Chapter 37 #2
Lucia stared intently out the window, tapping her fingers against her knee. I realized with mild discomfort I’d never spent time alone with a child before.
“What’s your favorite color?” she asked suddenly.
What was it with De La Vega women and their damn colors?
“Yellow,” I admitted.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s boring.”
“What’s yours then?” I asked.
“Rainbow.”
I glanced at her through the mirror. “But . . . that’s more than one color.”
“I know,” she said smugly, like I’d walked into the trap on my own. “That’s why it’s the best.”
Hard to argue with logic like that.
We stopped at a red light, and she watched me carefully. “You don’t smile a lot, do you?”
“Not usually.”
“You should,” she said simply. “It would make your face look nicer.”
“You think so?”
She nodded. “Valentina says smiling is good for you.”
“Does she now?”
“Uh-huh. She smiles a lot. Even when she’s sad.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “Do you think she’s sad often?” I asked.
Lucia shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes. But I can tell you make her smile. Even if you don’t smile back.”
That was a lot of insight from someone so small. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded. I didn’t know if I deserved credit for making Valentina smile—for anything—but I was glad she did.
“I think she likes you,” Lucia whispered.
“I hope so,” I said before I could stop myself.
“Do you like her too?”
Leave it to a child to drop the kind of question adults took years to ask.
“Valentina’s a good person.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She sounded just like her aunt. Wouldn’t let it go. Somehow I found myself answering honestly—probably more honestly than was smart.
“Yes,” I admitted slowly. “I do.”
Lucia made this little humming sound. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
It wasn’t really a fair question, because yes, obviously, Valentina was pretty. More than pretty. “Pretty” didn’t even begin to cover it, honestly, but I wasn’t about to explain that to her.
So I just said, “She’s very pretty.”
Lucia didn’t react right away, only stared out the window as if she were carefully plotting something. I thought briefly the interrogation was over.
But then she asked, “Does she know you like her?”
Did Valentina know?
She probably did, but we’d never really talked about it. Not in actual words. Valentina and I talked in arguments and sarcasm, sometimes silence. Anyway, it seemed dangerous to admit something like that out loud.
“I haven’t told her.”
She frowned, clearly disappointed in me. “Why not?”
“Sometimes adults don’t say everything they’re thinking,” I explained carefully.
“That’s weird,” she argued. “You should just tell her.”
“Maybe,” I conceded, suppressing the smile that threatened to slip. She was so direct, just like Valentina. “It’s not always easy to say things like that.”
Lucia looked skeptical. “Why?”
“Because people don’t always know how someone else will react. That can make them nervous.”
She tilted her head slightly, puzzled. “Are you nervous?”
I stared straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel tighter. How the hell did conversations with kids always end up like this? Awkward silences, questions I couldn’t answer, honesty I definitely didn’t want to give.
This was why I’d spent years avoiding children. They were worse than lawyers. They were small, unpredictable interrogators capable of cutting straight to the point.
Was I nervous?
“Nervous” wasn’t the right word. “Nervous” implied something fixable, temporary, like public speaking or walking into court.
This wasn’t nerves. This was something else entirely.
Something unsettling and persistent. Something that had gotten under my skin and was staying there, quietly changing things I didn’t ask to have changed.
It wasn’t as simple as “nervous,” but there wasn’t exactly a better word.
“I don’t think nervous is the right word,” I tried, awkwardly clearing my throat. “Maybe cautious.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She tilted her head, skeptical. “Isn’t that just a fancy word for nervous?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I disagree,” I muttered, tapping my fingers against the wheel.
Lucia made a frustrated little noise from the back seat, clearly annoyed by my careful word choices. “Why don’t you just tell her?”
“It’s . . . I don’t think it would help.”
“Help what?” she asked immediately, leaning forward again. “Does something need helping?”
Jesus. How did kids keep doing that? Twisting your words around until you had nowhere safe to hide.
“No, nothing needs helping,” I corrected quickly, trying to sound calm and failing miserably. “It’s just that Valentina already knows . . . enough.”
Lucia gave me a confused look. “What’s enough?”
“You know,” I said, vaguely waving a hand. “Enough.”
