A sob broke out of me, a violent, ugly thing I’d been suppressing for six weeks. I pressed the phone to my ear, desperate to be closer to her voice.
“You’re angry, aren’t you?” Marina’s voice chuckled softly, a ghost of a sound. “You’re probably standing in her room right now, wondering how that bracelet got there. Well, don’t go calling a priest just yet. I made a deal with your mother. She’s been my co-conspirator. I gave her the box and the phone. I told her exactly when to put that bracelet on her—six weeks after she was born. I told her that by six weeks, you’d be at your breaking point. I told her to set the alarm and tuck the phone away when she came over to ‘help’ this evening.”
I remembered my mother’s face earlier that day. She had been unusually quiet, lingering in the nursery longer than usual before saying goodnight. She hadn’t been just helping; she had been fulfilling a dead woman’s final command.
“Ignacio,” the voice became firm, the tone she used when she was about to tell me something I didn’t want to hear but needed to know. “April didn’t take me away from you. I gave myself to her. It was a gift, not a robbery. If you hate her, you’re hating the best part of me. You’re hating the choice I made. Every time she cries, she isn’t trying to hurt you. She’s calling for us. And since I can’t answer, you have to answer twice as loud.”
The recording shifted. There was a moment of silence, then the sound of a deep breath. “She has your temper, I bet. And my chin. Please, Ignacio. Look at her. Really look at her. Don’t let her grow up thinking she is a shadow. Let her be the light.”
The audio file ended with a soft, “Te amo, Papi. Take care of our girl.”
The silence that followed was deafening. I stayed on my knees, my forehead resting against the railing of the crib. The rage that had been my only companion for two months began to dissolve, replaced by a crushing, overwhelming weight of guilt. I had spent sixty days treating a miracle like a curse.
I looked up. April was reaching out, her tiny fingers opening and closing in the air. She wasn’t crying anymore. She was making a small, soft cooing sound.
“April,” I whispered. The name felt strange on my tongue, like a key turning in a rusted lock. “April.”
