The Argentina Rhodochrosite (22 page)

45

Ainsley Walker had never seen a
child fall facefirst into a birthday cake before, but there was a first time for everything.

She was standing against the wall, a camera in her hand. She was in the living room of her friend Deirdre, whose son, Justin, was celebrating his second birthday. There were about ten mothers here, and twice as many children.

Ainsley, being single, was the assigned photographer.

She had watched the kid toddle around. The mothers had applauded. Then he’d teetered, twirled, and finally tipped over into his own vanilla sheet cake. He’d wandered around the living room, his arms out, frosting smeared across his entire body. He looked like a tiny mummy.

Ainsley had snapped several frames before Deirdre had grabbed the kid and swept him away to the bathroom for cleanup.

Now the laughter was dying down. Ainsley poured herself a Sprite into a plastic red cup and walked into Deirdre’s kitchen. She surveyed the cutesy ladybug refrigerator magnets, the cartoonish boxes of breakfast cereal, the Bed Bath & Beyond coupons on the counter.

Then she looked at the ceiling, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a long breath.

This was the United States. She had returned home.

But not by choice.

The entire episode had felt like a dream. She’d woken up on the airplane to the pilot’s announcement that they were an hour from landing at New York’s JFK airport.

On the plane, she’d been beyond confused. She hadn’t even been able to talk. And the flight attendants had treated her like any other passenger. Maybe they hadn’t known. They could’ve assumed that Ainsley was just really tired. Maybe they had known. That was even worse.

But there was no doubt that her kidnappers had acted with absolute professionalism. She’d found her purse tucked safely under her arm. Nothing inside had been touched, not even the cash. Her passport had been given an Argentina exit stamp. She hadn’t even had to pay for the seat.

In retrospect, Ainsley had to hand it to them. It had been a very smooth operation.

After landing, she’d walked mutely down the gangplank, waited in line for customs. She didn’t say a word. Who would have believed her? She had answered the questions, watched her passport stamped, and re-entered the United States.

Spit out into the concourse of New York City’s JFK terminal, Ainsley wandered towards the ticket counters and paid cash for another flight, back to her home city. There was nothing else she could do. It was an automatic decision. As though someone were still controlling her from halfway around the world.

That had been four days ago. Upon her return, she’d slept for thirty-six straight hours. She hadn’t said a word to anybody about her return, or her kidnapping. Again, who would believe her?

She had left voicemails for both Nadia and Gabriel. Neither had returned her calls. She had tried emailing them. Nothing. Maybe they were truly finished with her. Maybe somebody had gotten to them.

Maybe the Argentine military.

A woman wearing baggy mom jeans waddled into the kitchen. She was bent over a toddler stumbling between her legs. Her hair obscured her face. Only when she looked up did Ainsley recognize her: Deirdre, the host of the party. She and Ainsley had been party girls, years ago, back in the days of flirting and free cocktails.

Those days were gone forever. The only parties Deirdre was throwing now were the ones where all the guests were two feet high and drank from plastic sippy cups.

“Very good,” she was saying to the boy, “… now careful… watch out… you don’t want to hurt yourself.”

Ainsley sipped her soda and smiled. In some ways, it felt good to be back, here in middle-class America, where nobody was ever kidnapped or disappeared against her will. Where discovering cat vomit on the sofa was the lowest point of the week.

On the other hand, she thought, maybe the little boy
should
hurt himself. After all, Ainsley had been “hurting” herself, in the broadest possible sense of the word, for several weeks now—and she felt more alive than she had in years.

Deirdre looked up, smiling with a mother’s delight. “So I heard that you were travelling somewhere. Like, in Central America or something.”

“A bit further south.”

“How exciting. I wish we had time to go travelling.” She squeezed her child and turned her attention back to him. “But what would this little manly man do without me? What would he do?” She nuzzled his cheek.

“He could go with you,” Ainsley said.

She looked startled by the suggestion. “Do you think so? I don’t know. I think he would probably like it here better.”

The little boy found his legs and stumbled back into the living room, where a small nursery had been set up.

Deirdre craned her neck to check on him. Then, satisfied, she turned back to Ainsley. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m kind of between jobs,” said Ainsley.

Deirdre’s expression hardened. “So maybe now’s the time to try meet someone new and settle down.”

“That’s not on the menu at the moment.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a lot of things going on right now,” Ainsley lied.

“If you really need a job, Matt can see if there’s anything open at his credit union,” Deirdre offered. “They have PPO coverage.”

Ainsley hemmed and hawed. “I’m not sure that would be the right place for me.”

But her friend wouldn’t be deterred. “You should think about it,” she said. “There’s not a lot of time left, you know. We’re getting older.”

Ainsley excused herself and wandered out of the kitchen. She didn’t need the extra pressure right now. She was barely holding herself together anyways.

It didn’t get any better in the living room. One by one, the mothers approached Ainsley, introduced themselves, and asked about her travels. Word had leaked out somehow, as it always does, and Ainsley realized that she’d probably been the topic of several coffee klatches.

