Crossing Hearts

by Rebecca Crowley

  “Your grandmother told you this?”

  He nodded.

  “When?”

  “A few days before she died. I was ten.”

  She whistled. “That is serious baggage to lay on a kid that age.”

  “She hated my dad—the guy I thought was my dad. I think she wanted to help me, to free me, in a way. She didn’t want me to end up like him.”

  “A miner?”

  “An alcoholic.” He smiled tightly. “Another secret you’ll never see in the rags-to-riches, full-color sports-page version of my background.”

  “Wow, Rio.” She shook her head at the weight of it all. “Was your grandmother right? Did it help to know you were different from him?”

  “Maybe a little.” He shrugged. “Mostly it felt like justification for why my brother and sister are so smart and successful and I kick a ball for a living.”

  She held up a palm. “Hold on. You can’t seriously tell me that you feel inadequate. You’re, like, a national hero.”

  “For now. Soccer fans have short memories.”

  “And you’ll have a bulging bank account either way, so who cares?”

  “I think I should’ve taken you up on that tequila.”

  She ignored his weak attempt to change the subject, and he continued with a sigh. “I’ve never talked about it with my mom, and she’s never raised it with me either. I get the sense it was hugely shameful for her, and that it’s a secret she’d like to take to her grave. So I feel like I owe it to her to be the best at whatever I can be, to prove that although she might be ashamed of what she did, she doesn’t have to be ashamed of who I am.”

  “Rio,” she said softly, simultaneously astonished and not at all surprised that he was so hard on himself.

  She sat up, retrieved her wineglass, and raised it in a toast.

  “To families, their secrets, and their imperfections.”

  He leaned forward and tapped her glass with his index finger. “To not making our parents’ mistakes.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” She swallowed a mouthful before replacing the glass on the table. “Here’s the real question. Why are you telling me all of this?”

  “I trust you.”

  She waited, and after a few seconds he continued, “I want you to know me.”

  She held his gaze, keeping her expression neutral despite the increasing pace of her heartbeat. “I want to know you, too.”

  He smiled. “I hope you like what you find.”

  “I already do.”

  He leaned forward and gripped her legs, tugging until she unfolded them, and then he pulled her feet into his lap. Strong fingers massaged her ankles, slipping under the hems of her tight jeans.

  “I thought about what you said on Thursday,” he murmured, rubbing his thumbs along her Achilles tendons. “Maybe I shouldn’t have needed to think about it, but I did.”

  “That’s fair,” she assured him quietly, although at the time it certainly hadn’t felt that way.

  “I guess I wanted to be sure. Not how I felt about you—I think I’ve made my interest clear from the beginning.” He cracked a half-smile. “I wanted to be sure I was good enough for you. Tonight I convinced myself.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed and unblinking, incredulity tangling with astonishment as she processed what he’d just told her. “Why wouldn’t you be good enough for me?”

  He lifted a shoulder, avoiding her gaze. “You know I’ve been struggling on the pitch, not quite finding my rhythm with my teammates, and it doesn’t help that I can’t communicate with them, and—”

  She pressed a silencing finger to his lips. “I’m not interested in your assist stats or your attempts on goal. I’ll show you what interests me.”

  She replaced her finger with her mouth, bending forward over her knees. One of his hands rose to her jaw while the other found her waist, dragging her onto his lap.

  His kiss was different from Thursday. Still hot, still hungry, yet warmer. Slower. Like he knew she wasn’t going anywhere and there was no need to rush.

  His lips were soft, his tongue gently curious. She inhaled sharply, filling her senses with tea tree oil and saltwater as she raked her fingers through his hair.

  She could’ve kissed him all night, yet when he pulled back she wasn’t disappointed. She knew as well as he did that this wouldn’t be the night they took the next step. She didn’t mind—they had plenty of time.

  “You have to go,” she acknowledged quietly.

  He nodded. “I need to sleep. And I want to do this properly, take you out somewhere, go on a real date.”

  “I’d like that.”

  They shared a smile, and then she slid off his thighs and he stood up. They walked toward the door in silence, and as they passed into the entryway he took her hand. She squeezed, then opened the door.

  “Will I see you at Mass tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I guess you’ll need a lift.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll be here at nine-thirty.”

  He leaned down and brushed a kiss over her lips, tracing his forefinger along her cheek. Then he crossed the threshold and she shut the door. She pressed her hands over her heart, listening to the engine of his car start, rev, and then recede as he drove away.

  She raised her palms to cover her face. She could still smell him on her skin, her clothes, her hair.

  Quickly, before the feeling dissipated, she jogged up the stairs to her bedroom and pulled a notebook out of the bottom drawer of her dresser. She sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it, suppressing a pang of sadness when she noted the date of the most recent entry.

  Eight months ago.

  She pulled the pen out of the spiral binding, wrote the date in the top-right corner, and began to write.

