CHAPTER 8
CARLOS
Five Years Ago
June 22
Puerto Escondido, Mexico
My heart slammed in my chest the way it had the day my wife died, when the nurse had placed Marcus in my arms and Raquel had put her trust in me. My past was as much an unknown to her as it was to me, yet we’d fallen in love and married. She’d given me her son Julian.
And now I could lose him.
I gunned the open-top Jeep on the Costera, shifting to a higher gear. The wind dried the sweat in my hair but offered no escape from the heat, let alone Imelda’s concerns about my documentation. And those concerns were valid. Though I hadn’t had issues, I did wonder about the cards in my wallet. Alarms didn’t sound and the authorities hadn’t come running when I married Raquel, adopted Julian, and paid my taxes. That didn’t mean my paperwork hadn’t been forged. It only meant I hadn’t done anything to show up as a blip on someone’s radar screen.
I could carry on with my modus operandi: maintain the gallery, socialize with the neighbors, and actively contribute to the community. But that didn’t resolve the big what if about Julian, especially since the state of my mind was already questionable. Was Julian legally my son?
Red flags would fly high if I started asking questions. I could find my ass hauled to the nearest prison or drop-kicked over the border. There was one person who had the answers, and it enraged me that I’d have to seek his help. It also scared the hell out of me.
I grasped the gear stick and downshifted, swerving right toward the airport. My conversation with Imelda had lasted a lot longer than the twenty minutes I had to spare. Natalya’s flight had landed forty minutes ago, and that impatient streak that ran through her veins probably had her in a cab on the way to my house. I’d texted her while leaving Casa del sol, asking that she wait. She’d already left a voice message wondering where I was.
I snatched the phone from the center console, and her most recent message flashed.
Turn around. Got a cab.
I swore, tossing the phone on the passenger seat. I’d just passed her. Couldn’t she have waited five more minutes?
There were times during her visits we felt like a married couple. Our schedules slid into place as we navigated around each other throughout the day. We shared meals and chores while juggling the kids’ activities and bickering about each other’s annoying habits. She picked at her teeth with her fingernail and I used the coffee mugs to clean my brushes. I also saved too much crap, stuff she considered trash, like old newspapers and magazines. I looked forward to her visits, loved having her here, and missed her when she was gone. She made me feel like me, whatever that was supposed to feel like. And I hated that I wanted more from her. She wouldn’t move to Puerto Escondido and I’d turned down her invitation to relocate to Hawaii where she’d help raise Julian and Marcus. I haven’t driven farther than the state line since December. Fear of travel is a bitch.
But despite the distance, what we did have in common kept us together.
Natalya had been in the delivery room with me when Raquel flatlined. It had happened so fast. Her blood pressure dropped like an airplane shot out of the sky; then chaos broke loose as we watched what should have been one of the happiest days in our lives careen in a downward spiral. The next thing I knew, the doctor was offering condolences for my loss in the same tone he’d tell patients to stay off their bandaged feet and rest. He grasped my shoulder, nodded once, then left the room. The nurse adjusted my arms around Marcus, and when she was sure I wouldn’t drop him, she mumbled a halfhearted congratulations and followed it with an apology, her eyes darting away. My gaze met Natalya’s over the jet-black hair of my newborn son. Her expression mirrored my stunned disbelief.
Natalya had come for Marcus’s birth and planned to stay a couple of weeks to help with Julian as we adjusted to life with a newborn. Instead, she stayed two months as we adjusted to life without Raquel. We didn’t have experience handling an infant and we blundered our way through feeding schedules and diaper changes, exhausted and grief stricken. Her fierce loyalty kept her home with us and her compassion ensured Julian and I kept an open dialogue about his mother. How did you tell a five-year-old his mother was never coming home? There was no easy way.
But Natalya’s compassionate nature brought her to me the night before she returned home. The boys had long gone to sleep and she had said good night, going to her room. I took a shower, alone with my thoughts, wondering how the hell I was going to single-handedly raise two boys when I had my own head full of problems. I twisted the handle and the water dropped a few dozen degrees when the glass door opened with a gust of cold air. My skin beaded and I pulled in a sharp breath at the feel of her hands on my hips. I turned, the water pelting the back of my head and shoulders.
