“Come to live with us. I already said you’d be better with us, but the law is the law,” she still sounds bitter about the ordeal.
When my parents died, they left Aunt Cécile as my guardian. My grandparents tried to fight it and take me to Mexico, but they lost the two trials. They were lucky they got visitation rights.
“What does that mean?” Heath asks.
I don’t think he’s ever heard about the little legal battle my grandparents and aunt had right after my parents died. The second time they tried to file for custody, they were willing to move to San Francisco, but the state kept me with my aunt.
Abuelita tells him about the ordeal from beginning to end. She’s almost crying when she says, “Atzi was the last thing I had from my only child, and they wouldn’t give her to me.”
“It’s in the past, Adelaida,” Abuelito says, irritated.
Thankfully, we arrive at the penthouse. This isn’t something I wanted to discuss. I don’t know why Heath had to ask. He’s usually observing but never asking. I breathe a sigh of relief as soon as Heath cuts the engine in the underground parking lot.
“Why don’t you guys go up first?” Heath asks, opening the passenger door and helping me down. “I’ll follow with the luggage so you won’t be crowded in the elevator.”
“You okay?” I ask him.
He lifts my chin and gives me a quick peck on the lips. “I should be asking that. You scared me back there.”
“I promise to get a therapist.”
“Do, please. I don’t want to—” He exhales but doesn’t end the sentence. He lifts his gaze. “They’re already going toward the elevator. I’ll meet you in five.”
“Okay,” I say, jogging to meet my grandparents.
“Atzi, I like him,” Abuela says. She loops her arm through mine and squeezes.
“He’s great.” I smile as I stare at Heath, who’s managing the bags.
We enter the elevator, and I sigh with relief. They haven’t caught the lie. Maybe we can pull this off. I hate to deceive them, but it’s for the best.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Heath
They say it takes a lifetime to get to know a person. I’m beginning to think it’s true.
Up until a few hours ago, I thought I knew everything about Atzi Maëlie Rivera-Lavigne, but I’ve been proven wrong. No one had ever told me embarrassing stories about her childhood until today.
According to Tita—that’s what Atzi calls her grandma—she’s always worn crazy colorful leggings, baggy sweaters, and had curly hair. Unless it was too hot. Then she wanted to wear swimsuits. One funny fact is Atzi used to wear socks to the beach. She didn’t like the feel of the sand between her toes.
I’m not surprised to hear she was a quirky little girl who liked to color on the walls while her mother worked in her studio. Lydia Rivera was a wise woman who had a wall designated for her daughter’s doodles. When Atzi ran out of space, her husband painted it so their daughter would have a clean canvas.
Her baby sister wasn’t born until she was nine, and Atzi was the best big sister in the world. She even got a CPR certification at ten, so her parents would let her babysit.
This is the first time I’ve learned how old her little sister was. It also explains why she’s never part of the stories she tells about her parents. Learning about Atzi is making me fall more in love with her. Leaving her is going to be ten thousand times harder than I thought.
How do you walk away from someone so extraordinary?
Right now, she’s in my office with her grandfather, playing chess. Her grandmother is cooking dinner for us. I’m in my favorite chair pretending to read while I watch a different version of Atzi. I had no idea she knew how to play chess. She’s never shown any interest before.
Her grandparents are sweet people, and I’m beginning to understand where she got her bubbly personality. Well, she’s happy unless the dark cloud traps her. If only the accident where she lost her parents and her sister hadn’t happened. Maybe I wouldn’t have met her.
As I watch her think about her next move, I’m transported to another time. The time when we first met.
I was thirteen years old the summer I met Atzi.
Thirteen and angry.
My father had died earlier in the year, and the triplets had descended upon the family, all three of them leaving college to return home to become the parents of five lost children. My relationship with almost everyone in my family had been contentious for years after Dad died. Maybe contentious is not the right word. It’s just strange. I tried to be a part of them, but at the time, I felt like an outsider who didn’t deserve them.
I’d been the one to find him and the one unable to save him.
The summer I met Atzi was a bad one, and then unexpectedly, against all odds, a bright spot appeared in the form of a skinny girl with glossy dark hair and a scowling face that matched my own.
It was a grief camp, of course we were all broken in a way, but Atzi and I carried more than the sadness. We carried guilt. I couldn’t save my father. Everyone died during the car accident but her. She still lives with survivor’s guilt, even though she denies it.
Almost from day one, she followed me around like a silent duckling, hiding from everyone else. She carried a sketchbook and a pencil with her. We didn’t speak at the beginning, but later, we began to exchange food. That’s all we would do, share the silence while we let the feelings eat at us.
Though, there was one night when we truly bonded. I noticed her sitting apart from the main group at one of the abandoned fire circles that was a little farther out than the ones the other kids tended to congregate at.
I watched her from a distance at first. I’d been walking the perimeter of the camp, not on any sort of patrol but because I found that walking endlessly at night tired me out enough that I could sometimes sleep instead of staring at the wooden beams of my cabin.
Atzi was trying to light a fire and was looking more miserable by the second that she couldn’t get the flame to take.
Finally, as I saw her kick the logs and hunker down in a sweater two sizes too large for her, I took pity on her and approached the circle.
“Do you want me to help you get it started?” I asked.
Her scowl was pretty intimidating when directed at me, but I met it with one of my own. Wounded animal to wounded animal. She blinked at me, the fierceness flickering into something a little softer.
“Would you?” she asked. “Actually, show me and not just do it, please.”
I nodded. In normal circumstances, I would smile at her to reassure her, but honestly, I hadn’t managed a smile in months. Instead, I just pushed up the sleeves of my own camp sweatshirt and kneeled next to the circle to start collecting the logs she’d kicked back into a neat pile.
“You had it mostly right,” I said. It was easy to fall into teaching mode with this, at least.
I had two younger siblings around her age. The twins were always following me around and asking a gazillion questions. Also, I had camped with Dad many times, and he taught us survival skills. One of them was how to build fires. Atzi was sharp and willing enough to learn so we had a fire crackling merrily in front of us within minutes.