“You wrote. I answered. And now I’ve been forced to keep this secret from Raul for over a month. What gives?” Sam launched the conversation straight to the only point she cared about.
“I never asked you to keep it a secret from him. In fact, I was hoping you might tell him so I might see him.”
So maybe Gabriel wasn’t fond of secrets either. At least they had that in common.
“Why haven’t you contacted your son before now?”
Gabriel considered her question far too long for Sam’s liking. “I don’t want to badmouth his mother, but she had forbade it.”
Of course he would throw blame on a woman who was too dead to defend herself, and it was a terrible excuse at that.
“Raul is a grown man, and his mother passed away. So try again, Mr. Smothers.”
“Lilith… is gone?” Gabriel grabbed the metal edge of the cheap plastic table dividing him and Sam. It shifted on crooked legs as Sam propped her elbows on it to steady it.
“Yes, she passed in 1969. I don’t know the details, since Raul doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Wow…” he exhaled pensively. “Over two years she’s been gone and I never knew. I’m sorry…”
“Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Raul.”
“I’ve wanted to! Boy, how I wanted to. I just didn’t know how.”
“Easy. The same way you contacted me.”
Sam wasn’t buying Gabriel’s remorseful act. A real father didn’t just disappear on his child. A real father stuck by until the end… even if that end was a bitter retreat into death. It was the last thing her own dad had taught her.
“You don’t understand, Sam. I have been watching Raul from afar for years. Did you know I clipped every single one of his articles since he became a journalist? But then suddenly they stopped, and I worried something had happened to him. Every day I searched the obituaries in a panic, worrying I would find his name. But nothing.” He sighed, a mixture of relief and sadness.
“How did you find him then? All the way in Pittsburgh, no less.”
“One day I couldn’t stand another day of not knowing. So I drove down to the Library of Congress in Washington DC and searched the phone book records of every single state until I found Raul’s name. Luckily there aren’t more than a handful of Raul Smothers in the country. It took showing up at the wrong residence a couple times until I finally found my son. So, that’s how I found out he had moved to Pittsburgh.”
“Why didn’t you introduce yourself then?”
“I tried. Once. Maybe you remember it? I showed up at the apartment listed in the directory and planned to introduce myself, but I saw him with you on the street. I instantly recognized him, you know. And for the first time in his life, he looked genuinely happy. You see, he wasn’t a happy child, I’m afraid. But as a man, with you, he finally was. So I decided to go home and let him live his life the way he deserved.”
“I was there?” Sam couldn’t pull up this memory, no matter how hard she tried.
“You sure were. I never forget a face.”
“You could have said something.”
“I did—don’t you remember? It was last fall. You two were dancing on the sidewalk.” Gabriel’s gaze clouded as if he was caught in the past. “Anyway, having a father resurface after all these years… I knew it would be painful for him. I figured it was best if I didn’t stick around and disrupt everything.”
“Oh, you’re the man who told us we made a beautiful couple, aren’t you?” Sam recalled the day a stranger had approached them on the street. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now it all made sense.
“Yes, that was me. While I was admiring you two, I overheard you both talking about your magazine column, so I grabbed a copy before I left to drive home. But I must say, I was genuinely inspired by your words. I truly wanted to support your efforts, even if it didn’t lead me to Raul.”
“For someone who abandoned his wife, I find it ironic you want to support women’s rights. Is this an attempt at redemption? Because I can’t offer you that.”
“No, you have it all wrong, Sam. I never left Lilith. She left me.”
Sam almost found that laughable, considering single motherhood was darn near impossible in a world where women couldn’t open up a bank account, purchase a house, or get a decent-paying job. When pressed hard enough, sure, an abused wife might leave. But leaving a perfectly good man? Unheard of.
“It wasn’t her fault, though. She was depressed. One doctor I had taken her to told me she had hysteria, but he couldn’t offer any help. They just kept telling her it was temporary, that eventually she needed to settle into life in order to be a good wife and mother. Then one day I came home from work and she was gone. Without a trace. When I finally did track her down months later, she demanded that I leave her and Raul alone—that she could never be happy with me and for the good of our son I needed to stay away.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. But if it’s any consolation, I don’t think she was any happier without you.”
“Why do you think Raul was such a sad child? His heart is so big that he tries to siphon all the sadness out of the people he loves, but that only ends up spreading it more. I’m just glad he wasn’t afflicted for life with it like she was.”
It explained why Lilith had seemed so cruel. Sam had misjudged her terribly as a heartless mother when the woman’s heart was struggling so hard just to beat.
“Did you ever start a new family?”
Raul had confessed that fear once to her as the driving force that kept him away from searching for his father.
“Not exactly. I never remarried, but I adopted a boy who had been abandoned by his parents. I always wanted a brother growing up, and when Raul was little he used to want one too. Maybe he can meet his brother someday…”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Meeting an estranged father and a brother? Sam couldn’t begin to guess how Raul would feel about all of this when she told him. If she told him. He had been so adamant about Sam leaving it alone, but how could she possibly keep all of this from him?
“I brought something for you to give Raul.” Gabriel rummaged through a leather briefcase that sat at his feet, and he pulled out a worn book. He slid it across the table at Sam. “This is his mother’s journal. She left it behind when she took off. I was hoping you might be willing to pass it along to Raul so he could understand better what his mother had gone through. I don’t want him hating her. And while I’m sure he hates me and I can’t change that fact, I want him to at least understand why I had to stay away.”
Sam held the diary to her chest. “I’ll give him this, but I also think you should tell him yourself. I don’t want to be the messenger.”
Gabriel heaved a long “uhhh,” glancing away. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’m pretty sure he will never forgive me.”
