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“You told me she got married, though. Who did she marry?”
Sabrina’s dad was a peach of a guy. “A man from her hometown. A guy named Phil.”
Her dad snapped his fingers. “I knew I recognized the last name. She talked about Philip Leal. I think she was in love with him, but in high school he didn’t give her the time of day.”
“Well, like I’ve told you, it didn’t go well. He ditched us after Sabrina was born and didn’t look back. Mom was always a negative person, but after Phil left, she was a black hole. I was raised to not expect good things to happen. My mom’s philosophy was if you anticipate the worst, you’re ready for it, and if the worst doesn’t happen then it’s a pleasant surprise. The problem is when you have that philosophy even when the best happens, you’re always waiting for it to go bad again. You can’t trust the good things.”
“Good things happen, Elisa,” her father assured her. “They happen all the time. They happen in the strangest places and when you least expect them to. The problem is your mom thought good things only ever happen when you deserve them, and she had very specific thoughts about what deserving meant.”
“You have summed up my childhood. There was a lot of talk about getting what I deserved,” she admitted as she made the turn. The hairpin turn that if she got wrong would send them both over the edge and down the mountain way faster than they’d gone up.
It didn’t seem to freak her dad out at all. He sat back, glancing her way. “There’s a problem with centering your life around that philosophy. If good things only happen because a person deserves it, then they deserve the bad things that happen, too. When you really think that way, when it’s the basis for your whole life philosophy, deep down you don’t see the difference between something you earned and something that happened. Deep down, when something real bad happens, you blame yourself. There’s a difference between working hard and earning success and getting a disease, but I don’t know that your mom would have been able to see that. I hope you can see the difference. Why don’t you pull in? Right up there is the highest point here. You should see it and take it in. It can be distracting.”
She needed the distraction because this talk was starting to get to her. Tears had formed, pooling in her eyes as she tried to stop them from falling.
Who the hell was this person she was becoming?
Elisa Leal was tough. Elisa Leal survived everything without shedding a tear. Elisa Leal was lonely and tired of shutting off her every emotion.
She turned into the parking lot that led to what was described as the scenic overlook.
“If you take in the sight, you’ll get used to it and it won’t distract you,” her father advised. He opened his door and slid out of his seat. “Come on. I’ll show you. It’s the best view in the Sangre de Cristos.”
She didn’t want to see the view but also didn’t think she should drive until she got her damn emotions under control.
She wiped her eyes when her dad wasn’t looking and took in a deep breath, forcing herself to move.
There were times when her body still didn’t feel like her own, when she would look in a mirror expecting to see the woman she’d been before. Or when she would move a certain way and muscles would tense that hadn’t before.
She felt different. So different, and not always in a good way.
She followed her father up the path. There were only a couple of cars at this time of day, and up ahead she could see an observation deck had been built on the side of the mountain.
Would she have guessed even last year that she would be walking a mountain path, following behind her father? That she would be in a town where she’d met two men and no one shamed her for it.
Her father moved to the deck and turned to offer her a hand up the last step. “Come on, honey. Let me show you something amazing.”
She took his hand, and he led her out.
She stared for a moment because it seemed she stood in the middle of giants. The mountains rose all around her, and she could see down to the highway below. From here she could see the road stretching toward Pagosa Springs, and when she turned she could see the valley where she lived, a gorgeous blanket of white dotted with cabins, the glow of life and warmth coming from inside. It was like standing at the top of the world and seeing it from a perspective she couldn’t have before.
