Chapter Twenty-One
Trying to fold my clothing into my luggage through blurry eyes is proving to be quite tricky.
Since Sofia left, my mother and I have been sitting in silence.
She’s been browsing her phone and taking photos of the wedding favors.
Probably showing them to her friends as things she bought herself.
I want to rip up all of the gift bags. Smash all of the Chanel and Dior perfumes.
Cut up all the gift cards and just run away.
“Hello?” Mari shouts.
“Huh?” I look up, and she’s staring right at me.
I hadn’t even realized she had said anything to me. I was so lost in my own thoughts and misery.
She frowns. “I said you must give me his journal back.”
“What? Why?” I ask defensively.
Panic begins to bubble in my chest at the thought of giving the journal to my mother.
I know I’ll never see it again after that.
She’ll find someplace to hide it away. I won’t ever get to see his words.
The photos. The recipes. It’ll be as if I lost him all over again.
This whole week I have felt closer to him than I ever have. I’m not ready to let that go.
“Mija, you need to give it back,” she says, sitting up as she packs all the gifts into one of the gift bags.
“Why?” I ask again, this time with more defiance in my voice.
She must have heard it because she looks up at me in shock.
“Because it needs to be preserved. There’s no reason for you to have it. You’ll ruin it by opening it and closing it all the time. So just give me the book, Isabella.”
“I won’t, though! I’ll keep it protected. It’s not going to get ruined,” I state.
“Mija, I’m not debating this.”
Her voice gets sterner.
“Papi would have wanted me to have it. You know he would have. Please, Mami. Just let me keep it.”
“Isabella, this isn’t a negotiation. You don’t need the journal. There is no ‘truth’ to find out. There never was.”
“What about what happened between you and Tía Rosita?” I shout, tears starting to form in my eyes.
“What about it? You won’t find that in ese maldito libro, Isabella.
There is no big secret you need to discover.
Your father would create puzzles to keep you entertained and distracted while he battled his sickness.
There is no big secret you need to solve.
He was so sick by the time he finished his journal. Nothing in there makes sense.”
“That’s not true!” I scream.
“Isabella! Do not raise your voice at me! I’m telling you the truth. There is no great answer to his puzzle. I promise. Please, mija. Don’t make this harder than it is. Just give me the journal, finish packing, and we’ll return home. We can pretend none of this ever happened.”
“It’s not true,” I whisper, feeling defeated.
Mariposa stands up and walks over to where I am standing.
“Oh, mijita,” she sighs, pulling me into her arms.
I can’t help but sob into her shoulder as she slowly caresses the back of my head.
“I know how hard his death was for you. You two were so close. Closer than you and I could ever be. I know that. I resented that for a long time. You’ve been swept up in his journal, being led into a cat-and-mouse chase with these random clues he’s put throughout it.”
She pulls me away to wipe my eyes.
“But I know the truth, mija. I know how hard it’s been for you to let him go and move on.
That’s why you won’t paint the restaurant for me.
That’s why you don’t want to let go of this journal.
But you need to let him go—my Isabellita.
I know you can do it. He would want you to move on and live your life managing the restaurant and caring for me.
He wouldn’t want you to be chasing words in a book. ”
She pulls me in again, squeezing as hard as she can.
I pull away and stare at her, my chest tightening.
Managing the restaurant and caring for her?
Is that what she thinks my life is supposed to be?
My entire existence, reduced to running the restaurant and making sure she’s okay?
That’s not living. It’s surviving. It’s waking up every day trapped in the same routine, in the same walls my father built, with no room to breathe, to dream, to do anything more than keep things from falling apart.
I swallow hard, trying to keep my voice steady. “That’s not what he would’ve wanted. Not for me.”
She tilts her head, her eyes softening as if she’s trying to comfort me.
But all I feel is suffocated. “He loved the restaurant, Isa. And he loved you. He would’ve wanted you to carry on his legacy.
I think it’s time you give me the journal, mija, and move on from this little hunt.
The restaurant is what keeps him alive.”
Without saying another word, I slowly walk past my mother, toward the dresser.
