Page 68 of The Last Sunrise

“You again, Oriah,” the man says, a knowing insinuation in his voice. “Isolde, your… mother. I can see.” He touches my face, which would normally make me uncomfortable, but I feel incredibly at ease with him, despite having never met him before, it feels like I have.

He knows my mom—well, an old version of her who slipped away a long time ago—and possibly my grandma, who I didn’t get the chance to know the way I wished I would have. But maybe now is my chance to learn even a little bit about her through this home, through this man. This is everythingI wanted this summer, to have a connection to my mom and where she came from and what made her who is she is.

The man puts his hand on Julián’s back and Julián holds on to my hand as we walk into the house. It’s clean and simple, oil paintings and greenery hanging from the ceiling and covering the archways. It’s not big, but it’s perfect. The walls are made of stone and each door is in the same shape as the front door, a lovely arch. I instantly feel at home, rooted to a part of my family that I didn’t dream I’d ever get the opportunity to feel. Julián introduces his great-uncle Jordi, whose name pushes at my memory from a place I can’t recall. They carry on casual conversation in Catalan and I look around the living space. I try to image my mother here, carefree and smiling, in love for the first time, before she hardened and the world and greed got the best of her.

“Look around and meet me in the kitchen when you’re done, my love. Take your time.” Julián kisses my temple and continues to talk to the man who I assume owns this house now. He’s got to be at least seventy or so, but his young, bright spirit feels like wildfire, even with the language barrier.

I move into the kitchen, taking in the details. It looks like something from a romance movie from the 1940s set in Spain. The details are so plentiful, they’re hard to take in in one pass. The wooden cart used as an island is covered in choppy knife marks from decades of meals prepared. I run my fingertips over the marks, wondering how many were from my abuelita. I imagine her cooking here, the thick smell of garlic and tomato in the air, dancing around with the windows open, the breeze full of ocean water, singing the songs she used to make up that my mother always told me about.

There’s a bowl of lemons, another of limes, fruit and fresh vegetables filling the nooks and crannies of the kitchen. Long strands of garlic bulbs hang near the edges of the windows. There’s color everywhere I look. So starkly different from our white and stainless-steel kitchen back in Texas. There’s never a single item on the island, nothing on the countertops. In the rarity that my mom does cook, she cleans up before she serves us and it’s always spotless and untouchable, like her. Not here, though. Here in this home moments of life are etched into everything. My heart aches at the loss of something I’ve never had and my mother took for granted. My hand presses on my chest as I walk toward the paned window, following the dusty sunbeams shining through. Did my mom dream about her future here as she watched the neighbors laugh and smile with their families? Did she know that her life would be so stale in comparison, so lonely and colorless?

A colorful line of clothes sways, drying in the breeze, as a woman and her child play hide-and-seek between a woven quilt as it waves, making a rainbow. The shrieking laughter of the child makes my eyes wet. I turn around, holding the happiness I feel for them in my heart, not able to watch them for a moment longer. The white porcelain sink is cold against my back, helping me regulate my emotions before I go find Julián. The last thing I want him to see is me crying, mourning a childhood and family history that will never be mine.

Spaces like this make me wish I was a creative, a writer or a photographer. A painter. There’s an emotion that comes along with being in places like this that’s hard to explain or convey, but it feels so deep, as if a core memory is being made rightnow. The camera clicks and Julián smiles behind it, lowering it from covering his eyes.

“Identical,” he says, showing me a photograph of my mother in the kitchen. It’s almost eerie how similar the background still is, how my mom’s posture used to be so much more relaxed, like mine.

“Can’t I see the rest yet?” I grab for the stack of photos, but Julián is quick. He blocks me and presses his mouth against mine, rendering me blissfully helpless.

His mouth becomes hungrier, surprisingly so, considering Jordi is in the small house with us. Julián’s hands push into my hair, and he grips it, making my eyes water a bit. I bite at his bottom lip, and he lifts me onto the counter. His mouth moves to my bare neck, and I gasp as his hands grip my bare thighs below the line of my shorts.

A quiet cough breaks us apart. With swollen lips and wide eyes, I wipe my mouth off, trying to look anywhere but at the man in the doorway with a huge smile on his face. I’m mortified but Julián doesn’t mind one bit. Men.

Julián apologizes with a laugh and helps me down from the counter. Jordi says something to Julián and Julián translates to me.

“He wants to know if you want to hear some stories about your mom and abuelita. Apparently, the men in my family have a long history of loving the women in yours.” He winks, and I look at the man.

