“I knew a girl once,” Maria said in almost a whisper. “A long time ago. She was very famous, and the whole world knew her name. But no one knew her. Everyone around her wanted a piece, a story, an autograph, a picture. She was surrounded by people constantly: managers, agents, fans, but she was terribly, terribly lonely.”
Maria took a bite of her torrejas and followed it with a sip of coffee. Janie waited for more, but Maria looked beyond her for a long moment, and for the first time since they’d met, Janie saw a sadness in Maria’s usually bright and joyful expression. “Whathappened to her?” Janie asked when the silence stretched on for too long.
Maria switched her gaze back to Janie, unwavering and direct once more. “She thought the world was a transactional place. You give a performance, you get applause. You give an interview, you get a headline. You give your time, you get paid.”
Her bottom lip twitched slightly, as if the retelling of this story was painful, and Janie began to wish she hadn’t prompted her to continue.
Maria made a clicking sound. “But she found out the hard way that true connection, true community, cannot be a transaction.” She waved her finger in front of Janie’s face, her playfulness returning. “It’s a gift. A risk, sometimes, yes, but a gift.”
Janie sat back from the table slightly and clasped her hands in her lap. Maria’s story was beginning to sound like an allegory, and she was holding up a mirror to Janie’s soul. She’d navigated her world precisely this way all her life; her parents had taught her to do exactly that. You give something, you get something.Don’t give away anything for free, especially your time.She could practically hear their words.
“I’m not… I’m not lonely.” The lie tasted like ash on her tongue. “I’m just private. I’m not like Hannah, with her whole band of sisters she can rely on. My problems are just that: mine.”
“Hannah is your wife?” Maria asked, looking at Janie’s hands.
Janie frowned at how easily Maria continued to read her. She glanced at the wall beside them and noticed the arrangement of framed tarot cards. Maybe Maria was some kind of white witch.
“And her sisters?”
Janie ran her finger over the rim of her mug. “They’re her tribe. Hannah was in the Army for thirteen years, and now they’re all out. They’ve just opened their own garage together. I guess Hannah is the kid sister of the bunch.” They were bound by shared experience, and their mutual trust had been earned under fire. She’d always stood outside that circle, assuming her contribution of stability and a good income and now afinancial stake in the business would be enough. Just the kind of transaction Maria was talking about.
“But why do you think of your problems as your own, to carry alone?” Maria asked softly. “They are like rocks, Janie, pressing on and crushing your soul. A secret, perhaps a guilty one, becomes bigger the more you hide it, the more you add layers of your fear. In the end, it isolates you and keeps you from the people who could help you lift it from your soul.”
If Janie had shared her own guilty secret with a therapist, she’d believe that Maria had read through her session notes. But she hadn’t. Why was her guilt so obvious to someone who was two coffees away from being a complete stranger? “No one can help me lift this,” she mumbled, thinking of the Greek myth of Atlas. “What did the girl do?” she asked, still eager to know if Maria’s cryptic tale had something to do with the café’s cashless operation. “What was she famous for?”
Maria’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and she waved her hand as if she were wafting away a bothersome mosquito. “Oh, something noisy and bright and utterly exhausting. Something that required her to give a lot of herself, though she got very little of meaningful substance in return.Herloneliness became like a rock too. And the more she tried to hide it from everyone around her, the heavier it became. The more she pretended it wasn’t really there, and that it wasn’t affecting her, the more isolated she became.” Her gaze flickered across the café and settled on Mirta. “Eventually, she came to realize that she could use the fame and the money it had brought her to build something real, something that was about community and bringing people together.” Maria motioned around her. “Something like this place.”
Janie’s heart hammered against her ribs. Maria’s tale wasn’t an anecdote. It was her origin story. And apparently a lesson for Janie in the value of vulnerability and community that directly refuted her transactional mindset. Without thinking about her own vulnerability and the danger of opening herself up to thisstrangely intuitive older woman, Janie pulled out her phone and showed Maria a photo of her beautiful family. “Hannah wants me to visit the girls.”
Maria smiled at the picture. “And you don’t want to go,” she said, as if already knowing all the facts.
Janie swallowed and shook her head slowly. “I can’t. They’re all better off without me.”
Maria huffed. “Janie, you are a mother. And mothers are an essential part of a child’s world. You are their sun and moon. Your absence is not the gift I talked about. It is a wound that can never heal. You’re inflicting that wound on your daughters out of guilt, and you’re calling it protection. You must talk to Hannah. Share this burden before it consumes you all.”
Janie flinched. The thought of punishing her kids, even indirectly, sliced at her heart. She squeezed her eyes shut and was immediately back in the house, reliving the horrifying moment that had changed everything. Janie waking from a slumber she shouldn’t have slipped into. The ensuing silence before the air exploded with the frightened cries of the triplets, and the bone-deep terror at the terrible realization of what had happened. All because she’d been so careless, so complacent.
Cold tears crept from their hiding place and coursed down her cheeks. “She wouldn’t understand,” Janie said, her voice cracking. “The girls are her life. If she knew I’d put them in danger, she’d hate me forever.” As she said the words, they molded into a viable option. Wouldn’t it be for the best if Hannah thought of her that way? Then she could move on, find the girls another mom, abettermom. Someone who deserved the title.
Maria sighed. “Your fear is blinding you, Janie. You think you’re being selfless, but you’re indulging your guilt. Hiding will not help any of you. You’re punishing yourself, yes, but you are also causing deep confusion and pain for the three little people who need you and the woman who loves you.”
Janie didn’t respond and simply lost herself in Maria’s eyes,which seemed to hold centuries of wisdom. Her kind weathered face, a portrait of empathy, held no judgment. Janie’s defenses crumbled, and her chin trembled. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, the admission a quiet, painful surrender.
Maria rested her hand on Janie’s arm, and Janie focused on it, on its warmth and on her soft skin, and how young-looking her hands were.
“This is not a thing that can be fixed in a single moment,” Maria said softly. “But you do have to start somewhere. And a visit to your children could be the first step toward healing, for all of you. It will say, ‘I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m here. I’m still your mom.’”
More tears than she could cry welled in Janie’s eyes and blurred her vision. A fierce, protective fear gripped her. The memory was too fresh, the terror too absolute. What was there to stop it, or something worse, from happening again? “I was so stupid. So careless. I haven’t changed. There’s no pill to take that will make me a perfect mother.”
Maria squeezed Janie’s hand. “There is no such thing. Every mother tries their best. You can’t guarantee that you’ll get everything right. No one can. But you can face it. You can share your burden with your wife.”
“I want to,” Janie said, her voice as raw as the pain in her heart. “God, I want to see their gorgeous little faces. To smell them. I ache for that.” She shook her head as the cold hammer of reality smashed into that desire. The image Hannah had sent her from last night, the crayon masterpiece adorning their living room wall was replaced by the terrifyingly vivid memory of the thing she’d done, the danger she’d created.
“Share the burden, Janie.”
She gave a single nod and looked at her phone. The warmth of Maria’s words wrapped around Janie like a comforting blanket, but it didn’t change anything. Maybe if she saw Hannah,justHannah, it might give her the support she needed to build herself up again, to make herself the mother the tripletsdeserved. But didshedeserve that chance?
“Go to them,” Maria said. “They need you, and you need them.”
