CHAPTER FOUR: The Girl at the Party
1237 Words
"I don't want to talk about her, George." Ava Reyes stood at the kitchen island of their harbor-view home, her hands flat against the marble countertop, not looking at her husband. "Please."
"She'd be seventeen now." George's voice was gentle, the way it always was when he raised this particular subject, which was rare, and always careful. "Ava, it's been seventeen years. We still don't know —"
"She's probably dead, George." Ava's voice cracked on the word, and she pressed the back of her hand hard against her mouth for a moment before continuing, steadier. "Ellisa is probably dead, and I have made peace with that, and I need you to let me keep making peace with it, because I cannot — I cannot spend one more year hoping."
George crossed the kitchen and pulled her into him without another word, and Ava let herself be held, silent tears slipping free while, three floors up, their daughter Estefe — who had never once in her life questioned whose child she was — sat on her bed texting Sara Cruz about what to wear to Camila Beltrán's party that Saturday.
The Beltrán estate looked, to Sara, like something out of a magazine spread she'd have paged past without letting herself linger — white stone, manicured hedges, valet parking for cars worth more than her entire life. She'd worn her one good dress, a navy sheath she'd bought secondhand and altered herself, and she still felt, within thirty seconds of walking through the door, catastrophically out of place.
A caterer confirmed it for her.
"Trays are in the kitchen, hon, you're a little late," the woman said briskly, pressing a stack of napkins into Sara's hands before Sara could get a single word out.
"Oh — no, I'm a guest," Sara managed, mortified, setting the napkins down as gracefully as she could.
She was still recovering from that when a small voice piped up beside her. "Are you Nick's girlfriend?"
Sara turned to find a girl of about ten, dark-eyed and unmistakably related to Nick, looking up at her with open curiosity.
"No," Nick said, appearing behind his sister with a flatness that landed harder than it needed to. "She's not."
"I'm Sara," Sara said to the girl, ignoring him.
"I'm Valentina. Val for short." The girl beamed. "I like her, Nicky. You should keep her." She says to him.
"Alright, now go find Mom," Nick says politely to his little sister, and Val skips off, delighted with herself, leaving Sara and Nick alone in a silence that Sara broke first.
"Can you believe I was mistaken for a waiter?"
"Well," Nick said, eyes flicking over her dress, "who wouldn't be. You're practically dressed as one."
Sara's mouth fell open, but he was already moving on. "Who invited you, exactly?"
"Estefe."
"Of course." He exhaled through his nose. "Just make sure you're not under the impression that it's acceptable to do anything stupid tonight."
"I wasn't planning on it," Sara shot back, "but thank you for the reminder, since apparently you think I need one every ten minutes."
He didn't answer, just walked off toward the door as Estefe's parents arrived, greeting Camila Beltrán with the easy warmth of decades-old friendship. Estefe found Nick moments later, asking where Sara was, and Nick's answer came fast and unkind.
"Why did you even invite her? She's not our class, Estefe. She's a social climber."
"Don't say that." Estefe's voice sharpened. "She's a good person, Nick. Better than most people in this room."
Val spotted Estefe across the room and shrieked with delight, running to hug her like she'd hung the moon, and Estefe laughed and swept her up before making her way to the table where Sara sat, alone, watching the party from its edge.
"There you are." Estefe dropped into the chair beside her. "Sorry, my parents took forever."
"I'm so glad to see you," Sara admitted, quieter than she meant to. "I didn't have anyone to talk to."
"That's about to change. I want to introduce you to my parents ."
Sara felt her stomach drop. "Estefe, I don't think —"
"It'll be fine. Come on."
"Where are we going?" Sara asks. "If we're going to meet my parents you need to look a bit more presentable", she says nicely after looking at Sara's outfit. "You look good she assures her, but we just need to do a little touch to your look".
"Okay" Sara says.
Estefe then pulls her up and steers her, gently but firmly, toward the bathroom, where she produced a small makeup bag and went to work — a touch of blush, a swipe of gloss, tucking a loose curl behind Sara's ear. Then she unclasped her own gold pendant necklace and fastened it around Sara's neck, slid her bracelet onto Sara's wrist, and stepped out of her heels.
"Trade me," Estefe said, already sliding her feet into Sara's worn sneakers.
"Estefe, you don't have to —"
"I want to. Now you look like you belong here. Because you do." Estefe smiled, and Sara, blinking back something she refused to name, let herself be led.
George Reyes greeted Sara with open warmth, shaking her hand like she mattered. Ava's greeting was cooler — her eyes moving over Sara once, head to toe, lingering half a second too long on the pendant, the bracelet, the borrowed heels. Something flickered across her face, gone before Sara could name it, and Ava said all the right words with none of the warmth behind them.
Neither of them knew they were looking at the daughter they'd spent seventeen years searching for.
Camila Beltrán, by contrast, hugged Sara like an old friend the moment Estefe introduced them, warm and unguarded in a way that made Sara's throat tight with something dangerously close to gratitude.
By the time the party wound down, Estefe was working on Nick with the full force of her considerable charm.
"Please. Just drive her home."
"Absolutely not."
"Nicolás." Estefe widened her eyes, tilting her chin down in a way that had clearly worked on him since childhood.
He exhaled hard. "Fine. But I'm doing this for you. Not her."
The drive started in silence and did not stay that way. Sara, buoyed by the strange, unfamiliar warmth of the evening, talked the entire way — teasing him about his driving, his playlist, the stiff way he held the wheel like it owed him money — until he finally snapped, "Can you stop."
She didn't, not entirely, and by the time they reached her building he was gripping the wheel like it was the only thing keeping him civil. He got out to open her door and found her already standing on the curb.
"Sure. Open the door," he said, deadpan.
"I thought I was disturbing you," Sara said sweetly, "so I relieved you of the stress."
"You don't even know how to behave like a proper lady," Nick muttered, sliding back into the car without another word, and pulled away before Sara had even reached the door of her building — the poorly lit, poorly built hostel that couldn't have looked more different from the house she'd just left, its stairwell smelling faintly of mildew, its hallway the entire way, utterly unable to explain, even to himself, why a girl who so thoroughly irritated him was the only thing he could think about.
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