Eagle's Heart (3 page)

Home was safe, and under her quilt was safer.

When she heard the bedroom door open and the groan of her window being forced open, Salomeh cursed herself for giving her friend a spare set of keys. Even so a surge of happiness tightened her chest as the bed sank under Marta’s familiar weight.

Marta rested her hand on Salomeh’s shoulder through the layers of fabric and batting, giving her a subtle shake.

“Can you come out from under there?” she prodded gently, which was thoroughly un-Marta-like. “Look, I’m the depressed fuck-up, and you’re the one who consoles me and forces me to stop feeling sorry for myself. You know I don’t do well with change.”

Salomeh squeezed her eyes shut against fresh tears and sniffled. She felt the covers being pulled away and didn’t resist. The fresh air seemed foreign in contrast to the musty air that had been trapped with her beneath the sheets. She inhaled deeply just as Marta pulled the blankets completely off the bed.

One of her neighbors was having a barbecue, and the smell of charcoal and burgers made her stomach rumble and her heart ache. She had always been invited to neighborhood cookouts before.

“Five more minutes,” Salomeh croaked, squinting against the afternoon sunlight that flooded the room. Marta was highlighted by the sunlight pouring in from the window. Her pixie-cut blonde hair was perfectly mussed, and her big hazel eyes, which men and women alike couldn’t resist, shone with concern.

“Nuh-uh. Hibernation is over, Sal,” Marta said.

Salomeh shook her head as if her friend would settle for that and leave her be.

“Girl, this is
not
the look,” Marta said with a sigh, gesturing to the mound of crumpled tissues that had formed a nest beneath the blankets.

Salomeh sat upright, sweeping the tissues onto the floor next to the quilt before leaning back against her dark wood headboard. She felt a twinge of embarrassment at the mess and at her tatty old pajamas, which probably smelled as bad as they looked, but it passed quickly. Marta was the only person in the world Salomeh would allow to see her at her most vulnerable.

“They provided good insulation,” she said peevishly. “Just trying to do my part to prevent climate change.”

Marta rolled her eyes.

“You haven’t left the house in, like, a week, Sal. It’s time to say ‘fuck these people’ and start living your life again,” Marta said, her voice taking on a sternness that almost made Salomeh smile through her sadness. Marta was using the “teacher tone” that Salomeh had been wielding against her friend for years. “You can’t let them win by becoming a hermit. You deserve better than this.”

I’ve been fighting to make things better my entire life, and this is where it got me, Salomeh thought. There’s no point in trying anymore.

“Marta, they’ve already won.” Salomeh picked up one of the less icky tissues and swiped at her nose. “I may as well be Hester Prynne, but instead of being branded with a scarlet letter, I’m photoshopped into a picture with pedobear.”

She shook her head in frustration. “Have you ever had a strange woman walk up to you and tell you that you deserve to burn in hell for what you’ve done? Had men make impossibly lewd comments because they think you’re the lowest of the low? I had to change my phone number, and I refuse to check my e-mail ever again.”

Salomeh didn't mention one phone call in particular, the first one she had received at her new number; a refined female voice that had calmly stated,
“Bardhyn wants you to know that if you even think about telling anyone about Alexi, the girl will suffer. Terribly. You’re smart enough to know that this is not an idle threat.”
That was the only contact she'd had from the man who had ruined her life. He couldn’t even be bothered to threaten her himself.

Salomeh’s stomach plunged at the reminder of how little value her life held for this man. She thought of how her first cat would behave when it caught a mouse: it would toy with the poor creature for as long as it derived enjoyment, or until the mouse was irreparably broken.

Marta sighed and moved from the bed, her strides carrying her through the long, narrow bedroom and out of sight. The fear that Marta was walking out on her gripped Salomeh, but Marta quickly returned holding two paper coffee cups, the familiar blue-and-white pattern as comforting as chicken soup. Salomeh eagerly took a cup, turning it so that the cheery “Have a nice day!” slogan faced away from her.

