Page 17 of That Last Summer

“Alex. Why does he hate me so much?”

That’s something I can’t get out of my mind. I’m thinking about it way too much. I could understand indignation—I left, crossed the Atlantic Ocean without any explanation, even if it was his fault—but hating me in such a visceral way? Where does it come from? What have I done that was so terrible? Run away from him? From a husband who stopped loving me?

“Alex... I... I don’t...”

“Yes, you do, Marcos. I know you do. I know you.”

My brother heaves a loud sigh before he speaks again. “Yes, I know.”

“But you’re not telling me.”

“No. You and Alex have to fix your problems yourselves.”

The things is... I don’t think there’s anything to fix. Four years is a long time apart; we’re not the same. It was so hard to start hating Alex, and in those first few weeks after it all happened I had to hate him. It wasn’t easy. I had to do it overnight too; these things usually happen more gradually. Like when you let your hair grow, you don’t wake up one day to find it fifteen inches longer—or like the coming of winter: you don’t get up one day and the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. But I did get up one day—or rather, I woke up on a plane thousands of miles away from my home—having to hate my husband when just hours before I’d been madly in love with him.

I wonder if Alex’s hate was gradual, or if his came suddenly.

“Alex has no reason to feel that way, Marcos,” I explain. “I, however, have my motives. He knows why I left, he must, and if he doesn’t, if he didn’t know once I was gone, it’s because he’s more of an idiot than I thought.”

“Okay, listen to me,” Marcos says, moving closer. “I only know his version, a version I’ve lived on the front line. And if I had to put myself in his place... if I had to go through what he went through when you left, I would reject you too. And if I don’t do it it’s because you’re my sister and I love you and respect you more than anything in the world. But if you weren’t, Priscila... if you weren’t my sister...”

“If I wasn’t your sister, what?”

Marcos snorts.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says, raising his hands in surrender. “Not if we don’t put the rest of the cards on the table. Are you ready to do that?”

“No, not this way. Not now.”

“Then I’m leaving. Count me out of all this. I don’t care, Priscila.”

And then he leaves the kitchen, cutting me off. This has always been his way of ending arguments: unexpectedly and abruptly.

I go upstairs to my bedroom, defeated. I stand there, in the middle of the room, studying everything for real this time, noticing every single detail. Earlier, with Jaime here with me, I didn’t pay attention; it was just another formality of my return.

It’s still the same—exactly how it was my last day here, and the same as it was months before that, when I got married. The same single bed—a captain bed—against one of the walls, the same white wooden furniture, the same duvet, sky blue with yellow stars, the same night lamp, the colored streamers hanging from the ceiling, the gigantic desk by the window. And the smell. And the memories. I move to the window and look at Alex’s house. Yes, the memories are all still there.

I put on my pajamas, turn on the lamp and the small television, and lie down on the bed. I just want to rest for a little bit. I feel like I’m home again, but at the same time, I feel odd. As if I’m a geometric figure who doesn’t quite fit into its cube of shapes. It looks like this is the place, but it’s not really home.

Ten minutes is what it takes for Marcos to come to my room to bury the hatchet.

“Hi,” he says from the doorway.

“Hello.”

“Can I come in?”

“Always.”

With his most beautiful smile, he walks over to my bed and sits next to me, his back against the headboard. We’re silent for a few minutes, just listening to the murmurs coming from the television.

“I think I shouldn’t have left,” I dare to tell him, to confess in front of his intense green eyes. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did. But I was twenty-two years old, Marcos, and I was scared, so scared. The world had fallen on me, my whole world; I didn’t know how to deal with it. I didn’t know how to manage. I’m sorry.”

“Come here, kiddo.”

We hug each other tightly and I burst into tears against his neck. “I’m sorry too,” he says. “I’m... stressed, and I’ve taken it out on you. Today you were an easy target. And I don’t want to use you as a target; all I’ve ever wanted is to hold the world for you, Priscila.”

“I feel weird, Marcos.”