“What are you—?” The question lodged in my throat. Water drops camouflaged her tears but not the redness and swelling around her eyes. She’d been crying.
For two months Natalya put our needs before her own. She held my young family together and kept us moving forward as we worked through our grief, rarely showing that she was hurting as much as we were. She stared up at me with glassy eyes and damp lips, exposed in more ways than a lack of clothes, and I realized for the past eight weeks, no one had held her.
I grazed my fingers into her hair and squeezed. Her lips parted on a gasp. She hadn’t come to me for reassurance or comfort. This was a moment for raw emotion, where the need to take transcended the desire to give.
My mouth landed hard on hers. The taste of her anguish was as palpable as the ache to feel alive. In a flurry of limbs and hands and mouths, Natalya’s body melded solidly against mine. I groaned, shocked at the possessive sound deep in my throat, and gripped her thighs, lifting her. Her arms and legs coiled around me and I turned, pressing her back to the cold tiles. I slid into her and our eyes locked. Something unspoken passed between us, connecting us in the way that shared loss does. But it wasn’t my deceased wife I saw in the lines of her face or arch of her brow. It wasn’t her I thought of as I started to move. It was all Natalya.
An undeniable emotion surged in me. Holding her close, I slammed into her. We jerked against each other, hard and rough, until our minds and hearts were stripped as bare as our bodies. I eased her down and we leaned into each other. She cried on my shoulder, shaking in my arms, and I kissed her damp hair, the dip in her temple, the curve of her ear. She trailed kisses across my collarbone and down to my rapidly beating heart. Then she left me, cold and naked and bewildered.
Natalya flew home the next morning. Neither of us had the courage to mention the previous night, and she barely made eye contact with me when she kissed Julian and Marcus good-bye. But at the airport, after I retrieved her luggage from the back of the Jeep, after she briefly hugged me and kissed the side of my neck, I grasped her wrist when she started to walk away. I didn’t want her to go. But those weren’t the words that fell from my mouth. She could be pregnant. We hadn’t used protection.
A sad smile touched her lips, and she gave her head a slow shake. “I’ll text when I land.”
She returned to Puerto Escondido several months later and we eased into a comfortable rhythm as though we’d been lifelong friends. After that, she visited several times a year, and we talked on the phone a couple of times a week. We texted almost daily. But I wondered if she ever thought of those moments in the shower when she looked at me. Did she see me or her deceased sister’s husband? Because I sure as hell hadn’t forgotten those fiery minutes, the way her body fit to mine and the throaty gasps she made as I rocked inside her. My name on her lips when she came. The memory sent my pulse thrumming. I should have felt guilty about having sex with my sister-in-law only a couple of months after my wife’s death. But I didn’t. I had to move on, keep pushing forward into the future. What I did feel guilty about was that I couldn’t stop thinking about Natalya in that way. I’d been lusting after her like a horny teenager.
I downshifted to first, pulling to the side of the road, letting a cab pass by on its way to the airport. Then I swerved around and headed home.
Natalya had showered and left for a meeting before I arrived home with Julian and Marcus. We’d finished dinner and Marcus had already been put to bed by the time Natalya wrapped up her meeting. I was picking up after the boys, making my end-of-the-day rounds through the house, when the front door opened.
“Tía Natalya!”
“Julian, I’m so happy to see you.” Natalya sank to her knees. Julian ran into her arms.
Over their heads, I watched the taxi back out of the driveway. A discarded shoe about the size of my palm lay on the porch. Juggling kids’ books, a wooden train, and a lonely flip-flop, I picked up the shoe and turned to Natalya.
“I want to show you a new trick I learned.” Julian took off to the kitchen. I heard the slider open and slam shut.
Natalya rose to her toes and kissed my cheek. “Hi.”
I smiled. “Hi back.”
Copper strands fanned across her face, tangling around her neck. A few caught on her lip. I brushed them aside, knocking her chin with the shoe.
“Ow.”
I chuckled, apologetic. “That was a rookie move.”
She blushed and glanced behind her. The taxi had left. My neighbors Raymond and Valencia Navarro were out for their evening walk. They waved and I waved back, then shut the door.
