Chapter 24
Emma
“You’re being weird.” I looked at Lili, who was holding her hamburger and staring at me. She gestured toward my tacos with her chin. “You haven’t touched your food.”
The thought of food made my stomach churn. “I guess I’m not hungry,” I said.
Lili rolled her eyes. She already hated that I ate “like a bird” but actually not eating in front of her must have been truly insulting. “You’ll make no muscle gains in the gym if you keep on like this,” she said.
I couldn’t care less about my progress in the gym right now, but I couldn’t exactly tell Lili that. She dove headfirst into training me, like she was on a mission to prove something to someone, but my mind had been…preoccupied for the last few days. Lili had definitely noticed.
She was the closest thing I had to a best friend. “Can you keep a secret?” I asked, glancing at David, who was a few tables away, inhaling his own burger.
Lili’s eyes went wide. “A secret? From my brother?”
I shrugged. “From everyone.”
My sister-in-law frowned, and I couldn’t blame her. Secrets were a way of life for the Castillos, but usually they meant nothing good. This isn’t exactly good either, I thought, not all of it, anyway. “I’ll do my best,” Lili said cautiously.
It wasn’t a promise, but I appreciated her honesty. “I’m pregnant,” I said, and Lili absolutely squealed and pulled me into a bone-cracking hug.
“You had me so worried!” she said, rocking me back and forth.
“I thought you were going to say something awful!” She pulled back, grinning widely, and for a moment, I let myself feel the joy that I’d locked away after my fight with Angel.
“I can’t believe that I’m going to be an aunt. I didn’t think it would ever happen.”
I scoffed at that. “I’m fairly certain that your brother’s duties as the next-in-line was to have babies.”
“But can you imagine Angel as a father?” Lili countered, and then it hit her just how rude the words were. “I mean, he’s going to be great. I’m not worried or anything —”
I waved her off. “I can’t imagine it either,” I said, “but I can’t really imagine being a mother either.”
“You must have thought about it though?”
I shrugged and picked at my salad. Even though I had ordered it without onions, I could smell the sharp tang, and it was making my stomach flip inside out. Was that morning sickness? Or anxiety? “I want to be as good as my mother,” I said. “She was…amazing.”
“Your best friend?” Lili asked, and she sounded genuinely curious. She doesn’t remember her mother, I thought. She was just a baby when their mother killed herself; she never had the opportunity to know what a mother truly was like.
I shook my head. “When I was growing up, my mother was very firm about being a mom, if that makes sense. She loved me more than anyone in the entire world and told me so, but she also knew when it was time to be a parent.” I smiled.
“There were times when I was a teenager where I really thought I hated her, you know? We got into so many fights…but I always knew that she loved me. I never questioned that. When she got sick, and I had to take care of her, that’s when we became friends.
” Tears stung my eyes, and I wiped my face. “I miss her.”
Lili, bless her, had the decency not to look completely uncomfortable. “I think that’s natural,” she said. “To want your mother at a time like this. I know I wanted mine when —” Her words cut off in a gasp, like she hadn’t meant to say that.
I glanced at David, who was staring at his phone; he was either scrolling through videos, or he was on a dating app. Still distracted, thankfully. I scooted closer to Lili. “Have you been pregnant before?” I asked.
Lili wouldn’t look at me; she was suddenly fascinated by the half-eaten burger on her plate.
“When I was in high school, I went to a magnet school that had dorms,” she said softly, keeping her voice pitched low so that David wouldn’t overhear.
“I met a boy, thought I was in love, and I got pregnant.”
“What happened?”
Lili’s smile turned sad, almost haunted.
“He and I made all these plans about our future. We were going to run away together and raise a little family.” She rolled her eyes.
“God, I was such a child.” She glanced over at me, and there was something heartbreaking in that look.
I wanted to hug her, but I kept my seat.
We couldn’t draw anyone’s attention to us, after all.
“My son died while I was giving birth,” she said.
“The cord had been wrapped around his neck, and it was too late…I didn’t even get to hold him. ”
My chest ached for her. Without realizing it, my hand had drifted to my belly, and I had to actively put my hand back where it was on the table. “You didn’t tell anyone?” I asked.
“And risk Padre murdering him?” Lili shook her head.
“I took it as a sign from the Universe that I needed to get my shit together, you know? I broke up with him, worked hard to graduate early, and then I came home.” She took a shuddery breath — the first sign that the story was affecting her in any way.
“We didn’t even hold a funeral for him, you know?
He said his family would arrange for a cremation, and that was that. ”
“Do you —?” I didn’t know how to ask my question.
