I broke down as I stood at my parents’ graves, clutching Sierra. The soil around my father’s site was still fresh, unlike my mother’s and MaMaLu’s. I hadn’t realized the prison lot was in the same cemetery, and seeing MaMaLu’s name carved in stone made her death that much more final. I wanted Damian there so I could draw from his strength, so I could lean on him, as he held our daughter at his mother’s tomb. We had never made it that day, the day they’d stormed the island and captured him.
How do we end up like this? How do we make a mess of something so beautiful and true?
I felt lost and unanchored, like a ship in the storm. No mother, no father, no MaMaLu, and no Damian. But I had Sierra, and I held on to her tiny body like it was my lifeline.
I visited Valdemoros before we returned to San Diego. I wanted to see the place that had taken MaMaLu, and pay homage to the woman who’d filled my mother’s shoes. I took enough “lunch” to earn me an escorted tour.
Behind the ominous barbed wire and bleak, gray walls, hard-faced guards mauled through my bag before letting me in. My footsteps echoed in the dark tunnel that led to the main compound as I followed Daniela, the officer who was showing me around. The central area was all concrete, but it was nothing like the highly regimented place I’d been expecting. It was hard to tell the prisoners from their visitors because they wore no uniforms. Small kiosks were set up around the inner perimeter, selling food and other staples. Mothers carried babies on their hips in the exercise yard. Children weaved through the corridors, chasing each other. There was a makeshift nursery with colorful walls, a maze of swings and slides, and a jungle gym. Tough-looking women eyed me with curiosity, suspicion, or both, and then went back to bouncing toddlers on their knees or weaving or sewing.
Daniela told me that over half of the women had yet to see a judge. “In the meantime, the prison encourages entrepreneurship. Some of the inmates make money running the kiosks. Others sew soccer balls and clothes. They make jewelry, hammocks, picture frames.” Daniela pointed to groups of women sitting in circles, working on different projects.
“What happens to these items?” I picked up a hand-stitched leather bag and examined it. It was similar to the one I’d admired in the market, the day Damian and I had gone shopping.
“Sometimes their families will pick them up and sell them in local shops. The more talented prisoners take orders for their goods from outside merchants.”
“How much does something like this go for?” I asked, holding up the bag. The leather was robust but soft. It had mitered gusset corners and rouleaux handles.
Daniela quoted a paltry figure.
I put the bag down and looked around, watching as one of the women unrolled a huge cowhide. She cut it following the outline of a rough stencil and started dyeing the exposed edges with a small brush. Another was burnishing the pieces, rubbing them with a soft cotton cloth to enhance the shine. It was an assembly line process, each of the women working on a task and moving it along to the next phase. The finished product was tossed into a pile with the others, under the shade.
As I sorted through the different styles, an idea started forming in my head. I had a degree in fine arts and a flair for designing bags, shoes, and clothes. I knew people who would pay big bucks for the kind of products these women were handcrafting. If I could connect the two, I would be helping these women and perhaps providing them with the tools to stay out of trouble when they got out. Most of the inmates were in prison because they lacked the resources to support themselves, and had turned to crime.
“Who provides the raw materials for these?”
Daniela shrugged. “Sometimes the prisoners pool their money, buy the raw materials themselves, and share in the profit. But it’s a risk. No one trusts anyone when it comes to money. Sometimes a merchant will sponsor them and pay them a small portion of the sales when the goods are sold.”
“And the women are willing to wait until then?”
Daniela laughed. “They have nothing better to do.”
That night, I put Sierra to bed and toyed with the possibility of earning a living while helping the prisoners in Valdemoros. I kept seeing their busy hands cutting and stitching and gluing and sanding. With a little finesse and direction, I was sure they could produce high quality custom products with local flair.
The next morning, I started looking for a place to stay. The money I had would stretch a lot further in Paza del Mar than in San Diego. But that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to stay. My roots were here. I felt it when I walked barefoot on the beach with Sierra. The wind played in my hair, laced with salt and seaweed. My feet sank into the sand and I felt soft waves thawing me out.
Home. Come home. Come home, they said.
Nick tried to talk me out of it, but when he saw my mind was made up, he got on the plane and wished me and Sierra well. There was a moment of panic as I watched the plane take off. Everything familiar was in San Diego. I knew where to go, what to do, how to speak, what to expect. Damian was there. In prison, butthere.
I felt an ache deep in my soul, a longing to turn back the time so we were the only two people on a little speck of land surrounded by a big, big ocean. In that moment, as the planes lifted off the runway, one after the other, I was overwhelmed by my loneliness. Then I felt my mother and my father and MaMaLu settle around me. An intangible sense of safety and security, of comfort and belonging, came over me, and I knew I was exactly where I was meant to be.
Home was a small, low-rise condo with a balcony that faced an open-air market. It was in the newer neighborhood, between Paza del Mar and Casa Paloma. The bus that took me to Valdemoros stopped across the street. The beach and Sierra’s school were within walking distance. The location made up for the ceaseless traffic and noise from the market during the day. At night, when everyone was gone, you could hear the sound of the ocean. Sometimes I closed my eyes and pretended I was lying under gauzy, mosquito netting in a little villa nestled among the trees.
But today, all pretenses were stripped away. Papers lay strewn around me. There was no escaping the reality before me, the reality that was Damian—in my room, in my chair. It was pointless to ask how he’d gotten in. He had picked up more than a few tricks in Caboras, and no doubt, in prison too. What alarmed me was not that he had broken into my place, or that he’d hired a private investigator to look into the last eight years of my life. What alarmed me was that Sierra was sleeping in the next room and I had no idea what Damian’s intentions were, now that he had found out about her.
“You should have told me.” He got up and walked over to the bed. The air shifted around him, like a force field of barely contained energy.
“What do you want?” I shrank back against the headboard. Being alone in a room with Damian, with all of his attention focused on you was heady and dangerous. “Nick—”
“Nick is in San Diego. Happily married. He was here to help you set up a charity for the women in Valdemoros. Or should I show youhisfolder?”
Shit. So much for trying to get the man to leave. I had seen the way Damian had looked at Nick. His jealousy had burned like a red-hot spear, ready to gouge the other man’s eyes out, before he’d retracted it and left.
“You’ve done well for yourself, all things considered.” Damian sat on the edge of my bed and regarded me, his eyes falling on the strap that had slipped off my shoulder. “The princess who lives among the peasants.”
“I did what I had to. No thanks to you.”
“I didn’t know.” He slid the strap back into place and let his fingers linger on the small scar that the bullet had left.
