Page 22 of The Lion in the Library

“It’s a bishop’s hat,” Luz told him.

“Frogs are also good,” I offered.

Pedro considered this. “Leo, you have to do the race commentary. Mami doesn’t do the voices right.”

“Pedro, I do the voices perfectly,” Estrella said.

“You make them all sound like you,” Pedro explained, with the diplomatic honesty of a four-year-old. He pointed at the red car at the front of the grid. “This one is from Spain. He sounds different.”

Estrella met my eyes across the table. Her expression was caught somewhere between wounded and laughing.

“He’s right,” I said, carefully. “The Spanish cars do sound different.”

“Thank you,” Pedro said, vindicated. He pushed the red car forward an inch. “Ready? Three, two —”

“Eat first,” Estrella said. “Race after.”

Pedro accepted this with the long-suffering patience of someone who has learned which negotiations are winnable. He put down the red car, picked up his fork, and looked at me with the expression of a man biding his time.

Estrella watched them with the expression she sometimes got when she thought no one was looking — open, undefended, a love so large it seemed almost to surprise her each time she encountered it.

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

“They’re a lot,” she said, quietly enough that the children wouldn’t hear.

“They’re wonderful,” I said, which was true and which also wasn’t quite the whole truth. The whole truth was something I was still finding words for — the strange rightness of sitting at this table, in this apartment, with this woman and her magnificent chaotic children, eating enchiladas in Los Angeles on a Tuesday evening while a four-year-old planned a race I would apparently be commentating, as if I had always been doing exactly this and would always do it.

After dinner, after Luz had exhausted her napkin curriculum and Pedro had completed his race and both children had been bathed and tucked in with a story — tonight a tale about a very small knight who was not frightened of anything, a story I mostly invented on the spot with contributions from Luz, who had strong opinions about the knight’s horse — Estrella and I sat at the kitchen table with what remained of the wine.

She told me about Roberto. The managed version first — the practical facts, the custody arrangement, the timeline of contact, or lack of it. Her voice had the smooth, practiced quality of someone who has told a story so many times that they’ve sanded off all the edges.

I listened to the managed version, and then I said, “And the part you’re not telling me?”

She looked up from her wine glass.

“You’re giving me the version for lawyers,” I said. “Or agents. The one where it’s all very sorted and under control.” I kept my voice easy, no pressure in it. “I’m not a lawyer or an agent.”

Something shifted in her expression. A small loosening.

“He called me this morning,” she said again, but differently this time. “And when I heard his voice — that particular voice, the warm one he uses when he wants something — I felt seventeen different things at once, and none of them were sorted.” She turned her glass slowly on the table. “I felt angry. Which I expected. And tired. Also expected.” A pause. “And then I felt guilty, which is the one I can’t stand, because I have nothing to be guilty about. I have full custody. I have done nothing wrong. I brought my children somewhere safe and I have built something real here and I have nothing —“ She stopped.

“But you still feel it,” I said.

“I still feel it.” She looked at me with the exasperated honesty of someone who has been betrayed by their own nervous system. “He has this gift. He makes his absence feel like something I caused. Like if I had only been different, easier, less — he would have stayed. He would have shown up.” She shook her head. “I know it isn’t true. I have known it isn’t true for three years. And yet.”

“And yet,” I agreed.

I did not say everything I thought about Roberto, because most of it was not useful. I said: “Whatever he does, whatever he tries — you have full custody, you have documentation, and you have every right to manage his access entirely on your terms.”

“I know,” she said. “I know all of this. It just —” She turned her wine glass slowly. “It still lands. Even now. It still makes me feel like I did something wrong.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.” She looked up. “I know. I just needed to say it out loud to someone who wasn’t my mother or my lawyer.” A pause. “Thank you for listening.”

“Anytime.”