Exiled Read online

  "I do." Your voice is clear and strong, steady.

  "And do you, Logan, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for as long as you both shall live, so help you God?"

  "I do." His voice as well is strong, proud.

  "Then by the power vested in me by the State of New York and by Our Lord Jesus Christ, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

  I watch him lift your veil. Your cheeks are wet, despite your clear voice. I watch his hands cup your face, watch his thumbs brush away your tears. I watch you bury your fingers in his long blond hair, watch you lift up on your toes.

  You kiss, you and Logan.

  Deeply.

  Fiercely.

  So passionately it becomes nearly unbearable, not for me but for the audience, composed of friends, donors to The Indigo Foundation, the many, many people you have touched and helped and moved and inspired. You have no family; neither does Logan. Except each other, and your children, of course.

  As they do so frequently, my eyes go to Jakob. My doppelganger, writ miniature. He is solemn and serious, holding the now-empty ring bearer's pillow. Watching you and Logan kiss. Unsure of what it all means, but knowing it is a serious occasion. Camila wriggles out of the grip of her minder, an assistant who has become like family. And once Camila is free, there is no catching her. She's like the wind, a zephyr run wild through the cathedral. Laughing, sprinting pell-mell up the aisle, throwing flower petals at everyone.

  And Jakob, he watches her disapprovingly, brows lowered. "Mama, why is Camila so bad?" he asks you.

  You only laugh, and watch Camila sprint through the narthex, stopping to splash in the holy water. "She isn't bad, my love. She's just . . . a little wild."

  "I'm not wild, am I, Mama?"

  I can hear all this, clear as day. His voice is small and soft and sweet, his eyes on you my eyes, deep brown, but so much more expressive, like yours in that way.

  "No, Jakob. You are much more serious."

  "Does that mean I'm gooder than her?"

  "Does that mean you are better than she?" you correct him. "No, Jakob. It just means you are different from each other, that's all. No better, no worse. Only different."

  "But sometimes she's bad."

  Another laugh. "Yes, sometimes she is bad." A glance at the raven-headed boy. "And so are you, sometimes. You colored on the walls yesterday and then tried to let her take the blame, didn't you?"

  "You knew?" He sounds amazed.

  "Of course I knew, silly. Why do you think she didn't get in trouble?"

  "Cuz you let her do whatever she wants?"

  "No, because I knew it was you, not her."

  "So why didn't I get in trouble?" Why indeed, I wonder.

  You pick him up, rest him on your hip, brush his hair out of his eyes. Kiss his cheek, ever so sweetly. "Because it was a better punishment for you to see your plan go awry. You got very mad when I didn't punish her, didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "And now you know you can't get away with things like that, and I didn't have to punish anyone."

  "How did you know it was me, Mama?" Oh, that face, so confused.

  "You had crayon under your fingernails. And the crayons used to color on the walls still had the papers on them."

  "So?"

  "So you're the only one who leaves the papers on. What does Camila do to all of her crayons?"

  "Rips the papers off."

  "The crayons were also intact, rather than broken. And what does Camila do to her crayons?"

  "Breaks 'em."

  "Correct. You failed to think of all the details, I'm afraid, my little mastermind."

  "You're smarter than me, Mama."

  "I'm not so sure about that, little one. You're awfully smart. I'm just older and wiser."

  "Will I be old and wise too someday?"

  "If you were to try to frame Camila again, and actually get away with it, she might try to kill you. She's got quite a temper, you know. If you can avoid that, you might just live to become wise, yes."

  Jakob's silence is telling. He's thinking, hard. It's like you almost want him to be devious. "Coloring on the walls is babyish anyways."

  You just laugh, and set him down. Logan has watched all this with a smile on his face, and now he leans down to ruffle Jakob's hair. Camila has realized everyone is watching her cause a ruckus, so she has quieted. She flips her curly blond princess locks out of her face dramatically, blinks her vivid blue eyes, and strides with demure elegance back to you, Jakob, and Logan. And together, you walk toward me, toward the narthex, the exit.

  If you were to glance up, right now, you might see me.

  But you don't.

  You have a hold on Camila, and Logan has Jakob's hand, and you are all together, saying hello to friends in the pews.

  Not looking up.

  Not looking to the shadows.

  It's better this way.

  When everyone has left, I wait a while longer. Finally, I descend.

  Fill my palm with white rose petals from the aisle. Stare at them, sniff them, but the scent on them has faded.

  The reception is next. And I have a plan.

  *

  I am unrecognizable. Not even you would know me, should you look directly at me. I have grown a beard since you last saw me, for one, and I have smeared food in it, back-brushed it to make it snarled and wild. I have temporary green tinted contact lenses in. An old beanie covering my head. I'm wearing clothes I bought new and aged by throwing them in the mud and having Thomas drive over them a few times, and then covered them in rotten garbage and actual shit.

  Over that is an old, tattered, stained, foul-smelling blanket I bought from a real homeless man.

  I walk hunched over, blanket up around my ears, hobbling as if my left knee is bad.

