We Never Asked for Wings

by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

  “I love you, Alex Espinosa,” she said suddenly, kissing him.

  “I love you too,” he said.

  And together they stood, hand in hand, and started the long walk home.

  It was dusk when they finally left Carmen’s. Yesenia walked them out to their cars, but Carmen hung behind, grabbing Alex as he tried to pass. Letty watched her place her hands on his shoulders. She couldn’t hear what Carmen said, but her whispered words caused his chest to fill with air, and then he let out a long, heavy sigh. He had been forgiven. It would take longer for Alex to forgive himself, but Carmen had done what she could. Letty thanked her as she said good-bye, and Carmen hugged her quickly before ducking back inside. They had been reassured again and again that ICE wasn’t looking for Carmen; but it would be a long, long time before any of them believed it.

  Rick drove Letty and Luna, Wes drove Alex; so twenty minutes later, it was all five of them who climbed the front steps of the dark cottage. Letty sank immediately onto the window seat. The intensity of waiting had been eclipsed by the intensity of the reunion, and she was beyond exhausted. With her eyes closed, she listened to the sounds of Rick getting Luna ready for bed, the sounds of Wes and Alex making a snack in the kitchen. Footsteps padded down the hall and then approached; when she opened her eyes she saw Wes, sunk silently into the chair across from her.

  “Hey,” Letty said, sitting up.

  “Hey,” Wes said. In his hands was a crumpled piece of paper that Letty recognized immediately. “He showed me the letter.”

  “Awful, isn’t it?”

  Wes nodded. “Just exactly what he didn’t need right now.”

  “I know,” Letty agreed. “And it isn’t like Mr. E not to think of it. Swept up in the brilliance of the idea, that’s what he told me.”

  “It was brilliant.”

  “He’s brilliant,” she said, looking off toward Alex’s room.

  Wes followed her gaze down the hall, and then glanced out the window, to where the dark trees arched through the cold night. He had something to tell her. Letty recognized his expression. It was the same look—elation underneath uncertainty and sadness—he’d worn when he’d come to tell her he’d gotten into Columbia.

  “What’s up?” she asked, when he didn’t say anything.

  He bit his lower lip. “I have an opportunity,” he said slowly. Drawing his eyes away from the window, he looked at Letty. “I wasn’t going to take it. When I first got the call I almost said no right away, but then I thought about it, and I thought it might actually be good for everyone. For Alex, especially.”

  “What is it?” Letty asked.

  “It’s a grant from the World Health Organization. Our team has been studying improved diagnostics for TB in HIV patients, and the grant is to go to South Africa. We’d be building capacity—mentoring and training local doctors—so they can better diagnose and treat their own patients.”

  Letty listened, wondering how any of this could possibly be good for Alex. But Wes continued, answering her question before she could ask: “I thought Alex could come with me. We could pull him in May, right before the science fair, and he could spend all summer working as my assistant.”

  Was he really asking her to let Alex, her only son, spend four months in South Africa—without her? Her heart screamed a resounding no as she tallied up the myriad dangers he could encounter, from plane crashes to political violence to infectious disease. But Wes held her gaze, and Letty knew he was right. It would be good for Alex. He wouldn’t have to suffer through the state science fair, and it would give him time to bond with Wes. Not to mention the huge head start it would give him in designing a science project for the following year’s competition.

  “And at the end of the summer,” she asked, “Alex would come back?”

  Wes nodded.

  “But you wouldn’t.”

  His eyes flitted away from hers, and he shook his head no. “I wouldn’t.”

  Letty thought about Wes at the Christmas party, his hands full of photos. His wanting to be with her had been a product of the holiday spirit and too much champagne, she saw now, nothing more. Wes had a life to live. And his life didn’t include Letty—it had never included Letty, which was why she’d let him go in the first place, all those years before.

  Just then, Alex walked into the room. He’d changed into flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt, and he sat down on the second chair, next to his father. Letty could tell from his expression that he already knew.

  “So what do you think?” Letty asked.

