Rafaela was having a marvelous time.
No, really! She had never had this much fun! Connor was taking her everywhere, she was meeting so many people, learning so much! She absolutely loved it! Connor was proud of her and the work was interesting, this was a huge opportunity that came with lots of responsibility, she was getting some good extra pay for this, so there was no reason for her to be absolutely fucking miserable.
She sat in front of her laptop in the fourth night and stared listlessly at the wall instead of paying attention to the schematics Connor wanted her to check out before sleep.
“You’ve been distracted,” Connor accused, which was his version of asking worriedly. He sat down beside her on the couch about eight feet away from her. “You have to pull yourself together, Rafa.”
“I know,” she muttered.
“This is your future, your life, we’re talking about.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you understand?”
“Yeah.” But she didn’t look at him as she said it.
For the first time in a long time, it didn’t make her happy to see him worried about her. It made her feel a bit nauseous.
She checked her phone when he sighed and walked away. Ellen hadn’t texted her—but then, why would she have? It wasn’t like they were anything to each other anymore. She remembered Ellen standing in her kitchen, face red and eyes bright, animated like she never was, pushing Rafa away for good while Rafa’s mother’s earrings glinted red like blood in her ears.
She did have a text from her father.
Bradley: Hi, Rafa! How has your trip been so far? We miss you! How about you visit after you’re done? We haven’t had you over in some time and you must have a lot of free time now, ha-ha!
Obviously Connor had tattled to them immediately that she’d broken up with her girlfriend and wasn’t taking care of the kid anymore. Everybody was all relieved and nice and it made her feel so sick.
Why would they be happy when she’d lost—
Ah, that was it, wasn’t it? She’d just lost basically everything.
Rafa didn’t have anyone. She had her adopted family, who were distant to the point of not being there, and her cousin, who didn’t choose her. And nothing else. She’d never made any friends, too ambitious and introverted for it. She didn’t even have class assignments to distract herself with anymore, since she’d pulled back on those to spend time with Gabi.
Would she ever even see Gabi again?
Or Ellen? How long would it take for her to be forgiven?
It was on the end of that thought that her phone buzzed. Rafa contained her yelp but couldn’t stop her reflexes, which sent her phone catapulting from her hand to hit the wall like a lightning bolt.
“Shit!”
Fuck, it was still whole. Heart hammering in her chest, Rafa checked the text. Had Ellen—
But it wasn’t Ellen.
Miriam: Can we meet? We need to talk.
***
Miriam was the one who texted her at ball o’clock in the night, so Rafaela felt no guilt about dashing into her hotel room and immediately calling her.
“Hello?” Miriam said warily.
“I’m away, I can’t meet, so we gotta talk like this,” Rafa said. “What happened?”
“I know you’re away! I meant we could meet up when you returned!”
“What happened?” Rafaela snapped, because she’d never had much patience for Ellen’s stupid distant snitch of a sister. “Why would you even want to meet me? You can’t see Ellen for a second but you can see me?”
“I’m constantly trying to meet Ellen, she’s the one who always says no!” Miriam retorted.
“Yeah, because you’re never on her side!” Rafaela argued. “You snitched on her to your Dad about five seconds after you learned Ellen had Gabi—”
“Rafaela,” Miriam said in such a defeated, weary tone that Rafaela’s mouth clicked shut. “You’re right. Okay? You’re right. I know she pushed me away because she knew I wouldn’t leave my father’s side. But listen to me. Don’t make my mistakes.”
“I’m not,” Rafaela said, which was the truth, so really there was no reason for Miriam’s words to make her feel like someone had just squeezed her heart in a meaty fist.
“Listen to me. Dad’s problem was never you. It was always Gabriela.”
Rafa’s temper boiled.
“What the fuck,” she shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with him! Why! She’s just a toddler!”
“You know why.”
And abruptly, Rafaela did.
It was so obvious that Rafaela hadn’t wanted to see.
