“Julia practically confirmed Jacobo’s paternity to me. Also, could you imagine your father hiding something so serious?”
“He’d have had to really fool me.” Daniela took another sip of beer. The tightness in her chest disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Dad is quieter than usual, sure, even gloomy, but he’s relaxed. If it were his son, he’d be on edge.”
“And the person who seems nervous is my father, yes? Then . . . when will we announce what we know?”
Daniela thought about her answer. “For the moment, we won’t say anything at home. Before that, I’d like to talk to Laha.”
During the first few months of 2004, as Jacobo helped Carmen recover and Clarence buried her head in work, Daniela made several trips to Madrid, traveling there every three or four weeks. Because she lived in an isolated area, it was easier to use a job refresher course as an excuse. Clarence could not understand how everyone else—especially her uncle Kilian—had not picked up on the change in her cousin. How did they do it with the distances involved? The only thing she could think of was that Laha was making a stopover in Madrid every time he went from California to Bioko and vice versa.
After each weekend away, Daniela arrived home exhausted but radiant. Clarence thought, with envy, that if Laha was half as good a lover as Iniko, Daniela had reason to be happy. Still, she was concerned. So many trips could mean only one thing: that Daniela and Laha had successfully gone beyond the honeymoon phase of the relationship and showed no signs of wearing out. They wanted to learn every detail of each other’s pasts, and think about living together for the rest of their lives.
Far from Pasolobino, what Daniela and Laha still did not know was how, where, and when.
The situation was not easy; Bioko, California, and Pasolobino formed a huge geographical triangle. One of the two would have to consider following the other around the world. Either Laha moved to Spain or Daniela would be between California and Bioko. Laha argued that the big advantage of being a nurse was that she could work anywhere. And in Guinea, she would have the opportunity of really making a difference, even if she earned less. Bisila would be a great help in placing her. What a coincidence that the two most important women in his life were nurses!
But Daniela was less worried about her work situation. For one, she had yet to confess to Laha her suspicions about his identity. She was being very selfish, but she was afraid that the news would threaten their closeness. And she had not dared talk to her father.
She had always been so close to Kilian that she was finding it very difficult not to tell him how happy she felt with Laha. She and her father had never lived apart from each other; even in college, she stayed with him on weekends. Jacobo, Carmen, and Clarence were close family, but the relationship between Kilian and Daniela was special, as if they really only had each other. How was she going to tell him that she wanted to fly far away, just when he most needed her?
At the speed her relationship with Laha was going, she would have to choose sooner rather than later. But she found herself fighting with her practical side. A love story with such a different man, a man a few years older than she, and with whom she could share genes, frankly, had never been part of her plans.
And Laha’s touch and delightful obsession with nibbling at her breasts was not helping her find the right path.
“You’re very quiet, Daniela,” said Laha. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I was thinking about my father,” she answered, sitting up against the bed’s headboard. “I will have to tell him!”
Laha lay on his side beside her as she wrapped her arms around her knees, deep in thought.
“Do you think he’ll care about the color of my skin?”
Daniela turned toward him, shocked. “Not for one moment have I ever thought anything like that!”
Laha stroked her foot. “This is something completely new in the House of Rabaltué.”
Daniela’s eyes blazed in fury. “Well, it’s about time someone disrupted the historic peace of my house!” She sighed before continuing. “It’s possible that it will give Uncle Jacobo a fit . . . a black in the family!” She winced. A black who could also be his son. “But my father is different. He will respect my decision above all.”
“Then what’s worrying you?”
Daniela sighed deeply. “Any decision we make to live together means leaving him alone in Pasolobino.” She picked up Laha’s shirt, put it over her shoulders, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Maybe it’s too soon to tell him. We’ve known each other for only three months.”
“It’s enough time for me.” Laha knelt behind her and hugged her. “There is a popular African proverb that says no matter how early you rise, your destiny will have risen before you.”
She leaned back against his chest and closed her eyes.
That night, in the Madrid hotel, she found it nearly impossible to sleep. In her mind, she ran through her childhood, her father, and a mother she recognized only from photos. She also saw Clarence, Carmen, and Jacobo. She thought of her friends, neighbors, colleagues, and of people she greeted every day on her way to work or when out shopping. She thought of how lucky she had been growing up.
Like Clarence, she was a part of the fields scored by streams, tarns, and glacial lakes; of the woods of black pine, ash, walnut, oak, and rowan; and of the meadows dotted with wildflowers in spring, with the smell of freshly cut hay in summer, with the fire colors of autumn, and with the solitude of the snow.
This had been her world.
Clarence would not understand.
She remembered another African proverb that Laha had shared in one of their many conversations about his home.
“The family is like the forest,” he had told her. “If you are outside it, you only see its density. If you are inside, you can see that each tree has its own place.”
Her family would not understand that she was ready to move on. “Daniela,” they would say, “you can’t transplant a grown tree, nor a flower in bloom. It will die.”
“Unless you dig out a huge hole,” she would answer, “and allow the roots to take as much soil as possible and water it continuously. Also,” she would add, “a person’s roots are kept inside. They’re the tentacles that extend the length of our nervous system and keep us whole. They go wherever you go, live wherever you live . . .”
When sleep finally came, Daniela continued to dream.
The meltwaters from the glaciers in her valley formed a large pool that flowed along a plain before falling as a waterfall into an enormous chasm. There, it disappeared completely. As if by magic.