“No, she won’t, Santiago. And you’ll have to keep choosing, and I’m just afraid the day will come when you choose her, and I’m back in my room or banished to wherever, and I don’t think I can survive that. Especially now that there’s more at stake than just me and you.” My throat tightens as I say the words, but I swallow them down.

“Ivy—”

I stand. “I’m ready.”

15

Ivy

I realize my father was in the same building as me when I was brought here after the aspirin incident. He was just a few floors above me kept behind secured doors not accessible by anyone without a reason for being there and with an additional guard at his door.

“He was here all along?”

Santiago nods as he guides me down to the last room.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Would you have?”

“I haven’t lied to you, Ivy. Not once.”

Is that true? I’m taken aback. Confused.

We stop a few feet from the door, and he turns to face me, backing me into the wall. “Like I told your sister, you may not like what I have to say, but I won’t lie to you.”

He dips his head down, so his forehead is touching mine. His eyes travel to the pendant hanging at the hollow between my collarbones, and he touches it, then takes my left hand to finger the rings there, the salt and pepper engagement ring, the wedding band. He shifts his gaze back to mine.

“I am trying, Ivy.”

I reach up, I can’t help it, but I stop myself before I touch his face. Instead, I smooth his shirt down—he changed before we left for the hospital, showering and putting on fresh clothes—and when I do, I realize my hand is resting over his heart, and for a moment, I keep it there and just feel it beat.

He closes his hand over mine.

“I know you are,” I say and feel a little guilty because right now, I’m the one with the agenda. I’m the one lying because omission is a lie, and I am here not only to see my father, to hug him, to know he’s okay but also to ask him about what Mercedes said. To find out what it is they think he did that is so terrible that Santiago would do what he’s done. The thing that would leave him incapable of loving me.

He nods and takes my hand as we step in front of the door. The guard nods his greeting and opens it, and I see him. My father. And for as frail as he looks when the nurse turns his wheelchair around and as different from the tall, commanding man I remember before the coma, I am relieved.

“Daddy!”