Thread of Deceit (12 page)

It wasn’t wrong. Awards were human measures of success—and she wanted to succeed. Not just for herself, but she believed God intended her to be the best she could be. All her life, she had strived for perfection. The cleanest desk. The neatest penmanship. The best book reports. The tidiest room. The highest GPA. The best job. The latest fashions. The most disciplined runner. The top awards.

In everything—everything—she had to succeed. She couldn’t do less. Couldn’t let down for a moment or…or what? What would happen if she weren’t the best, the brightest, the most perfect…if she failed?

Recalling her greatest failure—not hearing her sister’s pleas for help—Ana glanced toward Flora’s corner. The dark shadows were empty. The thin huddled figure who had stared glumly at the wall was gone.

Where was the child?

Fear prickled through Ana, almost as though she had carelessly mislaid part of herself. Flora was
supposed
to be there…right in that corner wearing her green skirt and plastic sandals. It was her place.

The afternoon wasn’t half over. Had Flora actually joined one of the activity groups? It seemed unlikely.

Ana glanced into the front office and saw that Sam, too, had disappeared. She quickly crossed to the row of classrooms and moved down it, checking at each open doorway. No sign of Flora.

Stepping toward the shadowed corner, she studied the empty space, imagining the huddled figure wedged as far as possible into the corner. Did Flora always wear a green skirt? Or were there other clothes? And her long black hair, was it always in one braid—or sometimes two? Such questions suddenly became important, and Ana needed answers.

Crouching, she thought how it might be to sit in this corner for hours and hours each day. Did Flora nap here sometimes? Or sing to herself, little Spanish songs she had learned from her mama or her grandmother—her
abuela?
Did she think about La Ceiba—the town, the hotel, the tree, the place of witchcraft, or whatever it was? Or did she just hide here, her heart trembling as she tried to stay undiscovered, unseen, secreted away like a mouse?

Tempted to try to fit herself into Flora’s corner, Ana gazed down at the floor. Such a dark, cold place. Concrete, bare and gray, and two dark spots near the wall. Ana reached out and touched her finger to the spots, smeared them, lifted her hand to the light…and saw that it was blood.

The color frightens me. The red is like the fingernails of the woman who walked with my father on the sidewalk the night that everything came apart. The red is like the ruffle on my mama’s blouse when she ran out of our house in tears. The red is like the woman’s high-heel shoes, and my father’s eyes when he drinks…

…and oh, I am afraid. Afraid of the pain and the evil smell of sweat and the color red. And I stare up at the lightbulb, forcing my eyes to burn, commanding them to come out of my head, wishing to be blind so that I may never again see that color. The bright white ceiling turns to black as my eyes float upward into the light…

…and it is the sun glistening down on my sister’s hair as I comb it. My fingers fall through the strands of her black hair, her blue-black hair, like a raven’s wings. Aurelia laughs at me for combing and combing her hair, but I cannot stop. Today, we found the comb on the beach, a red plastic comb with large teeth, and we sat together under the shade of a silk-cotton tree to comb our hair.

Ouch! Aurelia cried out at first, because her hair was all in tangles and sticky with juice from the mango we ate at breakfast. She turned around and slapped my face, and a tear rolled from her brown eyes down onto her cheek, making a pale track through the dust there.

But I whispered to her. Softly, softly, Aurelia. All is well. I will comb your hair, and you will be beautiful, like a queen, like a woman in a magazine, like a movie star.

So she sits for me now, drawing pictures in the sand, catching the tufts of cotton that float down from the tree, and letting me comb her hair. All the tangles fall away. The dirt sifts out of her hair, and the oil slides in, and Aurelia’s hair grows soft and shiny.

When, at last, it glows like the black coal in the bottom of a fire pit, I start to braid. Oh, my fingers are nimble as they divide my sister’s hair into three thick strands. Evenly sorted, none thicker than the others. And I set one over the other. Tuck another behind. My fingers twist and curl like my mama’s when she braids the hair of her two daughters. But my mama is quick, always in a hurry, uncaring because too soon these braids will fly loose, and her children’s hair will hang over their faces like a frayed curtain.

