No Way Back: A Novel (10 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

W
hen Harold came home the following night, he spoke with Roxanne privately, and after a few minutes with the kids, helping Jamie do his fractions and Taylor download photos on Apple TV, he and Roxanne asked to speak with Lauritzia in their study.

It was his office at the house, littered with briefs and law books. She hardly ever went in there.

Harold sat in the high-backed chair at his desk, and Lauritzia on the green leather couch. Roxanne sat next to her. It was clear they had something important to tell her.

“Your family has a case file with an immigration court in their attempt for asylum?” Harold asked her.

“Yes.” Lauritzia nodded. “My sister filed it. In Texas, when we tried to move here. She wanted her son to be born in America.”

“Do you remember the name of the judge who presided on it?”

Lauritzia thought back. She hadn’t come here yet, and she was a minor back then. Her older sister and father had handled it. “It was Esposito, I think.”

“We’ll need to find it.”

Lauritzia stared, confused.

“We can represent you, Lauritzia.” Mr. B leaned closer to her, a serious but somehow hopeful look on his face. “We can file an appeal, to the Immigration Appeals Court. We can go for what’s called a ‘motion to re-open,’ which basically means you could stay here, if we win. And judging by what happened the other day, I can’t imagine a court in the country not agreeing that the clear threat against your father extends as well to you. You wouldn’t have to go back home.”

“Represent me?” Lauritzia asked, looking at them both. “This will cost a lot of money.”

“Let’s just say we won’t spend our time worrying about that right now. The firm can pick up the majority of the costs. And if there’s more, well . . .” He nodded toward Roxanne. “The first thing we have to do is familiarize ourselves with your case. You’re the one remaining plaintiff of record now. Then we have to find someplace for you to stay. Someplace that’s safe. You understand that, don’t you, that you can’t remain here?”

“Yes, I understand,” Lauritzia said, her insides warming to what she thought she understood they were saying. The darkness that had weighed her down like a leaden overcast sky began to clear. This was more than she could ever have hoped for. No one had ever been there for her before.

“We’ll win this for you.” Harold reached across and squeezed her hand. A faint smile broke through. “I promise we’ll win.”

“No one’s going to walk away from you, Lauritzia.” Roxanne took her hand. “When we said you were like a part of this family, we meant it. Like it or not, you’re stuck with us!”

Mrs. B’s confident eyes and warm, determined smile infused Lauritzia with a strength she had never felt before. “So I don’t have to go?”

“Not unless you want to,” Harold said, grinning. “And even then, I believe it’ll be over my wife’s dead body.”

Lauritzia looked at him and laughed. She didn’t know what to say. Suddenly she felt joy come out of her. As if out of every pore. A joy she hadn’t felt for years, since when they were all children, back at home, before everything happened. It was a joy she felt she could trust, not a fake one, like a
governmentale
kneeling over a body telling her they would look into it. Which everyone there knew was just a
pantalla
, a sham.

“Thank you!” she exclaimed.

“Not me,” Mr. B said. “I’m just the hired hand. Her.” He pointed to Roxanne. “This is all her doing.”

“Thank you both!” Lauritzia said, unable to hold herself in. She leaped up and hurled her arms around Harold and hugged him, taking him totally by surprise. And then Roxanne. A warm, deep, penetrating hug, as deeply as if Roxanne had brought Rosa back to life and her sister stood with her arms open in front of her.

Never before had anyone stood up for her. Stood up against them. She had only seen the pall bearers and those who grieved. Tragedy and death. Now she had something she’d had only a few times in her life: a feeling of hope. The last time was when Rosa had told her that she was pregnant. She was in the United States and would have a boy, and there was hope for a new life for them. Away from all the bloodshed.

That hope did not live long, but this one was real. One she could touch and count on.

Roxanne said, “I don’t know if you’ll be able to remain with us when it’s over. Purely for your own safety.”

“I understand.”

“But we’ll set you up in a place where you’ll be safe. You can visit. You can get a job, or go back to school somewhere. Don’t be so quick to leave those books behind . . . you still might get that store.”

