The chair felt unsteady beneath me. The walls seemed to press closer.
“Coco, sweetheart, why don’t you go check on your brother?” Alex stood and crossed to us, scooping up her daughter with the ease of long practice. “I think Alfonso needs help with his puzzle.”
Coco protested but allowed herself to be carried away. Alex shot me an apologetic look over her shoulder. I tried to return it, but my face had gone numb.
One big family. Forever.
What she’d said echoed in my skull like a warning bell.
Saffron rested her hand on my arm. “You okay?”
I nodded because I didn’t trust myself to speak.
After lunch,we moved to the comfortable chairs arranged near the fireplace, where the flames cast dancing shadows across the stone walls. The twinkling lights overhead seemed softer now, less festive and more intimate. The children had gone outside to run off their energy, but their laughter drifted in through the French doors.
Lucia settled into the chair beside mine, close enough that our knees almost touched.
“You’re quiet,” she observed. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine. Just…taking it all in.”
“It’s a lot, I know. This family.” She gestured around the room at the women whose conversations branched and merged like streams. “When I married Alfonso, I only had one sister. My twin. Our house was quiet. Our whole life was. Even though he only had one brother, Tryst, the rest of their family was so big, so loud. I didn’t know how I’d ever fit in.”
“What did you do?”
“I stopped trying to fit in.” Her dark eyes crinkled with her smile, deepening the lines carved into her face by grief and joy over the years. “I decided to just be myself, and if they didn’t like me, too bad. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But they already loved me. Just like Alfonso assured me they would.”
My throat constricted. “How did you know it was real?” I said barely above a whisper.
“I didn’t. Not at first.” She turned her hand over and laced her fingers through mine. Her grip was warm and steady, her skin soft but strong. “But Alfonso kept showing me. Every day, in small ways and big ones. And eventually, I believed him.”
She squeezed my hand.
“When an Avila man loves, he loves with everything he has. Rascon won’t let you down,mija.”
Mija.
My daughter.
Calling me that was like a key turning in a lock I hadn’t known existed.
My mother had called me Isabel, always Isabel, in that cool, distant way that kept everyone at arm’s length. Even in her final months, when the cancer hadstripped away her beauty and her strength, she’d maintained that distance. I’d sat beside her hospital bed and held her hand, and she’d looked at me like I was a stranger she was too polite to dismiss.
And my father—he’d never had a pet name for me, either. Nothing that suggested warmth or belonging or love. I was Isabel when he was pleased with me, which was rare, and I was “my daughter” when he spoke of me to others, as if ownership absolved him of affection.
“I can see it, you know.” Lucia was gentle, pulling me back from the dark place my thoughts had wandered. “The fear. You’re waiting for something bad to happen. For someone to say the wrong thing, or look at you wrong, or remind you that you don’t belong here.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“But that’s not going to happen, Isabel. Not in this family. We don’t work that way.” Her eyes shined with fierce tenderness. “You’re carrying my grandchild. You’ve captured my youngest son’s heart. That makes you mine too. Do you understand? You’re mine now. You’re ours.”
Something cracked inside my chest.
The pressure that had been building all afternoon—through the announcement and the congratulations,through lunch and the stories and Coco’s innocent questions—all of it crashed through me at once. A wave I couldn’t outrun.
I stood up so fast my chair scraped against the stone floor.
“Isabel?” Lucia’s face creased with concern. “What’s wrong?”
