You Don't Owe Me a Home

After the meeting, Alejandro did not become an easy man.

He still answered some questions too sharply. Once Valeria found him demanding that Rafael tell him exactly who had been standing outside the apartment for eleven minutes. When he was frightened, his first instinct remained to close doors and place someone he trusted behind them.

But he stopped making Valeria guess whether she was allowed to disagree.

"That man is delivering groceries," she said.

Alejandro looked through the window.

The man in question lifted a bag containing an enormous cabbage.

"He could be doing both," Alejandro muttered.

She laughed, and after a moment he laughed too. Then he called Rafael back and amended the instruction.

They returned to the estate gradually. First for a meal, then an afternoon. Mateo chose his familiar bedroom over the temporary apartment, although he wanted the hall light left on. Valeria's family stayed elsewhere until the immediate arrangements around Daniel's detention had settled.

There was no swift trial, no announcement that everything was finished. Lawyers requested statements. Investigators asked follow-up questions. Alejandro answered some in person and others with counsel. He told Valeria when he couldn't promise how matters would unfold.

She preferred that to reassurance he couldn't support.

Gabriel's surgical team set a date. At the final appointment, Valeria sat with a notebook while her brother asked questions about recovery. Their mother held his jacket because he had become too warm and too nervous to admit it.

Afterward Gabriel found Valeria beside a vending machine she had already fed twice without receiving coffee.

"You look like you're about to threaten it."

"I'm considering my options."

He leaned against the wall.

"Do you want him?"

She turned too quickly. "What?"

"The vending machine. Obviously the man, Valeria."

She looked down at the useless paper cup.

"It's complicated."

"I'm aware. He's terrifying and has excellent shirts."

"Gabriel."

"You're allowed to want something while everything else is difficult. You don't have to wait until I've never been sick."

She stared at him.

He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I hear you when you talk to Mom. You keep saying you'll think about yourself afterward. There has to be an afterward eventually."

Valeria reached for his hand. This time he didn't complain.

That Friday she worked her final scheduled shift under the original trial agreement.

Alejandro had asked if she wanted to renew it. She had asked for time to think.

Mateo played in the garden with his father that afternoon. Alejandro was still terrible at making the toy truck climb the right cushion ramp. The boy corrected him with increasingly clear indignation.

"Other way, Daddy."

"This truck disagrees."

"No. You."

Valeria laughed from her chair.

Alejandro looked up at the sound. The expression in his eyes made her put down the book she hadn't been reading.

Later, after Mateo's bedtime, she found him on the terrace.

"I'd like Saturday and Sunday at home," she said.

"Of course."

"I mean I won't come over. Not for breakfast. Not for a few hours because he asks. He'll have you, and the weekend caregiver Dr. Salcedo helped us introduce."

Alejandro leaned against the stone railing.

"You think I'll call."

"I think I'll want you to. That's the problem."

He waited.

Valeria looked out at the lit garden. She could still remember entering by the service door with a bucket, hoping nobody would notice how frightened she was.

"I don't know how to tell where the job ends anymore. I miss him when I leave. I think about you when I'm with my family. And then I remember the hospital bills, and this house, and everything you've done."

"I didn't pay those bills to make you love me."

It was the first time either of them had said the word.

She turned toward him.

"I know why you did it. That doesn't mean I never feel the weight of it."

Alejandro looked at the empty glass on the railing.

"I can arrange a different position for you. Away from the house."

"Listen to yourself."

He closed his eyes briefly. "Another arrangement."

"Yes."

When he looked at her again, the practiced certainty had gone.

"What do you need from me?"

"Tell me what you want. Without making it sound like something you've already decided for both of us."

He was silent long enough that she could hear the distant motor at the gates.

"I want to have dinner with you when neither of us is waiting for him to wake up. I want to know what you do when you're happy and not useful to anyone. I want to take you home because you asked me to stay, and leave when you ask me to go."

She drew an unsteady breath.

"And Mateo?"

"He loves you. I won't use that to answer for me."

Alejandro came one step closer.

"I love you, Valeria. I don't know exactly when it happened. I know it didn't stop when he began reaching for me instead."

She pressed her lips together, trying unsuccessfully to keep her expression composed.

"You realize I'm not always calm. Gabriel says I argue with doors when they stick."

"I would like to hear your case against the doors."

She laughed, then wiped her face in irritation.

"And I won't always like your decisions."

"You already don't."

"Some of your life frightens me. Loving you won't make that disappear."

His expression grew serious.

"It shouldn't. There are things I have to change. Some will cost money. Some will cost people I once thought I needed. I won't tell you they're finished when they're not."

"I need to see the changes."

"You will."

She studied him. She could not make the choice safe by thinking harder. There were reasons to step back, real ones. There was also a man standing in front of her who had begun to hear the word no without making her pay for it.

"I love you too," she said. "And I want the whole weekend with my brother."

Alejandro laughed softly, relief changing his face.

"Then I'll see you Monday."

This time she went to him.

She slid both hands around his neck and kissed him without waiting to be asked. His arms closed around her, warm and firm. When she stepped closer, he made a low sound against her mouth that left her breathless.

He kissed her forehead when they finally stopped.

"Dinner on Monday?"

"Somewhere with terrible parking. You'll need practice being inconvenienced."

"Cruel woman."

"You're only just finding out."

Saturday morning, Mateo cried when she left.

Valeria knelt beside her bag and showed him the calendar. They marked Monday together. She told him she would miss him. She did not tell him not to be sad.

He pressed the brown dog into her hand.

"Take Oso."

It was the first time she had heard his name.

Her throat tightened.

"Will you be all right without him?"

Mateo looked at his father. Alejandro sat on the bottom step, shoes off, waiting.

"Daddy here," he said.

Valeria kissed the top of his head.

She walked to the waiting car with Oso tucked under her arm. This time, when she looked back, Mateo was sitting beside his father instead of reaching after her.

It hurt a little.

It made her happier than she could explain.