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“Try, Jules. I’m here. I’m listening, and I’m not going anywhere. Oscar can’t hurt you anymore. You can tell me what really happened.”
I closed my eyes. Somewhere inside my brain, my ten-year-old self screamed. She didn’t want me to tell anyone. She wanted that moment, that horrible, life-defining moment to stay buried.
I couldn’t be ruled by her anymore. I took a deep breath and let it out.
“I was on my way to my abuela’s house. I visited her all the time. They attacked in the desert, on a quiet back road. She lived out in the country. She was very old and very connected with her heritage.” I stared at my hands. They were trembling. I’d told him most of this already. “The car flipped. My leg got trapped between the front seat and the door, and I played dead when the men searched through the cars. In the seat next to mine, my personal bodyguard was trapped by his seatbelt and was unable to get away. I heard him breathing hard, and he whispered for me not to make a move. He told me to pretend like I’d already passed on.”
I looked up at him and he only nodded for me to go on.
“They looked inside and found him. I didn’t look as they dragged him out through the broken window. He screamed so much. They asked him things, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. He was in so much pain, and finally they shot him. It was a huge shotgun blast. The loudest thing I’d ever heard. I stayed there, playing dead, my leg jammed and broken for what felt like hours. Then I decided to see if they were gone.
“Getting myself out hurt more than anything I’ve ever done. But I managed to crawl through the window, and that was when I found him. Vidal sat in a pool of his own blood with his intestines in his hands. He looked over, his face pale and drawn and I looked into the eyes of a living dead man.”
I stopped then. So much was coming back and it hurt. This part was too much, but I had to go on. I had to face it.
Carmine put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. You can tell me what you did.”
“I tried to help him. But he could barely talk, and what could I have done? I was ten years old and they’d shot him in the gut. He was a mess and he was suffering. I told him I’d go get help, but he begged me not to leave. He kept saying he didn’t want to die alone, so I stayed. I sat next to him and held his hand and he cried for a while, until he finally stopped and told me to go get a gun.
“I did what I was told. I liked Vidal. He was one of the nicest people in my life. I had a crush on him forever, ever since I understood that girls liked boys in that way. I found a gun on the body of a dead guard in the car in front of ours and brought it back to him, but his hands were shaking and they were drenched with blood. He looked into my eyes and he said, ‘Please, Julieta. I know this is a lot to ask, but please. Put the gun against my head and pulled the trigger. It will be very fast and very easy. Please.’ I told him no, over and over, but he kept begging. He was in so much pain. He tried to move and tried to do it himself, but he couldn’t hold the gun up. It kept slipping from his slick hands.
“Finally, I took the weapon, and I pressed it against his head. He looked into my eyes and he smiled. ‘I’m sorry, little Julieta,’ he said. ‘But please, pull the trigger and send me on. I can’t take this anymore.’”
I stopped talking. The sound of the gun going off and the spray of his blood was seared into my mind. It was one of the many fragments, and the one that came back most often.
Carmine wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tight. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “You were ten years old. You were a child.”
“He asked me to do it. He begged. I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“It was,” he said, kissing my hair, my neck, my cheek. “God, Jules, all this time. You did nothing wrong. Vidal never would’ve made it, even if you’d gotten help right away. But I bet it took you hours to walk with your broken leg.”
“I used a rifle I found in the truck of our car as a cane. Even with that, it took me forever. I think that walk is why my leg is still screwed up.”
