mateo gets a playhouse pt. 3
Mia nestled closer against Luisa’s chest as she talked. She liked to think she was explaining things, but it felt like Jane wasn’t even listening to her. So instead, it ended up feeling like she was talking to empty air, talking just to hear herself talk, or talking to some imaginary person who wasn’t really there to begin with.
Scratch that. Talking to Jane didn’t feel like talking to Carla at all. Carla had actually listened and talked with her and provided her with another source of conversation. Jane just sat on her high throne and passed judgment. Not even right judgment.
Then again, if someone had kidnapped Mia within only a few hours of her birth, there wasn’t much that could have been done to make her like them again, no matter what their relation to Rafael or Rose or anyone else in their family. That said, if someone had tried to steal Mia, she wouldn’t have had to worry about it. Rose would have found them. Rose would have killed them. Then she probably would have had to worry about it. More like she would have to worry about Rose in jail.
—which maybe explained why Rafael hated Rose so much.
Maybe it was a good thing that Rose had stayed in the car.
Actually, Luisa would probably have forgiven them at some point. That was just the sort of person she was. She’d forgiven Rafael for lying about her inheritance (Rose hadn’t). She’d forgiven him for throwing Rose in jail (Rose hadn’t). She’d forgiven him for lying to her about his—
Okay, that one still bothered her. A lot. But she forgave him a lot of things and she had forgiven him that, even if it still bothered her. She wasn’t going to bring it up (Rose probably would).
“So what you’re saying,” Jane finally said, when Luisa had said all she could say – okay, not all she could say but there was a certain point in which talking to a stone wall felt a little useless, “is that you would have come up this weekend anyway. That it’s our fault for not being home to stop you.”
Luisa sighed. “No.” That wasn’t what she said at all. “It’s not anyone’s fault for not being here.” She bit her lower lip. “I told her we should have just left.”
“Then why didn’t you?” Jane asked, her eyes narrowing. “You knew we wouldn’t want Rose—”
“Petra said it was fine!” Luisa tried to keep her voice down. She didn’t do a great job of it because Mia scrunched up her face and squirmed in her arms before settling again. It was instinct by now to brush a hand through Mia’s hair. Where it had been brown before, when Jane had visited, it had started to brighten up again and return to the red it had been when she was first born. She really was Rose’s daughter just as much as she was hers, and Luisa couldn’t help but be happy that their daughter had taken Rose’s hair. And her freckles. She loved her freckles.
Mia relaxed her more than Rose did anymore. Not that Rose didn’t. Just that Mia was so much better at it.
Luisa took a deep breath and met Jane’s eyes. “You haven’t been around Petra and Rose together. It’s kind of impossible to tell them no. It’s worse when JR wants to—”
“It shouldn’t matter what anyone else says or anyone else thinks! You shouldn’t be making modifications to our house or our yard without our permission!”
There was movement in the backyard. Luisa glanced over Jane’s shoulder – past her – to where she could see Rose climbing onto the huge tree fortress. Yeah, that was great, Rose. You were supposed to stay in the car. Why she thought that she would stay there—
“Luisa?” Jane started to glance over her shoulder. “What are you—?”
“Nothing!” Luisa raised one hand and waved it. Rose made it behind one of the tree fort’s walls with her box full of stuff for Mateo before Jane could see anything. “There’s nothing. There was a squirrel. I’m easily distractible. That’s all.” She grinned as Jane turned to face her again. “And you’re right. We shouldn’t have.”
But she would have been fine if Petra had— she could hear Rose start to say in her head.
And the thing was that Rose was right.
She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want the argument. She didn’t want to be pushing what she knew against what Jane wanted, especially in the comfort of her own house.
But she had been learning assertiveness from Petra and from JR and even a little bit from Rose (although she listened less to Rose because most of her suggestions ended up being, You should kill them, with a little wink and a little smile and her tongue sticking out just over one of her canines as though she were an anime character and half of the time Rose wasn’t being serious) so she said it.
She did.
She regretted it as soon as she said it but she said it anyway.
“If Petra said she’d gotten personal construction workers to build it for you, you wouldn’t have minded.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”
Luisa winced. But she repeated it again anyway. “If Petra said she’d gotten personal construction workers to build it for you, you wouldn’t—”
“But she didn’t get personal—” Jane spluttered. “She didn’t—” Her eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t matter because that’s not what happened at all.”
Luisa’s eyes flicked over to where Rose was glancing through one of the tree fort windows at her. Her face contorted into one of concern, and Luisa tried to give her a little smile. She couldn’t give her a thumbs up or Jane would see that.
Then Rose’s eyes widened, and Mateo came sprinting over the fence into his backyard, jumping up the tree fort, and toppling into Rose’s arms.
“What was that?” Jane asked, and in the few seconds it took for her to turn and face her, Rose had moved both herself and Mateo out of view of her window. Jane saw nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing for her to see anyway. She sighed and turned back. “I thought I heard something.”
“Here.” Luisa moved over to where Jane was sitting – because it would be easier to not react to Rose and Mateo if she couldn’t see them – and held Mia out to her. “Would you like to meet her?” she asked. “You didn’t really get to see her much when you came to visit us.”
Jane looked at Luisa, almost as though she were avoiding Mia. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” Luisa asked. It didn’t seem like such a bad idea to her.
Jane opened her mouth as though to say something and then shook her head. “Never mind. I’d love to see her.”