She took a sip of coffee and then closed her eyes as the caffeine buzzed pleasantly through her system. She had been a five-cup-a-day drinker when she was teaching and mentoring, but caffeine had been the last thing on her mind for the past two weeks. All she had wanted to do was sleep. It was the only way to escape the nightmare her waking life had become.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Marta said irritably as she sat cross-legged at the end of the bed. “You didn’t do anything but help that girl, and the cops have no evidence against you. Why is this still an issue?”

“They have no evidence because they can’t find Yelena,” Salomeh said quietly. The girl had apparently disappeared a few days ago. Her mother said she had gone to stay with relatives in Moscow for the summer, but Salomeh couldn’t ignore what the phone call implied.

“The girl will pay.”

Marta sighed and shook her head.

“I can’t find it in me to be sad that the girl who helped unleash this shit storm isn’t around to cause more trouble right now,” Marta said, her thin brows furrowing.

“She’s a kid, Marta,” Salomeh said. Her instinct was still to protect Yelena, even now. “An abused kid who was afraid for her life. I doubt she had much choice in the matter.”

“I know,” Marta said, frustration lacing her tone. “And I know you felt a special attachment to her because you can’t—” Marta stopped herself short, but Salomeh knew what she was going to say.
Because you can’t have kids of your own.

“I just can’t stand seeing what’s happened to you,” Marta continued. “Isn’t there something your lawyer can do to make all those newspapers retract their stories?”

“Unless he’s a time-machine salesman in his spare time, then no,” she said, feeling a bit more of herself returning with each word she spoke to her friend. Perhaps going into full recluse mode hadn’t been the best choice. “The charges have been dropped, but the allegations will never go away.”

“Why don’t you just tell someone your side of the story? Why hasn’t your lawyer?” Marta asked.

“I tried, but the police say that there’s no record of my having made a complaint against Alexi,” Salomeh said, trying to sidestep Marta’s inevitable curiosity.
“The girl will pay.”
“Who would believe me anyway? If I told them that some strange man set me up because I tried to help a child, they’d think I was insane.”

And maybe by the time this ordeal is over, maybe I will be, she thought.

“There has to be something we can do to make this right,” Marta said.

“I don’t see how,” Salomeh said. She had been avoiding thinking about this topic because she always came down to the same conclusion. “Newspapers, blogs, social networks… This story spread everywhere. There are people all around the country who think I’m some perverted freak. And even if people forget, all it takes is a little Google search to remind them. It’s all too much.”

And that was without the added factor of a missing child and a criminal who would harm both of them if Salomeh tried to vindicate herself.

“Ugh, I wish I could do something to help,” Marta said, looking down and clutching her paper cup tightly. “Why couldn’t I have a cool job like an assassin or something so I could just go kill the guy who did this? Being a project manager at an architecture firm doesn’t exactly give you lethal skills besides the ability to bore people to death. I do have some pretty sharp tools, though.”

Salomeh could very easily imagine her friend trying to track down the men who had hurt her. Marta was the definition of loyalty, and she didn’t mind breaking heads when necessary.

She stretched her leg across the bed and poked at Marta’s knee with her big toe.

“You have helped me. You’ve stuck by me through all this, and I know you never doubted me for a second,” Salomeh said. “Plus you’re sitting on my trash heap of a bed, pretending it’s not giving you the heebie-jeebies.”

Marta gave her a trembling smile, and Salomeh swallowed past the lump of emotion forming in her throat.

“But some things you can’t help me with,” she said. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t trust Marta. She just didn’t want her friend to get hurt. A part of her wished there was someone she could turn to without reservation or fear.

When she was younger, she had imagined she would have a life partner by now, but she had lived her life the way she thought best contributed to the world, and that had meant sacrifice. Louis, her ex-fiancé and last serious relationship, had been jealous of the time and attention she gave her students and mentees. She had forgiven him for actively undermining her, but when he’d humiliated her after finding out she was barren, it had been the last straw. She hadn’t needed a partner to accomplish the things she wanted in life, and she’d never regretted that decision. Until now.

Now she wished there was someone muscled and strong and ready to karate chop any man who would dare threaten her. Someone she could brainstorm her way out of this mess and not have to worry that he would run away screaming or make things worse. She sighed. Maybe the last two weeks had broken the feminist region of her brain, because these thoughts were neither helpful nor empowering.

