16. Fidelity
Fidelity
Alex Segura
The Miami News
MISSING FOR ALMOST TWO WEEKS, LOCAL WOMAN FEARED DEAD
Local mother last seen leaving her Kendall home Wednesday morning
The soccer ball whizzed by Susana Martinez’s head, missing her by a little under an inch.
She dodged, pure instinct. Years of toys being tossed at her and a brief, forgettable season playing soccer in high school kicked in.
She had to remind herself to breathe as she turned to watch the ball skitter down the green of the park and toward an asphalt walkway near the small parking lot. She realized her mouth was open.
“You okay?”
Susana turned to the voice—low and calm, but weighted with worry and care. She couldn’t deny that realization made her heart pump a bit faster.
“Yeah, I—uh,” Susana said, pulling a strand of her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ear. She could feel her face reddening. He’d probably think it was a surprise. It was something else. “Just didn’t see that coming.”
Joe gave her a relaxed smile in return. He tugged back his salt-and-pepper hair, whistling a tune that felt familiar to Susana, but she wasn’t able to place it.
Susana couldn’t deny that he was handsome.
Fit. With sharp, blue-green eyes and an air of casual disregard that made his look and demeanor feel genuine.
He reached out his hand and patted hers.
A quick, fleeting touch. She felt her skin grow hot where his hand had been, and it had nothing to do with the powerful Miami sun beating down on all of them.
Susana smiled back, then tried to turn her attention to the game—well, not exactly a game.
It was impossible to organize a gang of four-year-olds into any kind of organized sport.
At least not for long. She and a few other parents, including Joe, were sitting on a small patch of grass at the park—watching as a handful of “coaches”—really, college-age kids who at some point decided to get side gigs teaching soccer—guided their respective children on how to kick the ball toward the net.
Susana didn’t envision her daughter, Jamie, becoming a soccer star—but a big part of parenting was finding things for your kids to do.
Especially when they weren’t at school. Susana’s own private hell was those long, unexpected stretches at home—with no plans, no ideas, and no options.
She tried not to just hand Jamie her tablet or turn on the television, but sometimes you had to.
Though Susana preferred this. Something active.
Something that ostensibly “taught” Jamie a skill or allowed her to socialize with other kids.
Susana leaned forward, stretching slightly.
Feeling that familiar ache and pull. She wasn’t young—but she wasn’t old, either, she reminded herself.
Closer to fifty than forty, she sometimes wondered if it’d been a good idea to have Jamie so late, but Oscar wanted to keep trying.
They’d been so focused on the baby. The baby.
After a miscarriage a few years back, Jamie seemed to appear out of a deep, dark fog—like an angel.
She’d been the perfect baby. Sleeping well, eating well, doing all the things at the right time.
It felt almost surreal. Like after years of pain and failure, they’d finally gotten a break.
Susana knew she had to stay grateful for it, or she’d forget—like an alcoholic who still goes to meetings, desperate to recall what it was like, what brought them into the rooms. Susana didn’t want to forget the fear and desperation she’d felt before Jamie arrived.
The bleakness. Even now, when things felt almost… easy.
She made eye contact with Jamie, who was getting ready to kick the ball toward the net.
She smiled at her daughter—her tough, defiant, and sensitive little kid—and gave her a quick thumbs-up.
Susana never had this stuff as a child. Never did classes, summer camp, activities.
She was lucky if there was even an adult around half the time.
On summer breaks or days off, she got dumped at her grandparents’ house in Kendall and had to fend for herself.
She’d spent more time alone in one week than Jamie probably had her entire life.
Parenting was different now, she tried to tell herself.
The world had changed. Susana—and Oscar, when he was around—had to protect Jamie, guide her.
Be thoughtful. Even if it meant they’d never have time for themselves.
She could feel Joe’s eyes on her. Imagined them scanning her neck and looking up toward her face.
He and his son—a bookish kid named Angel—were new to the soccer classes.
Susana brought Jamie twice a week, though you could do more.
And Joe always seemed to be there. Waiting, with a patch of grass clear next to him.
She felt that familiar buzz when he’d pat the ground and smile as she and Jamie approached.
