4. Lourdes
Lourdes
In the cab, I check inside my purse to see if anything is missing. It would have been rude to do it in front of the man who got it back for me.
Ares…
Like he’d steal anything from me. The man screamed wealth. Not from one lousy hundred-dollar bill. His clothes. The way he smelled. His absolute confidence and the way he kept his head held high.
I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help it.
“Did that guy touch you?” David grunts from beside me.
“No,” I spit out. “Someone tried to rob me. He felt bad. It would be really nice if you asked if I was okay for a change.”
David rolls his eyes.
Our marriage has been on the rocks for a few years now. I’m trapped until I save enough money to get my sister out of Chicago. Sandrine is in a long-term care institution, wasting away.
The taxi pulls up in front of our apartment building in Hell’s Kitchen. “Keep the meter running,” David says to the driver, then looks at me. “Get out. I have more work to do.”
Not caring to argue, I pull the handle to leave, but David grabs my arm.
“You better fucking be there when I get home.” His words don’t land as a shock anymore.
I could argue. I could ask what time he plans to come home. How long am I supposed to sit there waiting? They’re all lines I’ve learned not to cross.
I pull my arm free, not enough to provoke him, just enough to remind him I still can.
After getting out, I watch the taxi drive off. Relieved, I stare up into the sky to get centered. No stars in crowded cities. Too many lights. It was the same in Chicago.
When I was twenty, my sister fell down a flight of stairs.
She suffered a traumatic brain injury and complete memory loss.
Our mother had already been gone for years, so it was just my father trying to manage the crisis alone.
I left college in Florida to help Sandrine’s recovery, but my father put her into a home for disabled adults.
Then he died in a car accident.
Dad left a small trust to pay the bills, but that ran out shortly after, and my sister had to be moved to a state-run facility. The people there are kind. It’s clean. But it’s just basic care. She needs rehabilitation and advanced therapy. The kind of medical care I can’t afford right now.
I step into our dingy one-bedroom apartment and kick off these high heels.
David and I only dated for a few months in Chicago and got married because I became unexpectedly pregnant. He moved us to New York, and six months into the pregnancy, I had a very painful miscarriage.
I got a job and stupidly agreed to deposit my whole salary into his bank account. He kept telling me he’d change it to a joint account, but he never did. I didn’t have the energy to argue. I was dealing with depression from the miscarriage.
Now, he’s gone all the time, and when he is home, he’s moody and growing violent.
Thinking of Sandrine, I give her a call. It’s rare that I can talk privately without David hovering.
The ward receptionist answers. “Tenth.”
“Jessica Parker, please?” I ask for her by the name my father changed it to after her horrific accident.
“Who’s calling?”
“It’s Lourdes Sinclair, her sister.”
“Hold.”
She picks up. “Lourdes!”
“Jessica!” I’m always so relieved to hear her voice.
“How was therapy this week?” I ask to give these calls a purpose and to remind her I’m invested in her recovery. Even if I can’t visit her in person.
There’s a pause on the other end, then a soft exhale.
“The same,” Sandrine says finally. She’s slower these days. Walks slowly. Needs an extra beat to think about what to say next. “They make me repeat things. Over and over. My name. The date. Where I am.”
“It’s so you don’t lose yourself again, sweetie,” I say gently, keeping my emotions in check.
If I fall apart, she falls apart.
I picture her sitting in that sterile common room all by herself. She’s dealing with this all alone. She doesn’t remember being Sandrine De la Vega. Dad ordered me to never tell anyone I had a sister and never fully explained why.
“I had a dream,” she hums. “About an old apartment. There were steam pipes that hissed.”
This breakthrough of our old place in Forest Glen hits me unexpectedly. “Did you tell the therapist?”
“Yeah,” she sighs. “They said to just write everything down.”
It’s because they don’t have staff physicians to help her recover deep details. God, I hate being so far away. One day when we’re together, I’ll use old family albums and other things Dad left behind to help draw more memories from her.
The photos sit in boxes sealed and stacked in the back of my closet. David never met Sandrine. He just thinks I have a sister Jessica, who I’m not close with and don’t talk to.
With Sandrine in the home, Dad and the money gone, I couldn’t go back to college. I worked as a bartender to survive. It was the only steady, decent-paying job I could get with an unfinished degree in accounting. It’s also where I met David.
Here in New York, he got me a job working for Nathan Craig, who runs a textile import company called Juniper Trading. I actually like my job. I arrange overstock textile shipments and handle the customs filings.
Nathan’s bookkeeper is clueless about fluctuating exchange and storage rates, making it easy for me to skim money off the transactions. My father taught me how to set up shell accounts that even seasoned auditors can’t spot.
I’m not doing this for luxury handbags or vacations.
I’m doing it to get my sister out of the state home and move her to a private facility in Arizona that specializes in TBIs and memory loss.
I wish I could send her to one of the top centers here in New York, but I can’t afford what they charge here in the city.
Our cousin Elodie lives in Scottsdale, so I hope I can stay with her until I find a place of my own.
“You need to focus on getting stronger,” I tell Sandrine. “That’s your only job.”
There’s a quiet moment between us, the kind that says more than words ever could.
“I don’t like it here,” she admits, barely audible.
I close my eyes and want to cry. But I’m as stuck as she is.
“I know,” I whisper. “I’ll try to visit soon. Work’s been busy, and I don’t want to interfere with your recovery.”
“Okay,” she says, trusting me in a way I’m not sure I deserve since I haven’t seen her in three years.
“I’ll call you next week. I love you, Jess.”
“Love you, too.”
I hang up and stand there feeling lost.
I haven’t told Sandrine my plan to move her. I don’t want anyone in Chicago to know I’m coming back to get her. Dad changed her name for a reason.
If someone is looking for Sandrine De la Vega, I won’t lead them to her.
I stare down at the infinity symbol across my veins. David made me get the ugly wrist tattoo. He said it meant forever. At the time, I thought that meant something good, and things were turning around for us.
Now, forever seems like a death sentence. He’s grown distant since the miscarriage three years ago. I think he’s keeping me around because he feels guilty.
Glancing around our awful apartment, I wonder when David will be back. He works for someone shady in Westchester. Doing what exactly, I don’t know. He says he’s making good money, but I don’t see any of it. He gambles and drinks it away.
He’s never home, and he’s also not interested in sex. I’m just biding my time to get out of this city and be with my sister. Some days, taking her to Arizona seems more like a pipe dream than a goal.
I get ready for bed thinking about the man from the club.
He not only got my purse back for me, but he snapped at David when he manhandled me. And without recourse. Very few men challenge my husband, but Ares didn’t think twice.
My body hums as I think of those broad, wide shoulders and strong jaw. Sable brown hair and gray-violet eyes. Big tattooed hands that I can feel on my body. And very little body hair on that fine tawny skin, at least from what I could see in his partially open shirt.
It took every ounce of my strength to feign disinterest. But he absolutely took my breath away. He was simply magnificent. Statuesque. Like…a God.
Ares. The God of War.
In a word. Fucking gorgeous. Okay, that’s two words.
And I’ll never see him again.