Girl of Lies (28 page)

F
eliz compleanos, Adelina. Happy birthday.
Seventeen years old, and her life was already ruined. As she whispered the words to herself, she thought, bitterly,
I’m so sorry, Papa.

Her father couldn’t hear her, of course. She stood, head bowed, in her black dress, the same black dress she’d worn for days. Manuel Ramos had finally returned to his home in Calella, dead at sixty-one years old. And she missed him, terribly.

Her father’s death was sudden, but his worry for her had gone on for weeks. She’d wept after the night of the failed coup. She remembered crying as she heard King Juan Carlos give his speech ordering the Army home. She cried for days afterward, and her father asked her over and over again what was wrong.

She never told. Because she believed Richard when he said he would kill her father, kill her little brother, if she ever told. He was a cruel man, who enjoyed lies and pain. He was
evil.
She believed him because of his smell. She believed him because of the ice cold look in his eyes. She believed him because of the way he hurt her.

In the days after, she’d wept. She’d prayed. But she’d kept Richard’s secret. Even after he came back and hurt her again and again.

It was agonizing. Agonizing to see the condition her father was in. Agonizing to know she was responsible for his pain. She had begun to waver. Until finally one day, she said, “Papa, I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

He smiled. Then he said, “As soon as I get back to the shop, Adelina. I promise. I’ll only be gone twenty minutes.”

Her father never returned. Twenty minutes later he was dead, run over by a truck on Calle Santa Catalina.

“I’m afraid, Papa,” she whispered the words. Then she kneeled. The ground was cold and moist, and soaked through her dress to her knees. She whispered, “I’m afraid he’ll kill me, or Luis, like he did you. I’m… I’m afraid. I’m so afraid.”

She leaned forward, nearly prostrate in front of the grave. “Papa, I’m so sorry. Please tell me what to do. Tell me what to do, Papa.”

Her shoulders began to shake in great sobs. Her father was gone, her life was over, and she was going to have a baby.

I should never have let you stay in the city with your father.

The words echoed through her mind. Words that she couldn’t erase. Words that crushed her soul.

I didn’t raise my daughter to be a slut,
Adelina.

The pain was overwhelming. The shame was overwhelming.

Who is he, Adelina?

The questions. The demands. Four days after her father was laid to rest in the tiny churchyard of the parish church of Santa Maria in Calella, her mother dragged her in to the priest, demanding she go to confession. On her knees in the church, in between the Parish priest and her mother, she confessed her sins.

In a sober, cold voice, the priest said the words she’d been afraid of.

“Adelina, I would gladly grant you absolution. But I’m sure you know, I cannot do so if you are not truly in a state of contrition.”

She stammered. She begged. She cried. But the priest’s words were final. “Adelina. In order to return to a state of grace, you must be truly contrite. You must remove the sin, and regularize your situation.”

Fear staggered her. She knew what he meant. She had to marry him. If she didn’t—if she told the truth—he would surely hurt Luis just as he’d hurt her father.

She broke down.

“What is his name?” the priest thundered.

“Who was it?” her mother screamed.

Finally, she’d broken down. Out of fear for Luis, she didn’t say the worst. She didn’t say how it happened. All she said was the name.

Richard Thompson.

Julia leaned back in her chair. Furiously, she wiped a tear from her eyes.

“That’s it. I know it’s ridiculous. I mean, I’m thirty-two years old. But I still—I still resent her. I like to think I could forgive. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can’t. But when I needed her, she wasn’t there.”

Anthony flipped back two pages in his notebook. “Okay, let me make sure I’ve got it straight. You were pregnant. At fourteen.”

Julia nodded.

“And your mother?”

“She was—too preoccupied with her affair. Or whatever. I don’t know what was going on with her. But I needed her.”

“Do you regret the abortion?”

“Asshole.” Julia’s response left little doubt of her opinion of Anthony’s question, but it communicated little in the way of an answer.

“Sorry,” he replied.

“Yes, I regret it,” she said.

Crank sat up. “You do?”

A tear ran down her face. “Of course I do. If she—or he, I guess—were still alive, she’d be sixteen now, same as Andrea.”

