Chapter Seventeen
~Foreign~
From the highway, pointed spikes on wrought iron gates quarantining the extensive acres of cemetery rose up like rusty spears jabbing at the sky in warning. He drove through them anyway, traveling the winding roads that weaved through the graves until we were in the general area of where my father was buried under an enormous sculpture of a man that stood wide-legged with his hands on his hips. It was like he was bracing for the world. The figurine satisfactorily represented Terrence’s big body and presence in life a whole lot of yards away. It stood among the towering trees in the distance like an intimidating beacon that you couldn’t be sure led to safety because its imposing height and location. Let’s not forget its location.
We stopped at the curb. I shuddered, not because it was cold or because even in broad daylight, this place was creepy—it was a cemetery where I had to face my father to find my everlasting peace among the dead, while still living. And that needed to be done alone so I didn’t hold anything back in a cemetery where I still felt my father’s displeasure with me. Perhaps, I was projecting that on myself, but still…
“The shit I get myself into,” I mumbled. That’s why you should’ve done this before he died, scary ass.
The regrets were suddenly in abundance, enough to make my eyes and nose burn until Christian’s hand skated over my thigh, pushing out the melancholy gathering by simply squeezing lightly as I stared out the window at the twisted version of a confrontation/reunion waiting for me.
“I’ll be right here, sweetheart. Just holler if you need anything. Take your time, but your mother is still coming, so go do what you have to.” His voice was soothing simultaneously conveying ‘be quick about taking your time’.
Was that even possible? I doubted that—but not if he’d be right here, passing along his strength through touch until there was enough for me to grip the door handle, pulling then pushing. Once out the truck, I stopped on a dime, faltering on my quest. Realizing it, I took off across the grounds before completely changing my mind and put some serious thought into confronting my father from a place his remains weren’t actually occupyingsomewhere where the sting of regret would be less. Just didn’t know where that was, and this needed to be done ASAP, so okay, I was doing this.
Forging ahead like the frontline of an invading army, navigating around the smaller plots with vegetation slowly taking over them, I finally came upon my father’s. It was immaculate, not a blade of grass touched anything an inch above the rectangular, flat bottom of the figurine or the wooden bench’s legs positioned a few feet away behind me. Fresh flowers were in the holder below the engraving of his sunrise and sunset dates. The awkwardness I thought was discarded on the plane came back in full force, along with a powerful lonely feeling.
My father wasn’t really here, so technically, I was alone. However, this was the best I could do at talking to him, which I wasn’t doing. Supposed to get that out the way before Terrence’s better half showed up. Swallowing hard, the impulse to touch something solid that belonged to my father gripped me. I had loved this man like little girls were supposed to, and now, he couldn’t rebuff me if I reached for him. Or rather for the foot of the figurine.
“So, I guess I’ve proven you right that I would screw up your name.” But that wasn’t his fault—it was me who fuc… made love to Christian six ways from Sunday in front of an invisible camera, then let the damn evidence be stolen from me. “So, I can’t say that you talked the ruination of your name up on yourself because a self-fulfilling prophecy doesn’t need another party to make it true. The mess I’m entangled in was all my doing, but I didn’t come here to bitch about your name.”
Then old habits of respecting him, until I couldn’t, kicked in. “Sorry about the cursing... Oh hell, you’re dead. I’m almost thirty, so I can cuss. I wanted to say you helped ruin me before you ever said I’d ruin your name. I don’t know what the hell love from a man really feels like because you were supposed to show me that and what it felt to love a man like Christian, and…” Ew! I did not want to love my father like I do Christian, or vice versa. Which is why Christian would be classified as a first love, dummy.
The points I planned to make in the tangent I was going to go off on my father with were being struck down by details I hadn’t considered before, wouldn’t consider as long as I was in my feelings. Evidently, when you stepped out of them, realities like the truth and common sense prevailed; my father’s love shouldn’t feel like Christian’s love—wasn’t supposed to. They were two totally different men occupying two different areas of my life. Of my heart. Well then, some things just had to be experienced—like first loves—but it felt damn good to talk about anything without my father butting in, so I shrugged and continued, letting whatever come up come out.
