“No,” Vicente agrees, his dark eyes steady on me. “Some people know themselves completely. It’s a rare gift.”
We sit with that for a moment. Then I realize we’ve been in session for forty minutes and I haven’t used all the CIA prompts I intended. But somehow, they’ve given me intelligence anyway—locations, patterns, timeframes, all woven through their genuine concerns about Celeste.
“How do you maintain trust,” I ask, finding a therapeutic version of their reliability assessment prompt, “when the landscape keeps shifting?”
“You don’t,” Vicente says simply. “You accept that trust is temporary. That today’s ally is tomorrow’s enemy. The only constant is change.”
“Except family,” Arturo corrects. “Found or blood. Family is constant.”
“Even when they disappoint you?”
“Especially then,” Vicente says. “When someone you love fails you—betrays you, leaves you, chooses their fear over your bond—and you still want them in your life? That’s when you know it’s real.”
Arturo nods slowly. “Family—real family, chosen or blood—they are the ones who help you remember who you are after trauma tries to erase you.” His voice carries the weight of experience. “Thirty years of war, and Celeste still saw who we could be together. Maddox saw past what I did to him and his family. They held the truth of us when we forgot it ourselves.”
“That’s a profound kind of love,” I offer. “To see someone’s potential self when they can’t.”
“It’s the only kind that matters,” Vicente says quietly.
“Elena may need that same kind of time,” I say. “To move from seeing the harm to seeing the person beneath it. Forgiveness isn’t always immediate, especially when the wound is personal.”
Vicente’s expression shifts—becoming raw and unguarded. “If she ever does.”
“Elena lost her best friend when Lola was killed,” Arturo says to him. “Then she raised your daughter as well as her own through the worst years. She has earned the right to her anger. But she has also earned the right to choose when to let it go.”
Your daughter. Not mine, not ours. The gift of that acknowledgment settles between them.
Vicente stares at Arturo for a long moment, raw gratitude stripped bare in his expression. His throat works. “I know. I am trying to give her that choice. Even if it means she chooses to hate me forever.”
“That is all you can do,” Arturo says quietly.
I watch them sit with that—the acceptance that forgiveness can’t be forced, that staying matters even when reconciliation might never come.
“What you’re describing is grace,” I say. “Giving someone the space to be angry, to forgive on their own timeline if they forgive at all. That takes tremendous restraint.”
Vicente nods slowly, and I wonder if I’m talking to them or to myself.
Chris disappeared from that hotel room without a word. I left Denver and let Wyatt pack up my entire life alone, abandoning him to clean up what I couldn’t face. Tomorrow night I’ll have to tell them both everything and hope they don’t do what I did: run.
“That’s time,” I say gently.
They stand and head toward the door. Arturo hesitates and turns back to me. “About Thanksgiving—we meant it. The invitation. You should come if you’re free.”
“Bring whomever you consider family,” Vicente adds. “We want the house full.”
I should decline. Every professional instinct says this crosses too many lines that are already badly blurred. But the weight of what they’ve just shared makes refusing feel like rejecting more than just a meal.
“I’ll think about it,” I say carefully. “Thank you.”
They leave together, and I’m alone with the weight of what just happened.
My clients just invited me to Thanksgiving. Their first holiday together in three decades—the one they’ve been planning all session, the one that matters so much they’ve been adding names to the guest list all week. The same gathering where my best friend and her family will be. Where I could bring “whomever I consider family.”
The boundaries aren’t just blurred—they’ve dissolved entirely.
The sterilization is scheduled for Friday, three days away. I intended Thanksgiving week for recovery. Which I will very likely need after tomorrow’s barbecue where I’ll have to tell Chris and Wyatt everything.
I sit for several more minutes trying to process that I’ve been invited to a family gathering when I don’t even know what family looks like anymore.
