Page 102 of This Could Be Us

My hands freeze over the cake I made for tonight’s dessert, fingers tightening around the piping bag of strawberry icing.

“What?” I ask numbly, knowing damn well what but still unprepared for this inevitable moment.

“We want to see Dad,” Inez repeats, standing in the kitchen’s arched entryway, her small hands twisting nervously.

“Oh.” I set the piping bag on the counter and wipe my hands on a tea towel. “Um… I’ll have to check the schedule to see when visiting hours—”

“There’s visiting hours on New Year’s Day,” Lottie says from a few steps back.

My youngest averts her eyes to the floor, not quite meeting my gaze.

“He may not…” I stop myself, refusing to tell my girls their father does not want to see them. Or at least doesn’t want them to see him in prison. “I need to check with him to coordinate, if you’re sure you want this.”

“We want it,” Lupe says. “We know he broke the law, and we know he hurt you, Mom. I’m so mad at him for all of that, but he’s our dad. It’s the holidays. We want to see him.”

“Is that okay?” Lottie asks, her voice wobbling and crystalline tears trembling on her bottom lashes. “We love you. I promise. We just—”

“Love him too,” I finish for her. “Of course you do. That’s natural, baby.”

Yet it feels like the most unnatural thing in the world to arrange for my daughters to visit the man who upended their lives, who betrayed me and left us to fend for ourselves. Leftmeto fend for myself. If I never saw Edward again, I would die happy, but it’s not just about me. It is, as it always is, about my girls.

I’m reminding myself that this is for them when we pull up to the prison parking lot on New Year’s Day. Last year at this time, I was blissfully ignorant of the avalanche poised to dump all over my life. I had my suspicions, sure, and my concerns about the state of our marriage, but nothing was certain. And there were days I could even pretend everything was fine. I’ll never take solace in a fake fine again.

“Ready?” I ask, turning to study Lupe in the passenger seat beside me and Lottie and Inez in the back.

“Yeah, but…” Lupe bites her lip, toys with the ends of the long red braid flung over one shoulder. “Do you have to come inside?”

I frown, tossing the keys in my purse before meeting the concern in Lupe’s eyes. “You’re minors. I have to accompany you, and there’s no way I’d let you go into a federal prison without me. You know this. Why don’t you want me to come?”

“He cheated on you,” Inez says, surprising me since I know how hard it has been seeing her father’s feet of clay. Her soft response barely cloaks the disbelief and dismay of a little girl who thought the sun rose and set on her father. When I glance back, her eyes hold an incongruity of emotions I wish she didn’t have to sort through yet.

Fury. Disappointment. Longing.

She loves an undeserving man. It’s a sorrow most women experience at some point in their lives, whether it’s a father who neglects or a son who forgets or a husband who betrays. These men let us down and we pull ourselves back up, hopefully with the help of other women who love us in ways that heal. Lola and Nayeli held a Boricua High Council FaceTime this morning over breakfast. Nayeli prayed that I wouldhave peace that surpasses understanding, the kind that rises when your heart would drag you to fall. Yasmen came to the house this morning carrying a bouquet of yellow roses from Stems, my favorite florist in Skyland.

“For friendship,” she whispered into my hair. But I knew she really meantfor courage. She hugged me tight, squeezing, not letting go until a few tears trickled over my cheeks because she knew I needed to cryjusta little.

My friends, my sisters, my daughters. My great loves.

I look at each of my daughters with deliberate care, wanting them to see strength and resolve. I love that I’ve raised girls who think about me, who care about me as a human, not just their mother who exists to serve their every need. There’s an honesty in that. I think I saw it in my mother because I knew she stayed with my father, loved him in her own way, while the deepest parts of her heart belonged to another. I saw her not just as Mami, but as a woman in all her full, flawed dimensions. I want my girls to have that too.

“Your father broke my heart,” I tell them, “and he broke the law. He is not, in my estimation, a good man. I wish I could have protected you from the truth, but that was impossible. So you understand why I had to divorce him.”

“I would have been mad if you hadn’t,” Lupe says, traces of bitterness in her words. “He doesn’t deserve you, Mom.”

“No, he doesn’t, and he doesn’t deserve you either, yet here we are.” I gesture toward the imposing white building of the prison. “He’s all the things we said, but he’s also the man who taught you to ride a bike, Lupe.”

She drops her eyes to her lap.

“And always played video games with you, Inez,” I say, glancing back to meet my daughter’s eyes. “And did handstands with you in the backyard, Lottie.”

“He wasn’t very good at them.” She snorts, but a small smile cracks the corner of her mouth.

“My point is that it’s complicated,” I say. “He’s not all bad and he’s not all good, and he’s still your father. Finding out he’s not perfect doesn’t erase all your love for him.”

“You’re sure you’re okay with us seeing him?” Lottie whispers.

“I’ve told you from the beginning and I mean it now. I don’t want to keep you and your father apart. He will never—hear me when I say this—neverhave custody of you. No judge would award him that, and I would move heaven and earth to stop that from happening. You can love him, but I will never trust him with my heart again. The three of you are the most precious things in the world, and I will not trust him with you.”

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