Page 38 of After the Fire
Was he really a good man? So far, he had been thebestman I knew, going above and beyond to be there for me despite our complicated past. He was the same way with his family and his community. He was solid. I didn’t want to keep comparing him to Manuel, but it was automatic, inevitable. He was the complete opposite, and for some reason I couldn’t understand, he wanted me.Me.
But also, who sent me that photo? I would probably need to talk to Catalina about this, see if she could help me figure it out.
Almost like I had conjured it by magic, my phone pinged with an incoming text from Catalina. I didn’t even read the text before clicking on her name and calling her directly.
“Hey,” she said, her mouth full of who knows what. She was very into baking and was probably having one of her famous (to me, at least) sugar cookies. “What are you up to? I’m bored.” She rolled her eyes and pouted like a small child.
“How are you feeling?” She looked tired. “You look tired.”
“Yeah, no shit,” she said and laughed. “Your brother is making me crazy with all the hovering. He stopped going to work.”
I smiled at the thought of my brother taking care of her. They were so good for each other, and it was so disgusting I grimaced. “Why?”
“He says he’s on maternity leave,” she huffed. “I want to be left alone and be allowed to binge watch shows and obsess over unsolved mysteries by myself. But he’s around all the time.”
“Ay, amiga.” She sounded annoyed, but I was sure she was enjoying it. It was a matter of weeks until their lives changed forever, and I’m sure she was soaking it up. “He went to see your dad the other day,” she said nonchalantly.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “And?”
“He’s fine, same as always.” My father’s alcoholism had gotten worse throughout the years. It wasn’t terribly bad now, but Catalina had seen how it progressed, first as a friend and later, as family. It wasn’t bad, really, only mildly inconveniencing, especially because Susana had done a lot of crisis management around him. A few years back, he stopped being the lead attorney at the firm, and between Pedro, my brother, and me, we were able to take over and manage just fine. “Have you decided when you’re coming home?”
Home.
“I’ve been thinking—”
“Oh boy.” She laughed, and I saw her moving about on the other end of the call. She placed the phone on the kitchen countertop and shuffled over somewhere in close proximity. The sound of a cabinet opening and closing was clear over her voice. “It’s always dangerous when you do that because you’re already too smart for the rest of the world when you arenotpurposely thinking. I can’t imagine what you’re up to now.”
I smiled. She was, possibly, my biggest fan. “Ay, callate.” I took a big breath, afraid of what would be coming out of my mouth, but I wanted to run it by her nonetheless. “Do you think that it was Manuel who actually sent me that stupid photo?”
She stopped moving. The silence on the other end had me looking at my phone to check if the call had dropped. “Um, why?”
“I don’t know. I had lunch with Santiago’s sister today, and she asked me who sent the photo, and obviously I didn’t have an answer because with everything going on, it never even registered to check, but she’s kinda right. Maybe I should be checking?”
“Have you been on social media recently?”
If I was good at googling, Cata was a master sleuth. If she couldn’t find any information, she knew someone who would help her. Exactly like she was doing with my grandfather’s information.
“What?” I sighed. “Just tell me.”
“He moved to Australia. Allegedly”—such a lawyer—“he accepted a promotion within his company three months ago and starts a new role next week.”
“What?” I narrowed my eyes, trying to map everything out in my head. “He never said anything.” I shook my head. “Wait, what? I…”
That didn’t make any sense. Because if he had accepted a job offer, he would have said so. But also, he knew I would never move, so he just went ahead and did it behind my back? I tried thinking of conversations we’d had, about his insistence on going to Australia for our honeymoon. Was he going to try to convince me to move there once I visited?
“I’m confused.”
“You and everyone else, buddy,” she added, her tone chirpy and clear.
“Oh my god,” I whispered, the realization tight and heavy in my chest. “Oh my god.”
I heard Catalina’s deep sigh on the other end. I could picture her shaking her head in disappointment and closing her eyes in slow motion, like she did many, many times when someone had fucked up.
“Yep,” she said, popping thep. “It’s fucked up.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
