“Then stay,” I insisted. “We have more than enough fish.” I gently closed the gate when it occurred to me her reluctance might not have anything to do with her embarrassment over her plans falling through, or that we were strangers. “You aren’t allergic?”
“To fish? No. I love fish.” She wrung her hands.
“Then you’ll love our fish tacos. They’re el mundo famoso.” I led her across the yard and pulled out a chair at the patio table. “Drink?”
“Sí.” She sat down.
I grinned, studying her. “I bet you don’t drink tequila.” I tapped my nose and pointed at her. “Gin.”
She inhaled, the gasp just audible enough.
I clapped my hands. “Gin it is. One gin and tonic coming up.” I waved a finger, retreating toward the house. “Lime?” I called out from the kitchen slider.
“Sounds lovely.”
“Julian, come get the chips and salsa.”
After I mixed her drink and grabbed a beer for myself, Carla watched the boys while I grilled the fish. “What brings you to Puerto Escondido?”
She circled the plastic stirrer inside her glass. “It’s a place I’ve never been.”
“Have you been to a lot of places?” Julian popped a salsa-loaded chip in his mouth. He crunched loudly.
Carla frowned. “Yes, many.”
“Do you travel a lot?” Julian asked with his mouth full of chip.
Her eyes narrowed and I caught Julian’s attention, motioning at my mouth. Julian swallowed loudly. “Do you travel a lot?” he repeated.
Carla set down her glass. Condensation glistened on the base. “I used to.”
“Really? Where have you been?”
I tested the fish’s readiness, curious myself.
“All sorts of places.” She dreamily sighed. “Italy, France, England. I’ve also been to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Saint Petersburg.”
“Where’s that?”
“Russia.”
Julian whistled.
“Business or pleasure?” I removed the fish from the grill.
“Mostly business. But this trip . . .” Carla removed the stir stick. She squeezed the lime in her glass. “This trip is for me. I’m here for the summer.”
“Hmm.” My mouth turned down as I considered what she said. Typically, a steady stream of foreigners rented the house next door throughout the summer months. Surfers, vacationers, college graduates traveling Central and South America before returning home to start their careers. At least once a week I lodged a noise complaint. The excessive partying kept my sons awake. I doubted we’d have that problem with Carla.
I set the fish platter on the table between the tortillas and cabbage. Carla moved her glass out of the way and her wedding band reflected the waning sunlight. “Will your husband be joining us?”
Carla flinched. She gave me a blank look. I pointed with the tongs at her wedding band.
“Oh.” She splayed her fingers and stared at the ring. “I always forget it’s there. No, no, he won’t be coming. He passed away several years ago. I’ve worn it for decades. It doesn’t make sense to remove it just because he died.” She tucked her hand in her lap. “I don’t have any interest in meeting anyone else.”
“You never know,” Julian said, fixing himself a taco. “You’re old, but you can’t be that old.”
“Julian.” I firmly set down the tongs.
He jutted a shoulder. “She’s still pretty.”
“Julian,” I harshly whispered.
Carla’s cheeks took on a rouge hue. She shifted uncomfortably in the chair.
“He’s six and a half,” I told Carla as though his age was an excuse. I handed her a plate and glared in warning at my son. “Please apologize.”
“Sorry,” Julian muttered. He flopped into a chair and stuffed a chip in his mouth.
Marcus toddled over, catching Carla’s attention. “Your son is beautiful. I see you in him,” she said.
I glanced down at Marcus. He had my brown hair and eyes. But his cheekbones and skin tone favored his mother.
My breath tripped up my throat, the tightness fainter now than in the past when I thought of Raquel. She’d been gone for nearly a year and a half.
Marcus raised both arms, trucks in his hands. I lifted him into his high chair. “How about you, Señora Carla? Any children?”
Her eyes remained fixed on Marcus. Her expression turned sorrowful. “I had three sons. Once.”
Late that night, I stared at the framed photo of Raquel and me, the one I kept on the bureau in my room. Our foreheads and noses pressed together, we shared a laugh. About what, I didn’t remember, but Raquel’s dry wit often left me lurched over, stomach cramped and eyes watering. Laughter dissipated the shadows that lurked in the recesses of my mind, even if only for a short time.
We’d just been married on the patio of Casa del sol overlooking the wild, chaotic surf of Playa Zicatela. Our love had been like that. Swift and dynamic. I often wondered if I would have fallen so deeply and quickly had I not been terrified and broken. But I had loved her from the moment she walked over to where I waited in the physical therapy office. She pushed her hair behind an ear, where I caught a glimpse of the unadorned divot in her lobe, and extended a hand in greeting as she introduced herself. For me, that first touch peeled off the outer layer of anxiety that had kept my heart racing since the moment I woke up in the hospital a month before. A rush of air left me, and I recognized the inklings of hope. I would be all right.
Within moments, she coaxed me out of my sullenness and the chair with a determination I initially envied and rapidly adopted. If I couldn’t fix my brain, then I needed to focus everything I had within me to repair my body.
My wounds were mostly superficial. Facial bones knitting, lacerations healing to pinkish scars, and soon my shoulder would improve. Judging by the condition of my body, Raquel remarked on that first day, I’d been athletic my entire life. Doing what, I had no clue, but within four months I was running 10Ks. I’d been training for a marathon when Aimee showed up and knocked my world on its ass. On race day, a week after she’d left, I nursed a hangover and wallowed in self-deprecating grief, rising from bed hours after the starting-line gun fired.
I smoothed a thumb across the glass, tracing the line of Raquel’s loosely coiled updo sprinkled with baby’s breath. Golden-brown tresses and honey eyes, she’d never looked more stunning. Dressed in white silk, the waistline loose over our child growing inside her, she radiated happiness. I’d been drawn to that joy. Raquel had been a bright light, the beacon in my dark world.
I missed my late wife, more so tonight than in past months. But I always longed for her whenever I tucked in the boys. Some nights I saw her there, seated on the edge of the bed, her long, graceful fingers tracing the lines of Julian’s face as she sang a lullaby. Tonight, the illusion seemed real enough that I swore I heard her voice. How often I’d wished Marcus had the chance to hear her say “I love you.”
She’d died on his birthing bed, of an aneurysm, while I watched as my newborn son, freshly cleaned and swaddled, wailed in my arms. We both cried.
I returned the photo to its spot on the bureau and thought of Carla. Her despair over losing her loved ones—how, I did not yet know—had been palpable. It got to me.
The air inside my room had become hot and stifling. I flipped on the ceiling fan, snatched my phone from the bedside table, and slid open the door to the deck off my room. Boards groaned as I strode across the rough wood. Leaning against the rail, I swiped aside a notification from Imelda—Please come see me after you close Monday—and called Natalya.
“Hey, you,” she murmured. The dusty softness of her tone washed over me, easing the emptiness. Her voice did that to me, calmed and soothed.
“Did I wake you?”
“That’s okay.” She yawned. “I fell asleep on the couch.” Fabric rustled, a lock clicked, and a door slid open. Wood creaked and she sighed. I pictured her easing into a patio chair, gazing at the same ocean before me, thousands of miles away.
I parked my elbows on the railing. “Long day?” It was midnight here, making it seven o’clock in Hawaii.