Page 49 of One Year Ago in Spain
“That is Vega Castillo, Matías’s ex. She wants to see him, but Aracely won’t let her.”
Oh. Vega.Matías had mentioned her name a couple of times, but he didn’t like talking about her. Claire knew that he and Vega had met in art school and been together for a little while, but he’d never said what happened to them, only that the past was the past.
Was it, though? Because Vega was beginning to cry. She fell to her knees onto the linoleum, begging as she sobbed.
Aracely rolled her eyes.
“Vega is very dramatic,” Luis said in a conspiratorial voice to Claire.
But Claire saw actual pain in the woman’s posture as she reached out and clasped Aracely’s hands. Vega’s body trembled, not overly exaggerated like someone fake-crying, but in the way that Claire had experienced herself on the plane flight to Madrid, when her emotions were so frayed it felt as if all the nerve endings in her body were exposed and even a puff of air could send her into shock.
But Aracely wrenched her hands away and planted her feet even more firmly in front of Matías’s door.
“Would giving her a few minutes hurt?” Claire asked Luis.
Luis sighed. “Matías asked Vega to marry him when they were only twenty years old. She said yes but would never commit to a wedding date, no matter how often he tried to set one. When he received the invitation for the visiting professor position in New York a year and a half ago, he asked her again for a wedding date so she could go with him to the United States as his wife, but Vega gave him back her ring and told him to go alone.”
What?
Claire clutched the back of a nearby chair. Matías and Vega had been engaged for fifteen years? And presumably together for longer than that? Claire had thought it wasn’t an important relationship since she knew so little about it.
But looking back, she realized she’d only thought that because Matías never talked about Vega. Which wasn’t all that weird because Vega was, after all, an ex—not exactly the most popular topic to discuss with your current girlfriend.
Yet Claire’s chest tightened as she compared the lengthy history Matías had had with this beautiful artist to the eleven months and one week he’d had with boring, tight-laced Claire. And the fact that he had hardly ever mentioned Vega meant the opposite of insignificance. Other than the last year Matías had spent in New York, Vega had been a part of all of his adult life.
Did he still love her?
Oh god…Was the engagement ring Claire found in his dresser the same one that Vega had once worn?
Feeling suddenly nauseous, Claire looked away from Vega kneeling on the floor. Even desperate, Matías’s ex-fiancée was painfully beautiful.
“Aracely will never forgive Vega for breaking Matías’s heart,” Luis said. “And she definitely will not let Vega into that room.”
The nurse who’d been imploring Aracely and Vega to keep the volume down had finally given up on them and called hospital security. The next time the ward doors opened, two very large men in uniform stepped through.
They strode over to Vega and said something quietly to her.
She answered them, loud enough to carry across the room.
“¡Ay, por favor!” Aracely said, throwing her arms in the air.
Even though Claire didn’t want to look, it was impossible not to. “What happened?” she asked.
Luis shook his head at the scene; one of the security men was crouching to scoop Vega up into his arms. “Vega says she is too weak with grief and must be carried. As I said—very dramatic.”
Vega draped herself elegantly across the guard’s body, as if she were aware of the picture she was creating. Every man—except for Luis and his father—leaned a little bit forward, like they were hoping this might become one of those human chains, where, in order to help Vega, she must be passed from one man’s arms into another until she reached safety downstairs.
But all Claire could think about was how Vega used to drape her body all overMatías. Whereas Claire had never been so performative or clingy. She prided herself on being independent, but looking from the outside in, she saw how stiff she must be compared to Vega.
Why would Matías have ever chosen me when he could have had a woman like that? One who lived her life as large as he did?
The guards took Vega into the elevator. As the doors shut, the men left behind exhaled their disappointment all at once.
Aracely, though, leaned her head against the door of her brother’s hospital room and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw Claire and gave her a weak smile.
“Come on, Claire.Youare welcome to see Matías.”
Claire took a step in that direction, but then she realized something, which she honestly wished shehadn’tthought of.
