Hidden Heart (20 page)

“
Okay, if this would give
you peace of mind, I will spend the night at your home while you
are gone.”

“
That’s my girl,” he said
and scooped her in his arms.

***

“
Call me when you get
there.” Tessa blew him a kiss.

“
I will, promise,”
Alessandro said and walked towards the security. His plane would
depart in less than an hour and a half. He waived one more time
before disappearing behind the sliding doors.

Tessa left the Otopeni
International Airport, but instead of going back to Alessandro’s
place as she promised, she drove to the same old bodega on the
other side of Bucharest where she met Mr. Popescu the other day. He
called her earlier that Sunday and told her his brother-in-law
agreed to meet with her.

She’d do anything just to
take her mind off the abortion scheduled for the next morning.
After Alessandro offered her the key to his apartment she decided
not to tell him about the baby. It was hers and dragging him into
the story seemed like a bad idea. It was her sin, her cross to
bear.

The stench of alcohol and
smoke hit her the minute she entered the jam-packed bodega. She
forced herself not to gag by taking small breaths, while her eyes
tried to adjust to the dim lights and locate the farmers. She saw
them in a corner and she rushed to their table.

“
Thank you for coming,” she
said and took a seat. “I will not waste your time, here is my
document.” She placed the document on the table. Her heart raced
and her hands shook.

The two farmers exchanged
looks. Mr. Vasile pulled a wrinkled paper out of his pocket and
smoothed it with both hands, then placed it on the table in front
of her.

She looked at the papers,
read them and read them again. Something wasn’t right. Indeed both
documents had her signature, yet the price didn’t match.

“
I don’t understand. The
price is different.”

Mr. Popescu sighed,
exchanged another look with his brother-in-law and said, “You know,
Ms. Cosma, we’ve been through so much and we’re scared for our
families, but since that witch is gone, maybe things will change
for us in our community.”

He shook his head, took a
big gulp of vodka and continued, “You negotiated a price with us
and you gave us the money according to the contract. But before we
left the notary’s office, if you remember, we had to get the
documents sealed and stamped, which was done in a different room.
There, the notary took the contracts and replaced them with others
saying the exchange rate dropped and actually we needed to pay back
some of the money. None of us are educated; we have no idea what an
exchange rate means, how banks work. We just don’t have a way to
work our land anymore. We are a bunch of people that have worked
all our life to make a better life for our children.” He leaned in
his chair, took his glass and drank it to the bottom. His
brother-in-law nodded at him and drank his vodka to the bottom,
too.

Tessa finally understood.
The notary played her and she fell for it. She lied about the
contracts being damaged and used the second set of contracts to
keep the difference between the original price and the one given to
the farmers. Was she the one behind the letter accusing her of
fraud? Why did she try to destroy Tessa’s reputation and her
career? How many other companies did she rip off? Should she talk
to Daniel and warn him about this diabolical woman?

She shivered at the thought
of contacting Daniel, but it infuriated her to let the notary go
unpunished for her crimes. But that wasn’t her main concern now.
She needed to talk to Victor and tell him the truth. Then they
could figure out a plan to see if involving the authorities would
help in finding the notary and getting her to return the
money.

She left the bodega and
drove to Victor’s house.

“
You can’t get enough of me
at work, so you start paying house visits?” Victor said when she
walked into the house.

He showed her to his
office, closed the door behind and invited her to sit. Out of
nowhere, he handed her a glass of whiskey and whispered, “If Dina
comes in, you have to say it’s yours.” He took it from her hand,
drank a little, then handed her back the glass.

“
Victor, I’m not in the
mood,” she said, put the glass on his desk, and handed him the two
contracts.

“
Can I smoke a cigar? You
know, since the heart attack, she’s watching me like a hawk,” he
whispered again without looking at the papers.

“
Why, you think if Dina
comes in she’d think I smoke, too? Seriously, you’re looking for
trouble.”

“
Man, you’re in a bad mood
today, what ticked you off so bad?”

“
Read.”

She slumped in her chair
and rested her elbows on her knees pressing her hands together
against her lips. She felt nauseous and dizzy. She hadn’t had
anything to eat since breakfast and the stench from the bodega
clung to her clothes, her skin, her hair.

“
Why are there two
contracts with two different sums for the same person?” Victor’s
brows bridged in a frown.

Tessa stood and cleared her
throat.

Truth time.

“
The notary called me the
day before paying the farmers and told me the documents had been
damaged by a flood in her office. I went and signed a second set of
contracts without reading them. It turned out she took the
originals and swapped them and extorted the farmers, offering them
a story about exchange rate dropping. Since none of them knew what
that was, they took the fake contracts, the little money left and
went about their business.

“
It turned out she is one
influential person in their community and everyone fears her, or
actually her father, who is the mayor of Otopeni. That’s why no one
wanted to tell us why they were so angry with us; because they
thought we worked hand in hand with her. And this is not all; she
disappeared several days ago and no one has any idea where she
might be. Probably she took the money and fled the country. She’d
never have to work or worry again.”

Victor’s face reddened and
a vein on his forehead threatened to explode. She knew that sign
very well, the sign of fury. His mouth fell open when the door
swung open and Dina entered with a tray. The room filled with the
smell of fresh baked apple pie mixed with the smell of coffee and
green tea.

Tessa’s mouth watered
instantly.

“
Tessa dear, so good to see
you.” She placed the tray on Victor’s desk and turned to hug Tessa.
She offered her a plate and a mug with green tea, then did the same
for Victor, but instead of tea she gave him a cup of
coffee.

