Page 183 of From Rivals to I Do

“He just didn’t have a talent for that sort of thing,” she said. “To make matters worse, he, uh, he had a little bit of a gambling problem. It’s why my mom left him. Well, one of the reasons, anyway.”

Abel nodded in understanding. “I can relate. Rafael had the same problem, you know.”

She did know. Rafael had talked about his gambling days off and on in vague terms, never mentioning anything too specific. She never prodded him about it either. Camilla always chalked it up to him wanting to spare her the horrors of a bad time in his life.

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s told me that he was kind of on the bad side of the law for a while there.”

Abel’s eyes got far away. He bit down on his lip, the memory of his youth playing out in front of him. “Raf didn’t exactly have the best role models. He used to run gambling rings out of our basement when I was a teenager, like craps and poker and stuff like that. Made a lot of money doing it, but…yeah… More than a few nights were way too dangerous for a kid to be around.”

“Well, at least he’s still here. He’s a lot luckier than my dad,” she said. She paused, wondering if she wanted to talk about her father’s grim fate on such a beautiful day. “I don’t know everything that happened. My mom never told me the entire story. But apparently, at a certain point, his gambling got so out of control that he couldn’t take care of me anymore. So…yeah. That’s when I went to live with my mother.”

Abel’s face got serious. “You didn’t go with your mom when they got divorced?”

She shook her head. “Nope. I loved my dad. I wanted to be with him.”

He didn’t say anything. His hand was still in hers, but it was stiff now as if he was suddenly preoccupied with something. “What happened to your dad?”

Camilla sighed. “Well, after I was gone, I guess he just got worse and worse. Eventually, he was shot during a poker game with some gangbangers. I don’t know the specifics, really. Just that he was gambling with the wrong people, and some kid shot him because they said he was cheating.”

She happened to look over at him. He looked a little pale, and his hand suddenly felt very clammy. He looked down at his shoes for a moment, then back up at her. “Some kid?”

“Mom always said that it was some kind of gang thing. Maybe an initiation or something. Anyway, after Dad died, the restaurant closed, and it stayed that way for years. After I got married, my mom finally decided that she was going to sell it, but I convinced her not to. I wanted to have something of my father now that he was gone.” She thought about her happier memories of her dad. The way he’d laughed with her and told terrible jokes. Most importantly, she thought about how he’d looked at the crumbling restaurant as his way out of the poorhouse. He always had hope for the old place.

“It wasn’t all bad between us,” she said aloud. “I mean, father and daughter relationships can be complicated, you know?” Abel didn’t respond. She looked at him and noticed he looked a little green around the gills. Camilla put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

He smiled, but it looked forced. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Feeling a little queasy is all.”

“Oh. Oh, no.”

“Your father,” he said, turning around to face me. “His last name was Nunez? I mean…”

“That’s my married name,” she said with a giggle. “I never changed it back, I guess. Never thought to. His name was Santiago.” He was getting even greener. He looked away from her, pulling his hand out of hers. “Hey…are you okay?”

“Not really,” he said. “Listen, do you mind if we cut this short? I’m kind of feeling really bad here.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’ll get Charlie—”

“No, no. You stay. In fact”—he reached into his pockets and pulled out a five dollar bill—“get him some ice cream on me. I don’t want to pull Charlie away so soon. He’s having fun. I’ll head out and call you later, okay?”

She nodded, and he left quickly, standing up and practically running out of the park. Camilla watched him go, a little bit confused. He was clearly not feeling well, but she couldn’t help feeling like, somehow, it was something she’d said.

“Mommy!” Charlie came running up to her. “Where’d Abel go?”

She smiled at him. “He wasn’t feeling well, honey,” she said. She looked at the folded five dollars in her hand thoughtfully. “Do you want some ice cream?”

He jumped up and down happily. “Yeah!”

“She’s not going to put it together because you’re never going to tell her why you went to prison,” he said. “Listen, this isn’t a problem unless you make it a problem, okay?”

Abel swallowed. The event that had changed both of their lives, that Abel was sure was in his past now that he’d done the time—the event that he’d replayed over and over since it happened…

He’d woken up to yelling. All Abel knew then was that Rafael liked to have poker games with his friends sometimes, and on those nights, his job was to stay out of sight. It didn’t matter to Rafael where he went, but he had to stay away from the basement until morning. It just so happened that night Abel went to bed early because he had a test the next day.

Yelling from the basement pulled him out of a deep sleep. Abel remembered lying there while it went on and debated just putting a pillow over his head and going back to sleep. It had gone on so long, though, that eventually, against his better judgment, he went to see what was happening.

He walked down the stairs to the basement only to see his brother yelling at one of his guests, a man that he knew about but had never really seen before. He was older and a little overweight, and he didn’t fit in at all with Rafael’s friends, who were all young gangbangers from around the neighborhood.

“No way you’ve got four aces,” Rafael was saying. “You got a lot of nerve coming into my house trying to cheat me out of my money!”

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