  Hi Mom,

  It’s been a while since I’ve written to you in this notebook—I guess there was nothing I thought you needed to know.

  Tonight there’s something I want to share with you.

  I’ve been working as a translator for a new Skyline player. His name is Rio Vidal. He’s handsome, and kind, and I think you would like him a lot…

  Chapter 12

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”

  She did, but she shook her head. “You need to rest.”

  She’d repeated those four words time and time again, but she meant it now more than ever. He looked exhausted. On top of the hours of travel to and from Oregon for the midweek match against the Eugene Pines, during the second half of the goalless game he’d taken a late tackle and twisted his knee as he fell. He sprang back up, but by the time the whistle blew he was visibly limping.

  He insisted he was fine, but at breakfast that morning he’d confided to Eva that he’d struggled to sleep after the game. He muttered something about the hotel bed and the thermostat, but she suspected pain had kept him awake.

  They sat together on the plane and he slept through the entire five-hour flight, slumped against the window. She longed to adjust his pillow or run a soothing hand over his thigh, but she couldn’t. It had only been a few days since their agreement to turn their attraction into a relationship, and between her commitments at the church and his training schedule they’d barely had a moment alone.

  Which is why, as he smiled at her from the passenger seat of her rented car, it was so hard to turn down his offer to come inside.

  “Call me if you change your mind.”

  He leaned over and kissed her, a lingering press of his lips that had fireworks exploding behind her eyes. She pulled back before she lost her nerve.

  “Go to bed,” she instructed firmly.

  “Only if you come with me,” he countered teasingly, but grabbed his Skyline-branded duffel from the backseat and climbed out of the car. He waved as he made his way to the front door, and as soon as he shut it she backed out of his driveway.

  Back at her own home she was restive, tired fro
m the daytime flight but not yet adjusted to the Eastern time zone. She unpacked the small suitcase she’d taken for the short trip, answered a few e-mails and unloaded the dishwasher. She sent some texts, scrolled through Facebook, and finally settled on the couch and clicked through her DVR to find a TV show requiring as little thought as possible.

  She was ten minutes into an episode of a dating reality show when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen, then fumbled to mute the TV.

  “Miguel, how are you?” she greeted the private investigator.

  “Are you sitting down?” he asked in his characteristically curt manner.

  Her heart beat so fast she felt nauseous. This was it. The day had finally arrived. After eighteen years apart she’d finally get to see her mom again.

  Her eyes brimmed with tears as she replied, “Yes.”

  “Your mother died in August 2003. I’m sorry.”

  She blinked, her unshed tears hovering uncertainly on her lower lids. What did he say?

  No, she must not have heard him correctly. “Sorry, can you repeat that?”

  “Your mother is dead. Her body was found in the desert outside Juarez. I’ll send you the full report.”

  “No, that can’t be right.” It couldn’t be. Not after all this time. Not after everything she’d been through, all those prayers, all that hope. No, that was ridiculous. Impossible.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  “Maybe it’s someone else. There must be a lot of women named Maria Torres. Are you sure you’ve got the right person? Because she usually went by her middle name—”

  “Dolores, shortened to Lola. I triple-checked. It’s her.”

  Belatedly she realized she’d been shaking her head since he delivered the news, and it was making her dizzy. She stopped, with effort, and forced herself to exhale slowly.

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “She was working in one of the factories and still resident at the address you gave me. The reason her contact stopped so abruptly was probably because—”

  “I get it,” she interjected, not wanting him to say the words again. “Could you find a reason why?”

  She practically heard his shrug over the phone. “You know what that part of the country’s like. Juarez was up to a hundred murders a day at one point.”

  “So you don’t know if it was a drug thing, or…” She braced herself. “A prostitution thing?”

  “There’s nothing in the police report. That she was identified at all is lucky. Most of the bodies they find in the desert aren’t.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, the heavy finality of the moment settling on her shoulders like a fifty-pound weight. “I guess I’ll probably never know more than I know now.”

  “I’ll complete the paperwork and e-mail it to you in the morning, but the answer is no. Probably not.”

  “Okay. Thanks for calling.”

  “I wanted to let you know as soon as I found out. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you a better outcome, Eva.”

  It was the first time in all their interactions that he sounded remotely human, and that made things worse. I paid you for answers, not a fucking apology, she wanted to scream. Instead she thanked him again and ended the call.

  Then she dropped her phone, sank to the floor, and covered her face with her hands.

  She couldn’t even weep. Her devastation was so consuming it was like a black hole opened below her ribs and was sucking everything inside, swallowing the air from her lungs and the thoughts from her mind.

  She wasn’t stupid or carelessly optimistic—she’d known this might be the ending. But on some level she’d always believed that she’d know if her mom died, that she’d have some kind of physical sensation or sixth sense the moment it happened. She often talked to her mom in her mind lying in bed late at night, and imagined that somehow, in some way, her mom knew she was thinking of her.

  Evidently she’d spent more than a decade talking to a ghost.