Julian barreled up the hallway, dribbling a fútbol. “Watch this, Tía Nat.” He toed the ball into the air and juggled it with his knees. Natalya counted to sixteen before the ball bounced off the edge of Julian’s thigh and nearly collided with a table lamp.
“Whoops.” Julian chased after the ball.
Natalya clapped. “That’s impressive.”
I dumped my armload into the laundry basket of items to go upstairs.
“Your moves are looking great, kid.” I prodded him from the room. “But the ball belongs—”
“Outside. Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Natalya and I followed Julian outside, where we passed the ball, comparing kicking accuracy and blocking skills. Julian pointed out mine were the worst between us, but I wasn’t entirely focused on the ball. My mind was on my conversation with Imelda and how that played into Julian’s future.
“Dude.” My son gawked at me when he caught me staring at him. I’d missed the ball again.
Natalya looked at me curiously and I shook my head. “My bad.” I jogged after the ball and drop-kicked it to her. With the coordination of a professional athlete, she stopped the ball with the ball of her foot and passed to Julian. My son rattled off stats for the Albrijes de Oaxaca, a Mexican fútbol team, as we continued passing the ball. Eventually Natalya yawned loudly. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand. Julian followed suit. He rubbed his eyes with his fists.
“Let’s go, future pro fútboller, off to bed.” I picked up the ball and tossed it onto a patio chair.
Julian hugged his aunt good night. Natalya dropped a kiss on his head. “Buenas noches.”
I helped Julian with his nightly ritual of picking up his room and brushing his teeth; then I read a quick story. He fell asleep before I reached the last page. Setting the book aside, I kissed him good night and ruffled his hair, letting my fingers linger. He’d lost much in his short life. Abandoned by his birth father and the death of his mother. Then there was me.
I rubbed the dark walnut strands, the hair coarse from salt and the summer sun. There were three scenarios about Julian, two with Marcus that concerned me. The authorities could remove Julian from my care, assuming the adoption wasn’t legal. I could abandon them. It could be tomorrow or years from now, but one day I’d wake up without any memories of them. What if I didn’t want kids? Would I walk away from them? I had to consider that possibility. What would happen to Julian and Marcus if I returned to California?
Then there was the final scenario, the one I’d been trying to come to terms with since last December. I wasn’t sure I wanted James to have custody.
Julian’s hair slipped through my fingers and I wondered when the same would happen to my memories of him.
I found Natalya in Marcus’s room. She stood over his crib. “I can’t believe how much he’s grown,” she whispered when I came to stand beside her. “He’s beautiful.”
Marcus stirred. He grunted, lifting his rear into the air, the sheet sliding off him. He smacked his lips and Natalya smiled. She pulled the sheet up to his shoulders and lightly patted his back. “I’ve missed him.”
And I missed her. I wanted to tell her that she was beautiful, too. The startling color of her green eyes, even here in the dim glow of the hallway light that spilled into Marcus’s room, always caught me off guard the first time I’d see her after months apart. But the thing about Natalya that touched me in places I never had the opportunity to experience with her sister was the way she cared for my sons. She loved them as though they were her own. It always surprised me she’d never married and had children of her own. She would be an incredible mother.
“Do you want a beer?”
She hummed her acknowledgment.
We went downstairs. She slipped out the kitchen slider and I retrieved the brews from the fridge, popping the lids. She was gazing at the stars when I joined her. “The moon’s bright tonight.” It cast her face in blue light.
I passed her a bottle. “Thanks.” She cheered and took a long drink, then sighed.
Cicadas sang their evening song and palms swayed in the breeze coming off the water, enough to chill what the day had melted away. I caught the delicate scent of soap in the salt-heavy air. Natalya had showered while I put Julian to bed and she’d changed into a dress that looked more like a large T-shirt. The bottom barely skimmed the top of her thighs. She crossed those amazing legs at the ankle and leaned against a support post for the wood balcony above us.
I looked away and took a huge gulp of beer. “Tell me about your meeting.”
“It went well. Dinner was phenomenal. We ate at the new seafood place on Avenida Benito Juarez.”
“Luna’s?”
She nodded. “I had mahimahi tacos. Mari’s agreed to do three exclusive designs for us. We’re meeting up in a few days to go over some concepts.”
