Patricia was destroyed. Candela and I had tried everything. The kids were at their paternal grandmother’s, who everyone knew wouldn’t drown them in a bathtub, which is more than you could say about our mother, and Alberto had left the house with a suitcase. He was going to stay at a hotel for a few days. Then they would see. They would see because they’d probably have to sell the chalet and organize their lives in a very different way. I saw many things in Patricia’s inconsolable crying: I saw sorrow for what was; I saw the mourning of a happy relationship; I saw doubt about her future and a somewhat naive anger brought on by everything that would change with the divorce. Life would not follow its old rhythm; a different song would have to be sung. And she wanted to figure out a way to keep dancing exactly the same way except with a new partner.
We didn’t manage to drag a single smile out of her, and she wouldn’t stop crying even when we popped a bottle of her favorite champagne and opened the box of chocolate-covered strawberries we got from a bakery in the town center, which cost their weight in gold. Nothing. We were resigned when she told us she needed to be alone because we both knew that in her situation, we’d want to stay in the dark, drinking straight from a two-hundred-euro bottle and drowning our pain in sugar too.
But…surprise: as we were leaving her house, we ran into Didier. Suddenly we understood why we’d been rushed out of the house. The poor thing didn’t think we would run into him at the garden gate, that tall, thin, elegant dude carrying a bouquet of flowers.
“What if they really love each other?” I asked Candela.
Two weeks without David. That same morning I had written in our chat: I can’t take it anymore. Come back. I deleted it, of course.
I wanted to call him then, to tell him everything about Patricia and for him to tell me, while he put together bouquets like the one this boy was holding, that I shouldn’t worry about my sister, that life would always find a riverbed to run down, like water.
“The point isn’t whether they love each other,” my sister responded, bringing me crashing back to reality in the car.
I had borrowed a car from the company’s fleet but with no driver. A few days before I had wanted to be the one to brake, change lanes, slow down, and complain that traffic in Madrid is hell.
Candela and I had talked a lot about Patricia’s situation. We didn’t want to judge her, of course. But throwing it all away for a twenty-four-year-old? It seemed brave to me that she’d taken the step of breaking up her marriage if she no longer loved Alberto, but I doubted this new relationship would end well. We both doubted it, in fact, because we both seemed to be on the same page.
“If them loving each other isn’t the point, then what is?” I looked at Candela.
“The point is whether they’re in the same life stage. Whether he’ll miss, I don’t know, the freedom of being in his twenties and if he won’t get sick of needing to organize everything around his girlfriend’s three kids. And the same with everything else: they’ll have to agree on where and how to live, whether love means the same thing to both of them, if they’ve both healed from previous wounds…”
I glanced at her, leaving the car in park.
“Are you still talking about them, or have you moved on to me and David?”
She sucked her teeth and stroked my hair. “It will pass, I promise.”
“What if I don’t want it to pass?”
“Well then, you’re going to have to do something else.”
“But he’s so sure it won’t work that… How would it work?”
“You’re not in the same place, Margot. If you had been, you would’ve worked harder to find a middle ground.”
“Right.”
I looked ahead, clutching the wheel.
“When are you going home?” I let the question drop, looking through the windshield.
Candela bit her upper lip and avoided the question.
“Hey!” I complained. “You’ve been stalling for a month! What’s going on?”
“I quit my job a month and a half ago.”
I turned toward her in shock. “What are you talking about?”
“You heard me. I was sick of the cold and so few hours of sunlight.”
“But…what are you going to do? It was your dream job! Far away from Mama! You’re nuts. What the fuck is going through your head?”
She looked at me with a Mona Lisa smile and gave me a few pats on the back.
“Sweetie, get a grip.”
“But…”
“I got a position at Doctors without Borders, and I’m going to work on a boat assisting rescues in the Mediterranean.”
I slowly let out the breath I had been holding the whole time Candela had been talking, gripped the wheel, and to my complete surprise…I burst into tears.
“But, Margot…why are you crying? I’m not going to be in a war zone or risking my life, I promise.”
I sobbed.
“Idiot,” she said in a hoarse voice. She was getting emotional. “It’s not dangerous, seriously.”
“That’s not why I’m crying.”
“So then why?”
“Because I’m really proud of you.”
“I’m proud of you too.”
Candela and I hugged awkwardly across the gear stick, crying. I leaned on her shoulder, like I had so many times when I was lonely at boarding school. I thought it might be harder to see her now because it wouldn’t be possible to travel to where she was, like when she was in Switzerland. We wouldn’t spend sister weekends drinking wine and strolling through the city. It made me sad, but it made me happy too. Someone strong, intelligent, good was going to dedicate herself to making the world a slightly better place. Or at least trying.
