“You better start fucking explaining,” I say, and it’s all so absurd and bizarre that I feel like more should be said between seeing my dead husband and getting right into whatever list of reasons he had for abandoning us. Like I should be allowed months to absorb the fact that he’s even here before I have to ready myself for some excuse and find myself driving recklessly, fleeing from what, I don’t even know—it’s just all too goddamn much. I sit on the bench and bury my head in my hands. I’m desperate to know all of the details of how we’ve come to this moment, but I’m also terrified and know life is about to change. Again. And I have no control over any of it.
“I was Patrick Finch a long time ago.” He sits down next to me. I look at him. The kind, familiar eyes, the wool coat, the nervous blinking. He’s the same man I know with the exception of three scars on his face I have never seen before. It’s Jack. It’s like he never left. I feel sick with anger or griefor something I can’t even name. I try to swallow it all down and listen.
“My job took me to Mexico a lot then, before I met you, when my financial consulting was focused on opening some high-end resorts in Costa Maya. I saw something I shouldn’t. Some guys were running drugs and using a resort as a home base... Americans, some organized crime ring, but small. A family who made money smuggling all kinds of shit across the border. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed these guys in one of the resorts—it was still being built and it was supposed to be empty, and I went in one night to check on construction progress because they were behind schedule... and... anyway. They were... punishing some guy who didn’t pay them for something, I don’t know what, but I’ll spare you the details. The guy died is all you need to know, and I witnessed what ruthless criminals these guys were—and they saw me.”
He stops his story, and I find that I’m leaning in with both hands over my mouth in a surprising flutter of hope that maybe there is an actual explanation for his disappearance, and also confusion—wondering what this has to do with right now, with the danger he says we’re in.
“Okay,” is all I can think to say to fill the pause.
“I escaped. I reported it before they could get to me—I got one of them arrested and the other two got away. They have so many fake names and aliases and enough money to flee, so it was impossible to find them. The guy who was caught was a pretty dangerous fucking guy. When I came back home to New York, the police encouraged witness protection, but I decided since I didn’t have family and I wanted out of the company I was with anyway, I would just change my nameand social—they helped with that, and I moved away. It wasn’t a protective program like witness protection would have been, but it seemed like enough. And for a long time, it was. I was Jack Hoffman from Cloverhill Lakes for over a decade. We met and had a family and I thought it was all behind me for a long, long time.”
“What changed?” I ask, rapt by this story, which I can’t believe I didn’t know any of before this moment.
“They found me. I don’t know how. When I went to Colombia a couple years ago to do a consultation for a start-up, they must have tracked me. I was walking from the pub to my hotel.”
“I remember,” I say, tears springing to my eyes, because we were talking on the phone on this walk—the last time I ever spoke to him.
“I was pulled into an alley. I don’t want to tell you the details, Reg. If you knew the details, you might understand why I couldn’t come back and put you and Hallie in danger, but I can’t tell you. It’s too grotesque. There was no reason for them to come after you if I was dead, so I decided to be dead.”
“What does that mean?” I say, aching for all that’s happened to him, for all the things that are too unspeakable to even utter. The scars on his face tell a story of their own.
“I was left to die, but some woman stepping out the back of a bakery for a cigarette saw me and I was taken to a hospital. If they thought I died, you were safe. It was over. There would be no more revenge to seek. I had to. I’m so sorry, I know it’s unimaginable, but if you knew what they were capable of... It was the only way I could see through,” he says.
I stand, taking a deep breath and holding it in my cheeks, looking up at the sky and putting it all together in my mind.
“But your body was sent from Colombia by a US consular officer,” I say. And although we were told his face had been beaten and was unrecognizable, so I didn’t actually see him, you trust the government when they fly your husband’s body overseas and tell you it’s him, for God’s sake.
“There are people you can pay a lot of money to who can erase you. Stand in for US consulars, offer a new identity, make you disappear and have it look real.”
“Legally?” I ask.
“No,” he says, and I sit back down again, holding my heart and trying to decide if I can accept this. How am I supposed to absorb all this and process it?
“You left your daughter,” I say, shaking my head.
“I don’t know how else to tell you that I did it to protect you both. I wasn’t eligible for witness protection anymore because there was no proof this was anything but a robbery gone wrong. But I saw the guy’s face. I know who it was and I know what danger you would be in the rest of your life if you remained attached to me. I didn’t expect to live, Reg, I really didn’t, but once I got out of the hospital, I knew what I had to do.”
“Then why are you here now? Wait. You sent me a message saying ‘if you don’t stop, you’ll be next.’ That was you. What the fuck?”
“There was a short time I still thought maybe they didn’t know I was alive and you’d be okay. I was trying to keep you safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Do you know how hard it was to leave you and Hallie? Do you have any idea what it took to do that?” He blinks back tears.
“I heard about the car bombing,” he says. “I moved to a town not too far away so I could keep an eye on you, or atleast try to. When I figured out the bomb was meant for you, I panicked. I knew that was the end. I started to make plans, but I needed to check on you and Hallie. I came to town so many times, just keeping watch until I could get new papers and IDs in the works, but you saw me. I tried to be careful. I took the train under a different name. I never carried a phone or used the computer. I stayed off grid as much as possible. I never wanted you to have to leave your town, your parents, your friends, and I’m so sorry you ever had to be involved. I’m sorry I had to be involved. Jesus. But they know who you are now and they’re after you.”
I sit on the bench and lean over my knees, trying not to lose my breath. My head feels light like I could pass out and my hands are tingling. I can’t think.
“You don’t have to come with me, but I worry the police don’t know how to protect you—they aren’t really a match for this level of organization, this kind of evil. I just... I don’t know if they’ll take it seriously enough until it’s too late. It’s hard to prove what happened to me was them. My word should be enough, and maybe they’ll help, but serious protection is weeks or months of red tape and paperwork, and we don’t have that time.”
There is a moment that cuts through all of the urgency and terror of everything I’ve just been told, and I look at him and realize that he didn’t leave us—that he’s here, he’s alive and he didn’t abandon us, and I fling my arms around his neck and hold him, taking in his smell and weeping for all of the stolen time and the grief and loss and just let myself be here with him, without red-hot anger running through me, because I understand now. He holds me back as tightly as he can, but I don’t know if I can follow him.
“Maybe it took them years, but they still found you after you paid someone a ton of money to erase you, so they could find you again. They could find all of us, even if we run.”
“Yes. But they already have, so what choice is there now?”
How can I leave my family forever? How can I live a life on the run for something someone else did, potentially traumatizing Hallie even more? But how can I not?
“I have a place we can go,” he says, and I trust him, so we get into the car and drive.
Chapter Twenty-Three
