No Looking Back novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: Five Candles
Thiago turned five on a Saturday in September, with a tres leches cake shaped like a dinosaur.
I'd spent the night before kneading dough, and the whole morning blowing up green balloons with my heart in my throat.
My mother arrived at two with a gift wrapped in newspaper and a bag of candies.
The kids from the building arrived at three, wearing cardboard hats and screaming.
By four, the table was ready.
And Ricardo still hadn't shown up.
"He's coming," I told Thiago, crouching down to his level. "He promised me."
"Uncle Ricardo?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Really."
He nodded with the seriousness of an adult.
He had messy black hair, a dinosaur t-shirt, and his father's eyes.
Those big brown eyes, watching the door every three minutes.
At five thirty, my mother handed me a cup of coffee.
"Sweetheart."
"He's coming."
"Noelia."
"Mom, he's coming."
At six, the kids started asking for cake.
The neighbors' parents looked at me with awkward sympathy.
I'd told them my husband traveled for work.
That he was an "executive."
That he was "overseas."
Six years of excuses came out of me without effort by now.
Ricardo and I had gotten married on a Tuesday morning at a small municipal office in Lima.
There were two witnesses and a bouquet of carnations I bought myself from a street stall.
He was Ricardo Belaunde, general manager of Belaunde Imports.
I was a twenty-three-year-old accountant, the daughter of a market vendor.
"Until the company stabilizes," he'd told me then, in that calm voice he used for everything. "Until my mother accepts it. Just for a while."
A while.
Six years had gone by.
Our son was born the following year.
Ricardo held him for forty minutes and then handed him to the nurse, because his phone was buzzing.
Ever since then, I taught Thiago to call him "uncle."
Because Ricardo asked me to.
"There are eyes in the office," he'd say. "If the kid calls me dad in front of someone, everyone will know."
Six years.
And I'd accepted it.
At six fifteen, Thiago came over with an empty paper plate.
"Mommy."
"Tell me, my love."
"Why does Uncle Ricardo always show up after the candles get blown out?"
I couldn't breathe.
"Not always."
"Last year he was late too. And the year before."
"He was working."
"What if he doesn't want to be my dad?"
There was a silence in the room.
The kids were playing in the hallway.
My mother set her cup down on the table.
"Thiago..."
"The other kids say their dads come to their party. And that Uncle Ricardo isn't a dad. He's a man who brings presents."
I stroked his head.
I felt something inside me stand up, slowly, after six years of sitting down.
"Come on," I said. "Let's blow out the candles."
"Without him?"
"Without him."
We lit the five candles.
We sang.
Thiago squeezed his eyes shut and blew.
Everyone clapped.
I took out my phone to snap a picture.
And I saw the notification.
It was a society events account, with a recent photo.
"Charity gala in San Isidro: CEO Ricardo Belaunde and his inseparable assistant, Fabiana Olivares."
In the photo, Ricardo was smiling in a dark suit.
Fabiana wore a fitted burgundy dress, her hand on his arm.
The post was timestamped at four ten.
He'd been at a gala.
While my son waited with a cardboard hat.
I closed my phone.
I breathed.
I smiled at the kids.
I served the cake.
At seven, when the last guest left, my mother hugged me in the hallway.
"What are you going to do, sweetheart?"
"What I should have done a long time ago."
I went to the bedroom.
From the back of the closet, I pulled out a blue folder.
I'd prepared it four months earlier with a lawyer from my neighborhood.
Inside was a mutual-consent divorce agreement, asking for nothing for myself.
It had only one clause regarding Thiago: that Ricardo publicly recognize him as his son.
I'd already signed it.
His signature was missing.
I packed my son's clothes, my clothes, the dinosaurs.
I called my aunt in Arequipa.
"Aunt, do you have room for two?"
"Always," she said, without asking.
I handed the folder to the building's doorman, with Ricardo's office address on it.
"Make sure it reaches him Monday first thing, by hand," I asked.
"Yes, ma'am."
Then I sent Ricardo a two-line message.
"Sign the paper. I'm gone."
I turned off my phone.
At ten at night, I boarded the bus to Arequipa at the Javier Prado terminal.
Thiago slept on my shoulder, the dinosaur backpack on my back.
The engine roared.
The lights of Lima began to race past.
In the window across from me, suddenly, between two buses, a black Tahoe appeared, swerving sharply toward the platform.
The same one I knew by heart.
It screeched to a halt.
From the driver's seat, in his gala suit with his tie askew, Ricardo stepped out.
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