“Wait, he couldn’t be my grandpa, right? Oh my god, what if we’re related?” I whisper.

Julián bursts into laughter, kisses my temple, and shakes his head. “Your grandpa hasn’t been alive for a long time.” Hegently reminds me that my grandma was also a single mother for most of her life. “And we are not related. I may be morally gray, but that’s where I draw the line.”

I nod at how ridiculous the thought was, but today’s been a whirlwind of emotions already and my mind is clearly on a high.

“Can you tell him I’d love to hear anything he can tell me?” I lean into Julián’s side, and he wraps his arm around my waist, leading me into the main sitting room.

We sit on the floor and Jordi comes in from the kitchen with a wooden platter covered in bright food. Peppers, Romanesco broccoli, sweet potatoes, eggplant, cabbage, all cut into small, wonderfully placed pieces. In the center, there are three types of dips, one green, one reddish, and one white with little green flakes. Pieces of fragrant roasted garlic and shallots are sprinkled among the fresh food. The smell is beyond decadent, making my stomach growl. The aroma from the yeast in the just-out-of-the-oven bread, the almonds everywhere: it takes all my self-control not to dig in like an animal. The two shots of espresso I downed before we left the boat this morning were not much of a sustainable breakfast. But this, this is fresh and heavenly. I thank him and he begins to tell me tales and memories about my family. Julián takes the time to translate every twenty seconds or so.

I learn that my mom used to be called “tomàquet petit” because she was so feisty and was always eating whole, raw tomatoes, which is weird to me because she has always told me she hates them, despite her vegetable-heavy diet. As Jordi shares memories of the version of her who grew up here and of my abuelita, who he was head over heels for, I feel so close to them. I can imagine them in this home, my mother yappingaway and my grandmother cooking. I had never gotten to know her, or anyone in my family here. The moment my mother’s mom passed away, my mom at just seventeen packed a single suitcase and less than one hundred dollars and came to the States to live with her aunt, who had married a man in Texas years back and encouraged my mom to study business there.

Barely out of high school, but a whiz at charm and street smarts, my mother blew through her studies; with a full scholarship from the University of Texas, she graduated at the top of her class, and then got pregnant with me. Parts of the timeline didn’t add up in my brain, but I didn’t need to question every single detail when the past differed from person to person, each one putting their own stamp on what happened from their perspective. And I was okay with that; it made us all more human.

One thing was for sure: giving birth to me, having my sperm donor run off and never come back, and my… complications had drastically changed my mom’s life and who she was to the core. My mind wanders as I dip a piece of broccoli into the thick red sauce and close my eyes, imagining for a moment that my mom sat here in this exact spot on the floor, with this man and his delicious food, music playing softly in the background, daydreaming about the happy, fulfilled future she would never have. She left the only love I’ve known her to have, and there had to be more of a reason than anyone else knew. I would never be able to ask her, but curiosity eats at me as we feast.

After we finish our meal, Julián leads me outside to the back patio. A row of luscious almond trees and an iron table fill the small but enchanted space. The sun is out, bright and glorious but not scorching. It really is the perfect day. Another photo is held in front of me, my mom lying back on the irontable, her feet dangling off the edge and her face propped up on her elbow. She’s using the other hand to block the sunlight.

“Who do you think took all of these?” I ask Julián as I awkwardly climb onto the table.

I would normally feel insanely silly doing something like this, but he’s making it feel so fun, so immersive, that even as the table creaks, we both laugh and Julián pulls the camera back out, studying the shot and the photograph in his hand.

“My pare did. I found them in a chest in the boat. He took them all, I asked. Of course, I was pissed and wanted to rip them to shreds but I couldn’t bring myself to. Just like the letters.”

The click of the camera surprises me as the flash goes off. I reach up to cover my eyes and Julián rushes over to me. “I’m sorry, are you okay? I don’t know why the flash turned on.” He examines the camera and presses a button, then another. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.” The tone of his voice is so serious, as if he’s studied what flashes can do to me.

“It’s okay. Can you show me my mom’s old room?” I climb off the table quickly, letting my heart rate slow and my panic dissolve as Julián’s hand wraps around my own and he leads me back inside and upstairs.

The room is vibrant and more colorful than I thought it would be, and if it weren’t for the lack of dust anywhere, I would assume it’s been untouched all these years. I go to the window first to see the view she had for years and jump back in surprise. I blink and it’s gone, but I could have sworn…

“Are you okay?” Julián’s voice brings me back to reality.

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