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“Benigno . . . it is time I told you.” “Told me what?” “How beautiful you are.” I shook my head. “Tell me later.” “No, now.”
“When I look at you . . . I see the earthen reefs where I played as a child,” he murmured between strained breaths. “When you hold me . . . I feel the shallows warm around me. I have collected your smiles, your laughter, your songs like precious pearls. When I was alone, I held them close”—his voice caught in his throat—“to guard against my nightmares.”
“Your San Cristóbal?” I nodded. “You’re going to live. This way, the patron saint of travelers will always be with you,” I said. “And so will I.”
It took all I had not to do the same. I wanted them to know everything. How much I loved and admired them. How they’d become my family when I thought my only family had died of tuberculosis in Puerto Rico. Between the heat and humidity and terror that had crowded out the air in my lungs, my throat had become too small a gap for all my feelings to pass through at once.
“We will meet again,” added the madam, “in this life, or the next.”
“I don’t care if it’s a postcard, a telegram, or a goddamned message in a bottle, you find a way to tell me you two made it out alive. And Benny . . .” His large hand wrapped around my bicep and squeezed. “I believe you can lift two thousand pounds.”
“Wish I could’ve h-healed you like she healed m-me, Río. She saved my life w-when she told me to save yours.”
“I’ll f-find you again,” I whispered through tears. “Steal a boat from the pier every night if I h-have to. Río—you gotta let go.”
Why did new beginnings feel like the end of everything?
“Wait!” Mary’s hand flew out to grab Río’s wrist. “Where are you taking him?” Frothy waves rushed in around us. “Home.”
Though I’d had Río right as the person fate had bonded me to, I’d had everything else wrong. All this time. I’d thought I was bringing him home.
Are you my captor or my savior? I ask.
Son of Neptune, I answer. I am your harmony.
Courage is a weight heavier than anything I’ve ever lifted, and you only had to watch Benny disappear behind that wall of flames to realize he had more of it than most people have need to carry for themselves.
This book is for them too; their unconditional acceptance of what makes people different is a trait I pray they never lose, and if, like Benny, life’s trials dampen their sense of inherent worthiness, I hope this story gives them a road map back to themselves.