“Does Patricia know?”
“Yes.”
“How did she not tell me?”
“Because right now all she can think about is how chafed her chocha is from doing it so much with a twenty-four-year-old.”
We both burst out laughing.
“Bah…you didn’t need to be thinking about that. I almost told you a few times before the wedding, but”—she raised her eyebrows—“then you kicked off the whole mess.”
“I know, I know…”
“But all this has a silver lining: your guest room will stop being occupied territory very soon.”
“It doesn’t matter. I hate that house. It’s like living in a hotel.”
“That makes sense, considering what you do for a living.” We pulled apart and looked at each other.
A smaller apartment, warmer, full of plants and flowers in every corner, where the smell of home-cooked food would waft and the paint on the walls would sometimes be chipped. An imperfect home where I could be happy without trying to seem like someone else.
“Are you listening to me?”
“What?” I landed in the car again.
“I was saying I can leave calmer knowing that you’re capable of leaving work early every once in a while.” She pointed to the clock. It was barely seven in the evening.
David, did I ever tell you I have a flat in London? You won’t believe it, but that apartment is so warm and homey…
“Do you mind if we leave the car in the office parking lot and walk home?”
“Not at all.”
My sister was describing how her life was going to be when she started her new job at the end of the month, and I was doing a stellar job of pretending to have all five senses on what I was doing, asking questions and laughing at her jokes while concentrating on not wasting a minute. Candela had no way of knowing, since I seemed so unbothered, that my steps were directing us toward the florist. What was I hoping for? A chance encounter? One last desperate attempt? I had no idea. I was just responding to a need. I wanted to get there before they closed.
“Hey, aren’t we going the wrong way?” Candela asked me, peering up at the name of the street we were on.
“A little. But I thought we could grab a beer on some terrace in Malasaña.”
“Oh, okay. Sounds cool.”
“I know a place where they make really good hot dogs,” I said sadly.
“If they’re really good, why do you sound so sad?”
“Because David showed it to me.”
“Right.” She elbowed me gently. “And…where are we really going?”
“To walk by the florist,” I confessed.
“That’s stalking.”
“I’m not gonna go in.”
“Even worse. That’s so creepy.”
“Too much?” I looked at her, worried. “I’m probably losing my mind.”
“What if he sees you?”
“Well, probably…”
“He’ll probably come out and kiss you, and then the Disney magic will transform all of Malasaña into an enchanted place full of chubby birds who know how to sew.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“If you regret leaving him so much, why don’t you call him?”
“Because some things can’t be said on the phone. And because he was the one who was so sure he wouldn’t be able to love me.”
We walked a few more blocks in silence, until I stopped dead on a corner diagonally across from the florist.
“That’s it over there.”
“That one? It’s so cute.”
“Two super sweet ladies run it.” I smiled without looking at Candela, with my eyes glued on the exterior filled with flowerpot stands.
“Right…what do you wanna do?”
“Turn around and go home,” I answered.
“Why don’t you go in?”
“Because he won’t want to see me.”
“Why won’t he want to see you?”
“Because…he doesn’t think we could work.”
“Margot…” She pulled a fed-up face. “Should I buy you a copy of SuperPop? You’re not sixteen.”
“What would I say to him?”
“How about, ‘I miss you’?”
I stared at her, hesitating. She nodded encouragingly.
“I’ll wait here for you. If it all goes well, send me a thumbs-up emoji on WhatsApp and I’ll go home without you.”
“What if it goes badly?”
“Come on…” She pushed me gently. “Go. I’m not gonna say it again.”
They were the most difficult steps I’ve ever walked in my life. Not even my race in the opposite direction from my wedding had been so hard. Once I was at the door, I made three attempts to go in and ended up scurrying away all three. Candela whistled and waved her hand at me. For fuck’s sake.
“Chicken!” she yelled.
“Shut up,” I begged her, without raising my voice, trying to make her read my lips.
“You’re the biggest wuss of all the Ortega sisters.”
I sighed. I grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. Amparito had her glasses on and was leaning on the counter over something that looked like an invoice. She looked up at me and smiled, taking off her glasses and letting them fall onto her chest, swinging from a colorful beaded chain.
“Hello! How are you, beautiful?”
“Very good.” I took a few steps into the room. Everything smelled of flowers. Everything smelled of damp earth. And I must have been giving off a terrible stench of fear. “How’s it going?”
“Well, it’s going. We’ve having kind of a hard time.”
I furrowed my brow.
“Asuncion!” she yelled. “David’s girl is here.” She squinted at me. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I seem to have forgotten your name.”
“Margarita,” I said.
“How appropriate. David loves daisies.”
