Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Maxwell parked on the side of his parents’ house around dinnertime on Friday night.
After entering through the front door, he heard shrieks of laughter upstairs and the thump of pattering feet.
Then a deeper voice, which he knew belonged to his father, Benicio, doing something a man of his age probably shouldn’t be doing with his grandchildren.
Following his nose, Maxwell entered the kitchen. Rodolfo was at the stove, wearing his uniform of a gray chef’s coat, moving fluidly between the appliances with the expertise of years of practice.
Whatever he was cooking smelled delicious, the scent of savory herbs perfuming the air and the unmistakable sweet aroma of his lemon cake. The family was eating good tonight.
“Maxwell,” Rodolfo said when he saw him, a smile breaking out on his face. “I did not know you were coming for dinner.”
“Neither did anyone else.” Maxwell walked deeper into the kitchen. “Whatever you’re making smells delicious.”
“Your parents have the grandchildren, and the kids wanted breakfast for dinner. We have herb-crusted salmon, fried potatoes, bacon, and a frittata.” Rodolfo adjusted the heat under the potatoes.
Whatever the chef made, Maxwell already knew would be well done, but he missed his mole poblano most of all. During his residency, Rodolfo had overnighted the dish to Maxwell, and eating it had been like a spiritual experience.
“Do I smell lemon cake?” he asked hopefully.
“Almost finished,” Rodolfo confirmed.
“My nieces and nephews are going to have to fight me for that cake.”
Rodolfo chuckled. “There are two in the oven. Plenty for everyone.”
Before Maxwell could respond, small feet raced across the floor accompanied by giggling and screaming, much closer this time. His father’s delighted, booming voice speaking in rapid Spanish joined the noise.
“How long will the kids be here?” Maxwell asked.
“The kids” belonged to Audra and Damon and included their biological three and the two they had adopted.
“All weekend. Only the little ones. Kerilyn isn’t here,” Rodolfo said, referring to Audra’s oldest. “Your father is enjoying himself. Keeps him young,” Rodolfo said, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Until his back goes out chasing them around,” Maxwell said.
“Then the senora will fix him up,” Rodolfo said with confidence.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Rose, Maxwell’s mother, entered the kitchen carrying his two-year-old niece on her hip. She stopped short when she saw him.
“Maxwell, honey, I didn’t know you were coming over.” Her face broke into a warm and genuine smile.
“I had to come see my favorite girl,” Maxwell said.
Rose Santana was a tiny woman, barely over five feet with mahogany skin and her gray-streaked hair brushed away from her face and onto her shoulders.
She laughed, walking over and kissing his cheek. “You always know what to say. When did you get here?” She adjusted the little girl on her hip, Audra’s youngest.
“A few minutes ago. I haven’t been here long.” He looked at his niece, who examined him with serious brown eyes. “What are you looking at, girl? Come here.” He extended his hands, and she immediately reached for him. He lifted her into his arms and tickled her, making her giggle.
“She’s been attached to me all day. You show up and she’s gone.”
“That’s the power he has over women,” Rodolfo said without turning around.
Under normal circumstances, Maxwell would laugh and accept the compliment, but due to what was happening in his life with Jasmine, the comment didn’t sound complimentary.
“You’re staying for dinner, aren’t you?” Rose asked. “Rodolfo, is there enough?”
“Yes, ma’am. There is plenty.”
“We’re having breakfast for dinner because that’s what the kids wanted,” his mother explained.
“Rodolfo told me,” Maxwell said.
His mother looked at him with an assessing gaze and opened her mouth to say something but then apparently changed her mind.
“Looks like dinner’s almost ready. Go find your father before he injures himself running around with those kids.
Let them know it’s almost time to eat and they need to wash up. ”
Maxwell handed back his niece. “Yes, ma’am.”
He found his father and the kids upstairs in the wide hallway. His father was on the floor, wrestling with Damon, Jr., Tracy, and their three-year-old brother.
As soon as his father saw him, a smile broke out across his face. “Maxwell!”
“Uncle Maxwell!” the kids shrieked, running toward him.
“What are you guys doing? Beating up Abuelo?” he asked, giving them all hugs in turn.
“Yes,” Tracy said, giggling.
