straight into the heart of the oyster that was meant to hold all the pearls. It had been up to him and his brothers to reach out and grab the right one. And when their lives had been so brutally ended?
Everything he’d thought a childhood should have been had been swept under an inky-black darkness that had all but suffocated him. So, sure. There were decisions. But the pearls had all been yanked well out of reach.
It was why getting used to anything...getting attached to anyone...always came with painful ramifications.
But this was Saoirse’s story. He wanted to listen attentively and understand, for her. Everything about this moment seemed preserved in a special soundproof bubble wrapped around the garden table they’d chosen in a quiet corner—a bit of added protection against the hurt she’d endured at another’s selfish decision.
“So, anyway,” Saoirse continued, after another fortifying swig of margarita, “Tom—that’s his name. Feel free to hate it if you like, I do. Anyway, he had been my boyfriend since school days. Off and on, like. You know how relationships are when you’re young.”
Santi nodded affirmatively but again found he couldn’t really say. His teenaged years had been far from footloose and fancy-free. He forced himself to tune back in.
“...and then when everyone coupled up or left for the bright lights of Dublin, we started seeing each other again. He became a policeman and I became a nurse in the hospital up in the next town along because our village was only tiny. All our friends were getting married and so we decided to get married.”
“A mutual decision?”
“Sort of, I guess. I mean, he got down on one knee and everything, but it all felt as if he was going through some sort of pantomime version of what a man who was in a relationship at a certain age was meant to do when he proposed to his girl.”
“Weren’t you in love with him?” Santi felt his brows crowd together. This was hardly the portrait of a bewitched bride.
“Of course I was! At least, I thought I was.” She twisted her lips as she considered the question. “I was as in love with him as much as a girl who’s only known one boy her entire life could be. We met when I pushed him off the swings at school.” Her eyes took on a faraway look as she gave a mirthless laugh. “He was the same boy I had my first kiss with and saw my first film alongside and just about everything else in the first department.”
She waved off Santi’s sympathetic murmurs. The proverbial floodgates were open now and there was no stopping this story. Not that he wanted her to stop. They’d spent over eighty working hours together over the past week and he hadn’t even perfected saying her first name, let alone learned much about her other than that she had an unquenchable passion for race car driving.
“So, to turn a long story into a short one—because I’m guessing you don’t want to hear every revolting detail of my childhood romance...”
He nodded. The more she told him, the more protective he was feeling about her. And not in a big-brother way.
“Our big plan was always to come over to America. Maybe that’s the only thing we had in common. A desire to flatten our vowels and strive for more in the land of opportunity!”
“I thought you said this was the short version.” Santi grinned, grabbing a handful of chips.
“Right you are.” She nodded. “Instead of getting married straight away, we lived together and all, but our lives were dedicated to scrimping and saving and preparing for the Great American Adventure.” She held her hands up and made a little ta-da trumpet sound.
This had been a long-term relationship. Would the recovery take as long as the relationship itself? Santi filed the information away.
“When exactly did you come over?”
“Tom came over first. About a year ago.”
Ah! A chink. He stopped the swarm of judgments forming. This wasn’t a moment to rub your hands together in glee because all had not been as it seemed.
“He got his green card through a relative already living in Boston. I suggested we get the fiancée visa thing right away, but practical Tom said no—we wouldn’t have enough money while he was in the academy and I couldn’t work straight away, so we should wait until we were married properly. I came out and visited him, but he was super busy all the time and nurse’s wages don’t go far, so I spent a lot of time in the library where I discovered I could come over on a student visa and not bother about the whole fiancée thing. I was tired of my life being in a holding pattern, you know?”
Santi didn’t think he was meant to answer, but gave her a decisive nod. He did know. Caring for Alejandro after his lifesaving transplant surgery hadn’t been a hardship, but to teenaged Santiago? It had felt like being chained to a life he’d never signed up for. Joining the Marines had seemed the only way to loosen the noose of hard-core responsibility he and his brothers had been forced to accept.
“So to make this really long story even pithier, I started raking around and eventually found a specialist NICU training course that would sponsor me. Taking it would put me well above the other NICU nurses if we ever decided to go back home to Ireland.”
Santi tried not to wince each time she said “we” or “home.” As she continued, the basket of tortillas became more and more interesting to him. If she were to see the look in his eyes, she would see glimpses of the green-eyed monster.
“This was all before Tom flew back for his summer holidays and our wedding. Then, as part of the health check for the visas, I found out I couldn’t have children.” Her voice went flat as she continued, as if giving the words their intended punch would make them impossible to say. “A month later I was standing in a stupid white dress all by my lonesome with a huge fruitcake no one wanted to eat.” She plastered on a bright smile. “So I switched courses, joined the paramedic training course, chopped off my hair and moved to Miami because it’s about as different from Boston as you can get. I wasn’t going to give up all my dreams just because I’d chosen badly in the fiancé department. Now my visa’s set to run out when my training ends and the only way I can stay without leaving is to get married. Happy?”
The look she gave him—one mixed with innocence, hope, confusion and sadness—all but yanked Santi’s heart straight out of his chest. He could translate the depth of feeling to what he felt for his brothers, but the difference in their situations was vital. He’d been the one to leave them in the lurch. He’d been the Tom in the situation. Santi made a quick search for the invisible waitress, suddenly wishing he’d ordered a drink, as well. Water and iced tea weren’t cutting it anymore.
He scrubbed a hand through his hair, firmly reminding himself this was Saoirse’s time. He was doing this for her.
One selfless act.
It was all he wanted to see himself do before he reentered his brothers’ lives.
If a priest walked through the door right now? He was in. If she wanted him to marry her, he would. But she would have to be sure she could accept what he had to offer: absolutely nothing.
“Do you mind if I ask about your fertility issues?”
“What, nurse-to-doctor-style?” She drew away from him as she spoke.
“Friend to friend,” he replied.
Her shoulders softened. It wasn’t an inquisition.
“In for a penny...” she halfheartedly quipped, swiping at some tears. “The doctors weren’t entirely sure. I’d always had an irregular cycle so I mentioned it to the doctor who was doing the physical. It was more precautionary than exploratory, you know? And then the tests came back.” She gave the picnic table an unhappy rap with her knuckles. “The details are a bit blurry now, partly because I burned the papers after my ex left. But apart from having an abnormally shaped uterus... Yeah, I know,” she said when he widened his eyes, “there was more. Something about not ovulating regularly and not having a massive store of eggs.