1

EVERYTHING WAS DARK.

Though her eyes could see little, her other senses were acute, telling her that she wasn’t dreaming. Terror reached down into the pit of her stomach as the sound of whirring jets and the sensation of changing air pressure revealed her worst fear—she was on an airplane.

Hope left her heart as sharply as the air left her stomach as the plane ascended. Was she really being deported? Even after everything that led up to this, it was unbelievable.

She struggled for composure and clarity. Had she been drugged?

Think, Leila. Keep your head.

The shades were down. There was no light besides the tiny dots along the aisles and a bright green “Exit” sign a few rows ahead of her. If only that were a real invitation.

All these years she had worked to pull every detail of her life into her control. That was supposed to protect her, supposed to keep this grim past from reaching back for her. How fast it had all unraveled.

The plane was full but eerily quiet. The air was cool and stale. The hum of the engine reaching cruising altitude overpowered the irregular breaths of her fellow passengers who, like her, must have been too dazed or too afraid to cry. All the crying had been done in the days before.

Leila hurt all over. Her stomach turned with nausea. She was restless from sitting. Her head ached from having her thick hair pulled back for too long. She felt dirty in clothes that had been worn for . . . how many days?

Until now, it had been possible to hope. She’d told herself that she would soon be home, that the mistake would be cleared up in time. She never imagined the despair of a dark airplane, each moment tearing her farther from the people she loved.

Scenes from her life, lovely details which she’d taken for granted, now returned to her as memories: warm nights filled with music, her family’s embraces, the sweet smell of azalea and bougainvillea in the spring. She didn’t want to believe those times were gone, but her heart knew better and was already cataloging each memory as a treasured marker of a life that was lost.

Her grief was numbing, too heavy and too new to understand.

She blinked away the tears. She would not cry. She would not give up hope. Somehow, she would get back to the people she loved and be again the person she had worked so hard to become.

This had to be a mistake.

But was it? Perhaps the mistake had been hers all along. After all, what right had she to believe the life she had invented for herself could last? Had she forgotten so quickly who she really was?

As Leila’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she glanced around. She needed to get her bearings. The men and women who filled the plane seemed resigned. The woman beside her sat with a face like a stone. Why wasn’t everyone crying in sorrow or screaming in rage? She could have done either of those things; she wanted to do both at the same time.

Maybe these other people still thought they were dreaming and that they would wake up at home with their loved ones. She envied them, wishing she could believe she’d wake up with her boyfriend’s arms around her, with the windows open to the warm morning breeze off the desert. But dreams were over now. This was real.

A sound intruded upon her thoughts—a quiet rattling, almost inaudible. As soon as she recognized it, she realized it had been going on the whole time. Then, quiet as it was, she could no longer ignore it. Naturally, this was the rickety plane. The sound irritated her, then infuriated her, then made her think it would drive her insane.

How did this horror begin? When did her carefully crafted life begin to unravel, leading her to this day? There was the betrayal. There was the accident. But really, it started that night two years ago when she first dared ask herself if life could mean more. Hadn’t she sensed the danger in that question—that it could lead to this?

Trust. Passion. Love.

She had avoided such things, knowing they could shake up everything she had worked for. But now that she had felt them, how could it be undone?

Surely, she could find a way back. Surely.

Sorrow tore at her heart, but she fought to keep her thoughts clear. Self-pity wouldn’t bring her back to the people she loved, and it wouldn’t protect her from the dangers that might await her once this plane touched down.

Leila had no sense of how long the flight took. She gasped at the jolt of the landing. It shocked many of the passengers out of their daze. People shifted and stood up. Someone began speaking in Spanish. The woman beside her started to cry.

The rattling noise persisted. She wanted to scream.

The airplane doors opened. Daylight shot in. Leila hurried out into the middle of the crowd, squinting into the sharp sunlight. She was so relieved to be off that horrible, noisy plane. The thick heat was jarring after the air-conditioned flight.

She inhaled deeply—she knew this air. Scenes from her childhood floated toward her, brought by the scents of her never-forgotten past. The familiarity comforted her, in spite of everything it meant.

It had been a long time, but she had not forgotten her childhood home, and it had not forgotten her. If Paulo found out she was back, would he look for her? Despite the heat, a chill danced up her spine. Might he already be expecting her?

The tarmac was alive with the sounds of sputtering engines and shouting voices. Across a short fence, two teenage boys with cell phone cameras snapped a picture of each passenger as they passed. Clearly, somebody was interested in knowing who was returning to Colombia today.

They were corralled down a wide hallway into an open room and instructed to sit on the floor. It was stuffy and hot. There were windows on all sides, but from where Leila sat, she could see nothing to help her find her bearings—only blue sky in every direction, broken by a couple of air control towers. The shadows on the towers told her it was midafternoon and gave her a sense of north and south. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

A litany of names was being read, followed by the name of a town and a date of birth. She watched as a face would lift from within the group when their name was heard, but no one was called forward. The men at the computers merely typed some notes before moving on to the next name.

She didn’t know whether she wanted them to call her name or not. After all this time, this was the moment of truth. Finally, it came.

“Leila del Sol. Cartagena. November tenth, 1980.”

The other man typed something into his computer, then looked up at the man who had read her name.

“Leila del Sol? But that’s impossible. Leila del Sol has been dead for years.”