After the detective left, Jerry explained he and Julio were going to try and find an ally within the local force, then swing by some of the churches with big Hispanic populations. Wayne had no intention of leaving the terrain unguarded. It both surprised and warmed him, though, how Tatyana insisted on staying with him.
He couldn’t tell her how often he’d been there on his own before. “It’s fine,” he told her.
Tatyana saw Jerry’s smirk and asked, “You think I am funny?”
Jerry said, “No, sister. Wayne is one lucky dude, is what I’m thinking.”
“This is a serious issue,” Tatyana said. “This is a safety issue.”
“You’ve been calling the man a warrior, right? I’m guessing our hero will be just fine on his own.”
Tatyana made him wait at the entrance while she walked across the street and bought them sandwiches from a deli-grocery. When she returned, she drove them back to the north point and parked just past the Neally entrance. A pair of giant live oaks formed a living canopy over the road. The street was completely empty.
They unwrapped the sandwiches, pastrami for him and tuna for her. There was a tension in the silent car. A pressure Wayne found he did not mind in the least.
She waited until they had both finished their meal to ask, “What do you hope will happen?”
Wayne glanced at the clock set in the dash. It had taken her forty-three minutes to ask the question. He liked that about her. This sort of patience was not normal in Americans. He had seen it overseas, where television and film and games and life’s rush meant nothing. He liked it a lot.
Wayne replied, “We won’t know until we see it.”
She nodded. Accepting both his answer and his lack of certainty. She gave the silence another fifteen minutes. Then she asked what he had been waiting for.
She said, “Do you want to tell me about her?”
A simple no would shut that door. Wayne knew she would never ask him again. And he was tempted. He had, after all, been storing away his secrets for years. This was not something the military had taught him. He had been working on that trait a long, long time.
Even so, he replied, “My whole life feels like one giant mistake just rolling into the next one.”
He expected her to deflect. That had been his experience with women. Tell them the raw truth, even when they’d asked for it, and they’d change the subject.
Instead, Tatyana turned in the passenger seat so she was half facing him, and said, “Tell me the worst.”
“There are a lot of those too.”
“Pick one.”
That was the trouble with memories. Lift the lid looking for one, and all sorts of beasties started crawling out of the pot. “When I was fourteen I got arrested for the second time. Maybe the third. A buddy lifted a car and I went along for the ride. When my dad came down to get me, we had to sit with a police counselor while they decided whether to book me or not. The counselor asked my father if this was typical behavior for me or if this was something new. Pop told the lady, ‘The boy’s been looking for trouble since the day he discovered long pants.’ They booked me as a juvenile accessory and gave me ninety days, suspended.”
“So you never had anybody stand up for you.”
“Eilene did.”
“She is what, three years older than you?”
“Two.”
“She was a child then too. I meant someone who mattered when you were young and most vulnerable. Someone who could shield you from harm and offer you a way out.” She started to reach for him, but stopped herself. “We have more in common than you realize.”
“I bet you didn’t make a profession of learning all the wrong moves.”
Her gaze was not so much open as bruised. He glanced over and found himself unable to look away.
She did not demand so much as softly remind. “We were talking about you.”
A pair of white egrets stalked insects by the side of the road. Their impossibly slender legs took ballet steps through the trimmed grass. “Patricia and I were just kids when we got married. She was eighteen and I was a year older. By then I’d aced my basic training, advanced infantry, long range surveillance, whatever they threw at me. For the first time in my life I’d found something I was good at.”
“What about accounting?”
“That came next.” The army’s logic defied explanation. How they managed to tie him into the office corps was anyone’s guess. But they did. Him with the two stripes and a whole truckload of gung ho, getting strapped to a desk. The lieutenant in charge knew there had been a mistake the instant Wayne opened his jacket. He promised to do what he could, if Wayne would give him his best until things got sorted out. What neither of them had expected was how much Wayne enjoyed the work. Wayne told Tatyana about the class work, the simple pleasure he found in making numbers talk. “The instructor and the lieutenant said I was one in a million. Words I’d never heard before. I was almost sorry when they pulled me into Ops.”
But not for long. The training and the high-wire tension molded the recruits into the first real family he’d ever known. Which was true for a lot of the grunts. Misfits with a lot of reasons to rage, learning how to turn their fury into the edge to stay alive.
He realized he’d gone quiet. “Sorry.”
She gave him that smile that remained buried down so deep he wondered if he was the first who had ever seen it. “For what?”
What she said next caught him totally off guard. “I used to think getting the worst over early had its advantages. After that, life would just get better. That kept the pressure on me. Made me work harder for what I wanted to achieve. There must be worse things in the world. I know that now. But back then, I only knew my life. Being beautiful, becoming a woman, and locked up in a Siberian orphanage. That is what I have tried to run away from. And failed.”
The bruises in her gaze had grown deeper still. Wayne stared at her face and wondered if, in fact, the conversation had ever really been about him at all. “I’m so sorry, Tatyana.”
“I was married to Eric six months before I ever mentioned this. When I did, he acted like I had something wrong in me, not being able to walk away from my memories. I used to think that was why he cheated on me with those women. I learned later that there had been many of them. I thought maybe he did it because I couldn’t let the past go.”
“Listen to me. I don’t know him and I don’t know what happened. But I know this. He never deserved your trust.”
Then the car appeared.
Tatyana said, “It’s the maid.”
Wayne opened his door and slid out. He leaned back in and spoke hurriedly. “When she stops, try to see if she’ll tell you anything more. I’ll be around. You won’t see me but it doesn’t matter. Call me when you can.”
She started the car. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.”
He did not shut the door. “Promise me we’ll finish this talk later, okay?”
She looked at him but did not speak. She did not need to.