Maricela Reyes shook her head, making those beautiful dark waves move around her face. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I know.”
I willed my face to remain still, my expression blank. I couldn’t tell my mother about David, or what Dad had done out of some… sense of responsibility that only made me feel small and inadequate. If my mother heard about any of that, what had happened to Sparkles wouldn’t be anything in comparison to what she would do. She would catch a flight to Miami right now and—
That was exactly how Cameron had reacted to the story. Tonight. It had been so clear from his words, his face, the way he’d held me, everything. He… cared about me. That much.
“You know how much I love my job,” I continued, a little breathless. “The club. How much respect I have for what Dad does.”
“You’re getting it all wrong, mi amor.” A long sigh left through her nose. “I loved your father. I still do. I don’t think you can ever stop loving your first great love, and he was that for me. But ever since you were little, you’ve had him on this pedestal nobody else can reach. Not even you.”
“Is that so wrong?” I asked her, honestly. “Is it so bad to aspire to be like him? To want to impress him?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, and I believed she genuinely didn’t. “But while you’re on your way there, you’re climbing, getting higher and higher, and I’m scared you’ll fall. I’m scared he’ll do something to shatter all that faith you have in him.”
I felt the ball in my stomach shift. He’d tested that faith, hadn’t he? But then, he’d also succumbed to David’s demands to protect our relationship. To spare me the heartbreak after learning he’d asked David to marry me. And that meant something. It had to.
“Your father is a good man,” she continued. “Or maybe he was, once upon a time. Now he’s too wrapped up in his own greatness. He believes that everyone around him is at his disposal, for his own plots and schemes.” Her hands went up in the air, and she spread and wiggled her fingers. “He believes he’s the puppet master.”
“One doesn’t get where he is without that kind of scheming.”
“I wouldn’t know.” She averted her gaze for an instant, and when eyes as brown as mine returned to my face, I knew my mother was about to tell me something she never had before. “I don’t like that you’ve kept things from me. Not when your father has, too. Secrets.”
“I’m sorry, Mami.” For better or worse, I had kept things from her. “Deep down I kept this from you not to upset you. Do you think Dad meant to do that, too? With his secrets?”
“I don’t think so. Otherwise I’d know where he came from,” she offered. “There’s a black smudge covering a big part of his past. He lets people believe he’s from Miami, but he’s not.” A shake of her head. “I found out from the letters.”
“The letters?”
“Right before I discovered I was pregnant with you, I found a stack of letters in his desk. And I wasn’t snooping.” She rolled her eyes at me before I made the remark. “They were all from a woman, addressed to him personally, and when I asked him about them, he went pale as a ghost and mumbled something about his childhood. That’s how I knew. You know your father doesn’t shake up easily.”
“Was he—”
“Cheating?” she finished for me. “No. He swore it wasn’t that, and I believed him.” A finger tapped the side of her head. “You know I can tell when someone’s lying.” She really could. “But he never told me what it was really about.” Her hand reached out across the tabletop, and when she wrapped her fingers around mine, I squeezed. “That’s why I never married him. I am sorry for not giving you a normal family, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t the letters, it was him not trusting me enough to tell me the truth. I was an open book, I gave him my all. And him keeping from me the things that made him the man he was… It showed me that I was never an equal to him.”
“You’ve never told me any of this,” I said, barely managing to suppress the emotion in my voice. “And you’re my family, okay?” Did my mother really believe I blamed her for not marrying my dad? That our family wasn’t normal? “You were all the family I needed growing up.” I cleared my throat. “And let’s face it, you make any room, any house, feel like it’s full of people.”