Have I been using his journal as another way to keep his memory alive for a little longer?
Has it all been fake? Was there ever a big secret to discover?
I start to feel silly, as if I made everything up.
As mad as it makes me, my mother isn’t wrong.
I haven’t been able to move on from my father.
I never coped with his sickness, and I felt so much guilt when he suddenly passed away.
I wasn’t there for him. I was away at college, trying to get a degree in business so I could help him run the restaurant, and then he was gone.
This journal has brought so much of him back for me.
I’ve learned things about him that I haven’t ever known.
Even if the puzzle is fake, his words are still real to me—all of them.
I slowly pull the journal out of my bag.
I give it a good look. The leather-bound cover is wearing down around the edges.
A few pages inside have unattached from the spine and stick out slightly.
It may be in somewhat rough shape, but it shows how many adventures it’s been on.
How many of his memories live inside. I open the cover and see the photo of him sitting beside me as a baby.
I look over my shoulder slightly and see if my mother is staring.
She’s back to taking pictures of the stupid new tennis bracelet she took.
I turn back around and slowly peel the photo out of the journal, trying my best not to tear the page.
Finally, I pull the photograph out, sighing in relief that she didn’t notice. I hide it in my bag for a moment.
“Here,” I say. I toss the journal to her on the bed and return to the dresser.
I pull the photo slowly out of my bag to look at it closer.
To see my father’s large grin under his thick, black mustache.
I feel warm. He seems so excited to be next to me.
I rub my hand slowly on the perforated edge of the ripped side.
I wonder who else was in this photo. Maybe it was my mother, and he didn’t want her in the shot?
If he had a secret lover, as I may have found out with his clues, it’s possible he resented her as well.
The way he’s sitting in the photo, though.
It’s strange. The picture is cut right by his right arm, as if he was holding something else in his hand.
Or someone else. It could have been my mother, but why would she sit on his other side and not next to me?
I can’t seem to shake these thoughts. I wish I could have the journal for a moment longer to figure this out.
What is my father trying to tell me? Some of the pages felt like memories he wanted to preserve—simple snapshots of our lives, like the ones from my quinceanera.
But others…they feel like more than that.
Almost as if he wanted me to find something.
As if he left a trail on purpose. It’s hard to tell where the memories end and the clues begin.
Maybe that was his intention all along—to show me a mixture of both.
Without thinking, I turn the photo around to see if anything is on the back. To my surprise, I see my father’s handwriting, but half of it is cut off by the rip. I look closer to see what it says.
os hijitas
Os? I’m not sure what that is. But hijitas. That’s the plural of daughter. Could it be dos hijitas? Two daughters? Do I…have a sister?
My heart pounds in my ears as I reread his words in my head.
It’s not Silvana. It’s not Valentina. There’s only one person I’m sure it can be: Sofia.
I feel sick. I hold on to the dresser, trying to contain my anger as I process this realization.
That’s why Sofia has a letter from my father too.
He was in love with Rosita. They dated. Sofia was born.
I have so many questions, and only one person in this room can answer them.
“I know the truth,” I say.
“Que dices?” My mother looks up at me, confused.
“The big secret Papi was trying to reveal to me. I finally figured it out. You took the journal to prevent me from figuring it out, but you were too late.”
The expression on Mariposa’s face begins to shift from confusion to realization.
“Isabella, there is no big secret. I told you.”
“Stop fucking lying to me!” I shout, startling her.
“Isabella!”
“No. I’m done with your manipulations and lies.
Your fakeness. Your obsession with pretending to be perfect.
Your constant disapproval of me. And now you’re gaslighting me into thinking that everything my father wrote in his journal doesn’t mean anything when I know it does.
I have been reading it all week. I’ve discovered things already.
You’re too fucking late. I know the truth, Mari. ”
That is the first time I have ever called my mother by her first name to her face, but it just felt right.
She stands up and crosses her arms, a slight smirk growing on her face as if she’s caught my bluff.
“Okay then, Isabellita. What’s the big secret?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” I retort.
“But you said you already know, verdad? So just tell me.”