Andrew Gross - The Blue Zone

A blush of excitement, then confusion, rushed into Emily’s face. “Doesn’t he want to see us? Does he even know about Mom? Where, Kate? Where on earth has he been all this time?”

Kate didn’t answer. She just kept looking at them. She knew exactly what was in her sister’s mind. Something between shock and anger.

“There’s something you’re not telling us, Kate, isn’t there? About why you’re here. Mom’s dead. We’re in the goddamn Witness Protection Program! You can tell us. We’re not children anymore.”

Justin stared. “Dad’s done something really bad, hasn’t he?” Kate didn’t reply, but it was as if the question had already been silently answered. As if he understood. “We’re not just hiding here from Mercado, are we?”

Kate’s eyes glistened, and she slowly shook her head. “No.”

“Oh, God…”

Kate had made up her mind. Before she even came here tonight. What she had to do. She just needed to see them first.

Because they could still be protected, couldn’t they? They could still go to school. They could laugh, play squash, hang out on weekends, take the SATs. Live out their lives. They could still feel hope and trust. They didn’t fucking have to know.

A pall came over Emily’s face. “Are you in danger, Kate? Is that why you’re here?”

“Sshhh…” Kate put a finger to her sister’s lips. She reached out, and Em just leaned into her. Even Justin didn’t resist and joined them. They put their heads against her shoulders. Stared up at the ceiling. She drew them close.

“Remember when we used to sit in your room, like this?” Kate said. “You had those stars. And we’d talk about when you were gonna get that first kiss… Or how you told me about the night you snuck out and took Mom’s Range Rover after Mom and Dad were asleep-and picked up your friend Ally?”

“You took out the car?” Justin asked.

“Duh!” Em snapped. “If you weren’t stuck to your computer all the time like some stupid cybergeek, you might have a clue!”

“I never told.” Kate squeezed her shoulder.

“Of course you never told. What are you, some kind of Mom-and-Dad spy?”

For a while no one said anything. They just lay there, looking at the ceiling.

Then Emily asked, “What’s more important, Kate, knowing that your family loved you, even if they might not be the people you once thought? Or seeing them as they really are and feeling totally betrayed?”

“I don’t know,” Kate answered. But for the first time, she actually felt she did. Her father. Greg. She’d made up her mind. She locked her fingers tightly around theirs. “How can you really love something that’s not the truth?”

The following morning Kate dropped some change into a pay phone at a 7-Eleven store in Hewlett. No cell phones now. Nothing that could ever be traced.

During the night she’d thought a lot about what she had to do. She knew she was putting herself in danger. Feeling Emily next to her, the innocent breathing of her sleep, had removed all doubt.

This had to end.

The coins tumbled in. The dial tone sounded. Taking a breath, Kate punched in the number. She waited for someone to pick up.

Her dad. Cavetti. Mercado. Greg…Each of them was someone who had betrayed her. And each of them was someone she might trust, one last time. All through the night, each had flickered through her anxious mind.

When she heard the voice, she didn’t dare hesitate. “Okay, I’ll do what you asked,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear that, Kate,” the voice replied. “You’ve made the right choice.”

They worked out a place to meet. Somewhere safe, public. Lots of people. Somewhere she felt at home.

This had to end. People had died. She could no longer pretend she wasn’t complicit now. She thought of the smiling woman in the photo with Mercado. The man’s wife. Would she still be alive if Kate had acted earlier?

Would Mom?

Kate fumbled in her handbag for another quarter. At the bottom of her bag, she came upon the gun Cavetti had given her.

“I have to trust somebody,” she said, placing her makeup case over the gun. “It might as well be you.”

Luis Prado’s phone rang shortly afterward.

He was in Brooklyn, in the shabby apartment he rented, with some heavyset, fifty-dollar whore named Rosella straddling him, her large breasts bobbing in his face, the cheap metal bed squeaking and rocking against the paint-chipped wall.

The cell phone interrupted them.

“Don’t stop, baby,” Rosella whined.

Luis fumbled for the phone, knocking over a photo of his wife and kids back home that he kept on the table. “Shit…”

The number said this was the call he’d been expecting all day.

“Bizness, baby,” he sighed, rolling the girl off him.

“Luis…”

“I need you to get ready,” the caller said. “There’s a job for you tonight.”

“I am ready.” Luis ran his hand playfully along Rosella’s cheek. “I’ve been practicing my aim all day.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch later with the details. And, Luis?”

“Yes.”

“This one will require all of your loyalty. Do it well,” the caller said, “and you can go home. For good.”

His loyalty had never been in doubt. He had always done the jobs they wanted. His wife was home. His children. He had seen his newest boy only once.

Luis Prado didn’t hesitate. “I’m here.”

Kate waited on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, the skyline of lower Manhattan towering across the East River behind her. Joggers ran along the walk, and young families pushed strollers. Rollerbladers wove in and out of the Sunday crowd. The sprawling span of the Brooklyn Bridge with its steel-gray cables stretched above her. She knew she could count on the crowds. Kate had come here many times. Taking Fergus on a run. Breezing through the shops on Montague Street with Greg. She scanned around. Two policemen were standing nearby. She stepped a little closer to them.

He was somewhere out here.

It was a perfect autumn afternoon, and it made Kate recall how she had graduated from college on such a day. She still kept that picture on her desk-her in her cap and gown on the Green at Brown-everyone’s smiles so bright and proud, her head leaning on her father’s shoulder. The sky had never been bluer than it was on that day.

He’d been lying to her-even then.

Kate prayed she was doing the right thing. Her brain was dull from the lack of insulin, and even her blood felt thick and a little slow. She knew she wasn’t thinking so clearly. She glanced at her watch: 3:30. He was making her wait. She checked inside her bag for the gun and glanced again at the cops.

Please, Kate, please don’t be making the biggest mistake of your life.

Then suddenly she saw him, materializing out of the crowd, as if from nowhere.

Their gazes met. He stood a short distance away, as if letting her grow accustomed to the sight, a familiar yet uncertain smile. He was wearing khakis, an open-necked blue shirt, the ubiquitous navy blazer. His hair was shorter, almost shaved. The tan was gone. His face was leaner than she’d ever seen it. It was like some low-budget sci-fi movie-someone inhabiting someone else’s body. A jogger crossed in front of them. Kate’s every nerve stood on edge.

“Hello, pumpkin.”

He didn’t make a move to hug her. If he had, Kate didn’t know what she would do. She just looked at him-her eyes drawn to every familiar feature. There was a part of her that wanted to put her face against his chest and her arms around him as she had a thousand times. There was another part that wanted to tear into him with anger. So she just squinted into the faraway regions of his eyes.