  “What do you think?” Alex’s loyalty lay with her, and it made her heart swell, to feel his dedication, even after everything she’d done.

  “I think it sounds exciting.”

  Relief flooded Alex’s face. “Me too. But not for the whole summer. I was thinking maybe just a month.”

  “Right. Because more than a month away from your mother would be way too much.”

  Alex turned red, grinning guiltily. He’d just gotten Yesenia back. Letty was a little surprised he was considering being away from her at all. But she was glad. They were still so young.

  Wes stood up to go. “Thanks, Letty.”

  Letty nodded, standing up to hug him before watching Alex walk his father to the car. Wes had him by a few inches still, but Alex’s shoulders had broadened. They had the same build, the same step, the same hair. Someday soon, from the back, she wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

  In the hall she heard Luna’s soft feet. Turning away from the window, Letty watched as her daughter appeared in the doorway. Rick had put her in a summer nightgown, but he’d found kneesocks and pulled a sweater over her head.

  “Ready for bed?”

  Luna shook her head and skipped across the room, jumping up onto the window seat. “I don’t want to go to bed.”

  “She’s tired,” Rick said, and Letty wondered about the conversation that had led to the kneesock-nightgown-sweater ensemble.

  “I am not tired,” Luna said.

  Letty looked at Rick, her eyebrows raised, and Rick moved his chin up and down almost imperceptibly, the motion too subtle for Luna to see.

  “Thanks for getting her ready,” Letty said. “And I know Carmen already thanked you, but thank you again for paying for Yesenia’s ticket. It was a really big deal.”

  Rick shrugged. In his jacket pocket he felt around for his keys. “You know I was happy to do it.”

  “I know you were,” she said. She’d been trying to find the right time, and now, watching him prepare to leave, she knew she didn’t have another minute to wait. Bolting from the room, she grabbed an envelope from her closet.

  Rick stood by the door when she returned, looking at her curiously.

  “I would have bought Yesenia’s ticket myself,” she said, swallowing hard. “But I was saving for something else.”

  Rick took the envelope and slowly opened it. From inside, he pulled a plane ticket. SFO to Morelia and back, April 6–16.

  “It’s your spring break,” she said nervously. The tickets were nonrefundable. “I was hoping you’d come with us—to meet my parents.”

  Suddenly understanding what was happening, Luna sprang off the window seat and snatched the tickets. If she’d been tired before, she wasn’t anymore. On one foot she hopped all around the room, waving the tickets in the air above her head. She’d had a similar reaction on Christmas morning, when she learned they were going to visit her grandparents.

  “You’re coming with us!” she screamed, hanging off Rick’s waist, and Letty watched Rick’s expression progress from shock to understanding as Luna dragged him to the window seat, sprang onto his lap, and launched into a detailed description of the Espinosa family home. Luna had heard all the same bedtime stories Letty heard as a child, and she told Rick about the lemon groves and the swimming pool and the feather mosaics in the attic and the festivals in the town square.

  When she finally stopped talking, Letty sat down next to them, burrowing her hand undern
eath Rick’s knee, where Luna couldn’t see it, and squeezing gently. “Will you come?”

  Rick paused, a hint of a smile on his face. Then he nodded. “I will.”

  Letty exhaled, feeling her body relax fully for the first time since Alex had gotten in trouble. Her head leaning into Rick’s shoulder, she pulled Luna against her chest. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, his lips pressed against Letty’s ear. “You’re worth the wait.” Then, reaching out to smooth Luna’s wild hair, he added: “All of you.”

  Alex walked into the room then, the screen door banging shut behind him, and Luna jumped down, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the already crowded window seat. Letty and Rick moved to the end to make room, and Alex flopped down beside them, his head in his mother’s lap. Luna dove onto the pile. Alex yelped and tickled her, and Letty tickled Alex, and Rick held on to the window frame to keep them all from falling.

  When they’d settled in, Luna lifted her head off the cushion and looked her brother in the eyes.

  “Alex?”

  “Yeah?”

  She looked worried, and Letty wondered if she’d overheard them talking about South Africa. Luna wouldn’t want her brother to be gone for a month.

