Page 17 of One Year Ago in Spain
“I don’t care about the nurse’s rules,”Soledad said. “Claire is no normal ‘visitor.’Va a ser la esposa de Matías.”
Claire had enough Spanish to understand—She is going to be Matías’s wife.
So hehadtold them his plans to propose, although they didn’tseem aware that Claire knew. Otherwise, Soledad wouldn’t have said that part in Spanish to keep it secret.
But now Claire didn’t know if Matías would live long enough for her to become his wife, regardless of her own feelings on the matter.
She must have let out a whimper, because Aracely came over and pulled her in for another hug.
Soledad marched over to the nurse’s station and spoke quietly to them, gesturing every so often at Claire.
A minute later, Claire was standing outside Matías’s closed door.
Afraid to open it.
“Ve. Go,” Soledad said gently. “Matías needs you.”
—
Claire didn’t knowsomeone could have so many IVs and tubes and casts and bandages on him. After the accident, emergency surgery had been performed to stop internal bleeding, and now Matías was hooked up to nine different monitors—one to measure his breathing, another machine keeping track of his heart rate, a bank of panels administering half a dozen medications. There was a feeding tube and a catheter. What little of his skin that was visible was swollen and covered in bruises so deeply purple they were nearly black. They’d shaved part of his head to get access to his skull.
“Oh, Matías.” Any armor Claire might have still had on now tumbled to the hospital room floor, and she collapsed by the side of his bed and wept. “Please don’t die. Please hold on. I’m here…Can you hear me? I’m here.”
She couldn’t even hold his hand, because it was covered withtape and wires and an IV. There was no part of him she could touch—not his hair under the head brace or his battered cheek crisscrossed with scrapes or that muscled part of his neck that she liked to tuck herself into when she was scared or stressed.
What if he never woke up?
What if he did, but he was permanently broken? If he couldn’t paint, if he couldn’t play in his weekend volleyball league or go scuba diving with his friends? If he couldn’t take part in all his hobbies—and thelife—that he loved…how would he survive?
And what if he did recover, but he held it against Claire for not coming to Spain with him in the first place? She knew it was irrational, that he couldn’treallyblame her for the boat accident or the timing of the merger.
But she also couldn’t help thinking it was always somehow her fault. Like with her parents…What if she had gone out for a movie with them that night? Then they would have been in the theater with her and not where the eighteen-wheeler truck jackknifed…
If Claire had come to Spain with Matías, he would not have gone off on risky adventures with his friends. He would not have ended up on a boat at all, because waves made Claire seasick. And then Matías and Facu and Leo would be okay right now, and Diego and Carlos would still be alive, and, and, and…
The tears flowed faster now.
“I don’t want to do this without you, Matías. Come back to me, okay? Please?”
The oxygen cannula hissed. The panel of monitors beeped. Nothing changed.
“I love you, Matías. Come back. I’ll be waiting.”
Matías
Eleven Months Ago
Matías smiled inhis kitchen as he smelled the ripe tomato in his hand. Meeting Claire last night had been an unexpected highlight of the gallery opening. The exhibition itself had been a mélange of emotions, as it was anytime Matías had a show—the stress of sharing his work with a new audience and the rush of mingling with art lovers, the high of a sale, the low of haughty comments about his style. But that brief time he’d spent with Claire had been pure joy.
Shegothim.
And now she’d agreed to dinner. Matías hadn’t been on a first date for years—his last relationship had been quite long, and only recently ended—and he didn’t know if there were differences in how things were done in the States versus in Spain, but there was one thing he knew: Food was a universal language.
So Matías had spent all morning and early afternoon visiting different purveyors around New York. He’d stopped into four different cheesemongers to sample their offerings before he circled back to Murray’s for the Manchego that tasted closest to his favorite one at home—nutty and tangy, with just the right crumble. Then he’d browsed through Despaña for olives and Marcona almonds, and chatted his way through a local farmer’s market, taking time to talk with each grower about where theywere from and what they grew and why. It was the way he had been taught by his mom, Soledad, and hisabuelita,Gloria. Meals were not just nourishment—they were love letters to the sun and the earth that grew the vegetables, to the farmers who nurtured the fruit and the artisans who pressed the olive oil, and most of all, to the people to whom you served the food. If you put love and care into your cooking, it would show with every bite.
It wasn’t that far off from how Matías approached painting.
He glanced over at the open notebook on the counter: a collection of family recipes that his mom had compiled for him before he moved overseas. She’d been worried he would feel homesick, especially not being able to come over for family dinner every Saturday, so she and his abuelita had painstakingly handwritten over a hundred of the de León favorites. Aracely had gotten each recipe protectively laminated—because Matías’s persona in the kitchen was best described as Chef Chaos—and then bound them into a single, neat book so he couldn’t misplace any of them.
