Page 100 of Every Step She Takes
There’s already a cart with fresh tea, and Luzia pours two cups, then sits down on one of the highbacked chairs in the alcove. The bay windows behind her face my favorite part of the garden, full of big-leaf hydrangeas in candy-apple red, cornflower blue, and vibrant amethyst. I choose to stand, waiting for my tea to cool and waiting for Luzia to begin whatever planned speech she has in store for me.
“I’m not going to try to talk to you about business,” she says gently.
“Well, good. Because I don’t know shit-all about business.”
She drops two sugar cubes into her tea and stirs carefully. “And I don’t want to harp on about the funeral,” she continues. “I’ve taken care of all the arrangements for next Sunday. All you have to do is show up.”
Her gaze leaves her swirling tea to fix on me. “Youwillshow up, won’t you?”
“Yes, Luzia. I will be there.”
She returns to stirring. “The only thing I want to talk about this morning isyou.”
“Ah. Right. There it is.” I lean against the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves and try to make my tone as casual as my stance. “You want to talk about what a failure and fuckup I’ve become? You want to hit me with one of those classic lectures about family responsibility and the Costa legacy—”
“Maëlys,” she interrupts sharply, but I’m too old to be scolded.
“—Do you want to tell me how it’s time for me to finally do my duty and take over the company?” I barrel on over the sound of her protests. “Do you want to yell at me for being selfish and choosing to live for myself? Or for being a spoiled, privileged brat who needs to grow up already?”
“Maëlys!” Luzia slams her teacup back onto the tray, and I fall silent as a small fissure forms in the porcelain. The tea leaks out in a thin but steady stream, flooding the saucer, then spilling over onto a pile of napkins. But Luzia doesn’t seem to care about the broken cup or the spilled tea or any of it. “Maëlys,” she says, quieter now, but also firmer. “I would never say any of that to you. I don’t think those things about you.”
The shelves are digging into my shoulder, but I refuse to move from my indifferent position.
“Do you…?” She stares up at me. “Do you think those things about yourself?”
When I don’t answer—when Ican’tanswer—Luzia turns to the mess on the tray. “I only wanted to talk about how you’re doing, and how you’re coping with everything.”
The only thing worse than leaving my place against the bookshelf is the idea of letting Luzia see me cry. “Here. Let me clean that up.” I hurry to the tray, bending over by her feet to conceal my tearstained face as I use the remaining napkins to dry up the spilled tea.
“Don’t worry about it,” she insists, but I keep trying to destroy the evidence of the mess.
“But it’s all my fault.”
Luzia’s wrinkled fingers brush the hair off my forehead, like they used to when I was a kid. “None of it is your fault,” she whispers.
And I do let Luzia see me cry. But only a little.
“You stopped answering my calls,” she says, and she lets me see her cry too. “I only wanted to know what you’ve been up to, menina.”
I couldn’t answer those phone calls back then, and I can’t explain to Luzia now that all I have to show for the last twenty years is three passports completely filled with stamps; a series of nonprofit jobs I always quit after a year; a series of women I fell in and out of love with; an entire life that can be easily packed into a single suitcase; no home, no roots, no purpose. I can’t tell Luzia that despite her best efforts, I did turn out like my parents. Cycling through women like my dad; living life on the surface, like my mom.
I’m still kneeling in front of her as Luzia’s fingers move softly through my hair.
“I know we can’t go back,” she says after another stretch of my heavy silence. “I know we can’t pick up where we left off when you were eighteen like nothing has changed. I know you must be angry with me for staying by your father’s side after what he did, and I deserve your anger. But I would like to maybe… have a relationship again?” She’s treading so carefully, her words come out like a question. “If that’s something you might want too?”
I don’t know what I want. That is, and always has been, my primary problem.
“But what if I… what if I sell the company?” I ask her.
“You can do that,” she says simply. “But that has nothing to do withthis.” She presses her open palm to her heart, then presses it to mine, like she’s connecting a string between us. “Ifyou want to sneak away from this place right now, you can. If you want to sell the company and the vineyards and never talk to me again, you can do that too. But menina, if you’d let me, I’d very much like to earn back your trust. Your friendship.”
“Damn, Luzia!” I sniffle as a new wave of tears overwhelms me. “What the hell? I leave for two decades and you go get all emotionally intelligent on me?”
She gives me a soft smile. “Not everything here stayed the same.”
I wish I had the right words for Luzia, the right way to tell her thank you, and I’m sorry, and I forgive you. I wish I could be as articulate as she is and tell her what she meant to me back then, and what this conversation means to me right now. But the words fail me, and all I do is sit on the ground in front of her like a small kid.
“I like her, by the way.”
