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They say you can never remember the first moments of your life. That it’s impossible for the brain to be able to store that kind of information. But there are some things that transcend the realm of possibility, some algorithms too complex for us to explain away with just science. The nights I had spent looking at my mother’s faded photograph paled in comparison to this moment, this flesh and blood, andblood-coveredwoman who sat before me, as if she’d just fought a battle and barely made it out alive. Maybe she hadn’t made it out entirely. Her eyes were sad. They said she’d lost something very dear to her. That she’d left something behind.
‘Mariana,’ the FBI agent said, grasping one of her hands and placing his other palm on my shoulder. ‘This is Luis. He’s been waiting a long time to meet you.’
My mother started to cry, and it hurt inside my chest that she was so upset. What had happened to her? Had she been trapped somewhere? Had she just escaped?
‘Don’t cry, Mama,’ I said, my throat tight. I was fourteen years old, and I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry. But in front of my mother? I wanted to crawl into her lap and cling to her and never let her go.
Her eyebrows rose in disbelief when I saidMama.
‘Luis?’
There are some things that cannot be explained. A child can’t remember his mother’s voice from the day he was born. And yet . . . ‘Your voice,’ I said. ‘I remember your voice.’
That made her cry harder. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I didn’t want her to cry. I wanted her to speak so that I could hear her voice again.
We sat in stunned silence, observing each other.
‘You look exactly like your father,’ my mother said to me.
I nodded. It was true, I did. I’d seen the photographs. I was his spitting image.
‘But I have your eyes,’ I said to her.
She blinked fat tears, tears that wound a line through the dried blood and the dirt on her cheeks. It was incredible. Like the warrior I’d always envisaged her to be, here she was, risen from ashes, this mythical person who, until this moment, had only existed in hope and a faded photograph I carried around with me like it was my saving grace.
Agent Price nudged me, pointing at the empty seat next to this woman he called Mariana. I stepped over and sat down so that I was next to her.
My mother dropped the agent’s hand and turned to face me, stretching her fingers towards me ever so slowly, almost as if I might disappear if she moved too fast, like smoke on the wind.
‘Can I?’ she asked hesitantly, her eyes darting to my hands.
I nodded, offering them to her. She took them in her hands, drawing a deep, almost choking breath when our skin met. I hated to be touched, hated to be hugged by my aunt or my cousins, hated to have any affection. My whole life, I’d always felt like a weird kid, the outcast, because I’d just wanted people to leave me alone.
But when my mother studied the ridges on my palms, when she turned them over to look at each finger, at my wrists, when she let my hands gently go and pressed her fingertips against my cheeks, it was like someone had poured a balm onto my skin. I didn’t want to shrink away.
‘You’re real,’ she whispered, cupping my chin in her hand.
I nodded, squeezing her wrist with my hand.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘that I ever let you out of my sight.’
She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed, and we stayed that way for a very long time. It was nothing like I imagined it would be. It was so much better.
After a long time, the agent cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s time for me to take you both, now.’
‘Where are we going?’ my mother whispered.
I saw him glance at me before his gaze settled on my mother.
‘Home. You’re going home.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
DORNAN
There was a hollow feeling in Dornan Ross’s chest that he just couldn’t seem to shake. He’d tried to fill it with so many things over the years, with fucking and money, and little lines of flake that made his brain spark and bubble but left him with a hideous comedown afterward. He tried to fill it with children, and wives, and control.
He tried to fill it with everything he fucking could, but it was like a black hole, and it demanded to be fed, and it never, ever fucking closed up. It was never full. It was never sated. It just got bigger, and greedier, until one day, it swallowed him whole.
