Page 24 of Friends With Benedicts

The truth was, I really did have to defer to her on what we should do, at least until I got my bearings. I might have contributed biologically, but Presley was Priscilla’s mother. I had too much to learn to push back, and if Presley didn’t want to be with me for the long term, I knew better than to try to convince her otherwise. It was a genetic trait she shared with her cousins, upholding a long line of women who wouldn’t be told what to do under any circumstance.

And here I’d thought she was going to tell me she loved me. Instead, she told me we couldn’t be together.

There were some points I knew she was right about. I was technically still married, even though we’d been separated for more than half a year—six months in marriage time was nothing, even if it was a quarter of our marriage. And Marnie wasn’t some faraway concept, a faceless woman in another town. She was right here in Lindenbach, making sure to find her way into Presley’s space.

I shuddered to think what she’d do when she found out about Priscilla. I realized then that I needed to be the one to tell her, and the thought made my stomach turn. I’d do it without question, but it wasn’t going to be pretty. And the fallout would affect Presley in some way or another. I just couldn’t count on how. The very future that ended my marriage was now a reality. A reality that I shared with Presley instead of Marnie.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Presley had been a silent presence in my marriage. Her name was not to be spoken—I suspected that Marnie knew that part of me would always be Presley’s. And now Presley and I had a bond that I’d denied Marnie, and that connection was unbreakable.

Unlike my marriage.

I told my mom about Cilla this morning after Presley had gone home, and she’d cried so hard, she couldn’t speak. She gave the credit to God, reminding me of what she’d said yesterday—God would provide.

I wished I had that kind of faith, the kind that made you certain that things would just work out. But science dictated that there was a fifty-fifty shot that Priscilla would carry the genetic marker too, multiplying her chances of getting cancer to a number I couldn’t make peace with.

But Mom was right about one thing—what was done was done.

My guilt for being excited and grateful for the chance to be a father was heavy and deep. Because I might have sentenced her to a fate that would haunt me. It was almost too selfish to acknowledge. But it was there, a strong, steady pull toward a life I’d only imagined.

I didn’t know how I was supposed to leave at the end of the summer. I’d missed too much already, and to miss more felt wrong. But again, a point that Presley made was inherently true—all I’d ever wanted was to get out of here, but duty kept calling me home. And this was, in some ways, no different. There was no way to know if I’d be happy here, but that was never a guarantee. I might leave for Zambia—a place that had once fulfilled me like only a calling can do—and be miserable leaving my child who I barely knew behind.

Nothing about it was black and white, just indistinguishable shades of gray. The argument was cyclical, with one answer running into another question, round and round again. It was too new to decide one way or another, so I told myself what I’d been telling myself since this morning.

We’ll see.

I didn’t have to decide. Not yet.

I had someone to meet first.

A few minutes later, I pulled down the winding, sun-dappled driveway to the Blum’s bee farm. The farm had been here even longer than my family had been peddling Tex Mex. My great grandmother and her sisters had been a part of the original Chili Queens, selling chile con carne and tamales in El Mercado in San Antonio in the early 1900s. Abuela loved to tell stories about how one sister would stand out front and sing while another played guitar and the rest cooked and served. Abuela and her cousins would run around the market and play all day, which went on until the Chili Queens started opening restaurants. Rather than compete, Bisabuela moved with her family here, to Lindenbach, and opened up Abuelita’s.

It was Abuela who’d thought to start production on our family’s salsa, tomatillo, and carne sauce, which spread to include tortillas, chips, and jarred queso, eventually becoming a staple in Texas grocery stores, thanks to a fortuitous contract with HEB.

The Blum farm had been in operation since long before that. In the 1800s, they traveled by wagon to neighboring cities to tout their honey and flowers from their fields, and about the time Abuelita’s was founded, the Blums decided to open up production too. They had a small canning operation on their property, as well as several acres of flower fields to feed their bees. Flowers that supplied several florists in the area.

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