Jaime Carlos Dominguez. Artist. Widower. Father.
He doesn’t have any memories of Aimee’s trip to Mexico. He doesn’t have any memories of falling in love with his physical therapist, Raquel; marrying her; adopting her son, Julian; fathering their son, Marcus; and her death from birthing Marcus. He doesn’t have any memories of anything Thomas told him about what he, as Carlos, did in Mexico. He can hardly recall how he ended up in Mexico.
He doesn’t remember anything about the hours leading up to his wandering into Playa Zicatela, bloodied, dazed, and confused, with no idea who he was or where he was from.
What he does have, though, is more than six years of Carlos’s journals, all tidily filed on a thumb drive. Daily entries that stopped two days before James surfaced.
The damn man kept a diary.
James makes an odd noise in the back of his throat. It’s ironic. Anytime he curses Carlos, he’s only cussing at himself. But thinking of himself as separate from Carlos has made it easier to accept the loss of time.
There is much about the man Carlos was that James doesn’t understand. The one thing he can relate to, though, is Carlos’s paranoia of losing his identity. For when James surfaced from the fugue state to magazine and newspaper stacks, framed picture mosaics crowding the walls, and a lockbox bursting with the details of the man’s short life, Carlos was lost to this world forever.
James thinks of the items in that lockbox. Photos, birth and death certificates. Aimee’s engagement ring.
His blunt fingers rub the edges of the diamond solitaire ring tucked deep in his trouser pocket. The thin gabardine wool dress pants scratch thighs long used to board shorts. And the ring is a solid, cold reminder that for the rest of his life he’ll pay for his mistakes with more than the physical scars marring his thirty-six-year-old body. The angry ridge from right temple to jawbone, the not-set-just-right nose bridge, the slash of rigid tissue across his hipbone—a bullet trail, he surmises. Those scars he can handle. What he can’t get past, what he has yet to come to grips with, is that he’ll never share his life with Aimee because he fucked up.
James thinks of his sons waiting in the conference room. Eleven-year-old Julian hates him. He’s convinced James doesn’t want to be their father, that he’ll ship them off to Hawaii to live with their aunt, Raquel’s half sister Natalya Hayes. Six-year-old Marcus has been wary of him since that first day when his dad started speaking English. James is not the same papá as before.
God knows how he’ll manage getting his sons settled in a new home, let alone a new-for-them country, and trusting him as their father, all the while trying to start a new life together.
A life Aimee will not be a part of.
James breathes through the ache deep inside his chest.
“She won’t see you.”
He fists the engagement ring and slowly turns from the window to glare at his brother. Thomas sits behind his desk, erratically bouncing a Montblanc pen against the glass surface. James’s ears flex, capturing the noise. The sound grates. He tightens his grip and the diamond bites into his palm. The desire to punch Thomas, feel the sickening crunch of cartilage vibrate up his arm—that feeling consumes him. Almost.
Get a grip, James.
Thomas meets his glare, a brow arched as though challenging James to object.
“How would you know?” James asks, turning back to the window. “You haven’t seen her in five years.”
The tapping stops. “I haven’t spoken with her.”
Last December, when James bombarded Thomas with questions about Aimee, he couldn’t answer them. Aimee had filed, and the court had awarded, a temporary restraining order against his brother upon her return to the States. She didn’t want anything to do with Thomas or the Donato family, so other than a few e-mail exchanges after the order expired, Thomas has left her alone.
James doesn’t blame Aimee. If he wasn’t so reliant on Thomas’s help to get reestablished, he’d write his brother off, too. He’d even contemplated suing Thomas for violating his human rights. But his own shame, as well as his respect for his mother, had stopped him. Claire Donato’s three sons has already done enough to screw up the family. Besides, James deserves what happened to him. It is because of his own mistakes that he ended up where he did, abandoned and practically forgotten.
“I have seen Aimee,” Thomas murmurs.
James flips the ring onto his pinkie. He leans his forearm against the window, taps the glass with a finger, and wonders if Thomas is right. Would Aimee want to see him?
Chair wheels roll across tightly woven carpet, and the distinct rustle of rich, tailored fabric disturbs the air. Thomas comes to stand beside him at the window.
“Los Gatos is a small town. I walk past her café almost every day. Hard not to see her or Ian. Or their daughter.”
James leans his forehead against the bent arm supporting his weight.
“She had to move on,” Thomas says. “Kid. Husband. She loves Ian. She’s happy.”
James knows this, has known since the day he tried calling her last December only to reach a disconnected number. He’d never been so scared in his life.
He reached Thomas, though. His brother had answered on the first ring. Then he was there in Mexico, twenty-four hours later, and told him everything.
Thomas claps James’s shoulder. “Don’t fuck up her marriage.”
“Like you fucked up my life?”
Thomas flinches. “I told you, I tried to fix it. You, when you were Carlos, wanted nothing to do with me.” He angles his face toward the evening traffic below. Hands in pockets, he fidgets with the pen. “I couldn’t force you to leave Mexico no matter how hard I tried to convince you.”
The sun disappears below the horizon, and the sky darkens. Their reflections against the glass grow more distinct with each passing moment. James notices for the first time in their lives he is larger than Thomas. He also looks much younger than the two years separating him from his older brother.
That was what surprised James the most when he first saw his own reflection last December: how much he’d aged. The surfer-length hair and scarred skin on his face had been a shock. Six and a half years had deepened the creases around his eyes and mouth, tightened the skin around his ribs as though it had baked frequently under the Mexican sun. But Carlos kept his body in top form. Between running and mountain biking, he maintained an active, outdoor lifestyle.
Thomas hasn’t fared so well. He wears his stress in the dull-gray hair cropped close to his head, blanched skin deficient of vitamin D, and a leaner frame James surmises survives on caffeine, cigars, and a liquid diet. The wet bar in Thomas’s office is well stocked, and the burned, musty smell of cigars is unavoidable when Thomas stands near him. The sharp smoke scent in Thomas’s suit hits the olfactory, almost making James’s eyes water.