  Suddenly she needed movement, escape. She jumped up from the floor and paced the open-plan ground floor, but it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t breathe, she needed air—she had to get out.

  She walked up and down her driveway, in circles around the car, through the gate to her small yard and back again. She went back inside and picked up her phone, put it down, picked it up again. She tried to scroll through her list of contacts to find Juana’s number, or Lulu’s number, but her hand shook and she dropped the phone a second time. She didn’t want their comfort or their empathy or their tears where she had none.

  She wanted Rio.

  Blindly she shoved her phone in her purse, grabbed the car keys from the counter and sped off in the rental, her stomach lurching, her breaths short and tight.

  She drove slowly, fully aware she wasn’t at her attentive best, but the empty Thursday-night roads made it a short trip despite her extra caution.

  She cruised down Buckhead’s leafy streets, glancing enviously at lights shining in curtained windows in the neighborhood’s large houses. She imagined a happy, perfect family behind each one, homework finished, dishes cleared, baths drawn. They weren’t worried about money or jobs or what to do with their lives. They didn’t know her mother was dead, had quietly been dead for years, and they didn’t care.

  She parked at a sloppy angle across Rio’s driveway and stumbled up the steps, her knees weak, her vision fuzzy. She felt drunk and sick and utterly without hope as she pressed the doorbell, not daring to wonder what she would do if he didn’t answer—or what she would do if he did.

  She waited, resting her forehead against the door. After what felt like a sufficient amount of time but could’ve been anywhere from two to ten minutes she pressed the bell again, and heard it resonate inside the house.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, barely staying upright, and then the door opened and he was there, white T-shirt, dark skin, mussed hair, bare feet.

  She sobbed in relief and sagged against his chest. His arms locked around her waist as the roaring in her ears became unbearable. Her knees buckled as the dark spots before her eyes swum and swelled and swallowed her whole.

  Someone’s fingers were in her hair. Rio’s fingers—she could smell him, rainy asphalt and saltwater. She opened her eyes. She was on his couch. He crouched on the floor in front of her.

  His eyes were narrow with concern. “What’s wrong, querida?”

  The endearment burst the dam. She turned her face into the cushion and wept.

  Vaguely she registered Rio saying her name and then he was beside her, tugging her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. She cried against his chest, clutching the soft cotton of his shirt, finding some solace in his solidity and warmth.

  “Please, tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded against the top of her head.

  She closed her eyes, dragging in a shuddering breath. “Did I faint?”

  “And scared the shit out of me, yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it took me to carry you to the couch. Less than a minute, probably.”

  “I’m sorry I missed that,” she told him genuinely.

  “I’ll carry you anywhere you want if you tell me what happened.”

  Tears tingled afresh as she remembered the horrible, irrecoverable turn her life had just taken.

  “The private investigator called. My mom died in 2003, in Mexico.”

  He swore brutally. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Her body was found—I think she was—”

  He hushed her, tightening his grip as she dissolved into sobs. That was it, now—she’d made it real by telling him. She could’ve lied, told him she was still waiting for news, told him the investigation was taking longer than expected, and then at least her mom would’ve been alive in his imagination.

  Now her death felt much more final than it had a minute earlier.

  She cried for a long time, until his shirt was soaked with her tears and
she was sure his arms must’ve ached. She cried for her mother, for her short, fraught life and its violent end. She cried for her younger self, the girl who hadn’t known she’d never see her mother again as she left for school, who’d always believed it was only a matter of time until they reunited. She cried for her future self, the woman who would never hear her mother’s voice again, never show her mother an engagement ring, a wedding dress, a newborn grandchild. And she cried for all the mothers and daughters and sisters whose stories ended in that brutal desert, the ground hard and indifferent as their bodies cooled, their names forgotten.

  She wasn’t sure why she slowed, but eventually she did. And then she stopped.

  She sniffed and turned her head to rest her cheek below his collarbone. He smoothed her hair and wiped the wet trails from beneath her eyes.

  “Come on.” He urged her to her feet, letting her lean against his side for stability.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To bed. You need to sleep.”

  It was the best idea she’d heard in years.

  He led her up the stairs to the second floor which, she realized with a jolt, she’d never seen despite having been to this house more times than she could count when she worked with Hector.

  The landing was as grandiose as the rest of the place. She followed Rio to the far end of the hall, where he ushered her through a half-open door.

  She took in the crumpled white sheets, the clothes on the floor, the shoes peeking out from beneath the bed. “Is this your room?”

  “None of the other beds are made up. Go ahead, I’ll sleep next door.”

  She turned begging eyes on him. “Stay. I don’t want to be alone.”

  He hesitated, and for the first time since she’d left her house she second-guessed her decision to come here.

  Was this pushing their fledgling relationship—if it could even be called that—too far? Where was all the self-assured aloofness she’d shown him until now? Where was her self-control, her strength, her prized independence?