“
Now, if you plan on
yelling at her, I warn you, I’m not taking you to the hospital.”
She pointed a finger at his chest and raised her eyebrows. “She did
something stupid, but there is always a solution.”

Victor looked at his wife
and tried again to say something, but she pointed at the pie and
hurried him to eat.

“
Dina, it’s more than
that…” Tessa managed to say. She placed her pie untouched on the
table and shook her head. “I don’t know how to solve this mess. I
should’ve never signed those contracts without reading them, it’s
illegal and I’m taking full responsibility.” She looked at Victor’s
pained face and his disappointment tore her heart. “Victor, I’m so
sorry, so sorry…you have every right to fire me…I don’t deserve to
be trusted, I screwed up, big time.”

Chapter 10

This
was it. The abortion was scheduled for the next morning. Tessa
felt as if the time just flew by; she needed more time to get
ready, to be in the right state of mind. What was the right state
of mind? Did such a thing exist?

Alessandro’s apartment felt
empty without him there, but she promised she’d stay at his place
while he traveled to Italy. After leaving Victor’s house, she went
by her apartment to grab her bag with the items the doctor
suggested she’d bring: pajamas, robe, towels, house shoes, socks,
tampons.

And money.

Lots of money. She made
money envelopes with a “D” for the doctor or an “N” for the nurse;
easier for her to hand them out when the need arose. The more money
in each envelope, the better the service and care.

This bribery spawned from
the beginnings of communism and still continued—though the
Communist Government no longer existed—as the standard practice
when visiting a doctor’s office, no matter what the procedure. The
more complicated the surgery or consult or exam, the more money
necessary. This practice was intrinsic throughout Romanian
society—whether a doctor, police officer, teacher, dentist,
fireman. It irritated Tessa that all these people had a regular
paycheck once a month and all of them would argue that they were
doing it because they were underpaid.

Tessa finished packing and
as she prepared to leave her living room she saw the last book her
mama had given her resting on a bookshelf. She’d seen “Gone with
the Wind” so many times, she could easily recite parts of it. But
the book, she’d never read. It was an older English version, with a
hardcover and a dust jacket and delicate yellowish pages. She
remembered her mama’s glowing face the evening they had returned
from the theater and she handed her the book, nicely wrapped in
gift paper, and how excited she had been to finally offer it to
her.

Tessa picked up the book
and tears blurred her vision. She hugged it to her chest as if it
was made of crystal and closed her eyes. She could almost feel her
mama’s soft touch, running her fingers over the book’s cover. She
opened her eyes and browsed through the book. It would be a good
way of distracting herself while waiting for the doctor.

A white envelope fell out
of it, drifting to the floor. It was the envelope her mama left for
her, similar to the one Octavia and Chiara received as well. Tessa
had never read it. She came home after the funeral and put it away,
then forgot about it.

Maybe now was the right
time to read it.

She sighed and inserted the
envelope back between the pages. She’d read it when she got to the
doctor’s office in the morning; something to look forward
to.

An overwhelming mixture of
feelings kept her awake almost all night. She went through all of
them: fear, anxiety, guilt, sadness, shame, worry… She cried, wrung
her hands, paced the room, curled up on the floor, then stood and
paced again. The emotional horror she underwent through the night
left her exhausted. She finally fell asleep, only to hear the alarm
within a few minutes.

She hardly recognized
herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked like a ghost, with large
dark circles under her eyes, pale and tired. She took a quick
shower, twisted her hair up into a bun and dressed. No food or
liquids as the doctor directed. A violent trembling came over her
and when she tried to call a cab, she had to dial the number twice
until she had it right, then she needed to repeat several times the
address until the operator understood her.

Alessandro had called her
and she had to pretend she was okay. But she was far from being
okay. She was a mess. She was miserable. Facing a firing squad
would feel better than what she was about to do. But she had to
remind herself the baby didn’t have a place in her life, not now
and not ever.

“
Please have these forms
filled out, and sign here and here then come and see me,” the
receptionist said when she entered the clinic.

Tessa put her bag on a
nearby chair and took the forms. She shook so badly that she had to
hold the papers with both hands. She forced herself to read and
understand the content, signed robotically, then returned the
documents to the receptionist. She was told to have a seat and
she’d be called shortly.

Tessa finally looked around
her. She had been there before, when she scheduled her abortion.
The small reception area had chairs along two parallel white walls,
a long coffee table in between, two plants in each corner by the
window and lots of magazine. Two other women sat across from her,
either reading or pretending to read. No one looked at
her.

Her palms hurt; she looked
down to see her white knuckles gripping tightly around the bag’s
handles. She opened her palms and saw the angry, red, deep marks
left by her own nails. She felt dizzy; her heart could easily
compete with a racecar, a roaring in her ears.

Breath, in and
out…everything will be all right…it will soon be over…

“
Miss Cosma, hello?” The
nurse’s face close to Tessa’s made her jump. The nurse straightened
and said, “Miss Cosma, please follow me.” Her words penetrated
Tessa’s panic.

Tessa stood and followed
her into an adjacent room; tiny, white and unwelcoming. The
furniture consisted of a bed in the middle, a chair on one side and
a nightstand on the other side; an IV pole nearby with two serum
bags already hanging over. White plastic shutters covered the
windows.

A chill crept down her
spine and the trembling began again. She couldn’t stop her teeth
from chattering and only nodded at the nurse when she told her to
get undressed, the doctor would soon come to see her. She undressed
and arranged each piece of her garments with infinite care, in an
attempt to prolong the time she had left. She put on the robe and
socks the nurse gave her and crawled underneath the bedcovers. She
closed her eyes.