My mom told me he didn’t want to come back to Minnesota. Mercedes’s mom told her they were better off without him. They both told us he didn’t have time for children. But those things weren’t the whole truth. He looks up. His eyes are wet, and I feel an ache deep in my heart. It sinks, heavy. And I can tell that the things he never said—the letters he never sent, the emails he never wrote, the poem he never shared—that wasn’t the whole truth, either. I can see in his eyes that he wanted to see us, to know us. If you only tell half the story, is that the same as a lie? My mom and Mercedes’s mom told us what they thought was best, but is it ever best to tell only part of the story?

“We should go.” He smiles a little sadly and stands up. As if that’s the end. He slings his bag over his shoulder and stacks our dishes on a tray.

“But it doesn’t have to be like that,” I protest. We follow him as he puts the tray on the conveyor belt that carries the dirty dishes away, out of sight. “You’re here now. We can get to know you.” I point at Mercedes. “I mean, Mercedes and I just met. And now we’re, like, sisters.”

“Well, half sisters,” Mercedes clarifies.

“Sisters,” Francisco Gómez repeats. “Hermanas. Do you know that’s how you say ‘sisters’ in Spanish?”

“Err-mah-nahs,” we repeat. In unison.

“Buen hecho,” he says. “Good job.”

We walk outside. The sun is beginning to peek through the fog. On the steps of the student union, he puts an arm around each of us.

“Ay, mis estrellitas,” he says.

And somehow I know right then that we’ll never know everything. That some things will stay a mystery. Mercedes and I lock eyes as he squeezes us. We walk awkwardly, the three of us like an unsteady creature trying to find its way.

In the parking lot, Francisco Gómez opens the passenger door of his little green car. He’s going to drive us home to Santa Cruz. First to my house. I’m not sure what we will tell my mom, what story we’ll give her.

There’s only one seat in front and there are two of us, so Mercedes and I decide to sit in the back seat together. “I feel like a taxi driver!” he says, laughing. He starts the car and opens his window. He inhales deeply. “I love the smell of the woods here in California. It reminds me of the mountains outside Quito, Ecuador.” He rolls out of the parking lot, turning the same direction as the protesters had gone.