“I’m fine.”
“I’ll make you a plate,” she says, gesturing to the kitchen table. “I have leftovers.”
I watch from the table, silent, as she bustles around, heating up a plate of seasoned chicken, rice and beans, and fried plantains.
The plantains make me smile despite myself. Sal was very particular about the frying process and made sure both Kiara and I could do it with our eyes closed.
“Where did you go out to dinner?” I ask eventually. “Somewhere good?”
“Italian place down in Tequesta,” says Chester.
“Wasn’t as good as your food,” Kiara says as she sets down a plate for me, along with utensils and a paper napkin. “But we had a good time.”
“Yeah?” Chester says, fiddling with the label on his Modelo.
A small smile plays on her lips. “Yeah. Of course.”
I take a swig of beer. I’m exhausted, suddenly. The deep kind that settles into your bones. Yearning not for sleep, but something else.
“Thank you,” I tell her after a few bites of food. The guilt rises up again sharply. I hope Poppy is eating something for dinner.
I’d planned to see if she wanted to go out for ice cream for dessert.
Kiara tips her beer to me. “Dad wanted you to be happy, you know. More than anything. That’s all he ever wanted for either of us, right until the end.”
I thought that, too, until my last argument with him. I clear my throat, distracting myself with a few bites of food. “What was it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“When he was sick.” We’ve tiptoed around the topic ever since I came back. I’ve been afraid to ask, but I need to know.
“It was hard.” Her voice cracks. Chester wraps his arm aroundher, squeezing reassuringly. “Really hard, Jack. The chemo ravaged him. He lost so much weight, I hardly recognized him. He joked that it was a good thing he was bald to begin with.”
My vision goes watery. I can imagine Sal cracking a joke like that, even in the throes of pain. He always wanted to put the people around him at ease. The kitchen staff never got tense around him, even when something was going wrong. He’d fix it with the same calm, loose attitude he brought to everything else, drifting between English and Spanish effortlessly.
“Sounds like him.”
“Eventually he wanted to stop. It had spread, the chemo wasn’t helping, so he just... wanted to focus on getting everything in order, pretty much.”
“I’m sorry you went through that alone. I thought—” I stop. I was fucking selfish. There’s no excuse. “I just thought I’d have time for a visit before he passed. I guess I didn’t want to see him like that. I didn’t want to ruin the image of him in my mind, but I shouldn’t have left you to deal with it all by yourself.”
“You didn’t even come to the funeral,” Chester says quietly.
“I know.”
“You made me go through the aftermath alone. Again.” The pain in Kiara’s voice is impossible to ignore. She wipes her eyes with her hand impatiently, smearing her mascara. “Damnit, Jack.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, voice breaking. I wish I was better with words; knew a way to explain the stinging knot of emotions I’ve yet to unravel. “I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t come back.”
“He didn’t know who I was sometimes,” she admits. “Or he thought I was my mother. Something with the drugs he was on, the nurses said. I think part of him just really wanted to get to her, wherever that is. When he did realize I was his daughter, he’d pull me close and say...”
“What?”
Her voice wavers. “He’d say he was sneaking up to heaven a bit early, and he was sorry.”
Her words hit me like a punch. I can’t speak, chest tight with guilt, throat thick with regret. Tears fall down my face. I reachacross the table, unsure whether to take her hand. Whether she’ll let me. A painful moment, and then her fingers close over mine.
I failed her, just like I failed Sal. I told her I’d be her brother, that I loved her, that she could count on me. But then the moment it became time for us to truly be family, I backed out. I was a coward. A coward like my father, for leaving my mother to have a baby on her own. A coward like her, abandoning her son with nothing but a name. I should have come back sooner. I should have faced my past, instead of shoving it down until it came out twisted and ugly in the kitchen, the one place I’d always considered a refuge.