Lauritzia couldn’t hold back from laughing.

Roxanne squeezed her hand. “Maybe you’ll even find your father . . .”

Lauritzia’s eyes filled up with tears. “A day ago I felt there was no light anywhere in my life . . . just terror, and I had to face it alone. Now, when I look at you, at you both, there is nothing for me but light. Excuse me . . .” She felt the tide of emotion rushing up inside her. “I’ll be right back,” Lauritzia said, rushing to the door.

“Where are you going?” Roxanne asked.

She was going to cry. But she didn’t want to show that to them. “I want to tell the kids!”

WENDY

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
woke up, hearing the
whoosh
of rushing water outside. For a moment it filled me with peace, a sound I had awakened to a hundred times, one that always made me feel like everything was calm and right in my life. And that usually meant my family was around me.

Then I realized where I was, and the reality of the night before came crashing back to me. Not like the peaceful brook outside a country home. But like a raging flood of dread. A tsunami of darkness and nightmare I never saw coming, taking with it every plank and brick I had built my life on, sweeping it all away in an instant like a dark torrent of debris.

I blinked my eyes open. I sat up and looked around the familiar living room of our ski house in Vermont. The truth knifed into me, like a punch in the solar plexus. I had driven here in the dead of the night. Arrived here at four in the morning. Exhausted. Not knowing where else to go. I just needed a place to collapse and think. Think what to do. Who I could contact. I opened the door and hurled myself onto the living room couch and just passed out. I slept like a corpse, hiding from my haunting dreams. The sun cut through the room. My watch read 9:30
A
.
M
. The truth dug into me that if I were here, and not back in my own home, then what I’d been praying was just an awful dream was real. Exactly the way my mind was rebelling against remembering it.

Please, please, don’t let me really be here . . .

I looked around and saw the antique signs we collected.
CHEAP
CORN
, 5
C
.
HOOF
IT
TO
DIAMOND
GRAIN
AND
CATTLE
. The vintage board games Dave scoured flea markets for displayed on the wooden shelves.

The vintage pinball machine in the corner.

I recalled how I had pulled over to the side of the highway, somewhere in Massachusetts, and called the kids. I woke Neil in the middle of the night at school.

“Jeez, Wendy, what’s going on?”

“Neil, something terrible has happened. To your father . . .” I did my best to tell him; the words fell from my lips like stones off a ledge. “Dave’s dead. He’s been killed, Neil. I’m so sorry . . .” Then in the vaguest, clumsiest way I tried to tell him what happened. I knew it wouldn’t make any sense. Only make me appear guilty and all mixed up. Agents coming to our house in the night.
“What agents?”
he asked, becoming clearheaded. Shots as I tried to escape.

“Escape from what, Wendy?
What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, Dad’s dead? He just called me earlier today. You’re sounding crazy . . .” He was an eighteen-year-old kid, and I was telling him his father had been killed, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him why.

“What are you saying, Wendy?”

“Neil, honey, I need you to trust me and do something for me,” I said, urgency coming through the desperation. “I want you to go to your aunt Ruth’s and uncle Rob’s in Boston. First thing tomorrow morning. Just go! Don’t ask me why. This is important. You’re going to hear some crazy things . . . about what happened to your father. About
me . . .
Sweetheart, all I can tell you is they’re not true. I loved your dad very much, and now I’ve done something, I don’t know how, that’s gotten him killed. I just don’t want you to believe what they may be saying—”

“Saying?
” His sleep-strained voice grew elevated in exasperation. “What are you talking about, Wendy?
What’s
happened?
What
can’t you tell me?”

Tears rushed into my eyes.
I only wish I knew
.

