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“You did it to keep yourself safe. You were just a kid.”
“That’s what my mother said too. She always insisted I was too creative, too vivid in my imagination to be in the fields. That’s why she took me to St. Andrews, and asked if I could join the parish so that I could be part of their plays. I hated it.”
“Didn’t it help though?”
“No, it was just another secret to hide from Miguel, her tithing what little she had to the makeshift acting school the church provided. And why would I really want to be there, participating in a place where people prayed to a god that I felt never existed? The priest always saidheworked in mysterious ways, but watch your mother get hit enough times, and things start to feel less mysterious. It’s fucking negligence. But despite all that shit, I did as I was told, I played the parts I was given, and slowly I got good at them. Any time my mother came to see me, she would smile from the crowd. That’s what I held onto, and that’s what I believed in… and from there, the dream was born.”
“To be an actor?” I asked innocently.
“No. To be someone different… to pursue the only distraction that could keep me alive. My dreams aren’t like yours, Gemma. They aren’t aspirations. A dream to me is literal, like when you fall asleep and lose touch with reality. That’s what I was seeking. But like I asked long ago, what is the cost to chase a dream?”
The warning was less for my future and more of a bleak reality he faced. He was telling me the best way he could, the only way he could. “It costs a life.”
“And not just your own sometimes,” he added. “The plays, the acting, my involvement in the parish, it was all an attempt to give me some normalcy, and Miguel knew nothing about it… until he found a playbill with my name casted inside.” The cold drop in his voice was met with the turn of his cheek. I knew he didn’t want to say whatever was on the tip of his tongue, so I waited.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, knowing his unfinished sentence was darker left unsaid than it was complete. I couldn’t imagine what happened after Miguel found out.
“Me too. Sorry to you, to my mother… to my brother who I tried to protect. To the boy who stood in the kitchen with vomit on his cowboy pajamas, the one who needed to escape, but ended up causing more harm than good.”
“You did what you could.”
“But it cost me everything. Gemma, I showed a need to escape, and my mother saw that, refusing to let me work with her. That meant keeping the secret, sneaking me every day to the parish, driving me back and forth to do so. And she did it, never complaining because that’s how much she cared.” Alejandro hunched into his seat, leaning over to his knees so that he could look onto the floor. He spoke to his boots, faltering between words. “She continued to take me to class, to work the cherry fields, and every day she’d pick me up. No matter what. Until—”
The last family from the stage left the building, exiting through a loud steel door. It slammed with an echo, sending the amphitheater into a strange new silence. We were completely secluded with the implications of what Alejandro didn’t say.
“There was an accident…” he mustered inaudibly, the image of what he’d seen that day visible only as his sharpened cheekbones hardened, restrained from tears, as he started to blink. “It was raining, and she still went to work; she still took me to the church. And had I been there with her, working in the fields, not living some fantasy, she wouldn’t have had to come pick me up. She wouldn’t have been driving on that fucking road…for me.”
I turned closer to his body, offering the condolence of my head along his shoulder. Though his eyes glossed over with the most vivid red I’d ever seen, he didn’t cry. He stopped himself, an impulsive control that may still have been there from when his father refrained him from ever doing so. I wasn’t as strong.
“Miguel blames me. He thinks I killed her, because of my dream… because of the sacrifices she made for me… and I guess that’s true. If it weren’t for me, she would still be—”
“Stop…” I cooed sweetly, unable to bear the thought of the blame he placed on himself. “You did nothing wrong. What happened wasn’t your fault, and don’t you ever believe what he told you. That’s thediseasehe wants you to have.” I said, realizing how similar we were. Despite the avoidance we gave to the past—not wanting to become the things we feared—we still somehow got caught.
I fought so hard to avoid the memories of growing up alone with Claire in a house I hated being in. I was too young to hear the things she said, the paranoia and fear she instilled in my little head. I had neither the tools nor the power as a child to manage that life, to navigate her depression. It changed me; it scared me; and ever since then, I lacked the ability to differentiate her disorder from the trauma I experienced as a child. I knew it wasn’t her fault, but the impression still burned in my mind: the long nights of screaming, the weeping, forcing her to eat, to cook and clean, the dread I had of falling asleep, of making sure my door was locked. It was everything I hated, stemming from a single night that my father left, the moment my life changed forever.
“Your mother saw a talent in you that the whole world now gets to see. She instilled your desire to help others, to be better. Don’t let one person blame you for what your mother fought so hard to protect you from. She had nothing but pride and love for you, I just know it.”
“Or shame,” he argued. “There’s nothing to be proud of when my life isspentclearing my name, settling in court, reinforcing a reputation of getting others hurt… it happens because of me, and it’s expected regardless of how it happens. But every year is another theatre, another quiet place for the youth, an opportunity to help. I donate to them, but never under my name, only my mother’s, letting her do for others what she had done for me, to make dreams come true for those less privileged. But I have to do better.”
“And you’re trying,” I argued back. “I know you are.”
“It’s not good enough. You were wrong about the disease my father gave me. It’s not the self-hatred that I can’t stand… it’s the anger.” A line along Alejandro’s cheek wrinkled into a scowl. “Whatever rage he had, whateverfuckedup loss of control he had, I also have. Gemma, I can’t stop myself. When I see someone get hurt, when I see a woman,anywoman, abused or mistreated, it makes me sick. I see fucking red, and I can’t control myself.”
“You’re just trying to help…” I scrambled for words. “We can find a way for you to control it.”
“That’s the thing, I’m not sure that I can. I try to counter the bad I’ve caused with these acts of charity. You know it’s not just theaters I give money to, it’s places like Belmont Hills, as well.”
My breath stilled at the mention of Belmont Hills. So much had circled around one place, around one person. I didn’t know how to respond. Alejandro grew quiet, his final words an uncomfortable admission.
“I hate Miguel, I hate what I’ve become and how people I love have been hurt. I went to Belmont Hills to try and make things accessible to women who couldn’t afford that type of protection, protection I couldn’t provide my own mother.” He looked at me, folding his hands together. “That’s where I met Natalie… That’s where this lawsuit began.”
Chapter38
Alejandro
9 months earlier
“Stop it, Alejandro,” Ivanna said my name with a warning. “You know you can’t smoke here.”