  But she hadn’t. Dropping her head onto Alex’s chest, she asked: “Is Yesenia home to stay?”

  Alex’s eyes flicked up to meet Letty’s, and suddenly Letty flashed on Alex as a little boy, sitting on his grandfather’s lap at the Landing. She’d come home between shifts to change and found them by the window, watching the long-empty winter sky flood with bright white gulls. Are they home to stay? Alex had asked, the birds’ incessant squawking drowning out the loneliness in his six-year-old voice. But her father shook his head no, and then there was Maria Elena behind them, reciting from St. Francis’s sermon to the birds. It is God who made you noble among all creatures, making your home in the thin, pure air.

  Letty remembered feeling a connection to the birds then, en route from one minimum-wage job to another: God had given them nothing. But now, the heaviness of Alex’s thoughts in her lap, she realized she’d gotten it all wrong. The birds had been given everything they needed. A home in the thin, pure air: a moment of weightlessness, a reprieve from the gravity of life.

  Alex sighed and kissed his sister softly on the nose.

  “She’s home,” he said simply, and maybe he remembered his grandmother’s words too, because he added, so quietly Letty almost couldn’t hear: “Wherever she is, she’s home.”

  It was enough for Luna. Sighing contentedly, she closed her eyes, and Alex turned to look out the window.

  There was a big, dark world out there.

  But from where they sat, underneath the soft living room light, Alex couldn’t see any of it. He could see only his reflection—and next to him Luna, and Letty, and Rick—the four of them piled together on the too-small window seat.

  Letty’s eyes met Alex’s in the glass. “She’s home.”

  Alex nodded. “Us too.”

  Rick squeezed Letty’s hand, a comforting pressure, and Letty kissed the top of Alex’s curly head.

  He was right.

  Like birds in flight, they were here, and they were home.

  For Donovan, Tre’von, Graciela, and Miles

  And in memory of Sharon Renee Higgins, 1991–2011

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  They say book two is hard. Whether or not this is true I don’t know, but I believed it to be true, and so this book was hard for me. Really hard. Which means I never would have finished it if it weren’t for a number of people who stepped in to revive both me and the book at our darkest hours.

  First, Tasha Blaine, who appeared just as I’d almost given up and in record time was able to show me exactly what wasn’t working and why. I tore the heart out of this novel and rewrote almost every single page, and I never would have had the confidence, strength, or vision to accomplish that without Tasha answering every call. On a sunny afternoon in Boston we sat in the Public Gardens and outlined the entire backstory, and I, full of joy, remember thinking—what’s so hard about this? Tasha, I plan to write all future books with you, whether you like it or not.

  My agent, Sally Wofford-Girand, is truly my rock, and I am just starting to understand how unbelievably lucky I am to have her as an agent, editor, and friend. Sam Fox and everyone at Union Literary make working with her even more of a dream.

  For the second time I have had the great fortune of being published by Ballantine. I am grateful to Jennifer Smith, Jennifer Hershey, Kim Hovey, and Libby McGuire, who believed in this book when it was barely readable, saw the potential in the pages, and didn’t stop pushing until I’d written the novel they knew I could write.

  When I hired Maria Wessman-Conroy, just after I sold The Language of Flowers, I told her I needed someone to help with my kids—except I wanted to be with them every single second—and also that sometimes just the thought of clearing the breakfast dishes made me feel so overwhelmed I had to go lie down. My whole life had just been turned upside down, and I didn’t know what I needed. But Maria did. I needed her to love me and to love my children, and she did that, every single moment of every single day, for three years and on book tours across six countries. I couldn’t have done any of it without her, and I will always be indebted to her for her transformational love and care during an incredibly intense time. I am also grateful to Kasey Reinitz, who supported our family with dedication and grace under pressure through the hardest year of my revisions, and to Emily Grelle, whose thoughtful, poetic spirit and deep knowledge of language made every sentence of this book better. If I manage to write a third book this decade, Emily will be the one to thank!