“Well, I guess you couldn’t love me like Christian, you could only love like you were capable of doing. Yeah, you did a shitty job of that, but I still managed to find a good man, you know? Er, rather he found me with the aid of your wife ironically. My conscience is still laughing at me over that one. I don’t know what I did to deserve Christian. He’s so damn generous, deserving of everyone’s love. I’m not but wish I was like him in that regard, I’d know how to love him like I’m supposed to… I think.” Big sigh. “I don’t damn know. I bet he does though because he’s so damn smart. Smart enough to not let his house be broken into and let something very value go missing.
“Not me though, noooo, all I’ve been doing is ruining myself from the inside out for years, and now, his reputation too… but you and mama playing at Pinky and the Brain trying to take over the world started my downward spiral. I couldn’t love anybody because I can’t remember being loved by anybody. The twins had their own lives by the time I got here. I don’t know if what I feel for Christian is fully love. I… well, I think it is, but I can’t be sure because I don’t have experience with love period and I’m kind of scared to tell him I love him because I don’t know if I’ll wake up one day and backslide, not wanting him around any...” Just the notion of going without Christian for one whole day made my body threaten to break out in a cold sweat in the balmy temperature with pleasant cool breezes.
The image of identical rocking chairs on a wraparound porch in Arrow came to mind and brought me tranquility I’ve never known. For the first time, I knew who I wanted my future to lean toward—Christian was it for me.
“Okay, I take that last part back, Pops… ah…” My name for him, given when I’d learn to speak, just fell out of my mouth.
Old instincts were rising and taking hold when I had made a conscious decision to strip my parents of their titles long ago in retaliation for stripping me to the bone of my self-worth. Finding what I needed in Christian had given it back. I was worthy of love. Hell, I thought I had taken my self-worth with me when I left home for good. Apparently, not. Well, you know you’re worthy now.
Unconsciously, I was letting go of the spite I had carried in my heart for my folks, and it was a little disconcerting to let go of what you’ve known, grown comfortable with to try something new like living damage-free… or less damaged. “Where was I? Ah, Christian. Not wanting him around isn’t an option. Still, I’ve dumped so many people because I didn’t want them to love me, I… I didn’t want to love them either, not then. But now, I want to love someone. No, I want to love him, Christian, with everything in me, and I’m pretty damn sure I do, but… enough about me and my crazy ass feelings. This is about you and the ones you never showed me. How could you not love your own damn daughter enough to tell her you did while you were alive? I thought you hated me and was using your own kids to expand your empire. Christian swears you told him differently, but I needed to hear that from you and from… from mama.”
Arrrghh, I was that emotionally-needy little girl again. And she has a right to speak her mind, to feel what she felt. To go through it to get past it. To grow up.
Definitely had to do that if I wanted to be with a man and give him the love he merited.
“So, I should’ve told you both that I didn’t need a damn husband because I needed my parents and an education, but you both were too busy networking to listen… to love me.” I spat.
This topic—being neglected where it counted the most—I could sink my teeth into. This was what I needed to get off my damn chest, and boy was the buried-deep pain and anger hitting home, making a mess of my emotions. I was angry enough to swing on the figurine that embodied my father. Of course that wasn’t happening, so I began to pace, literally walking on his grave, as close as I was going to get to his real body as I thought of what to say next. But there wasn’t anything else to say, and I felt cheated because he couldn’t respond. He couldn’t tell me why I wasn’t good enough to be shown love by him.
“We were networking on your behalf, baby girl, because we loved you,” someone replied from behind me.
I froze, startled and almost pissing myself, so sure my father had actually risen from the grave to take part in the conversation. That was where that old adage came in about getting what you want, and oh, how you regretted it. But the voice was too lyrical, had too high a pitch to be his big, burly tenor that matched his body. The statement also came from behind me. I knew who was coming this way, before I even spun around.
My mother was picking a path on skyscraper heels very carefully around graves. “School was always an option if you wanted it, but you never said you did. You didn’t have much to say to us period unless we were arguing.”
Just as beautiful as she always was with most of my facial features in a pale complexion. Shimmering, silky black hair that wasn’t as coarse as mine swung from side to side at her waist as she moved graceful as ever. Her wide set eyes held firm on me, a smile crossing her small but plump lips. And the ‘come to Jesus’ meeting had begun… and the steps in APA commences.
