay’s, and to Ed’s. And send for help.”
She snapped off the gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket. “Let’s go.”
“In that order.”
She spun on her heels to face me. “That’s crazy.”
I shrugged. “It’s all here.” Already I was tuning her out, my mind jumping several steps ahead.
“Let me see.” She took the note and scanned over it quickly, then stopped, her eyes sliding back to the top of the list. She threw me a surreptitious glance that, as quick as it had been, failed to hide her curiosity. “Had to even write it himself,” she muttered under her breath. “Why am I not surprised?” She slapped the note down on the table.
I went to the pantry, took the house keys the boys left with me, and strode back to the kitchen to fill my canteen with water. “Leave it,” I said, walking by her as she lifted her backpack. “We are not going with the search-and-rescue. Nor are we going to Vavuudis.”
A million unasked questions flashed across her face. She lifted a hand to her head, as if to forestall a nascent headache. “And why?”
“I’m going to Congressman Amarillo. He will know what to do.”
She opened her mouth as if to argue, then changed her mind. She must have thought it was wiser to save her energy for what lay ahead. I knew I did, because Joe certainly knew how to kick off a list, unleashing, with so few words, a hundred wild horses in my chest.
Consuelo, he’d written, straight away, open the blanket chest, take the letters, and guard them with your life.
oOo
Jay and Ed are a day late, and our nerves are shot. Raul and I have switched back and forth between going after them and staying put. If something had happened to them before they got to town, then people would’ve been looking for us right now, and we need not worry. But that’s the problem. We didn’t stick to the plan.
It was simple: walk to town, send the message, stay there, and wait for us to return. They were not supposed to come back. Should something happen to them on the way, the soonest we could expect help to arrive would be on Day 6, when Consuelo doesn’t get another message from us and sounds the alarm. But a lot can happen in two days. It was too risky.
But they both insisted on going back. A few hours of sun and clear skies made them overconfident. Raul agreed with them (four pairs of eyes are better than two, he said) and I couldn’t help bring that fact up today. I shouldn’t have. But it had been raining for hours and we were cold and running out of food and I was tired. We argued, Sara, and with the way we nearly came to blows it was like this one time I fought with Linc, and I don’t want to remember that. All this thinking and waiting makes me remember and I don’t want to.
I remember the lifeless eyes of the Company operative Jane shot at close range in Hatyai. All those hours I spent in the dark. Blood on the floor, my father’s wound under my hand. Mom’s voice coming from a woman I barely recognized. Beads of sweat on Linc’s forehead at the fence when he told me about you. Consuelo looking at me but not quite seeing me, then her hand tightening on the knife with this look of resignation on her face. Was that how you looked, Sara, when you asked them to take you instead of my nephew? Was that how it was?
I don’t want that to be my last thought, Sara. Help me think of you the way I did in Calcutta. There, you were to me a brave, generous, beautiful woman in a crowded street--happy, because finally you were making a difference, smiling, because you had just decided to stay for good and make the orphanage your home. In this way we would never have met, and you were saved.
Chapter Seven (Part Two)