Ben read over the options. I felt lucky that I could be picky and only take jobs that spoke to me in some way, and of course stayed in line with Mom’s “nothing too dangerous” rule. Big horse race in Maryland? Not so interested. Sixteen-year-old matador facing six bulls in one day? Very interested, but the magazine wanted a pro-bullfighting angle, and I couldn’t be part of that. Success of a once homeless woman who turned her life around by using microloans to start her own business? Loved it; big, resounding yes.
“That’s about it.” Ben shrugged, then looked down again at his list as if he’d just noticed something. “Oh, wait—there’s one more thing … any desire to go to Carnival in Rio?”
He tried to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t pull it off.
My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? YES!!!”
There were about a million reasons I wanted to go to Carnival. Not only was it a massive four-day celebration unlike anything else in the world, but it was also a photojournalist’s dream: ornate costumes, wild revelry, and throngs of people from every walk of life, surging into the streets to rejoice together.
Of course, I also had a personal reason to go to Brazil. For a year now, I’d wanted to visit the place where my father had disappeared. I wanted to talk to the people who’d been with him in his last days. Mom thought the idea was pointless and morbid. She had already been in touch with everyone at the GloboReach camp outside of Rio, where Dad had last been seen. She spoke to them on the phone the day he was declared missing and went there in person almost immediately there-after.
Everyone told her the same story: that Dad’s time at the camp was just like all his other visits. He saw patients, he counseled other doctors, he surveyed the operations to see how the outpost could work even better. Had there been drama or violence? Sure, that was a way of life in the favelas, the poorest parts of Rio; but the drama and violence had been nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing that had to do with Dad himself.
Dad had gone off alone on a few occasions, and he hadn’t let anyone know where he was going. But this wasn’t unusual. He always became personally invested in his patients’ lives, and it was common for him to visit former patients whenever he returned to a GloboReach camp. He’d also get so engrossed in individuals’ stories that he’d embark on one-man missions, striving to accomplish that little bit more to help a certain family or village. Given all that, no one thought twice about Dad being away and out of touch until several days had gone by. At that point the trail had already run cold, and no amount of Weston family money or powerful government emissaries could change that.
Four months went by between Dad’s disappearance and the official declaration of his death. In that time my mom’s mind-set decayed from fierce certitude that her money and connections would find my father, to a determined hope that they could at least bring her answers, to abject despair about everything in the universe. She survived only by closing the door on the whole thing. She was afraid that if I opened it back up, I’d be leaping back into the same world of pain.
Mom didn’t realize I’d never left that world. The only thing I thought might help me escape was to get some answers of my own, even if those answers were the same things I’d already heard through Mom, and even if they killed the last tiny fire of hope I held that my dad could maybe, possi-bly, somehow still be alive.
“Think she’ll sign the paper?” Ben asked as I pulled out my cell phone and dialed. Since my eighteenth birthday was still a couple of months away, I needed a notarized permission letter from my mother each time I traveled outside the country. Not every airport asked for it, but many did, and it was technically a requirement. If they asked when I got to customs in Brazil and I didn’t have it, they wouldn’t let me out of the airport. I’d have to take the next flight home.
Mom wasn’t answering. I left her a message with all the pertinent information, and asked her to call me.
“You know she won’t want you to go,” Ben said.
“I know. But it’s for work. I think she’ll give in.” I nodded toward the playing cards. “You want to deal, or would you rather postpone your agony?”
“Big talk from somebody about to be double-skunked.”
“Ooooh. Cocky much?”
Ben just grinned and dealt. We left Dalt’s several hours later, with our cribbage game tally dead even.
My phone rang on the drive back home.
“Shalom,” I chirped to my mom. “Isn’t it the middle of the night in Israel?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Clea.”
I could hear the roar of laughter and loud conversation behind her and knew she’d stepped away from a dinner party; the kind that seemed casual and friendly, but at which many of her greatest political accomplishments were hatched. She wanted to cut to the chase; she wouldn’t be able to stay on the phone very long.
“It’s a legitimate assignment,” I said.
“The one you were hired for, or the one you’ll actually do?”
“I will absolutely do the job I was hired to do.”
An explosion of laughter erupted from the crowd. Mom joined in.
“We’ll talk later,” she said. “Love you.”
She clicked off, and I smiled. She hadn’t said no. I turned up my radio and continued home, stopping by Rayna’s house to munch popcorn and catch up on the TiVo’d shows we’d missed. It was late by the time I hung the cribbage board back on my wall and climbed into bed, and I imagined for once I’d easily fall asleep.
I was right. I did fall asleep. But then the dreams came.
The room was in shades of red, which matched the robe I wore. I sat in front of a mirror, slathering cold cream onto my face to loosen the thick stage makeup.
There was a knock at the door. Three raps fast, then two slow. Our signal. I eagerly rose to unlock the door, taking care not to make a sound. I didn’t want him to enter before I was ready. I sat back down and quickly blotted the extra cream off my face. I turned down the wick on my table lamp, then called, “Come in.”
I didn’t turn to look at him, but our eyes met through the mirror. We’d been together for a year now, but seeing him still made me nervous. He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. Not that he looked perfect. His nose bulged slightly near the top, like it had been broken ages ago and hadn’t quite healed properly. And though he was young, ever-so-thin lines snaked out from the corners of his eyes. They gave him character; he looked like a man who’d wrestled with life and won.
“What took you so long?” he asked as he removed his top hat and ducked his muscular frame through the door. “I was worried.”
I wheeled in my seat, primed to snap, but he was smiling. I relaxed and laughed. He was teasing me. I always said he worried about me far too much and it would be the death of me, so now he was playing it up on purpose. “You are so bad,” I said.
“And you,” he said, holding out a huge bouquet of red irises, “were so, so good.”
“Did you really like it?”
“Hamlet has never had a better Ophelia.”
“In over two hundred years?” I asked. “I’m not sure you’re qualified to make that statement.”
His mouth curled in a wry half smile. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I am.”
I rolled my eyes and gave him the closed-lip smile I almost always used when I wasn’t onstage.
He didn’t let me get away with it. “You know I think your smile is beautiful, Anneline.”
I blushed. He knew I hated the little gap between my front teeth. I could forget about it when I was in character, but in real life it felt like a sinkhole in the middle of my face.
“You’re so convinced you’ll disappoint people if you show them that you’re not perfect,” he said gently.
I blinked back the tears that suddenly welled behind my eyes. He always knew the deeper truth behind what I did, even when it was something so scary and personal that I’d never say it out loud to anyone, even myself.
“You don’t realize you are perfect,” he went on. “Your imperfections are what make you perfect. They make you you. That’s what people love. It’s what I love too.”
I had to blink harder now to stop the tears, but they were tears of gratitude. It had been that way from the day we met—like he could see every place my heart was cracked and would pull open the wounds, inspect them, dig out every bit of infection, then fill them with his love until they healed.
It felt so good I almost couldn’t take it. I smiled—a real smile—and quickly changed the subject. I nodded to the bouquet of irises in his hand, then to the vase of long-stemmed roses on my dressing room table, “Roses and irises? You’re feeling extravagant today.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t send you those.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t send you those.”
“No? The note says ‘From Your Biggest Fan.’ They were delivered before the show started. They aren’t from you?”