  Instead of having a normal reception in a fancy hall or restaurant, you throw open the doors to A Temporary Home and invite everyone. There are no less than ten cakes in a variety of flavors, a buffet of free food ranging from standard fare such as chicken wings and tenders, mac and cheese, salad, and homemade soups, to real wedding reception dishes like chicken cordon bleu, a prime rib carving station, salmon. And when I say you invited everyone, I don't mean just your friends, but everyone. The mayor of New York has an apron on and is dishing out coleslaw to the homeless. There are celebrities, professional athletes, other politicians, even the vice president. It is one of the biggest nights of the year, and all the fancy, famous guests are behind the tables, dishing out food to the real guests, the homeless and hungry, who have shown up in droves.

  I make my way in, and blend with the crowd perfectly.

  There are party favors, voluminous waterproof backpacks for every guest filled with coats, wool socks, gloves, hats, scarves, blankets, and boxes of hand warmers, because you've opted for a winter wedding.

  It is freezing outside, the mercury at -6 and still falling, less with the windchill.

  I am legitimately stiff and numb with cold by the time I make it inside, and so my hunched posture isn't quite faked, and the way I smack my fingerless gloved hands together to beat some warmth back into them definitely isn't faked. The snow in my beard is real. The pink on my cheeks and ears is real. The growl in my stomach is real, too, because I've gone without eating for over forty-eight hours in preparation for this, so I would be genuinely ravenous when I receive my food.

  You are at a cake station, cutting fat wedges of double fudge cake with vanilla cream frosting and serving them. I wait. I go through the line, let the mayor dish me coleslaw, let a famous New York Knicks player plop a pile of mac and cheese onto my plate next. A gorgeous A-list actress is at the salmon station, and a celebrity chef is at the prime rib station. It's genuinely staggering, the people you've brought in for this, the amount of money you've spent on food.

  I am in awe of you.

  The Indigo Foundation is incredible; the things you've accomplished t
hrough it in the last two and a half years are simply unbelievable. MiN is nationwide already; within two months of the first one opening, other cities were scrambling to get them built, so you did fund-raiser after fund-raiser, donated millions of my money, and built dozens of Minnie centers all over the nation. The first international one goes live next week, in South Africa, with more to follow in India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the U.K. A Temporary Home is also catching on, with locations popping up in L.A., Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, and Chicago, and more to come as well, of course. You've not stopped there, my lovely, hardworking Isabel. You've donated money to dozens of existing charities. You've started a nationwide campaign to overhaul the foster care system, spurring sweeping investigations into current and prospective foster homes, establishing a more stringent psychological profile of each foster home in hopes of making sure the homes are safe and loving. You accomplish this by dangling the carrot of a five-million-dollar donation to any county that overhauls their foster care system, the think tank-designed profiling system being the key rider; thus far, you've donated over a hundred million dollars. That's not all. You've started a charity that raises money for adoptions, so that couples hoping to adopt have only to meet the home study requirements rather than raising the tens of thousands of dollars normally necessary. The charity also provides volunteer manpower to assist in sorting through the overflow of waiting cases, so that the children and parents don't have to wait as long.

  I don't know where you find the time for it all, and this is coming from someone who routinely slept barely six hours a day in three-hour chunks.

  I move through the buffet line, putting off dessert, putting off being face to face with you.

  I eat with gusto, because the food is, indeed, spectacular. I even go up for seconds.

  And then, finally, I can put it off no longer.

  I wait my turn in the dessert line. Take a little plate and a scuffed, tarnished metal fork--yes, you are serving on real plates with real silverware, and I believe that is the lead guitarist to a rather well-known rock band collecting the dishes and carrying them to the kitchen. There are four people between you and me.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  And now, God--now I'm here. Inches from you. Breathing your scent, your perfume. I do not break character, dare not. Hunched, hobbling. I hold out my plate, the fork clutched underneath. My heart is hammering, galloping a million miles a second. I accept the slice of cake onto my plate, lift it and grunt in thanks. A wordless grunt, all I dare risk. You'd know my voice, were I to speak.

  And, just like fifteen years ago, if I spoke, I would lose myself to you all over again.

  But I do raise my eyes to yours. A moment, only, but in that moment . . . the earth ceases to spin. Hearts cease to beat. Time freezes. I see the joy in your eyes. The peace. Madame X is long gone; no trace of her remains. You smile at me, and the smile is bright and genuine and kind.

  "Are you having a good time?" you ask.

  I nod, grunt. Shovel a forkful of cake into my mouth, to gag myself.

  "Is there anything you would like?"

  You, alone.

  For five seconds, your eyes on mine, your hands in mine, your lips on mine.

  Your heart beating for me, as mine does for you.

  Five seconds to know love returned.

  Five seconds.

  But I will never get those seconds, not with you.

  All I get is half that time, perhaps, of your eyes on mine, not knowing me, seeing only a homeless man, as intended.

  I shake my head to answer your question, and walk away. Sit at a table, shovel the cake into my mouth. Accept another foam cup of scalding, black coffee. Take it with me, leaving the backpack full of supplies for those who actually need it.

