Chapter 21 Soledad
Soledad
Hours later, Soledad lay next to Armando in bed, both staring at the ceiling.
“I can still remember how it felt to hold Matías as a baby,” Soledad said, bringing her hands up to her shoulder as if cradling him. “He was so tiny, but so warm.”
“He always put out more heat than I thought possible,” Armando said.
“Our tiny furnace,” Soledad said, sighing. She closed her eyes briefly and brought her head down, as if she could nuzzle against the memory of her infant son. He smelled sweet, like milk and fresh laundry and that indelible, pure something of newborns.
Thirty-six years later, he was still her baby. It didn’t matter that Matías had been taller than Armando for two decades, or that Matías was well known in the international art world. Or that he was a visiting professor at a prestigious art school on the other side of the ocean. Soledad would always be his mother, and that meant he was her little Mati, no matter how grown he’d become.
If only she could fall asleep, nestling against the peaceful thoughts of the past.
But sleep only came in nips and snatches since Matías’s accident, and Soledad reluctantly opened her eyes. She rolled over to face Armando.
“You have been quiet. What are you thinking, cari?o ?”
Armando shook his head. “Claire. The poor woman has no family. Matías said her parents died many years ago. She has no one.”
“She has us,” Soledad said.
“She hardly knows us. And Claire lives in New York. What happens to her if Matías dies?”
“Don’t talk about that,” Soledad snapped.
“It is a possibility, amor .”
“No. It is not. ” Soledad flung off the covers and launched herself out of bed.
“Where are you going?”
“To pray. To beg God to take some of the years off my life to give to Matías.”
“Soledad, por favor.”
“I would sacrifice my entire life for my children!”
“But you don’t need to do that.”
There was a pause.
And then, barely audible, she asked, “How do you know?”
Armando didn’t have an answer.
Soledad tried to swallow the fear in her throat, but it stuck.
He climbed out of bed.
“Wait for me, Soledad. I am coming to pray, too.”