Anthony leaned forward and said, “Look, I’m sorry. That was a shitty question to ask. Just… tell me this—”

“Stop.”

Anthony stopped. But then he said, “Stop what?”

“Stop probing. You want to write about the album, fine. You want to write a puff profile piece on me and Crank? Go for it. But this is—”

Anthony sat forward. “This is bigger than that. This is bigger than you’ve ever realized, isn’t it? Your father’s going to be the Secretary of Defense, and suddenly you’re finding out you don’t even know who he is.”

“Stop.” Her tone was stiff, but he kept going.

“Not to mention, one of your sisters was kidnapped. And you don’t know who was responsible.”

“You can’t seriously believe my father—”

“I don’t know what I believe, Julia. I think you need to let me pursue this where it leads.”

Crank leaned forward. “Anthony. Shut the fuck up.”

“Excuse me?”

Julia held a hand up. “Please, Crank. Just—stop a second. I don’t know what it is you expect to find.”

“I don’t either,” Anthony replied. “Just bear with me.”

She sagged into her seat. “All right,” she said.

“Okay…”

He shuffled through his notes for a moment, then said, “All right. Your mom was pretty young when they got married, right?”

“Eighteen.”

“And she moved to the United States then?”

“Right. I was about three months old when they moved to the U.S.”

“Washington, DC?”

“San Francisco… I think
.
I was a baby.”

“Your dad’s official bio says he was posted to Pakistan from ’82 to ’84.”

“I guess he was then. At that age I wouldn’t have known the difference between Pakistan or Disneyland.”

“And your earliest memories?”

“In Washington. I think. I remember when Carrie was born, vaguely.”

He checked his notes. “January ’85.”

“Yes.”

“Were your parents close then?”

Julia raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “Not so I could see. I was really young. I don’t have a lot of memories from then. Mom used to spend a lot of time in her room alone and Dad was always at work.”

“Who took care of you?”

Julia smiled, but it wasn’t a warm smile. “Miss Reyes. I remember her. She sang to me a lot. I do remember we’d have breakfast together sometimes on the weekend. Mom would let me sit in her lap. That was before things got really awful.”

Crank said, “It’s hard to imagine your mother singing.”

“She was an accomplished musician, Crank. Why do you think she made all of us learn an instrument? When she was a teenager, she played for the national youth orchestra in Spain.”

“What happened?” Crank asked.

Julia smiled and held a hand out to her husband. “She fell in love. It happens, you know.”

Crank took her hand. “It does, doesn’t it?”

“Julia, come.”

Adelina Thompson took her daughter’s hand in hers. In her other hand she held a leather suitcase. She was exhausted, frazzled. Her flight had been delayed, then diverted around a storm cell, finally landing almost three hours late.

The delays were welcome. Except for a few days here and there when he’d gotten leave, Richard hadn’t been home since April two years before. Two years she’d had to learn English, to raise her daughter.

Two years to regain her sense of self.

She’d prayed about it. Sometimes she was ashamed, because she knew that despite his lies, Richard’s assignment took him to places that were not safe. And more than once, she’d prayed he would meet an accident. That he would leave her with an insurance policy and their house in San Francisco and her daughter, little Julia.

Julia, who was innocent.

Julia, who reminded her every day of how it felt to be used.

He hadn’t met an accident, and unexpectedly, he was home a year early. Promoted. His letter and subsequent phone call said nothing of the reasons why. They merely gave instructions, as if she were in the military, to pack their things and fly to Washington on January 28
th
. It didn’t matter that she’d made friends in San Francisco. It didn’t matter that she’d found a home in the church there, that she’d tried to reconstruct her life. She didn’t belong to herself. Not anymore.

Not as long as he was in a position to hurt her. To hurt her daughter, or her little brother.

The terrifying part was, no one would ever believe her. Richard was charming. He smiled and shook hands and spoke reasonably. He was eloquent, soft-spoken, and generous. He wore beautifully tailored suits and had perfect teeth and in a hundred subtle ways reminded everyone they encountered that she was young, delicate, incompetent.

