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Pain throbbed through my face. “You just ruined any chance you had left,” he sneered, his eyes full of pity towards me, like he had been doing me favors all these years. I let my father go, and he took a deep breath. He turned on his heel, looking down towards the ground and walking to his car. The reporters continued their barrage of questions, capturing every nuance of the broken relationship playing out before them.
“I’m done with you, Eugenio,” I said, my voice cutting through the chaos. “I will not hold back if you ever come near me again.”
“Francisco,” Lorena said from inside the house. She was clutching her closed laptop with both hands, and her long hair was up at the crown of her head, held by a pen. “Your mother just filed for divorce.”
“She’s the leak,” I said. The realization finally hit me.
34
LUCÍA
The newsof Francisco’s family’s downfall hit me like a train straight into the chest. I was sitting at the kitchen table in Valentina’s house when my phone started buzzing with a few text messages from the staff at the hospital. Of course they knew who that family was. We were intimately familiar with their dynamics, toxic as they had been.
The headlines screamed of scandal. It was bigger than the most recent celebrity hookup, a famousfútbolplayer and a pop princess who hadhard launchedtheir relationship by climbing into a convertible and driving away into the sunset.
“What is it?” my mother asked, her face full of concern. They had arrived in the city a few days after I had, claiming that they wanted to visit with some friends. But I knew it was Charlie who had tattled, and really, they were here because they wanted to talk to me. They were walking oneggshells around me. She leaned her body towards my phone, her eyes scrolling the screen. “Is that that boy from New Year’s?”
“Mm-hmm, sure is,” I replied, following the thread with a little more interest now. Francisco’s mother had put out a statement to the press saying she was filing for divorce due to irreconcilable differences, but the press was catching on quick—her husband had lost his power in politics, and she wanted out. And I believed it.
And Francisco had been on repeat on the news cycles.
The images of the fight with his father outside of that home; the look of disgust on Francisco’s face. The constant barrage of videos and photos of his political campaigns, his wife and son standing next to him. Clips of old press conferences or interviews with the media. It was on at all hours of the day, the hottest scandal of the year.
“What a weird coincidence,” she said, her gaze bouncing from my phone to her crossword puzzle, her lips pinched in concentration. “Did you know he used to work with Santiago?”
“He is the brother of one of my patients,” I said, looking into her eyes and studying her closely. She placed the crossword puzzle on the table and set both her hands on it softly. My father was sitting next to her, glasses perched on the tip of his nose and his eyes scanning the small font of the newspaper. Not the front pages but the classifieds, just for the fun of it. To see what types of things people were selling.
“Really?” Her shoulders sagged slightly, but not indefeat. It was more like amazement. The gossip was coming out of her, and I smiled at her reaction because you could take the girl away from the small town but never take the small town away from the girl.
“Yeah, my last year of residency.”
“No te puedo creer.”She really did sound incredulous. Like this was a charming twist of fate. And it was, partially, but it was also full of darkness and grief. A whole lot of drowning.
“Her death is the reason why I went back home.”
There. My mother’s shoulders sagged in defeat. My father looked up, newspaper discarded on the table. All four eyes were on me.
“Honey—” he said, his voice laced with anguish.
“No, you know what? It’s fine,” I said. “I’m fine now.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked, her tone full of concern. She did this thing when she was worried about us—her hand would automatically go to our faces, cupping our cheeks like when we were children and we scraped our knees while playing outside. I was in my thirties now, and this didn’t get old. It did work to soothe the pain. “We’ve been so worried about you.”
“I was embarrassed,” I said, nose tingling and tears threatening to fall. “I fought so hard to be a doctor, and I couldn’t hack it. But it’s fine. I get it now.”
“What do you get now?” She twisted her body on her chair, her knees bumping against mine, one hand still cupping my face, the other placed softly on her leg.
“Honey, you can’t save them all,” my dad added, cutthroat and straight to the point but logical. My mother turned to look at him for a second, and then her gaze was back on me.
My heart dropped. Had I been so transparent with my feelings yet so oblivious to what was going on around me that I hadn’t seen it? Silent tears rolled down my cheeks, and I choked back a sob. My mother smiled sadly at me, her eyes shining too.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, please don’t say that,mi amor,” she continued. She looked heartbroken, like the words coming out of my mouth were wounding her. It was such a contrast to the last time I’d seen her, elated out of her mind back in town, her son marrying the love of his life. And in only a few days, I had hurt her so much. “You’ve been unhappy for such a long time. I wish you had felt you could talk to us.”
I wiped away my tears and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to burden you. I thought I could handle it on my own.”
She sighed, her thumb gently brushing away a tear that escaped the corner of my eye. “You’re never a burden to us.”
