I saw the people who came to the orphanage. They were not good people. The kids who left never came back. I asked about them every once in a while. Well, not directly, of course. That’s dumb. I asked one of the other kids. “Hey, Rosa. Where did Isabel go? We were just playing with her yesterday, remember?” And sweet Rosa would get all upset. Her face would go crinkly. She would look around. And then, inevitably, she would reply, “Yo no sé.” She would look around again and call Isabel’s name a couple times. And then she would wander up to a sister and ask my question. “Sister. Where the fuck is Isabel? She was just here!” Curse-word embellishments are all my own in this retelling. And then the sister would say, “She’s been adopted, sweet Rosa. She has a new home with perfect parents who have lots of money and give her presents every night.”
I would read these lips from across the compound.
The sister would usually see me watching. But people have a hard time looking me in the eyes. They want to look at me, I can tell. But then it’s like they know better. Most of them make the sign of the cross and turn away quickly.
They have taken to calling me ‘espeluznante.’
At first, they would say my name first. Wendy Espeluznante. But then it just became ‘espeluznante.’
Creepy. They called me Creepy.
I would be lying if I said I was OK with this, but it kept them away from me. So. Whatever.
These guys on the boat, they saw it too.
They wanted to look at me. They wanted to know who the hell I was. They wanted to know why I was there. They wanted to ask all the questions. But they couldn’t look at me. And they couldn’t ask Chek, either. Wouldn’t dare ask Chek.
Because he’s espeluznante too.
This is why I love him.
Who was on the boat that day?
Nick Tate, of course.
That was the first time I met him.
But it would be a lot of years later before I fell in love with him.
THE CURE, PART 3
PRESENT DAY
The day before Chek took me to an airfield and dropped me off with Nick Tate so I could help him take care of his infant daughter, Lauren, I was seeing that doctor in Savannah, Georgia.
I was nine. I was done with the exam. Which wasn’t a take-your-clothes-off kind of exam. It was more of a what-do-these-ink-blots-mean-to-you kind of exam. In fact, it wasn’t an exam at all. Let’s just call it a test.
And I failed.
Chek and the doctor—a tall woman with dark brown hair and a white coat—were standing face to face in her office. Her office was made of glass. I was sitting in the hallway.
Chek had his back to me, but she was facing me the whole time, her eyes darting to me, then him, then back to me. Talking about me.
Lip-reading is my superpower. Well, I have a lot of superpowers, but lip-reading is my secret superpower. Not even Chek knows I can read lips. It’s something I’ve always been able to do. If I can see your mouth, I know what you’re saying even if you’re way across the room. So glass walls were never gonna be my Kryptonite.
She was telling him that I was not well.
She was telling him that she needs to report me to someone.
She was telling him that I should stay the night. The weekend. The week, the month, the year, the lifetime.
She was telling him I was never going to get better.
I didn’t have time to think about this in the moment, but later, I would realize that she was probably gonna report me to Santos. She was Company, obviously. You don’t just plop a little Zero girl down onto any old psychiatrist’s couch for sanity tests.
I don’t know if she did report me, but I think she might’ve. I think that’s why Chek sent me to Nick.
If Nick had me, then Santos couldn’t get me. They are brothers, after all. And maybe Nick wasn’t in charge, plus he was on the run with baby Lauren at the time, but Santos wasn’t gonna mess with Nick.
He needed Nick.
We all needed Nick.
Because Nick isn’t just a person, he’s a requirement. He’s an essential worker. A necessity. Not because he’s so smart, though he probably is smart. But because… I dunno. There’s just something about Nick that feels specific. As in specifically necessary.
But back to the doctor.
She said something else before Chek came out and took my hand and led me out of that tall building, never to return. She said there was no cure for me.
Like I had a disease.
No. Like I was the disease.
There was no cure for me.
This was why I was so interested in what Johnny Boston was doing down in Key West. Because his woman, Megan, was making the cure.
And hello? I wanted that cure.
I was tired of being the disease. And even if Carter never got me, or Santos didn’t kill me before he got himself shot in the head in Kansas, I wanted Chek to know that I was not a disease.
That I am not espeluznante.
I am just Wendy.
That’s why I did all those things that day.
That’s all I was after.
I just wanted my chance to be cured.
If I could do it over, would I do it differently?
Well. Yeah. Of course.
Of course I would.
“Does that mean you feel regret?… Wendy?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“The exact meaning of regret.”
“Would you like me to define it for you?”
“OK.”
“Regret. To feel sorrow or dissatisfaction on account of the happening or the loss of something. As in, to regret an error.”
“Oh. Hm. Then no, I don’t feel regret about it.”
“But you just said you would do it differently.”
“I did say that. But I lied.”
Anyway.
It’s last Christmas.
I go home a day early.
I pay attention to everything.
The lane in the woods is covered in snow. Snow deep enough that my truck barely disturbs the almost peaceful, picture-postcard imagery when I look in my rearview.
I see smooth, white trunks of paper-white birches—their boughs heavy from last night’s storm, a smoky-gray sky thick with the threat of another storm off in the distance, and a rabbit scampering from one side of the woods to the other after the danger of me passes by.
It’s so perfect.
I miss this place so much. And even though Chek and I never really lived here for any continuous length of time, it was still home.
It doesn’t feel like home anymore. It feels like a waystation. I only come by here when I’m meeting up with Nick. Christmas and birthdays. Though we’ve been mad at each other for a couple years now, so there have been no Christmases and birthdays.
Until now.
Well, tomorrow.
If he comes.
I want to be here a day early to get things ready. I have presents this time. I think, after twenty-four years, I might be getting the hang of this holiday shit.
But when I come around the last bend, just before I get to the cabin, I see that Nick had the same idea. Because his black truck sits off to the left side of my little house. In his spot, I realize. He always parks there. I park on the other side. And that’s where I am when the front door opens and Nick Tate appears with a dish towel slung over his shoulder and a wide grin on his almost too-handsome face.