Page 36 of Along Came Amor
“I’m fully aware of that,” she muttered, smiling as she tore lettuce leaves with more force than necessary.
“And then, when you have a baby, you can move back in here with us and we can take care of it!”
Ava nearly choked at her grandmother’s gleeful declaration. Across the room, her grandfather cast his gaze toward the ceiling and sighed.
“That is... very sweet of you,” Ava began, even as she pictured her grandmother telling a newborn that crying would cause wrinkles.
Setting aside the spoon on a glass dish shaped like a coquí, Esperanza reached up to cup Ava’s cheeks in her hands. “I just don’t want you to be alone cuando eres una vieja, like me.”
“You’re not an old lady, Bwela,” Ava replied, even as shetried not to notice how frail her vibrant, larger-than-life grandmother’s wrists had become.
“Está bien, I know I’m old. ¿Pero tú?” Esperanza tapped Ava’s chest. “You’re already thirty-three. You need to have babies while you can. Then, after your husband dies, your children will take care of you.”
“Oye.” Willie looked up from the newspaper. “No me mates.”
His affrontedDon’t kill medid the trick. When Esperanza scurried over to argue with him, Ava took the opportunity to duck out of the kitchen to collect her thoughts.
In the living room, next to a glass-enclosed cabinet full of porcelain angels, Ava pressed her fingers to her temples, trying to stave off the stress headache that was brewing.
She loved her grandmother. Truly, she did.
But sometimes? The old woman drove her fucking nuts.
Ava wished she could state in no uncertain terms that she was never getting back together with Hector and she didn’t want to hear another word about it. She often lay awake at night imagining how that conversation would go, and how it would feel to let loose all the things she wanted to say.
But that would only lead to a fight, and nothing would change. It would only confirm thatshewas the problem. Besides, her grandparents had helped raise her and she simply didn’t have it in her to be rude to them.
A knock at the door echoed through her pounding temples.
“I’ll get it,” Ava called. She straightened her shoulders, gave her curls a shake, and strode to the door. When she opened it, her face broke into a wide smile.
“Mommy,” she said with relief.
“Happy birthday, baby.” Patricia Griffith stepped over thethreshold, bringing the January cold with her, and caught Ava in a tight, freesia-scented hug. She was a couple inches shorter than Ava, her skin a couple shades darker. Her hair was mostly gray now, and she kept her tight curls cropped short, but she made aging look stylish. Patricia kissed Ava’s cheek and whispered, “Is she going on about Hector again?”
“All the greatest hits,” Ava mumbled as she straightened.
Patricia shrugged out of her long down coat—even after living in New York for forty years, she still wasn’t fond of the winters—and gave Ava a conspiratorial smile. “I’ll distract her.”
“¿Quién es?” Esperanza yelled.
“It’s me, Espie,” Patricia called, strolling into the kitchen.
There were a lot of excited exclamations from Esperanza, and through the doorway Ava could see her grandmother embracing Patricia warmly.
Esperanza and Willie were technically Ava’s father Miguel’s parents, but they loved Patricia as one of their own. Ava knew it drove Olympia crazy, although her stepmother would never admit it. Patricia had been best friends with Michelle’s mom, Valentina, since they’d met working at Macy’s when they were in college. During those years, Patricia had spent holidays with the Rodriguez family, since her own still lived in Barbados. That was how Patricia had met Ava’s dad, the oldest of Esperanza and Willie’s six kids. After a whirlwind romance, Patricia and Miguel got married, and along came Ava. While the marriage didn’t last, Patricia stayed close with her former in-laws.
After Patricia and Miguel divorced, Ava had spent a few years living with Esperanza and Willie while Patricia finished nursing school. Ava had adored her grandparents, and in their house, she had her own room, something she hadn’t had in either of her parents’ apartments. But she’d never been ableto shake the feeling that she was a guest, and her mom had reminded her constantly that she needed to be on her best behavior for her grandparents.
In the back of Ava’s mind, she’d worried that if she was bad, her grandparents would kick her out too. And then where would she go?
But those days were over. She had her own place now. Sometimes she even left a dish in the sink overnight, just because she could.
Logically—and thanks to Colleen, her former therapist—Ava understood that her parents hadn’t divorced because of her. She knew that she’d been sent to live with Esperanza and Willie because her parents had been struggling financially and needed help with childcare. Still, deeply rooted beliefs had a way of twining themselves into the foundation of a person’s psyche, and no matter how diligently she tried to root them out, they managed to push through the cracks.
Behind her, someone else knocked on the door, and Ava opened it to see Jasmine’s smiling face. Jasmine was flanked by her fiancé—the telenovela star Ashton Suárez—and Ashton’s ten-year-old son, Yadiel.
“Happy birthday!” Jasmine rushed in and kissed Ava on the cheek. “I’m so glad we’re in town to celebrate with you.”