The lonely feeling immediately went away, but the awkwardness stayed, along with the damn regrets. I hadn’t truly ever been in my mother’s company when we were alone, unless we were yelling at each other. Talking to her now was going to be very different; she could talk back and butt in. Oh lord!
I stood silently, a bit shy, with a whole lot of past hurt coming to the surface. Why hadn’t we confronted each other before now? Why did I have to call her to a grave because I wasn’t ever comfortable in her home to say what was on my mind?
Halfway to me, she tilted her head. “You know networking wasn’t so much about acquiring more power as it was about making sure our kids were taken care of from the best position in life, on top, Foreign. Parents don’t know when they’re going to leave this earth, and the good ones don’t want their kids floundering after they’re gone.”
“I get that, mama, but it’s the new millennium. A woman doesn’t need to be tied to a man to be taken care of, or have her parents pay for everything. We’re allowed to do that for ourselves now, you know? Having independence is not the equivalent of having the bubonic plague, despite what you believe.” Despite how she was raised.
“Neither is having a family, Foreign.” She sat down on the bench a few feet away.
“I can’t tell,” I replied dryly, frozen to my spot. The usual oppressed-when-she-was-around feeling didn’t emerge, just the angry-as-hell cargo sitting on my soul was making itself known, and I wanted it gone. “My family threw me out as soon as I stopped making excuses for why I didn’t like anyone at your meat markets and outright refused to marry any man. And my family forgot to make me feel like anything besides obligated to the family.”
She crossed her shapely legs, leaning back to elegantly toss an arm along the bench’s backside. “Yes, showing you the door backfired on me and your father real fast. You weren’t actually supposed to leave, then stay gone when we gave you the ultimatum of agreeing to pick someone. But we wanted you to just agree to marry, Foreign. You didn’t have to do it with who we chose or put on a wedding dress in the near future if you didn’t want to. The dinners were for you to have your pick of eligible bachelors, and yeah, we hoped you’d find love if that was what you wanted. Everything was done for what was best for our kids. Kaleb and Kali seemed to find love under our guidance. We thought maybe you would too if we pushed you… but maybe we should’ve just left your life to you and I’d have kept my baby where she belonged, at home or in the same city at least. But you were the baby that came out of the womb bucking the system. Giving the doctors and nurses cutting glares instead of crying, then learned to walk at eight months. You didn’t even want help with your homework. Independent from the start.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t as independent as you thought.” Had embraced the hell out of it by elementary school though, made it my best friend at twenty-six; it was all I had before I left.
Her eyes began to beam a little too brightly at me. “You know, we weren’t convinced you loved us either.” The longing in her voice gone husky was unmistakable, knocking my tail for six.
“Of course, I loved my parents!” I shrieked, maybe loved them too much if there was such a thing. “But you spent so much time with your associates at home when I was little, then you were pushing me at them when I turned eighteen, I thought you guys wanted a dynasty more than your kids.”
“True, we had a lot of dinner parties to network, but you butted heads so much with us, baby girl, it was hard to show you love, and that was when you were at home. You started coming home when you wanted to at twelve, but you never got into any trouble. Always at the same house with the same friend. Dina still asks about you by the way. Before twelve, you spent all your time in your room alone. After that, World War Three ensued if any of the family looked at you sideways. In order to keep the peace, we all gave you your space. Just about everybody was too afraid to approach you at the funeral and repast for your father. Everybody wanted to leave like they came; in one piece.”
She snickered. “I bet your father would’ve risked it though. He wasn’t scared of anything, not even losing you because he didn’t think it was possible… until it was very real and too late.”
Well, I said I wasn’t easy to love, which worked at the fabric of our relationship too, until it was shredded, which made me just as much to blame for the breakdown.
“His funeral and repast is the only two times I would not have wanted him to come anywhere near me.” Sighing, I browsed the statue from top to bottom. “I know I cut you guys off a long time ago and I’m sorry, but I have to say you didn’t explain the ‘arranged marriage’ thing that well back then. It felt like you guys had drawn a line in the sand with the twins who married a few years later. When I turned eighteen, I thought I had to choose right then too. When I reached the breaking point, I couldn’t stay in your home anymore or come back either. Plus, I haven’t been sure where I belonged in the family since I was six. Showing love is not a priority with the Torres’.”
