Chapter 150
Third Person
The discharge came on a Tuesday at ten in the morning.
The doctor walked into room four with the latest blood results on her tablet and a smile Lucía had been waiting eight days to see.
“White blood cells normal. C-reactive protein normal. Follow-up X-ray clear. Oxygen saturation ninety-eight percent without support. This boy is going home.”
Lucía closed her eyes. Gabriel squeezed her hand. Doña Marta crossed herself three times in a row, murmuring something in Spanish that was probably a prayer—and probably also a curse at the fright they’d just endured.
Matías sat on the hospital bed, gnawing on the flipper of the stuffed penguin Gabriela had given him—the same one he hadn’t let go of in eight days. His cheeks were rosy again instead of fever-flushed. His eyes were bright. And he wore that indignant baby expression he put on every time a nurse approached with a thermometer, having already decided thermometers were his personal enemies.
The doctor gave Lucía instructions. Oral antibiotics for five more days. Nebulizations twice a day for a week. A pediatric follow-up in ten days. And if the fever returned or the cough worsened, come back immediately.
“Any questions?”
“Can he travel by car?” Gabriel asked.
“How long is the trip?”
“About an hour. To Manhattan.”
“With the heat on and no direct drafts, there’s no problem. But no crowds or enclosed spaces with lots of people for at least two weeks. His immune system needs time to recover.”
“Understood.”
Gabriel signed the discharge papers. Lucía dressed Matías in the outfit Aurora had brought the day before—a blue cotton onesie that fit him a little big, because Aurora had bought a one-year size even though Matías hadn’t turned twelve months yet. Aurora had insisted the Morettis were always big, that her grandson would grow fast, and it was better to buy big than make another trip to the store.
They left room four at eleven in the morning. Lucía carrying Matías. Gabriel beside her, his hand on her back. Doña Marta behind them with the bag of clothes, the stuffed penguin, and the homemade cookies no one had eaten—now probably hard as stone, but she refused to throw them away.
The car waited at the hospital entrance. Gabriel opened the back door. Lucía got in with Matías and settled him into the baby seat someone had installed that morning on Aurora’s instructions.
Gabriel sat beside them.
Doña Marta in front with the driver.
“Where to, Mr. Moretti?”
“Home. To the Moretti mansion.”
The mansion appeared at the end of the drive with its doors open.
Lucía saw it through the car window, and Gabriel felt her tense beside him. Not fear. Something closer to vertigo—the kind that comes from stepping into a world that wasn’t yours and suddenly being told it is.
“Gabriel.”
“What?”
“It’s enormous.”
“It’s old. And enormous. And my mother’s filled it with photos of the grandkids, so it’s not as intimidating as it used to be.”
“Gabriel, I don’t belong in a place like this.”
“Lucía.”
“It’s the truth. I’m a nurse from Queens who spent the last year in a two-bedroom apartment in Quebec earning minimum wage. I don’t know how to use silver cutlery, I don’t have clothes for formal dinners, and I don’t know what to say to your father, who probably hates me for hiding a grandson from him for eleven months.”
“My father doesn’t hate you.”
“Gabriel.”
“My father mobilized three armed teams to rescue you. My father interrogated William Harrington with a baseball bat to get the address where they were holding you. My father carried Matías out of that house while bullets were flying. If that’s hatred, Lucía, then my father has a very strange way of hating.”
Lucía didn’t reply. She just kept watching the mansion draw closer, her face that of a woman processing too many things at once.
The car stopped at the steps.
The driver opened the door.
And they were all there.
Gael Moretti stood on the first step in a gray suit Aurora had forced him into because, according to her, one does not receive a new daughter-in-law in sweatpants—even on a Tuesday. His arms were crossed, that patriarch posture he’d perfected over decades, but now there was something different about it. Softer in the shoulders. More open in the jaw.
Lucía stepped out of the car with Matías in her arms.
She stood in front of Gael, unsure what to do or say. The baby between them stared up at the tall man with wide eyes, studying him with that seriousness babies reserve for faces that seem important.
Gael took a step toward her.
“Lucía.”
“Mr. Moretti.”
“Gael.”
“Mr.—”
“Gael. I’m Gael. And you’re welcome in this house. You and my grandson. Today and every day you want to be here.”
He extended his hand.
Lucía took it with her free hand. Gael squeezed it—not like a CEO, but like a father. A grandfather. A man who had spent six months learning to use his hands for something other than signing contracts and closing deals.
“Thank you, Mr… Gael. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank your son—he’s got the most Moretti jaw I’ve seen in three generations. This boy is one of ours. You can tell from a mile away.”
