Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
They found an all-night diner six blocks south of the Inquirer building. A few solitary customers sat spaced along the counter. A waitress brought them a pot of coffee and left them alone in a booth by the window.
The sky outside had gone from grey to a pale, washed gold. Dante watched it come up over the rooftops across Broad Street.
Jessica wrapped both hands around her mug. The ruby ring was still on her finger. He'd noticed it on the curb outside the Dollhouse and hadn't said anything, because some things didn't need saying out loud, and also because he hadn't trusted his voice.
“You should call him,” she said.
Dante looked at her.
“Santiago.” She turned her mug a slow quarter-turn on the table. “You should call him.”
“It's five in the morning.”
“I doubt he’ll be sleeping.”
Dante looked out the window. He thought about the last time he'd seen his brother—four, or was it five days ago?
—in his backyard in Agua Dulce, Santiago's face hard and final.
You're doing it again. You're choosing her and you're going to die for it, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life not knowing where they buried you.
And Dante had driven away with Jessica because there hadn't been another choice, but he'd carried the look on Santiago's face all the way to Galveston and beyond.
“He told me I'd never see him again,” Dante said. “it was one of the last things he said to me.”
“I know.” Jessica was quiet for a moment. “Call him anyway.”
He took out his phone, then he dialed Santiago’s number.
It rang once.
“?Bueno?” Santiago's voice. He sounded wide awake, like he’d been waiting by a phone.
“It's me,” Dante said.
There was a long silence.
“Daniel.” His brother said his name—his real name—and it almost cracked him down the middle. “Dios mío. You're alive. You're— Where are you? Are you hurt. Is she—”
“I'm okay. We're both okay.” Dante's own voice wasn't steady. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. “It's done, Santi. It's over. He's finished. Sokolov. It's all the way over.”
He heard his brother breathe—a long, shuddering exhale.
“She called me,” Santiago said. “Jessica. Days ago. She told me what she was going to do.” There was a long pause.
“I helped her, Daniel. Julian and me. We helped her come get you.” Another breath.
“I thought… Dios, I thought I was helping her go get your body. I thought I was going to lose both of you.”
Dante opened his eyes and looked across the table.
Jessica was watching him. He reached across the table and took her hand, the one with the ring, and held it.
“She's right here,” Dante said into the phone. “You want to—”
“Bring her home,” Santiago said. His voice was wrecked and certain at the same time. “Both of you. I don't care how far you have to drive. You come home.” He gave a wet, broken laugh. “Just come home, hermano. Please.”
“We will,” Dante said. “We're coming.”
When the call ended, the diner was brighter. The gold outside had warmed toward proper morning. The waitress came by and refilled the pot neither of them had touched.
Jessica was still holding his hand.
Dante looked at her—this woman he'd spent thirteen years running toward and away from, who'd walked through the front door of the worst place in the world for him, who'd mended a thing he'd broken with his own brother without ever once mentioning it.
He'd spent his whole life believing that loving people meant carrying everything alone so they didn't have to.
He was starting to think he'd had it backward the entire time.
“Agua Dulce's a long way,” he said.
“I don't have anywhere to be.” She smiled. “Not anymore. Nowhere I have to run to. Nowhere I have to run from.”
Outside, the city was waking up. They heard delivery trucks, the first commuters, the ordinary sounds of an ordinary day, indifferent to the fact that two people in a window booth had just stopped running for good.
Dante put a few bills on the table. He stood, and held out his hand, and she took it.
They walked out into the morning together, south toward the bus station, toward the long road home, toward a small white house in the flat Texas distance where a brother was already telling his husband to put the coffee on.