Of course eventually I have to explain that it wasn't a bad dream at all. Rewind to a year and a half ago when I was still alive and working for Elway. He calls me into his office. Once I'm sitting across from him he slides a folder across the desk to me. Inside is a picture of a chubby ten year old who looks like a Morgan.
"Did you find some long lost cousin of mine?" I ask studying the curly black hair framing a face similar to mine at her age.
"Maybe," he snickers. "Sure looks like it. If her hair was straight and her eyes were lighter, I'd swear you're this woman's granddaughter." The girl had intense dark brown eyes framed by those enviable mediterranean thick dark eyebrows. The kind that are long and arched and needed no filling in.
"She was moved here by her father when she was 12 because her mother was into the wrong scene. The grandmother has been trying to find a way to contact her for years and just now made the trip from South America to find her."
"That picture looks really old." I point out. How old could she be now?
He nods,"She's probably about 40. Her name is Soraya Mendoza. This woman is paying handsomely. "
"Well then, lets get to it."
Soraya turns up under her father's last name, Marquis. Mr. Marquis had died of a heart attack when Soraya was in her 20's. Our investigation leads us to a hospital where we find her in a coma.
Records show that her boyfriend was driving drunk when they got into a car accident a few years back. She hasn't woken up ever since. We came to the hospital to confirm, before giving her grandmother the bad news.
Even with the age difference and her wild dark hair, she still has an uncanny resemblance to me. She could be my older sister.
"Now what?" He asks.
"What do you mean? We tell her grandmother we found her."
"Mrs. Mendoza doesn't have long to live and wanted to see Soraya before her death. Can we really do that to her?"
"So you want to tell her we didn't find anything?" I ask, surprised by his sentimentalism.
"No... it's just that you look so much alike,"
"Fuck no!" I exclaim, finally catching his drift.
"She's never met you and hasn't seen her in over twenty years."
"Not fucking happening. For starters my spanish sucks balls and we don't look exactly like."
"She could have assimilated and she has no idea what Soraya looks like now."
"It's wrong," I shake my head. "It's cruel to lie to an old woman like that."
"Crueler than telling her the granddaughter she hasn't seen in twenty years will never wake up? That she came all this way to see her in a coma?"
"But she can hold her hand. Her REAL granddaughters hand."
"I don't think so Deborah. If it was you in that bed, wouldn't you want the person you love most in this world to die happy? Wouldn't you do anything to spare them the pain?"
Gee I don't know. The person I love most in the world happens to be the one I hate the most right now.
"She has no family left behind. Her daughter died of an overdose."
"Shut the fuck up Elway."
His emotional blackmail breaks down my determination and the next day we go shopping for temporary hair color, curlers and contacts. My hair is really oily so I'm not worried about the hair color sticking. When I did undercover work it always washed out way too quickly. Still the curlers don't do much to make it thicker. Elway thinks I'm putting too much effort into it since there is a two decade gap but the last thing I want is to insult the poor woman's intelligence. My spanish will be insulting enough. So I suffer through two hours of extensions in a salon to give me a thicker look.
A day later my transformation is complete. I hate wearing dresses but I'm damn good at undercover work so I put on a maxi dress to look the part. My eyebrows still leave much to be desired but I did my best. Grandma has expensive taste. She schedules our meeting at the LIV in the Fontainebleau where she's now staying. When I arrive at her table she looks up at me and meets my eyes with a huge gasp.