Page 57 of After the Fire
I looked down and scratched my forehead. I needed a minute to think. At this point it was clear to me there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t tell the truth. No, that was not possible. That was my biggest fear, being caught in a lie, humiliated. But I could always say he was confirmed dead. Request the death certificate. Bury him. Something.
“¿Qué hago, Pedro?”What should I do? WhatcouldI do? I closed my eyes and took a big breath, willing everything to go away.
“Susana, yo te lo dije,” he said. I told you so. He had warned me. But I didn’t listen. My stomach was in knots. And the only way out of this was straight ahead.
“Fine, I’ll figure it out.” I turned around, headed toward the door and up the stairs. He followed behind me, his steps quick, trying to catch up with me before I took the first step up. “Leave,” I said, without even looking at him.
I heard him sigh and stop right behind me. As I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the door close. And the last card that was still standing at the top of my brittle house of cards flew away in the wind.
28
THE FIGHT
They saythat time flies when you’re having fun. But what happens when you were stuck in a rut, in a life that didn’t belong to you, in a town that is the exact opposite of what you always knew and a place that was making you doubt everything you ever thought you wanted?
That was how I found myself. Holding my phone a few inches away from my face, frantically grabbing all my clothes while I spewed incoherent sentences at my brother.
“How is it possible? She’s not due for another three weeks!” I said as I walked into the bathroom to collect all the items that littered the countertop. I left my phone on the granite facing up while I quickly zipped my toiletry bag, then headed out the door into the room.
“Victoria,” I heard my brother say. He was oddly calm, given the circumstances. I walked back in the bathroom to grab my phone and saw him laughing a little at the screen.
“What?” I barked but didn’t look at him while packing everything in my suitcase. There was strategy, and this was not it. This was pure chaos.
“It’s been four weeks. She’s actually overdue.” He laughed out loud, and a snort escaped him.
Four weeks? “How?” I whispered. “Already?”
I could see him moving inside his apartment, Cata sitting still on the couch. “What are you doing?” she said loudly over my brother’s shoulder. “Don’t you dare come home, Victoria.”
“Of course I’m coming home. Do you think I would miss this?” Not for the world. Not for my best friend and my only brother. She needed me there. I needed to be there for them. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, end of day. I love you.”
I kept pacing around my hotel room, my thoughts running wild in my head, my heart thumping in anticipation. I couldn’t focus on what needed to be done. I just wanted to transport myself to another time and place, somewhere that would take me immediately to them.
Everything came crashing back down on me: Susana, Manuel, this baby. I needed to be back there with them, fixing my life. This, this was a mere fantasy. Something I had constructed out of thin air. It wasn’t foundational, and it would never be, because this wasn’t me.
This is you, the little voice in my head said.This is much more you than the old Victoria.
Maybe that voice was right. But maybe Susana and Manuel were also right. I was no one without my family. I was nothing without my name, my profession. So making the choice to go back for the first time in—apparently—four weeks was the right one. It felt right.
“What are you doing?” a voice said behind me. My back went ramrod straight, my chest heavy with guilt. “Where are you going?”
His gaze was soft, almost like someone had hurt him. Me? I turned around to look at him. He was looking all over my room, to my half-packed suitcase and then back to me. His voice was rough, and his hair was wilder than ever, like he’d run his fingers through it almost obsessively. He took a step towards me, and the heat from his body almost made me melt.
“I need to go,” I said. I turned back, unable to look at him, and continued folding my clothes and putting them inside my suitcase. He was silent and motionless behind me. The only hint he was still there was the faint sound of his even breathing. “I spoke to my grandmother,” I added as I watched the breeze hit the tree branches outside the window delicately, almost teasing. In the time since I had arrived in this town, the colors had begun to shift from green to yellow to deep, rich oranges and reds. A telltale sign of change.
“What did she say?” he asked. I turned to face him, searching his face for anything that would clue me in on his feelings. “What did you say to her?”
I smiled softly at his interrogation, one of his many quirks, one that made him the man he was: caring and detailed and interested. He did this thing where he would lean, just so, into a person when he was talking to them. It was probably a natural reaction to his curiosity and his interest. Something that in the past was annoying to me, but now it was charming. And knowing his family and this town and how he shined, it was everything.
“You know, Susana is the only mother I really ever knew. My mom died when I was three years old in a freak accident —she was taking some boxes up to the attic and fell backwards and broke her neck—and I would give anything to be able to hug her again, even just for a few minutes.” A new realization, definitely. I missed her so much. And it had gotten to the point where I didn’t know if the memories I had of her now were actual memories or if it was a narrative I had constructed throughout the years, of things I imagined my mom could be, of the ways she would treat me and the relationship I would have had with her. “But I just want my mom.”
Santiago moved closer to me until I could feel his breath on my face. He reached one of his hands towards me and laced our fingers together. I sighed.
“Where is this coming from?” he asked softly. His eyes were still moving around, searching my face, maybe in confusion at the scene in front of him.
My time in this town was coming to an end, my body itching to go back and figure out the rest of my life, to go back to how things were. Back to my friend and her baby, to my family—as flawed as they were—and to life as I knew it. I wanted to go back to my old self, the one who hated this man for being such a natural fit, the one who didn’t know he was so caring, loving. The one who didn’t know him, who was sure they would never be a good fit.
And it was completely overwhelming because being there in that town with him made it abundantly clear that I could never go back to how things were before.