I am not quick. I braid Aurelia’s hair slowly, weaving the strands perfectly, creating a rope of black pearls that falls down my sister’s back. At the end, I tie a red ribbon—it is a strip of plastic torn from a packet of bologna and discarded on the beach—but I tell her it is a ribbon. A ribbon for a queen. For a lady in a magazine. For a movie star.

You are beautiful, Aurelia.

And she smiles at me, her teeth so white and her arms so warm around my neck.

I will take care of you always, Aurelia, and I will braid your hair and put red ribbons in it, and I will make you beautiful.

She nods, because she believes what I tell her. I believe it, too. We sit together under the silk-cotton tree with our combed hair and Aurelia’s long braid. And we look at the water, at the glow on the water as the sun sets, the orange and pink sun, the red sun…

…and it is the lightbulb. But the pain is gone now. I can breathe. Thank you, God!

A
na staggered to her feet, unsteady as she searched her purse for a tissue. Moving out into the light, she could see the scarlet color, the sticky consistency. No doubt about it. This was blood.

Alarm surging through her, she heard a chorus of echoes in her head.
Tell someone! Wait—don’t tell! Get help! No, hide, hide!

Swallowing against the fear that lodged like a bone in her throat, she focused on the office in the distance. Sam Hawke had wandered out now and was patting Duke. His large hand covered the dog’s head, and his fingers stroked around and behind the large furry ears.

Should Ana tell Sam? No, he would sneer at her the way he had laughed at her desire to win a Pulitzer.
How shallow can you get?

How dumb can you be? That’s not blood. That’s nothing. Strawberry jelly, maybe, from lunch. You’re blowing things out of proportion. What are you doing here, anyway? I told you to leave.

No, Ana would not leave, not without finding Flora first. What if another child had hurt her? What if someone had scratched her or cut her with a knife that had been sneaked past the metal detector? Or what if Flora had suddenly begun her menstrual flow? That would be terribly frightening to a young girl all alone. Who could explain it all to her—the important information about her maturing body and its natural cycles?

No one but me, Ana concluded. I have to help her.

Making for the restroom, she prayed that Sam wouldn’t see her. She slipped into the hall and hurried down the steep steps. Was Flora old enough to have a monthly period? She seemed so small. But Ana had been young, too, and surprised. Her loving mother had talked to her about so many things. But not the unspoken privacies of women. Ana’s own body had been an uncharted realm, mysterious and frightening. She had felt as though her secret places must be too unpleasant and innately disgraceful to be mentioned.

Worried that Flora might be just as innocent, Ana pushed open the door to the girls’ bathroom and bent to look under the row of stalls. There—the pink plastic sandals.

“Flora?” She tried to make her voice light, to hide her concern as she spoke in Spanish. “Are you all right?”

Nothing.

Ana stepped up to the stall’s metal door and tapped gently. “Flora, it’s me, Ana Burns. I talked to you the other day, remember? You asked me about La Ceiba. Do you remember me?”

Nothing.

The door swung open. Flora stood against the tiled wall beside the toilet, her brown eyes focused on Ana, her green skirt spotted with dark blood.

“I saw you when I came in,” Ana went on, feigning calm. “But just now, I noticed you were gone. Is everything all right?”

Flora nodded, then whispered in Spanish, “Excuse me.”

Turning, she edged past Ana and hurried toward the door.

“Wait! Flora—I see the blood on your skirt.” Ana caught the girl’s shoulder. “Please tell me if you’re hurt.”

“I’m all right.” She faced Ana again. Her face was calm, but her eyes were bright with tears. “I’m fine now.”

“The blood on your skirt—what happened?”

“My arm. It’s nothing, see?” Flora showed Ana that she had wrapped a strip of toilet tissue around her thin arm just below the elbow.

“Who did this?” Ana caught the child’s hand before she could hide it behind her back again. “Who hurt you, Flora?”

“I’m not hurt. It doesn’t hurt.” She squirmed. “Let me go.”

“I want to look at it—please.”

“No, it’s mine. It’s my arm.” She jerked loose and ran out of the restroom, her legs as gangly as a foal’s beneath the short green skirt.

Ana leaned against a sink and tried to still her heartbeat. How had Flora been injured? Who had hurt the child?

