Chapter 4
Alex had heard her laugh politely for four years. This was different. Her whole face softened. For the first time, he wondered who Lucia Herrera was when she was not making everyone else’s life easier.
Two months later, Lucia entered his office holding Sofi’s drawing. The red crayon still covered the figure outside the house.
“I thought you should see this,” she said.
Alex studied the picture. “Who are the three people?”
Lucia hesitated. “She drew versions of this for almost a year. I asked her once who they were. She said they were you, her, and me.”
The office became quiet.
Alex traced one of the stick figures with his finger. “Why would she draw me?”
“She said you had sad eyes. She said you were the only adult who listened to her pictures.”
“Have dinner with me,” he said.
Lucia stiffened. “Not like that,” he added quickly. “Unless you want it to be. I’ve realized I’ve known you for four years and I know nothing about you.”
“You know I clean your house.”
“I know what you do. I don’t know who you are.”
They ate in the staff kitchen because Lucia refused the formal dining room. Sofi fell asleep across two chairs before dessert. The conversation lasted until midnight.
Lucia told him she had grown up in San Antonio, moved to New York at twenty-one, and been abandoned by Sofi’s father before the baby was born. She had completed a hospitality certificate while pregnant and worked double shifts until she could afford childcare. Before motherhood had reorganized her life, she had dreamed of becoming a landscape architect.
“I used to draw gardens,” she said. “Not houses. The spaces around them.”
“Why did you stop?”
May you like
“Gardens don’t pay rent before they exist.”
Alex smiled at the sadness in her voice. It was a familiar kind of sadness — the weight of a dream deferred not by failure, but by survival.