“Do I still think about him?” Lili guessed, and I nodded. “I think about my son every day,” she said. “I wonder who he would have looked like, what kind of person he would have become; I wonder what kind of mother I would have been.”
I reached over and took her hand then. It wasn’t the hug I wanted to give, but she wrapped her fingers around mine and squeezed hard. “You would have been a good mother,” I said.
She scoffed. “You’re a liar,” she said. “I was a teenager who didn’t know anything about anything; I would have been a disaster…but thank you for saying it anyway.” She squeezed my hand again. “You’re going to be a good mother.”
I wanted to tell her that she was going to be an amazing aunt — she seemed to be expecting it — but the words were stuck in my throat.
I wasn’t planning on raising this child within a thousand miles of the Castillos; I couldn’t lie and tell this woman that she was going to get to be an amazing aunt because she would never get the chance.
My body ached at the memory of Angel holding me this morning.
Why did he demand that I look at him? Why couldn’t he keep it impersonal, like it had been when he first pulled me into that bathroom?
Every time with him was intense, but his demand that I keep my eyes on him had made my blood boil.
In the end, he’d still been Angel. The moment he was done, the wall had come back up, and he’d left me there alone.
“What’s wrong?” Lili asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said and tried to take a bite of my salad, but the smell of hidden onions made me gag.
“Emma,” Lili said, “you are a terrible liar. What’s going on?”
“If I say it, then it’s real, and I’m not sure I want it to be yet, okay?”
Lili’s brow furrowed. “Tell me,” she demanded.
It was the same expression she had when I told her about Tío Andre pinning me to the wall.
Unlike Angel, Lili had been sympathetic.
Horrified and angry, yes, but not at me.
She was doubly upset when I told her how Angel reacted, but I had made her promise not to say anything to him.
He was already mad at me; I didn’t want to make it worse by letting him know that I had told anyone.
“I can’t stay.”
The words were out, and some of the weight that had been on my shoulders relaxed…until I saw the look on Lili’s face. It was a cross between fury and horror. “What do you mean?”
“The day I took the pregnancy test, your uncle assaulted me,” I said, “and then your brother blamed me for being in the wrong part of the house. How on earth could I raise a baby in that place? How could any good mother raise a child there?”
“I was raised in that house,” Lili said. “My brothers were raised in that house.”
“No offense,” I said, knowing full well that she was going to be offended, “but you were raised by a housekeeper after your mother killed herself. Your father had Angel shoot someone before he graduated from high school. I wouldn’t call that a shining example of childhood.”
Lili’s already stormy expression soured all the more. “We aren’t bad people.”
“You’re not good either,” I argued, “and that’s not an indictment on you or your family because I know there are things that I’ve come to realize about myself that I don’t like, but…
I want my child to have a normal upbringing.
I want them to go to school and make friends and not worry that their parents are going to be murdered by a rival cartel. ”
“Angel would burn the world down looking for you,” Lili said after a long pause, “and that’s only if you don’t get killed by the Rojas first.”
“Help me get out of Miami,” I said, repeating the same plea from the day we met. “I’ll leave the state entirely; no one will see me again.”
Lili shook her head. “You’d be dead before you got out of the county.” She took my hand back in hers. “Don’t do this. Please, please don’t do this.”
I shook her off. “It’s fine if you won’t help me,” I said and took a sip of my sweet tea. The sugar nearly made me gag. “But you can’t tell anyone.”
“I can’t promise that, Emma.”
The waiter appeared at the table, cutting us both off. “Can I get you anything —?”
I pulled out my credit card. “Close us out?” I looked at Lili. “We’re ready.” The waiter took my card and scurried away.
“Emma —”
I held up a hand. “I’m going to say this, and I don’t want you to think I’m doing it out of ill will, okay? But if you say anything to Angel about this, I won’t hesitate to tell Angel about your son.”
Real fear flashed across her face. “Emma, you can’t tell him. If they knew —”
“Then, don’t say a word,” I said. It was mutually assured destruction to threaten her like this, and our friendship would likely never be the same…
but I couldn’t risk her running to her older brother.
Angel wasn’t likely to hurt me if he knew that I was pregnant, but what I was planning was a betrayal, and there would be no way for him to look the other way.
As we left the restaurant, David leading for once, Lili touched my arm. “Think this through,” she begged. “Don’t do anything hasty.”
I wasn’t being hasty, and I had thought it through, but I didn’t need to tell her that. “I will,” I said instead. From the look on her face, she knew that I was lying.