“I do, Sarai, I really do.”
She sighs and looks over at me, reaching out her hand and placing it on my knee drawn up on the cushion, tucked underneath my other leg.
“I want to go back to Tucson,” she says. “Even back to the trailer park. I miss it. I miss the damn dogs barking at night and the kids running up and down the street causing a nuisance. I just want to go home.” She pats my knee and then pulls away, looking at me with sad but smiling eyes.
“But Dina, it’s not safe”—I raise up on the couch—“you can’t go back there. Look what happened here, the reason you’re sitting in this room talking to me right now. If you go back there you’ll be where anyone who wants to find you, will likely look first.”
Her smile warms her whole face.
“Oh, honey, I don’t care about that stuff,” she says as if to console me. “I did at first, but it was mostly just because of you. But I can’t do this anymore, moving from place to place, having strange men parked outside every house watching me all the time. I’m too old for this. I appreciate all of the elaborate things you and Victor provide me and the beautiful houses and…just everything. I’m very grateful. But I just want to go home and live the rest of my life the way I did before—simply.”
My heart sinks deeper and deeper.
“But it’s dangerous. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to me, baby girl.” Her smile lengthens. She lifts a hand and pats her chest over her thin pink blouse where her heart is. “If anything takes me out it’s gonna be my ticker. You know that.” She grins and pats my knee again playfully and adds, “Besides, I know how to use a shotgun, remember? And I ain’t afraid to blow somebody away if they break into my house.”
I can’t help but smile back at her, even though I want to fight her on this whole issue.
Dina turns around on the cushion to face me fully and she takes both of my hands into hers.
“I want you to promise me something,” she says, looking into my eyes. “And I mean it—it’s a real promise and it means everything to me and if you ever break it, even if I never find out, you should feel guilty for breaking it because it’s so important to me.”
This is scaring me, but I nod and agree.
“What is it, Dina?”
Her fingers grasp mine firmly as if to place emphasis on the words she’s about to say.
“When I go home, back to Tucson,” she says, “I want you to promise me that you won’t send anyone to watch me or protect me. No one. And I don’t want you doing it, either. Do you give me your word?”
At first all I want to do is say no—I even begin to shake my head—but she wrenches my hands and forces my gaze, the look in her eyes so intense, and I feel just how important this promise is to her. As much as I want to lie to her and say that, no, I won’t send anyone to watch over her…I can’t. These are her wishes and I owe her everything and know I have to give in to them no matter how hard.
And before she leaves, as I wave her goodbye as she gets into the cab on the street to head for the airport back to Tucson, I can’t help but feel like this is going to be the last time I ever see her.
“I love you, baby girl!” she calls out to me from the open car window, her long, bony fingers waving in the cool night Boston breeze.
I press the tips of my fingers against my lips and send her my kisses as she pulls away, and I wipe the tears from my eyes and try so hard to keep the smile on my face for Dina’s sake. Because she deserves to be happy and she doesn’t need any more reason to worry about me than she already has.
~~~
“Have you seen Niklas?” I ask Victor in the meeting room with James. They’re looking through photographs and files scattered about the elongated table.
I’m still emotional from having let Dina go an hour earlier.
Victor looks up.
“He is gone, Izabel,” he answers solemnly and looks back down. “But don’t worry about him right now—”
“What?” I step farther into the room and stand at the end of the table. “Victor, how can you say that? Have you tried to talk to him at all?”
He locks eyes with me over the length of the table.
“I will talk to my brother when the time is right,” he says.
James glances at us briefly and pretends to be more interested in the photographs in front of him. He appears uncomfortable.
“How is any time right?” I ask with an accusatory tone. “Right now is as good a time as any will ever be.”
“Niklas needs time alone,” he says and I slam my palm against the table before he gets the last word all the way out.
“Fuck!” I say angrily.
Victor stands up quickly from the table in one swift motion, sending the paper he had been reading in his hand falling onto the floor. His chair screeches as it’s pushed back a little on his way up.
James freezes, looking between the both of us under nervous hooded eyes.