Holding on to the wall, Benicio pushed carefully to his feet with a groan.
“Dad...” Maxwell said in a disapproving voice.
“I know, I know. I should not be down on the floor with them. Your mother has already given me the lecture,” Benicio said in accented English.
He was still an imposing figure in his sixties. Tall, broad-shouldered, his gray hair and beard neat and trim.
“She told me to come find you. Dinner’s almost ready and we need to wash up.”
“You heard your uncle,” Benicio said, with a clap of his hands. “Everybody use the bathroom downstairs. Vamos!”
The kids raced ahead of them.
“I remember a time when we weren’t allowed to run down the stairs or run through the house, for that matter,” Maxwell remarked as he and his father followed at a slower pace.
“Different time, different rules,” his father said, a twinkle in his eye.
The family gathered in the dining room around the long table.
Rose cut the toddler’s food into small pieces with an efficiency that came from years of practice.
The meal lasted almost an hour, with Benicio telling funny stories—some of which Maxwell wasn’t entirely sure were true.
They talked, laughed, and in between, Rodolfo appeared twice to bring out more food.
The lemon cake was a hit, and by the end of the meal, the tension Maxwell carried when he arrived had almost completely disappeared.
Coming home always did that for him, including when he was in college or doing his residency. Being around his family always made him feel better.
Afterward, the kids wanted to watch Zootopia for the millionth time, so Maxwell helped them carry pillows and blankets to the theater room downstairs, which accommodated four people in each of the four rows.
Junior and Tracy sat at either end of the second row, with their younger siblings between them and two huge tubs of freshly popped popcorn—thanks to Rodolfo—being passed back and forth.
Maxwell didn’t know where they got the appetite after eating dinner.
He settled in the back with his father, stretching out his long legs. A few minutes into the movie, which had the kids riveted, Maxwell leaned toward his father.
“How are the wedding plans going?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
His father’s expression shifted into something akin to mild exasperation. “You know your mother. She wants something intimate, small, and meaningful. I explained to her that after everything, we should have a big celebration.”
“You want a big event,” Maxwell said.
“Of course. The event should match the occasion. I have work to do, convincing her my idea is the better one. But I will eventually wear her down. She always comes around when she understands that I am right.”
Maxwell was hard-pressed not to burst out laughing. “Does she know that’s what you do? Wear her down?”
“Of course she knows. That is why she makes me work so hard to have my way.”
The kids responded to one of the scenes with laughter.
“Why are you really here?” Benicio asked, turning to look at him.
Maxwell smiled. He was never good at hiding problems from his parents. “There’s a woman.”
“Ah yes, there is always a woman. But this is unusual for you.”
“Yeah.” Maxwell kept his eyes on the screen. “We work together but met before I started at Bright Futures. On my first day, I walked into her office and couldn’t believe my eyes.”
His father murmured something but didn’t interrupt.
“She’s seeing someone, but it’s not serious. The problem is...” He was almost embarrassed to tell his father the truth. “She’s not that interested in me. She thinks she knows exactly who I am, but she’s wrong about me.”
“Who does she think you are?”
“A player. Someone privileged who’s used to getting whatever he wants.”
His father side-eyed him, and Maxwell laughed softly.
“Okay, some of that is true, but it’s not the entirety of who I am, and she wants me to prove that I’m not that guy.
She issued a challenge. She wants me to apologize to the last three women I...
I wasn’t good to. In person. Only then will she have dinner with me. ”
In the silence, the movie carried on, cheerful and animated.
“What do you think about her request?” Benicio asked.
“It’s a ridiculous, stupid test. Who does she think she is, making that kind of demand, trying to make me jump through hoops for a date with her?”
Benicio nodded slowly. “Yet you drove here on a Friday night instead of going out with your friends or doing any of the hundreds of things young people your age could be doing right now.”
Maxwell kept silent.
His father looked at the screen in front of them. “I have a question. These women she is asking you to apologize to, did you hurt them?”
The question sat in the air between them.
“Not... well... not deliberately.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Maxwell let the silence stretch out for a while. “Probably,” he said reluctantly. “Yes.”
Benicio nodded slowly, as if the answer confirmed what he already knew.