  There is a moment in writing every book that feels almost divine or otherworldly. In writing We Never Asked for Wings, that moment occurred at an event in San Luis Obispo, when I met Gabriela Sepúlveda. Strong, funny, smart, and a survivor, Gabby made real to me everything I was trying to write about and told me to keep going. I might not have, though, if I hadn’t had Nancy Gutierrez and Maritza Cervantes working relentlessly to correct my Spanish and geography and Mexican card games, and later Ara Jauregui, Sandra Martinez, Mayra Morales, and Maria Rendon-Garcia, who gave the manuscript a final read and gave me the courage to send it out into the world.

  To write this book I had to learn about all kinds of things I didn’t know: science (Allison Shultz, a PhD candidate at Harvard, taught me about feathers and, at the exact right moment in my plot development, e-mailed to make sure I knew that it was illegal to gather wild bird feathers; Noah Diffenbaugh, my brother-in-law and a Stanford climate scientist, explained isotope signatures and helped me revise the challenging opening chapters in the final hour before the book went to be typeset); immigration (Marisa Cianciarulo and Hayley Upshaw helped me make sense of immigration laws that make almost no sense at all); medicine (Kathryn Stephenson and Reagan Schaplow helped me figure out exactly who Wes was); and bartending (Gabrielle Dion and my brother, Mark Botill, both extraordinary bartenders, opened up my eyes to the past, present, and future of the cocktail). I am grateful to all these extraordinary individuals who gave freely of their time and expertise, and also to Adan Gutierrez-Gallegos, who let me borrow the tattoo right off his chest, with its beautiful phrase that inspired Rick’s character.

  For giving me a room of my own when I needed it most, I would like to thank everyone at the Grand Del Mar and at Mt. Madonna Center, in particular my mother-in-law, Sarada Diffenbaugh, and my father-in-law, Dayanand Diffenbaugh, who makes the very best chai west of the Indian Ocean. For nurturing my children and giving me the mental and emotional (and physical!) space to write, I would like to thank Ken Fleming, Melinda Vasquez, Amy Moylan, Lucia Castiñeira, Noelle Danian, Megan Gage, Kirsten Fried, Lissa McDermott, Dawn Calvert, Jan Mongkolkasetarin, and Holly and Rebekah Wilson. For reading early drafts and giving me kind, honest feedback: Rachel McIntire, Angela Booker, Polly Diffenbaugh, Heather Kirkpatrick,
Mary Sullivan Walsh, Talaya Delaney, Barbara Tomash, Ed Vasquez, Liz George, and Jim Botill. For long walks and fantastic talks I would like to thank my dear friend Jennifer Jacoby; most of the major epiphanies I had about this book occurred running around Fresh Pond with Jen, through rain and sleet and snow.

  It took me four years and many sleepless nights to find the right title, and in the end it was my childhood friend David Jones who came up with the phrase that became We Never Asked for Wings. I can never thank him enough for capturing so well the themes and emotions in this story in a single line.

  Finally, I am most grateful of all to my husband, PK Diffenbaugh, the love of my life, and to my children, Donovan, Tre’von, Graciela, and Miles, who had to live with me as I wrote this book. At one point, in the middle of a particularly hard chapter, my seven-year-old daughter said: “I don’t want to be a writer anymore, because when you are a writer and your book isn’t going well, you are in a really bad mood!” Which is of course true, and also heartbreaking. I can only say I’m sorry, and I hope you won’t remember me as I was while writing book two. I’ve heard that writing book three is pure joy the entire time—I don’t know if it’s true, but I believe it!

  BY VANESSA DIFFENBAUGH

  We Never Asked for Wings

  The Language of Flowers

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  VANESSA DIFFENBAUGH is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Language of Flowers, which was translated into more than forty languages. A mother of four, she lives with her husband in Monterey, California. In addition to being a writer, Diffenbaugh is a passionate foster-care advocate and sits on the board of Youth Villages, where she supports their mission to radically improve outcomes for America’s most vulnerable children and families. Find out more at YVLifeSet.org.

  vanessadiffenbaugh.com