Chapter 10 Only the First Day #2
Marisol's voice, sharp and concerned. Lying down on the office couch because I couldn't hold my head up anymore.
Cold cloths on my forehead, or maybe I imagined that.
And then... nothing. A black gap where memories should be, and then Friday morning, waking up alone on the couch with Marisol standing over me telling me my wife had come and gone.
I don't know which fragments belong before I fell asleep and which came after someone woke me. Guessing won't give me the missing hours back.
The coffee maker beeps. I pour a cup, then leave it on the counter untouched.
What do I actually remember?
I have a vague memory of asking for Sera. Or wanting to ask. I can't be sure I said it aloud.
What I know is that Marisol called her. Sera told me yesterday, and I barely heard anything after the word divorce. Before that, she told me about the workroom.
I close my eyes.
That memory comes back more easily than Thursday night does, which somehow makes it worse. I remember the crate on the desk. Ferrante's notes. The ache behind my eyes that had been building for hours. Marisol asking about the next morning.
I remember Sera's name and I remember saying no.
At the time, it had felt like one decision among twenty others. Marisol already knew the buyer. She already had the notes. She was already standing beside me in the middle of the problem.
Sera had been somewhere upstairs.
My wife.
The person who had spent weeks asking me to let her help.
Yesterday, standing at the Castille gate, she told me what she had heard from the hallway, and I finally heard myself from where she'd been standing. How quickly I decided she wasn't necessary to that part of my life.
I lean both hands against the kitchen counter.
She told me Marisol touched me that night too. Her hand on my arm, her fingers in my hair. I try to remember it and get almost nothing.
A vague sense of someone beside me. A hand, maybe. My head tipped back because I was too tired to hold it upright.
Sera remembered every detail.
For her, it became something she carried upstairs.
For me, it barely registered.
The realization sits heavily in my chest as I stare at the untouched coffee beside me. How many times did that happen after? How have I been so blind?
Now I wonder if silence was the first thing I lost.
And why would Marisol do that?
The question lodges in my brain like a splinter. If I was sick, really sick, calling my wife made sense. But Sera said Marisol wouldn't leave when she asked. Said she stood there with her hand on my shoulder, her hair against my skin, refusing to give us privacy.
That's not what you do when you're trying to help. That's what you do when you're trying to be seen.
I leave the coffee and go to find my father. He was awake in that room. He can tell me what he saw.
I find him on the shaded bench outside the packing shed, emptying grit from one of his walking shoes. He looks up when my shadow falls across the path, his expression guarded.
"Rafael." He sets his shoe on the paving. "You look terrible."
"I feel terrible." I stop beside the bench, out of the way of the morning deliveries. "I need to ask you about Friday morning. When you came to the office to check on me."
My father studies me for a long moment, his face unreadable. Then he moves his shoe to make room beside him. "Sit down."
I sit on the edge of the bench, too impatient to lean back.
"Your mother sent me," my father begins, resting his elbows on his knees. "Sera had come home to pack. Your mother told me to check on you while she helped her leave."
"And was I?" I lean forward, desperate for information I can't access on my own. "All right, I mean. What did you find?"
"You were on the couch." My father's voice is carefully neutral. "Sweating, shivering. Your skin was hot when I touched your forehead. I found a thermometer in the desk drawer and you had a fever. Not dangerous, but real."
"So I was actually sick." That matches what I remember, the heaviness, the sense that something was wrong with my body.
"You were." My father retrieves his shoe but leaves it unlaced. "Marisol was there when I arrived. She said she'd been looking after you, that you'd asked her to stay."
"Did I?" I try to remember asking anything, wanting anything except Sera. "I don't remember that."
"I don't know what you remember." My father pulls the laces tight. "I only know what I saw. You were sick. She was there. And your wife had already left."
"What else did you see?" I need every detail, every fragment he can give me. "Please. I'm trying to understand what happened."
My father pauses with one lace looped around his finger. "Your shirt was unbuttoned. Halfway down, like someone had been trying to cool you off. She was beside the couch. She moved when I came over to check on you."
The image lands in my stomach like a stone. I think about what Sera must have seen when she arrived, how it must have looked: me on the couch with my shirt open, Marisol's hands on my skin, her hair brushing against me. She had asked to be alone with me, and I hadn't even been able to answer her.
