Heart Breaths (25 page)

I had just crawled into bed when I felt my cell phone vibrate. It’s not Gabe, I scolded myself as I reached for it. You have to stop thinking like that.

It was easier said than done.

God, I missed him. I missed sitting on his couch, talking about anything and everything. I missed snuggling up with Noie, and drawing pictures with her. I missed listening to her giggle as she made up her own jokes, and tried to tickle Gabe. I missed her singing songs and mangling the words, I missed him sitting at his table, working. I missed the calm that only came from sitting next to him, head on his chest, listening to his heart beat, reminding me to let my heart breathe.

I didn’t know if I knew how to breathe without him.

If I was even doing a good job of it, or if I was slowly suffocating again.

“Hello?”

“Maddie!” Sam. “You busy now?”

Nope, just moping about your brother. “No, what’s up?”

Her voice turned cajoling. “Can I ask you for a favor?” she asked sweetly.

I pretty much owed her my life. “Sure,” I replied. “What’s up?”

She sighed. “Well, Mom and Dad’s thirtieth anniversary is tomorrow, and they made me swear that I wouldn’t throw them an anniversary party, and that under no circumstances was I allowed to make a big deal about it, because they don’t want to do anything huge now, since there’s going to be the big Fourth of July thing soon, so we’re going to combine it then. But I wanted to do something special for them on their actual anniversary.”

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, trying to figure out how I fit in to her plans.

“Well, you know that every couple has a song?” she asked.

Did I? “I guess,” I replied.

“Well, Mom and Dad’s song is an Alberto Montañez song—it’s the song they danced to at their wedding, and Mom cries every time Dad sings it to her.” I smiled, thinking of the whirlwind that was Mrs. Mendez getting all teary eyed when her husband sang to her. “We have a piano in the house—the people who lived in the house before we did didn’t take it with them. It’s tuned and everything. I wanted to know,” she paused, “please, please, please, if you could come over tomorrow night and play their song for them?”

I smiled. “Of course,” I replied, touched that she called me for help. “Which Alberto song is it?”

“‘Mi Corazón No Puede Parar Amar de Usted’,” she replied. “You sure it’s okay?”

“I’m positive,” I replied.

“You are the best. I’ll talk to you tomorrow and give you all the details then, okay?”

“Sure,” I leaned back onto my pillows.

“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. “Good night, Maddie.”

“Good night,” I said, hanging up the phone. Flipping off the lamp, I snuggled into my bed. What did it feel like, to be married to the same person for thirty years?

I thought of my parents and the very civilized marriage they had. Civilized, and completely impersonal. Marriage was supposed to be the joining of two hearts and two lives—but all marriage ever did for my parents was join two bank accounts, and not even.

If I ever get married, I thought, feeling my eyelids droop, it’s going to be for real.

Chapter · Twenty-Three

“They’re not back yet,” Sam said as she opened the door. “They went out to dinner, and should be home soon.”

“Great,” I said, wiping my hands on the sides of my shorts. Why was I so nervous?

“Here, let me show you the piano,” she said, leading me through the house toward the back room.

It was a music room. The walls were decorated with old record covers and music sheets, with big windows looking out to the backyard. A baby grand piano sat in the middle of the room. My mouth dropped open. “And they just left this here?” I asked, walking over to the piano, flabbergasted. “Why would you just leave this behind?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said. “Honestly, they were a little suspicious—so maybe they were running away from the law or something.”

Laughing, I ran my hands over the piano. There had been one here the whole time! One that I could have been playing… I shook my head to clear my thoughts. “Well, that’s one possibility,” I said, sliding onto the bench and letting my fingers find the keys. “Do any of you play piano?”

“Mom does a little, I think,” she said, sitting down next to me, watching my fingers drift across the keys, picking out a soft lullaby. “But that’s it.”

“So you guys just have a music room?”

“Well, Gabe used to play violin, and my Dad has been known to play the guitar on occasion,” she said as the music floated gently around us. The sound of a car pulling up made my fingers freeze. It was a good thing I hadn’t put up the top of the piano yet. “I’ll go and see who it is,” Sam said, sliding off the bench. “Stay here.”

I nodded, getting up and picking up the top of the piano as Sam jogged to the front door.

“Gabe!” I heard her exclaim in surprise.

My heart dropped.

“I finished a lot earlier than I thought I would,” he said, his deep voice carrying through the silent house and causing shivers to race up and down my spine. “So Noie and I came by to say happy anniversary.”

