The Lies We Told (15 page)

T
HE HELICOPTER LANDED ON THE ATHLETIC FIELD OF A ONE-STORY-HIGH
school that looked as though it might have been built in the late fifties or early sixties. Climbing out of the chopper with Adam, ducking low as they moved quickly onto the open field, Rebecca felt as though she’d been born around that same time. She’d aged a good ten years in the past few days. She looked at the track that circled the field, hoping she’d have time to run later. She
had
to run. Had to keep herself centered. They had so much to do. They had to make sure things were set up properly in the school, treat the incoming evacuees, and most critically, stay on top of the search efforts. They needed to make sure Maya’s case didn’t get lost in the sea of missing persons.

“Where are the trailers?” Adam asked as the chopper rose into the sky above them.

Rebecca lit a cigarette, then pointed toward the school. “Probably on the other side,” she said.

“Hey!” A teenage girl wearing an orange Day-Glo vest called to them from the side of the field. “Are you Adam and Rebecca?”

“Yes!” Adam shouted.

The girl approached them at a trot. Her brown hair was in a little flip that bounced with each step. “I’m one of the volunteers,” she said as she neared them. “I’m going to take you to your trailer.” She did an about-face and set out a few yards ahead of them, and Rebecca and Adam followed wordlessly behind her, lugging their duffel bags. It was blistering hot on the field, and Rebecca was drenched with sweat by the time they’d walked around the far corner of the concession stand and the parking lot came into view. A white brick wall bordering the lot proclaimed Welcome—Viking Territory! Five trailers were already parked close to the building, and two trucks were in the process of towing in a couple more.

“What’s the chance of air-conditioning?” Adam asked Rebecca.

“Good chance.” She pointed to the generator sitting behind the trailers. “Our own little source of power. Hallelujah.” She’d stayed in trailers before, ones nearly identical to the simple white tin cans in front of them. The trailers were cramped and Spartan, but there would be electricity they’d have to be careful not to abuse, and there would be actual beds, a luxury after the floor of the airport. Not that she expected to be able to sleep.

The girl turned to smile brightly at them, pointing to the trailer closest to the school. “There’s pizza inside for you,” she said.

Adam hiked his bag higher on his shoulder. “You’re kidding.” The stubble on his cheeks and chin could almost be called a beard now, and Rebecca thought it looked good on him.

“Donated by a local place that wasn’t damaged,” the girl said. “They sent some over for you two and for the rest of us who are setting up stuff in the school. It’s been there a while, so it’ll be a little cold, but still—”

“That’s great,” Rebecca said. The volunteer was too perky
for her to deal with. She wanted to get inside the trailer and dump her duffel bag. She needed to get her bearings and figure out what to do next. “Do you have a key?” she asked.

“It’s in the door. Two of them on a chain. And I don’t think you’re supposed to smoke in there.” She pointed to Rebecca’s cigarette.

Rebecca considered blowing a smoke ring in her face, but thought better of it. “Where I smoke is none of your business,” she said.

“Smoke’s going to come out of her
ears
if you don’t watch it,” Adam warned the girl, though his voice was light and kind.

“I’m just
saying,
” the girl said. “And I’m supposed to give you a message from Dorothea Ludlow.”

Rebecca stopped walking, her muscles suddenly tight. “What?”

“She said to tell you that you’re just supposed to get settled into the trailer this afternoon and not go over to the school.”

Rebecca let out her breath and exchanged a look with Adam. Beneath the beard, his face was the same white as the trailer, and she knew that the last two seconds had stolen the color from her face as well.

“Okay, fine.” Rebecca started walking again.

They reached the trailer and she turned the key in the lock, then looked over her shoulder at the volunteer. “Thanks,” she said. “We’re good.”

“Miss Ludlow said she’ll be pissed off if she finds out you went over to the school.”

Rebecca stared daggers at the little twit.

Adam took the girl’s arm and walked a distance away from the trailer with her. “We know Dorothea,” Rebecca heard him tell her, “and we’re not afraid of her being p.o.’d, but thanks for letting us know.”

The girl hesitated, but finally seemed to realize her job was
finished. “Okay.” She sounded chipper, then added as she walked toward the school, “Thanks for volunteering!”

