She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Bobby in his blue dress uniform. Even though she was still mad at him, Elena couldn’t help thinking how handsome he looked standing in front of the mirror in their bedroom. A part of her didn’t even want to know what was going on, but she’d just gotten home after a shift and she needed to ask.
“Where are you going?”
Bobby continued staring into the mirror while he twisted the tie in the most perfect knot he could. This seemed ironic, given Bobby’s natural perfectionistic nature. It seemed at odds with his very imperfect actions.
“Preliminary hearing,” he said. “The union wants to hear ‘my side’ of the story.”
She stood, still facing him in the mirror, wanting him to look at her for a moment. He still didn’t seem to get the gravity of all of this.
“Have you decided what that’s gonna be?” Elena asked.
His eyes landed on hers. “The truth.”
“Which truth? The one that keeps you working, or the one that gets you fired?”
He flattened down the tie, satisfied with the job he’d done, then turned to face her. Sunlight from the window behind him made his profile almost glow like some kind of angel.
He needs to take off the halo and come back down to earth.
Elena breathed in, calming herself, trying desperately to get him to just listen.
“Querido, I’m asking you one last time. Please don’t do this.”
The square, solid, strong face didn’t change.
“I have no choice.”
“Oh, you’re making a choice, Bobby. You’ve been making a lot of choices lately.”
“I’ve been what?”
This got his attention.
Good.
“You decided to start going to church without ever asking how I felt about it. You risk your life for strangers every day, but what about us? What about me?
“Do you have any idea how alone I feel? Do you even care? My own brother doesn’t feel welcome in my house anymore. And now this. You’re just gonna throw everything away. But hey—you have no choice.”
Her words echoed off the walls in their bedroom. It was unfortunate that so many of their arguments—too many in fact—came in this place that should have been a sanctuary and a refuge.
“Elena, I’m trying to do the right thing. Don’t you see that?”
She could only see a stubborn, foolish grown-up man acting like a child. He’d been acting like one for the last two years.
“Think about the boys. Will you at least do that?”
Elena knew there was absolutely nothing that Bobby wouldn’t do for those two boys. The only times he gave in to something or went against his wishes, it happened to do with Michael and Rafael. She knew this, and was now using it against him.
“I am thinking of them. I’m setting an example for how I hope they’ll behave when they’re men.”
The words coming out of his mouth . . . So foolish, yet he believed every single one. With an earnestness that he had on their wedding day.
“Don’t you understand,” Bobby said, pleading with her. “The easiest thing I could have done on that day of the accident—and the easiest thing I can do now—is to not say a word and just walk away. But I can’t. I won’t.”
She bit her lip and shook her head, exhaling and trying to control her emotions.
“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind then,” she said. She might as well have been talking to some automated customer service line on the phone. “Hope it all works out, Bobby.”
Something about the way she said his name sounded almost like a curse. Elena left Bobby and his decision and the fate of their family in the room behind her. She had tried and failed. There was nothing more she could do.
Bobby was her husband, not her patient. She simply wished he’d act like it.