We Were Never Here(21)
We hurried down the mountain as the edge of the sky turned cerulean. Near the road we picked up branches and rushed back up to the rock, sweeping at our scuffs and skids.
We tumbled into the car and slammed the doors. For a moment Kristen closed her eyes, her crown tipped against the headrest.
“Do you think it’ll look weird in the light?” I peered out the window. “Will the dirt be another color where we swept it?”
She was quiet for a very long time. “I don’t know what to tell you, Emily. There’s nothing else we can do.” Her hand shot out and turned on the ignition, and then we began the long drive back.
The car felt so much lighter without Paolo in the trunk.
CHAPTER 9
It was almost six, the sky brightening with alarming speed. We passed three vehicles along the way, headlights like eyes in the early-morning murk: a truck, a sedan, and a pickup pulling a trailer with four men in the back, handkerchiefs clutched to their noses. Each time I stared down at my lap, willing us to be forgettable. Finally we turned into our tiny parking lot. It was still cold out, but mistier now, so the dampness had a bite. In the purgatorial light of predawn, we carried the shovels back up to the shed. Kristen grasped my shoulder when a window lit up nearby (in another guesthouse, I think?), but it darkened after a few seconds and I went back to screwing the lock into place.
Dew glistened on the sliding door as we slipped back inside our suite. With a stab, I pictured him there again: calves poking out from behind the sofa, the wine bottle smeared red but otherwise unharmed, having won the durability contest against Paolo’s skull. It had to be One of Those Things—a centimeter up, down, or to the side and he could’ve been fine.
I looked over at Kristen and felt a wash of compassion. She was still being so strong—stronger than I’d been in Cambodia, certainly—and it had only been a few hours since Paolo had threatened her life.
“Help me finish cleaning.” Kristen rummaged in the kitchenette, then held out a dish towel. We ransacked the rooms for cleaning products and, finding none, pooled our resources: makeup remover, hand wipes, soap, Purell. The day cracked open like an egg, sunlight nosing against the windows and then pushing inside with sudden vigor. We swiped and swabbed and dusted, silent and focused in our own personal hells. I scrubbed the shower curtain in the tub, body gel foaming brown and red on the colorful plastic, then strung it back up. Was it enough? Could we really expect to leave no trace when we lacked even proper cleaning products?
We touched a lighter to crumples of newspaper we’d piled in the fireplace. Once kindling and then a few logs popped and roared, I added Paolo’s things one by one: passport, journal, wallet, phone. I coughed as they curled into a stinking mass; Kristen opened a window and fanned out the foul-smelling smoke. When Paolo’s effects were a blackish chunk, I poured water on it.
“I’ll take it,” Kristen announced after the lump stopped sizzling. She wrapped it in newspaper and stuffed it inside an empty chip bag. “I’ll toss it when I get home.”
* * *
—
Normalcy—we had to maintain it, had to load our suitcases into the trunk and then trudge to the lobby for breakfast. After all, we’d made it to breakfast every morning and the owner was so proud of it, their desayuno delicioso, and the last thing we wanted was anyone wondering where we were. There we stared at baskets of rolls and colorful fruit plates in quiet revulsion. We stopped at the front desk to turn over the key (they’d been very clear about this at check-in, do not leave the key in the room), and I suddenly realized everyone was staring at me, the only possible translator.
“?Cómo?” I prompted, too out of it to recall the polite way to ask her to repeat herself.
“?Cómo estuvo su estadía con nosotros?” she asked, too fast and too mumbly, and I blinked at her for a long time before the words unstuck themselves. How was our stay? Fine—the suite’s romantic wood-burning stove sure had come in handy when we had evidence to destroy.
“Muy bien.” I forced a smile. “Gracias por todo.”
* * *
—
It was a six-hour drive back to the Santiago airport, out to the sea and then south between the mountains and the water. Monotonous and brown, as ugly outside as the muck I felt covering my breast and brain, horror and disbelief clotting beneath my rib cage and skull. We’d driven the opposite direction this morning—was that just this morning, with all that dead weight in the trunk? Still, I found myself scanning the hills, watching for our footprints, probably smeared away but possibly more obvious than ever after our sweeping—like a giant arrow from the road to the grave. I was so sore that raising my hand to slide on sunglasses hurt. Shattered: The word lodged in my head, a skipping record. That’s how I felt. My body, my life. Paolo’s fragile eggshell skull.
A lookout point appeared, and Kristen swerved into it and threw the car into park. She stared straight ahead. Then, right as I was about to puncture the silence, her eyes went hard and she let out a scream. Not a scream—a roar, the way a little kid answers when you ask what sound a lion makes. It echoed around the car, buzzed in my ears, then stopped. She punctuated it with a single surprised laugh. Then she turned to me, as if she’d only just remembered I was there.