“They’re not back yet,” Sam said, her voice getting closer. I froze in my seat by the piano. Could I do this? Could I look him in the eye and pretend everything was okay?

“Maddie!” Noie yelled, barreling toward me. Reaching out, I let her collide into my arms, the feeling of hugging her one I had missed so much it hurt.

“Hey, baby girl,” I whispered, rocking her gently and placing a kiss on her forehead. Not looking up. “I missed you.”

“I missed you!” she replied, snuggling into my lap and patting me. “You’re at Grandma and Abuelo’s house!”

“I am,” I agreed, smiling down at her darling little face.

She frowned. “Why aren’t you at my house?” she asked, pouting.

“Well, you’re not there either now,” I replied, trying to think as quickly as I could.

“Maddie.”

Gabe.

Taking a deep breath and keeping my arms around Noie for courage, I looked up. “Hi, Gabe,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like just looking at him made my heart splinter.

Sam stood silently at the door, watching. “Maddie, we have to talk,” Gabe said, his voice low and rasping.

I shook my head. Not now. I couldn’t do this now. “I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t, Gabe.”

The sound of a car pulling up to the house startled everyone. “I’ll go get them,” Sam said, a smile flashing across her face as she turned and headed to the front door.

“Maddie.”

“Not now.”

“Later?” he asked as Noie squirmed off my lap and wandered around the room.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said, as the sound of the Mendezes drifted toward us. Show time.

Placing my fingers on the keys, I started to play, letting the melody float through the room. “Oh, Carlos, is that what I think it is?” Mrs. Mendez asked as they walked into the room.

“
Esta noche, te canto una canción
,” he began, his eyes suspiciously bright as he gathered her into his arms and began to sway.

“Para mostrarle cómo te amo así,

No sé si hay palabras que siquiera le mostrará.”

The sound of a violin startled me, nearly causing me to stop playing. Standing in the corner, his eyes closed, stood Gabe, coaxing magic out of a violin. My eyes burned as Mr. Mendez continued to sing, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Solo lo que hace a mí,

Haces que el luz de sol todos los días de mi vida.”

Noie sat there, at Gabe’s feet, watching him, entranced. Sam stood by the doorway, hands wrapped around herself, crying silently, as we played through to the end. There was a magic that had settled over the room, one that I couldn’t bring myself to break. Hoping he knew the song well enough to play along, I slowly transitioned from Alberto to Christina Perri.

“A Thousand Years.”

Mr. Mendez didn’t know the words. I hadn’t expected him to. The two of them swayed, wrapped in a bubble of the same love that had carried them through thirty years of ups and downs.

The only sounds in the room were the sounds of the piano and the violin, dancing together in the sea air, wrapping around everyone.

I let the last notes drift off, as Gabe put down the violin, his expression unreadable. Mrs. Mendez untangled herself from her husband’s arms, tears rolling down her face. “Gabriel, my Gabriel,” she said brokenly, wrapping her arms around him and rocking him side to side like a baby. “You played?”

“For you,” he said, his voice sounding suspiciously close to tears.

Standing up slowly, I walked toward the door. This wasn’t a place for me to be right now.

Blinking my eyes rapidly and trying not to cry, I inched toward the door, only to have Mr. Mendez stop me and give me a tight hug. “
Gracias, mija
,” he whispered.

“
Feliz aniversario
,” I said, smiling.

Slipping past through the front door, I made my way back to the beach, toward the sand dunes that hid me away from the rest of the world.

Leaning against the side of a sand dune, I tried to regulate my breathing with the sounds of the ocean.

Would this endless cycle of heartbreak ever end?

“Maddie?”

I flinched at the sound of his voice. He slid down next to me in the sand, smelling of sawdust and sunshine.

The smell of him made me ache.

I sat there, not knowing what to say. Not knowing how to say it.

“Sam told me that she told you about Noie,” he said, sounding hesitant.

I nodded, keeping my gaze firmly planted at the waves.

“You know how you’re just moving along with your life, and you think it’s going to go a certain way? You’re going to go to this college, get this job, live in this place with this person, and that’s just what’s going to happen. And then something smashes into your life like a tornado, and shreds all of that to pieces, and suddenly, you don’t even remember if you know how to breathe anymore.” I heard him swallow.