Aurora appeared behind Gael like an emotional torpedo that had spent eight days holding back its explosion for this exact moment.
“Where is my grandson? Where? Give him to me. I need to hold him.”
“Aurora, give the girl a moment to breathe,” Gael said.
“Breathe? I’ve been breathing for eight days in that hospital. I want to hold my grandson in my house. Is that too much to ask?”
Lucía handed Matías over with that instinctive trust young mothers feel when an older mother reaches out with the authority of someone who’s held a thousand babies and never dropped one.
Aurora gathered him against her chest, and the baby looked at her with that I don’t know who you are, but you smell nice expression babies reserve for grandmothers.
“My God,” Aurora whispered. “He’s identical to Gabriel at this age. The same eyes. The same grumpy face.”
“He’s not grumpy, Mom. That’s his normal face,” Gabriel said as he came up the steps.
“That’s your normal face, son. Which is exactly what I said.”
Lucía let out a small laugh.
Aurora looked at her, cupped her face with one hand while holding Matías with the other.
“You’re beautiful. And you’re strong. And you raised this child alone for eleven months while my son was being an idiot married to the wrong woman. That makes you the bravest woman who’s ever set foot in this house—and many brave women have set foot here, starting with me.”
Lucía opened her mouth to respond, but Aurora was already hugging her with Matías between them, and there was no speaking when Aurora Moretti was hugging you—the embrace took up all available space for communication.
Inside, the living room was full.
Alejandra waited by the fireplace with Emma in one arm and little Gael playing on the floor at her feet. Mateo stood behind her with that calm smile that was his way of being present without taking center stage.
When Lucía entered, Alejandra walked over and hugged her without needing explanation—because she was Gabriel’s other sister, and because over the past eight days she had visited the hospital six times with homemade food, clean clothes, and the quiet determination of a woman who understood what it meant to raise children under impossible circumstances.
“Sister-in-law,” Alejandra said. “Welcome. Officially welcome.”
“Sister-in-law?”
“Sister-in-law. You’re the mother of my brother’s child. That makes you my sister-in-law, paperwork or not. And let me warn you—paperwork comes late in this family, but affection comes early.”
Lucía smiled, her eyes filling with tears that were no longer from fear, but something else.
Gabriela was next.
She came out of the kitchen where she’d been helping Ana prepare something that smelled like home. When she saw Lucía, she stopped short. The two women looked at each other, carrying the weight of a friendship that had begun on a hospital bathroom floor and survived a year of distance and silence.
“Gabriela.”
“Lucía.”
“Gaby.”
“Lucía.”
Gabriela crossed the room and hugged her with the specific force of a Moretti twin who had shared things with Lucía no one else in that room knew. The secret pregnancy. The appointments with Dr. Ruiz. The vitamins. The late-night panic. The conversations in hidden cafés where two frightened women held each other together without knowing their lives would one day intertwine like this.
“You should never have gone alone,” Gabriela whispered in her ear. “You should have called me. We would’ve found another way.”
“There wasn’t another way, Gaby.”
“There’s always another way. And now you’re here. And you’re not leaving. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear.”
Alejandro appeared, limping from the study with his bandaged leg and a crutch he used more as an accessory than a necessity.
“Welcome, sister-in-law. I hope you like big houses and intense mothers-in-law, because you just won both.”
“Alejandro.”
“And I hope the kid didn’t inherit Gabriel’s light sleep, because there are two-month-old twins in this mansion who scream at four in the morning like they’re being murdered, and nobody sleeps.”
Lucía laughed. A real, full laugh that transformed her entire face.
Andrés and Andrea Valmont arrived at two in the afternoon.
They hadn’t been formally invited, but Andrea had called Aurora that morning to ask if they could stop by to meet the baby, and Aurora had said of course—and that they should stay for dinner because she was making enough lasagna to feed an army.
Andrés entered the living room with his characteristic quiet elegance, a contrast to the volcanic energy of the Morettis. Andrea followed, carrying a gift bag that, according to her, held a teddy bear the size of a three-year-old child—because the Valmonts didn’t do small gifts.
Matías lay on the living room floor on a blanket Aurora had spread near the fireplace. He was surrounded by toys that had mysteriously appeared over the past week, as if someone had bought an entire toy store and emptied it into the mansion. Little Gael and Emma sat nearby, watching him with the curiosity of two babies who had just discovered another human being their size and hadn’t yet decided whether he was friend or competition.
Three grandchildren on the floor of the Moretti living room.
Aurora watched them from the sofa with the face of a woman who had spent thirty years dreaming of exactly this image—and now that she had it, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both.
