20. Diego
20
DIEGO
T he next day, when Ramon was at school and Sofia headed to the clinic, I counted down the minutes until they’d be back. Ramon now came home to me instead of staying next door at Se?ora Vasquez’s house, and I looked forward to his keeping me company.
I enjoyed his company, and I was glad that he seemed to look forward to being near me as well. It was all too easy to want to get attached to him, to consider him my son and that I could be his father. If things could go right between me and Sofia and we could make this an official family, with marriage, I would adopt him as my child. It wouldn’t be the same as that Kismet sense of belonging. That day he’d told me that people could feel connections in their heart—or the lack of a connection—didn’t seem like a myth. I believed him as much as I could. But that also precluded me in a way from ever having such a connection with him. That he’d never really identify me as his father since I hadn’t helped create him.
Or maybe it’s just a bunch of bullshit.
Why couldn’t he and I feel a close bond, even if I wasn’t his biological father?
What grew in my heart for Sofia was love. Pure, honest, wholly consuming love. That affection applied to him as well.
I was ready to embrace the idea of fatherhood. My heart had room to let Ramon in as my son. And these growing feelings I couldn’t deny for Sofia, my angel, hinted at a bigger deal than what I first considered.
Love.
My dark mood persisted as I putzed around the house, though. Alone, stuck with my thoughts that consisted of more questions than answers, I doubted I could be worthy of her love if I didn’t know what I was bringing to the table.
I wasn’t a doctor. I was a stranger uniquely capable of killing others and knowing how to dispose of bodies.
I wasn’t a victim. I was a perpetrator in something that had gotten a target on my back at some point in my life.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I led any danger to Sofia or Ramon, and that, more than anything, compelled me to figure out the truth.
Fingering the small oval metal pendant of her necklace, I zoned out and revisited the blip of a memory that had broken through. When I saw her holding it, the golden-bronze metal reflecting the brightness of the twinkling Christmas lights strung throughout the room, I was punched with a flashback.
Not one, but two of those very same Our Lady of Chiquinquira images. I’d seen them before, and not long ago. My perception of time was sketchy with my memories, but I knew, somehow, that I had seen that same metal image recently.
Maybe the night I had been knocked out.
As quickly as the memory struck, it slipped away, damning me from knowing the significance of it. The only other details that came with the memory of seeing the Our Lady of Chiquinquira jewelry was that it had been two. As earrings. And the person wearing them had a bloody face.
Who was wearing them?
Why were they bloody?
What was happening?
I shook my head again, bewildered by how little I could still know. Teased by the possibility of recalling anything about the night I was knocked out, I strained and focused, grasping and lunging for any wisp of a hint or clue.
All that left me with was more frustration. More darkness and the void of nothing. I couldn’t force myself to connect whatever I’d experienced before with what I did after.
I can’t sit around like this.
I shot to my feet, restless, and went into Sofia’s room where “my” clothes were stored. She’d gotten most of them from a donation-type of a thrift shop, and I appreciated all of them. What I grabbed right now was the sweatshirt with a decent-sized hood. If I went out of the house, I felt better about using a disguise.
Wait.
Disguise?
I was certain I wore them before.
Leaving the house to go to the market for a few things for dinner, I mused about why that word stood out to me now. Disguise. When would I have worn a disguise? And why? Was that doctor’s coat a disguise?
Excitement burned through me as I neared the possibility of remembering something again, this nagging insistence that I was on to something, just like I’d felt when I spotted Sofia’s necklace with the Lady of Chiquinquira pendant.
What is it?
What am I not seeing?
Certain that I was getting closer to unlocking my past, I braced myself for what it would be like to remember it all. No matter who I was in my previous life, I would not let it challenge or dispute the peace I’d found with Sofia and Ramon. The peace and bliss that I would not give up.
At the market, I caught sight of a man almost immediately. He stood out for no other reason than my conviction that he was familiar.
I recognized him. Not his name, but his face.
