A couple of somber holiday weeks came and went. While both feeling and honoring the tremendous absence left by Pablo’s father, his family made a concerted effort to carry on with long-established traditions and make the best of a particularly difficult time.
They had very mixed success.
Once the new year was underway, Pablo decided to take Jorge’s advice. Having failed to identify any more-promising possibilities, he would talk to their friend Nacho to see if his father needed help on any of his construction sites. Pablo was just looking for a temporary position to get him through the spring, by which time he hoped to have figured out a new plan to get out of town.
Nacho’s father told him to have Pablo stop by one of their sites on the outskirts of the village. They were building a large house on a beautiful parcel abutting the nature reserve, and they could use a hand with some odds and ends. Since Pablo didn’t have any construction skills to speak of, it was the type of work he could do. Although sure to be dull at first, Nacho’s father was optimistic there would be more interesting work in the relatively near future, since a couple of men were talking about signing up for the extension of the Mediterranean Highway under construction up the coast—much more difficult, dangerous work that had already claimed the lives of several laborers but that, consequently, was much better paid. If and when those men did quit, Pablo would be able to start learning some new skills and doing more relevant work. In the meantime, he could get started with his initial responsibilities the following Monday.
As he walked back down the road from the site, a canopy of live oaks shaded his way and the fresh, earthy fragrance of the soil filled the air, revitalized by the recent rains. Having landed a job and settled on a new path forward, he felt some relief. He would soon be learning skills that, once he had a season of work under his belt, would allow him to make a decent living. More importantly, in the event he failed to come up with a better plan, the new job would provide him with valuable know-how he could use to seek other work elsewhere. Until that moment, that hadn't even occurred to him.
Maybe that was how it was supposed to happen. Maybe he was supposed to stay put a while longer, learn a trade, and use it as a stepping stone out of the village. It wasn’t Barcelona, but maybe it would be—or Sevilla or Valencia or Madrid—in time. After all, he reminded himself, the construction boom was going on all over Spain, not just his tiny corner of it.
If that wasn’t how he had imagined things working out, it was because he was still holding on to the idea of leaving right away. But that wasn’t going to happen. He needed to accept once and for all that, for the time being, he was staying put. Over the coming weeks and months, he'd figure out another way out of town. For now, he needed to be grateful for an opportunity that, if all else failed, could very well be the one that paved the way.
Passing the cemetery without so much as a glance in its direction, Pablo climbed the hill back to the village proper. As he approached the day care center, he made his now-habitual detour down a side street.
It didn’t matter. Fate had other plans.
“Rosa.”
Less a greeting, more a statement of fact.
“Pablo.”
They had practically run into each other as she came out of the alley of shops. His heart was pounding. Her mind was spinning. The fact it was inevitable they’d eventually meet did nothing to assuage his shock. Or hers. The village was so small.
“¿Qué tal?”
It, too, just came out.
Rosa didn’t reply. Like him, she needed a moment to regroup.
After a couple of failed attempts to find the right words, she realized that what she wanted to say was actually very simple.
“Pablo, I’m sorry.”
He felt bad. He didn’t understand. He wished they could still be together.
“And . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“And?” Pablo wondered. “What?”
She looked around, as though making sure no one else was within earshot.
“There’s something I have to tell you. I just found out a couple days ago.” She hesitated again, now seeming not only confused but agitated. “And, well . . . you should know before you hear it from someone else.”
Before he heard it from someone else?
“Rosa, what is it?”
She wanted him to just get it. Miraculously. So she wouldn’t have to say it. But that wasn’t going to happen. As shame welled up in her insides like the tears gathering in her eyes, she was forced to face reality. He wasn’t going to give her any choice but to say the very words she most wanted to avoid.
“I’m pregnant.”
The words ripped through the space between them like the innocent turn of an ignition key detonating an unsuspected, devastating blast.
For Pablo time stopped, suspending him in the moment like an astronaut floating weightlessly in space. Rosa’s peculiar energy as she delivered the cataclysmic news. The dreadful, fateful words she uttered as she did. Each time the loathsome sequence of events flashed before his eyes, the reflexive battle to deny its ramifications came a little closer to being lost. Slowly but surely, the truth made its way into his world like a pathogen against which he had no defenses.
“Pregnant,” he said, rather than asked, struggling to even give voice to the word, to form its letters and pronounce its syllables, like someone who had never said it before. After all, in this context at least, he never had.
As he struggled to assimilate the news, he was seized by an equally mortifying thought.
“And you’re sure of . . .”
“Of what?”
It took a moment to register.
“Of the father? That it’s not yours?” Rosa responded indignantly, as though the very idea were ludicrous. “Yes, Pablo. I’m sure.”
Another excruciating silence. It was hard enough for him to think straight. It was even harder to articulate his thoughts. There was too much to try to make sense of. He felt too much at once.
“It just sort of happened. I’m sorry, Pablo. I really am.”
Just sort of happened? What was that supposed to mean? If up until then he had struggled to find the right words, they now rolled off his tongue.
“You and Rafa did not just sort of get together behind my back.”
It hurt to say it. But he needed to. He needed to confront her with the truth.
She looked away.
“And you did not just sort of have sex.”
Rosa winced as though she’d just been dealt an unfair blow.
“You and I aren’t even together!” she cried out. “I didn’t even have to tell you! I wanted to do the right thing and let you know before you heard it from someone else, but I shouldn’t have even bothered!”
“Wanted to do the right thing?” contested Pablo. “You mean like when you told me you and Rafa were dating? The only reason we’re even having this conversation is because we happened to run into each other on the street!”
“Well, now we’ve had it,” Rosa shot back, any discretion she had hoped to maintain long since blown completely. “And there’s no point in continuing it. I’ve given you the news. I’ve apologized. Whether you accept it or not is up to you. Either way, I’ve got to go!”
Tears streaming down her face, she turned and was off.
Pablo walked around the corner to the springs next to the town hall. He took a quick drink, then splashed his face with cold water, hoping to regain some clarity. Seeing her was hard enough. The revelation she was pregnant with Rafa’s baby was shocking, as nightmarish as it was surreal.
He couldn’t believe it was happening.