“Neil, you’ve always trusted me like your own mother. And I think you know that’s exactly how I’ve always felt about you. Like you’re my own! And now you just have to trust me, honey. I can’t be with you just now. It won’t be safe. For
you.
Something’s happened and I need to sort it out. I know I’m sounding crazy. I know I’m not telling you what you want to hear. Just get to your uncle Rob’s. It’ll be safe there. And please, I beg you, Neil, don’t tell a soul where you’re heading. Not even your roommates.” I knew the people who were looking for me could find him. Could do to him what they had done to Dave. “Just go, first thing in the morning, okay? Promise me that, honey—”

“This isn’t a joke, is it, Wendy?” he said, fighting back tears.

“No, honey, it’s not a joke. I wish it was. Just promise me you’ll go, okay?”

Now he was weeping. “Okay . . .”

“And I give you my word, baby, whatever you may hear, it’s not the truth. I swear to you on that! Now go, I have to call Amy. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.” I heard him sniffling, trying to sort through the shock and confusion and grief. “I love you, baby.”

“I know. I love you too, Wendy.”

I hung up, the bass drum inside me beating through my brain. Then I did it all over again, with Dave’s daughter, Amy, six hours ahead in Spain. She was just heading off to class. Amy, who had always had issues with me. She was nine when Dave started seeing me, a year after separating from her mother. Old enough to feel like I had stolen him away from her, and kept him from ever going back. I understood. It just took her a while to learn to truly trust me. But eventually we worked it out. Neil was always my baby. I’d lived with him since he was eight. How I wanted to put my arms around them both. I needed to. I’d just lost
my
partner in life as well.

My world was crumbling too . . .

I knew I couldn’t stay here for very long. It was no secret we owned the house. Once word got out—maybe it already had!—someone would surely come by and check. The West Dover police. Or one of the neighbors. I got up and flicked on the TV, hoping to hear something about what was going on. I went into the kitchen and put on some coffee, then trudged over to the computer we kept there and punched in Google News.

I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for. To find nothing—like none of it had ever happened. Which would still mean my husband was dead, and that a government kill squad hadn’t even informed the police and were trying to silence me.

Or what I saw, the third article down.

Which stopped my heart as quickly as if a syringe of paralyzing fluid had been injected into it.

PERSON
OF
INTEREST
IN
NEW
YORK
TRIPLE
MURDER
NAMED
.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

N
umb, I focused on the headline and knew what everyone must be thinking. My kids. My family. Pam.

Anyone who knew me.

My eyes riveted on my name.
Wendy Stansi Gould.

I almost retched, my name juxtaposed with such horrible crimes. But there it was, hitting me squarely in the eyes. Taking away my breath. I could barely move the cursor, my hands were shaking so noticeably.

The article was from the AP, and posted only eight minutes earlier.

“A person of interest has been named in the string of Metro New York shooting deaths that began Wednesday night in a posh midtown hotel room and ended in an affluent suburb where the husband of the person police are seeking was found dead.”

Found dead?
Dave wasn’t “found dead.” He was killed. Something already didn’t seem right to me.

“Wendy Stansi Gould, 39, whose husband, David Michael Gould, was found shot to death at his Pelham, N.Y., home, is being sought in connection with his and two other shooting deaths: a man identified as Curtis Kitchner, a freelance journalist, and a person yet to be identified, said to be a federal law enforcement agent. Both were shot in Mr. Kitchner’s room at the Kitano Hotel. Ms. Gould is suspected to have been present at both crime scenes.”

I felt the blood rush out of my face.

“Police report that Ms. Stansi Gould was seen with Mr. Kitchner at the hotel bar only minutes before he was found dead in his hotel room, the result of an apparent shooting incident with the unidentified law enforcement agent. Soon after, Ms. Gould was spotted fleeing the hotel.”

“Of course I was fleeing!” I said out loud.
I was scared for my fucking life that they were trying to kill me!

“Later, when investigators arrived at her house in Westchester,” I read on, “they found the body of Ms. Gould’s husband in the kitchen of their tony Pelham Manor home.”

What!
My stomach started to come up. Dave wasn’t shot in the kitchen. He was shot in my car. As we tried to escape. A numbness began to take hold of me as I started to see exactly what was going on.