She shook her head firmly. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
She wasn’t wrong. But explaining exactly how deep this rabbit hole went was even worse. I couldn’t exactly say, “Listen, kid, your aunt makes me question my entire life, and every time I look at her I realize I’ve made a thousand mistakes I can’t fix.”
Instead I offered something safer. “Sometimes adults keep things to themselves. It’s better that way.”
Lucia frowned harder, clearly unimpressed. “Better for who?”
Good question. Definitely not me.
“Just . . . better,” I said weakly.
She sighed heavily, loudly, dramatically—exactly the way Valentina would’ve done. “I think adults just make everything complicated for no reason.”
I rubbed a hand over my jaw, feeling tired. “You might be right about that.”
“Then just tell her,” she said simply, as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
I glanced at her through the mirror again, wondering when I’d lost control of this conversation. “I’ll think about it.”
“No, you won’t,” she muttered, unimpressed. “You’re just saying that so I stop asking.”
And damn, if she wasn’t right again.
“Maybe,” I admitted finally, feeling oddly defeated. “But let’s keep that between us, okay?”
She thought about it for a second before nodding. “Okay. But just for now.”
I opened my mouth to respond—maybe to argue, maybe to agree—but we were already pulling into the hospital parking lot, and Lucia had thrown open the door, hopping out like she hadn’t just shaken my entire day upside down.
I sat there for another second, engine still running, watching her race toward the hospital entrance without a backward glance. Kids. They just threw out statements that wrecked your reality and then skipped off without a second thought.
But the problem was, Lucia had a point, and the bigger problem was, now I was going to think about it. All damn day.
“Come on,” she said confidently, taking my hand and leading me through the hospital entrance like it was her second home. “I know where Abuela’s room is.”
I followed her through winding hallways, up elevators, past nurses and carts, until Lucia finally stopped at a room near the end of a corridor. She walked straight in. Kid was confident—I had to give her that. I just stood there in the hallway, hands shoved into my pockets, feeling awkward as hell.
I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.
Plus, meeting Valentina’s mother wasn’t something we’d ever talked about. Not directly anyway. It felt personal. Private. Like I was crossing a line, even though I’d already blurred most of the others without realizing it.
So I stayed outside, leaning against the wall, staring down at shoes I should probably polish soon.
Time moved differently here. Slower. The hallway smelled too sterile, and all around me there was this faint hum—fluorescent lights, nurses talking down the hall, machines beeping somewhere I couldn’t see.
It got under my skin, thinking about it—whether the treatments were working, whether I’d made the right call handling everything on my own.
I didn’t want thanks or gratitude; I just wanted her life to be easier, even if she’d never know it was me who’d done it.
Eventually, the door opened, and Valentina stepped out, letting it close softly behind her. She seemed surprised to see me still standing there. I wondered if I should’ve left, if she’d wanted time alone. I was probably overthinking it.
“Hey,” she said with a sigh of relief, as if she were excited to see me. “Thank you so much. The meeting ran long.”
I nodded. “No problem.”
“I mean it,” she said, and I could tell she did. “I had to meet with the finance department.” She tilted her head back against the wall and closed her eyes for a second. “Again. Because apparently, their entire communication system is held together with duct tape and blind optimism.”
I waited. She wasn’t done.
“They told me originally the grant was denied. That was what they said. So I started spiraling, trying to figure out how to tell Isa it was approved without telling her I was lying. Practicing it in my head like some kind of script. I even thought about getting a fake letter drafted.” She rubbed her temple, frustrated.
“And now? They tell me the grant was approved. Weeks ago. That was why the payments weren’t going through—the grant is covering it.
And no one thought to update us? Like we should be grateful someone’s paying and not worry about who or how or why. ”
I stayed quiet.
Because yeah, I was the who, the how, the why.
I wasn’t going to tell her that. Not because I didn’t want her to know, but because she’d take it as some kind of favor, leverage, maybe even presume it was because I felt bad for her, when really, it was just . . . what you did when someone mattered to you.
She sighed again, softer this time. “Anyway. Thank you. For stepping in and picking Lucia up. You didn’t have to, but I’m glad you did.”
That one landed weird. Because I did have to. Maybe not officially. Maybe not in any way she could point to and say, “That’s your job.” But I’d made it mine somewhere along the line.
“You gonna be okay, or do you need me to stay?” I asked.