Lisa Unger: Black Out

“One half hour until you have to pick up Miss Victory,” she says quietly.

I nod and look at my watch. I resist the urge to snap at her, to say, You don’t think I know I have to pick up my daughter? She loves my daughter and takes care of us, while I nap on the couch in the afternoon. I can never muster anything but gratitude for her.

“Thank you, Esperanza.”

Impossibly, I have drifted off in my crouch behind the door. That’s the level and nature of my fatigue. I am not sure how long it has been since Dax came to tell me about the other boat. Might be minutes, might be hours. Through my porthole I can see that the sun has not risen, that there’s not even a hint of morning light in the sky.

My feet and legs are aching with that horrible tingle of having too much weight on them awkwardly for too long. I stand painfully and stretch, try to walk it off. As I make tight circles in my small cabin, trying to get blood flowing to my limbs, I have a growing sense of unease. Something’s wrong. It takes another minute of anxious pacing, but I realize eventually what’s bothering me: I can’t hear the engines anymore. The boat has come to a stop.

I’m not sure what this means, but suddenly I’m a fox in a trap; I’m stuck in the box of my cabin. When he finds me, I’ll have no place to hide. It’s almost as though he choreographed it that way, like some elaborate dance that we do, that we have always done. But for the first time since we’ve met, I won’t allow myself to be led, to be circled around and dipped at the finale. Tonight I’ll take the lead.

I open the door just a crack and peek out into the empty hallway. As I do this, I hear the boat power down, and everything falls into pitch black. There’s not even a pinprick of light, and I’m rendered blind. I draw my gun, step into the corridor, and put my back to the wall, then start edging my way toward the staircase that leads to the deck.

After an early and incredibly healthy dinner of fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, and a side of broccoli spears that no one eats, Esperanza, Victory, and I make chocolate chip cookies. Or Esperanza and Victory make cookies and I watch with rapt attention, sitting on a stool at the bar that separates the kitchen from the family room. It still thrills me to watch Victory walk and do things like hold the hand mixer from her stepstool. She’s such a little person that it’s already impossible to imagine she came from my body.

“I don’t think you put enough vanilla in there,” I say, trying to be helpful.

“Oh, Mommy,” says Victory with a sigh. I smile into my cup of chamomile tea. After the last couple of days, I’ve decided no more caffeine for me. I clearly don’t need any extra stimulation.

The sun is setting, painting the horizon purple and pink. I have pushed my dream as far away as it will go and focus on being present for this time with my daughter. When the cookies are ready, the three of us eat them together on the deck. I’ve built a fire in the chimenea, and we help Esperanza practice her English as the sun makes its final bow. When the air gets too cold, we all go inside.

“When does Daddy come home?” Victory asks as we head upstairs for her bath.

“Soon,” I tell her.

“Soon when?” she asks, dissatisfied with my answer.

“Soon,” I say, resting a hand on her hair.

She nods and looks a little sad. I feel bad that I can’t tell her more. But the truth is, I don’t know the answer to her question, and even if I did, I still wouldn’t be able to tell her where her daddy goes.

By the time she’s lathered up and playing with her bath toys, I’m off the hook; Victory has forgotten all about poor Gray. She’s far too wrapped up in the drama unfolding between Mr. Duck and Mr. Frog, who are in a heated debate about who is faster. I’m cheering for Mr. Frog when Esperanza comes in.

“Telephone for you, Mrs. Annie,” she says, coming to take my place beside the tub.

“Who is it?”

She shrugs and looks uncomfortable. She searches for the words in English, then finally gives up. “No sé. Pero pienso que es importante.”

“She says she doesn’t know but she thinks it’s important,” translates Victory, my little bilingual.

I nod and go to the phone. My heart is thudding as I walk down the hall to our bedroom. I am always afraid when the phone rings while Gray is away. I’m always waiting for the call. I remind myself that if anything were really wrong, they’d come in person.

“Hello.”

“Annie.” It’s my father. He sounds tense, urgent. He’s not supposed to call me. In fact, I’m not really supposed to call him, either. But every once in a while, like the other day, I can’t help it. In recent years we’ve become a little careless. Part of the overconfident phase I’ve been going through.

“Where are you calling from?”

“From a friend’s place.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There was someone looking for Ophelia today. He came by the shop, said he was a cop. But he wasn’t. A bald, beefy guy making a show of himself with a big gun in a holster.”

“Okay.” This is the hard part. I don’t know if he’s lying or not.

“Seriously,” he says into the silence. “No bullshit.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that my daughter has been dead for over five years.”

“Okay.” This seems to be the only word I can manage. I realize that my whole body is tense, that I’m gripping the phone too hard.

“He didn’t believe me. He wasn’t just casting for information; he knew something. He got all friendly with me, said there was a reward, a big one, for any information about you. I went crazy on him, started to cry and shit about how you were dead and how dare he play these kinds of games with an old man. Then he left in a hurry.”

“But he wasn’t a cop.”

“No way. You can always tell a cop, even the bad ones. They think they got the law on their side. This guy was too dirty even to be a dirty cop.”

“Okay,” I repeat again, not wanting to say too much.

“Be careful,” he says, and hangs up.

I sit for a second with the phone in my hand. I’m not sure what to think about what he’s told me. Ophelia has been dead for so long. After so much time I’d come to believe that everyone had forgotten her except me. I hang up the phone and then pick it back up, punch in a number I know very well.

“Hello?” says Drew.

“Can you come by later? It’s Annie.”

“Sure,” he says after a second’s hesitation. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

Drew always looks at me as though I’m an unwelcome solicitor at his door asking for a donation to a charity in which he doesn’t believe. I don’t like the woman I see reflected in his gaze. She’s someone unworthy, not to be trusted. But maybe I’m just projecting, as my doctor might say.

He sits at our dining-room table, a bottle of Corona nearly disappearing in his big, thick hand. His brow furrows with deep lines as I tell him what my father told me. He is a heavier, harder version of Gray. He has the same storm-cloud eyes without any of the wisdom or kindness I see in his son’s.

“Could just be someone fishing,” he says with a shrug. He takes a long swallow of his beer, puts the bottle down heavily on the table. “Unfortunately, the circumstances of Ophelia’s death wouldn’t hold up to any real scrutiny. We never expected anyone to come looking.”

I feel a little jolt at hearing that name from him. I hate the way it sounds coming from his mouth, the way it bounces on the walls of this house.

“But there might be a few people who haven’t forgotten her,” he says when I don’t say anything. He rests his eyes on me, and I fight the urge to shift beneath his gaze. I hear the television playing in Esperanza’s room; she’s watching one of her novelas. I can tell by the staccato of Spanish and the strains of melodramatic music. (¡Ay, Dios! Esperanza will exclaim about one of the characters. She is so bad! ) Outside, a strong wind bends our palms, whispering through the fronds. I wish I hadn’t called Drew.