I felt my shoulders relaxing slightly, despite all the shit she had said that I should get nervous about. “I like you too.”
“Good. Mateo says I can be a pain in the behind, but as my brother he has that right.”
“Are you two close?” It sounded like they were even though he didn’t talk about her all that often.
She tilted her hand back and forth. “More or less. We’ve always had our age differences between us, so perhaps we aren’t as close as we should be. But we make an effort.”
The funny thing was that they were closer in age to each other than I was to Mateo. I bit my lip.
“But that is not the only thing,” she went on reassuringly. “By the time I was a teenager, he was already moved out and part of the team, so I didn’t see him very much. He is a good brother though. And a good father, too. Perhaps not the best husband.”
I looked at her, my hackles raised. She was smiling at me. “It is true, no? I say, if you can’t laugh about it, then life is too serious. Divorce may not be as popular as it is in America, but it happens more and more. It’s just life. You make what you can of it, yes?”
I nodded, swallowing slowly. “Yes.” If only other people would see it so easily. “So, can I ask how he’s been handling it? The divorce, I mean?”
She rubbed her lips together and shrugged as she brought the Mercedes off the highway and on to a boulevard. “It is not easy. Isabel does not want him to have joint custody.’
“Why?”
“I think she is punishing him the only way she knows how.”
“With their daughter?”
“Si,” she said. “That is what it has come to. I am not too sure if Isabel knows about you specifically or that you are here, but she does know there was another woman. Of course she is hurt and humiliated, as any woman would be.”
My chest felt cold, heavy. This was all my fault.
“She is lashing out. She doesn’t want Chloe Ann to ever see her father again.” She dabbed pale pink nails at her eyes that were suddenly wet, her voice going an octave higher. “And then I would never get to see my niece again. Papa, Mama, they love their granddaughter. And Isabel doesn’t care. She doesn’t even care what is best for Chloe Ann, which is to see her father. They are close, you know. Mateo would do anything for her. I know that is the only reason he has stuck with Isabel for so long.”
Shit. This was too much. Despite what Mateo said about being unhappy before I came along, and wanting a change, wanting a new universe, this wouldn’t have happened this was if it wasn’t for me. I did this. His sister could be losing her niece, her parents could be losing their grandchild. Mateo could be losing the light in his life, his happiest memory. All because of me. Because I wanted him. Because I was young, in love, and selfish.
“Do not be so hard on yourself,” Lucia said with a sniffle, as if she heard my thoughts. “Mateo will win. There is no reason for him not to. The courts will see he is a great father. It’s just such a long process because Isabel is making it so. She is fighting it every step of the way, even for his money. Spanish women, we like to fight. But Mateo will be fine in the end. He is very respected.”
“Makes me think I probably shouldn’t have come here so soon,” I said carefully, my words pricked with regret.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But falling in love with another woman does not mean you are not a good parent. That should have no effect on it.”
“Even if the other woman is fifteen years younger, and covered in tattoos and piercings and is Canadian?”
She studied me for so long with those pretty eyes of hers that I was afraid we were going to collide with the back of a van. “We like Canadians,” she finally said. “It will be fine.”
After that sobering conversation, I asked her about things that didn’t make me feel like a horrible human being. She told me all about her job in marketing for a major cell phone company, how she still lived with her parents because she and her last boyfriend had only broken up six months ago and she had nowhere to go. Now, despite the car, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to move in with her new one. When I asked her why she didn’t move out on her own, she told me that didn’t sound like a lot of fun.
Eventually the car pulled down one of the prettiest streets I had seen yet. It was wide, with classic buildings and lots of greenery and color. There were all sorts of smartly-dressed people on the sidewalk, tons of boutiques and tapas bars. Even on this grey day, it had life to it.
“This is the Salamanca barrio,” Lucia said. “My ex-boyfriend lived down that street right there. I love it here, you’re lucky that Mateo got a place. It can be quite expensive.”
“Where do you and your parents live?”
“We are just north of the city. My boyfriend now lives in the Ibiza neighborhood, and it is not so bad. If he asks me to move in with him, I will not mind.”
We drove around the block a few times, Lucia peering at the apartment buildings, until she drove down toward another road. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I have only been here once. But now I remember.”
Finally she found a parking spot in front of a cream colored building with almost a Parisian look to it. “Here we are.”
I stared up at it through the car window. It was gorgeous. I was going to be living here?
We got out of the car, Lucia swinging the pack over her shoulder, me with the suitcase, and we walked through the glass doors of the entrance. The floor had white marble tiles, and the concierge desk was dark wood. Lucia nodded at the man behind the desk who was sifting through a newspaper, and we continued over to the elevator.
“He is only here during the day,” she said as she pushed the button. “At night you need to use your keycard to get in the building.”
The elevator was tiny as hell, barely fitting us and all my stuff; the floor was red velvet that had seen better days. I guess not all the building was as well-renovated as the lobby. I liked that. It felt more like me, to have something a bit tired and rundown.
We got off on the top floor, which was the sixth, and I followed Lucia down a long hallway of sleek hardwood floors with a red and gold runner carpet down the middle. The doors to each apartment had intricate moldings around the frames. You’d never find a place like this in Vancouver and have it be from the actual time period.
“How old is this building?” I asked.
She shrugged as she tried to find her keys, her glossy hair falling in her face. We had stopped at one of the doors at the end of the hall, light streaming in through an ornate window. “Mateo would know. Maybe two hundred years old, more or less. Our buildings here aren’t as old as the other European cities.”
“It’s old to me,” I told her, amazed.
She stuck the key in the lock and we walked into my new home.
I sucked in my breath. It was beautiful.
The floor was hardwood like the hall, but a lighter maple color. The walls were textured and a creamy off-white. The ceilings were very high and had iron chandeliers hanging from them, much like Las Palabras, but these were painted the same color as the walls. As I slowly walked down the front hall, marvelling at the Matador paintings on the walls, I came across the kitchen to the left, a big open space of gleaming chrome and granite, fit for a chef. Beyond that was the living room with a flatscreen TV and soft white leather couch. Windows on the far wall stretched from floor to ceiling, bathing everything in light. You could hear the muffled sounds of the street below and had a view across the street to another beautiful apartment.