The Book of Broken Hearts (36 page)

That we’d shared this summer together, rebuilding his old Harley.

That he loved me.

My father would be gone.

But Emilio and I had given him that last ride. And for one moment he was alive, more than I’d ever seen him. Not in the past, but right now. For that, despite the fact that I was losing him by degrees, I smiled.

“
Te quiero
, Papi,” I whispered.

“You too, Jude.” His voice was groggy and thick with medication, but he’d said my name, I was sure of it, and I grabbed on to those words and tucked them inside my heart.

Screw you, Alzheimer’s.

I stopped at the entryway to the waiting room and leaned against the wall, my heart strangely light, full of peace. Mom had arrived, and she sat with her back against the hard plastic chair, Celi’s hand kneading her left shoulder. In the chair at Mom’s right, Lourdes sat up straight, absently stroking Mom’s hair. Mari was across from them, and when she caught my eye, I thought she might wave me over, ask for the update.

But she only tilted her head, some silent understanding passing between us. Her gaze slid sideways, and I followed it to the boy sitting next to her, chewing on his thumbnail.

Emilio Vargas looked out across the waiting room and met my eyes.

I dropped my gaze to the floor and smiled. Tentative. Shaking. And then I looked up again, preparing for the worst, hoping for a chance.

Those dimples were a dead giveaway.

True confessions. I’ve been wrong about at least six things in my life (not naming names, just saying it happens sometimes). But there’s one thing I know with absolute certainty.

Right now, it’s
way
too early to be awake.

I won’t open my eyes—don’t need to. The chill crawls across my skin, bringing with it the dewy cold that speaks of before-dawn, and when a warm kiss lands on my lips, I don’t care if it’s a dream.

“Almost morning,” a gentle voice says. He slowly unzips my sleeping bag, rubs my stomach. “Coffee’s hot. Birds talkin’ like mad.”

“Mmm-hmm. About what?” I ask through my sleep-heavy haze.

“You. They couldn’t sleep with all your snoring.”

I open my eyes and sit up fast, our noses almost touching. “Let’s get one thing straight, Vargas. I do
not
snore.”

“Bueno, mi osita.”

“Call me a bear again and I’ll soak your boxers in raw meat. Then you’ll see a real bear.”

He flashes his dimples. I’m toast.

Eventually the need for coffee and food wins out over the need for kissing, but only by the narrowest margin, and I crawl out of the tent, shivering in the twilight blue haze. Emilio drapes his fleece over my shoulders and hands me a steaming mug of coffee. Behind him, the fire pops, and here’s what I’m thinking:

Wow. For all its ridiculous imperfections, life is pretty damn perfect sometimes.

The first pink sliver of light cracks the deep blue sky, and Emilio smiles. “Take that coffee to go.”

I pick up my mug and follow him ten short yards to the rocky rim. We find a good spot to sit, let our legs dangle over the edge.

Fifteen miles across this great gash in the earth, tourists are setting up their cameras, anxious to capture every moment through the lens. But on this side, tucked away from the popular spots, Emilio and I are alone, and neither of us brought a camera.

I drain the last of my Dark Moon blend and slip my fingers into Emilio’s hand. The last of the morning chill evaporates. No words pass between us after that, just the feeling of his hand in mine, his lips soft on my cheek. The horizon splinters into pink and yellow rifts, then all at once the light stretches its golden fingers through clouds, streaking the sky and illuminating the red rock floor below.

The sun rises over the Grand Canyon, igniting rocks that have been there for two billion years before we were born and will likely remain two billion years after we’re gone. My heart aches with the cruel and unimaginable beauty of it. We’re nothing. We’re everything.

I am dust.

Emilio coaxes the embers in our fire pit back to life. “Ready when you are,
princesa
.”

I nod once. He gives me the space I need.

The fire is perfect in the chilly morning air, and I sit on a boulder before it. I slip the heavy black book from my pack and slide it onto my lap, remembering everything my sisters told me. . . .

“I can’t believe you found this again.” Celi thumbed through the black book. We’d gathered in her room after midnight, like last time. Emilio would be there in the morning to pick me up, to ferry us onto the open road.

I promised Papi I would go. It was the first in his ongoing series of last wishes—
viejito loco.

Once I officially accepted the invitation, my sisters and Mom agreed—probably part of Papi’s unending “last wishes” preconditions—to hold off on further discussion about Papi’s future until I returned. He was released from the hospital the day after the accident, and Mari and Celi were staying in Blackfeather for the rest of the summer. Lourdes would return
in the fall. We didn’t have forever, but we didn’t have to figure it all out in a day, either.

“It’s a book of ill repute.” I leaned over Celi’s shoulder and scanned a page Lourdes had written about sneaking down to the river with some guy.

“It’s not a book of ill repute,” Celi said. “It’s a . . .” Her voice faded as she turned the page, flipped to some other brokenhearted recollection.

“I had no idea you guys got around so much,” I said.

“Crushing on boys is not the same as getting around,” Mari said. “Some of those boys were just . . . It was, like, one dance in junior high.”