Asuncion poked her head out through the beaded curtain from the back, smiled, and then made a kind of pout. “But, beautiful…how are you?”
“Fine.”
“Not fine. If we’re sad…imagine how you must feel.”
“Uh…” I looked around nervously. I took a few deep breaths. I was starting to get an inkling of what was going on. “He’s not here, is he?”
They looked at each other.
“No, he’s not here. He…he didn’t tell you?”
“About what?”
Another look passed between them. Amparito pushed a stool out from behind the counter and told me to sit. I obeyed without knowing why.
“I don’t know if you should tell her,” I heard Asuncion say.
“How could I not? Can’t you see the poor girl’s face?”
“The more you stir shit up, the worse it smells.”
“Margarita,” Amparito said to me, trying to crouch down to my height and look into my eyes. “He’s gone.”
“Very subtle,” her sister said exasperatedly. “Leave it to me.”
“What do you mean he’s gone? Did he go to another florist?”
Asuncion appeared in front of me, elbowing her sister aside.
“He came here on Monday. It seemed strange because he only worked Tuesday to Thursday, but the thing is…he was upset.”
“Upset?”
“Yes. He told us he had to quit; he was leaving. He had gotten a full-time job, that he had to save up and I don’t know what else. He was very unhappy.”
“Another job? Doing what?”
“As a waiter, I think? In a restaurant. Isn’t that what he said?”
“I don’t know,” Amparito replied.
“He left us phone numbers of a few friends who could help us move boxes, flowerpots, and all that stuff. That’s how he started out, but we saw he had a knack for flowers…and, anyway, it doesn’t matter. He came to say goodbye and sorry, to let us know. He worked that week and on Thursday…he packed everything up and left.”
I stood up from the stool and took a few steps toward the door, half groggy.
“Sweetie, are you okay?”
“Thank you. Thank you both so much. Have a good day.”
I slammed out of the store, pushing the door harder than I needed to because I needed air. I was suffocating. The smell of the flowers, the wet earth, David’s absence…they were taking over my lungs, pushing all the oxygen out of my body.
Candela rushed over to my side.
“He’s gone,” I said.
“Ay, Margot…I’m so sorry.”
“He’s gone, Candela.”
“Margot…”
“What day is it?” I asked, dazed.
“Wednesday.”
I lifted my hand up like a robot, hailing the first cab that passed and throwing myself inside.
“Wait, where are you going?” my sister asked.
“Hang on, hang on…” I said, scrolling through my WhatsApp chat with David. “Here!”
I gave the driver the address and turned back to look at Candela through the open door.
“Are you coming or not?”
The street where David lived with Ivan and Dominique was just as tree-lined as the first time I visited, but in the light of day, everything looked a little shabbier. The walls of the buildings had the faded color of paint jobs that hadn’t been refreshed in years, graffiti, and smoke stains I hadn’t noticed the last time. Or maybe it was just that everything lost its shine without David.
Candela didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. It wasn’t the neighborhood that shut us up. It was the anxiety breathing at my side.
I rang the buzzer rudely, again and again. But they didn’t take long to answer. It was Dominique’s delicate, melodious voice that answered with a soft “Who is it?”
“Is David here?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Margot, Dominique. Is David there?”
I don’t think the desperation in my voice went unnoticed because she buzzed me in without a word.
Candela didn’t ask if she should come up with me or wait downstairs. She just followed me into the elevator and studied my expression as I pushed the button for the third floor. I remembered being in there with David, how he came closer just for the fun of seeing how nervous it made me.
“Don’t cry, Margot.”
I hadn’t even noticed I was.
I didn’t have time to pull myself together in front of the door, just to swipe away the tears with my forearm. Dominique was waiting, with Ada in her arms and a sad expression.
“He’s not here, is he?” I said.
“Come in. I’ll make coffee.”
The apartment was cozy and smelled exactly like the last time I had been here: a mixture of homemade food, baby smells, and cleanliness. It was like going into your much-loved grandmother’s house.
Domi asked if I could hold her baby, and my sister took her in her arms when she saw I hadn’t even heard the request. In my head, I was spinning through all the possible explanations for why David wasn’t here. Or in the florist. Or in my life.
We sat on the couch in silence. Candela was playing easily with Ada; she had always been good with kids. She laughed, and the walls happily embraced the sound as part of the happy life inside it.
Dominique came out quickly with a tray covered in drawings of coffee beans, containing three mugs, a pot of coffee, a sugar bowl, and a small jug of milk. She left it on the table and sat on a footstool very close by. I wasn’t used to physical contact and the affection of friendships, but I still let her take my hands in hers.
“He’s gone,” I put forth. “Isn’t he?”
