“No!” Dario shouts.
Denise jumps down and unlatches the door. Then Dario. He’s going to catch her.
But Aunt Clara’s voice echoes in the small chamber. “Denise?”
“I’m right here.”
Dario puts his back to the door, looking up, mouthing the word fuck over and over.
Through the crack, I see my friend putting the phone in her back pocket. She and her aunt Clara walk out, and Dario finally finds his voice.
“Fuck!”
Dario curses all the way to the car. Once we’re both safe inside, he holds out his hand to me. “Your phone.”
I give it to him, and he makes a call.
“Thank fucking God that fucking house is locked down or we’d have to fucki—Tam.”
As he talks to Tamara, he seems so cut off from me it’s unbearable. After what just happened, seeing Denise, showing her the video, knowing how painful it was for me to see, watching her face fall—it must have been ten times more painful for her.
I hear Dario tell Tamara what to do about his phone and I see his rage at himself, but it’s all through a filter of the memory of that bathroom stall.
“…erase everything. And the lock screen…”
“Don’t,” I say.
Denise resisted helping us, but for how long? She can’t unsee what her people—our people—did. Her own husband.
“…shouldn’t even have a keyboard…”
“Unlock it. Dario.”
“What?” He stops himself mid-sentence to look at me as if I’ve lost my sense.
“If unlock it means she can see it… she needs to look at that video as many times as she has to. She might put it away and never look at it again. Or she might show people inside. Think of what that would do? A mass waking. Then she’ll help us get Dafne out.” I pause to check his reaction. All he does is blink, and it’s all I need. “Leave the video. Can the forwarding number be somewhere?”
“In the contacts,” Tamara is barely audible from his phone. “It’s not a bad idea.”
“Can you make it so when she calls it, it comes to my phone?” I say it loudly to make sure she hears me.
“Fuck, Sarah,” Dario mumbles.
“Yes.” Tamara’s voice is definite. “Dario?”
“She’s going to hang up if it’s you. If it’s me, she’ll talk.” I put both hands on his thigh and lean closer to him, pleading. “She has liberation in her back pocket.”
He thinks. From a thousand miles away, Tamara asks if he’s still there.
And though he doesn’t answer, I can tell he’s still here. The invisible wall that seemed to separate us is gone. He is one hundred percent in this car with me.
“If she’s caught with it,” he says, “and they punish her, that’ll be on us.”
Us.
I’ve dreamed of sharing a home with a man. Children. Old age. Sharing responsibility isn’t a dream come true, because I never dared imagine it was possible, or that it would be this fulfilling.
“She’s smart.” I put my hand on his. We are connected. I am here with him, anchored in the storm. “She’ll be fine. And if she’s not, she’ll call me, and I can ask about Dafne.”
He shakes his head, but I know it’s not about Denise. He’s denying something deeper and more personal.
“Tamara,” he barks toward the phone. “Do it.” When he hangs up, his head drops back.
“I know.”
He squeezes my hand but looks out the windshield to a place far away, rubbing his chin with his thumb. “I just want to be with you, and I’m so tired of the rest of it.”
“I’m with you.”
He puts the car into drive. “I’m getting you home, then I have to pick something up.”
CHAPTER 21
SARAH
In the Manhattan prison I left a week ago, if Dario wasn’t around, I knew he was in the office behind the double doors at the end of the hall. I didn’t think about that until he left the grounds of the safe house and disappeared to some nameless place my mind couldn’t picture.
There’s an empty room on the other side of the house. If he can decide how he’s coming and going without telling me, I can decide this is my space. I bring in paper and my art box. A table. I go through a few chairs before finding one I can sit in for hours. I eat lunch, then I draw what’s in my head.
His hands. The place his arm cap meets his shoulder. The delicate map of lines on his brow.
Outside. The tangle of bare tree limbs. The shape of roofs on the horizon. My memory of the tree line’s clear silhouette every ten seconds.
Benny checks on me, asking if I’m okay.
I miss my people. My family. Safety. I miss the sense that I wasn’t on my own and every choice was lovingly made for me. That I was surrounded by a community that cared for me.
Like Denise.
I wish I knew what was happening with her, but there’s been no news. All I can hope is that she hid the phone and never took it out again.
“Is there a clipboard anywhere?” I ask Benny.
“I think so. Hang on.”
He brings me one. I clip as much paper to it as I can and go outside where I can get a closer look at the trees.
I go around the back and find the service road I saw on the security monitor. The sun makes a hatched web of shadows on the soft bed of leaves that crackles under my shoes. I’ve never been in a real forest. I’ve only seen trees in parks, where they’re tamed and bound. Their spacing seems random, but when my pencil records it, there’s an order bigger than the paper can contain. But I try.
Up ahead, a twig cracks. It’s not me. I step ahead. Cautious. Curious. Safe enough to be open to any possibility. The next broken twig is close enough to stop me.
The deer is already staring at me, a piece of leaf hanging from the bottom of its chin. Pale brown. White spots. Big ears radiating from the head like antennae. Its eyes are black and still, filled with a terror that anchors it to me.
I look away but keep it in my sight. I don’t expect it will let me any closer, but I don’t want it to run. I don’t want it to be afraid. I hug my clipboard, shifting my shoulders forward as if I carry a weight, the way I did at home and school when I wanted to escape notice.
You hunch like that every time Grandma’s around.
Massimo didn’t understand. He never had to make himself small.
The deer’s ear wiggles. It bends to eat something on the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch, standing as still as a tree, postured to look as unthreatening as a woman.
The deer picks up its head, turns to me, checking to see if I’ve moved, and finding me still, turns its back on me. I dare to look up. It’s checking the ground, but finds nothing, and casually trots away.
My smile is spontaneous, but it gets so wide my face hurts.
I could have scared it. I could have brought a moment of fear into the world, but didn’t, and I won’t.
From now on, I’m going to be the counter to the suffering I’ve seen and felt. The exact opposite. The world will be better because of me.
My legs churn under me as I look at the crossed branches above in their sensible, chaotic beauty. I don’t realize how far I’ve gone until I hit a chain-link fence. It’s ten feet high with a coil of barbed wire strung across the top. The other side is more forest and brush. Over it, I can see the roof of another house. Not the one I have to get back to. I can’t see that one anymore.