“Here, give me your keys and we’ll transfer his camera bag and wheelchair to the back of your car,” Brandon offered.
“Thank you.” Anamaría followed them to the back entrance, where she waited for Brandon to return her keys, the whole time praying all hell didn’t break loose before she could get Alejandro out of there.
* * *
“I do not want your mother to know about this, me entiendes?”
Standing outside the Miranda’s office door, Alejandro shook his head as if his papi had asked him if he understood his edict. It didn’t make any sense at all.
“Papi, she’s not going to like being kept out of this.” Ernesto’s worried plea had Alejandro straining to hear better through the thin walls. “The insurance adjuster said there’s nothing they can do. It’s up to the bank, and we don’t have enough equity in this property. Let me talk with CeCe about a second mortgage on our place.”
“You will not jeopardize your familia’s home because of my error in judgment.”
Alejandro drew back in surprise at his father’s revelation.
“Fine,” Ernesto shot back. “Then let’s ask Ale. He may be able to give us a loan to help—”
A loud slam reverberated from inside the office, cutting off whatever Ernesto meant to say next.
“Your brother has nothing to do with our restaurant. He and his money are not welcome here.”
Alejandro jolted at the bitterness in his father’s voice. The words, while not unexpected, stung worse than the time he’d swum through a swarm of jellyfish. Feeling as burned and raw as he had back then, Alejandro sagged against the wall.
He could hear his brother and father arguing, but his will to listen evaporated.
Suddenly the office door flung open and his father stormed out. Alejandro straightened away from the wall. Shoulders stiff, head high, he braced himself to face the inevitable firing squad of his father’s verbal onslaught.
Victor drew to a halt when he spotted his son. Body rigid with anger, a low growl burst from his papi’s throat before he demanded, “Qué haces aquí.”
Alejandro squinted into the dappled sunlight streaming through the glass door to the outside patio seating area at the end of the hall behind his father. The gloomy darkness matched the thunderous scowl stamped on his papi’s jowled face.
“Anamaría has a business contact in town. We brought him for lunch.”
The disbelieving humph his father answered with grated. Why the hell the man would doubt even a simple explanation spoke of his irrational mind-set. Underscored why Alejandro never bothered trying to reason with him. Because in Victor Miranda’s mind, there was only his way, or the wrong way.
“Why are you listening where you should not be? What did you hear?” his old man demanded.
“Nothing. Or not enough to make any sense of it. But Ernesto is right. If it’s financial help you need, I can provide it.”
“Ha!” his father scoffed. “Why would Miranda’s, why would I, depend on you for assistance? Te fuiste, y nunca miraste pa’ tras.”
His father spit out the unfair accusation that Ale had left and never looked back as if it had been of his own accord, and the injustice unleashed the rebuttal Alejandro had uttered in every argument he had held in his head with his old man over the years. “I never came back because that’s what you told me to do. It is not the choice I wanted to make. But the one you forced on me.”
“No, no lo acepto. Uh-uh. I will not accept your blame.” His father’s scowl deepened when Alejandro shook his head. “You are the one who spit on your abuelo’s legacy. ¿Qué fue lo que dijiste? Tell me again. What was it you said?”
No matter how much Alejandro wanted to defend himself, nothing would make right the hateful insult he had yelled that night. He couldn’t take it back. No matter how badly he wished.
“Do you not remember? Porque I do. This is not enough for you.” His father flung his arm out toward the Miranda’s dining area, barely missing one of Alejandro’s crutches with his wild gesture as he brought his open palm back to pound against his chest with a heavy thud. “Everything I have built is not good enough for you.”
“That’s not true. It never was. Papi, I only wanted—”
“Eh!” His father held up a hand to silence him. The nicks and calluses and scars on his palm and fingers were testaments to the hours and years he had labored as the head chef in their beloved neighborhood restaurant. Underneath his black apron with Miranda’s embroidered across the front, his father’s burly chest rose and fell with each labored breath.
“You made yourself very clear, Alejandro. Miranda’s is of no importance to you.” His father bent toward him, his eyes dark pools of anger. “Our familia is of no importance to you. So, vete.”
Alejandro flinched, the slap of his father’s words a sharp sting across his face.
Despite telling him to leave, his father narrowed his eyes in a steely glare, then stomped away with another feral growl.
The fight drained out of Alejandro, and he sagged against the wall again, head tipped to lean on the doorjamb. One of his crutches clattered to the linoleum floor. He ignored it.
Regret and anguish burned in his throat. His father’s contempt confirmed what Alejandro had known all these years. Even if he wanted to, there was no way he could come back to Key West, make it his home base in between jobs as Atlanta was now.
His father would never forgive him. His familia would forever be fractured.
* * *
“Alejandro, you okay?”
His eyes closed, he heard Anamaría’s concerned voice call to Alejandro from the dark place his papi’s harsh dismissal had sent him.
Damn that man for still being able to hit where it hurt. Wounding him with contempt and disdain. Even when Alejandro knew the shots were coming.
Our familia is of no importance to you. So, vete.
If he could easily leave like his father had ordered, he would.
But his injury physically prevented that.
His professionalism required he honor the contract with Marcelo, Logan, and Bellísima.
More important, he wasn’t ready to say good-bye to Anamaría. Not when they were just starting to find footing in this new . . . friendship of sorts they were forging.
At least until after the exhibit’s opening weekend, he was anchored here, intent on withstanding the buffeting storm winds his father blew.
Ernesto stepped out of the office at the same time Anamaría reached Alejandro’s side.
“Hey, here you go.” She bent to grab his crutch, the tail of her long braid nearly sweeping the floor until she pushed it back over her shoulder. “I guess dropping it is better than throttling your dad with it. So, yay you for self-restraint.”
He lifted his left arm when she moved to tuck his crutch under his pit. His lips quirked at her lame joke. “Small blessings.”
Her empathetic smile, the hand she kept on his waist after he had adjusted the crutches and stood fine on his own, they seared his heart with a yearning for the comfort he knew he would find with her alone.
“Papi shouldn’t have said what he did,” Ernesto offered. “He’s wrong, Ale. We all know it.”
“I don’t. Maybe I should have hired a home health provider back in Atlanta instead of poking the bear by letting Mami guilt me into coming ho—” He rubbed his nape, massaging the muscles bunching in protest. “Into coming back.”