Rebecca crushed her cigarette beneath her shoe before climbing into the trailer. She took two steps to one of the narrow settees on either side of the small, built-in table and flopped down. “Thanks for preventing me from killing her,” she said as Adam followed her inside.

He smiled. “No prob.” He raked a hand through her short hair as if she were his kid sister. “Bet she’s a cheerleader,” he said. “I thought all that bubbliness was kind of cute.” He pulled a couple of bottles of water from his duffel bag and tossed one to her.

“I thought it was kind of insufferable.” She watched as Adam looked to the right, where the double bed was tucked into one end of the trailer, and to the left, toward the long built-in couch that would serve as the second bed.

“Has a little cottage charm,” he lied as he sat down across from her. He was sweet, and she regretted her bitchiness.

“Better than the conference room,” she said.

A pizza box and two paper plates rested on the table between them, and Adam lifted the lid to peer inside. “I think this is the first time in my life that the smell of pizza is turning my stomach.”

“Mine, too.” She raised the lid higher and frowned at the cheese pizza. She lifted a slice, so cold that it came away cleanly from its neighbors, and took a bite. It may as well have been cardboard. “I can’t taste a thing,” she said. She had a jarring realization. She’d worked in dozens of disaster zones and had never lost her appetite or her sense of taste. As a matter of fact, she’d usually been ravenous. You
had
to be ravenous to enjoy MREs. But for weeks after her parents died, she couldn’t taste or smell. She’d lost twenty pounds in a month. She took another bite of the pizza, moving it around in her mouth with her tongue, determined to taste it. Nothing.

She set the slice of pizza on one of the paper plates. “We’ll go over to the school after we’re done eating.” She needed to get busy. Keep herself from thinking.

“Absolutely,” Adam said. “We’d go out of our minds hanging out here at the Ritz.” He took a bite of pizza, and his eyes slid closed and stayed closed while he chewed. He was falling asleep, and Rebecca felt a smile cross her face.

“Do I look as tired as you do?” she asked.

His eyes popped open and he looked surprised at finding himself in the trailer with a mouthful of pizza. “Whoa,” he said. “I was in another universe for a minute.”

She sighed. “Another universe sounds great right now, doesn’t it?” She poked at the congealed cheese on her pizza with her fingertip. “I need to be sure they’re setting up the clinic the right way,” she said. “Sometimes the volunteers don’t know what makes the most sense, from a medical standpoint.”

Adam leaned back on the settee, his sleepy eyes studying her. “You have so much…I don’t know…
inner strength,
” he said.

“Ha,” she said. “Then why do I feel like I’m falling apart?”

“Maya always says you can get things done no matter what’s going on around you, but I never saw it firsthand before.”

Rebecca looked down quickly at the almost casual mention of Maya’s name, and whatever was left of her so-called inner strength seemed to slip away. “I didn’t want to leave the airport.” She gave her head a small shake. “I know it’s irrational, but I feel like…what if she comes back there looking for us and she doesn’t know where we are?”

“Hey.” Adam set down his pizza and reached across the narrow table to cover her hand with his. “If she returns to the airport, she’ll find us, kiddo,” he said. “She’s more capable than you give her credit for.”

“She’s fragile, Adam.”

“You need to get over that,” he said. “I think I know her better than you do, as an adult. You still think of her like a kid.”

She remembered Brent saying that she infantilized Maya. Maybe she did.

“That’s your family story,” Adam said. “Rebecca’s the tough, brave, wild one who raised her little sister single-handedly. Maya’s the brainy mouse who needs to be taken care of. She might not be as tough as you are, but she’s tougher than you think. And you’re probably more of a wuss than you let on.”

“Am not.” She made a face at him. She was embarrassed at letting him see her vulnerability when he’d just applauded her strength. “Anyway, I
said
it was irrational.” She got to her feet and picked up her duffel bag from where she’d dropped it on the floor. Setting it on the counter, she began unpacking. When she pulled out her cell phone, she flipped it open out of habit and let out a gasp.

“My cell’s working!” she said.

Adam jumped to his feet, digging through his own bag for his phone.

“Mine, too,” he said, “though the battery’s just about had it.”

Rebecca speed dialed Maya’s cell number.

You’ve reached Dr. Maya Ward.