Thus, I couldn’t recognize the feeling attached to it, but I think I was starting to, if the notion of going without Christian for one whole day made my body threaten to break out in a cold sweat had anything to do with it.
She leaned back under the weight of sudden amazement bearing down on her face. “Foreign, do you seriously think you’d have made it to twenty-six if you had no choice in marrying someone or when? And yeah, your father and I are guilty of entertaining more than spending real time with you kids and trying to make you guys grow up too fast. He knew he had heart problems before we married, infected me with his existential crisis and the need to make sure you all were taken care of before we left this earth. We didn’t know one day to the next when he’d suddenly be gone, so he worked his ass off. I, alongside him, networking to make as many contacts as we could for the business. It was going to be our kids’ foundation one day when we were gone, and we thought you guys knew you were loved. Kali and Kaleb were dodging our kisses by five-years-old. You father and I are guilty of thinking you were even more independent than the twins, but what you are is our all-or-nothing baby. He and I forgot that along the way, you know?”
Oh yes, I knewit was all-I-wanted no matter how small the amount, or nothing-at-all. “Damn, I was a right bitch even in my early years.”
Ma-ling giggled but didn’t disagree.
That irked a little, but I came to heal not be irked, so I ignored the tiny irritation. “It felt like I had no choice in who I married too, and yep, I wanted your kisses and hugs and your time and your attention and for you to stop trying to foist me off on strange men. When I got nothing from you emotionally, I left emotionally as soon as I figured out how to; by being angry all the time. Then, I left physically and I’m sorry I didn’t sit you all down and explain my feelings. I just couldn’t get out of them to remember there were two or rather three sides to the story.”
Clearly, misunderstandings had been running amuck in the mansion damn near all my life, dividing a family because none of us chose our words or actions well. If I hadn’t roared at them every time I felt like it, maybe I’d have asked why they thought I needed to marry someone. Maybe I’d have learned about my father’s heart condition sooner, spent more time with him. Maybe I’d have understood where they were coming from. All I had to do was step outside my feelings and ask. Something to remember for future reference. At least with Christian.
I can definitely shoot straight from the hip with him.
Ma-ling sighed. “I guess it would seem like that with the way we were breathing down your neck and forcing you to eat with strange men, but that’s how every Filipino family, rich or poor, do the women. That includes me and my mother. Her mother. Your great grandmother. For your father and me, it wasn’t so much as who you married but that you found someone who’d watch over you when your parents were gone. Who’d provide the basic necessities without breaking the bank. Hopefully, your husband wouldn’t rob you blind either.” The reason for all the men who were wealthy in their own right, and I can’t imagine the meat markets were fun for them who were forced to attend too. Almost guaranteed that I would’ve saw that for myself had my view not been so tunneled.
No point in dwelling on it now though—that part of my life was over.
“So, you’re saying I could’ve married the nice pool boy who wasn’t greedy, and you’d have been happy?” I joked. “And I provide the basic necessities for me just fine.”
Her eyebrow lifted off. “I said we wanted you taken care of, not struggling, Foreign. Your father and I wanted people who knew how to run the business, so our children wouldn’t have to if they didn’t want to. We were so busy trying to spoil you in the future, we forgot to love you all in the present, which is the real gift. We did know as long as people need something to cover their asses and sit on, the company would continue, expand, and keep you, your brother and sister, and those after you in a comfortable lifestyle. But being poor is not for the faint of heart. I’ve been there, before your very young grandmother caught the eye of a king. I was eight. Worrying where your next meal will come from is stressful as hell. I didn’t want that for my kids, or you guys jumping from bed to bed with potential sharks who would drain you dry, then spit you out.”
I gave her a blank look. “I don’t jump from bed to bed. I take my time and choose wisely, selecting the one I’ll spend a few hours with. As for the sharks, well, I’m the one more inclined to drain and spit them out.” Then, I grinned because I knew she’d loathe that last part.
She cringed on cue. “Too much information, daughter, and I’m sorry it took us so long to talk things out. Your father and I have been too damn prideful and self-righteous.”