“Yes. A friend of his called him about a waiter job on a cruise ship. They said it paid well and you could get a pretty good bonus in tips.”
I raised my eyebrows. A waiter on a cruise ship? That didn’t seem like him at all.
“But…”
“Okay, girl, do you want the truth, or do you want it to be easy?” she asked me.
“Easy,” Candela blurted.
“The truth,” I corrected.
She looked at both of us with a tender smile. “You’re sisters, aren’t you?”
“But we’re like night and day!” Candela said, surprised.
“You have the same eyebrows.”
I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been so sad, dazed, angry, disappointed, and embarrassed.
“Is he ever coming back?”
“Girl, I don’t think he’s going to be stuck sailing the Adriatic Sea forever. But he told us he wasn’t coming back to live here.” She straightened up, picked up a mug, and handed it to me. “He was pretty torn up when he got back. We had never seen him like that.”
“When he came back when?”
“The Sunday you guys said goodbye. He wouldn’t stop repeating that he had thrown his life away, that he had aways made the worst decisions, that he had missed the boat. Ivan tried to cheer him up, but there was no way. It was hard, but…he talked. He talked clearly, I mean. You know how David is…he never shuts up even underwater.”
I smiled.
“He was destroyed. I had never seen him cry. He was overwhelmed because he had nothing to offer you and he had spent so much time bumming off you. He kept repeating that he couldn’t have fallen in love in a month, that it was all a personal crisis and he had to get his life together.”
He couldn’t have fallen in love in a month.
“I mean…” I said.
“The next day, he went back to walking dogs, saying that he needed time to understand, and…that very afternoon his friend called him to tell him about the cruise. He saw his shot. Three months on a boat, well paid, with no immediate need to find an apartment but still getting out of the house right away. It seemed perfect to him.”
“He gets seasick on boats,” I whispered.
She patted me on the leg. “You must feel terrible. I guess in a way he escaped; everything got him tied up in knots and…”
“No,” I said, not looking at her. “I know that feeling. I guess it’s the same thing that made me run out of my wedding.”
“No, my girl. You didn’t want to marry that man. David…David sometimes feels too much. If you want my opinion, I’d say that I think you’re still the only priority in his decisions. He’s a great guy, but in some ways, he’s still a…little boy. I guess he left thinking he could come back in style, you know? With a plan, with a future…I don’t know. He’s a romantic. And look, I thought he was crazy when he told me that if you showed up, I should tell you…”
“Tell me what?”
“Wait. I wrote it down in my phone so I wouldn’t forget.”
Dominique stood up. Ada was still trying to pull on Candela’s nose, which was apparently hilarious to both of them. When she came back, I had put my mug down on the tray untouched.
“Let me see… Here it is: ‘Life will decide whether or not we are us. Tell her to fly. And to not change her number because, even if we never dare to knock on that door, we need to feel like it’s open.’”
She took her eyes off the screen and looked at me.
“Does any of that mean anything to you? I probably typed it wrong. I don’t know. Now that I’m reading it out loud, it sounds all weird. He said it quickly, and I typed it after he left, so I don’t know if…”
I stood up. Candela looked at me from the couch with the baby in her arms, surprised by my reaction.
“I have to go,” I said to Dominique. “But thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome, Margot. Come back whenever you want. We’re making chicharrones on Sunday if you want to join.”
I swallowed and thanked her, knowing I would probably never see her again. I gave her a hug, and Candela handed back her child when we drew apart.
As we were saying goodbye at the door, Dominique said to me, “It’s too bad David was so scared of being loved right, Margot, because he was crazy about you.”
The roof of our house, imperfect but warm, had collapsed under the weight of our doubts and crumbled in over the furniture and plants, smashing everything and leaving the four walls coated in dust, warped, tearing photos we never took of trips we would never go on.
The couple we could have been, passionate but ready to learn it all, stopped speaking the same language and, as much as we wanted to say I love you, we didn’t understand a word and had to let each other go.
The woman who could have been at his side. The man I imagined he was harboring inside. The kids who would’ve grown up knowing that being free doesn’t mean not being tied to anyone but instead knowing that the truth is what matters, were never born.
I never crossed the threshold of his parents’ house.
I never defied my mother, introducing him at Christmas lunch.
We never bought furniture together.
We never argued again about a stupid misunderstanding.
We never made love in any bed, car, or pool again.
Because the absence, the empty “forever,” crashed onto me all at once, like a conviction I couldn’t possibly swallow in one bite.
Like Cassandra…I suddenly knew what the future held, that I would wait without him, but nobody, not even me, was ready to believe me.
No, fairy tales don’t exist. And if they did exist, it’s possible that Hansel and Gretel never would have gotten out of the candy house alive.