27. Sofia
27
SOFIA
L ate into the evening, Se?ora Vasquez came in to check on me. She made me put ice on my arm. She warmed up some soup and ordered me to sip water too.
Juan came with her here and there, helping to pick up stuff that had fallen in the living room. The Cartel men had made an outright mess of it all.
The only thing I could do was sit there and stare.
Stuck in this sadness and despair, I let the hopelessness win.
Without energy to get up, without the power to think straight, I stared and willed time to pass with more mercy, that somehow, each minute would move forward and make this all hurt less.
“Up.” Se?ora Vasquez barked at me as she entered the kitchen again. “Up. Get up.” She clapped her hands and gestured at me to snap into obedience. “Up, Sofia.”
I shook my head.
“Move. Get up. Walk around. Get fresh air.” She tugged on my hand and didn’t quit. “Get. Up. Now .”
I sighed, standing. I still didn’t see the point, but I didn’t protest when she prodded me to step outside with her.
“You need to move. Breathe in,” she ordered once I followed her out onto the sidewalk leading to the front door. “Breathe out.”
I only sighed again.
She growled, shaking her head. “I said to breathe in, Sofia.” Again, she demonstrated, putting her hand on her stomach and acting out a deep inhale.
I made the mistake of lifting my hand to my stomach, mirroring her, but it was the arm Sebastian had broken. I winced and lowered it.
Se?ora Vasquez scolded me, but as the droning whine of a moped approached, I frowned and wondered where it was coming from.
“Sofia,” she scolded just as a small bike rolled closer and closer. I tugged her hand to pull her out of the way from the moped that sped in a swerving path along the street. In and out of yards, back on the road, then mostly on the sidewalk, the rider nearly crashed into a garbage can. The handle scraped along a parked car, then took out a string of Christmas lights attached to a low fence.
“Look out!” Se?ora Vasquez hollered as I yanked her out of the way.
“Ahh!” The rider’s voice carried past us until the small bike hit a young tree and forced him to crash into a bush.
I blinked once. Twice.
I couldn’t breathe.
I knew that voice, that cry of alarm that would one day probably be an adult-like curse.
“Ramon?” Juan had stepped out of the house, pausing from his abuela mandating him to offer to clean.
Is it…?
How is ? —
My baby?
The young rider groaned and crawled out from the bush as the moped’s engine droned on steadily. It wasn’t going anywhere, upside down and spinning in a circle to wear out the grass. As he shuffled out from the leaves, on his hands and knees and shaking his head full of thick brown hair…
“ Ramon! ” I screeched it, stupefied and overjoyed to see my son.
I ran to him, stunned and rocked back in disbelief that it was him. He was here . He was back.
“Mama!” he cried out in reply as he staggered to his feet and brushed off the debris from his legs. “Mama!”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” I fell to my knees, hauling him into a hug. My arm screamed in pain, but it didn’t stop me from hugging my precious boy close. Nothing could stop me from clinging to him and crying happy tears that he was alive. And here. Not taken away.
I hadn’t lost him.
He was here!
I wet his hair with my happy tears. Holding him close soothed my heart. I couldn’t understand how this was possible, but the broken pieces of my soul were patched back together. Stroking his hair and rubbing his back, I kept him in my tight embrace and let him cry in response. He held on to me just as tightly, catching his breath and calming now that he was home again.
“Ramon,” Juan said, wonder in his voice. “What did you do?”
Ramon leaned back a little, and the shift in his weight put more pressure on my arm.
“Mama? What’s wrong?” He frowned, looking me over. “Diego said you were okay.”
I gaped at him. I’d heard him. I heard my son correctly. He said Diego . And I’d heard my lover tell me that he’d retrieve my boy. I’d heard him promise with my own ears.
Yet, I doubted him. The gravity of my worst nightmare coming true had shielded me from having faith and trusting in what that man vowed. It simply seemed too impossible of a feat, but I would let myself deal with the guilt at doubting him later.
“Diego?” I framed his face.
“Are you, Mama? Are you okay?” He looked me over, searching for a wound.
I nodded. “Of course, I am okay. You are home. You are here, and unharmed!”
“But how?” Juan asked. “Abuela said that you were taken by the Cartel. She saw their cars.”
Ramon pointed to the moped. “I… I didn’t know how to stop it,” he admitted sheepishly. “The men drove me to the compound and?—”
“Shh. Shh.” Se?ora Vasquez wagged her finger to hush him. Wisely, she pointed for us to go into the house. “You don’t talk about the Cartel when anyone can hear…”
We all moved inside. Ramon held my hand, and Juan cleared off a spot on the couch for his abuela to sit next to me.
“The men took me to the compound, and that fat old leader who hit your arm”—Ramon looked down at it as I cradled it—“put me in a cell.”
Se?ora Vasquez snapped her fingers at Juan. “Get the ice. In the kitchen.”
He ran over to get it and handed it to me.
“Did anyone… hurt you?” I dared to ask. He looked unharmed, save for the braking crash in the bush.
“One man slapped me for crying. That told me enough. I didn’t make a peep after that.”
I gritted my teeth.
“But they just put me in the dark cell. I wasn’t in there for long before Diego found me.”
“He just… found you?” I asked.
He nodded. “He got me out and snuck me over to get that bike. Then he showed me a way out of there. He told me to come home to you, Mama.”
“But…” I swallowed hard. “Where is he now?”
Diego knew his way around the Cartel’s compound. He’d found Ramon in a cell, broke him out, and was familiar with an escape route. All those facts led to the proof that his memories had to be returning to him. There was no other explanation. He had experience with being in the compound before whatever he’d done before he was knocked out.
“At the compound,” Ramon replied. “He said he would come back soon. Men were talking on the ride, saying they wanted to kill Diego, too, but I was so scared, I wondered if I heard them right.”
I blinked, slotting this information away.
“He…” I could not relax with the thought of someone trying to kill him. Someone had already tried, and I’d nursed him back to health. But this time… how could I do it again?
“He’s still at the compound?” Where someone wants to end his life?
“I think he wanted to kill the big, bad man who took me,” he said.
“Oh, God.” I covered my mouth, ill at the thought of his being so foolish. I didn’t want to believe that he was a Cartel soldier. That was not a scenario I could accept, that I’d fallen in love with the enemy. That he’d… duped me.
But if he’s familiar with the Cartel compound like that, is he working with them? It made no sense why he’d let Ramon go. Sure, he was living out a fantasy of playing house with me, but that was before his memories returned about knowing the Cartel’s compound layout. If he were a Cartel man, he wouldn’t have released Ramon.
I rubbed my brow, unable to understand. I was stressed. I was wounded. I had faced a terrible fear. I suspected I was struggling with a fogginess I recalled having when I was pregnant with Ramon, a stubborn pregnancy brain.
But this simply didn’t add up.
Just who was Diego?
“Why would he let you go? If he… if he is a Cartel man himself, if he is a soldier for them, why would he let you go?”
Ramon held my hand. “Because he loves me. And he loves you. He told me so.”
My heart swelled with hope, chasing out the confusion littering my brain. Hugging him close again, I prayed that this was possible, that if Diego’s past included being in the Cartel, love would overrule it all.
He could still choose us. If his love was that strong, then maybe there was hope.
But when?
How?
He told Ramon he would come back, but after Sebastian barged in here the way he did, I wasn’t comfortable sitting here, vulnerable and waiting.
We could relocate until he’d return. Hiding felt safest. Hiding was what I knew to do in order to survive. But in doing so, I risked Diego not being able to find us. I would forsake the one man I’d opened my heart to. The one man I’d ever love.