Page 1 of After the Fire
1
THE PHOTO
My face was on fire—notliterally, of course—but it felt like steam was coming out of my ears. My whole body was burning from the inside out, flames constricting my chest and making it hard to breathe. I looked at the phone screen in my hand and looked at it again, and I couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing. In every sense of the word, it was absolutely unbelievable.Is it though?Clearly, my brain was playing tricks on me because this couldn’t be happening. Not to me.Not to Victoria Aguirre Sáenz on the morning of her wedding.
“Cata, I…” I said, stuttering the words out. “Let me call you right back.”
My coffee sat on the side table, still hot to the touch. My phone buzzed in anticipation of the day’s activities, not to be minimized by whatever was going on in my head. From the corner of my eye, I could see my dress hanging from the door to the bathroom in what used to be my childhood bedroom. I could see my reflection in the bathroom mirror—my brown hair was down, and my eyes had an unusual shine, maybe from all the tears I was trying to withhold. My freckles were definitely out today, possibly as a result of all the sun I’d been getting in the previous days. The only thing I could hear was my heart pumping inside my head and my erratic breathing.
“What’s going on?” my best friend asked. She was getting ready at her house and then would drive to mine later in the afternoon, but we were already talking on the phone to iron out some last-minute details. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.”No. Fuck.“Um, jus—something came up. Give me a minute. I’ll call you back,”I muttered as I hung up the phone.
The house felt giant around me, always had, and we still had a few hours to go until it got swarmed with people—including but not limited to the photographers for the biggest society magazine in the country, very obviously arranged by my grandmother.
The last time I spent the night here I was probably in my mid-twenties—close to a decade ago now—but on my grandmother’s insistence, I was getting ready for my “big day,” as she called it, here. Secretly, I thought she wanted to control the situation, try to avoid anything that could go wrong and make it easier on her and on my unreliable father. She was making this event a spectacle, her house front and center in what had been deemed “the wedding of the year” by the local media.
“Victoria,” Susana called from the bottom of the stairs. The woman had put her life on hold in her mid-fifties after my mother’s tragic accident and had really raised my brother and me like her own children, although she’d never let us refer to her as anything but Susana. Not even a tender, kind, lovingabuela,like my cousins did with their other grandmothers. “Come here,por favor.”
I groaned, my face still hot with embarrassment. “Si,I’ll be right there.” I took a deep breath, trying to center myself to face her. The long and puffy garment bag was taunting me, the zipper half open. The top of the dress was peeking out, made of a sparkling white lace that my grandmother had purchased in Italy years before I was born. She bought it during one of the lavish trips she’d made with her husband, anticipating that maybe one day, one of her daughters would wear it at their own weddings.
My phone kept buzzing in my hand, but I didn’t need to look at the screen again because the image I saw a few minutes earlier was permanently burned into my brain. A million thoughts ran through my brain in a microsecond.Could it be a photo of Manuel?I saw him in bed, with a woman on his lap, her long, blonde hair brushing her bare back. It was probably Manuel because that was very much the apartment we shared together. The lamp to the right was one of the few things he’d chosen when we decided to move in together, and I’d hated it since that first day we unloaded all our boxes. It was absolutely Manuel because I could clearly see that tattoo on his left thigh—another thing I hated.
The question was: why was my fiancé in bed with someone who was obviously not me? And who would send me this photo on the day of my wedding?
“You need to make sure we triple check with the florist the exact time they will deliver the bouquet and the boutonnieres, and if we need to refrigerate them, too, or if they should be good to go by the time we leave for the church,” Susana said as soon as my left foot hit the landing. This was very much a normal Susana routine—she would drill us with orders and then we would obey them, everyone fearing the consequences of her disappointment.
She sat in the living room, lazily browsing through a society magazine, probably catching up with the latest gossip. She most likely knew everything before it even got to the media, but she always needed to be prepared, as to not be caught off guard if anything hadn’t reached her ears.
“Victoria, are you listening? Did you call María to give her instructions on how to get here? We don’t want her to run behind and then derail the whole schedule,” she added. She always spoke in a calm and uniform tone, even when she was disparaging the behaviors of others. It was, at times, almost dull. Easy to tune out.
Susana was, by all accounts, intentional. She never, ever spoke to anyone before practicing her words. She never deviated from her speech. She knew what to say at all times, and people respected her for it.
The woman had been up since four o’clock in the morning—her usual time—and now, five hours later, she still looked as fresh as a baby. Her skin glowed; she looked twenty-some years younger than she was. She had a full face of makeup already and, if I were a betting woman, I would one hundred percent guarantee that she wouldn’t need to redo anything but her lips by the time evening rolled around.
The house was quiet except for the soft humming of Lali, the cleaning lady, in the back. She was outside watering the plants, probably having run away from Susana. The orders kept on coming, one after the other without even a pause in the middle for me to stop her to tell her what I’d completed.
“Victoria? It’s your wedding today.” I did my best to contain my eye roll. It would be completely unacceptable to disrespect her in any way, so instead, I cocked my head and looked straight into her eyes. “Everything has to be absolutely perfect. Are you listening?”
“Si, Susana, I’m listening. I’ve taken mental note of all the things that need doing. I was going to drink my coffee while I called the planner to let her know of the small changes. A few friends called already to ask a few things, and I needed to get on that immediately. If you don’t mind, I’ll head upstairs.” I started moving, but she closed the magazine enthusiastically and smiled at me.
“Have you spoken to Manuel yet?” she asked. “He must be excited, huh?”
I turned, swallowing my tears. “Uh-huh,” I said noncommittally. I couldn’t let her see me like this. Even if she saw me crying, I doubt she would ask what it was about. Because the way to Susana’s heart was acknowledging and acting on what she told you, and if you did that, you’d stay on her good side. She couldn’t argue with my logic, so I went up the stairs, my feet echoing into the darkness of the hallway.
Was it because my brain was moving at warp speed that I noticed that Susana hadn’t even asked how I was feeling? I had to be more transparent than what I gave myself credit for. I knew I had a good poker face—years as a lawyer gave me enough practice, I thought—but I was sure thatsomeof the things I was feeling had to be on display. Right? Manuel always said that he could tell when I was lying, and I took offense, because my professional career depended onnothaving such a trait.
The thirty-two years of my life had, so far, been a series of moments, one after the other, that aggregated, made a full picture. It just happened that the moments that made up my life up until this moment had been deliberate and thought-out ahead of time. All of my movements had always benefited my family, especially Susana.
That was how I ended up being a lawyer and working for my family’s firm. It was an exciting career, and I was good at it. Very good. I’d taken planned steps to get where I was today: a well-respected corporate attorney at a top firm in Buenos Aires, successful professionally and with a growing group of clients, ready to take the next step towards a picture-perfect life. Worthy of those society magazines my grandmother obsessed over.
I scanned the room, buying some more time. Maybe I would be able to come up with a solution to this. Surely I wasn’t getting married. That was clear to me—and apparently to Manuel and his lady friend too. But what was the best course of action? Calculated moves. Intentional steps.
I felt my phone buzz against my palm. I didn’t even need to look at the screen to guess who was calling.
“Hey,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Sorry abou—”
“What happened?” Catalina asked me, knowing exactly when to interrupt. On top of being my best friend for the past ten years, she was married to my brother. We met our first week of law school, forming a quick bond over how out of place we both felt. “Is it Susana?”
