Chapter 4 - THE LETTER MY FATHER HID
"Give me the envelope."
My mother held it against her chest.
"Marta, please. Your father was trying to protect everyone."
"From what?"
She didn't answer.
I looked at the envelope again.
For Marta. After the wedding.
There was something especially cruel about those four words.
My father had written me a letter.
My mother had carried it to the wedding.
And somehow, both of them had decided that I could learn whatever it contained only after my husband had married my sister.
"Mom," I said quietly, "if there's anything left of our relationship, give me that letter."
Her fingers loosened.
I took it.
The envelope had already been opened.
Of course it had.
Inside were two sheets of lined paper.
My father's handwriting covered the first page.
Marta,
I know you believe your sister and Javier are the only people who betrayed you. I wish that were true.
I stopped reading.
For fifteen years, I'd been married to a man who could lie without blinking.
But my father?
My father had taught me to ride a bicycle.
He'd driven across Nashville in a snowstorm when our furnace stopped working.
He'd stood beside me at my wedding and cried when he gave me away.
I kept reading.
Last winter, I made financial decisions that placed your mother and me in a terrible position. Javier learned about those decisions before you did.
He offered to help.
I accepted.
My eyes moved faster.
I told myself I was protecting your mother. Instead, I allowed your husband to become involved in matters that should never have touched your marriage.
The next paragraph had been crossed out.
I could still make out a few words.
Property.
Security.
Children.
Then came the final sentence.
I have no right to ask your forgiveness, but I hope you will understand why we needed the wedding to happen before everything came out.
I lowered the paper.
"What does your debt have to do with Lucy getting married?"
My mother didn't answer.
Javier reached for the letter.
"Let me see that."
I stepped away.
"You can ask my father for your own copy."
"Marta, I helped your parents with a loan. That's all."
I turned.
"How much?"
He hesitated.
"Forty thousand."
Lucy made a small sound.
"Forty thousand dollars?"
Javier looked annoyed.
"Your father needed help."
"And you never told me?" I asked.
"It was his private business."
"Apparently my marriage was yours."
He looked away.
I examined the second page.
It wasn't a letter.
It was a photocopy of a property document.
The address belonged to my parents.
My father's name appeared near the top.
Below it was Javier's.
And farther down, I saw something that made me stop breathing.
My own name.
Marta Elena Morales.
I was listed beside a signature.
Except I had never signed that document.
"What is this?"
Javier leaned closer.
His face changed.
"Where did he get that?"
I pointed to the signature.
"Is this supposed to be mine?"
He said nothing.
"Javier."
"Your father told me you'd signed the paperwork."
I stared.
"What paperwork?"
"A guarantee. It was supposed to be temporary."
"A guarantee for what?"
"The loan."
My mother started crying harder.
"I told him not to involve you."
I turned toward her.
"You knew somebody had signed my name?"
She shook her head.
"Not when it happened."
"But later?"
Her silence answered.
Lucy stepped closer.
"Wait. What exactly was the wedding supposed to accomplish?"
Javier looked at her.
"Nothing."
"Then why did Mom say everything had to happen afterward?"
He rubbed his jaw.
"Lucy, this is between Marta and her parents."
"No," I said.
"It stopped being private when someone put my name on a document without permission."
I photographed both pages with my phone.
Then I folded the letter.
"We're leaving."
My mother stood.
"Your father wants to explain."
"He had eight months."
I walked toward the door.
Lucy followed me.
"Marta."
I stopped.
She was still wearing her wedding dress.
For the first time, I noticed that her hands were shaking.
"I didn't know about your signature."
I looked at her.
"Should that make me feel better?"
"No."
Her voice cracked.
"I know it shouldn't."
For a moment, I saw the little sister who used to sleep in my bedroom during thunderstorms.
Then I remembered the photograph.
April fourteenth.
Our anniversary.
"How long were you seeing Javier?" I asked.
She swallowed.
"Marta—"
"Tell me."
"Longer than we admitted."
"How much longer?"
Her eyes filled.
"Almost three years."
I felt the answer settle somewhere deep inside me.
Three years.
Not one.
Three years of family dinners.
Birthday parties.
Christmas mornings.
Three years of my sister standing beside me while I wrapped presents for the man she was secretly seeing.
"Why?" I asked.
It was the simplest question.
The only one that mattered.
Lucy wiped her cheeks.
"At first, I thought he understood me. I was thirty-three, living in your guest room, and everything in my life felt like a failure."
"So you decided to take mine?"
"No."
She looked miserable.
"I didn't think that was what I was doing."
"Then you weren't thinking very hard."
Javier stepped forward.
"That's enough."
I looked at him.
"No. Enough was eight months ago. You don't get to decide when I'm finished asking questions."
He lowered his voice.
"You're making this harder on the children."
I couldn't believe it.
"You invited them to watch you marry their aunt."
"I wanted them to know they weren't losing their father."
"Then why did your bride write down that they would spend most of their time at your new house?"
Lucy looked startled.
"That plan was a draft."
"A draft for whom?"
She looked toward my mother.
And once again, I watched the same terrible exchange of glances.
Then she whispered, "Mom said it would make the transition easier."
I stood perfectly still.
"What transition?"
My mother shook her head.
"Lucy, stop."
But Lucy had finally begun to understand that she had been kept in the dark too.
"You told me Marta was overwhelmed," she said to our mother. "You said the children needed stability."
I stared.
My mother had been telling Lucy that my children needed a different home.
While telling me I needed to forgive Lucy for the sake of the family.
I walked out before I said something I couldn't take back.
Outside, Alba stood beside Elena near my car.
The late-afternoon sun had turned the vineyard rows gold.
My daughter looked exhausted.
When she saw me, she ran.
"Can we go home now?"
"Yes, sweetheart."
She climbed into the back seat.
Elena touched my arm.
"There's something you should know."
I closed the car door.
"What?"
"Your father was here earlier."
"I figured."
"No. He left before the ceremony. He and Javier argued in the parking lot."
"About what?"
"I couldn't hear everything. But your father kept saying Javier had promised to return something."
"What something?"
Elena hesitated.
"Your mother's house came up. And then I heard Javier say, 'Once Lucy signs, I can fix it.'"
I looked back toward the building.
Through the windows, I could see Javier standing beside my mother.
He looked furious.
Elena continued.
"Marta, I don't think today's wedding was just about getting married."
I drove home with Alba sleeping in the back seat and the white candle lying on the passenger seat.
My three other children were waiting with my neighbor when we arrived.
Tommy hugged his sister without asking questions.
Nico offered her his favorite blanket.
Sofia announced she'd saved her a brownie.
I nearly cried.
Later, after dinner, I sat at the kitchen table studying my father's letter.
Then I noticed something on the back of the property document.
A handwritten reference number.
Beneath it were the words:
Supplemental Family Asset Schedule.
I opened the old folder containing the divorce financial disclosures Javier had provided three months earlier.
I searched the pages.
And there, buried in a section about contingent liabilities, was the same reference number.
Beside it, someone had written:
Beneficial interest assigned to L. Morales upon marriage.
L. Morales.
Lucy would become Lucy Morales if she married Javier.
But the document was dated six weeks before their engagement.
May you like
And it described something I had never agreed to give away.
My share of the house my grandmother had left to me.
