THE PAST
FEBRUARY
Miami, Florida
Julio and Lola
In an old Chevy truck,twenty-two-year-old Julio Escobar followed Tamiami Trail out of Miami into the Everglades. Next to him, moaning from intense labor pains that began several hours earlier, sat his young nineteen-year-old wife of little more than a year.
“Breathe in, breathe out, Lola,” he coached. “We’re almost there.”
Lola gasped as a painful contraction hit her. “Hurry, Julio!”
He spotted a dirt road, made a sharp right turn, and pressed the gas pedal. The Chevy skidded but caught traction and sprang forward. Within a mile, the road curved, and his headlights illuminated a shack sitting some distance off to the left. A single candle shone in a small window, and smoke curled from the chimney, though South Florida’s temperatures that February were mild.
Julio jammed the gear shift into park. He jumped from the cab and rapped twice on the weathered door, stripped of its youth long ago. An elderly woman showed herself, as ancient and weathered as her hovel. Tanned, wrinkled face, gnarled hands, sunken cheeks and mouth due to the loss of most of her teeth, yet her clear, omniscient eyes and quick mind belied her age and physical weaknesses.
“It’s time.”
The woman nodded. “Bring her inside.”
Julio lifted his wife into his arms and carried her inside the sparsely furnished shack. He laid Lola on the birthing bed which had been prepared for her. While the old woman gathered her supplies, Julio drove the truck into a shed as he’d been instructed on a previous visit. Then he swept away the tire tracks. The impending rain would wash away the rest of them. He kissed the gold crucifix he wore around his neck and thanked God for the storm clouds rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean.
Lola’s childbirth screams pierced his heart. Beneath a clean white sheet that covered the lower half of her body, her knees were raised. The old woman, whose name they did not know, urged Lola to push. She cried out in pain and squeezed Julio’s hand so hard he thought she might break his fingers. His words of love and encouragement fell on deaf ears as Lola pushed and panted until their baby slid from her tired body.
The old woman examined the infant. “It is a girl.”
Julio grinned and kissed his wife as the sound of their new baby’s hearty cries filled the shack. The midwife cleaned the baby and swaddled her and placed her in Lola’s arms. With a head full of dark hair and deep brown eyes, she resembled Julio.
“You know it’s too dangerous for us to keep her,” Lola murmured.
Julio’s gut twisted with soul-searing disappointment. “We could flee the States. Disappear.”
“No, Julio. We agreed that giving the baby up for adoption is what’s best. I don’t want her to know about your father.”
“He will find us.”
“And when he does, you will kill him.”
As prearranged, Julio and Lola spent two nights with the old woman to ensure there wouldn’t be any complications after the risky birth. On the third night, Julio paid the agreed upon fee of two thousand dollars in cash and left with his small family.
He drove cautiously through Miami to avoid unwanted attention until he found Fire Station 49 far from their modest one-bedroom apartment near one of Miami-Dade College’s campuses where Lola attended classes. He parked a block away. Julio slipped on a pair of black latex gloves and flipped up his dark hoodie to hide a telltale tattoo his father forced on him and added reflective sunglasses. He placed a sterling silver necklace with the baby’s pre-chosen name already engraved on it around his tiny daughter’s neck and held her close to him for the last time.
“I love you, Julia.”
He carried his daughter in a car seat to the entrance of the fire station, his heart heavy and aching with unimaginable sorrow. Since the lights were out, he assumed the firefighters were asleep. Julio gazed into Julia’s face and set her down before he lost his courage. He sprinted back to his truck and called 911.
“Someone left a baby at Station 49.”
Julio ended the call and smashed the prepaid phone beneath his work boots. He picked up the fragments and placed them in a plastic bag Lola handed to him. Later, he would melt the pieces at the construction site where he worked as a welder. Julio slid behind the wheel and drove to an area without security cameras. There, he switched the license plate on his truck. If the cops ever ran the plate, it would trigger a warning to a group of hackers he’d met in college. They would protect him.
Both he and Lola were silent as they returned to their apartment. They crawled into bed and cried their mutual grief in each other’s arms.
The next day Julio went back to work, and Lola attended her college classes and reported for her shift at a campus coffee shop, as if nothing had happened.
A monthlater
On his wayhome from work, Julio stopped at a florist shop near his apartment and bought a dozen red roses for Lola. His boss had given him a substantial raise and promoted him to lead welder. He planned to surprise his wife and celebrate his good fortune by taking her out to a fancy dinner and dancing afterward at a nightclub.
