An entire catalog of our time together.
The songs I wrote from my first moments in captivity to the moments I fell in love with Javi. And then… the songs that express my grief in the only way that I can.
It is a timeline of our entire relationship. A small blip in the enormous number of seconds and hours that have compiled my life. But these seconds and hours I spent with him are the ones that have impacted me most.
The ones that will haunt me for the rest of my days. The ones that I will treasure. There is only one thing I need to complete the story. One more song for the final chapter.
You can’t choose who you love, for better or worse.
But there is one thing that will determine the way that I remember Javi. The thing that will help me to understand him. To have my closure. The thing that will provide me with the lyrics for one last song. And this thing cannot be found at Moldavia.
In fact, there is only one place that it can be found.
And I am not certain that anyone else even knows this place exists. Except for me. Because I am paranoid, like my father. And because I did not trust him after Javi was poisoned. I tracked him up here into this cabin in the middle of the woods.
As I stand here in the clearing, I know that this is where my answers lie.
I have observed my father closely over the years. I have witnessed the fashion in which he sought out devices. The places he would hide things he did not want found.
I am well informed of the precautions he takes and the way he goes about his security measures. And this is how I know that what I’m looking for will not be inside the cabin at all. When I find the loose floorboard on the porch, I know I am right.
I lift it up and reveal the visibly undisturbed earth below. A trick my father once taught me. To everyone else, it looks like nothing. Just dirt. To me, it looks like a tarp below, covering something else. Something more sinister.
I am right.
When I brush my hand over the dirt, there is plastic beneath. I pull it up, only to reveal a shoebox below.
It is not high tech. Anything the agency would have my father keep would not be kept here. This is something he has done on his own. In a hurry. Something he intended to come back to. And I must get to it first, whatever it is.
I don’t look inside. I take the shoebox and replace the tarp, covering it with dirt. Then I leave, checking my mirrors the entire drive back to Moldavia.
My heart is racing, and my palms are sweating, and I am afraid of the answers this box might carry. Something that once opened cannot be undone. But I have come to realize that what Javi said rings true.
Nobody can hurt me anymore. I have a built a fortress around my heart. Whatever this box contains, I can handle it. No matter how sinister. I am ready to know the truth.
I am ready to learn my father’s secrets.
So, when I am secure inside of Moldavia, I open it up. On top, there is a file. An old file, with handwritten notes. It takes me some time to read the messy scrawl. But it is clear from the header that it is a medical record. For Javi’s mother. It speaks of her illness. Her mental decline. The tumor in her brain. An incurable tumor.
Her illness was not random. It was because of the tumor. A tumor that would prove fatal in time, as evidenced by these very notes. What I can’t understand is why my father would keep the file hidden away like this. Why it would matter to him.
There is so much paperwork that most of it seems irrelevant. It is the entire history of her medical records from the time she was first diagnosed to her last appointment.
And then there are transcripts. At first, I think they are part of her records as well. Until I see the dates.They were after her death.
They are transcripts from something else. An interview performed by my father. An interview of Javi. He was only a child at the time. Eleven years old. It was after his mother had died.
I read through the entire transcript. Three times. My father always told me how dangerous Javi was. He told me how he had killed his mother, and what a tragedy it was. But it was never true.
The truth is right here, printed in ink. A truth that I can no longer deny. My father has been lying to me for so long. But even worse, he has been lying to Javi. Javi told him what happened that day. He told him how his mother believed there was a device implanted in her stomach. That she had to retrieve it. How she made Javi watch as she gutted herself like a fish and tried to perform her own surgery. She died of the blood loss, despite Javi’s best efforts to save her.
It is a secret he has lived with his whole life. Allowing everyone around him to believe he was a murderer. That he murdered his own mother in cold blood. And my father has not only condoned the lie, but he has perpetuated it.
He turned Javi into a killer on the basis that he already was one. He inserted him into the operative training program and left him there.
A child.
He was only a child.