“He is the only way to my sons,” Marta said. “All roads to Sal and Enzo pass through David.”
“But he isn’t,” Wes said. He pulled the papers he’d been working on all afternoon from his back pocket, leaned forward, and spread them flat on the huge stone coffee table. “Listen, OK. Hear me out. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” Marta said. “I’ll do that.”
“What’s here—well, it’s a mess is what it is. But I think it’s enough. I’ve written down account numbers, verification codes, keys, passwords, answers to security questions. Everything I have except my retinas and my fingerprints, and those have to stay with me. Sorry about that.”
“Wes.”
“You said you’d hear me out. Anyway, do me a favor and make sure not to leave this lying around, OK? Anyway. On another sheet’s a kind of legal document, or the best I could come up with. I’m handing over my assets to my parents’ protection. If I’m not back in five years, it goes to them permanently. I’ve made similar arrangements for operation of Pocketz and its subsidiaries.
“Over here. This sheet.” He pointed. “This is an account I hold under another name. Untraceable. Make the transfers to get you back in-zone through this one. There should be credits enough to cover you and Violet. Let Berto and Ken foot Andy’s bill.
“About two seconds after you set foot back in-zone, I want you to call this guy.” He licked his finger and peeled back another sheet. “Gio Slattery. Give him these papers. I trust him. Only him. He can get you clean new documentation and a validated passport to London. He can get your sons clean documentation.”
“They’ll never do that. They love their father. More than I even realized, apparently.”
“I can’t say one way or the other about that. They’re your sons. You know them, and I don’t. But don’t make the assumption. Have you ever sat them down and told them about your husband? All of it?”
“Of course not,” Marta said. “How could I do that? He’s their father. They idolize him.”
“Maybe because they need to know? Because he’s their father and they idolize him?”
Marta shifted uneasily on the leather sofa.
“I’ve instructed Gio to set you up an account under the new name with enough credits that you shouldn’t have anything to worry about for a long time. Let him do it, Marta. Let me do this for you.”
“I can’t accept all of this,” Marta said. “It isn’t right.”
“You can accept it, and it is right.”
“David will find me. He’ll never let it happen.”
“David thinks you’re dead. Doesn’t he?”
Staring into her glass, Marta nodded. Then she knocked it back.
“So he won’t know any different until it’s too late for him to do anything about it.”
“Let’s say I do this,” Marta said. “Let’s say I let you help me, and I go to London and find my boys. That’s not the same thing as what you’re doing. You’re setting me up as if it is, but it’s not. You have a life. You have family. Your parents will be worried sick. You have a company and influence and money. You’d be a damn fool to walk away from it all for a nice girl you barely know.”
“It’s not only for her.”
Marta made a snorting sound.
“Well, gosh, it’s partly for her. And I probably am being a damn fool, on that count, at least. But I have a penance to pay, Marta. Ruby City, that other village June mentioned. Lee, Anastasia, Wendy, Tia.” He cleared his throat. “Jesse. They’d all be alive if I hadn’t made that deal with your husband, if I’d stuck to my values instead of trying to make a quick buck. I want to try to put some good into the world, and that medicine could still make a difference.”
“I wished I believed that. I really do.”
“There’s another thing. Maybe this will be a more compelling argument for you.”
Marta lifted her pale eyebrows.
“Your husband. Will he let me come back and not take his deal? Knowing everything I know?”
Marta flipped through the sheaf of papers, though Wes didn’t think she was actually seeing any of the words or numbers on the pages. At last she stopped. Tapped them against her thighs to neaten the edges. Refolded them along the old creases. The she tucked them against her middle and crossed her arms over them protectively.
“All right, Wes,” she said. “Let’s be fools.”
—
The next morning, the chalet was shrouded in fog, the view outside the two banks of windows nothing but white and white and white. The group, Edie and Wes, too, went downstairs for the first time since their arrival and gathered beside the car. Berto and Andy argued about the best way to pack the trunk with the supplies they’d pilfered from the chalet’s stores. Edie felt something building inside herself like bubbles in a champagne bottle. She was scared. But she was also ready to see the others leave. She was ready for the life that awaited her and Wes after the others’ taillights had vanished downhill, into the mist. She was ready for midday to come, so that Wes could pass the forty-eight-hour mark and they could both believe, for real and true, that he was in the clear for Shreve’s.
But first, goodbyes. Dutiful hugs and well wishes. Edie was reminded of long-ago Gulf Zone Christmases with relatives she only saw once or twice a year, those imposed physical intimacies, unwelcome but required by shared blood. And this group all shared blood now, didn’t they? Or shared bloodshed. Edie wouldn’t miss Andy, Berto, Ken. But she could put her arms around each of them, feel their hearts thudding against her own—proof that they all lived, still. Was that the point of a hug? Two human hearts thudding together, testifying? This made a sort of sense to Edie.
She hugged Marta fiercely, and Marta kissed her cheek. “Take care of yourself,” Marta said. “Be smart.”
Edie promised that she would.
She withdrew so that Marta and Wes could exchange their goodbyes, understanding that there was something special between the two of them, a bond unlike any the others on this excursion had shared. She was jealous of them, in a way. But there was no replacing her own mother. Not with Marta, not with anyone else in the world. Edie had been loved, and lucky, and the loss served only to underscore these facts, to remind her of their preciousness.
That left Violet. She hung at the edge of the group, arms folded tightly across her chest. Edie didn’t even try to go in for the obligatory hug.
“Thank you for what you did,” Edie said. “You saved us.”
“I saved my baby,” Violet said. “And I got the rest of them killed.” She dug into her jacket pocket and pulled something out. “Here. It may be all that’s left.”
Edie took the offering: a paper pouch. Whatever was inside it made a fine rustling sound in the transfer, and Edie peeled the flap up to examine the pouch’s contents.
“The seeds,” Edie murmured.
“Yeah. It turns out I won’t need them.”
Edie nodded and folded the flap back down, then rolled it down a second time for good measure. She slid the pouch into her Stamp holster.