“He passed her along,” she said hollowly. “When Ellen was dropped off with him, he unthinkingly passed her along to the next random relative. He only took her in for real when he was pressured into doing it.”
“And when Ellen got Gabriela, she immediately enrolled her in the local daycare and started talking about signing guardianship papers,” Miriam said with a sigh.
Ellen taking Gabi in so easily, when her financial situation was so fragile, Ellen immediately loving her, deciding to keep her, was a huge, steady, firm: what you did to me was wrong.
If Ellen thought that Gabriela deserved to be loved and taken care of, if she grew angry at the people who treated Gabriela like an unwanted dog for two years… she might realize she had deserved love too, and hadn’t gotten it. She might recognize that the people who passed her along had been wrong, instead of bowing her head to everything her Uncle asked of her because she thought she didn’t deserve anything else.
“What a selfish bastard,” Rafa breathed out. “What a fucking monster.”
Miriam was quiet, then said: “Do you really get to call him that?”
Rafa was so furious at that that she saw red for a moment.
And then, the thought:
Did she really get to call him that, when she had stepped back from Gabriela and Ellen when things got too complicated, too?
She sat down heavily on her bed, phone dropping to her lap.
***
Connor sighed explosively when she came out for breakfast and he caught sight of her pale face and the bags under her eyes.
“This is pulling yourself together?” he asked her crossly. “Do you just agree with me to make me stop talking, these days?”
The thing was.
Rafa had stayed up all night thinking about it.
The thing was: wasn’t she just the same as Ellen? A kid taken in by people who would really rather not have done it, who treated her like an outsider, like a burden, like their particular lives were much more important and worthy of their attention than her?
If so, if Rafaela hated Ellen’s Uncle for the way he treated her, if she hated Gabi’s relatives for the easy way they dismissed her—
Didn’t she deserve to be angry on her own behalf, too?
“Man,” she said, “shut the fuck up.”
Connor’s eyes widened with affront. “Watch your tongue, Rafaela!”
Rafa stared at the table so hard that her eyes were aching.
“I’ve been thinking about some things,” she said. “I think I made a huge mistake, Connor.”
“Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts. Part of adulthood is standing by your choices. There’s no need to be so dramatic about it.”
“Stop pretending to be my father,” she told him hollowly.
He was shocked into silence.
“I’ve been thinking about things all night long,” she said, not looking at him. “Ellen and Gabi really deserved more than a coward like me. I should have stood by them with all I had. So what if I’m not ready? If I’ll never be? If I didn’t plan for it and I’m scared to shit? I don’t think Gabi was ready for her parents to die and for her to be left alone. Ellen definitely wasn’t ready to take in a toddler,” She laughed. “Being ready—it’s fucking meaningless, isn’t it. It doesn’t matter at all. I should still have tried.”
“Rafa, you can’t,” Connor tried, then cleared his throat and straightened up. “I know things are hard right now, but this will pass. You’ll see things are better this way. Adopting a child right now is irresponsible and stupid; your future—”
“You should have taken me in,” she cut him off, and again his mouth clicked shut and he let her. She looked up at him. At all the guilt in his face, the shame. It was just the same, wasn’t it? Sure Connor worried about her future, but he also knew that if she made the same decision he’d made years ago, then she couldn’t grow to hate him for it. “Even if you hadn’t, because my parents had stability and jobs and a house with a room for me when you were young and had no money, you should still have fucking visited me, Connor. You should have been there for me, been an uncle, a big brother, instead of waiting ‘till it was convenient. You should have fucking tried.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Like I should have,” she said with a nod to herself. “Like I will do. You wanted to see me taking responsibility?” She stood up and snatched the keys of his car off the counter. “Well, I’m taking fucking responsibility.”
She marched out. She was going to find Ellen and talk to her. She didn’t even care she was still halfway through her week away for work—it wasn’t like she was needed here, when Connor had brought her here as some stupid reward for doing what he wanted.
(She hadn’t wanted to see because it hurt to recognize these things. It hurt because she loved him so much.)