Marriage, Bravo Style!

He gave a slow nod. “She told me that she spoke with you, about the ways we are working to have peace in our family, at last.” He looked so uncomfortable. She ached for him.

“Dad, we don’t have to talk about this.”

“Ah. But I think we do. I want you to understand….” He seemed unsure how to continue.

She made a sound of encouragement. “What? Tell me.”

He sipped from his cup, set it down with a tired sigh. “Most of the time I was a good husband to your mother. But not always.”

“Yes. I know. It was bad, that you hit her.”

“It was worse than bad. It was not acceptable. She betrayed me. She lied to me. And that hurt me deeply. But striking her was no answer to my pain. She had never—ever—done any violence to me.”

Softly, she confessed, “Mami said you’ve been seeing a counselor.”

He nodded again. “To try to…understand myself a little better, to face all the ways I have lied to myself over the years. To look honestly into my own heart, to face the darkness there.”

An outraged sound escaped her and tears stung her eyes. “Darkness? What are you talking about? Why do you have to make yourself the bad guy in this? You’re not. No way.”

“Elena,” he said so gently. “No llores. Don’t cry…” He touched her arm again.

She grabbed for his hand, held it tight between both of hers. “Sorry.” She sniffed, blinked away the moisture. “So sorry…”

“There is nothing for you to be sorry about. Know that. Believe that.”

She nodded eagerly, clutched his hand tighter. “Yes. I do. I know it. But I seem to have…oh, I don’t know, a lot of heat on this whole subject, I guess you could say.”

“It’s not surprising. What happened has hurt you. I hurt you, by turning my back on you when I first learned that you weren’t my blood child.”

“That’s all in the past. We got through it. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Javier insisted, “It does matter.”

“Papi. I understood. I really did.”

He said nothing for a moment. Then he sighed. “You are my daughter,” he said. “In all the ways that really matter.”

She knew it already. Still, it felt so good to hear him say it out loud. She bit her lip, swallowed back a fresh flood of tears and leaned across the distance between them to press a kiss on his lined cheek.

He touched the side of her face, a tender caress. “You still blame your mother.”

She sank back to her own chair, wanting to argue. But no. He was right.

He said, “You don’t know how I was, how angry and bitter, when she went to work for Davis Bravo. No, she shouldn’t have done what she did in betraying our marriage vows—and with my sworn, lifelong enemy, too. But I do see my part in it now. In some ways, time and growing older can be a man’s best friend. He learns to see more clearly. And I see that I drove her away. I was angry, so angry—at the Bravos, for taking our land, taking everything. For the death of my father, which I blamed on James Bravo, though it was my father who broke into the Bravo ranch house with murder on his mind. It’s not so hard now, to see that James Bravo had to protect himself and his family when he killed my father.

“And even more than for my father’s death, I was angry for…selfish reasons. For my idea of myself, as a man. I was angry because your mother and I had no babies, while my enemy had so many. I never hit your mother then, all those years ago. But I was cruel to her. I said hard things, things that hurt her. I called her barren. I said she was…no good, as a woman. I didn’t want to face that the problem might lie with me….”

Elena’s hand shook as she picked up her cup and took a slow sip. She knew he wasn’t finished.

He went on, “And then she took that job working for Davis. I left her then. And Davis was kind to her. And he had his own problems at the time, he and Aleta. They…took comfort in each other, your mother and Davis. And both of them regretted what they did as soon as they had done it. Your mother left that job with him and she and I reunited. I was the happiest man alive the day she told me that she was going to have a baby—have you. And we were happy. So happy. Together.”

Elena longed to argue that it wasn’t right. It was all based on a lie. But what good would that do? Her mother’s lie had been found out in time. In the end, they had all paid the price for it.

She turned away as she muttered bleakly, “Mom says you and Davis have made peace with each other.”

“We have, yes,” her father said. “We will never be friends. But I think we understand each other now. There can be true peace between us now. After all, we share two daughters….”

She took his meaning. Mercy was Davis’s daughter-in-law. And she, Elena, was his…

Not his daughter. No. She refused to even let herself think it. “Next, you’ll be telling me you want me to get to know him better.” Her voice was tinged with bitterness and she felt only slightly bad about that.

Her dad just smiled. “No. I will give you no advice when it comes to Davis Bravo.”

“Whew. Thank you.”

“But I will say that if you decide you want to meet with him, to talk with him, to find your way to some kind of closeness with him, I will be pleased for you.”

She gazed at him, disbelieving. “You’re not serious.”

“Ah, but I am. I told you, I see things much more clearly now. Don’t deny your blood father for my sake. There is no law that says you can’t have two fathers. The fact is you do have two fathers.” She opened her mouth to deny it, but he stopped her words with a look. “I’m not telling you what to do, m’hija. I’m only saying, if you hold back from knowing Davis, let it be by your own choice. Don’t lay the blame on me.” He picked up his coffee and took a thoughtful sip.

She was thinking about her mom again. “You know, it’s true what you said a few minutes ago. I love Mom. But I do blame her the most, I think, for everything that happened. She cheated and she lied. She lied every day for over twenty years.”

“M’hija.” With care, her father set down his cup. “Your mother knew me. She knew me so well. If she had told me the truth all those years ago, that she had been with Davis, that the baby—that you were Davis’s blood and not mine…my anger was so deep then. You can’t know how deep. I would have hurt her. And I would have gone after Davis. I might have killed him then, or someone close to him.”

“No!” She didn’t believe that.

He met her gaze steadily. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Consider what did happen three years ago. I hit your mother when I learned the truth. And I got my pistol and I went after Davis.”

They were silent, the two of them, for what seemed like a long time. Somewhere outside, she heard a woman, calling, “Jenny! Jenny, where are you?” And a child answered, “Here, Mommy! Coming…”

Her father said, “So instead of the truth when you were born, we had happiness. As a family. We grew prosperous. And when the truth finally found us, well, at least I was older, a little bit wiser. A little more able to learn, slowly, from the hard lessons life has thrown at me—at all of us. Can you see that?”

“Yes. All right. I…I see what you mean.”

Her father almost smiled. “You’re wondering why I’ve said all this, wondering why I thought you needed to hear it.”

It had meant a lot—so very much—to hear him say out loud that she was his true daughter, to know that their bond was as strong as it had ever been. But as for the rest of it, well, “Maybe it was something you needed to tell me.”

He chuckled then. “Es verdad. I did need to tell you.” He was shaking his head. “I am so glad that I’m no longer young. It wasn’t easy to be young. So much passion. So much frustration. And confusion. It’s an exhausting time of life.”

She reached for him again, caught his hand. “Are you okay, Papi? I mean, really okay? You look so tired.”

He stood, pulled her close and wrapped her in a loving hug. “I am tired, yes. And yet, more myself. More…content than I have ever been.”

She moved back enough to meet his eyes, but remained in the circle of his strong arms. “Content.” She resisted the urge to make a sour face. “It’s what Mom said.”

“And we are content, your mother and I, both of us. Just as we are now. More than you know.”