“Maxwell, mijo,” he said, keeping his voice low, “I am not saying this to make you feel better or worse about yourself, but perhaps you should not only think of the apology as a bad thing. It can be healing, for those young women and for you. And... perhaps doing this will help you stop judging yourself by the worst things you have done and help you understand something you have been unwilling to see.”
“Which is?”
“The man you were does not have to determine the man you become.” He looked at Maxwell.
“If you care about this woman, which I suspect you do more than you are willing to admit, then the question is not whether her request is ridiculous. The question is, are you willing to show her that you are worth the risk?”
Staring at the screen, Maxwell exhaled.
“Are you willing to humble yourself for this woman, or do you plan to walk away and move on? It is difficult to be humble, I know. Ay, es difícil. Pero on the other side of humble is happiness. Joy.”
Maxwell thought about the times he had spent with Jasmine at the practice before their disagreement.
Both of them teasing and joking with each other.
How they had worked together to save the workshop.
How much fun they had at the arcade. Joyous.
That was the right word to describe how being in her presence made him feel.
Since Valentine’s Day, that joyous feeling had been sorely missing.
“I could use some joy,” Maxwell said quietly.
His father didn’t say another word. He didn’t need to.
Maxwell left before the movie ended, saying goodbye to his nieces and nephews before he slipped out of the theater room. He found his mother in the den sipping tea, flipping through a magazine.
She looked up when he entered. “You’re leaving?” she asked.
“I have something I need to take care of.” He sank onto the sofa beside her and peered at the magazine. “Are you doing some redecorating?”
“Mhmm. I want to spruce the place up, and I’m looking at these pictures for inspiration.”
“You look happy,” Maxwell said. “Younger, even.”
His mother laughed, a small, pleased sound. “That’s a compliment, right?”
“It definitely is. What’s changed?”
Rose sipped her tea, the corners of her mouth lifting higher. “It’s because of your father, but don’t you dare tell him I said that. He’s insufferable enough as it is.”
Maxwell let out a short laugh. “He said he wants a big wedding.”
“I know,” she sighed. “And a big engagement party.”
“He wants an engagement party too?”
“You know your father. Any excuse for a party.”
“Are you going to do what he asks?”
“Probably,” Rose said begrudgingly. “But I’ll fight him on it first. Can’t let him think he can have his way too easily. Then he’ll run all over me.”
Maxwell smiled. His parents had mastered the art of the game they played with each other.
Their current state was much different from the past. They hadn’t fought often, but when they did, it had been monumental.
He used to press his ear against their bedroom door and listen to their raised, muffled voices.
He distinctly remembered the strain in his mother’s voice as she pleaded with his father for more time and his father’s defensive, dismissive answers that had thrown fuel on the fire that ultimately burned their marriage to the ground.
He had understood both sides. His father had a business to run that demanded his time and attention, but his mother wanted time and attention from the man she had planned to spend the rest of her life with.
Their divorce had shattered his views on love, which had already been on rocky ground.
He’d watched his siblings get wrecked by the people they loved.
Audra’s ex had left her to raise Kerilyn alone.
Ethan, whose wife Maxwell believed was actually a demon in disguise, had been a terrible partner.
Ignacio had gone through hell with Delta and their back and forth.
People talked about love but they didn’t perform love.
He used to think the happiest people he knew were the ones who didn’t allow themselves to get caught up in the ‘love trap,’ as he called it.
Guys like Jayson, who lived for a good time and never let their hearts be captured, hopping from bed to bed like it was an Olympic sport.
That’s how he’d been living his own life for years. Meeting Jasmine made him rethink his whole perspective.
Rose stroked his bearded cheek. “Are you okay, hon?”
“Yeah.”
“Work still going okay? You still love it?”
“More than I ever expected to. It’s so fulfilling, Mom.
I know I made the right choice because I’m helping people.
Right now, I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong with one of my patients—why he’s deteriorating.
” He had examined Trevor Thompson and come to the same conclusion as Dr. Roberson: There was nothing wrong with him.
Yet there was clearly an issue, and he intended to uncover it.
“You’ll figure it out. We’re so proud of you.” She briefly patted his cheek.
They talked for a few more minutes, and then Maxwell hugged his mother briefly and left.
He climbed into his car with a renewed sense of purpose.
Challenge accepted.