Prologue #2
I folded into her instantly. Tension I hadn’t named loosened all at once, slipping off my shoulders, down my spine, out of my chest.
Her hand came up to cradle the back of my head, fingers threading gently into my hair, holding me there like I was something worth steadying. The closest thing I had to a mother and she never took that for granted.
“Oh, bebê,” she murmured into my hair, softer now. “Look at you. All grown up and leaving for the land of deep-dish pizza and emotional repression.”
I huffed a laugh against her shoulder.
“You’re going to rule that city,” she continued. “And if you don’t, we’ll buy it and rename it.”
My father made a sound—half amusement, half warning. “Clementine.”
She turned to him with a grin that carried years of history in it. “Rafa.”
They held each other’s gaze for a beat too long. There was still something there—respect, affection, the echo of a life they’d built and chosen to end. My father had loved her once. Maybe he still did, in the quiet, careful way he did everything. He just hadn’t been able to keep her.
“You didn’t need to—” he began.
Lo waved him off abruptly. “Don’t. We talked about this. She’s not flying alone.” Her tone softened just enough before she added, “And you have a merger hanging by a thread. A flight to Europe in the morning. Let’s not pretend you can be in two places at once, darling.”
My father’s jaw shifted. He didn’t argue. He never argued facts.
He had been leaving for as long as I could remember. Conferences. Cases. Entire countries strung together in his calendar like obligations he couldn’t afford to miss. He always came back. Always called. Always showed up in the ways that counted.
But he was gone.
And when he was, Lo stayed.
School pickups when flights ran long. Late-night dinners when work stretched past midnight. The quiet, unremarkable moments that built a life instead of interrupting it.
Lo stepped closer to him, lowering her voice like this was testimony and I was the jury. “Besides,” she added, “if anyone thinks they’re going to make my girl feel small in America, I’d like to be there in person to ruin their day.”
My father’s lips pressed together. He looked at me, then at her.
Then he nodded once.
Small.
Contained.
Absolute.
Lo’s grin returned, bright and mischievous, like she couldn’t help herself. “Where are we on the packing situation, bebê?”
“I’m almost done,” I responded, even though my stomach had gone tight and my hands suddenly felt clumsy. “Just… the last things.”
“The last things are always the hardest,” Lo murmured.
She didn’t add anything else. She didn’t make it bigger. She didn’t try to fix it. She simply stepped into the room like she belonged there—because she did—and began folding clothes with brisk efficiency that somehow still felt like affection.
My father watched her for a moment, then returned to labeling boxes as if the three of us could build a bridge out of cardboard and tape.
The rain kept falling.
Time moved in small actions.
Tape ripped. Clothes folded. Zippers closed. Papers stacked. A mug of chai cooled until it was too bitter to drink, and still I kept lifting it to my lips as if I could swallow bravery.
At some point, my father paused beside my backpack, fingers hovering near the zipper. He didn’t touch it. He just looked at it the way he looked at my face when I was sick as a child.
“You’re ready,” he sighed. Not a question. A conclusion.
I nodded, because if I spoke, something inside might fracture.
Lo snapped her suitcase shut with an authoritative click. “We are ready,” she declared. “She is ready. The world is not.”
My father huffed a quiet breath—almost a laugh, almost disbelief—and stepped toward me.
Rafael Ribeiro didn’t do sentimental speeches. He didn’t linger in emotion longer than it was useful. He moved forward. He expected the same from me.
But when his hand lifted and settled against my cheek, the gentleness of it stilled everything. Warm. Steady. Certain. He studied me the way he did contracts, negotiations—like he was committing every detail to memory before letting it go.
“This will be hard,” he stated plainly. No softening. No dramatics. “You will feel out of place. You will question yourself.”
My throat tightened.
His thumb brushed once along my cheekbone—small, precise, like everything he did. “And then,” he continued, voice even, accent threading through the words without dulling their edge, “you will adjust. You will learn. You will outwork everyone in that room.”
He wasn’t comforting me.
He was reminding me who I was.
“You don’t wait for space,” he added. “You take it. You understand?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Good.” His gaze held mine another second, sharp and unwavering. “You are not going there to survive, filha. You are going there to build something. For yourself.”
The words didn’t wrap around me.
They anchored.
Behind us, Lo shifted, giving us the space without interrupting it—another thing she understood without needing to be told.
My father’s hand dropped, but the warmth of it lingered, phantom and steady.
“Call me when you land,” he muttered, already stepping back. “Send the address to the dorm at MidU when you have it.”
“I will.”
A beat. Then, quieter—“I’m proud of you.”
It landed harder than anything else. I let it sink in and still my buzzing mind.
Lo clapped her hands once, bright and decisive, breaking the moment before it could stretch into something neither of us knew how to hold. “All right, before I start crying and ruin my mascara—we have a plane to catch.”
She reached for my suitcase, already moving, already orchestrating. I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the other, grounding myself in the solid weight of it.
I stepped into the doorway and paused—just for a second.
My father stood where I’d left him, already turning back toward the apartment. Toward the boxes. The paperwork. The life that didn’t stop just because mine was changing.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Not lingering.
Fleeting.
Enough.
I stepped forward.
Lo fell into stride beside me, warm and certain, already talking—flights, weather, boots, plans—pulling me into motion before I could look back again.
The elevator ride blurred. The lobby lights were too bright. The rain had softened to a steady hush by the time we stepped outside.
A town car waited at the curb, sleek and black against the slick street, engine running like it had somewhere to be. The driver stepped out and reached for our bags without asking, practiced and efficient.
For Lo, it was routine.
For me—departure.
I slid into the backseat, the leather cool beneath my palms, the scent of it clean and unfamiliar. Lo followed, already issuing directions in her flawless, lilting Portuguese.
The door shut with a quiet, final sound. The car pulled away from the curb.
Florianópolis blurred past the window—colors bleeding into motion, edges softening, the city letting me go in pieces.
Behind me, my father stayed.
Ahead of me—Chicago.
Midway University.
A life I had fought my way into.
I didn’t look back again.