Chương 7
“And you believed her?”
He did not answer.
I took the receipt back and slipped it into the envelope.
“Where does she keep the phone?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said you saw it at her apartment.”
“She had it on the kitchen counter.”
“Password?”
“I don’t know.”
“Number?”
“No.”
I gave him a look.
He looked irritated.
“What?”
“You’re the operations vice president of a national logistics company, and apparently no one in your family has ever left a trail you felt like following.”
“That’s cheap.”
“It’s accurate.”
“No, it’s angry.”
“It can be both.”
He pushed his chair back and stood.
“I’m not defending what I did.”
“You keep doing exactly that.”
“I’m explaining.”
“You’re explaining why every bad decision was understandable.”
“Because some of them were.”
“Understandable decisions can still be catastrophic.”
He looked at me then, really looked.
“So that’s what this is?”
“What?”
“You already think I’m done.”
“At the company?”
“In everything.”
I hated that he asked it that way.
I hated more that I did not know my answer.
“We are not talking about our marriage tonight.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Convenient?”
“You can separate everything into departments when you need to.”
His voice stayed quiet, but the words sharpened.
“Work goes in one box, family in another, marriage in another.”
“That is called having boundaries.”
“No, sometimes it’s called not having to feel anything until it fits on a spreadsheet.”
I flinched before I could stop myself.
He saw it.
His expression changed.
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing after you mean something.”
“I did mean it.”
“Then don’t take it back.”
He leaned both hands on the table.
“I have spent years feeling like I had to prove I deserved to be next to you.”
“That was never my requirement.”
“No.”
“Then whose was it?”
He laughed once.
“You know.”
“Your mother’s?”
“My family’s.”
He shook his head.
“Mine.”
I said nothing.
He walked toward the sink and filled a glass.
His shoulders had dropped.
The anger drained quickly, leaving exhaustion behind.
“When you started Ruta Norte, everybody talked about you like you were insane,” he said.
“I remember.”
“My uncle called you the truck girl.”
“He still does.”
“You laughed.”
“It was funny the first two times.”
“No, you laughed because none of them could touch you.”
“That is not how it felt.”
“I know that now.”
He drank some water.
“At the time, I envied it.”
“What?”
“How sure you looked.”
I almost corrected him.
Then I stopped.
Looking sure and being sure had never been the same thing.
“I wasn’t.”
“I know.”
He set the glass down.
“But I needed to believe you were.”
There was no accusation in his voice now.
That somehow made the sentence harder to hear.
“What does this have to do with Tomás?”
“Everything and nothing.”
He leaned against the counter.
“My mother spent years telling people I was the successful one.”
“I noticed.”
“She told them I made decisions you actually made.”
“I noticed that too.”
“And I didn’t correct her enough.”
“No.”
“Because I liked it.”
There it was.
Small.
Ugly.
Human.
He stared at the floor.
“I liked walking into family dinners and not being your husband for ten minutes.”
I looked at him for a long time.
“That still doesn’t explain why you hid misconduct.”
“No.”
“At least we agree on that.”
“We do.”
His phone buzzed on the table.
We both looked at it.
Teresa.
He did not pick it up.
It stopped.
Then began ringing again immediately.
I watched his face.
“Answer it.”
He looked at me.
“You just said not to call anyone.”
“She called you.”
“That’s different?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Because if she’s nervous, I want to know why.”
He picked up the phone but did not answer yet.
“Speaker?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t an interrogation room.”
“It may be evidence.”
“It may also be my mother asking where I’m sleeping.”
I held his gaze.
“Answer normally.”
He accepted the call.
“Mamá.”
Her voice was loud enough that I could hear the tone but not every word.
She was talking fast.
Alejandro glanced at me.
“No, I’m not at the hotel.”
More talking.
“No.”
He listened.
His eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean?”
The voice on the other end stopped briefly.
Then resumed more quietly.
Alejandro straightened.
“Why are you asking me that?”
I moved closer without thinking.
He turned slightly away, not hiding the call from me exactly, but protecting the habit of privacy.
“No, I haven’t spoken to Tomás.”
A pause.
“No, I said I haven’t.”
Teresa’s voice rose again.
Alejandro’s mouth tightened.
“Mamá, what happened in Toluca?”
The silence from the phone lasted three full seconds.
Then she answered.
I could not make out the words.
Alejandro did.
His eyes flicked toward me.
“No.”
He listened.
“No, don’t go anywhere.”
Another pause.
“No, listen to me.”
Teresa spoke over him.
He pulled the phone away from his ear, frustrated.
“Mamá.”
She kept talking.
Then the line went dead.
Alejandro stared at the screen.
“What did she say?”
He looked at me.
“She asked if you had found something.”
My skin prickled.
“Found what?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“What else?”
“She said Tomás isn’t answering.”
“That’s all?”
“No.”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“She said she needs to get something from her apartment before morning.”
“What?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
I was already reaching for my phone.
He stopped me with one hand.
“Who are you calling?”
“Elena.”
“You said outside counsel.”
“This is personal property and potentially evidence.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“If my mother thinks something is in her apartment and she’s scared enough to call me at midnight, she’s going there.”
“Probably.”
“And if we call anyone, we risk making this look like we’re using company resources to chase her.”
“Yes.”
“So what do we do?”
I hated the answer that came to me.
“We do nothing.”
He stared at me.
“That’s your plan?”
May you like
“For tonight.”
“What if she destroys something?”
