"Rosa de Medianoche," Carmen said. "I still have the box it came in. Empty. I kept the bottle through three apartments and one shelter and the night I almost sold it and didn't. It smelled like you forgiving me in advance for things I had not yet done."
"I did not forgive you in advance," Elena said. "I loved you. That is different."
"I know."
Elena wrapped her hands around her own mug. "Tell me about Papa. All of it. No more careful versions."
So Carmen told her. She told her about the call from the hospital social worker who had found Carmen's name on an old emergency contact form Papa had never updated. She told her about walking into the cardiac unit smelling of fear and hand sanitizer. She told her about Papa's face when he saw her—surprise, then tears, then a joke about how dying made a man sentimental. She told her about the numbers on the monitors and the way Papa's voice got tired after twenty minutes and the way he kept asking for Elena as if Elena were a country he needed a visa to enter.
"I asked Marco for rides because my license is still suspended from the old DUI," Carmen said. "And because I knew if I called you first, you would hear my voice and hang up before I could say his name. Marco was the bridge I did not deserve and desperately needed."
Elena listened. She felt anger and grief and a terrible, reluctant gratitude braided so tightly she could not pull them apart. She thought of Marco in the burgundy sweatshirt closing the laptop. She thought of Sofia in the pink cardigan. She thought of her father asking whether Sofia still liked dinosaurs.