A week later, Weinstien had called back with J.R.’s address in Grand Cayman, and Ryan had begun planning his trip.
Now it would only be a matter of hours — a day at the most — before Ryan could confront him face to face, finally confident in the whole truth. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to say — or do — when he found him. But he hoped when the time came, he’d be able to summon a reasonable level of restraint
“You’ve got ten minutes!” Annamaria huffed, showing herself out of the headmaster’s office. Carlos scrambled closely behind her. As she exited, it dawned on her that the interior of the building was utterly unrecognizable. It no longer looked like a warehouse that stored children. A long central hallway with doors coming off either side every dozen feet or so led to the cafeteria at the other end of the building.
“No more barracks-style living,” Carlos said with a smile, feeling suddenly unburdened — and resigned to his fate.
“The kids are all outside right now. Go ahead. Take a look,” he said with the casual pride of a realtor showing off a prime property, nudging one of the doors open and flipping on the overhead light to reveal a set of wooden bunk beds and two small desks with chairs. A couple of hand-sewn stuffed animals were poking their heads out from under the sheets of the bottom bunk, and a bulletin board on the near wall was adorned with some of the kids’ artwork.
“We’ve got eight rooms just like this on each side of the hall. Two kids in each room, so we can handle up to thirty-two kids, but our census usually runs in the mid twenties.”
“The two rooms in the middle on each side of the hall are for the nannies to stay in at night, and the rooms right next to those are nurseries. There’s a door connecting them, so the nannies don’t have to go into the main hall if the babies cry at night.”
Nothing was fancy. The drywall that partitioned the space was thin and roughly cut with no molding, the floor was polished concrete, and the doors were made from flimsy particle board, but it was a remarkable upgrade from what had been there six years earlier.
“We’ve got two bathrooms now — a boys’ on the right, and a girls’ on the left. No more shifts for showers in the morning and evening.”
Annamaria involuntarily chuckled at the memory before quickly straightening her smile and continuing on down the hall toward the cafeteria.
“The kitchen’s closed off now,” Carlos continued. “The older kids still get the opportunity to work in there, but I never liked the idea of the kids going through a line with a tray. It felt so… institutional. We eat family-style now. The plates, cups and silverware are set up ahead of time. We have one adult at each table; we even distribute the little tikes in the high chairs at different tables. We talk, we laugh, we argue over who gets the last empanada. It really feels like family.”
Carlos gazed around the room sadly. “I eat here every night,” he said, missing his dinners with the kids already, trying to maintain the strained smile on his face.
“There’s one more thing I want to show you,” he said, doubling back down the long central hallway. They exited the main door next to his office and took a right, heading down the new section of sidewalk that had originally piqued Annamaria’s interest, this time making it all the way to the back of the building.
Annamaria’s heart nearly stopped as her eyes filled with tears. Two dozen kids, who looked like they could’ve been the exact same group she’d shared three months of her life with, were joyously splashing and bobbing in a full-sized swimming pool. Off to the side, a nanny was doting over a blissful dark-skinned toddler outfitted in nothing but a swim-diaper, wading in a small circular baby pool, as a teenaged lifeguard, probably one of the older orphans, dutifully prowled the perimeter with a whistle around his neck, never taking his eyes off the water.
“None of this would’ve been possible without you,” Carlos whispered.
“This isn’t fair!” Annamaria shot back, her voice trembling. She turned and stormed out of the pool area, determined not to let him see her cry.
Why couldn’t he just have been the pure evil she was expecting? He had no right to make this even harder on her. What he did was inexcusable, and he had to pay for it!
Standing in the middle of the empty soccer field, she squeezed her eyes shut, losing the battle to hold back her tears. It was clear the children were happier now than when she’d been there. The facility was far superior in every way. Carlos was contrite, and he’d obviously used every cent of the dividends her stock had paid out on the kids, keeping his own office in the tiny supply closet. He’d even provided the kids with two computers that were several years newer than the one he used himself.
“Annamaria,” Carlos said, hesitantly approaching. “You have a right to be angry. Don’t feel guilty for that.” He paused to give her the chance to vent if she wanted to.
“But you also have the right to feel proud. That’s all I wanted for you.”
She squeezed her eyes and lips together even harder, to the point that she was dizzy. “I can’t have children because of you!”
“But look at all the children you’ve helped. You have a good heart. Nothing that happened to you was your fault, Annamaria. You’ll make a wonderful mother some day.”
“I might never be able to have children!” she growled, trying to keep her voice down for the children’s sake. “What? You think the reversals are a hundred percent? They’re not even close!”
“Reversals?” Carlos asked, genuinely confused.
“Getting my tubes untied!” she hissed. “What do you think?”
“Getting your…” Carlos stopped mid-sentence, bringing a trembling hand up to his mouth. “Annamaria, I had no idea. I never would have…”
“Don’t try and deny it now. I had a private investigator track down the consent forms for my procedures, and your signature is all over them.”
“They promised me the procedure would be purely cosmetic. The forms were all in English. I didn’t…”
“You said it yourself, Carlos,” Annamaria said resolutely but with an aching heart. “You were responsible for protecting me from people like Aaron Bradford. And you failed.”
His shoulders drooped, as she brushed past him on her way back to the cab, knowing that there was nothing he could say at that point to make things any better.
A blast of heat and humidity hit Ryan as he walked through the sliding doors of the George Town airport on an uncharacteristically breezeless day, wearing a plain white T-shirt, navy blue athletic shorts, a pair of aviator sunglasses and flip-flops, carrying a backpack half full of the winter clothes he’d been wearing at the start of his trip.
His “garden view” hotel room half a mile away had no frills, no character, and certainly no view, but it was the only place he could find that, one, had availability and, two, was close to J.R.’s address. And, he reminded himself, he wasn’t there on vacation. He threw his backpack onto his double bed and turned right back toward the door to start his search.
J.R.’s apartment was a third of a mile inland up a slight incline. Keeping up a brisk pace, his eyes constantly darting side-to-side behind his shades, Ryan noticed a gradual increase in the state of disrepair of the neighborhood (and the road itself) as the street numbers inched upward toward J.R.’s address. By the time he was halfway there, there wasn’t a tourist in sight. But he’d been over the route so many times on his computer, he almost felt like a local himself.
As he approached a dilapidated two-story apartment building, he squinted to confirm the faded number 616 painted on the curb out front. J.R. certainly didn’t appear to be living a life of luxury, sheltering millions in one of the Caymans’ famous banks.