The Blue Zone

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

They talked about a million subjects. Justin and Emily, how they were getting along. How Tina was doing. Kate’s diabetes. Greg. How he was finishing up his residency and had his résumé out, but right now they didn’t know where they’d end up next year.

“Maybe we’ll have to come out here and live with you,” Kate said with a grin.

“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Sharon smiled.

They talked a lot about Dad.

For lunch they ordered from a cute, athletic-looking waiter, with the tan of a snowboard instructor. Kate ordered the Vietnamese chicken salad and Sharon a salade Niçoise. Every once in a while, the wind kicked up. Kate kept pushing the hair out of her eyes.

Finally, in a little lull, Sharon lifted her sunglasses. She took Kate’s hand and, with a bit of a worried expression, traced the life line on her palm.

“Darling, I think you ought to tell me just why you’re here.”

Kate nodded. “Something happened last week, Mom, on the river…”

She told her mother about the boat that had almost run her down and cut her shell in two.

“Oh, good God, Kate…” Sharon shut her eyes, continuing to grasp Kate’s hand. When she opened them, there were tears. “You don’t know how sorry I am that you’re involved.”

“I think it’s too late for that, Mom. I think it was always too late.” Kate reached inside her bag for her wallet. “There’s something I have to show you, Mom.”

She took out the old snapshot of her father she’d found back at the house and pushed it across the table.

Sharon picked it up. Kate wasn’t sure if she’d seen it before. But it didn’t seem to matter. Sharon looked back up. She knew what it was. She knew what it meant. It all registered, mixed with a trace of regret, on the lines of her face.

“You found it.” Sharon smiled, without even a hint of surprise.

“You know about this?” Kate asked. “What the hell is Daddy doing there, Mom? This is in Colombia, not Spain. Look what it says on the gate, behind him.” Her voice grew agitated. “Can you read it, Mom?”

“I know what it says,” Sharon answered, averting her eyes. “I left it for you, Kate.”

Kate stared back at her, stunned.

“I wrote you almost every day,” her mother said, placing the photo back on the table and reaching out for Kate’s hand. “You have to believe me. I tried to tell you a hundred times… I just could never push that key. It’s been so long, I’d almost forgotten. But it doesn’t help. It doesn’t go away…”

“Forgotten what, Mom? I don’t understand.” Kate picked up the photo and held it up in front of Sharon ’s eyes. “This is my father, Mom! Who the hell is he? What is he doing in front of that sign?”

Sharon nodded and smiled, a bit resignedly. “We have a lot to make up for, honey.”

“I’m here, Mom.”

The wind kicked up, blowing a plastic glass off the table. Instinctively, Kate bent over to grab it.

She never heard the sound.

At least that’s how she always recalled it as she played the moment back in her head a thousand times.

All of a sudden there was this sharp, searing burn on the back of Kate’s shoulder-a molten iron jabbing into her flesh, the impact almost knocking her off the chair.

Kate’s eyes flashed to the spot. The fabric of her jacket was torn. There was a red hole there. No pain. No panic. She knew that something horrible had happened, she just didn’t know what. Blood started to ooze. It took a second for her brain to realize it.

“Jesus Christ, Mom, I think I’ve been shot!”

Sharon was upright, still in her chair, but somehow unresponsive to Kate’s desperation. Her sunglasses were gone, her head was slightly bent and slumped forward. Her pupils were fixed and glazed.

A dark circle spread against the green of her sweater.

“Mom!”

In that instant the haze of the moment cleared and Kate focused in disbelief on the hole in her shoulder and at the ring of blood widening on Sharon ’s chest. The bullet had shorn right through her. And into her mom. Kate stared in horror.

“Oh, my God, Mom, no!”

There was the sound of another ping coming in, a woman screaming as a glass exploded at the table next to them, the shot careening off the pavement. By that time Kate had leaped up and thrown herself in front of her mother, covering her slack, unresponsive body, shaking her by the shoulders, screaming, “Mom, Mom!” into the stonelike pallor of Sharon’s face as she fell to the ground.

Shouts rang out from all directions, people grabbing kids, tables upending. “Someone’s shooting! Get down! Everyone get down!”

But Kate just lay there. She knew that her mother was dead. She brushed the hair out of her face. She wiped away a few dots of dark, red spatter from her cheek.

All she could do was hold her close.

“Oh, dear God, Mom…”