She mouthed the usual explanations. Yes, she had an amazing time abroad. No, she wasn’t posting the pictures online. Yes, the travelling was finished for now. No, another job wasn’t out of the question.

But their questions kept piling on, and soon Ainsley felt the pressure building behind her eyeballs. She excused herself, ran upstairs into the spare bathroom, and locked it behind her.

46

There, Ainsley tripped over the kiddie
toilet on the floor. She cursed the thing and kicked it aside.

Then she turned on the faucet, planted her hands on either side of the sink, and looked at herself in the mirror.

She couldn’t fault these mothers. They were sweet and supportive, every one of them, almost to a fault. But they had a narrow viewpoint. And that viewpoint would become Ainsley’s present and future, if she stayed here.

That thought made her head feel even worse.

She opened her purse, looking for her ibuprofen. She noticed an unfamiliar piece of paper, folded into quarters, at the bottom of her purse.

As she unfolded it, she recognized it. It was the slip of paper that Bernabé had handed her just before he’d returned to Uruguay.

She read the name again.
Marcelo Carrazo
. The owner of the Zorro vein of rhodochrosite. Bernabé had included the man’s phone number and address.

He lived in Patagonia.

The phone call happened as though someone else were acting through her. Ainsley watched her fingers fly across the numbers of her keypad, first the international country code, then the area code, then the number itself. She felt the phone pressed against her ear.

A deep male voice answered. “
Hola
?”

She paused. Her Spanish had deserted her. Then something shifted in her mind, and she found her second tongue. “Is this Marcelo Carrazo?”

“It is. Who is calling?”

“My name is Ainsley Walker.”

Outside the door, a child started to bang fiercely against the bathroom door. Annoyed, Ainsley climbed into the bathtub and slid shut the translucent door.

“Why are you calling?” the man said.

The banging on the door grew stronger. Ainsley plugged her finger into her other ear. “Someone told me,” she explained, “that you are the owner of the Zorro rhodochrosite mine.”

“No, I’m just a poor rancher.”

“No, that’s not what I was told.”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Bernabé Gradin.”

There was another silence. “So you are the girl working for
El Mono
.”

“I am,” she said, then corrected herself. “Actually, I used to. Not any more.”

The man sighed. “I was wondering if you would call me.”

Ainsley’s heart leapt against her shirt. She plunged on. “Do you know about Ovidio’s necklace? The one from his mother?”

There was yet another silence. Ainsley wondered if the connection had failed. Then the man’s spoke hestitantly: “Yes, I do.”

“It was taken from your mine.”

“I know.”

There was another silence. Ainsley sensed that he was clamming up. Then it just came blurting out. “I feel like there is something you want to tell me,
Señor
Carrazo.”

When Marcelo replied, his enunciation had become very precise. “Listen to me,” he said. “I am going to tell you something very, very important.”

“I am all ears,” she said.

“They lied to him.”

Ainsley lifted an eyebrow. “Who’s they?”

“I can’t tell you that over the telephone.”

Ainsley jerked her head back, as if she’d been physically smacked. She could still hear the toddler banging on the door.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“Tell me more,” she begged.

“I can’t. I don’t trust this instrument. There are too many ears listening.”

She started to panic. “Marcelo, you are the person I have been looking for. How can we talk?”

“Come down here, and we can talk. Did Bernabé give you my address?”

He had. Ainsley looked at the piece of paper. Marcelo lived in Patagonia. The rugged, southern province of Argentina, where only the hardiest souls could travel.

“He did,” she said, “but that’s going to be difficult for many, many reasons.”

“Yes, and by design. I don’t need those
porteño
assholes killing my peace.”

“I’m in North America right now.”

She could almost hear the shrug. “If you show up, I will be here.”

“I’ll try to make it. But it’s a long journey.”

“I will welcome you, and we will talk about many things.”

“But—”

“If you can’t get here, then I will be here anyways, living my life. Good luck.”

The line disconnected. Ainsley was completely still, in a state of shock. Her eyes looked straight ahead without seeing anything.

She was thinking.

From a practical perspective, returning to Argentina made zero sense. She’d been fired from her only job in the country, actually, and been paid nothing for the trouble. Nobody in Buenos Aires was returning her calls. And the journey wasn’t safe, since the military had already forced her out of the country, presumably for sticking her nose into a place where it didn’t belong.

But from an emotional perspective, returning to Argentina made perfect sense. It would give Ainsley an excuse to postpone her return to an American life. She could keep searching for Ovidio’s necklace. If she were lucky, she could possibly even find it, and redeem herself in his eyes. And most of all, she would feel a sense of completion. She hated leaving tasks unfinished, especially when it hadn’t been her decision to abandon them.

She pondered the choices. It was going to be tough to ignore her emotions.

Ainsley climbed out of the bathtub and opened the bathroom door. Deirdre was standing there with her little boy. He streaked past her to the kiddie toilet.

“I’m sorry he was being so loud,” Deirdre said, “but Matthew has to go really bad.”

Ainsley zipped her purse shut and slung it over her shoulder. She looked her friend in the eyes.

“So do I,” she said.