Andrew Gross - The Blue Zone

“Kate, listen, please… I admit, I was asked four years ago to get to know you-”

“To get to know me?” Nothing he might have said could have sounded quite so cruel.

“ To watch out for you, Kate. That’s all, I swear. I can’t lie-what you saw in that book is real. My name is Concerga. And I’m not from Mexico City. I’m sorry, Kate. But I fell in love with you. That part was always real. That part is the truth, I swear it on my life. I never thought in a million years this would ever come out.”

“But it did, Greg,” she said. “It did come out. So who is it you work for, Greg?”

“I don’t work for anybody, Kate. Please…I’m your husband.”

“No, you aren’t my husband. Not now. Who have you been keeping tabs on me for? Because it’s over now, Greg. I release you. From the duty. This deber of yours-the debt is cleared.”

“Kate, it’s not what you think. Please, tell me where you are. Let me come and talk to you.” There was a desperation in his voice, and it hurt her not to respond, but she no longer had any hold on what was real. “I love you, Kate. Don’t turn me away.”

“Go away,” Kate said. “Just go away, Greg. Your job is done.”

“No,” he said. “I won’t. I’m not going to.”

“I mean it, baby,” she said. “I can’t talk to you now. Just go away.”

There was only one place Kate could go.

Even though she’d been expressly forbidden to.

She stood in front of the white-trimmed blue cape in Hewlett, Long Island, and the WITSEC agent who had spotted her approaching on the street and intercepted her now held her tightly by the arm.

She had remained at the boathouse until after dark. It had taken her two trains and the rest of the afternoon to make up her mind. She knew she wasn’t followed. But she couldn’t chance they’d say no by calling. Where else could she go?

As the front door opened, Aunt Abbie’s eyes went wide. “ Kate! Oh, my God, what are you doing here?”

It took barely a second for her mother’s sister to see that something was really wrong.

“It’s okay.” Abbie nodded to the agent, hastily pulling Kate in and throwing her arms around her niece. “ Em, Justin , come down quick!”

Kate realized she looked horrible. She’d been huddled on the bank of the river all afternoon. She was cold and wet, her hair windblown and disheveled, her cheeks raw. Only a blind person couldn’t see that she’d been crying.

But the moment her brother and sister barreled down the stairs in a state of happy shock, everything brightened. Em screamed, and they hugged each other joyously, just as they had back at the boathouse in Seattle before everything fell apart. Em and Justin had been staying here since the funeral. Under guard. David and Abbie’s own kids were away at college. The plan was for them to remain here for the rest of the semester and start fresh in the spring.

“I need to stay here,” Kate said to Abbie. “Just for a day or two.”

“Of course you can stay,” Abbie said, hesitating only in trying to decipher the troubled cast on Kate’s face.

“You can sleep in my room!” Emily shouted, gleefully. “I meant Jill’s -”

“That’s okay.” Aunt Abbie smiled. “Jill wouldn’t mind. It is your room now. For as long as you want it. Yours, too, Kate.”

“Thank you.” Kate smiled back in appreciation.

“Why are you here, Kate?” “What’s going on?” The questions from Emily and Justin seemed to shoot at her from all directions. Right now she just felt so exhausted she wanted to collapse. They took her into the living room and let her sink into a chair. “Are you all right? Where’s Greg?”

“He’s working,” she said.

“What’s happened, Kate?” They weren’t crazy. They could read it in her eyes.

“Let Kate alone,” Aunt Abbie told them.

And something did start to revive her. Something Kate had been missing for a long time.

Her sister’s happy grin, her brother’s slightly dumb buzz haircut. Abbie next to her on the arm of her chair with a gentle hand on her shoulder. There was no confusion here, no doubt. They all looked like home to her.

Her Uncle David came home around seven. He worked in the city as sales manager of a fashion jewelry line. They had dinner in the dining room. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, gravy. It was the first solid meal Kate had eaten in days.

Everyone bombarded her with questions. How were things back at the lab? How was Tina coming along? What was going on with Greg?

Kate deflected them as best she could, telling them how he had gotten the position at New York-Presbyterian and how they could stay in New York now, and that was great.

Justin said they would be going to Hewlett High School for the rest of the semester. With a WITSEC escort. “Then, in the spring, maybe this private school, Friends Academy.”

“Jill and Matt went there,” Abbie said. “They’ve agreed to take them in.”

“Friends has the third-ranked squash team in the East,” Emily announced. “I’ll be able to start playing tourneys in the fall.”

“That’s great.” Kate beamed. She looked at Abbie and David. “Thank you for what you’re doing. Mom would be proud.”

“Your mother wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same for us,” Abbie said. She put down her fork and looked away.

And Kate knew she was right.

Later Uncle David helped Aunt Abbie with the dishes, giving Justin and Emily time with Kate.

They all went up to Em’s room on the second floor-their cousin Jill’s room-papered with magazine shots of Beyoncé, Angelina Jolie, and Benjamin McKenzie from The O.C. Kate curled up on the bed with a pillow, Em sitting cross-legged at her feet. Justin spun a desk chair around backward and flopped himself down.

Emily looked at her, concerned. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Kate shook her head. She knew her voice didn’t sound convincing.

“C’mon, Kate. Look at you. You’re pale as a ghost. Your eyes are totally bloodshot. When was the last time you took your medicine?”

Kate thought back. Yesterday, maybe the day before …What suddenly scared her was that she couldn’t recall.

“We’re not exactly idiots, Kate,” Justin said, “we all know the agreement.”

It was a condition of their aunt and uncle’s taking them in that Kate agreed not to come here without prior notice until things cooled down.

“Is it Greg? Has something happened? Kate, why are you here?”

Kate nodded. She realized when she walked through that door and saw their faces that they had a right to know.

“All right.” She sat up. “I don’t know how you’re going to react when you hear this. But Dad’s alive.”

They both just sat there staring at her for a second.

Emily’s jaw slackened. “ He’s alive?”

“Yeah.” Kate nodded. “I spoke with him. He’s alive.”

Justin almost toppled over in his chair. “Jesus, Kate, you were just gonna throw that in?”

How much could she tell them? Without telling them everything. Margaret Seymour. Mercado. The picture she’d found. The truth about their grandmother and where their father had come from. How could she just tell them these things? How could she destroy their world, the way hers had been destroyed? Wasn’t it right to protect them? If not from harm, then at least from knowing too much.

“Where is he?” Emily asked, dumbfounded.

“I don’t know. He said he would contact me. The police want to find him, in connection with some stuff that’s been going on. But he’s okay. I just wanted you to know. He’s alive.”