Like saying, Here. Here’s your spot. Sit with me.
And she did. Every Wednesday and Friday, she’d sit with Joe and they’d watch their kids bumble through practice—learning how to kick, how to move the ball down the field, how to pass—each lesson feeling completely new even though they’d been doing it for months now.
Like Susana—the soccer teachers were just here to pass the time.
It was something to do. To get the kids some exercise so they’d come home tired and pass out after dinner.
That was the unwritten contract. Susana hadn’t expected more.
She hoped for an hour to scroll through her phone, catch up on emails, maybe sneak a few Instagram reels while Jaime ran around. That was the best-case scenario.
She hadn’t counted on Joe.
Susana swallowed hard. She pulled out her phone and absentmindedly checked her email.
Nothing. Promo offers. An package arriving.
A note from her aunt in Broward. Susana used to do something.
Before Jamie, even while they were trying, she had a job.
Corporate PR wasn’t fun, by any means—it was exhausting, all-consuming, and featured a cast of vile characters at every turn.
But once Jamie was on the way, she and Oscar knew Susana would have to back away from the job.
Just for a year or two, he’d said. That’d been five years ago.
Susana understood it, of course. There would be no way to parent the way they wanted if she were working full-time, traveling, coming home late, answering emails at all hours.
Plus, Oscar made a great salary working in tech.
But the result was Oscar was working all the time, and Susana…
wasn’t. She was with Jamie. And if Jamie was sleeping or eating or at an activity, Susana was tending to the house.
Cleaning. Cooking. Organizing. She was a housewife.
As much as Susana loathed the idea, it was true.
And she couldn’t argue her way out of it. She chose this path.
What would her mami say? she wondered.
Te pensaste tan especial.
She would’ve been right. Susana did think she was special.
Better than the gender paradigm her parents seemed to live in.
Papi would work, Mami would work, and Mami would work some more—keeping up the house, tending to him, serving him.
Until it stopped working. Then the tears came.
The darkness. Susana had promised herself it’d never be like that for her.
She’d meet a man who understood balance.
Who wanted her to have a career. Who collaborated.
What happened?
She let out a quick sigh as she slid her phone back into her bag.
“Tough day?”
Susana turned to look at Joe. His eyes were on the field, his expression serene and happy. He was a consultant of some kind, he’d told her—he made his own hours. Susana knew he was married—she noticed the silver ring on his left hand. But he only mentioned his wife in passing.
“No, not really,” Susana said, leaning back onto her palms, her fingers weaving through the dying blades of grass, pulling on them gently as she thought of what to say next. “I’m just… I dunno. I’m bored. We’ll go to the store after this, make dinner, then… Oh, never mind…”
Susana shook her head slightly. Then his hand, on her arm now. Not moving.
“Hey, it’s fine, I get it,” he said, pulling back as she looked down at his hand, warm and coarse. “It’s hard doing what you do. I get it.”
“Do you?”
She looked at him now. His eyes seemed brighter for a second.
Then a flicker of something else. A crackle of gray and white and black.
Like static taking over the television screen.
The hiss of that snow-like visual. For a second.
She blinked and it was gone. Replaced by his chiseled face.
The stubble on his cheeks. The crow’s feet at his eyes.
I want to kiss him.
“Of course,” Joe said with a nod, scoffing slightly. “I’m with Angel all day sometimes. It’s a lot. Impossible to get any actual work done, either.”
Susana let out a dry laugh.
“That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t have actual work to do. This is my work. This is my life. And sometimes… shit, this is going to sound terrible, but… it’s boring as hell.”
They stared at each other for a moment, letting it linger.
She felt his eyes scanning her face, over her humorless smile, her slightly watered eyes, her knotty ponytail.
She looked at him, too. The uneven stubble, the heat-glistening face, the crow’s feet at the corner of each eye.
It was like they were both mutually moving past their flaws, their blemishes—toward something else. Something new.
Susana looked at her hands. For a second, she thought she heard someone whistling.
Susana stuffed the receipt into her back pocket as she stepped out of the Publix supermarket on Coral Way. It was almost nine. It felt weird to be out this late, but Oscar had told her she needed some time to herself. A rare lightning bolt of clarity.