Awake now, Audie stares at the ceiling and feels dazed at the preposterousness of what he has done—kidnapping a boy, expecting another wrong will somehow balance all the others and make things right. Odds don’t change because a coin has landed on the same side a dozen times or more. And there is no invisible set of scales or grand ledger that has to be balanced over the course of a lifetime.
When people survive a disaster—a flood or a hurricane—they are often asked by reporters how they coped. Some of them credit God for answering their prayers or say it “wasn’t my time,” as though each of us carries a hidden expiration date. Normally, they have no answer. No secret. No special skill. That’s why so many survivors feel guilty. They didn’t earn their good fortune by being braver, or cleverer, or stronger. They were simply lucky.
Out of bed, Audie goes to the kitchen and looks out the window. He can see the burnished tufts of grass, clinging to the dunes, and feel the wind still pummeling the house, beating against the shutters. Mornings like this one, raw and untouched, seem like a victory over the night.
A toilet flushes and he hears the tambourine. Max leans barefoot against the doorframe, his hair tousled and his face creased from the pillow.
“You want some breakfast?” asks Audie. “We got instant coffee, but no milk.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Good to know.”
Audie stirs powdered eggs into a bowl and continues talking. “Did you sleep OK? How was the mattress? I can get you another blanket.”
Max doesn’t answer.
“We don’t have to talk,” Audie says. “I’m used to having one-sided conversations.” He tips the eggs into a hot skillet. “I’m sorry I don’t have any bread, but I found some crackers.” He glances out the open shutter. “I know I promised to take you fishing, but there’s still a lot of wind. Storm hasn’t quite blown through. I listened to the news on the radio. There’s another late-season storm off Cuba. They’re saying it might turn into a hurricane, but they don’t expect it to head northwest anytime soon.”
“I don’t want to go fishing. I want to go home,” says Max.
Audie sets down a plate in front of him. They eat in silence. When the meal is finished, Audie washes and dries the plates. Max hasn’t moved.
“You were going to tell me today.”
“That’s true.”
Audie glances around the room as though trying to calculate the dimensions. He goes to his bag, takes out his notebook, and shows Max the same photograph.
“Remember I told you I was married?”
The teenager nods.
“It took me a long while to find this. The photographer at the wedding chapel lost his job for being a drunk and left Las Vegas. He didn’t leave a forwarding address. Then he went traveling in Europe for a few years. He thought of tossing his old digital files, but he kept a few disks in a storage cage.”
Max frowns, but something, somewhere, seems to register. “Why are you showing me this?”
“That’s you,” says Audie, pointing to the boy in the photograph.
“What?”
“You were only three. And that woman who’s holding your hand is your mom.”
Max shakes his head. “That’s not Sandy.”
“Her name is Belita Ciera Vega and she’s from El Salvador.”
Another silence, longer this time.
“Your full name is Miguel Ciera Vega,” says Audie. “You were born at San Diego Hospital on August 4, 2000. I’ve seen your birth certificate.”
“My birthday is February 7,” says Max, growing upset. “I’m American.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“I’m not illegal. I got a mother and a father.”
“I know you do.”
“But you’re saying I’m adopted.”
“I’m saying this is your mother.”
“This is bullshit,” yells Max. “I’ve never been to Las Vegas or San Diego. I was born in Houston.”
“Let me explain—”
“No, you’re telling lies!”
“You had a favorite toy when you were little—do you remember? It had a purple bowtie and black button eyes and you called it Boo Boo, like Yogi’s little friend.”
Max hesitates. “How do you know that?”
“It only had one ear,” says Audie. “You sucked the other one off, just like you sucked your thumb.” Max remains silent. “We were on our way from California to Texas. We stopped off to get married in Las Vegas and then drove through Arizona and New Mexico. We visited a whole lot of places. Do you remember visiting Carlsbad Cavern? There were stalactites and stalagmites. You said it looked like pink ice.”
Max shakes his head as though trying to rid himself of an idea.
Audie starts at the beginning, trying to tell the story in the same words that Belita used—describing the earthquake and the loss of her husband, her parents, and her sister. He recounts the exodus and the trek across the desert and the death of her brother and the journey to California. Audie’s own eyes begin to fill with tears, but he doesn’t stop because he’s frightened the language will leave him, the words of love and loss.
“She was pregnant with you,” he says. “You were born in San Diego, but I didn’t meet you until later. By then I’d fallen in love with Belita. It felt so easy, like forgetting yourself and thinking only of someone else. We ran away together—escaping from a bad man. We were coming to Texas to start a new life. She was going to have another baby. Our baby. A brother or sister for you…”
As he talks Audie can see himself reflected in the boy’s eyes and begins to wonder if he’s making a mistake. He is reframing Max’s history, tearing down everything the teenager has ever known or trusted or believed in.
“You’re wrong,” Max whispers. “You’re lying.” The statement is full of cold certainty and hatred and Audie feels a terrible vertigo, as though he were being swept into a gigantic maelstrom that can only cause destruction.
During all his years in prison, Audie had pictured Miguel growing up, riding his first bike, losing his first tooth, heading off to school, learning to read and write and draw and a thousand other everyday rituals. He had imagined taking him to a ball game and hearing the clean sharp crack of wood and feeling the surge of the crowd as the ball climbed into the heavens and fell into the forest of upraised arms. He imagined meeting his first girlfriend, buying him his first beer, taking him to his first rock concert. He thought of them traveling to El Salvador together and looking for Belita’s extended family and walking along the beach that she walked upon as a child. He wanted to climb the towers, ride the rapids, stare at the sunsets, read the same books, watch the same movies, break the same bread, and sleep under the same roof.
It was bullshit. Ruined. Too much time had passed.
Max will not thank him for having saved his life—he will blame him for having wrecked it.