Did I tell Marisol to call Sera? Did I ask for my wife, and did Marisol decide that was the perfect moment to bring her to the office?
"I need to talk to her." I stand before my father has finished tying his shoe. "Marisol. I need to know what she did."
"Are you sure that's wise?" My father rises too, slower, steadier. "Right now, with everything so raw?"
"I need to know." I turn toward the downhill path. "I can't fix this if I don't understand what I'm fixing."
"Rafael." My father's voice stops me before I leave the shade. "Whatever you learn, it doesn't erase the months before. Marisol might have made things worse on Thursday night, but you were the one who let her into your marriage in the first place."
"I know." I turn back to face him, and I can feel the weight of that truth pressing down on my shoulders. "I'm not looking for an excuse. I'm looking for the whole picture."
My father nods once, a small gesture of acknowledgment that doesn't quite reach approval. I leave him on the bench and walk out into the morning sun, pulling out my phone as I go.
Marisol answers on the second ring.
"Rafael." Her voice is warm, concerned, exactly the tone she's used with me for months. "How are you feeling? I've been worried since Friday."
"I need to talk to you." I keep my voice neutral, professional. "Can you come to my office?"
"Of course. I'll be there in twenty minutes.
" The certainty of her answer makes me wonder how many arrangements she has dropped for me, and what she believed that bought her.
She hangs up before I can respond. I pocket my phone and walk toward the office where everything fell apart, trying to prepare myself for a conversation I'm not sure I'm ready to have.
***
Marisol arrives before I have decided how to begin. I watch her car pull up from my desk, where I've been sitting and failing to focus on anything except the couch against the wall and what it might have looked like on Thursday night.
She looks the same as always when she walks in, polished and professional, her dark hair pulled back from her face. She's carrying a folder of papers, probably estate business, but she sets it aside when she sees my expression.
"You look terrible." She perches on the edge of the chair across from my desk, crossing her legs at the ankle. "Have you been sleeping at all?"
"Not much." I don't invite her to sit more comfortably. I don't offer coffee. "I need you to tell me what happened on Thursday night."
"Thursday?" Her eyebrows draw together in concern that looks practiced now that I'm watching for it. "You were ill, Rafael. Don't you remember? You could barely stand by the time I realized how bad it was."
"I remember being sick." I fold my hands on the desk to keep them still. "I remember lying down on the couch. After that, things get fuzzy."
"That's the fever." Marisol leans forward slightly, her voice soft with sympathy. "You were disoriented. You kept asking for water, for cold cloths. I did what I could to help."
"Did I ask for Sera?" I leave the question between us without softening it. Marisol's expression flickers, something passing through her eyes too quickly for me to name.
"You might have." She sits back, recrossing her ankles. "You were saying a lot of things that didn't make sense. The fever was quite high."
"Sera told me you called her." I put my phone on the desk between us. "Used this to tell her I wasn't feeling well and she should come."
"I thought she should know." Marisol's voice is still calm, still reasonable. "You are her husband. If you were sick, she had a right to be informed."
"And when she arrived?" I watch Marisol's face carefully, looking for tells, for cracks in the performance. "What happened then?"
"She came in and saw you on the couch." Marisol's eyes meet mine, steady and clear. "I told her I was taking care of you. She seemed upset."
"Upset." The word is so inadequate it's almost funny. "She said you wouldn't leave when she asked. That you stayed in the room with your hand on my shoulder, refusing to give her privacy with her own husband."
"Someone had to look after you." A hint of steel enters Marisol's voice. "She's not qualified to handle a medical situation. I was concerned that if I left, no one would monitor your fever properly."
"I wasn't dying, Marisol. I had a fever." I can feel my temper rising and force it back down. "And my wife wasn't asking for medical advice. She was asking you to leave us alone."
"She's always been threatened by me." Marisol stands up, smoothing her skirt with practiced hands. "I've tried to be supportive, to help her see that our relationship is purely professional, but she refuses to understand."
"My shirt was open. Did you do that?" I glance at the couch, trying to recognize anything beyond the scraps I remember. The question stops her mid-motion. She looks at me, her mask slipping for just a moment before she recovers.