The Rain in Spain Read Online Free Page B

himself—because for him it wasn’t logical that she should pay for things when he made so much more money than she did—but he’d come striding through that airport in Goa, wheelie in tow, a tightly rolled cylinder of sticks and green fabric in his other hand. He’d dropped into the seat next to hers, tangled his hands in her hair, and pulled her head to his chest. She’d closed her eyes and let his words rumble through her.
    “I’m going where you’re going. Or staying.”
    They’d flown the frog kite on every beach they’d visited since. The bribes he’d paid to a rural government official had been brutal, but she’d married him before he’d left her, grumbling at her inflexibility, to finish her research in northern India. He’d met her at Terminal 5 at O’Hare when she’d landed at midnight two weeks later and hadn’t let her out of bed for the entire weekend except when she’d needed to go to the bathroom. Even then he’d stood outside the door and kept talking to her until she shouted at him, “Go away, for Christ’s sake, it’s impossible to pee when you’re making me laugh!”
    He made his lists and his plans and they all included her. Sometimes she went along with them and sometimes she went her own way, but every time she came back to him. Her true north.
    She’d asked him once why he’d done something so insane and unplanned as get married to a woman he’d known less than a month and only in a strange land far from home. His family, she’d already learned, was large and traditional and she imagined their weddings were celebrations that invited new family in, not removed someone from their orbit. She’d hoped for romance in Javi’s answer, been willing to settle for sentimental. Got neither.
    “I knew I wanted to get married.”
    “Let me guess. It was next on The List.” She put the capitals in with her tone. The List had been charming at first, Javi’s goals for a life that had grown so far beyond his roots he astonished her. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist—or a particle physicist—to figure out that most people’s next steps involved children and family stuff.
    Not her forte.
    He flushed. “Well, yes. It was.” He’d twined her fingers with his and stared at her knuckles. “And then you were there.”
    Now, she shook her head and tried to smile at Javi when he asked if her burger was cooked properly, pointing to her full mouth as her excuse not to answer.
    He made it sound so simple, when she knew it couldn’t be. She’d heard the long conversations, half in Spanish, half in English, he had with his mother every Sunday morning while she slept in. They started with cheerful banter and teasing, but ended in unhappy murmurs.
    Javi’s laughter was a sound she prayed for, saving stories on her travels that she would hoard to her chest like jewels until she came home to him and poured them at his feet. Every chuckle or outright guffaw shone in heart like a diamond.
    Those Sunday morning conversations muted all the laughter in her husband until his smile, when she arose and found him in some distant corner of their big house, was a tired shadow.
    “Man, your mother must hate me.” She stared at the curved edge of her bite out of the burger, the imperfections of her teeth notched into the bread.
    Javi jerked his head back, a sharp movement in the corner of her vision.
    “Why would you say that?”
    “Because we haven’t been to visit.” A half truth. The canyon yawned beneath her feet. Maybe she could say it if she put the words in someone else’s mouth. Instead of her husband’s. “Because I don’t stay with you. Because I keep you from your family.”
    Because I keep you from having a family.
    No.
    Those words were locked behind her teeth, because to say them was the worst thing in the world. Worse than lists or hating lists or anything she pretended to fear as much as she feared that thought.
    “She doesn’t hate you.” He scrubbed a hand over his face