NATALIA
IT TAKES ABOUT A week’s worth of rest before I’m feeling up to the ten-hour drive to El Paso. Joaquin, of course, offered to fly us there, but there was just something about the idea of driving through the desert with the hot wind in my hair and his hand on my knee that I couldn’t resist.
Call it making a dream come true, I guess, because it was all I dreamed of during the time after I had run away from him, believing I’d never see him again. He seems to understand the feeling of freedom that comes from traveling in the open air this way is one of the many types of therapy I will ultimately need in order to heal the lifelong wounds that mar my battered soul.
Another exercise in therapy, probably the most important as far as I’m concerned, is what we’re driving to.
I don’t remember my childhood home. I don’t have a lot of memories from before, such was my young age and the trauma I endured so prolifically after being taken. In fact, I only have the one memory of my mother patching up my skinned knees while she looked at me with the eyes she gave me. Accordingly, what our home at the time was like escapes me. But the humble, pretty, safe neighborhood of streets lined with sturdy brick houses is what I would like to think it may have been like.
The GPS informs us that our destination is on the right, and Joaquin eases the car up to the curb and cuts the engine. He turns to me, stroking my hair away from my face and rubbing his thumb over my cheekbone, lovingly and gentle the way he always is and always has been with me.
“You ready,querida?”
I nod because my stomach is so tied up in knots with nerves that speaking feels impossible.
“You want me to wait out here so you guys can talk privately?”
At that, I can’t help responding. “No.” I force a smile that trembles a little. “I always want you with me,cariño.”
He smiles. “Okay.” Picking up my hand, he kisses my knuckles. “Then let’s do this.”
Joaquin steps out of the car and walks around to open my door, holding out his open palm for me, and I take it. He rests his hand on the small of my back as we approach the front door. The only reason I’m doing this at all is because he made it possible. After a life packed to the gills with nothing but violence and hate, my heart is so full of love that it feels like it’s fused with my blood, pumping through my veins, sustaining me, and giving me new life.
His hand remains on my back, rubbing tenderly, as we stop at the front door, and I draw in a deep breath before lifting my hand to knock.
There’s a shuffle of activity just on the other side, and anxiety grips me again. “Should we have called first?” I whisper.
“Well, yeah.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “But there wasn’t a current phone number in the file, and that P.I.reallydidn’t want to hear from me again.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “Right.”
Just then, the lock slides open, the knob turns, and the door is pulled open.
The expression on her face is pleasant, but blank. Her eyes, framed by fine lines and dark, yet thinning lashes, are bright and warm.
They’re alsothat shadeof gray-blue that I’ve only seen in my own reflection and in the one memory I have of before.
“Hello. How can I help you?” she greets us in the same meticulous Mexican-American accent that I know from my own voice.
“Hi,” I manage. “I was wondering—”
My words dry up again, but it doesn’t matter because her eyes go wide and her lips part, recognition draping her features. She sucks in a sharp, yet quiet gasp and clutches the floral fabric at her ample bosom.
“Dios mio,” she murmurs.
I swallow, but it does nothing to counteract the boulder-sized lump lodged in my throat. “I’m your…”
“Mijita,” she murmurs, grasping my elbows and pulling me into the house and into her arms, and all the oxygen sucks out of my lungs becauseIremember this.
These loving arms.
This warm, floral scent.
This soft, enveloping embrace.
It iseverythingI lost from my memory and my life, andnow, I have it back.
The gravity of it all causes my legs to buckle, and I fall to my knees on her rug, wrapping my arms around her soft middle while I bury my cheek against her breasts.
