Page 16 of His Gilded Cage

I confronted him about his new export partnership. My suspicions were confirmed. He has sold his soul to the drug cartel and he has no intention of stopping. They are silent partners in Amador Industries. They are his family now, a fact that he made pretty clear when he struck me in the courtyard. This is the first time he has raised a hand to me. I think he shocked himself with the violence, but the line has been crossed. I am no longer safe in that house.

If I were alone, I would just accept my fate with Luis or I would choose to die, but I can’t do that to my boy. Marco deserves a chance to be a good man. I live to protect him. I will fight for our new life.

I love you my friend.

Amalia

I looked up at Veronica, my hands shaking. “She didn’t kill herself, she wanted to escape. She wanted to live for me. She wanted me to be a good man.”

“Marco, the police had this letter for years and no one followed up. No one investigated. You have to ask yourself why.”

It didn’t take long to sift through the rest of the papers in the files. The police in Cabo had built their case on personal accounts and the fact that my mother was found dead in her robe.

They said her clothing showed pre-meditation, a methodical nature, a will and a plan to die.

No one ever interviewed me about my last day with her. No one ever gave me the chance to explain how she’d wanted to talk to me about important things.

Would it have mattered?

It was hard to believe that the police in Cabo were really looking for the truth. Someone had read, recorded, and filed a letter that suggested everything they believed about my mother wasn’t true, and it had been locked away for ten years without consequence.

Veronica and I walked along the beach in front of Casa Flores. The setting sun painted the sky with red and purple streaks.

I felt adrift in memories and emotion.

It was as if someone had changed the color of the sky and forgotten to mention it. My golden childhood was tinged with darkness and as the memories replayed for me, I had to admit the darkness had been there all along. I hadn’t wanted to see it.

I remembered seeing Mama and Father dancing in the courtyard after one of their many late night parties. Mama’s head was pressed against Father’s chest as they swayed in rhythm with the music.

I watched from a window box in my bedroom. I often snuck out of my bed to spy on the world outside since Father so seldom let me leave our property.

Mama had looked so happy to me, so in love. But when I replayed the memory again, I remembered something else.

Father leaned down to whisper in Mama’s ear. Her face turned in the moonlight. Tears glistened on her cheeks. Her mouth opened in a silent sob.

I remembered Mama holding my hand as we walked to school when I was just a boy of maybe six or seven. Men in suits walked on either side of us escorting us through the main plaza in the city. Mama had kissed me on the cheek when we arrived at the door to the school. Then she walked home flanked by guards. I had imagined they were her guardians, now the memory felt different and I saw the men in black for what they really were, henchman.

Then a single memory bubbled up with a force that took my breath away.

I remembered standing beside my mother as she tended to her doves. She kept birds in a large aviary in the corner of our garden.

She looked at the birds and then gestured to the high walls surrounding our grove. “Do you know why people lock up beautiful things, Marco,” she said, her voice soft.

The doves coo’d and clucked as they shuffled along the metal branches in their artificial world.

“People lock things up to keep them safe,” I repeated, remembering how often my father warned me of the dangers outside our doors.

“Beautiful things are locked up to be safe, but also to make sure they don’t escape.”

“Escape?” I remembered asking.

Mama had leaned closer her voice hot against my skin. “Remember my sweet boy that there is a world outside these walls.”

“But the beggars and the thieves,” I said, my eyes wide.

“These walls keep them out, but they also keep us in my boy,” she said. She leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Someday you and I will both be free. Trust your mother. I will find a way.”

Veronica and I sat in the sand side by side facing the ocean. I was reminded again of that last conversation with my mother.

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