Find Me in Havana
Page 29
“Of course.” I dry my hands and give Rosita a proper hug. She has become a sister to me. “Hopefully she won’t have to use the bathroom. There’s laundry piled sky-high.”
“Julian can’t fix it?”
“He’s waiting for a part. Oh,” I cry suddenly, “I forgot to tell you, Daniel started a new band.” Daniel is my son, his birth one of the most extraordinary things that has ever happened to me.
“He did? That’s fantastic. What is it called?”
“Head Rush.” I roll my eyes.
“Yikes,” Rosita says and we both laugh.
Raising him wasn’t easy, but he has become a man I am proud of, and unlike my single mother, I had Julian beside me every step of the way. The entire loud, loving Lopez family has been beside me.
And after all these years, to everyone’s astonishment, I still have Grandmother Maria, who, at a hundred and one years of age—still swearing to God she’s sixty—stands straight-backed and is as bossy as ever. On Sundays, when the entire family gathers at our house for dinner, Grandmother Maria is given liberty to tell each family member exactly what they should—and shouldn’t—be doing with their lives. Love, work, hobbies, all of it. The Lopezes take her very seriously. Marriages have been called off, jobs changed, hobbies picked up or abandoned. They all adore her, especially Julian’s father, Raphael, but that’s probably because she laughs loudest at his jokes. Once she laughed so hard she cried, “Heavens to Betsy, I’ve peed my pants!” which only made her laugh harder.
It was precisely the sort of thing my mother would have said.
When Rosita’s friend arrives, an energetic woman who gives us both hearty hugs, she and Rosita arrange themselves over muffins and coffee in the sunroom, and I find myself alone in the kitchen with the woman’s daughter. She is young, maybe all of nineteen, still carrying the self-consciousness of a teenager. Out of habit, and because I don’t know what else to talk about, I tell her my mother’s story. The girl listens with polite, rapt interest. Little do I know that she is tucking away every detail, that she will one day return as a writer to hold the memories with me.
Later that night, pressed up against my husband, his skin smelling of sage soap and salty air, I lie awake for a long time letting the past roll over me. I think of the first time I met Julian, how tenderly he pulled each tiny piece of glass from my face, how we ate empanadas together and I had looked at him and longed for the very thing I now have. I remember the hour I held my mother dying and the moment I sailed off Bixby Bridge, certain of my own death. On nights like these, I can still feel the weight of my mother in my arms as I carried her from the bathroom and the weightlessness of mine in hers as she carried me from the car.
I still miss her, but not as much. I have been the keeper of her story, and the pain is there, the memories, but they have been smoothed out like sea glass, and there are no more sharp edges. I have made peace with them. I have made a good life. One she would be proud of.
And in the end, Julian was right: my face healed without a single scar.
* * *
Acknowledgments
For their continued commitment, guidance and support, I am indebted to Sanford J. Greenburger Associates; my agent and champion, Stephanie Delman; Heide Lange for first believing in me all those years ago; Stefanie Diaz for her skill with foreign rights; and everyone who manages the behind-the-scenes details that make this happen.
For her editorial insights, patience and sheer delightful personality, I am immensely grateful to my editor, Laura Brown, and to Park Row Books for the integrity and thoughtfulness with which they handle their authors. To my fabulously efficient publicist, Justine Sha, without whose management I’d be lost. Thank you to the whole team at Park Row for their expertise, creative design, marketing and promotional skills: Erika Imranyi, Randy Chan, Rachel Haller and Kathleen Oudit.
Thank you to my dear mother, Ariane Goodwin, for introducing me to Nina, for being my travel and research partner in Cuba, for patiently listening to me read unedited chapters and for being there every step of the way with the manuscript.
For those whose generosity, excitement and belief in my work has sustained me, thank you to Lilia Teal, Isaiah Weiss, Tae, Luna and Willow, Robert Burdick, Michelle King and Bonnie Miller. Thank you to Silas and Rowan for continuing to be mischievous and delightful, and to Stephen for being my anchor, my home and the love of my life.
Finally, to Nina Lopez, for honoring me with this story, for trusting and believing in me to write it and for your gracious, enthusiastic reception of this book.
And to Estelita Rodriguez, for living your life with passion, for striving for your dreams and for giving the world beauty and laughter and song. You are missed.
ISBN-13: 9781488073908
Find Me in Havana
Copyright © 2021 by Serena Burdick
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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