Chapter 68
Chapter 68
Mira’s POV
I didn’t sleep.
Not even close.
I lay on Zara’s couch staring at the ceiling while she sat cross legged on the floor beside me eating crackers she’d found somewhere, both of us processing what had just happened in the specific way women processed things at midnight— in circles, loudly, with snacks.
“Okay but how does he know?” Zara questioned, crunching. “Like what does he actually have?”
“He said he’s still putting pieces together.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.”
“Mira.” She turned to look at me fully. “Your mother. Alive. Do you understand the magnitude of what I’m sitting with right now? I need more crackers.”
“Zara.”
“I’m stress eating, let me stress eat.” She reached into the box. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“That’s not an answer either.”
“Well it’s the only one I have.”
She was quiet for a moment, which for Zara was the emotional equivalent of screaming.
“Do you believe him?” she asked quietly.
I stared at the ceiling.
That was the question, wasn’t it? The one I’d been turning over since he walked out that door with his hands still warm on my face and his eyes doing that thing that made rational thought significantly harder than it needed to be.
Did I believe him?
“He had no reason to lie about that specifically,” I said finally.
“He had no reason to read a file about your life either but here we are,” Zara replied pointedly.
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“His father built the file, Zara. He didn’t commission it.”
She gave me a long look over her cracker box. “You’re defending him.”
“I’m being objective.”
“You’re being objective at midnight on my living room floor about the man who didn’t answer your calls for two weeks while his arranged fiancée redecorated his house.” She tilted her head. “Very objective.”
“Can you just—” I pressed my fingers against my eyes. “Can you be normal for five minutes?”
“Baby, normal left the building when he said your dead mother is alive,” she replied pleasantly. “We are well past normal. Normal is a distant memory. Normal is—”
“Zara.”
“Right. Five minutes.” She mimed zipping her mouth. Then immediately unzipped it. “I just need to say one more thing.”
“Obviously.” I rolled my eyes.
“If your mother is actually alive,” she said, her voice dropping into something genuine, “that changes everything. Your treatment. The surgery. Everything.”
I looked at her.
She looked back.
“You can’t keep doing this alone,” she said softly. “The ‘just hold on’ thing. Mira it’s not—” She stopped, swallowed. “Tell me how bad it actually is. Not the version you give me to stop me worrying. The real one.”
The room went quiet.
I thought about the bathroom floor three nights ago. The four minutes. Dr. Osei’s voice saying things his face was too controlled to fully say.
“It’s getting worse,” I admitted.
“How much worse?”
“Faster than they expected.”
Zara put the crackers down.
That alone told me everything about how she’d received that information. Zara didn’t voluntarily put food down.
“There’s a surgeon,” I continued, because I’d started now and stopping felt worse. “Dr. Harrington in Switzerland. His survival rate is seventy one percent. The local option is thirty four.”
“Thirty four?” she repeated quietly.
“Which is why I’ve been waiting.”
“How long have you been waiting for this Swiss guy?”
“Four months on his list.”
“And?”
I exhaled slowly. “He has a slot. In six weeks.”
Zara stared at me.
“SIX WEEKS?” The volume returned with force. “Mira you have a slot and you’re lying on my couch eating nothing and stress watching cooking programmes—”
“I don’t have the money yet,” I said quietly.
Silence cut between us for a second.
“How much?” she demanded.
I told her.
She said a word that would have made her mother faint.
“I’m working on it,” I said quickly. “I’m close. I just need a little more time.”
“A little more time,” Zara repeated slowly, and something in her voice shifted into something I’d never heard from her before, a quiet, controlled fury that was somehow more frightening than her loud version.
“Mira Martinez, you have been saying that for months. You have six weeks. Six. And you’re sitting here—”
“What do you want me to do?” I snapped, sitting up too fast again, ignoring the flash of protest in my chest.
“Tell Alejandro? Tell Ace? Walk up to someone and say hi, my heart is failing, please save me? I don’t do that. You know I don’t do that.”
“I know,” she replied. “And it’s going to kill you.”
The words landed in the room and neither of us said anything for a long moment.
“Not if I get to Switzerland,” I said finally.
“And if you don’t?”
I didn’t answer.
Zara looked at me for a long hard second. Then she reached over and grabbed my hand holding it with both of hers and didn’t say anything else, which was the most frightening thing she’d done all evening because Zara always had something to say.
My phone buzzed on the cushion beside me.
We both looked at it.
It was Ace.
Ace: You awake?
I stared at the message. Then at Zara.
She read my face the way she always did, faster than I could arrange it into something neutral.
“He’s been showing up a lot,” she said carefully.
“He’s been kind,” I replied.
“Mira.” Her voice carried something delicate in it. “Be careful.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?” She glanced at the phone. “Because you’ve got one man who just showed up at our door telling you your dead mother is alive and another one texting you at midnight, and your heart—the physical one— is already under enough strain without adding the metaphorical version to it.”
I looked at her.
“That was almost poetic,” I said.
“I have my moments.” She stood up, tucking her crackers under her arm with her dignity fully intact.
“Answer him or don’t. But figure out what you actually want before somebody gets hurt.” She paused at the hallway. “Specifically you. I mean specifically you getting hurt.”
She disappeared into her room.
I sat alone in the dark with my phone in my hand.
Ace’s message still waiting.
I thought about Alejandro’s hands on my face.
I thought about Ace’s shoulder against mine at the waterfront, the paper cone of warm nuts, stubbornly alive.
I thought about Switzerland and six weeks and thirty four percent and the bathroom floor.
I typed back slowly.
Me: Still awake. Come over tomorrow?
His reply was immediate.
Ace: Already planned on it.
I put the phone down and lay back pressing my hand flat against my chest where the ache hummed its constant quiet reminder.
Six weeks, I thought.
Find a way.
But somewhere underneath that, quieter and more dangerous the question kept lingering.
Which one of them is worth staying for?