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“Then why did you stay with him? Lie for him?”

She sighs, and I feel the weight of the years behind it. “Tinito, nobody is perfect. He made his choices, and I made mine. And you will make yours, and not all of those will be perfect either.” My stomach wriggles with guilt as her words hit far too close to home. “I loved your abuelo. That’s not something that can be turned off, like the switch of a lamp. We still needed him—needed the support he gave to us during those hard years. And I saw no reason to hurt our family further by sharing this secret.” Her mouth hardens into a thin line. “But I told him: do better. Be a better man now than you have ever been.”

I stare at her, my mouth falling open. “You said that?”

She nods. I slump back on the ottoman, putting the time frame together. Abuelo’s first appearance in the papers, the first time El Rasca was seen defending the defenseless …

She cocks her head. “What is that look about?”

I tell her about El Rasca. I tell her about the article and all the research I’ve done. I tell her about all the things that Abuelo did for the Latino community in New York.

Abuelita’s eyes grow wide. She presses her lips together, deep in thought. Then she smiles at me. “It seems like he took my words to heart. El Rasca.” She chuckles. “He did better.”

So Abuelita shamed him into becoming El Rasca. And I know that was a good thing, for many people. But I still can’t shake my anger at his betrayal. At the lies we were fed.

Abuelita tuts. “I can read your face, clear as water,” she says. She puts a hand on mine. “Don’t put people on pedestals, Agustín. Those are meant for statues, cold and lifeless, not flesh and blood human beings. Our flaws are what make us real.”

“How can you be so forgiving?” I ask her quietly.

“Oh, I’m not,” she reassures me. “I was very angry, for a very long time. But I had a family here who needed me. What good would my anger do? Was the truth going to help put food on the table? I did not want anyone else to carry the burden except me.” Her eyes go distant again. “And as time went on, I could not help but think about what life must have been like for him, so far away, alone. We were all together here. He had no connection to his family anymore. Or to his culture. He could not hear the whistle of the camoteros in the evenings or pick figs from our tree in the backyard for breakfast. He could no longer help our neighbors as he once did or gather them at our home for Nochebuena. How hard it must have been for someone with a heart such as his, a big caring heart, to be in that jungle of a city, all alone.”

I absorb her words for a moment. And suddenly my thoughts flash to Eloise—how she was all alone when I met her, with her dogs as her only comfort. I’ve seen what it looks like for someone so bighearted but lonely to live in New York. I wonder if Abuelo felt a similar loneliness, intensified by being ripped away from all he knew. I try to imagine Eloise without her dogs and I can’t. It’s impossible—she would not survive.

Maybe it was similar with Abuelo and family. He needed something, some kind of deep human connection, in order to survive in the city. In order to be able to stay and support us.

“Ricardo—Abuelo’s son—is going to the Alvarez wedding,” I confess quietly. “That’s how I met Eloise. I needed an invitation in order to interview him, or The New Yorker wouldn’t publish my article.” Shame trickles down the nape of my neck. “But I haven’t told her that yet. I … I didn’t know that I would fall in love with her when I first met her. And now … I don’t know how to tell her. Not without hurting her. But if I pull the article, I lose all credibility. I lose the one shot I’ll ever have at achieving my dream. And I think people deserve to know who Abuelo was. All of him. Not just the good parts.”

Abuelita thinks for a minute. “Don’t let the past ruin your future,” she says. “And don’t lose what’s right in front of you. Maybe this is a different sort of story you’re telling—not just about Abuelo but about yourself as well. You still have choices, Agustín. You still have a life to live. Don’t waste it.”

She’s right. And Eloise deserves the truth.

But I don’t know how she’ll take it, and the very last thing I want to do is disrupt the harmony she seems to have found in Mexico City. She still needs to give that speech. And while she’s happy here with my family—which brings me such deep abiding joy—I know that her anxiety isn’t gone. It never will be. And she can’t afford a single distraction right now.

So I’ll wait. Once the wedding is over, and the speech has been given, and we’re back at the hotel after the reception, I’ll come clean and tell her everything. It’s only a few more days—there’s no harm in waiting just a few more days, right?

“Mama Rosita!” Elena scampers into the living room and throws herself into Abuelita’s lap. “Quieres postre?”

And just like that, the moment is over. The rest of the girls come rushing inside at the very mention of dessert, clamoring for flan, while Lupe shushes them. Caro and Eloise come in last, and the moment my eyes land on Eloise, it’s like everything clicks into place. I enter her orbit, and my whole center of gravity shifts.

Her hand reaches for mine in the same instant I reach for hers.

And as much as I love my family, suddenly, I can’t wait to be alone with her.

“Get a room, you two,” Caro teases us in English. Eloise’s cheeks flame.

“Carolina, what are you saying to them?” Abuelita demands.

“Nothing Abuelita,” Caro says, faking innocence.

After dessert, we say our goodbyes. The Minions don’t want to let Eloise go—she’s like the shiny new toy for them. Vero especially seems enamored by her. My mom gives her a big hug, and Eloise and Caro exchange numbers. Even Lupe seems won over.

“She’s a good one, Tín,” she tells me. “Quiet but you can tell she has a good heart.” Then she levels me with a glare. “Don’t screw it up.”

So supportive.

We get into the sleek SUV, garnering impressed looks from Lupe and Tía Cristina, and my family crowds out onto the sidewalk to wave goodbye, the twins jumping up and down, Sofia smiling widely, Caro with her arm slung around Papá’s shoulders.

As soon as they vanish from sight, Eloise slumps against me. I wrap my arms around her and chuckle into her hair.