I snorted, my chest heaving with my unreleased mirth. “Hey, you brought up the bed-jumping. Got a lot of pride myself, inherited of course, but I wield it expertly from much practice, and I’m sorry too for not looking past my own hurt feelings to demand yours.” I looked over at what remained of my father, then whispered, “Should’ve spent more time with you guys.” That was where most of my regrets were based, and they would never go away because the past can’t be undone.
Suddenly, she was the shy one, muttering, “Then, can I have my first hug in twenty years from you?”
I didn’t even hesitate to move from the grave to the bench, sitting beside her to gather her small body in my arms. It didn’t feel as if I’d come home—I had one of those—but it felt like I’d found something that was missing because I had missed her, as well as the twins. You didn’t actually have to get along with someone to love them, to want their support, willing to give it in return. She inhaled the skin at my neck then kissed my cheek, pulling back to wipe a stray tear away, calling forth my own waterworks. No, no, no, screw this crying-crap.
“You know you could always make me cry, Foreign, when no one else could. I love you just that much, and speaking of bringing things up, is there anything you want to tell me?” Still dabbing at the pool of water in her midnight-black eyes.
To hear she loved me twice in one day would’ve been mind-blowing if she hadn’t brought up the reason I was here. How the hell did she know about the sextape already? I tell you, it felt like the whole world crashed down around me; I had to tell her I’d screwed up. The question was, why didn’t she lead with the fiasco I was living in when she got here.
“I love you too, mama, and there is something I want to tell you. I didn’t know Christian had made the tape of us the night of Pops’ repast until a couple weeks ago. He brought it to me to show me that I was still capable of feeling something for a man besides hate, and—”
“What?!” she screeched, “What sextape?!”
The expression on her face of pure scandalized shock would’ve been comical if I wasn’t the reason for it. “Oh hell, I thought you knew. If not the tape, then what were you talking about?”
She thumbed behind her slender shoulder. “I saw Christian on my way in, and that was a little surprising but not shocking. Him being here with you was what I knew.”
“Oh… that,” I downplayed. “Well, um, he and I are dating… heavily.”
My mother conjured up one of her famous shit-eating grins that trailed when she got her way. Amazingly, it didn’t raise my hackles.
“Well, yeah, Foreign, I figured you were dating heavily when I found out from him that he was waiting for you. Congrats on finding the perfect man for you, which I knew he was by the way. Both of you are as stubborn as the day is long. You father and I knew it would take someone as muleheaded as you, which you get from your father’s side, to get to your heart, but the damn tape. Where did it come from?”
Yep, she and my father had handpicked Christian for me only God knew how long ago. I let that slide by the wayside because she had me dead to rights at what man would set my heart aflutter and my soul on fire. But what mother didn’t know most times who and what their child needed? That was neither here nor there now. I had to give her the gritty details of how Christian and I came to be, so I began. From the amount of abject alarm growing on her face, she was scandalized even more. When I concluded the story where she found me aiming venom at my father’s grave, I was expecting her outrage and my immediate exile from the whole United States if she could swing it. She started to laugh hysterically, holding her stomach instead. I flipflopped back and forth between calling the nearest nut house for her and putting my arms around her to hold her together. She had to be falling apart, right?
But I didn’t think she’d want me to touch her, not after hearing about the disc. At this point, I felt tainted, contagious, so I kept my distance and started talking fast, begging for her forgiveness. To understand that I never thought Natalia would come after me in this way. That Christian and I were working on finding the disc, well, he was working on it. I was just along for the ride until I had to share the bad news with her and the family who I knew would want me to keep as far away from them as possible now. And that was okay with me, who had made my bed and now I’d lie in it. Again! And I told her so.
She stopped cracking up abruptly, pinning me with a fierce glare she wore when she was hearing none of what the other party in the conversation was saying. “You will do no such damn thing, Foreign.”
“I won’t do what? Stay away or lie in my bed?” I was hella confused here.
“Either,” she spewed. “Neither. No more damn running for you. We stand as a family from now on, and we will damn well fall as one. Natalia Fosters, will learn this the… that is who you’re talking about right?”
Now, I was the one wearing scandalized shock, nodding dumbly and stammering, “Yes… yes ma’am.” She just kept surprising me with her responses.
