He offered no excuses and no defense, as he sobbed on the ground in front of her.
“Get up, Carlos!” she demanded. “I want answers!”
Slowly he rose to his feet keeping his head down, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “Of course, of course,” he finally whispered. “Just not here. Not where the children might hear. Please, follow me.”
He led her into his cramped office, seemingly the only part of the grounds left unchanged from the day she’d departed six years earlier, and offered her a chair and a glass of water, both of which she hastily refused.
“I’ve thought about the day you might come back everyday since I sold my soul to the devil,” he started, his voice trembling. “First of all, let me say that what I did was wrong, and I will continue to pay for the decision I made for as long as I live.
“Now, you want answers, and you deserve them. Please, sit.”
Annamaria kept her glare on him, her face still flushed with anger. “Damn it! I don’t want to sit down!” she screamed.
“Ok, ok. I’m sorry,” Carlos continued nervously, “It’s been six years now since the earthquake. I took this place over just six months before that. I was only 24 years old at the time.
“After the quake hit, in the span of two days, our occupancy rate shot up from 25% to 200%. You were here. You remember.” Every memory he had of her was fond. He wasn’t aware that a smile had started to form on his lips as he took a moment to reminisce.
“Up to that point, I had always been more of a romantic than a realist. I took this job with dreams of cleaning the place up, filling it with light and laughter. Making something that felt like a home for the homeless. I converted the old headmaster’s huge office into a gameroom and moved my stuff into this cramped little space. I fenced in the yard, so the kids could play outside more. I spent every cent the state gave me on enrichment projects and lobbied for more.
“But I was learning on the job. When the earthquake hit, I was overwhelmed. I had no money in reserve. Then half our staff either cut back their hours or couldn’t work altogether because of injuries or damage to their homes.
“The government increased their allocation to the orphanage by 50%, but it wasn’t even close to enough. We were barely keeping food on the table. The kids with injuries were getting essentially no medical care, and we didn’t even have time to think about child enrichment. You were a godsend, Annamaria. I’ll never forget…”
“Don’t!” she warned. She didn’t want him toying with her emotions, and she wasn’t there for flattery.
“I’m sorry,” he stuttered, not entirely sure what he was apologizing for this time, and then continued on with his story. “One morning I was in my office, desperately trying to make the finances work when I came across a letter I’d actually meant to throw out from an American company by the name of Avillage. They said they were looking for orphans with ‘exceptional skills or talents.’
“These children, they said, would be adopted into hand-selected American families. And the referring orphanages would be eligible for a finder’s fee of sorts. They made it sound like a win-win situation.
“I was desperate. And you were the only child who came to my mind — beautiful, confident, responsible — so I sent off some pictures.
“I had just about forgotten about it when, after hearing nothing for months, Aaron Bradford showed up, on less than twenty-four hours notice.
“He was very slick. And pushy. Clearly adept at preying on the hopeless. An evil man. I should have sent him out immediately, but he understood how dire our situation was, and, in his brief encounter with you, I think he picked up on your compassion for the younger children.
“He told me what would need to be done to complete your adoption — and what the orphanage would get in return. I immediately refused, shocked and disgusted! But he persisted.
“Then he asked me a question that I’ve never stopped wondering about. He asked me, ‘What would she do?’
“I thought I knew the answer.
“So, reluctantly, I consented.
“I hurt you. I damned myself… And you saved the orphanage.” His voice trailed off, as he considered stopping there. But he couldn’t stop himself from trying to satisfy his curiosity. “If you had been given the choice… what would you have done?”
“I’ll tell you this,” she said, the fire in her eyes reduced to smolder. “If my family had been on the verge of starvation and my dad had asked me, at thirteen, to have surgery and be taken permanently from the only home I’d ever known to save my family, I would have done it in a heartbeat.
“But he never would have asked.
“He was a man. A leader. A protector. A father.” She shook her head disgustedly. “You aren’t any of those! You don’t deserve these children.”
“You’re right,” he said softly, too ashamed to raise his head to make eye contact with her. “I was your only defense from the Aaron Bradfords of the world, and I failed you. I’m so sorry.
“But if I were put in the same hopeless position again, I can’t honestly convince myself I’d do things differently.”
“Then I hope you enjoy your last day,” she said, turning for the door.
“Annamaria, wait! I understand if you never forgive me. I’ve got no right to ask for that. And I’ll accept whatever consequences come my way for what I did. But can I at least show you the good that has come from your success? You deserve that.”
Toward the end of the prior summer, Weinstien had called Ryan, and in typical fashion, was speeding through his third sentence before Ryan was entirely sure who it was.
“Your grandfather died of hypoglycemia — low blood sugar,” he’d blurted into the phone. “His blood sugar was eight! Under seventy-five’s abnormal! Anything under sixty is dangerous! I mean, he was essentially D.O.A.
“Anyway, he wasn’t a coroner’s case because he was a diabetic and generally didn’t take great care of himself. So, no autopsy. Cause of death on the death certificate: diabetes-slash-hypoglycemia. No foul play suspected. Case closed, right?
“Well, maybe not,” Weinstien teased after a dramatic pause. “I had a retired doctor friend of mine look over his records, and a couple of things jumped out to him. One: the only prescription he’d ever filled for his diabetes was a medication called metformin, and your granddad was only picking it up about every other month — i.e., he wasn’t taking it regularly.”
“But if he wasn’t taking his medication, how’d his sugar go low?” Ryan had asked. “Seems like it should’ve been through the roof.”
“Exactly! And on every other blood test he’d taken in the past three years, it had been! Three hundred, three-fifty, four hundred, three-eighty. Every one sky high. So the conclusion I came to was that he must’ve accidentally taken too much of his medication.
“But my doctor friend said his bloodwork didn’t really support that. Plus he tells me that metformin usually doesn’t tank your blood sugar — at least not to that degree.
“Now here’s the kicker: turns out his potassium had bottomed out along with his blood sugar. There’s really only one thing that saps your body of potassium and glucose at the same time.”
“Insulin,” Ryan had interjected, disappointed but not at all surprised at the ending of Weinstien’s story.
“How the heck do you know this stuff?” a flummoxed Weinstien had asked, mildly deflated that he hadn’t gotten to drop the bombshell he’d been building up to.
“It’s pretty basic human physiology,” Ryan had answered, before filling Weinstien in on the full details of J.R.’s state-license probation over a prescription he’d called in. For insulin. To a Seattle pharmacy. The day before his grandfather had died.