The car felt so much lighter without Paolo in the trunk.
CHAPTER 9
It was almost six, the sky brightening with alarming speed. We passed three vehicles along the way, headlights like eyes in the early-morning murk: a truck, a sedan, and a pickup pulling a trailer with four men in the back, handkerchiefs clutched to their noses. Each time I stared down at my lap, willing us to be forgettable. Finally we turned into our tiny parking lot. It was still cold out, but mistier now, so the dampness had a bite. In the purgatorial light of predawn, we carried the shovels back up to the shed. Kristen grasped my shoulder when a window lit up nearby （in another guesthouse, I think?）， but it darkened after a few seconds and I went back to screwing the lock into place.
Dew glistened on the sliding door as we slipped back inside our suite. With a stab, I pictured him there again: calves poking out from behind the sofa, the wine bottle smeared red but otherwise unharmed, having won the durability contest against Paolo’s skull. It had to be One of Those Things—a centimeter up, down, or to the side and he could’ve been fine.
I looked over at Kristen and felt a wash of compassion. She was still being so strong—stronger than I’d been in Cambodia, certainly—and it had only been a few hours since Paolo had threatened her life.
“Help me finish cleaning.” Kristen rummaged in the kitchenette, then held out a dish towel. We ransacked the rooms for cleaning products and, finding none, pooled our resources: makeup remover, hand wipes, soap, Purell. The day cracked open like an egg, sunlight nosing against the windows and then pushing inside with sudden vigor. We swiped and swabbed and dusted, silent and focused in our own personal hells. I scrubbed the shower curtain in the tub, body gel foaming brown and red on the colorful plastic, then strung it back up. Was it enough? Could we really expect to leave no trace when we lacked even proper cleaning products?
We touched a lighter to crumples of newspaper we’d piled in the fireplace. Once kindling and then a few logs popped and roared, I added Paolo’s things one by one: passport, journal, wallet, phone. I coughed as they curled into a stinking mass; Kristen opened a window and fanned out the foul-smelling smoke. When Paolo’s effects were a blackish chunk, I poured water on it.
“I’ll take it,” Kristen announced after the lump stopped sizzling. She wrapped it in newspaper and stuffed it inside an empty chip bag. “I’ll toss it when I get home.”
* * *
—
Normalcy—we had to maintain it, had to load our suitcases into the trunk and then trudge to the lobby for breakfast. After all, we’d made it to breakfast every morning and the owner was so proud of it, their desayuno delicioso, and the last thing we wanted was anyone wondering where we were. There we stared at baskets of rolls and colorful fruit plates in quiet revulsion. We stopped at the front desk to turn over the key （they’d been very clear about this at check-in, do not leave the key in the room）， and I suddenly realized everyone was staring at me, the only possible translator.
“？Cómo?” I prompted, too out of it to recall the polite way to ask her to repeat herself.
“？Cómo estuvo su estadía con nosotros?” she asked, too fast and too mumbly, and I blinked at her for a long time before the words unstuck themselves. How was our stay? Fine—the suite’s romantic wood-burning stove sure had come in handy when we had evidence to destroy.
“Muy bien.” I forced a smile. “Gracias por todo.”
* * *
—
It was a six-hour drive back to the Santiago airport, out to the sea and then south between the mountains and the water. Monotonous and brown, as ugly outside as the muck I felt covering my breast and brain, horror and disbelief clotting beneath my rib cage and skull. We’d driven the opposite direction this morning—was that just this morning, with all that dead weight in the trunk? Still, I found myself scanning the hills, watching for our footprints, probably smeared away but possibly more obvious than ever after our sweeping—like a giant arrow from the road to the grave. I was so sore that raising my hand to slide on sunglasses hurt. Shattered: The word lodged in my head, a skipping record. That’s how I felt. My body, my life. Paolo’s fragile eggshell skull.
A lookout point appeared, and Kristen swerved into it and threw the car into park. She stared straight ahead. Then, right as I was about to puncture the silence, her eyes went hard and she let out a scream. Not a scream—a roar, the way a little kid answers when you ask what sound a lion makes. It echoed around the car, buzzed in my ears, then stopped. She punctuated it with a single surprised laugh. Then she turned to me, as if she’d only just remembered I was there.
With a jolt, I heaved open the car door and dashed to the edge of the cliff. Nothing but tawny mountains, reddish in the morning light, as far as the eye could see. A wail poured out of me, mournful and low but powerful, too, until I squeezed the air from the bottom of my lungs and sputtered to a stop. Kristen appeared next to me and puffed her chest, and together we roared, our screams somehow in harmony, with the same uncanny intensity as a group om in yoga class. We listened to the echo and I pictured the sound waves rattling the cells of armadillos and vicu?as and Patagonian pumas miles from this place.
As if we’d triggered it, the sky bruised over and spat at us, at first a drizzle and then a steady tap.
Kristen smiled for the first time since last night.
“It’ll wash away any sign that we were ever on the mountain,” she said.
Or maybe it’ll wash away the dirt we used to cover him. I lifted my face to the rain, then got back in the car. She gave my shoulder a squeeze before turning on the ignition and pulling back onto the road. Outside, the drops tickled rows of bushy vegetables and moss-colored shrubs. I watched rainwater spill together, a brownish vein working its way downhill.
I breathed deeply. I chose to believe her.
Maybe we were never here.
CHAPTER 10
At the airport, Kristen and I were almost silent, moving like automatons as we returned the rental car. There wasn’t an inspection; we just had to push the keys through a slot. I checked again for any dirt in the back seat or ruby-colored speckles in the trunk. I searched and searched and searched, feeling the anxiety like an itch in the corner of my mind. Will they catch us?
In a long, twisty security line, Kristen stared off into space and I took her in, still beautiful despite the sleep deprivation, her tawny hair piled in a messy top bun, her contacts swapped with wire-framed glasses over her high cheekbones, somehow looking like a Hot Girl in Glasses and not a bespectacled woman. A key distinction I could never put my finger on.
“Oh my God.” Just above her jawline was a dried speck of blood. Paolo’s blood. I licked my thumb and swiped at it, and she batted me away.
“It’s a mole, Emily,” she snapped, covering her cheek. “What is wrong with you?”
Everything. Everything felt wrong. The soreness was stepping in to take the acute pain’s place, and even reaching for Kristen’s face had left my arm twinging. “I…I thought it was…never mind.” We’d both taken quick showers before breakfast, scrubbing at the dirt and sweat. Of course there wasn’t still blood on Kristen’s face.