After the Crash: A Love in Ruins novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: The Second Home
Every Monday, before eight in the morning, the roses arrived.
Red, long-stemmed, with an unsigned card.
For five years I received them with the same wonder, as if it were the first time anyone had ever sent them.
People said Fulvio Castellani was the man who traded power for love.
The newspapers said it, the reporters, the ladies at the Boca del Río club.
The heir of the most feared family in the port of Veracruz, who gave up the command, the blood, and the gold to marry a waitress from the upper neighborhoods.
That waitress was me.
My name is Celina Benítez, I'm twenty-eight years old, and for five years I believed that story.
On Tuesday I had to take his gray suit to the dry cleaner.
I always checked the pockets before handing it over.
It was a habit from when I was a waitress and collected tips on napkins.
In the inside pocket I found a folded piece of paper.
A receipt from a toy store.
Two balance bikes, blue, small size.
Dated last Thursday.
I stood in the dressing room with the paper in my hand.
We don't have children.
We tried for three years, and in the first two months I lost what little there was.
After that the doctor said there was nothing to be done, and Fulvio held me for an entire night and said it didn't matter.
I folded the receipt and put it away.
I called the driver.
"Hey," I said. "I have an errand to run today. Don't tell the boss anything."
"Ma'am, the boss left orders..."
"Tell him you took me to the market."
He hesitated.
Then he lowered his eyes and opened the car door.
I followed him in a taxi until two in the afternoon.
The driver left the city, crossed the bridge, and took a palm-lined street in Boca del Río, ten minutes from our house.
He stopped in front of a little white house with low iron gates, a trimmed garden, and a swing hanging from a mango tree.
I paid the taxi driver and got out two blocks early.
I walked close to a neighbor's wall.
From the corner I saw Fulvio's car, parked in front of the gate.
A car I knew better than my own face.
My knees went weak.
I leaned against a post.
Then the door of the little house opened.
Two children came running out.
Twins, about four years old, in denim shorts and red t-shirts, barefoot on the grass.
They were shouting something, laughing, in a high-pitched chorus.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Behind them came Fulvio.
In a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, no jacket, no tie.
He crouched with his arms open and the children hung from his neck.
He lifted them both, one on each arm.
He kissed their hair.
The children had gray eyes.
The same gray eyes that had looked at me for five years across the breakfast table.
Behind them a woman appeared.
Tall, with chestnut hair, in a yellow cotton dress.
She was wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.
She walked up to Fulvio and kissed him on the cheek, a long kiss, the kind you give when you have the right.
"Lunch is ready," she said.
He smiled.
A smile I knew.
The one he gave me when I came home from work.
I felt something inside my chest break silently.
I didn't cry.
I didn't scream.
I just stood there watching my husband sit down at a little garden table, with a child on each knee, and the woman in the yellow dress serve him hibiscus water.
There were toys everywhere.
A fire truck.
A ball.
A chalkboard with chalk drawings.
A home.
A whole home, full of laughter, that existed ten minutes from mine.
Then the woman looked up.
She looked toward the corner, toward where I was.
She didn't look at me, but through me, with a gentle calm.
And she smiled.
She raised her hand and waved her fingers at me, slowly, the way you wave at a neighbor.
I knew she had seen me for a while.
I knew she knew who I was.
I knew she was waiting.
I turned around and left without running.
That night, Fulvio came home at nine with a bag of sweet bread and a calm face.
"Sorry," he said. "The meeting ran long."
He kissed my forehead.
I served him dinner.
We talked about his day, a contract, the tropical storm that was approaching.
We slept in the same bed.
He held me from behind, like every night.
I waited until his breathing grew heavy.
I slipped out of bed.
I went to the study.
I dialed a number I had known by heart since I was a girl, the number of the only person in his world who had loved my father.
It rang three times.
"Hello?" answered a hoarse voice, an older man's voice.
"Wences. It's Celina."
"Celina? What's wrong, child? It's midnight."
I closed my eyes.
I took a deep breath.
"I need you to help me fake a private jet accident," I said in a low voice. "It's the only way I'll be able to leave Fulvio Castellani."
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