“That’s what happened with Noie. I wasn’t planning on staying with Diane—not even in the slightest—she knew it and I knew it. And then she came to me, hysterical, telling me she was pregnant. The tornado hit—and I thought it was the biggest thing ever. Because I had woken up that morning as just Gabe Mendez—some kid from North Carolina who wanted to build things, and all of a sudden, I was Gabe Mendez, soon to be husband and father. I thought my whole freakin’ life was over. I was twenty years old, and all of a sudden, I had to worry about supporting other people. I was here on vacation, an end of the summer kind of thing, and Diane wanted to live here. So I found myself a job in construction and started saving money, because damn if my child was going to be born without a roof over its head. I hadn’t told my parents yet, because
dios mio
, my mom was going to kill me, even though I was marrying that girl.”

His shoulders slumped. “And then when she nearly aborted the baby—that’s when everything came crumbling down. Because that’s when I realized that she didn’t give a shit about the baby—and that I was the only person in the entire world that the baby had. The only person. Which meant that I had to be everything for that kid. And when Diane left—it was kind of a relief, knowing that there was nothing that could get between Noie and I. I changed jobs, and convinced them to let me wear her to work.”

I smiled, heart aching, at the thought of Gabe going to work wearing a little baby Noie. “And then the nightmares started.” His voice cracked. “Do you know what that did to me? Hearing her scream, night after night, panicking and not being able to do anything about it? All the doctors said it was night terrors, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing. When she finally started talking about it? God, Maddie, every time it was a punch in the heart—like I was the shittiest father in the world that I couldn’t even protect my daughter from the demons that plagued her at night. So when she started talking about Devi, I was relieved. Before Devi? She wouldn’t go near my parents. She wouldn’t let me leave her alone.”

His head dropped into his hands and he was silent for a moment. Then he continued, his voice muffled, as if he didn’t want me to hear what he was going to say next. “Sometimes, in the moments when I couldn’t stand up straight because I was so tired? Sometimes I wished that Diane had actually gone through with the abortion.”

He turned to look at me, his eyes haunted. Hunted. “Do you know what that feels like?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “Knowing that for even a split second, you wished your child was never born?”

I nodded. Because God help me, I did. And I lived to pray the price.

“I feel like I lived fifty years in the past four years,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder how she’s only three. How she’s already three. How much longer she’s going to have to suffer the hell she does when she closes her eyes. Sam was sure that it was a past-life thing, but I couldn’t bring myself to think that. Because if it was true…” he shook his head, trying to clear it. “I can’t, Maddie. I can’t have it true. It would kill me.”

I could feel a tear making its way down my cheek.

“I couldn’t have it true, Maddie,” he repeated, looking at me. “I couldn’t.”

Turning my head away from him, I let the tears run unchecked.

Why didn’t it ever stop hurting? Why did it never stop?

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Maddie,” he said, his voice broken. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” I said, my voice choked.

Reaching over, he laid his hand on top of mine, sending jolts of electric awareness flashing to my soul. “I don’t know, Maddie,” he said, slowly threading his fingers through mine. “But telling you to stay away from Noie was one of the shittiest things I have ever done in my life.”

I nodded. “It was,” I said. “It nearly killed me.”

Turning so we were face to face, he looked at me, his gaze searing. “And with everything I have, I am so sorry for that,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to forgive me.”

I stared at him, knowing the tears were still flowing, and not caring. “I don’t know either.”

Slowly untangling his hand from mine, he sighed. “I have to get back to Noie,” he said.

“Okay.”

“She misses you,” he said, quiet. “She wants to know if you want to come over and visit her.”

I watched his face, trying to read his expression. Trying to figure out how he felt about it all. “I miss her, too.”

“Then you should come over and visit sometime soon,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because even though you don’t believe that Devi is my daughter, I do. And so does Noie. And I can’t lie to her about that, Gabe. I can’t pretend—not even for you.”

“I’m not asking you to,” he said, the moonlight shining off the dark strands of his hair.

“But it’s going to hurt you,” I said, knowing that it would.

It hurt me—it had even before Sam told me the full story.

“Life hurts sometimes,” he said. “But just because something hurts me doesn’t mean that I should let my daughter keep going without her friend.”

I looked down at my hands, watching them twist into each other. “Tell Noie that I’ll come over tomorrow,” I said, hearing my voice shake a little.

The smile that split across his face dazzled and terrified me. “I’ll let her know,” he said.

Reaching over quickly, he squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” he whispered.

I watched silently as he walked away from the beach, and wondered if Gabe was the only one I had to give a second chance to.