“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your hair. “I’m so sorry.”
You pull back enough to look at him.
“What for, mijo?”
“For not seeing that you were worried. For not asking if you had what you needed. For making you walk in here feeling alone.”
It would be easy to tell him not to blame himself. Easy and partly true. But standing there in that church, with the eyes of everyone on the three of you and your old green dress no longer a source of shame but revelation, you decide that truth deserves the day too.
“You were busy becoming your own life,” you say. “That is what I raised you to do.”
He laughs and cries at the same time, which has always been his fatherless way of falling apart when joy and pain arrive together.
Lara places one hand on his arm and one on yours.
