Chương 2
“You’re not boring,” she said. “This wasn’t your fault.”
His throat moved.
“Can I still blow out my candles?”
The question hurt more than Lorena’s laughter had.
“Yes,” Mariana said.
He looked at the wreckage.
“Just not here.”
She stood and opened her banking application. The movement was almost automatic. Lorena’s name sat among the scheduled transfers: school tuition, apartment support, Diego’s soccer fees, a monthly payment labeled household. Mariana tapped the last one, disabled the next transfer, and locked her phone.
She had never made a financial decision while shaking before. At her firm, she required documentation, review, and a night’s sleep before any action that affected another person’s livelihood. Now the confirmation message appeared on the screen in less than three seconds.
The event manager approached carefully.
“Mrs. Ríos, we have another cake in the kitchen. It is plain vanilla, but our pastry team can decorate it quickly.”
Mariana looked at Emiliano.
He shook his head before she could ask.
“All right,” she said. “Please box the food. Pay the staff for the full reservation.”
“You don’t have to decide now.”
“I’ve decided.”
The woman nodded. Her gaze dropped to Mariana’s fingers, reddened where she had grabbed the candle.
“There’s a first-aid kit in my office.”
“I’m fine.”
Emiliano leaned against her side.
Mariana called the parents closer and apologized without explaining. Her voice remained steady, which made several people tell her she was handling it beautifully. She disliked them for saying so. She had not handled anything. Her son’s cake was beneath a chair. Her nephew’s footprints crossed the marble. Her sister was probably composing a version of the story in which Mariana’s lack of humor was the only injury worth discussing.
A father offered to take the children to the adjoining game room. Emiliano said no.
Another mother said they could all stay and have the replacement cake. Emiliano said no again.
Mariana did not try to persuade him.
Within fifteen minutes, the party had dissolved. Guests carried blue gift bags and unfinished conversations toward the elevators. Some hugged Emiliano. Some avoided mentioning what had happened. One boy asked whether Diego had done it for a video, and his father pulled him away before anyone answered.
The photographer approached Mariana last.
“I stopped recording after the impact,” he said.
She looked at the camera hanging against his chest.
“After?”
“I was filming the candles. I have the whole thing.”
“Do not send it to anyone.”
“Of course not.”
“Not even my sister.”
He shifted his weight. “She asked me before the party whether I could capture a surprise.”
Mariana stared at him.
“What surprise?”
“She didn’t say. I assumed a performer, maybe a gift reveal. She offered me extra money to keep one camera on Diego when the candles were lit.”
The chandelier’s crystals threw small reflections across his glasses.
“Did you agree?”
“I told her you hired me, so changes had to come from you. She laughed and said families don’t need contracts with each other.”
That sounded so precisely like Lorena that Mariana could hear her sister’s voice inside the sentence.
“Send the original files to me,” Mariana said. “No edits.”
“Tonight.”
“And keep them private.”
He nodded.
Mariana found Emiliano near the windows, watching traffic move far below. His frosting-stained sleeve rested against the glass.
“Ready?”
He did not turn. “Is Diego in trouble?”
“Yes.”
“Like police trouble?”
“No.”
He nodded as though this distinction mattered, though his shoulders did not relax.
They left through the service corridor to avoid the lobby. The event manager carried the wrapped gifts, and a waiter brought boxes of food. Mariana’s heels clicked too loudly on the tile. In the loading area, someone had placed the broken chocolate goalpost in a clear plastic container.
“Throw that away,” Mariana said.
Emiliano looked at it.
“No,” he murmured. “Can we keep it?”
She almost asked why. Instead, she took the container from the waiter and held it beneath her arm with the gifts.
On the drive home, Mexico City passed in bright afternoon fragments: buses, jacaranda shadows, a delivery rider balancing between lanes, a man selling flowers beside stopped traffic. Emiliano sat in the rear seat with his forehead against the window. He had not opened a single present.
Mariana drove with both hands on the wheel. Her phone vibrated in the cup holder six times before she turned it facedown.
At a red light, Emiliano said, “I knew it was boring.”
She looked at him in the mirror.
“What was?”
“My party.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Diego said soccer cakes are for little kids.”
“You are a kid.”
“He said that’s not what he meant.”
The light changed. A driver behind her tapped his horn.
Mariana moved forward.
“I liked your cake,” she said.
“You paid for it.”
“That has nothing to do with liking it.”
“You have to say that.”
“No, I don’t.”
He rubbed the frosting on his sleeve with his thumb, making the stain wider.
She heard herself begin the kind of sentence adults used when they wanted a child to accept an answer instead of believe it. Your friends were happy. The room was beautiful. Everyone was having fun. None of those things would reach him.
So she stopped.
After another block, she said, “I thought the magician was terrible.”
Emiliano turned from the window.
Mariana kept her eyes on the road. “He dropped the red scarf before he made it disappear. I saw him kick it under the table.”
“He was not a magician. He did soccer tricks.”
“The tricks were also terrible.”
A small sound escaped Emiliano. Not a laugh exactly, but something that had been close to one before it changed its mind.
“He missed only twice.”
“He missed the ball and almost kicked Mrs. Valdés.”
“She moved.”
“Because a soccer ball was flying at her face.”
This time Emiliano smiled for less than a second.
May you like
Then the smile disappeared, and he looked down at his sleeve again.
At home, he carried the broken goalpost to his room. Mariana took the gifts into the dining room and left them unopened on the table. She placed her phone beside them and went to the kitchen.