“Still,” I said. “No wonder you never wanted me to see it. It would’ve ruined my virgin eyes.”

Lourdes gasped. “You’re still a—”

“It’s a book of old ghosts.” Celi had stopped on a page of Johnny’s stuff. “Look at this crap! Wedding invitations? Baby names? We weren’t even . . . God, I thought he was my entire future.” She was in her own world, fighting with the memories all over again.

Shame and sadness burned my cheeks, and I looked out the window and waited for it to pass.

“It’s all heartbreak,” Celi whispered. “Why did we keep this?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Mari ashed her cigarette into a half-empty Coke can. “And it did help me get over Ham Camari.”

“You dated a guy named
Ham
?” I asked, grateful for the redirect. “You didn’t list him in the book.”

“I used a fake name,” Mari said. “Harry Smith. It only lasted a month.”

“Thank the Lord.” Celi finally closed the book on Johnny and smiled. She was probably grateful for the redirect too. “If you married him, your name would be Mari Camari.”

“Oh. My. God!” Mari doubled over. “I never thought of that!”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “It’s so obvious!”

“His name was Ham!” she said. “I kind of stopped right there, you know?”

“Hello, Simon and Schuster?” I made my best Mari impersonation, which was pretty impressive, truth be told. “I’m calling about that five-billion-dollar book I sold you? This is Mari Camari. Yes, I’m serious. Mari Camari. Camari. C-A—no, it’s not a joke.”

“At least he didn’t have Wesley Laytonitis,” she said.

“Mari!” Celi squealed at the same time Lourdes gave Celi the evil eye.

“You weren’t supposed to tell anyone,” Lourdes said to Celi. “I didn’t even put him in the book.”

“What’s Wesley Laytonitis?” I asked.

“You tell her,” Lourdes said to Mari. “Since you know all about it now, thanks to Mouth over there.”

“Like I could keep that to myself.” Celi laughed.

“The
whole
story?” Mari asked Lourdes.

“You
have
to tell it now, don’t you?” Lourdes said.

Mari dropped the end of her cigarette into the soda and scooted down onto the floor. She was, like, giddy. Very un-Mari. Goose bumps rolled down my skin when she looked at me. “Wesley said he was in love with Lourdes, right? Like from day one. And they went out for six months.”

“Seven,” Lourdes said.

“Hey, you wanna tell it?”

Lourdes shook her head. “You go ahead.”

“Six or seven months. Anyway, one night, she decides he’s
the one
, and they’re gonna do it.”

“Lower your voice!” Lourdes was bright red. I’d never seen her so embarrassed.

“Sorry,” Mari said. Not that she lowered her voice or anything. “They were supposed to . . . you know. Only right when things were getting hot and heavy, he . . .” She grabbed her stomach to stifle another laugh. “Dude started barking.”

“Like . . . yelling at her?” I asked.

“Barking,” Mari said. “Straight-up barking like Pancake.
A-rooo! Woof woof woof!
”

Lourdes giggled and winged a pillow at us. “You guys are terrible.”

“Anyway,” Mari said, “she made up some excuse not to go through with it, thinking maybe he was nervous and next time it wouldn’t be an issue. Only it was an issue.”

“Four more times,” Celi said.

“Five,” Lourdes said. “Including once at his parents’ house,
when they were downstairs watching TV. And even
that
didn’t help.”

“Guess he liked it doggy style,” Celi said.

Mari bent over with another giggle fit, and when she straightened up again, her face was streaked with tears.

“I’m sorry, what was that, Mari Camari?” Lourdes asked. “Did you say something, Mari Camari?”

Mari swatted her with a pillow.

“See what your future holds, Juju?” Lourdes asked. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you about . . . boys.” She flashed a look at Celi, then back to me, and I knew she’d almost said
Vargas
boys. Mari had come around to Emilio, grown to actually like him, hard as it was for her to admit. And after the initial shock, even Lourdes seemed okay; she’d been chatting him up ever since, asking about the bike, how he learned to fix it, how he knew exactly what to do.

But Celi was still struggling with it. She’d graduated from outright cold-shouldering to meaningless small talk whenever he was around, but she still made excuses to leave the room when he came over, to go to bed early or walk to the river to avoid his presence. I knew she wasn’t over Johnny, and maybe the idea of Emilio and me would never sit well with her. But she was trying. And I loved her for it.

For once, it seemed that the Holy Trinity and I had finally come to agree on something: I needed to live my own life, take my own chances, make my own mistakes, just like they had.

And maybe, after all that, they wouldn’t be mistakes.

My sisters and I eventually drifted into a comfortable silence, each of us thinking about the history in that book, maybe, or everything we’d been through as a family, all the heartbreaks that were still to come. I thought about Zoe and Christina on their way to the Dunes, their last road trip, the places they’d see together. I’d sent them both letters wishing them safe travels. Maybe they’d send me a postcard. Maybe they’d call when they got back, or when they got settled in at college. Maybe they wouldn’t, and they’d end up in the book. It was uncertain, like life.