Killing Sarai

I look at my birth certificate first.Sarai Naomi Cohen. Born July 18, 1990. Tucson, Arizona.I say my full name over in my head three times just so that it might feel real to me, real like it used to feel.

It doesn’t.

“How’d you get this?” I look up at Victor.

“I have my ways,” he says with a smile behind his eyes. “I also set you up a bank account. The details are on the rest of the documents in the box.”

“Thank you, Victor,” I say, setting my birth certificate down on my lap. “For everything.”

I mean what I’m saying to him. I would’ve been dead many times over if it weren’t for him. But saying these things to him, these goodbyes, are shredding every last bit of what’s left of my heart.

“When are you leaving?” I ask.

I don’t really want to know the answer.

I put the documents back into the envelope and close them away inside the box.

“In a few minutes,” he says and I choke back my tears. I want to be strong for him because I know this is hard for him too. “But there’s one more thing before I go.”

He goes to the door and opens it. In walks Mrs. Gregory. I’m so shocked that the only part of my body that moves are the tears streaming down my face. My hand comes up over my mouth. I look back and forth between them. They’re both smiling, Victor less so, but smiling nonetheless.

Mrs. Gregory, looking so much older than I remember her, walks toward my bedside with open arms and she envelops me in a hug. She smells of Sand & Sable perfume. She always wore it.

“Oh, Sarai, I have missed you so much.” She squeezes me gently, knowing just how to without hurting me. Her voice is heavy with emotion, but she’s vibrant with joy.

“I missed you too,” I say, squeezing her back. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

She pulls away and sits beside me on the bed, ru

But then my smile fades and my heart finally dies completely when I look back at where Victor stood to see that he’s gone. For a long moment the things that Mrs. Gregory is saying to me sound muffled, forced somewhere far off in the back of my mind. I want to leap out of the confines of this bed and run after him. I swallow hard, pushing my scarred emotions down into the very depths of me and pull myself together as much as I can for Mrs. Gregory’s sake.

I turn back to her and enjoy our reunion.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

That was six months ago.

Today life is very different. The bank account Victor set up for me had two million dollars in it. When I got on the plane with Mrs. Gregory four days after Victor left, only then did I find the strength to look at the other documents he left inside the box. One was my bank account information and on the back, scrawled in Victor’s handwriting:

Your profit for executing the job.

Sincerely,

Victor

He gave me his portion of the money Guzmán paid to have Javier killed. I guess it’s only fair since I’m technically the one who killed him.

But life is definitely different. I’m living back in Arizona with Mrs. Gregory. Over in Lake Havasu City. And I have enough money that I don’t have to work, but to keep my mind busy and try to conform to this life of normalcy I work nights at a convenience store. Mrs. Gregory doesn’t like it. It scares her. She says it’s dangerous working in places like that which are open at all hours of the night.

She happened to be right.

I was robbed my second week there, but as the guy stood on the other side of the counter pointing that gun at me, all I could do was watch his eyes. When he glanced down at the money I put into his view, I smacked the gun aside, managed to grapple it from his hand and then I hit him in the face with it. It was stupid, really. But it was instinct. I’m not much intimidated by low-life meth-heads that rob young women in convenience stores.

That’s child’s play.

But I’m definitely not some kind of reformed badass created by my extraordinary experiences, either. Just ask the spider that crawled on me the other night while I was reading a book in bed. Mrs. Gregory about had a heart attack I screamed so loud.

I went to school to obtain my GED and passed the test two months ago. It wasn’t very hard for me, although I struggled with the math. Now I’m enrolled in community college taking Computer Science, though I don’t know why. I really have no interest in it out in the ‘real world’, but…well, normalcy. That’s my excuse for everything these days, for hanging out with my new friends, to pretending to be interested in their life goals. It makes me feel like an awful person that I have to pretend these things at all, but I can’t force myself to like something just because I should.

But not everything is so unbearable. I love Mrs. Gregory and I spend most of my time with her. She has arthritis so bad that her fingers are gnarled and she can’t play the piano much anymore, but she still teaches me and I still play, sometimes for hours until my fingers are cramped and my back is stiff. I finally mastered Moonlight Sonata. And each time I play it I think of Victor and the night he sat with me at the piano.

Mrs. Gregory’s health is getting worse. I take care of her, but I know she won’t be around forever and that one day I’m going to be alone again. I like to think that maybe Victor is still out there watching over me and sometimes I trick my mind into believing that he is. But the reality is that I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I try not to think about that, but it ends up being all that I ever think about except when I’m lost in the piano.

I miss him. I miss him so much. Some people believe that when two people separate that over time they heal. They start to find interest in other people. They go on with their lives. But that hasn’t been the case with me at all. I feel a deeper void now than the one I felt when I lived at the compound. This is more painful, more unbearable. I miss everything about Victor. And I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t think about him sexually on a daily basis. Because I do. I think I’m addicted to him.

It has been so hard for me to adjust to just about everything, but in the grand scheme of things, six months isn’t a very long time. Not compared to the nine years I was at the compound. So, I’m hopeful that by the time another six months rolls around, I’ll be better. I’ll be ‘normal’. My friends, although I can’t tell them about my life—and I think that’s why I’ve had such a difficult time getting close to them—are really great. Dahlia is a year older than me. Average beauty. Average intelligence. Average car. Average job. We are alike in the ways of average, but we couldn’t be more different when it comes to everything else. Dahlia doesn’t jump at any sound that remotely resembles a gunshot. I do. Dahlia doesn’t look over her shoulder everywhere she goes. I do. Dahlia wants to get married and have a family. I don’t. Dahlia has never killed anyone. I would do it again.

But I’m grateful no matter how often I dream of being somewhere else. Of being someone else. I’m grateful because I got away. I’m grateful because I’m home. Though ‘grateful’ is very different from ‘satisfied’ and despite finally having a normal life that a lot of people would love to have, I’m as far away from being satisfied as I can be.

Victor Faust did much more than help me escape a life of abuse and servitude. He changed me. He changed the landscape of my dreams, the dreams I had every day about living ordinarily and free and on my own. He changed the colors on the palette from primary to rainbow—as dark as the colors of that rainbow may be—and not a day goes by that I don’t think about him or about the life I could’ve had with him. Although dangerous and ultimately short, it’s what I want. Because it would’ve been a life that better suited me and, well, it would’ve been a life with Victor.