Chapter 41
Forty-One
ISABEL
Grief turns to anger the minute we step into the townhouse.
“How could you ambush me like that?” I yell at Mama, kicking my shoes off and not caring where they land.
“Isabel—”
“How could you hide this from me? How could you send me out there knowing she was my sister and not say a single thing? This whole time—this whole time, you knew, and you said nothing. Not when she bullied me in high school, not when she bullied me this summer.”
“Alvaro and I thought it would be best—”
“Fuck Alvaro! What the fuck does he know?”
Mama’s face is red. Tears fall from her bloodshot eyes.
“Isabel. Please. He might not have been present, but he’s provided for us all these years.”
I rear back as if I’d been slapped.
My tuition. This townhouse. I’ve always wondered how, even during the direst of times, we always made it out alive. I thought it was just Mama being a superhero. Now I know we were accepting handouts.
Mama cups my cheeks and brushes the hair away from my face.
“I was so young. It was my first job. I reported directly to his assistant, and somehow—somehow, I caught his eye. I’m not proud of it, anak.
He was married, and in the end, he chose his wife.
But if you ask me—if you ask me whether I’d do it all again, if it meant having you in my life, anak, I would. ”
“That’s not fair,” I say, backing away from her. “That’s not fair.” What about what I want? Don’t I deserve to be loved by both parents? To not be the inconvenient result of a humdrum affair? Something to pay off, so that Alvaro never has to lose a wink of sleep at night because of his guilt?
“We never had to do without because of him,” Mama says.
“He was always just one call away. We—we both decided it would be best for you to be raised away from that life. To lead a normal life, away from the pressures of being an Aranaz. But when he heard about your stay in the ward—” Mama chokes out a sob.
“We wanted you to have a break. He regretted all the lost time. He wanted to make it up to you, to give you your birth right.”
“Which is what?” I scoff. “Endless trauma from his legitimate daughter?”
“Isabel!”
“Why couldn’t I have lived a normal life with him in the picture? How hard would it have been to give me one Sunday—one bloody Sunday every month—just so that I knew I had a father, one who cared about me, even just a little bit? Why couldn’t he have owned up to me from the beginning? Why—why—”
Mama pulls me into her arms. I break down crying. Hurt turns to anger and right back to hurt in a never-ending grief cycle.
“I know, anak. I know,” Mama says. “I’m so sorry. You’re right. We failed you.”
Words burst out of me, but never enough to form a full sentence. “How could you—? How am I supposed to—?”
I’m sick to my stomach, disgusted by the reality of my situation.
My whole life is a lie. I’m not who I thought I was.
I’m not simply Vanessa Martinez’s daughter.
I am the scion, however illegitimate, of Alvaro Aranaz.
Everything I am, everything I have, is because of him.
The worst part is that, no matter which way you look at it, that is who I’ve always been.
Everything else I thought before were half-truths.
Isabel Martinez Aranaz. Daughter to Alvaro. Younger sister to Natalia.
The thought sickens me. I press a hand to my chest and gag. I barely make it to the upstairs toilet before I hurl.