Page 9 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

W HAT GOT YOU INTO WORKING with refugees?

” I ask five minutes later, contemplating the brown flecks covering the wall in front of me.

I’ve cleaned up after enough bar fights to know Ashley’s instincts had been correct—it’s definitely blood.

And not exactly the kind of spray you’d get from nicking your finger while cutting up carrots. Interesting.

I pick up a bottle of bleach solution and start spritzing.

“My youth group at church. We volunteered to help several years ago. The resettlement agencies were getting one to two families a month back then, which meant they could spend more time on the housing. We’d spruce up the rentals with fresh paint, assemble furniture, make simple repairs.

Some of the families had spent years living in makeshift tents constructed from tarps and wooden pallets.

Freezing in the winter, baking in the summer.

The look on their faces when they’d first walk in…

” Ashley glances up from where she’s furiously scrubbing cabinet shelving.

“The women always cried. Except in those days, it was happy tears.”

“Not so much anymore.”

“When I took this job fourteen months ago, the rate of placements had already ticked up to three to four families a month. Now it’s eight to fifteen.

There aren’t even that many rentals available on the market.

Let alone, instead of having two weeks’ notice, I sometimes get as little as twenty-four hours.

It’s crazy. I mean, I’ve forged relationships with some landlords who are now willing to help, but then again, more and more apartment complexes are owned by out-of-state real estate corporations.

They’ll deny families housing and blatantly declare they don’t work with programs, even though that’s illegal.

So I stick small children in units where the previous owners were drug dealers.

I mean sure, why not?” She scrubs more furiously.

That is going to be one darn clean cabinet.

“Who’s sending the families?” I ask. “I mean, why so many on such short notice?”

A snort of derision. “Welcome to the global refugee crisis. Wars, famine, natural disasters. You read the morning news and think, oh that’s sad. I read the morning news and think, now where am I going to put them?”

Hence her level of exhaustion. “How do the families end up in Tucson? Do they get to pick?”

“Oh, no, it’s all a bunch of administrative red tape, global, federal, local. Okay, so you, Frankie Whomever, are declared an international refugee by the UN.”

“Thank you?”

“Hey, this is an official legal status that can take years and over half a dozen attempts to earn, all the while having to live in fear of sudden deportation back to your home country, where your government may or may not kill you.” Her tone is serious.

She starts scouring the countertop. “But go you, Frankie—you got the golden ticket.”

I remember what Aliah said about Sabera and her husband knowing they were the lucky ones. “Okay.”

“Nations around the world pledge to take in so many refugees each year. Our government just promised to take in a hundred and twenty-five thousand this fiscal year, which is a significant leap from last year and still not even a rounding error in how many people need sanctuary.”

I nod to show I’m paying attention, then brush a cockroach off the wall. Honestly, I just cleaned there.

“In the US, the Office of Refugee Resettlement works with designated resettlement agencies to get the families into the US and handles all the basics. Background checks, medical exams, in-person interviews. Lots of shots. You have no idea how many people I see whose entire concept of the American medical system is a military doc armed with a needle.”

“Military doc?”

“Entry point is generally a military base where the families will spend their first six to eight months.”

“Six to eight months ?”

“Nobody ever accused the government of moving quickly.”

“Touché.”

“From there, the larger resettlement agency will start doling out families. Each state has already agreed to take X many bodies. Some bureaucrat with a red pen—well, more like outdated modeling software—arbitrarily sticks in random information, gets back a random location. Tucson! Welcome, Ahmadi family of three, to your new town.”

“What if they don’t want to go to Tucson or, say, have family elsewhere?”

Ashley shrugs. Countertop done, she moves on to the lower drawers.

The top one opens with a sharp screeching sound.

Three cockroaches pour out. Without missing a beat, Ashley grabs a rag from the countertop, rolls it tight, then snaps it out, one, two, three.

The cockroaches fall dazed to the ground.

She raises her foot and stomps them dead.

“Do you make house calls?” I murmur. “And what are your thoughts on snakes?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Family learns they’re headed to Tucson, but don’t want to go there.”