She was trapped.

As she stepped off the plane and into the jetway, she straightened her dress, then kneeled in front of her daughter.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, quickly wiping Julia’s face with a napkin.

“Go potty,” Julia said.

“In a few moments, Julia. We’ve got to go see father, first.” Her stomach twisted a little in fear at the words. She knew he was only a hundred feet away at the end of the jetway. She straightened Julia’s dress.

There was no point in putting it off any longer. She stood up and took Julia’s hand and the two of them walked down the jetway.

She spied Richard in the terminal. It had been six months since she’d seen him—he hadn’t come home for Christmas, leaving her and Julia to celebrate alone for the second year in a row. His skin was dark from exposure to too much sun, his skin roughened.

She felt a little woozy as she walked toward him. The combination of first-class tickets and a two-year-old daughter meant they didn’t check her age on the plane, and she’d had enough drinks to boost her courage and damage her judgment.

“Adelina,” he said. He leaned close, pulling her into a not-too-close embrace, and murmured the words under his breath, “It’s lovely to see you dear. You’ve been eating well, I see.”

Bastard
. “You look well,” she replied.

He knelt in front of Julia. “Hello, Julia. Do you remember me?”

“Poppa?” Julia asked.

He put his arms around their daughter. Adelina felt her gorge rise, and she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer to Mary. When she opened them, Richard stood again. He smiled at her in a way that probably appeared endearing to people who walked by them, but which served only to frighten her.

“Come, then,” he said. “I’m anxious to show you where we’ll be living.”

That was simple. He’d purchased the house in San Francisco without consulting her and done the same here. She didn’t actually know
where
they were going this morning, which was typical of her whole life. Richard took her suitcase, and she followed, hand clamped around Julia’s.

Twenty minutes later they were getting in the car. It was unseasonably warm for Washington, DC in January, which meant the temperature was close to that of San Francisco. The sky was steel grey, threatening rain. Richard had been irritated about Julia needing to use the restroom, as if there was any way Adelina could have controlled that.

“How was your flight?” he asked. “It took long enough.”

Adelina shrugged as she buckled Julia into the back seat. “The flight was fine. It took forever. We need to get a car seat,” she said.

“A what?”

“My friend Linda has one. It’s to protect her.”

“She’s two years old. I don’t think that’s—”

“She needs one.”

Richard blinked. He wasn’t used to her being assertive about anything. “Fine,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” She said the word as she got in the front passenger seat of the car.

He raised his eyebrows. And waited, hands on the wheel.

Her heart thumped wildly as she said the words: “I want to go to college.”

He shrugged. “And?”

She kept going, so terrified she couldn’t stop talking, the words coming out faster and faster. “I know we didn’t start off the best—whatever. I’m nineteen. I didn’t get to finish high school. I lost everything. I want to go to school. I want to—”

“Fine.”

“What?” she asked, her voice raising to a squeal.

“Go. Whatever. But I expect you to host dinners, I’ve got a lot of important people I need to cultivate for my career.”

“Sure. Of course,” she said.

He started the car, and as they drove out of the airport, he said, “I don’t know why you were so anxious about this discussion. I love you, Adelina. I want the best for you.”

Her eyes widened at the words
I love you.

Despite her fear, Richard kept his word, not interfering when she made arrangements to register at Montgomery County Community College. The home he’d purchased was a surprise. Unlike the old Victorian townhouse in San Francisco, he’d bought an expensive condo in Bethesda. With five bedrooms, it was larger than they could possibly ever need, though she took his injunction to be ready to host
important people
seriously. It was only a few days later that Richard announced in a peremptory fashion, “We’re having guests over next Saturday.”

“Oh? Who? How many?”

“Let’s see—Colonel Chuck Rainsley and his wife. He’s retiring in a few weeks and planning to run for the Senate from Texas, and I’m guessing he’s going to win. We need to cultivate him. Leslie Collins—he works for some accounting firm in Virginia, but he’s a friend of Prince Roshan, who will be here with his wife. George-Phillip, the Duke of Kent, who is playing at diplomacy, he’s assigned to the British Embassy.”