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“No,” I whispered. My nose tingled, and tears filled my eyes. “No, no, no. I didn’t—” I didn’t even say goodbye to her. “I was running late. My meeting ran late.”
She took a step forward and grabbed my forearm, tugging me towards her small frame. Her arms went around my back, and she squeezed hard.
“Cuánto lo lamento,” Sonia whispered in my ear, her voice laced with apology. “The doctor will be back shortly to talk to you.”
“I—” My mouth opened, but no words came out. “My meeting ran late.”
My breaths came in jagged gasps, each inhale a struggleagainst the weight that had settled in my chest. I stumbled forward, my mind swirling with every single image of my sister—it all threatened to drown me. The hospital corridors, once familiar, now felt like a maze, voices and sounds so foreign to me. Sonia’s touch lingered on my forearm, possibly an attempt to anchor me down to this new reality. I wanted to shake off her grasp, to run into Jazmín’s room and discover this was all a sick joke they were playing on me, but my limbs were heavy with the burden of regret and grief.
“Francisco.” A voice sounded next to Sonia. I looked at the man standing before me, but I couldn’t focus on him. Guilt clawed at the edges of my consciousness, tearing through any semblance of composure. I hadn’t said goodbye. This couldn’t be happening.
I pressed my trembling hands against my face, attempting to stifle the sobs that threatened to escape. The doctor’s whispered condolences echoed in my ears, a mumble of words put together in an explanation I couldn’t quite grasp. I took a step towards the wall and melted into it, my body sliding down to the floor. The silence was deafening, broken only by the loud wail leaving my mouth.
Lucía’s sobs broke me away from the memory, from that horrible night that had been playing on repeat in my brain. She was standing in front of me, my arms tight around her shoulders. She was perfect, even like this, with her guard down, shaking in my hold. I kissed the top of her head, her tears streaming down her face straight to my shirt. “I’m sosorry,” she kept repeating, her words barely discernible above her loud weeping.
“No,” I said, shaking my head at the same time to get the point across. “No, Lucía, that’s not it at all.”
“But I wasn’t there,” she said, sniffing hard and wiping at her tears. “I couldn’t save her.”
“Lucía,please,”I begged. I needed her to stop crying so that she could hear what I had to say. “Please stop crying,linda,I beg you.”
She turned her head to look at me, tears streaming still down her face, but her breathing started to even out. She wiped the back of her hand on her eyes and then grabbed her shirt from the seat beside us, using it on her face and dabbing it all around.
“I am so sorry,” I said, being completely honest and open with her. I needed her to understand that this had nothing to do with her and everything to do with my screwed-up family. “I’m sorry I never came back to you.” Tears started to fall down my cheeks again at the confession. “It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.”
She nodded and licked her lips, keeping her mouth slightly open as she listened to what I had to say.
“I think you know about my father,” I started, taking a deep breath after the words spilled out. “He’s a powerful man. He was more powerful then than what he is today, especially over me. When I was in my teens, he got one of his aides pregnant. I found out because my parents had ahuge, violent fight at the house, and I heard every single word of it. It was awful.”
She nodded, looking in between my eyes with attention.
“You also might know that he runs on a ‘family values’ platform.” I used air quotes because he was very far away from actually living and believing in those traditional morals. “So when his aide got pregnant, he hid her away, giving her a ton of hush money and trying with all his might to keep everyone away from each other.
“When I was in law school, I had a contact of mine at the registrar try to find her name and address—completely illegal, by the way—but I was desperate because if my suspicions were correct and my father was being my father, they weren’t doing well. I later learned he never sent any child support to help out with Jazmín, so it had been tight for them for years. And that’s when I met her and her mother, Florencia.
“And the rest you know because you saw me with her. She is the best thing that ever happened to me. She showed up at the exact moment I needed her, even if I only met her when she was in first grade. So her death was rough.”
I was quote-unquote lucky that a few days after Jazmín’s death, I had scheduled time off of work. Because I didn’t know how I would have handled it if I had to go to work and also hide from my family at the same time. Even though my father knew I had been to the hospital to see her, he never made me aware of the extent of the information he had. Maybe he knew less about my relationship with Jazmín andFlorencia than what I thought he did, but that didn’t matter.
“I pretended I had no idea of her existence in front of my parents for years, until she was hospitalized.”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes closing and her forehead resting on mine. She was breathing calmly, one of her hands holding on to my arm steadily, like an anchor. “Oh my god,” Lucía whispered. “That sounds awful.”
I nodded. “But by that time, it didn’t matter anymore because I had separated a little from him and from his public persona. I was doing my own thing in family law, far away from politics. I think that is what pissed my father off the most,” I said, lifting my hand and stroking her bare back up and down, up and down in a steady cadence. “That I didn’t follow in his footsteps in politics.”
“Mm-hmm,” she mumbled, her forehead still on mine. Her free hand had moved to my hair, stroking my scalp with the tips of her nails and giving me goosebumps.
“So now, apparently,” I added, not even stopping for a second, wanting everything out in the open once and for all, “someone leaked it to the press that he has a daughter out of wedlock and as a result of an affair, so Florencia is freaking out, and I’m guessing he is too. He might lose his biggest supporter.”
“Oh shit,” she said, and I didn’t miss the small smile on her lips. I smiled in return, pressing my mouth against her in a chaste kiss. I loved that response because she knew exactly what that meant.
“Yeah.” I ran my hands over her arms, from her shoulders to the tips of her fingers, linking mine with hers. “I’m driving back for a few days to see how I can help,” I added, my eyes searching her for a reaction. She smiled and nodded, her face still splotchy from all the crying.
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow?” It came out as a question, even though it was a fact. I had already called the head of PR at our firm to see what we could do, and they were all looking into it as a small favor to me. “Early tomorrow.”
She sighed, then, with a big smile on her face, said, “I guess I’ll have to water the plants, then.”