“What’s going on?” The deep voice startled Ana. She turned to find Terell Roberts standing inside the bathroom near the door. “What are
you
doing here? Did you sign in with Raydell?”

“That little girl—did you see her? The one who just ran out of here? She’s hurt.”

“Hurt? What happened to her?” He scowled down his nose as he strode toward Ana, his large white sneakers eating up the floor. “Who else is in here?”

“No one. It’s just me.”

“You’re that reporter from the other day. Sam said he didn’t want you to bother us anymore. Why are you sneaking around down here?”

“I’m not sneaking.” She felt small beneath his stare. “I came to check on Flora.”

“How’d she get hurt?”

“I don’t know. I saw blood on the floor.”

“Blood?” He took a step closer, intense. “Where?”

“Upstairs. In her corner.”

His face went hard. “You better leave now, ma’am. I need to find that girl.”

“I want to find Flora, too. She’s been injured.”

“Hey, what’s going on down here?” Sam’s voice echoed down the hall. “The kids are freaking out about T-Rex and some lady in the restroom.”

“It’s nothing,” Terell called back.

Sam appeared in the doorway and his blue eyes focused on Ana.
“You.”

Sam could not believe it. Instead of leaving, as he’d told her to do, Ana Burns had stayed in the building, gone down to the restroom and caused a scene with Terell.

“Someone start explaining,” he demanded.

“There’s blood,” Terell growled, poking a thumb at Ana. “She chased that little girl out of the restroom. Flora—the one in the corner, you know? I didn’t see the whole thing, but I don’t trust this lady any farther than I could throw her.”

“Where’s the blood?”

“Upstairs,” Ana said. “And I didn’t chase Flora.”

“Where upstairs?” Sam demanded.

“Wherever it is, it’s blood,” Terell said, “and that’s not good. Blood is
never
a good thing.”

At the sound of children whispering behind him, Sam turned to find a cluster of preschoolers staring wide-eyed at the two men inside the girls’ restroom. Murmuring, elbowing each other, the kids pointed to the reporter. A little boy burst into tears.

Wonderful. Just what they needed. Hysteria.

“Where are you kids supposed to be?” he asked.

The boy sobbed. “Somebody’s gonna kill us!”

“Nobody’s going to hurt you, Andre. You’d better get back to your activities. Aren’t you supposed to be with Granny right now?”

“But what about the blood? I’m scared of blood!”

“There are only two drops,” Ana said.

“Two drops?” Sam raked a hand back through his hair. All this hullabaloo for a couple of drops of blood? He couldn’t believe Ana was still here—and still causing him trouble.

“Listen, Terell,” Sam said, “would you take these kids back where they belong? And see if you can find Flora.”

Terell snapped to attention. “Come on, you ragamuffins. Stop your boohooing, Andre. Get up those stairs right now, you hear?”

“Talk to me, woman.” Sam took Ana’s hand to prevent her following the group. Her fingers were cold and trembling. “Tell me what you were doing in the restroom after I told you to leave the building.”

She jerked her hand away and crossed her arms. “When I left your office, I noticed she wasn’t in her corner. Flora. I went looking for her.”

“Why? What is Flora to you? We’ve got more than a hundred children inside Haven at one time. Why are you after her?”

“I’m not
after
her. She just…troubles me.”

He nodded, aware that the haunting child had affected him deeply, too. “What about the others? They don’t trouble you?”

“Of course they do. But Flora is different, Sam. She’s so alone. Did you know she talked to me the other day? She speaks Spanish. I wanted to see her before I left—to make sure she was all right. I went to her corner, and that’s when I saw the drops of blood. They were still wet.”

Sam studied the young woman. As much as he wanted to bite her head off for disobeying him, he responded to the tone of concern in her voice. After her comment about winning a Pulitzer, he had figured Ana Burns to be like he once had been—totally focused on himself and his own goals. Other people had meant little to him beyond what they might do to him or for him. He never thought of connecting.

Not until Terell. And Christ. And then people came to him in waves—the men in his command, the civilians at the base and those in Iraq, and finally that one child…that girl with the brown eyes. Now he had all these children and so much responsibility.

