“Even though it’s how we met?”
“What good is it if it lets us meet but won’t let us stay?”
“I agree,” I say. “Besides, she wasn’t in charge at that time anyway. It doesn’t count.”
She plops down on the couch beside me and leans her head against my shoulder. I can feel her whole weight on me, and I know she’s putting it in my hands. I am only too eager to handle it for her, I just hope I know how to get us out of it.
“What the hell am I going to do?” she asks, voice tired now.
“You’re going to live here illegally until January. Then you’ll go to school.”
“What?”
“It’s the only way. But it’s not so hard, Vera. You’ll see.”
She sits up and eyes me incredulously. “It’s not so hard? How do you know? Do you normally harbor illegal immigrants?”
I give her a half-smile. “I would if they all looked like you.”
“This isn’t funny.”
I sigh. “No, it’s not. But honestly, it’s our best chance. It will have to do, anyway. Even if you go and find another job and convince them to sponsor you, that will take some time, so it will have to be this way. It just has to.”
“And what were you talking about with the whole school thing?”
“Your astronomy degree. There is no reason why you can’t finish it at the universities here.”
“Uh, yes there is. It’s called money. I don’t have that.”
“But I do.”
“Mateo, we’ve been over this. I don’t want you to pay for me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “It’s either that or you’ll continue living in fear of being found out, or you leave. We don’t have much of a choice here, Vera. We don’t. I wish we did. I wish this was easier.”
She chews on her lip for a few beats, then stares at the ground. “Common law. We’re common law, we’ve been living together for at least six months. Can we do something through that? In Canada it’s a legally binding thing.”
“I doubt in Canada that people can get extended visas or permits due to shacking up with someone. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be much tragedy in overseas romances, would there?”
“Tragedy?” she asks.
“Let’s just say the path we chose, out of all paths, isn’t the easiest one.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
I glance at her. “Sherlock Holmes?”
She give me a wry but tired smile. “Another expression.”
“Of course.” I clasp my hands together and close my eyes.
After a thick moment she says, “Please don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
I only grunt in response.
“It’s just a lot of money. A lot of money. Fifteen thousand euros for one year. I could never carry that kind of guilt on me.”
“You carry too much guilt on you as it is,” I tell her, eyes still closed.
“Nothing more than I deserve.”
My eyes fly open and I look at her sharply. “Vera. Stop it. You don’t deserve anything but happiness. Get it out of your silly head that this is something you’re owed. It’s not. You never did anything wrong. You were never the one who was married.”
She swallows and looks away. “I am a homewrecker,” she says quietly. “I’m the bad guy.”
“No,” I say, my voice hard. I spear my words. “I am the bad guy. That will never change. But you, you are anything but. You are pure and wonderful and warm and sweet and—“
“A whore.”
“Vera,” I say, anger and frustration rising through me at lightning speed. I grab her hand. “Don’t you dare ever call yourself that. You are not a homewrecker. You are not a whore. You don’t deserve to get fired. You don’t deserve to leave. You don’t even deserve me, but I’m here now, and I’m going to try my hardest to get us out of this. We can be okay if only you’d just let me. Please, Estrella, let me try. This is as much for me as it is for you.” I lift her hand to my lips and kiss her knuckles. “I can’t lose you. I won’t.”
She peers at me intensely, perhaps trying to match my own expression, perhaps searching for the truth. “You won’t.”
“Then let me try.”
She nods slowly. “Okay.”
I break into a grin. Suddenly nothing seems impossible. “Monday then, you go into Las Palabras, and you leave making them regret this. Take your lipsticks, all your stuff. Never look back. Hold your head up high like the star that you are. Then we’ll start taking a look at the school stuff, exactly what we need.”
She fidgets. “And you’re sure that this will be okay, me staying here illegally?”
“Vera. They will have to step over my dead body to take you away,” I say. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to harbor an alien. Though, when I was young, of course it was an actual alien. You know, like E.T., yes?”
“That’s so dated,” she says.
I cock my head thoughtfully. “Well, I am an old man.”
Her face falls and she quickly averts her eyes. “I’m really sorry about that.”
“I know.”
She slides her cool fingertips across the stubble on my cheeks, on my jaw, like she’s feeling me for the first time. “You are not old. You are perfect. More than that, you are perfect for me. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, want you any other way than just the way you are now.”
“An old man?”
She raises her brow in impatience. “A beautiful man.”
I think I can live with that.
Chapter Six
The next Wednesday afternoon, I end up working late because Warren had to fly back to the UK for a family emergency. It wouldn’t normally be a big deal except that Wednesday is the day I have Chloe Ann, and while Pedro has permitted me to leave early so far—I am just an observer after all—today he does not. I’m tempted to call Isabel and tell her I can’t make it, but I am caught up in the idea that Isabel may use that against me. She may think of me as unreliable and not a good father, even though I try everything in my power to be the opposite of that.
Still, it’s something I consider until Vera tells me not to worry about it, that she’ll handle it. Chloe Ann has a sort of summer day camp on Wednesday mornings so that Isabel can have the entire day off and Vera has come with me to this camp to pick her up at noon on numerous occasions. She’s even driven there once or twice, so I have no worries about her wielding the SUV through Madrid’s bottleneck traffic and volatile drivers.