Page 53 of One Year Ago in Spain
Then they’d just gotten stuck in the progression of a relationship, with one thing leading to the next, until faced with the fork in the road where you had to decide whether to break up or stay together. And Matías, who was a hopeless romantic, had chosen the path of proposing less than a year after meeting Claire. The road where he could be married and have that fantasy “happily ever after” where he had once slotted Vega.
Claire cleared her throat and tried to look stable, even though she still felt like she was going to throw up. She used a tactic that was reliably helpful as an attorney when faced with difficult situations—she pivoted and changed the topic.
“Armando, do you ever paint here?”
He watched her for a moment, assessing whether she really was okay after seeing such an intimate rendering of Vega withMatías. But if Claire was good at anything, she was good at putting up a shield of unflappability and strength when others would panic; it’s why her clients trusted her to run their make-or-break deals.
She pulled off another convincing job, because Armando answered her question. “Matías told me to consider the studio mine while he was gone, but I still work on my watercolors at home.”
“Why? This is such a great space.”
“Yes, but…how can I explain?” Armando smiled. “Okay. Imagine you have a little boy. He has a corner of his bedroom where he plays with all his stuffed animals and toy cars. He is a generous child, so he says to you, ‘Mommy, when I go to school, you can play in my corner.’
“Do you do it? Probably not. Because in your mind, that corner belongs to your son. As a parent, that space is sacred to you because it is his.
“In the same way, I can never consider this place as mine. This is Matías’s studio. I do not want to change anything about it, even if it is only using a corner of the room.”
“Vale,” Claire said softly. It was a word she’d heard the de Leóns use when they agreed with each other, which was quite often. What Armando said made sense, even in the context of his son’s just going overseas for a couple of years. But now that Matías was in a coma, it seemed evenmoreimportant to preserve everything that Matías had ever touched, every room he had ever graced.
“I am going back to the hospital.” Armando gave her the key to the studio. “You will come back soon?”
“Of course,” Claire said. “I just want to be here for a little while, if that’s okay?”
Armando nodded. “I understand. The studio is like being with Matías, but in a different way.”
—
Claire watched throughthe window as Armando left. When he had turned the corner, she hurried outside to a café across the street and parked herself at a table on the front patio. She hoped that Matías would come to the studio because he’d said he needed to pack up his paintings to ship overseas. But she couldn’t already beinhis studio when he appeared. That would set off all sorts of alarm bells in his head. She already had a strike against her, given how desperate she’d acted last night after the Sorolla Museum closed.
New tactic: Play it cool.
I just happened to be at a table at a café that has an unobstructed line of sight to the front door of your studio building. No, that’s not weird at all. Total coincidence.
Claire would’ve made a terrible spy.
But what else could she do? She didn’t have any better ideas for intercepting Matías. Yesterday, her careful strategy of being at the park’s drink kiosk at the same time as she’d previously seen him was a bust, but then he’d suddenly appeared later, outside a lingerie store she’d never stepped foot in before. He wasn’t predictable. So being here, close to the one place he’d said he would be, seemed like the best option.
That was, assuming souls actually followed their own plans.
Given that this was Matías, who—in corporeal form—had a hard time sticking to his calendar, the chances were not great.
And yet, Claire stayed.
She stayed through three cups of coffee.
She stayed through an order of toast with pomegranate jam, then an order of huevos rotos.
She stayed as her sunscreen wore off, and her skin began to scorch.
No Matías.
Was he not coming at all? Could she have missed him and he was already upstairs in his studio?
Or was Matías with Vega?
All that coffee Claire had drunk threatened to come back up her throat.
Don’t think about Vega!
