I don’t regret what I’ve done or the night we shared. I hope he finds his patch of earth. Hope he finds his farm. His freedom. Even if I won’t find mine.
* * *
There’s a hole in the yard. I can’t help thinking of how horrified mother would be if she could see this. Her perfectly manicured lawn with its green, green grass, marred by something as ugly as a grave. My own patch of earth.
She’s not here, though.
She drove away as soon as Daddy discovered the diamonds were gone. Probably checking in at some kind of emergency spa retreat. I can just imagine her. The masseuse would say, Stressful day? And Mom would answer, Yes, my daughter has to be murdered. I’m going to get wrinkles over this.
It isn’t quite rectangular. Definitely not six feet deep, but I suppose it will do the job. There’s a pile of dirt beside the hole that must be more than my body mass.
What do you say to your father when he’s about to kill you?
Already killed you, really. That’s what it feels like. When I was nine years old, he knew that I would never really be able to live. This is just the punctuation at the end of a run-on sentence.
“Don’t look at me,” he says sharply, and that makes smile a little.
“After all this, you have a conscience?”
“Do you think I enjoy this?” he snaps. “You made me do this.”
That’s what bad men have been saying to their victims for a long time. Has it ever been true? No, because he’s the ultimate liar. I lift my hands up, palms open, my gaze fixed on him. I’ve done too much to make his life easier. I won’t turn away and let him shoot me in the back.
He lifts the gun and points it at the center of my chest.
Standing in front of the hole, I realize I’ll probably fall back into it. He won’t even have to touch me. Small mercy. I don’t want him to touch me, even when I’m dead. Only the earth will touch me then. Dirt, like the kind that was under Niko’s nails. The kind that coated his hands.
In this moment I am afraid, but I’m also brave. I’m about to die, but I’m more powerful than I’ve ever been. Because no matter how insane the world is, telling the truth is worth something. Even telling the truth to yourself. And I can finally be honest. Without the pink phone and the panda alarm clock.
This dirt hole is the most honest thing in my entire life.
A blast rips through the air, sharp and sudden.
I suck in a breath, waiting for the pain. Will the bullet kill me right away? Will it take time to die? Will I have to watch my father pile dirt on my dying body?
And incongruously, the thought comes: Where is Niko now?
As if I’ve conjured him from my mind alone, I hear his shout. “Emily!”
My father stares at me in shock, in anger. In relief? And then he falls to the ground in front of me, a blooming red flower on his back. I look up and see Sergio De Fiore striding toward me. It feels like a strange fever dream, seeing these terrible men. Maybe I’m already six feet under. Maybe there’s dirt in my nose, these images the result of an oxygen-deprived mind.
Except then Niko is there. He’s running his hands along my arms, as if making sure I’m still in one piece. And then standing in front of me, using his body like a shield.
“Don’t touch her,” he says to the Sergio De Fiore fever dream.
“Even though she conspired to steal the diamonds with you?” he asks, his voice dry. “I should shoot all three of you and leave the cops to puzzle over what happened.”
“That wasn’t our deal,” Niko says, sounding fierce.
And afraid. He’s afraid, I realize, and that’s how I know this isn’t a dream.
“Sustainability,” I say, stepping out from behind Niko. If we end up in a bloodbath on this pretty green grass then we’ll do it side by side. He came back for me.
Sergio lifts a sardonic brow at me. “You wish to speak to me about earth sciences?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve had a catastrophic impact on the environment.”
“What has?”
“Blood diamonds,” I say softly, nodding toward the small black case at his side. I can guess what’s inside. I can guess what Niko must have traded for my life. “Soil erosion. Deforestation. Thousands of abandoned mines that have left a surface uninhabitable by wildlife or humans.”
Sergio gives me a small nod, as if conceding a point. “But the diamonds have already been mined. The destruction has already been made. What good would it do to ignore the diamonds now?”
“Not ignore them, but make changes for the future. We can impose limits on diamond mining. We can invest in land restoration projects. We can do better in the future.”
“Can we?”
“Niko is a farmer. That’s all he wants to do.”
“And you wish to be a farmer’s wife?”
“I’ll start by being a farmer’s girlfriend, I think. That’s the natural progression of things. And I’m very interested in things that are natural right now, after a lifetime spent inside.”
Sergio seems to examine this, taking his time as if my dad’s body isn’t cooling between us. Finally he says, “There aren’t many farms near Tanglewood.”
“Not in the city,” Niko says carefully.
“Far away,” Sergio says, his expression hard.
“Very far away,” I agree, taking Niko by the hand. His fingers squeeze mine. Because we can find that patch of dirt together. It’s a small dream, especially by the glittering standards my mother has. But a huge dream for two people who’ve longed for this. It’s everything.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Emily Coulter lives up to her terrible reputation. More than a liar, she’s also a thief and a murderer. She kills her father one terrible night and buries him in the backyard, before disappearing for good.
It’s a fitting end for a terrible life.
It’s someone else who appears in a small town about two hundred miles west of Tanglewood. Someone named Emma, but her boyfriend calls her Em. Like being born again, into a life I choose.
This new identity is a lie. Niko even finds someone to make us fake identities.
Strange that I find my salvation in such an elaborate deception.
The money I have stashed in my backpack is enough to pay first month’s rent on a small apartment above a garage. I find a job at the local steakhouse while Niko goes to work for a rancher. He doesn’t mind the dirty work of shoveling feed or muck out of stalls, but he’s more interested in the crops.
At least there used to be crops. The rancher swears the land is useless, used up, done for, which doesn’t deter Niko. On the contrary he tells me that we can get it for less money. Even so it takes us two years to save up enough money. Even once we purchase the land, we keep our jobs to pay for supplies and farming equipment. And to build a small house in the center.
I work the land in the morning, then hit the lunch and dinner rush at the stakehouse. Niko goes to the ranch in the morning, then works the farm at night. It’s hard work, the kind that puts cuts in my hands and aches in my muscles. But it’s honest work.
That’s what makes it worth doing.
It takes five years for the farm to sustain itself. Five years to get to know Niko, this boy-man-something else I met in the worst of circumstances. Five years to get to know myself, this girl too sheltered and stunted to be a real person. It’s more than just the crops that grow on this acres. It’s two strangers becoming themselves, two people learning to love each other.