Salomeh watched Marta down the last of her coffee before tossing the cup onto the pile of tissues. Fantasizing about some deus ex alpha male who would descend from the heavens to save her wasn’t exactly productive, so she started planning what cleaning supplies she would need to get her apartment back in order. It hit her then that it was the first time she had made a list in days. Making to-do lists had been second nature to her before her downfall, but while she had wallowed in despair, she’d lost track of even the most deeply ingrained parts of herself. That couldn’t happen again if she were going to get through this.

“What are you going to do?” Marta asked. “You better not be thinking about crawling back under that blanket as soon as I leave.”

What to do? Salomeh had been avoiding that question as she lay mired in depression, but somewhere within her, the answers had been gestating.

“No, you’re right. No more hiding,” she said. She started a new list, counting each task off with the unfurling of a finger from her tightly clenched fist. “I’m going to try to clear my name, but to do that I need to find Yelena. I’m going to find out who Alexi’s boss is, and…”

She thought of the name the woman had said with such an air of reverence:
Bardhyn.

“What?” Marta said, leaning toward her.

“I’m going to make him pay,” Salomeh said, surprising herself. She didn’t quite believe it, but she needed to put the thought out into the world. Something else was growing within her alongside the plans for how to get herself out of this situation—a brightly burning rage at the people who had done this to her, and the strong desire to hurt them back.

She was tired of doing the right thing; that had led to the ultimate humiliation. Her old life was a burned-out wreck, but there was still a chance to salvage something.

“What can I do?” Marta asked.

“You can keep being the awesome friend who brings me coffee and doesn’t let me decompose under a moldy quilt,” Salomeh said, placing her feet on the floor and standing. She stretched, a vertebrae-cracking, reach-for-the-sky kind of stretch.

Marta smiled, her large eyes sparkling with hope.

“Since you seem to be getting your groove back, I should tell you the reason I stopped by,” Marta said. “There’s a party at my building tomorrow, and I want you to come.”

Salomeh’s stomach lurched at her friend’s words. Getting out of bed was one thing. Leaving the house would be its own lesson in humility. The thought of being at a party surrounded by people who didn’t know her but might think they did was enough to stir the beginnings of a panic attack.

“I can’t do that,” she said stiffly, her arms dropping to her sides. Her rediscovered vim and vigor quickly subsided. How could Marta make it sound so easy?

“Yes, you can. It’s Independence Day, the perfect time to throw off these self-imposed shackles and leave the house. How ironic would that be?”

“That’s not irony,” Salomeh said, the English teacher in her winning out over her despair. “Maybe if it was Juneteenth, but even then…”

Marta rolled her eyes. “Whatever grammar-type thingy it is, it’ll be fun, I promise,” she coaxed. “Come on, what was it you told me after that Australian chick dumped me and I was sure that my life was over?”

Salomeh didn’t even have to think. The words, spoken by one of her idols, had been her mantra for years.
“‘Be the heroine of your life, not the victim,’”
she said, but then shook her head. “This isn’t about pithy quotes. Do you think it will be fun when someone recognizes me and makes a scene?”

Marta struck a Mr. Universe pose. “If that happens I will personally dump said person over the side of the roof myself. I’ve been working out.”

“As much as I would enjoy seeing that, I couldn’t deal with it if something happened. I’m trying to be strong—”

“You are strong, but you’re turning into the black female version of Howard Hughes, and for no reason,” Marta said. “There are people walking down the street proud as peacocks who’ve done terrible things—have
actually
done terrible things—while you’re locked inside.”

Salomeh felt a bit of the burden she had been carrying ease from her shoulders. Maybe Marta was right. It was tempting to think of a night spent enjoying herself.

As if sensing the chink in her friend’s armor, Marta pressed on. “This too shall pass, Salomeh. In the meantime, shouldn’t you have fun for just one night?”

Salomeh bit her lip as her fear and resilience warred with each other. One night of fun, one night of pretending to be carefree.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.