Free Daughter's Keeper by Ayelet Waldman Page A

we’re on our way to do your drug deal?”
    He reached back for the seat belt.
    She pulled out of the parking lot and followed his directions to a small house in South Oakland.
    â€œWait for me here. Don’t turn off the engine,” he said.
    Olivia sat in the car, listening to the idle. The street was empty and quiet. The houses were small bungalows, most with wrought iron gates on the windows and doors. The house into which Jorge had disappeared was painted a pale color; she couldn’t make it out in the dark. Its front lawn had been ­covered over in cement that was probably painted grass-green. There was a tricycle lying on its side in the driveway, missing one of its rear wheels. Along the side of the house, a clothesline drooped under the weight of sheets snapping in the night breeze.
    Olivia turned on the radio. She punched the buttons, stopping finally on a station playing bolero music. Jorge would hate it, preferring as he did Norteno bands likes Los Tigres del Norte. But Olivia loved old scratchy records with the quavering voices of boleristas like Amparo Montes and Toña La Negra, singing about desesperación del amor and almas solas.
    She jumped as Jorge jerked open the car door. He was holding a small cardboard container, about the size of two shoeboxes. He laid it gently in the well of the passenger seat and got in the car. Then, with an almost childish grimace, he buckled his seat belt.
    Olivia’s stomach lurched with dread. “What’s that?” she whispered.
    â€œYou know what it is.”
    â€œI thought your job was just to introduce people! I thought you weren’t even going to be touching the stuff!” Her fingers gripped the steering wheel so tightly she could see her knuckles glow white in the dark of the car. She kept her eyes on Jorge’s face, afraid even to look at the box under his feet.
    â€œI’m the one everybody trusts,” Jorge said. “Oreste knows me, Gabriel knows me. It only makes sense for me to do the delivery. I just drop this off and pick up the money. That’s it.”
    The back of Olivia’s neck prickled, and she whipped her head around, terrified someone was watching her.
    â€œOh, God,” she whispered.
    Jorge hit his knees with his hands, obviously impatient with her anxiety. He seemed to feel none of it himself. On the ­contrary, he looked excited, almost happy. “Let’s just drop this off, okay? Then I’ll take you home. I’ll deliver the money myself.”
    Once again she followed Jorge’s directions to another house. She was so frightened she didn’t even notice the route they took. The numbers on the digital clock on the dashboard seemed to be frozen, refusing to move while she waited alone in the car. She tried to listen to the radio, but the sound of her heart beating in her chest drowned out the music.
    Suddenly, in her rearview mirror, Olivia saw the bright lights of a car driving up the block. She began to whimper, and by the time it had passed her and continued on its way, she was crying. It felt like hours before Jorge returned, and she almost left without him. When he finally opened the car door and leapt in beside her, she slammed the gear shift into drive and spun away, blindly driving down street after street until she reached a landmark she recognized. She kept her eyes glued to the road in front of her, refusing to look at Jorge or at the brown paper bag he held in his lap. She slowed down only when she was within a block or two of home. She pulled up in front of their apartment building and wrenched her house key off the ring. She grabbed her bag, jumped out of the car, and ran down the alley to their apartment.
    Olivia gagged as she ran by the garbage bins and made it only as far as the kitchen sink, where she vomited again and again until her chest heaved dryly and nothing more came up.
    She leaned her forehead against the cool metal of the sink and breathed