“That, you should have known was going to happen.”
“Once the unexpected happens, Sarah, the consequences get predictable… and they’re all bad.”
“Nonsense.” In this cramped space, overreach seems within bounds. There’s no room for polite little dishonesties. I’m just saying what’s on my mind. “All of that was preventable.”
He leans back as far as he can, as if he needs to see me from farther away to figure out if I’m serious.
“Isn’t there a way to carry a phone you can’t track?” I say. “Like shutting it off or something? And you knew Samir’s wife had health issues. You didn’t ask if he was in the habit of leaving his post? Or if she tended to call with problems in the middle of the night? And you had no extra men, no lookouts… no one for just-in-case who could have been like, ‘Hey, Samir, please don’t just leave without pulling out Dario and Nico, because they have no water and didn’t even pack a granola bar.’ I mean, what did you expect when you were so reckless?” When he doesn’t answer, but stares at me under the glare of the light bulb, I can’t help myself. “And as far as Nico’s parents go, I don’t care if they were foster or not, they were responsible for him. I promise you, our children are not coming and going as they please. Spending the weekend with who?” I scoff. “How old were you, Dario? Out of your teens, even? Barely a man. My God, money couldn’t buy them good sense. What did they think you two were up to?”
He blinks so slowly that for a split second, I think he fell asleep under the car. But he opens his eyes, grips the edge of the chassis, braces his arms, and slides out. I start to wriggle myself in that direction but stop squirming when I feel him grip my ankles. He slides me out along the cardboard, and when I’m out, he helps me up.
“You’re staying here. So you’re safe, yeah. But also.” Reaching into the engine, he removes a cap. “I don’t want you to have weight on you. I’d rather you hate me than drag around guilt you had a part in something you didn’t want to happen.” He pops a yellow top from a jug of blue liquid. “So no thumbprint. Not a single boop.” He pours the liquid from the jug into the hole he uncapped, silent, deep in his thoughts until the container is empty. Still pensive, he screws the cap back on. “And we can’t wait any longer. I’m going to kill your father.”
He waits for me to object, but I do not.
“I can get you the keys to everything.” My hesitation comes from wondering if I should hesitate, but there’s no need to. Dario and I have to win this if we want to live in peace. “If it’s useful to not shoot your way in and out.”
“It could be.” He’s not exactly distrustful—but managing his expectations. He tosses the jug into the trash can. “Tell me.”
“Can you get into the church again? You probably won’t be able to go the same way as last time.”
“There’s another way.” He steps toward me with his shoulders at an angle, as if he’s not ready to believe I can deliver what I promise. “The skylight over the back stairs.”
I try to imagine the safest pathway through, but I need to engage my eyes and hands. There’s a thick, square pencil on the tool bench. I stick it behind my ear. “Let me think.”
I leave the garage and pace to the living room with my mind in the halls and rooms of my youth. I feel them. The thick air, the smell of mildew in one place, and the constantly changing smell of food cooking in another. The broken and the repaired. The old and the new. I am physically present in my mind and mentally detached from my body.
Grabbing the arm of the couch, I pull it away from the wall.
Dario’s behind me. If he touches me, or speaks, the spell will be broken.
Sliding the pencil from my ear, I make a line. Then another. I narrate what I draw. Here are stairs. Here is a hallway. This is a door that’s behind a thumbprint, and here’s one waiting for a key or clever hand.
“This…” I make an X then a circle around it. “Is a maintenance room, and next to it is the site director’s office, which is a thumbprint lock on a steel door. There’s a cabinet on this wall.” Tap tap… then I draw another X. “The keys to everything are inside it.”
“What does everything mean?”
“Once, I forgot the keys to our apartment. I got sent down here for the spare set.”
“Your personal apartment? With your father?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what else is in there?”
“No. Can I finish?”
“Go on.”
“So the cabinet has a combination lock. But there’s a bathroom back here.” My cheek’s pressed to the plaster as I tap the boxes I drew. I switch my focus from the pencil to the man leaning his shoulder on the wall. “But it’s from the original construction, and every wall cabinet in that building is connected to another in the adjoining room, separated by a tin sheet.” I push off the wall and stand straight. “So if you go into the bathroom, the medicine cabinet’s on the other side. Unscrew the back with one of those fancy tools you have.” I toss the pencil on the table. “Take the keys. Do what you have to do.”
He comes to me, hands out, and holds my face still while he breathes me in from chin to temple.
“You’d do this for me?” He’s still long enough for me to look into his dark-webbed eyes.
“I’m doing it for me.”
“This can’t be undone.” His whisper is a warning.
“I’ll wait for you here.”
“First you drive, then you wait.”
I nod, leaning even closer to him. Our lips meet, and with a kiss, I betray my family and my father.
Dario takes the car out to make sure the brakes work the way they’re supposed to, but before he gets out of the garage, he winds up stopping so short the tires stretch to ovals.
I rush over to his window. “Are you all right?”
“Perfect. Let me get the fluid going.”
I watch, closing my sweater around me as he takes the car around the driveway a couple of times, stopping and starting until he’s satisfied. Finally, he parks in front of me.
Putting my hand on the top of the door, I lean into his open window. “Is the fluid going?”
He opens the door but doesn’t get out. “Let’s do this.” He spreads his legs and pats the leather seat between them. “Come on.”
After a moment of suspicion, I let him guide me into the front seat with him. It’s set back far enough to let me lean comfortably into his chest and take in the dials and levers around the steering wheel. He takes my hands and places them on the top of the steering wheel.
“Is this how everyone learns?”
“The wheel is a clock. Hands at ten and two.”
“You hold the wheel by the bottom.” I put my hands where he does.
“Forget what I do.” He moves my hands where he wants them.
“Sometimes you don’t even use both.”
“Put your feet on top of mine.”
Arguing about the steering is getting me nowhere, so I find his feet with my own. We’re attached everywhere with pressure at the extremities.