She’d been in my life since I was a child. Not long enough to claim me by blood. Long enough that it never mattered.
“Okay,” she huffed, her voice warm and bright, Southernhoney wrapped around years of travel and reinvention. “Why does it smell like feelings in here?”
My father’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. A concession. “Lo,” he greeted, carefully neutral.
But his eyes gave him away. They softened at the edges, the way they only did for two people in this world.
Me.
And her.
Lo pushed her sunglasses up into her hair as she stepped fully inside, and the room shifted with it—because that was her talent. She didn’t just enter spaces. She warmed them. Claimed them. Made them feel like something worth staying in.
She saw me—and everything else fell away. “Hi, bebê.” Soft. Immediate. Like she hadn’t crossed half the world to get to me.
Three quick steps and her arms were around me, pulling me in before I could brace myself. Her perfume wafted off silk—lavish florals cut with something bright and citrusy, expensive and familiar, the kind of scent that lived in memories. Her coat was cool from the rain, but beneath it she was warm, solid, real.
I folded into her instantly. Tension I hadn’t named loosened all at once, slipping off my shoulders, down my spine, out of my chest.
Her hand came up to cradle the back of my head, fingers threading gently into my hair, holding me there like I was something worth steadying. The closest thing I had to a mother and she never took that for granted.
“Oh, bebê,” she murmured into my hair, softer now. “Look at you. All grown up and leaving for the land of deep-dish pizza and emotional repression.”
I huffed a laugh against her shoulder.
“You’re going to rule that city,” she continued. “And if you don’t, we’ll buy it and rename it.”
My father made a sound—half amusement, half warning. “Clementine.”
She turned to him with a grin that carried years of history in it. “Rafa.”
They held each other’s gaze for a beat too long. There was still something there—respect, affection, the echo of a life they’d built and chosen to end. My father had loved her once. Maybe he still did, in the quiet, careful way he did everything. He just hadn’t been able to keep her.
“You didn’t need to—” he began.
Lo waved him off abruptly. “Don’t. We talked about this. She’s not flying alone.” Her tone softened just enough before she added, “And you have a merger hanging by a thread. A flight to Europe in the morning. Let’s not pretend you can be in two places at once, darling.”
My father’s jaw shifted. He didn’t argue. He never argued facts.
He had been leaving for as long as I could remember. Conferences. Cases. Entire countries strung together in his calendar like obligations he couldn’t afford to miss. He always came back. Always called. Always showed up in the ways that counted.
But he was gone.
And when he was, Lo stayed.
School pickups when flights ran long. Late-night dinners when work stretched past midnight. The quiet, unremarkable moments that built a life instead of interrupting it.
Lo stepped closer to him, lowering her voice like this was testimony and I was the jury. “Besides,” she added, “if anyone thinks they’re going to make my girl feel small in America, I’d like to be there in person to ruin their day.”
My father’s lips pressed together. He looked at me, then at her.
Then he nodded once.
Small.
Contained.
Absolute.