“Is Gale on board yet?”
Natalya laughed lightly at my pun, shaking her head. She could have been laughing about her father, perhaps both. “Not entirely and he’s not going to like Mari’s counteroffer.”
Hayes Boards, a premier surfboard manufacturer founded by her father, Gale Hayes, and based in Hawaii, was known for its proprietary finishes and cutting-edge designs. Their stock boards lacked any unique artwork. Too masculine and generic in color, in Natalya’s opinion. The number of young girls taking to surfing had skyrocketed in the last decade and she was determined to expand Hayes Boards’s target audience by introducing a line of custom boards with designs that appealed to that generation. Natalya found that opportunity in Mari Vasquez, world-renowned surfboard painter. As artists, Mari and I ran in the same circles and I introduced her to Natalya last November during the torneo.
She took a lingering sip. “Dad agreed to commission Mari for three designs.” She held up the same number of fingers. “We’ll digitally print the designs on a fiberglass wrap and apply them on a limited number of long boards and see how they sell.”
I pressed my back against the opposite pillar and faced her. The temperature was dropping and I finally felt comfortable in the linen shirt I’d worn all day. My jeans were another matter and I itched to pull on shorts. “What’s Mari asking for?”
“Her name on the board, which I expected and don’t have a problem with. Dad, on the other hand, will see it as a sellout. The boards should speak for themselves, not the designs on them or the professional surfers riding them. That’s why we don’t have our own pro team where many of our competitors do.”
“Gale shouldn’t have a problem with Mari’s autograph when the boards sell faster than you can manufacture them.”
She flashed a smile, her teeth bright against her face. “That’s when he’ll pop a vein. She doesn’t do a flat up-front fee. She wants royalty payments.”
I brought the beer to my lips and laughed, the sound vibrating in the bottle. “Gale’s going to pop more than a vein.” I cheered the bottle at her and drank.
She grimaced. “What about you?” She tapped her forehead. “Something’s on your mind.”
I crossed my arms. “What makes you say that?”
She finished her beer. “You weren’t with us when we passed the ball around earlier. You were distracted. Care to share?”
I wasn’t sure yet. I was still working it out.
“I’m fine.” I held out my hand, ready to return inside.
She gave me a doubtful look but didn’t pry further. A light flashed on in a second-floor window of the house next door, catching her attention. “Who’s vacationing there? I’m not used to seeing that house so dark and quiet.”
It usually wasn’t this time of year. Music would be blaring, with light in all rooms blazing. “A woman from the States rented the place for the summer.”
“Which state?”
I lifted a shoulder, surprised I hadn’t thought to ask Carla. “No idea. She seems nice, though. You might meet her. She watches the kids play on the beach.”
Natalya yawned, nodding, then gestured toward the slider. “It’s late. I’m going to bed.”
I reached for her hand when she started to walk by. She took mine without looking up at me and I pulled her into my arms. I almost sighed because the contact felt so good. Fist-bumps and neck hugs from the boys were great, but they didn’t stave off the loneliness.
Natalya folded her arms around my waist and I buried my lips in her hair. The embrace was platonic until I let my lips linger, following the part down the middle. She stiffened and I let my arms fall away, afraid I’d crossed some unspoken line. The shower incident was almost fifteen months ago. You’d think it had never happened at all.
She retreated a step and looked up, her eyes searching my face. The skin between her brows bunched. “Let’s grab some beers after work tomorrow. We can talk about what’s bothering you.” She grinned.
My mouth tilted up at the corner. “Beers sound great.”
“But not the talking.” She wagged a finger at me. “Now I know something’s going on with you. Don’t worry, I won’t push it. Yet.” She walked into the house and I followed. We said good night in the kitchen and I watched her walk down the hallway. She stopped and studied the pictures on the wall. I knew which one had her attention. A photo of her and Raquel at our wedding, bent over in laughter. Both of them beautiful in their dresses. Raquel in white and Natalya in lavender. She touched her fingers to her lips then the glass. Then she disappeared into the bathroom.
I tossed the bottles in recycling and went upstairs to write. Doctor’s orders. But what started as a daily exercise in hopes of recovering my past had evolved during the last six months into a tool of survival. Should I lose myself to James, my memories would still be here.