To protect her, she needs to be armed with knowledge, so she knows how to live. I always knew she’d have to be trained in the ways of the world, but she was supposed to be far away—a dot on the landscape of my mind. But she’s in the foreground of my heart, and to protect her is to give her the power to leave me.
The fear in my blood isn’t funny. It’s hot and angry. It takes losing this woman very seriously. The fear isn’t loneliness or even death. It’s a deeper separation that I can’t even get my thoughts around until I know she’ll be all right without me.
She won’t stay leashed. There’s mischief in her. It’s dangerous. She could slip out of line. Reveal herself. Step outside the carefully placed boundaries she needs to stay safe.
When she touched herself, for just an instant, I caught a glimpse of her private self. The girl discovering something she should have known already. The connections she missed.
I want more of her eyes lighting up. Her face opening like a window. A chain of breakthroughs. A life invented moment by moment.
I make sure she’s the cleanest thing in that filthy little bathroom, kissing her where she’s exposed herself to me, vowing to safekeep her vulnerabilities. The world outside this dank, cinderblock nightmare pushes against the door with a constant mental pressure. Once we’re out, the consequences of my vengeance will chase us down.
Crouched in front of her, I kiss her belly while drawing up her underpants.
“Are you all right?” she asks. I look up at her while she strokes my cheeks.
“I’m supposed to be asking you that.”
“I’m just a little tired.”
I am too. I’m so tired of being tired. Sick to death of demanding death.
“You need to relax.” I pull up her pants. “Let’s get you comfortable.”
After picking her up, I carry her across the parking lot to the ghost car. I buckle her in, give her water, lower the back of the passenger seat, and put on the sound of ocean waves. She seems to like that, and she falls asleep before we’re on the highway.
Something has to change. I can’t train her to live in the world and run away from it at the same time.
Maybe I got lazy. I’m not—in a million years—supposed to feel desperate for Sarah Colonia, but I feel a creeping softness that leaves me inside-out. She’s the center of it—the cause and purpose of it. Without her, I’m helpless to make myself right.
The two-story Tudor is fifteen minutes from the last edges of the Bronx but behind a gate and surrounded by acres of forest, so the property feels like the country.
She’s still sleeping when I pull up to the front. Lips parted, lashes dark on her cheeks, the car’s dome light glowing on her skin. Safe.
Her flip phone sits at her feet, harmless in its plastic case.
Mentally, I list the things she has to learn to do.
Read a map.
Use her phone.
Make doctor’s appointments.
Benny, the caretaker, rushes to the car. I roll down my window and put a finger to my lips. He sees Sarah and nods.
“Sir,” Benny says quietly, head bowed slightly. I haven’t seen him in a while, and the diameter of his bald spot has grown. “It’s ready.”
Benny’s servility is not to be taken as weakness. He needed a reason to get out of the business of killing people. Keeping my safehouses ready means he can retire in comfort, while I have them maintained by a man who can commit murder if he needs to.
Open a bank account.
Pay a bill.
“Thank you. Give me a minute.”
Read labels.
Drive.
For God’s sake, driving involves built-up social knowledge she’s been denied.
“Should I stay?” Benny asks. “Heywood and Glen are ready, but I haven’t greeted them yet.”
He’s talking about two massive houses on streets marked Heywood and Glen. They’ll be full of my people by now.
“Go. Make sure everyone has what they need.”
“Of course.”
He runs off. I’m ready to settle in until Sarah’s awake, but when I close the window and look over, her brown eyes are staring back at me.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
She closes her eyes and opens them again. I expect her to claim she’s fine, or sleepy, or satisfied. I shouldn’t be surprised she opens with a question, but she’ll never stop surprising me.
“What else did you lie about?” There’s no accusation in her tone. She’s not rigid or guarded. She wants facts. My words, placed next to some kind of objective reality. “Besides Willa?”
“I lied about a lot. Little things. Sometimes to protect you. Sometimes to hurt you.”
“Like when?”
I don’t have a list of bent truths or outright falsehoods. Since rerouting a limo on her wedding day, I’ve been trying to do the impossible. I told her whatever I had to tell her. Searching my mind for something… anything, to admit to, I can only come up with a series of statements I thought were lies when I uttered them but that now hold a deeper truth.
“When I said I adored you.”
“That was a lie?” Her lips twitch.
“And treasured you?” I put my hand over hers. “Remember?”
“Yes.”
“And honored you?” When I brush my finger over her jaw, I feel it quivering.
“Enough, Dario.” My name cracks in her throat. She sits up. “I get it.”
Taking her at the back of the neck, I pull her toward me, so we’re face to face. “It was all a lie of omission. I was saying enough to keep you from the truth.”
She swallows, looking down, eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks.
“I want to be a man you honor, and adore, and treasure, and I’m not.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I haven’t earned it.”
“Shouldn’t I honor, treasure, and adore you no matter what?”
Of course she should. A wife’s unquestioning devotion is not just the rule of the Colonia. It’s what I expect. What I demand.
“No-matter-what isn’t good enough anymore.”
Her shrug says she doesn’t know what’s good enough, and that’s wrong. Of everything she needs to learn, she needs to learn how to demand more of everyone, including me. Especially me.
I get out, walk around the car, and open her door.
“Come on, wife.” I wedge my hands under her and pick her up the way I did to get her into the car, and at Armistice Night, and the way I’ll carry her whenever she needs it. “Let’s go home.”
She puts her arms around my neck. I kick the car door closed and carry her to the house, over the threshold, and into the new life I will create for her.