“Uh huh, that bitch isn’t mad with you, Foreign. She’s mad with me. I won’t let her father’s company take over exporting our fabrics overseas at an inflated price, because our old shipping company is going under. Our company, alone, would keep a shipping company afloat, but the competent father, who inherited the business we use from his competent dead father, died too. The son’s been running it into the ground for the last couple years with his rotten ass.”
Well damn, this was business and personal for Natalia.
“Let me get this straight, mama. You’re talking about Syrus LaFont. The jerk that lists his acquisitions before he even learns your name. I thought the arrogant rotten ass was smart enough to know that to maintain his acquisitions, he had to make money.”
She harrumphed. “Guess not. Thank God you didn’t see anything in him. Anyway, Natalia isn’t your problem, she’s mine. You just gave her the opening to get back at me and…”
Then she cocked her head to the side in thought. “Well, back at you too, since you got the man she’s been after since coming here to do business on her back right before you left. She likes to pretend she’s docile, but she’s a snake. I knew she wasn’t any good at first sight, but her father owns a shipping company too. I’m shopping around for a new one, so I entertained the snake. Should’ve ran her ass out of town when she first step foot in LA. When I heard Christian had started seeing her, I fell out a little bit with him, wanted him for you, and yes, that’s meddling. That’s what parents do. Although, some of us don’t know when to quit. Some of us like me and your father, but I’m glad things worked out for you and Christian. I’m so sorry she attacked your home and invaded your private life. If you want to film and photograph your body with your man’s, that’s your business, not hers or anybody else’s.”
My mother started wagging her finger at me. I was sitting speechless because she didn’t go nuclear on me. “I bet she has something to do with the break-in too, and she will pay for it. By the time I get through with her, her father’s business will be the least of her worries because she won’t have a business.”
She got to her feet, leaving me shell-shocked on the bench. She was on my side, not parting the fabric of time with her little finger for me to step through, then never return. Tried to wrap my mind around all that but couldn’t. That was what years of indoctrinating yourself with certain beliefs did to you. Brainwashing, you mean. Call a spade a spade.
Motioning for me to come on, she turned away. “Foreign, let’s go. I need to get home and make some calls. This is where your family, snobbish and self-righteous as they may be, proves to you how hell bent we can be for our own.” Prove to me?
My mouth started to flail like a fish, needing a second to adjust to the turnaround. “I… ah… wait, mama. I don’t think they’ll want me around right now.” Even if she did.
She stopped sideways, looking back at me, fingering the buttons of her dress. “Sure, some of them will be a little judgmental, but you can damn well believe they’ll be respectful about it because they don’t want me on their asses too. And you don’t have to worry about that for now because we won’t breathe a word of this to anybody unless we have to, and then they’ll still have to go through me to get to you. Now, let’s go.”
“But I’m shunned,” I blurted out, still stuck to the bench.
She turned completely around, raised both arched eyebrows then dipped her head, looking down her nose at me. “When? By who?”
“By you and Pops when you kicked me out.”
Her face morphed from furious with Natalia to just cross with me. I did not miss the look she got when I agitated her.
Exhaling, she switched most of her puny weight—a force to be reckoned with nonetheless—to one tiny heel. “Did we say to you that you were shunned?”
“Well…” No! “… no,” I added grudgingly because I’d be the one they’d tell that to for sure, but they hadn’t. I assumed it and made myself look like…
Well, you knew what I looked like.
“Uh, huh, that’s what I thought. Let’s go.” She strolled away, the subject already dismissed.
“I wasn’t shunned,” I breathed away the conviction that had fueled so much of my spite now gone, but I felt ordered around like a five-year-old again while catching myself scrambling to my feet to follow her like a puppy, like she was the big dog. That’s because she is.
There was that.
“Get in the car with, Christian, baby girl. You don’t need to know what I’m about to do.” Had good ideas though.
“Yes ma’am,” I obeyed without hesitation, then caught myself obeying.
I’d fallen right back into respecting her, would continue to as long as she wasn’t shoving me at a male… which she kind of was doing but in Christian’s direction. Hell, I’d shove myself there, so she wasn’t doing anything I wouldn’t. No need to get tight about it then.