  I did not give you all of my money, of course.

  Most of it, but not all.

  I kept something in the neighborhood of a hundred and twenty million, all carefully and thoroughly laundered, scattered in banks all over the world, untraceable. I need something to live on, of course.

  And, while it's far less than I've been used to, a hundred and twenty million dollars is still a fucking lot of money. Enough to give me my freedom. It's more than most people can ever dream of, yet in comparison to what I left behind, what I gave to you, what you refused to accept for yourself, a hundred and twenty million is chump change. Pennies. In comparison, at least.

  I'll make do.

  I clutch the foam cup full of coffee and glide away into the snow and shadows. Reach the intersection, stop, stare up at the black sky, at the fat white flakes drifting lazily to the earth.

  "I know it's you, Indigo." Logan.

  I sip my coffee. Say nothing. Turn, standing straight now, pretense abandoned.

  "Knew you weren't dead. That felt a little too neat."

  "Let her continue to believe it." My voice is hoarse from disuse; I have little to say, lately.

  "No shit." He has his own coffee, but his is in a mug. He's in the bitter cold in only his tuxedo jacket, seemingly oblivious. "She's come too far, Caleb. Don't fuck it up for her now."

  "Caleb is dead." I swallow the last of the coffee, burning my tongue and throat. "He died in a car bomb."

  "What do you want?"

  "Nothing." I turn, look into Logan's one scorching blue eye. "There is nothing I want."

  "Then why are you here?"

  "Call it . . . a final farewell." I feel the truth of the statement even as I say it.

  Logan stares me down, searches me. I let him.

  There is a trash can nearby. I toss the cup in, shove my fists into my coat pocket--under the stink and the filth I smeared on it, the coat I'm wearing is a five-hundred-dollar mountain climber's insulated shell, with a thick wool sweater beneath it; I'm plenty warm.

  I turn away from Logan. "Promise me one thing, Ryder. Make sure Jakob is . . . a better man than me."

  He only nods, a single jerk of his head.

  I walk away, then. I feel Logan's gaze on me until I turn the corner.

  Thomas is waiting in a red Bentley Bentayga, three blocks north of the shelter. He pops the trunk when he sees me approaching. There are two bags waiting, one full, one empty. I quickly shuck the filthy disguise and re-dress in new, clean clothing--jeans, a sweater, boots. No more suits and ties for me. The disguise goes into the empty bag, zipped up against the stink. I keep it, though. It may come in handy again, someday. Thomas hands me a bottle of water and a towel. I rinse the stink out of my beard as best I can, pat it dry, finger-comb it straight. Slide a Rangers ball cap onto my head.

  "I'll drive, Thomas." I stand beside the driver's door.

  He looks confused; I never drive. "Sir?"

  "I said I'll drive."

  "As you wish, sir."

  I take the driver's seat, adjust the steering wheel, the mirrors, turn on the seat warmer. Tune the radio to something hard and heavy as Thomas slides into the front seat beside me. He seems ill at ease, tapping the dashboard with a long finger, tracing the stitching on his seat, fiddling with the lumbar settings.

  I input a destination into the navi: Miami, Florida; nineteen hours and twenty-one minutes, it tells me.

  Thomas is alert as we leave Manhattan.

  He's alert as we hit New Jersey.

  He's alert, and confused now as we pass the hotel that marks the farthest I ever made it from you.

  "Sir?"

  "Yes, Thomas?"

  "Where are we going, sir?"

  I tap the navi screen. "Miami. White sand beaches and bitches in bikinis."

  "And what about Miss Isab--"

  "If you ever utter that name again, I will put a bullet between your eyes," I hiss.

  Thomas is unperturbed by my threat. Merely eyes me curiously. "You are done, then?" He waves a hand behind us. "With . . . all of that?"

  I drive a long, long time in silence, considering his question. Am I?

  I have to be.

  I must be.

/>   I do not know how to be done, but I must be.

  I do not know how to start over, yet again, but I must.

  Finally, after thirty miles, I answer. "Yes, Thomas. It is done."

  Thomas nods, tilts his seat back, crosses his massive arms over his broad chest, tugs his chauffeur cap down over his eyes. "Good. It is good." Lower, more to himself, he murmurs something else: "Took a very long time. Too long, I think."

  "Fifteen years. That's how long it took."

  But I don't think Thomas heard me; he's snoring already.

  I put an entire tank of gas between us, three-hundred-some miles. Thomas sleeps while I refuel.

  I put another tankful of gas between us.

  Seven hundred miles.

  You are seven hundred miles away, Isabel.

  I stop somewhere in South Carolina. Pull off the road around dawn, nine hours after leaving Manhattan. I stand on the side of the road, heat on my back, joints stiff, eyes burning with exhaustion. I yawn, stretch.

  Face north.

  As if I could see you, even from here.

  I can feel you, I think.

  I can believe it is real now.

  You are gone.

  No, I am gone.

  "Good-bye, Isabel."

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  Jasinda Wilder, Exiled

  (Series: Madame X # 3)

 

 

 

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