FORTY-ONE
Later Caitlyn would learn that, unconscious, she’d been taken to what the Illegals in the subway called a sleeping chamber, where one or two families would retire each night, with every person allotted one of the coffin-shaped excavations in the side of the wall—like the ancient catacombs beneath Rome, with the difference being that living bodies occupied the resting spots, not corpses that the early Christians were trying to keep from cremation by Roman authorities.
Later, she would learn that the sound of laughing children came from a much larger chamber designated as a general communal living space. And later, she would understand more of the events that had forced the Illegals to literally carve out an existence beneath the city, driven into a life where the old subway tunnels served as thoroughfares to a network of tributaries and small territories of living chambers.
But for now, in Emelia’s comforting presence, all that was still a mystery to Caitlyn. Her sobs eventually subsided as the older woman stroked her head and murmured again and again, “Poor child.” Caitlyn found herself telling Emelia all that she’d held back and kept inside for as long as she could remember.
She told Emelia she had never gone to her papa—when she thought of her childhood, he was Papa to her, not Jordan—for this kind of comfort. Papa was a caregiver and kept her safe. But Papa wasn’t someone she brought her secrets to. All through childhood, isolated in the hills of Appalachia with her papa—Jordan—Caitlyn had always been adoringly shy, content just to be in his presence, so aware that she was different and so convinced that she was a burden to him that she was afraid to complain or even share the constant anguish that came with her deformity. She knew, always, that they were hiding in Appalachia because of who she was.
“He loved you,” Emelia said, after giving Caitlyn’s confession a long pause of respectful silence.
“He loved me.” Caitlyn had straightened by then and was out of Emelia’s arms. Kneeling near Emelia’s chair. At times looking straight ahead, at times into the old woman’s face. She ached for the days when it was that simple, daily life with Papa, just the two of them.
“A child must feel loved,” Emelia said after a pause. “Look around here. Humans were not meant to live the way we do. Some of the children haven’t seen sunlight. Ever. But you hear laughter. It is good that you were loved. It is better that you knew you were loved.”
“Papa loved me. He was willing to give his life for me. In Appalachia, when the bounty hunter and the dogs were close, he left me behind and drew the dogs. Later, he told me he didn’t expect to escape.”
“There is anger in your voice.”
“Jordan also betrayed me. Kept secret what I am. That’s why I’m here. Outside of Appalachia. Hunted. Alone.”
Emelia spoke softly. “He must have had his reasons.”
Caitlyn thought of the letter she carried, rescued from the front seat of the Enforcer car. “He told me that before I was born, he had vowed to perform an act of mercy and decency and drown me like a kitten.”
Emelia didn’t push Caitlyn to speak, simply waited, as if realizing Caitlyn had never spoken of this to anyone.
Caitlyn closed her eyes, thinking about the nights, in her dreams, that Papa appeared. To rescue her from the destiny he had thrust upon her before she was born. To return to her what he had taken. Her trust and innocence.
When her dreams took her to those childhood days in Appalachia—picnics with Papa, holding his hand, watching the hawks—she woke up happy. Loved. Secure. Just for a moment, until she realized where she was. Outside. Alone. Angry. Needing this anger to force away her fear.
“His secret was my deformity,” Caitlyn said. She was tempted to strip down, to spread her wings, to show Emelia what Jordan had done to her. “He was a scientist. Before the war. I was an experiment. He betrayed me before I was born. He betrayed me by keeping it secret from me. He betrayed me by setting me loose.”
The old woman made a humming noise as she lost herself in thought.
Caitlyn found the noise comforting, but she found everything about the woman comforting.
“What do they want from you?” Emelia asked. “Those who hunt you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jordan.”
“And Jordan. He helped you escape from Appalachia but stayed behind.”
Caitlyn felt her face twist in a bitter smile as she remembered the night of her escape. A clear, moonless night. Wind coming off the slope of the high ridge overlooking the perimeter fencing that imprisoned Appalachia.
She’d been poised to leap into the night sky, to escape. Jordan had reached for her. She’d stepped away, knowing how much her rejection would hurt him. He had spoken, softly. “I love you as big and forever as the sky.”
They both knew it had been his plea for forgiveness. Since she could remember, that was their game. “Caitlyn, how much does Papa love you?” And her answer: “As big and forever as the sky, Papa.”
That night, on the ridge, with the wind waking her senses, with her arms and wings outstretched, she had simply needed to utter a single word in response. Papa. He would have known he was forgiven.
Instead, in cold, blind anger at what she had learned about Jordan, she had leapt into the abyss, determined to reject him. But when her wings had made instinctive adjustments and she’d exulted in her destiny, found joy in flight, she finally called back, not knowing if it had reached him.
“Papa.”
It had been a cry of love and of forgiveness to set him free too.
Some nights, waking from childhood dreams, Caitlyn hoped the wind had carried that single word back to him. So that he realized she missed her papa. So that he would always know she was grateful for the chance to flee her pursuers and alter who she was.
Although she had escaped Appalachia, she could not escape her hatred of what he had robbed from her—the trust and innocence that had sustained her all through childhood. To the world she had been a freak, but not to him. His love had been the ultimate shelter. Until discovering why she was a freak and what he had hidden from her. Until understanding that when he made a choice not to drown her, Jordan had thrust upon her this fate. Alone and hunted.
Most nights, then, she hoped he did not hear that last cry. So that, as childish punishment, she could take satisfaction that Jordan believed she was still as cold to him as in their final days together.
She hated that she hated him. And hated that she loved him.
“Your papa,” Emelia began, but Caitlyn cut her off again.
“Jordan,” Caitlyn corrected her. “Jordan Brown. A scientist.”
“He gave you no instructions?” Emelia asked.
Caitlyn thought of the papers she always carried. One was a letter from Jordan to her, just before he’d abandoned her the first time. “We had agreed—the woman I loved and I—that as soon as you were born, we would perform an act of mercy and decency and wrap you in a towel to drown you in a nearby sink of water.”
The other paper was a letter. Given the night she escaped Appalachia. With the name of a surgeon and how to reach him.
“I was to visit a surgeon,” Caitlyn answered. “An old friend of his. The surgeon would remove my…” Wings, Caitlyn nearly said. But she caught herself in time. “… my deformity.”
“Yet you haven’t.”
“I haven’t,” Caitlyn said. “But I’ve decided. It’s time.”