But Ana Burns had just one. Flora. Her humanizing connection.

“Tell me about the blood,” he said gently. “Start at the top.”

“I was afraid another child had hurt Flora.” Ana’s shoulders relaxed an inch. “She’s so vulnerable, you know. I went looking, and I found her in one of the stalls down here. When she came out, I saw that she had a strip of toilet paper wrapped around her arm. Here, below the elbow. I saw the blood—enough to seep through the tissue. It was on her skirt, too. I tried to get her to tell me what had happened, but she ran out. I was headed after her when Terell stopped me.”

“Do you think the injury was serious?”

“I’m not sure. A bad scratch, I guess.” Ana shook her head in frustration. “Sam, something’s wrong in that little girl’s life. I just know it. She wears the same clothes, sits in the same corner, and today when Jim Slater and I were talking, she was staring at the wall. She had put her forehead against the concrete, Sam. Her eyes were open, and she was just staring at that blank wall.”

Unable to resist the anguish in her voice, Sam reached out. Her shoulder was warm and tanned against the sleeveless white blouse. “Ana, it’s going to be okay. This is what Haven is all about. Flora is like most of the children who come here. She lives in substandard housing, doesn’t have many clothes, rarely gets enough to eat and has little parental contact. She may be depressed. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Sam.” Ana’s eyes filled with tears. “I think Flora cut herself.”

The unexpected pronouncement startled him. “What? Why would she do that? Are you saying you think she was trying to take her own life…to commit suicide? A child that young?”

“I don’t know. But people do cut themselves sometimes. I’ve read about it. It’s a cry for help, I think. The cutting relieves stress.”

“That can’t be right. An injury
causes
stress to the body—not relief. In Iraq…” He paused as memories surged up once again, things he didn’t like to recall. Sand, heat, wind, death. Stifling his thoughts, he forced himself to continue. “That’s something you watch for in your men. A bullet wound or shrapnel can put a soldier into shock. The body’s signals get scrambled, adrenaline pours in, things go into hyperdrive.”

“I know, but I’m telling you, Sam, this cutting can happen. Someone did a study. I read it.”

“But a child? Why would a little girl do that to herself?”

“If you’re in a terrible situation, sometimes you do terrible things.”

He shook his head. “I’ll bet some other kid went into her corner and tried to mess with her. They tangled, and Flora came out the loser.”

“That might have been it.” Ana’s big brown eyes were soft now, filled with sadness. “Sorry I caused a scene.”

“Forget it. I’m sure Terell got the kids back into their activities. Listen, Ana, I’ll keep an eye out for Flora, okay? If I find out anything, I’ll give you a call at your office.”

“This sounds like a dismissal.”

“Second one today. Here.” He reached over and peeled a strip of paint from the bathroom wall. “My gift to you. Lead paint from Haven.”

As he set it in her hand, she raised one eyebrow. “Why was Terell down here by the girls’ restroom? The boys’ is at the other end of the hall.”

“Restroom duty.” His hackles rose again. Did she never get tired of irking him? “Terell and I patrol this building. Keep it safe from unauthorized visitors.”

“Enough, Sam. Authorize me, okay? I’ve told you I’ll write a favorable article. Let me talk to your children.”

“You want to talk to kids? Become a Haven volunteer. We talk to kids all day long.”

“I can’t wire a building or repair a computer. I don’t have time to supervise basketball games or patrol your building.”

“So teach a writing class.”

She frowned. “I’m a reporter, Sam.”

“I’ll bet these children have lots of things to write about.” The mortification on her face gratified him, so he pressed on. “You could start tomorrow. Granny spends Saturdays with her son and his family, so I’ll let you have the crochet room. It’s near the end of the row of classes where Flora sits. Maybe she’ll even become part of your group. How’s that sound? Shall I sign you up?”

She looked away, her lips tight. “You’re the most stubborn human being I’ve ever met.”

“Likewise.”

Shouldering her purse, she gave him a shrug. “Adios, Mr. Hawke.”

He followed her to the restroom door, then watched as she vanished up the stairs. Flora might have touched her, but not deeply enough. It would take more than a single lonely child to penetrate the hard shell around the heart of Ana Burns.