Live Again (Camren)

Chapter 12

Camila. 

"Lauren we can't smuggle a child out of Cuba." Was the first thing I said once we we left the orphanage.

"Don't think of it as smuggling, just think of it as secretly taking her back home with us." She tried to make light of this very serious situation.

"Call it or think of it in whatever way you like but it doesn't change the fact that we can go to prison if we get caught." Of course I wanted to help this little girl but one of us had to be realistic and realistically speaking this could get us in some deep shit.

She stopped walking and turned to face me. "Does that sound right to you? Corrupt motherfuckers get away with worse shit yet we can't help a small child because we run the risk of ending up in prison." She's being rhetorical so I don't bother giving her my answer. But just to be clear of course it doesn't sound right to me but that's just the way things are. "You and I both know we have zero to no chances of getting legal custody of that little girl. I know it's probably going to sound crazy but holding her in my arms gave me these feelings that I can't explain, it was like I was at peace and this heavy weight on my chest was being lifted. Something in me is telling me that this was meant to be, that I was meant to help this little girl out, that we were meant to meet her and that she's meant to be ours. She's my second chance, Camila. I know it's risky, and I know I'm being impulsive but I truly in my heart feel like this is what we should do." Lauren wasn't the type of person to do things off of feelings or instincts, she was meticulous, go by the book and everything needed to be gone through thoroughly until a seal proof plan was in place, even for the simplest of things so I understood exactly how strongly she felt about this.

"I can't believe I'm actually saying this but," I sighed. "Okay, let's do this." Just call me Camila the human trafficker Cabello.

Never mind don't call me that.

Now I know what your thinking, this is fucken crazy and I agree but there is not much I wouldn't do for Lauren. Your probably wondering if I even want Eliana to be apart of our lives, my answer is of course I do. What kind of heartless human being do you take me for? A child doesn't need to share my blood to be my child. The way Lauren looked at Eliana, and way she made Lauren feel are enough reasons for me to love her. Plus everything just makes sense, it truly feels like it was destiny. Let's look at the facts, out of all places we could have met her it's my birth city, out of all the places she could of gone she heads straight to the beach, out of all the people that she'd be comfortable with it's Lauren, and her name literally means God has answered. It's why Lauren feels Eliana is her second chance. Could it be any more clear?

Not everything happened so quickly, it took time. Lauren still had a job to finish, which meant we were in Cuba for another month. We didn't get to see Eliana after the day we dropped her off at the orphanage, but the nun that offered to help us kept in contact with us and updated us on her whenever she could, secretly of course. It was hard for us to stay away but we knew it was for the best, an American couple making constant visits to an orphanage to see the same little girl that would eventually go "missing" well we might as well carry around giant posters saying "we did it." It was easier for us to stay away once we left Havana and made our way around the other major coastal cities in Cuba. Finding a human trafficker was a lot easier than we expected, finding one we could trust well that was a lot harder. When we did find one, we also had to find someone who could travel with Eliana, because it was impossible for either of us to do it considering we had to report to US customs as soon as we landed back in the US. It was safer and easier to smuggle her into Florida so we changed our flight so we land in Florida rather than California.

I know what your thinking, what the hell do you plan on telling the US government? How the hell do you explain this to them? The answer is that we don't. The plan itself sounds simple enough, getting everything to go as planned, well that's the difficult part. Our cover story is that, we're visiting my extended family and I'm taking Lauren on a trip down memory lane. We needed to make sure she arrived here safely so we couldn't not show up to Florida. It may seem like a pointless trip to everyone else but not to us, not when we left our child in the care of criminals and a total stranger. Once we saw her and knew that she was fine, we had Eliana and her caretaker for the time being driven down to California while we spent a few more days in Florida. Which is where we would pretend we "found" her, you can't just keep a child hidden from the US government, well I mean you can but with our lines of work and our plans to travel, we wouldn't be able to keep her hidden for long. Unless we kept on pulling off these James Bond type of missions to get her in and out of the country. Which by the way,  I was not a fan of.