Page 16 of One Year Ago in Spain
Her boldness caught him off guard, and he grinned.Thereshe was. He’d suspected from the first moment he saw her that Claire wasn’t the meek type. She may have been more at home in a university library than at a gallery opening, but she didn’t have the posture of a mousy bookworm. More like a young professor who knew she was a rising star. She was aware of her potential, but not egotistical about it—perhaps because she understood that talent alone was not enough to guarantee success.
Matías led them to the back wall of the gallery. There were only two other guests farther down on this aisle, so he and Claire had this part of the exhibition to themselves. She was a head shorter than him, and when a waft of the light citrus scent of her shampoo hit him, he gasped.
Seville orange.
Like the famed Spanish oranges of home.
His heart thrummed a little faster, and for a few seconds, he forgot how they had gotten here alone. But then he remembered that Yolanda was trying to set them up, and that Matías was supposed to explain his paintings to Claire.
Suddenly, though, Matías felt his hold on the English language loosen. Which was strange, since he’d spoken it fluently for nearly three decades.
He cleared his throat. “Um…although Jason asked me to give a speech earlier tonight, I do not really like to talk about my work. I put everything I have to say into the art itself, you know? So, please.” He waved toward the paintings that hung around them.
Was that terribly awkward of him? He was supposed to be Claire’s guide, and he had embarked on this endeavor not wanting her to be nervous, but now he’d just thrust her straight into his work without so much as an explanation of classical realism or even a background of his years of training.
But as he’d guessed before, Claire wasn’t meek, just unaccustomed to the art world. As he watched her absorbing his work—taking her time with each one and giving it its due—he realized he’d been right to let her explore his paintings without the burden of his commentary.
And Matías could see the instant when Claire found the magic in each piece. She didn’t laugh loudly or point at it like almost everyone else had tonight. Rather, she simply smiled quietly and held the detail inside her for a moment, as if turning it over in her mind and contemplating not just the image of it, but thewhyof its existence in the first place.
When they arrived at the painting of the monk offering the planet Earth inside an orange peel, though, Claire couldn’t keep her reaction in.
“Oh my god, Matías,” she whispered. And in those four words, he knew that she understood everything he was trying to say.
Matías smiled then, brighter than he had all evening, and his dimples didn’t even hurt.
Tonight is a beginning.
Claire
The hospital wasthick with beeping and the smell of antiseptic, with the padded footsteps of doctors in sterile shoe covers and the fog of patients’ worry and families’ fear. Claire’s chest seized up as soon as she stepped inside.
When her parents had been hit by the big rig, they had died on impact. Claire hadn’t even gotten to see them in the hospital, because they’d never had a chance. She used to wish that she’d had the opportunity to at least say goodbye, but now that she was here in that situation, she didn’t know if it was better or worse—getting the bad news all in one blow or having it slowly trickle like water torture, not knowing how or when it would end.
Claire followed Aracely and Luis through the corridors, past signs in Spanish she couldn’t read and rooms full of the heavy burden of waiting. There were halls and halls of patient rooms, and every so often, a nurse’s station. It felt like they were walking in slow motion through Dante’s rings of hell; the journey was interminable. In actuality, it was only three floors and four wards they had to cross before reaching Matías’s.
As soon as she, Aracely, and Luis came through the double doors, the de Leóns descended on Claire. All of the extended family lived in Madrid, and every last one of them was here inthe hospital. They gathered around Claire in a collective hug, talking all at once in a storm of Spanish.
“Ay, pobrecita.”
“Claire, cielo…”
“He estado muy preocupado para Matías, pero ahora, estás aquí y espero que…”
She was helpless, uncomprehending in the torrent of their emotion. Why hadn’t she made it more of a priority to learn his family’s language?
But Claire and Matías had been together for less than a year. She hadn’t had enough time—to study Spanish. To meet his family properly. To sort through her own baggage enough to decide if she really wanted to marry him. If their connection was real, or just an illusion.
A woman who looked identical to Aracely but with more wrinkles put her hands on Claire’s cheeks. It was Soledad, Matías’s mother.
“Mi corazón”—dear heart; that was one phrase Claire knew from Matías—“You are strong. You can do this.”
“M-may I see him?” Claire asked, her voice barely audible.
“He is resting,” one of the many cousins said in English this time.
“The nurse said no visitors,” another said.
The denial was too much. Claire’s knees gave out. She almost hit the floor, but Luis caught her arms.