She stomped her foot in frustration. “Damn it, Maya, where
are
you?”

Adam leaned against the counter. “You were out there, Bec,” he said soberly. “You saw even more than I did. Do you honestly think she’s still alive?”

She felt like throwing her phone at him, and if she hadn’t needed it so badly, she would have. “Don’t
you
give up hope,” she said. “We both have to stay positive.” She sat down on the settee again. “I’ve worked in so many disaster sites where bodies were never recovered, at least not while I was there,” she said. “And I
never got it. Not really. I never completely understood what those families were going through. I just focused on my work.”

“That’s what you were
supposed
to do,” he said. “That’s what I do in the O.R. What your sister does.”

“And will do again,” she said, as if daring him to challenge her words.

He hesitated, then nodded solemnly. “I hope she’ll be able to do it again,” he said. Then he dropped his gaze to his phone and began scrolling. “I have hundreds of messages.”

Rebecca checked her own messages, hunting for Maya’s familiar phone number. She scrolled through the numbers once. Then again. Many of her friends had called, some of them repeatedly. She looked for unfamiliar numbers—numbers of people who might have found Maya and were calling to let her know. There were a few she didn’t recognize and she wondered if she should try calling them.

“Check your voice mail,” Adam said. He lifted his phone to his ear, then impatiently lowered it, pushed a button, lifted it again. In another moment, she was doing the same. She clicked through calls from friends, her automobile insurance carrier, more friends, a reminder of a doctor’s appointment she’d missed, and finally, Brent telling her to call him on his sat phone.

She gave up listening to her messages and called Dorothea.

“Ludlow,” Dorothea answered.

“We have cell coverage here,” Rebecca said.

“Super!”

“Give me the number for the guy heading the S and R team,” Rebecca asked.

“I just spoke with him not two minutes ago, babe. Nothing’s changed.”

“I want the number anyway.” Rebecca blindly hunted in her duffel bag for a pen, but Adam handed her one before she could
find it. Dorothea gave her the number and she jotted it on the top of the pizza box.

“And look, Rebecca,” Dorothea said, “Brent just called. He’s been without a phone himself until this morning. He’s got a sat. Wants you to call him.”

“I will,” she said. “Call me the second you hear anything, okay?”

“Of course.”

She hung up and felt uncertain what to do next. Adam sat across the table from her, still scrolling through his calls. He glanced up. “It must be all over the news about Maya,” he said. “Everybody’s calling. I’m going to check in with one or two friends and have them call everyone else for me.”

“Good idea,” she said, but she made no move to dial her own phone. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t feel like explaining what was going on or answer questions or hear—premature—condolences.

She was staring woodenly at the phone when it rang. The number on the caller ID was unfamiliar, which filled her with both hope and apprehension as she flipped the phone open.

“Hello?”

“Rebecca!” Brent’s voice boomed in her ear as if he was sitting next to her instead of thousands of miles away in Ecuador.

“Hi,” she said, barely able to mask her disappointment. She’d wanted it to be one of the searchers with good news. She’d wanted a miracle.

“Oh, no,” he said, picking up on her flat tone. “Is there news? I spoke with Dot just a little while ago and she said—”

“No. No news.”

“I just can’t believe it,” he said. “Poor Maya. She finally gets the gumption to do something outside her comfort range, and now this.”

Adam started talking to someone on his phone, and Rebecca walked to the end of the trailer with the double bed. “I know,” she said as she sat down.

“Dot said you went out to the accident site.”

“I did. It’s a…” She didn’t want to relive the scene. She didn’t want to think about the pilot hanging from her seat belt or the guy whose legs had been chewed off by an alligator. “This whole thing is a nightmare,” she said.

“Look, Rebecca.” He sounded so cool and calm. So together. He was always that way in a crisis, which is what made him such a good DIDA doc. She was usually that way herself. “It’s still really bad here,” he said. “I have things I have to wrap up tonight, but I’m going to come home tomorrow. I want to come down there and be with you.”

“No, don’t.” She didn’t want him here. He knew Maya. He
cared
about Maya, but he didn’t love her the way she and Adam did. She felt the way she had when Dorothea had told her Maya was on her way to the airport—that intense aversion to having her come. If only…if
only
she could turn back time and insist that Maya stay home.