We marched single file toward him leaning against the side of the truck with his arms crossed.
Ma-ling waved to him. “Christian, bring baby girl to the house. We may have to commiserate on a plan for the snake in our lives if my scheme doesn’t work out.” She paused beside the baby blue Phantom idling in front of the SUV. “Oh, and Christian, I assume you’re the reason why my check for Foreign’s tuition was returned to me this semester.”
I stopped in my tracks a yard away from the SUV, just blinking at her and thinking, Wait. What? on repeat.
Eventually, I recovered my one of my fine-motor skills, speaking. “So that explained why my classes dropped from thousands of dollars in my first semester to only five hundred for the following ones. I thought it was just hella expensive to get started.”
Christian roared with laughter, then started toward me who had yet to move. “Yep, I’m the reason, Ma-ling. I went all in, paying for the remaining semesters, and got caught. I’m not as clever as you are.”
She released that shit-eating smirk as her chauffeur opened her door. “See you two at the house.”
She slipped into the car, never once having kept her finger out of my world, operating from the shadows. Somehow, I don’t think life would have gone as smoothly as it had without her, which only made me love her more. My chest seemed to be bursting at the seams again, feet barely touching the ground until Christian planted a hand in the small of my back, tethering me to the earth while ushering me to the SUV.
I shook my head along the way. “That’s a sneaky little tyrant.”
“It takes one to know one, Foreign,” he chirped.
I glared up at him, unable to not smile while doing it, because he was right—I wanted to be the captain of my ship, but I thought he knew I’d made room for him at the helm while my mother steered when neither of us was looking. “Oh, we’re about to have our first real fight, Christian. You’ve been running roughshod over me and my wants from the start along with my mother, so who’s really the tyrant here?”
“Only because you let us get away with it, and I’m down for makeup-sex, heard it’s hot.”
“Hot, huh?” With him, it would be. I stuck my tongue in my cheek as he shepherded me in the passenger’s seat. “In that case, let the fighting begin. The Escalade has a lot of room in the back, you know? And I’ve never made love in a car.” It was going to be one interesting road trip back to Arrow.
“No punching,” he cautioned as I buckled up, then swiveled to pout down at him.
“Then it’s not fighting, it’s arguing, Christian,” I complained in a much too whiny voice to be truly peeved with him.
“Tomato-tomahto,” was his comeback with a smile, giving the sun a run for its money, not giving a damn about the devil being in the details.
“I won’t get to use the step stool you bought me then.”
He chuckled and made his way to his seat. The silly argument faded away to me recounting how I nearly needed a new set of clothes when my mother appeared out of nowhere at the cemetery, and how a little unsatisfying it was to talk with my father who couldn’t tell me the things I wanted to hear. Christian supplied that this was where I had faith that he and my mother were telling the truth about my father’s feelings. When the colonial, red brick mansion I grew up in materialized, sitting fifteen acres away on each side from its neighbors, tension mounted in my shoulders. I may have made peace with my parents that left the rest of the Torres’ and the few Daniels’ that still carried the name.
I took a deep breath after Christian parked on the circular driveway. Pecking me on the jaw, thinking he was secretly passing on more strength but he wasn’t slick, before telling me to wait for him to open my door for me. He took my hand in his, activated the SUV’s alarm, and led the way to double oak doors at the top of the half-moon staircase. I was leading because I was assing around, only slightly terrified of reuniting with the clan because he stood like one rather damn big hurdle between me and the people I’d left. He would be that hurdle even if I stood in front of him, but my place was beside him. I knew that for sure now as I walked up on his left. This man, who would stand between me and an avalanche, because that was exactly what the Torres’ could imitate, merited a strong woman.
Kali answered the door, a glowing five-year-older version of me with a pointed bob tickling her cheeks. She was rounded out at the waist, about six months gone with child. Overwhelming sadness took my breath away. Had I been a better sister, wouldn’t have found out I was about to be an aunt this way. But I wasn’t going to punish myself for it. The phone worked two ways. Reaching out to me on the internet worked in too many ways. Settling for simply being overjoyed and a little remorseful for how bad our relationship had gotten off track, I shrieked, “Congratulations!” then stood at the door like an idiot, unsure where to go from there.