“For the Afghans, there are significant communities in San Francisco and northern Virginia, so many would prefer to relocate there. But you go rogue, you lose your three months of federal aid. And given those cities have high costs of living, not to mention you think it’s hard to find an apartment here…

” Ashley gives me a look. I get her point.

“So Sabera, her husband, and daughter start researching Tucson.” I almost get it now.

“Please, half the time they’re told their destination as they’re boarding the plane.”

“Seriously?”

“‘For we live by faith, not by sight,’” she informs me.

I hear her, which brings me to another point. “Your resettlement agency is obviously faith-based. Does this create issues?”

“Actually, it’s the one thing that gives me hope.

I might be the first Christian some of these families have ever met, while my friends from the Jewish Family and Children’s Services agency—also an excellent agency—are the first Jews.

But person to person, no one cares. We’re neighbors helping neighbors, and that’s what matters.

If only the rest of the world got that memo. ”

Makes sense to me. “So the Ahmadi family arrives in Tucson,” I prod.

Ashley nods while tending to the kitchen drawer.

“Step one, meet the family at the airport. This is something I like to do personally if I can. The families are always dazed and confused—no idea where they are, no clue what’s going to happen next.

The kids are exhausted, clinging to their parents, who are standing there with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

And yet, they always have this set to their shoulders, a smile plastered on their faces.

They might not know where they are, but they already know it’s better than where they’ve been. ”

“Sabera and her family?”

“She was holding their daughter, Zahra—a petite little thing with huge gray eyes and the world’s most serious expression.

Honestly, I took one look at the girl and would’ve gotten them a penthouse suite if possible.

Zahra’s like the poster child for displaced children everywhere.

” Ashley scowls. “Which is a terrible thing for someone like me to say.”

“Kabul fell in 2021. Sabera’s family has been in a refugee camp the entire time since then?”

“Most likely several different camps. There’s a whole global system most refugees process through.”

“So Sabera gave birth while in one of the camps?”

“Much less than ideal,” Ashley assures me. “Pregnant women, women with infants are particularly vulnerable in such places. Way too many people, not enough resources to go around, violence a daily occurrence. First rule of refugees, they will almost never ever speak of their time in the camps.”

Which returns us to Ashley’s original point—it would be foolish to think anyone knows what Sabera has gone, is going, through. And Aliah’s conviction that her friend would never leave her child is also premature.

“What was your first impression of Sabera and her family?” I ask Ashley now.

She shrugs, moving down to the next drawer.

“She was quiet, let Isaad do the talking. I assumed that indicated a more traditional marriage, which surprised me, because according to their file, they were both in academia. He taught mathematics at Kabul University. She worked in the department. Aliah, who was the volunteer assigned to the family—”

“She’s the one who reached out to me.”

“She’s amazing!” Ashley’s voice picks up. “She’d already remembered a booster seat for Zahra, and had one delivered to my car—you don’t know how many times we forget things like that. But Aliah’s a pro and a great role model for the younger females. I mean twenty-five years later, look at her now!”

“Absolutely.” I’ve finally finished scouring the wall running perpendicular to the kitchen cabinets. It turns out the original color is almost as dingy as the previously grimy version, so I’m left with a mostly moral victory. At least the blood is gone. Until I glance up at the ceiling.

Definitely not from an injury while cutting up produce. I raise the bottle of bleach spray and get to it.

“What did Sabera and her husband think of the apartment?”

“Oh, the look on their faces when I pulled into the complex’s parking lot…” Ashley sighs heavily. “Isaad asked a lot of questions about their three-month allowance, which is exactly how long families are given to be financially independent once they are settled in a city.”

“Three months?” I can’t keep the disbelief from my voice.

“Exactly. First task is to assess their English skills, then enroll them in the proper English as a second language class. Good news for the Ahmadis—I could already tell Isaad’s English was good enough, while Sabera’s was absolutely perfect.

She even enunciates with a crisp British accent, which I assumed was from private school education, but later learned her mother was originally from London. ”