Blood Daughters: A Romilia Chacon Novel

Chapter 10

44 Chapter 10 Karen saw things that Romilia has yet to see. Had she been at the border with Saenz, Karen would have understood what the Mexican cop meant when he had said, There is a third . . . country here. No confusion. In fact, Karen might have complimented Saenz on his alacrity, his ability to say in six words what this was all about. How large all of this was. Which is why she was not afraid. She sat in a second holding room, drinking a second diet soda and nibbling on the chocolate bar they had given her in San Diego. The drive to L.A. in the back of the car with the two FBI agents up front had not bothered her, though she was tired now. It had been a long day and was almost morning. Romilia was at the border. Romilia would catch things others had overlooked or covered over. Karen knew that Romilia has a gift. Eventually, Romilia saw things the rest of us didn’t. Though Romilia would never say this. Or she’d chalk it up to simple obsession. “I just get something stuck in my head, I have to follow it out or I’ll go nuts.” This was said one night when they had stayed up late in Romilia’s house, playing several rounds of poker with Sergio. The boy had cleaned them both out, and then had fallen asleep on the couch. Romilia and Karen stayed up, drinking wine and talking. “So. It was just deep curiosity that led you to find me? Find us?” Karen had said. “Everyone else was looking through the hills in Malibu. You figured out Minos had taken us up north, to the Redwoods.” “No. That wasn’t just curiosity, God no,” said Romilia. “That was a countdown.” Marcos M. Villatoro ~ 45 Then she shut up, as if the wine had let that slip out. But Karen knew what Romilia had meant: countdown to when Minos would have begun dissecting Karen and the others alive. Much like the countdown a few years later, when Karen, a sophomore in college, had called Romilia out of a final desperation that meant to keep her alive. But then Karen had hung up. Still Romilia had found her, not on campus, but up in the mountain behind the college, tucked away in a crevice just a few feet off the side of the fireroad. Later Romilia gave a haphazard explanation on how she found Karen, “Oh, I just figured you weren’t on campus, you had left the area, I just figured. . . .” Figured, no doubt, that Karen didn’t want the bullet from her father’s gun to go through her and through a window to hit another student. Didn’t want to get her room messed up. Didn’t want to disturb the faculty, the other students, with the gunshot report. Romilia had kept Karen alive through the following months. She visited Karen every other day at the clinic in west Los Angeles. Brought her magazines. Sneaked in chocolate. In the psychiatric hospital, Karen took meds and sat in talk therapy for weeks. It was a meticulous, nerve-wracked stitching of spirit back onto muscle and bone. Romilia was a part of that. Karen once asked her, “Why do you keep coming here? Why do you care?” Romilia answered, “It’s a sister thing.” Karen believed that. But Karen also understood something else: since the day she had crawled into the crevice by the side of the fireroad in the Santa Monica Mountains, just behind the campus, and had pushed the barrel into her mouth and aimed upward into her palate, things hadn’t been the same. The desire to die. That had not gone away. It had been there before she met Minos. Some thought Minos would have been enough to shock her out of her tendencies, but no. After the scare of being kidnapped by a psychopath, that intriguing tremor of thought, You’re still alive, simmered through her once more. “Come on Karen. Sister. Hey. Come on.” There is that image, always. The sky beyond the crevice, blue and bright over the Santa Monica Mountains. Then Romilia, how she filled that sky when she bent over and reached in, toward Karen. Romilia had smiled at her. She had reached in, her hand open, not to pull the gun out of Karen’s mouth, but to give Karen the option of handing the gun over. So calm...