Page 60 of After the Fire
“I…” I didn’t know. I took out all my anger on him, and in the hours since it all fell apart, I realized that maybe… “Susana is expecting me for dinner tonight. She’s going to berate me until the end of time. Fucking destroy me.”
“Yeah, okay, but you can hold your own.” And she was right. “Why are you trying to defend yourself if you did nothing wrong?”
“She has a hold on me. It’s the only way I can explain it.” Catalina knew exactly what I was talking about. She had witnessed years’ worth of interactions between Susana and me. My grandmother never liked her, said she was a bad influence on me, but the real reason was because her parents were “the help.” Her mother was a housekeeper, and her father was a mechanic. “You know that she owns me.”
“Vicky.” Her eyes were soft now, but her face was serious. She sat up and put her hands on her lap. “I think it’s enough, don’t you?”
Maybe.
“Maybe,” I replied quickly. “But there isn’t much I can do. What are my options, really, at this point?” Susana was my family.
“Just because she’s family doesn’t mean you have to keep her.” She cocked her head. “You have to be honest with yourself. There’s a thick line between loyalty and respect. Just because you are her family and expected to be loyal, doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t respect you—or anyone, for that matter.”
“I disrespected her, my whole family. I disrespected you guys too.” I shrugged. “My actions have consequences.”
“Why do you think that? You didn’t do anything wrong. And please get it out of your thick head that you disrespected your brother and me,” she said, confused. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but that fucking dumbass you called your boyfriend has moved on, couldn’t care less about what people say. He is the one that disrespected everyone.” She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders. “And one last thing: no one gives a shit about what happened. Susana is going to make you believe that she’s been humiliated, that she can’t be seen in public. But guess what? You’re old news.” She shrugged and looked at me, almost apologetic in her words.
I blinked at her several times, trying to control my emotions. She was so bold, so brave, getting what she wanted and needed. She had a thriving career, an incredible new family. She and my brother couldn’t care less what my grandmother thought of them, still loving each other and getting married despite her very vocal objections. Why couldn’t I be the same way?
“What really happened with Santiago?”
“He basically said the same thing you just said to me,” I told her, tears in my eyes. The baby started squirming in my arms. She scrunched her little nose and opened her eyes. My eyes welled with the sudden realization that the things I wanted so desperately and could have with him were just out of reach and drifting away by the second. “Except that I seem to be stuck to you, and now you go have a fucking cute baby, and how am I supposed to leave you like this? I’m only friends with you for your baby, so we’re clear.”
I was full on crying, the tears streaming down my face and out of control. Catalina had only seen me cry once, the one and only time I failed a test. It was early on in law school when everything was new and overwhelming.
“What? I’m confused.”
“Same,” I huffed. “I don’t know where I went wrong. One day it was all perfect—perfect—and then the next, I’m picking a fight because he dared to tell me something we all know is true. Did I mess it up?”I studied her face, hoping she could give me the answer. “What do I do?”
She looked down at her baby and then back up at me, her eyes shining with unshed tears. We were so close, our relationship so intimate, like we were sisters that found each other in their early twenties and never lost each other again. “You need to allow yourself to want things, Victoria,” she said. “You have gone your whole life living it according to what others think is best for you, and you’ve been unable to take any single step without approval. Which is fine for some. But that isn’t you.”
Tears were falling down my cheeks, and my mouth was dry. She was right, of course. And she’d seen it firsthand with Manuel. How everything I had wanted had to be approved first.
“You are the only thing that’s stopping you. Not your grandmother or your job or whatever the fuck is back in this city. It’s you,” she said. “You need to go to him. He’s right for you.”
“I don’t even know if he’ll want me back, Cata. I pushed him away, and maybe I deserve it.”
“My god, stop being so dramatic.” She rolled her eyes and reached for her baby. “You know how to find him, Vicky.”
I laughed, the sound coming out wet with the tears I’d been shedding. My brother chose that moment to come back, two large cups of coffee in one hand and a bag of pastries in the other.
“Not exactly Susana-level but will do for an impromptu five o’clock tea,” he said, a big smile on his lips. He had been defying Susana ever since we were teenagers. Missing curfew, hanging out with the wrong crowds, doing everything in his power to make her angry.
“I don’t know how you did it.” I turned to face him as he sat on the couch in the sitting area and put what he had brought with him on the coffee table. “Survived so many years of her torment.”
He smiled wide and looked at his wife right next to me, and she replied with a grin to match his. “Easy,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee and wincing, either at the taste or at the temperature. “You learn to tune it out,¿no, Cata?”
I could feel her nod right next to me, the smile still wide on her face. “After a while, you actually start to enjoy it. She gets tripped over the tiniest things.” She laughed, the sound startling the baby and making her wail in surprise. “Shhh, baby, it’s okay. You’ll learn in time too.”
They made it look so easy. My brother sitting there, sipping on his coffee and completely enamored with his girls. Cata, a powerhouse and taking the court system by storm, but totally natural in this new role as a mother.
“Victoria.” My brother interrupted my thoughts. “I don’t know why you think you owe her anything, but you don’t. She has proven time and again that she’s not the person she pretends to be, and she only cares about herself. Fine, she helped raise us, I’ll give her that, and she did a fucking tremendous job when it comes to you, but that’s it.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that to me?”
“Because it’s the truth,” Catalina chimed in. “There’s nothing wrong with making informed decisions.” She rolled her eyes because of course she would say that, and everyone in the room knew that too. “But living your life like this? No, Victoria, that’s no way to live.”
“Easy for you to say,” I added, but it sounded childish coming out of my mouth. Which was not my intention at all. I wanted to scream, wanted to tell them that I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.
