Twenty-Four

Cofre del Tesoro, Colombia
January 2009

Michael looked at the young woman sitting beside him. Lydia had taken her shoes off as soon as she sat down, her brown toes digging into the pale sand, face turned up to the sun. Just beyond them, Christina played tag with the waves, running after the water only to turn and scurry away from it the moment it returned, giggling all the while.

“You should smile more often.”

He turned to find Lydia watching him. “If I did, people would know the truth.”

“What?” Lydia said, grinning at him. “That you’re human?”

He laughed, shaking his head. The girl had gotten bold in the months she’d been sneaking down to the beach to join them. Her initial fear had evaporated quickly, leaving an intensely curious nature. There was nothing she wouldn’t ask, and he’d found that there was little he felt uncomfortable telling her. “Yeah, something like that.”

The laughter died between them, fading slowly until there was nothing by silence. “What is the truth, Michael? Why are you here?”

He looked away from her, watched Christina zigzag back and forth across the sand, her peals of laughter tinkling like bells. “There’s nowhere else for me to go.” He hadn’t meant to say it, but once the truth escaped him, more followed. “I can’t go home and what I was doing … ”

“The killing.” She said it softly, her face tipped down to catch his line of sight.

He finally turned to her, looked her in the eye. “Yeah. The killing … it was killing me.” He nodded. “So instead, I let your husband pay me an obscene amount of money to play on the beach and read bedtime stories.”

“Do you miss it?” she said, genuinely curious.

“Miss what?”

“Home,” she whispered the word, transforming it into nothing more than a wistful sigh.

He thought of Frankie—the only home he had left. “Yes, I do. What about you, Lydia? Why are you here?”

She cut him a sidelong glance. “I live here.”

He laughed in spite of himself. “Okay, smartass. Maybe what I mean is, how did you get here?”

She lifted her shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, her mouth quirking into a smile that did nothing to hide the tears that glittered in her eyes. “I don’t know. This isn’t where I’m supposed to be. I was very young when Alberto found me working in my father’s coffee fields. He was charming. Said the right things. He was so polished. Even as nothing more than his cousin’s gofer, you could see he wanted more. He paid my father three hundred dollars—before I knew what had happened, I was married and taken away.”

“Your parents sold you?”

Her lips pursed, her dark eyes clouding just a bit. “Colombia is not like America. Here, choice is a luxury. Men like Alberto are not the kind of men you say no to.”

He looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? None of this is your fault,” she said. She looked at her daughter, now building one of her sandcastles a few yards away, and suddenly her smile became genuine. “Besides, without Alberto, there would be no Christina. For that alone, I have no regrets.”

“Do you love him?”

She thought quietly for a long moment—so long that he was starting to regret asking—before she finally answered. “There was a time, in the beginning, when I hoped that I would learn to. But no, I don’t. I can’t,” she said, looking up at him. “What about you? Was there ever someone special?”

Now it was his turn to think. “Yes.”

Lydia drew her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. “Tell me about her?”

Michael looked out across the ocean, seeing not the water but the small East Texas town he grew up in. “She was a few years younger than me. I didn’t see her very often—usually when my parents dragged me to church or when I stopped into the diner where she worked. They had this video game—Millipede—I used to play it all day just so I could see her.” He grinned in spite of himself. “I don’t want to even think about the amount of money I wasted on that stupid game.”

She smiled at the memory he’d shared with her as if it were her own. “You must have liked her very much.”

His grin faded away, memories taking root. “I did, but she had a boyfriend and I was”—he struggled to find the right words for what he’d been back then—“not someone she took much notice of.”

Lydia frowned. “Did you love her?”

It was the same question he’d posed to her only minutes before and it gave him pause, just as it did her. “I wanted to be good enough for her.”

She gave him a look that said she understood full well that he’d managed to avoid answering the question. “Were you? Good enough for her?”

He shook his head. “I tried but could never quite manage it.”

She gave him a sympathetic look. “Perhaps when you finally leave here, you can find her again.”

He looked away, casting his gaze across the ocean. “She was murdered a few years after I joined the Army.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh … I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It happened a long time ago,” he said, shutting the door between himself and a past he couldn’t change, even though just thinking about it, what Melissa must have gone through, twisted his insides. He looked up, his gaze scanning the cliff line high above the island’s private beach. In the distance, he spotted a lone figure standing at its edge. He couldn’t tell who it was, but its sudden appearance tightened the skin along his nape. “It’s getting late, you should head back.”

She followed his gaze and caught sight of the figure just as it turned and moved out of sight. “Do you think—”

“Don’t worry about it, just be careful, okay?” he said to her, forcing himself to ignore the niggle of apprehension that slid down his spine. It wasn’t Alberto; he’d been away for weeks now and showed no signs of returning. His private helicopter was still sitting on its pad waiting to be called for a pick-up.

“Okay,” she said as she stood. “Thank you for letting me see her.” She thanked him, without fail, every single time they met on the beach, no matter how many times he told her that her gratitude was unnecessary.

“There’s nothing to thank me for. She’s your daughter, Lydia,” he said.

“You’re wrong, you know; you are more than good enough,” she said before turning away, refusing him the chance to answer.

He watched her kneel down next to Christina and speak softly. The little girl looking up at her and nodded. She flung her shovel down and threw her arms around her mother’s neck while Lydia pressed her lips to her cheeks and hair.

Finally she stood, giving him a small wave before disappearing into the trees.