Dinner was a collective effort. Aurora directing in the kitchen. Ana contributing her cookies—this time actually eaten. Andrea making tiramisu that rivaled Aurora’s and sparked a friendly debate over which was better, settled by Gael declaring both perfect and asking for double portions.
At six in the evening, they sat down.
Thirteen people. Four generations. Three surnames. One table Aurora had decorated with white flowers and candles—because, according to her, important dinners deserved candles, even on a Tuesday.
Gael at the head. Aurora to his right. Gabriel and Lucía together. Gabriela and Alejandro together. Alejandra and Mateo together. Andrés and Andrea. Doña Marta seated between Ana and Aurora, because the three grandmothers had decided that afternoon they formed a governing committee on child-rearing and needed strategic proximity.
The three babies in high chairs beside their mothers. Matías between Lucía and Gabriel, gnawing on one of Ana’s cookies—the only solid food he’d accepted since leaving the hospital.
The conversation flowed with that noisy ease of large families who had endured months of crisis and finally had a night where no one was in danger, in a hospital, or running from anything.
Andrés was the one who said it.
He had spent the entire dinner watching Gabriel and Lucía with the gaze of a father who recognized in another man exactly what he himself had lived thirty years earlier—the look of a man who had fallen in love with a woman from another world and built a life with her anyway.
He waited until dessert was served. Waited until Aurora finished debating tiramisu texture with Andrea. Waited for the precise moment when the noise dipped just enough.
Then he said, in that voice identical to Mateo’s:
“Well. I think this calls for a proper family dinner.”
Everyone looked at him.
“But before the family dinner,” Andrés continued, glancing at Gabriel and then at Gael with a smile he’d been holding back all evening, “when’s the wedding?”
The silence lasted exactly two seconds.
Gael leaned back in his chair, that patriarch stance now used to support rather than intimidate.
“They’re right. My grandson should carry the Moretti name as soon as possible. So tomorrow is already late.”
Aurora smacked his arm.
“Gael, don’t pressure them.”
“I’m not pressuring. I’m being practical.”
“You’re being Gael. Which is the same as pressuring, but in a suit.”
“Aurora, my grandson is eleven months old. He’s spent eleven months with the surname Sandoval—which is a fine name, but not the one that corresponds to him. And the only legal way for that child to carry my name is for his father to marry his mother. It’s mathematics, Aurora. Not pressure.”
“It’s pressure disguised as mathematics.”
“It’s the same thing.”
Gabriela covered her mouth to hide a laugh. Alejandro didn’t bother and laughed openly. Alejandra nudged Mateo, who smiled with Valmont restraint.
Gabriel looked at Lucía.
Lucía looked at him.
And Gabriel saw exactly what he expected. Not panic. Not pressure. Just the genuine surprise of a woman who had just been proposed to—indirectly—at a table full of people she barely knew, unsure whether to laugh, cry, or run.
“I’m willing,” Gabriel said, looking straight at her. “I’ve been willing for a year. Even before I knew Matías existed, I was willing. But it’s not my decision. It’s yours. You decide if we get married or not. And if you say no, I’ll wait as long as it takes. And if you say yes, we can get married tomorrow if you want. But you decide, Lucía. No one else.”
Lucía met his gaze, her honey-colored eyes glowing in the candlelight Aurora had insisted on.
“Gabriel.”
“What?”
“Your father just said tomorrow is already late.”
“My father says a lot of things.”
“And what do you say?”
“I say I love you. I love our son. And I want to spend the rest of my life waking up next to both of you. But the when and how—that’s up to you. Because you’ve spent a year making decisions alone, and it’s time someone asks what you want instead of deciding for you.”
Lucía smiled.
That smile Gabriel had kept in a crumpled photo in his wallet for over a year—now right in front of him, alive.
“Then yes,” Lucía said.
“Yes?”
“Yes, Gabriel. But not tomorrow. Give me at least a month to find a decent dress. Can you wait a month?”
“I can wait as long as it takes.”
“A month.”
“A month.”
“Then a month.”
Aurora started crying. Doña Marta started crying. Ana started crying. Andrea discreetly dabbed a tear with her napkin. Gabriela squeezed Alejandro’s hand under the table. Alejandra whispered something to Mateo that made him smile with damp eyes.
Gael raised his glass.
“To family. It took its time coming together, but now that it has, nothing will tear it apart.”
Thirteen glasses were raised.
And Matías, from his high chair, slammed Ana’s cookie onto the table, scattering crumbs across Aurora’s pristine white tablecloth—probably worth more than the apartment in Quebec where Lucía had lived the past year.
Aurora looked at the crumbs.
Looked at Matías.
And laughed.
“He’s a Moretti. Definitely a Moretti.”