I paid for the few items I’d come for and set them in a bag. My motions were all done absentmindedly. Dazed and in a zone, I watched the tall, muscular man across the market aisle.
As if my direct stare on him alerted him, he glanced up and spotted me.
Yes. I know him. Yet, I didn’t. Who he was remained a mystery, but deep in the core of my brain, I recognized that he was someone I once knew. He was a representation of someone I’d spoken to before that night I lost so much of my past.
A slow smile crossed his face as he made eye contact with me. Then a crooked, shocked expression replaced it.
He recognizes me. He saw me. And he knew who I was.
This could be it. This just might be it, the moment when someone who knew me from before could now update me about who I was supposed to be.
He stalked over toward me, and I didn’t wait to approach him.
The closer we got, the more I saw of him. Without stalls and people blocking a direct line of sight to him, I could notice more details.
Like the tattoo on his forearm indicating he was one of the Cartel’s soldiers.
What? Someone from the Cartel? Again?
The last time I’d been here, another Cartel man had spotted me—or Ramon. I had been so certain that Ramon was the target, not me. Now, though, as I was here alone and not with the son whom Sofia didn’t want to give back to the Cartel, I realized that those other men hadn’t been tailing us out of interest in Ramon, but in me .
Desperation fueled me. Too many questions had lingered for too long and I had to get an answer now. I had to reach this man and ask him who the hell he was. Who he thought I was.
“Diego!”
I almost tripped over my feet at his greeting.
It was my name. I’d suspected it was. The more I let it sit in my mind, I convinced myself that really was my name. But hearing it from someone other than Sofia and Ramon made it more believable.
“Where have you been?” he asked, smiling wide as he switched a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.
My instincts warned me to stay guarded. “Who are you?”
He furrowed his brow, sliding his sunglasses up to squint at me. “Huh?”
“Who are you?” I asked.
Seeing this man, a Cartel man, had me on the defense. I literally had no idea who he was or how he’d know me, but in asking him that, it seemed to look like I was playing dumb.
Fine. I would. Maybe that was wisest, to let him think that I was who he thought I was.
Because the idea that he could know me because of the Cartel stunned me. A chill swept over me at the thought that I could have been… one of them.
No. Stop jumping to conclusions.
“Diego.” He chuckled, like I was being ridiculous. “It’s me , Manny.” Shaking his head slightly, he laughed again. “Don’t be playing like that. Where the hell have you been?”
I didn’t reply, staring at him and failing to remember how I’d know anyone named Manny. I did. I was sure of it, but I couldn’t understand his significance in my life. Dread sickened me as more things started to slot into place.
The Cartel? No. I didn’t want to let my brain go down that path.
“Come on. Quit playing around. I know you kept sayin’ how you were due a break, but no one believed you.”
“A break from what?”
He huffed, sliding his sunglasses back down. “I said quit playing, man. I’m sick of doing runs without you. Without your help.”
Runs?
Reaching out to pat my back, he smiled and tipped his head to the side to encourage me to walk with him. I dodged to the opposite side, evading his touch.
“Let’s go. I’m just leaving now, and you can come with me.”
I shook my head. I was not going anywhere with him.
“Diego.” His brow furrowed. “You have to come back, man.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I stepped back once, and he advanced. I did have an idea in my mind, but I didn’t like it. Not at all.
If he was suggesting I was ever involved with the Cartel…
No. Fuck no.
I turned, running and weaving through the crowd to get away from him. To get away from the suggestion that I could have been involved with the Cartel at all.
Fleeing my past couldn’t be possible, but as I sprinted to lose Manny at the market, I wished that I could retract and delete all my wishes to regain my memories.
If my past held the taint of a relationship with the criminal organization that had abused and frightened Sofia, she would never, ever let me near her or Ramon again. I would never be someone she could love or want.
The little family I was hedging all my bets on could cast me out if my past caught up to me, if I learned once and for all that I was involved with the Cartel.
And the hope blooming in my heart that I could have a future with my angel faded and dimmed with every frantic step I took to dismiss and reject what I learned at the market.