Author's Note: This story is a prequel to my Brittana multichapter fic The Knife Thrower's Daughter. It focuses on Santana's life prior to the events of TKTD. It is told from the perspective of her father, Mateo, and is meant to clarify how Santana ended up leaving New York City to join the J.P. Adams & Son Traveling Circus & Menagerie. If I did my job right, reading this story will enhance your understanding of both Santana's character and some of the events in TKTD. While you will see some familiar faces from TKTD in this story, the rising action takes place prior to the time when Santana meets Brittany. It is not a romance but rather a story about a girl and her family—a Santana story. It is a very different project than anything I've written before. I will update regularly on Fridays.

A Careless Man's Careful Daughter

Part I: Summer Peach

Seven minutes elapse before the midwife brings the baby into the parlor.

She sets the baby in Mateo's arms and then quickly scuttles back to the suite to care for Bonnie, leaving Mateo and his child alone together for the first time.

The baby is still wet with afterbirth, still bruised in places, still rattled from the delivery. She wails, hurt and surprised. It's difficult business, being born, Mateo supposes. The seams of his heart threaten to unravel as he begins to understand his child.

In the months leading up to this moment, Mateo already loved her in an anticipatory way, but now he loves her anew and better—not just her idea but her reality and presence.

When Mateo heard her first wail come from the suite, he had loved it. When Mateo saw her reflection in the glass parlor doors as the midwife brought her to him, he had loved it, too.

Now her tiny fists and feet flail against his chest.

In her distress, the baby scratches her cheek with one of her brand new fingernails. When Mateo's heart breaks for her tiny pain, he knows: no matter where he goes or what he does with the rest of his life, he will never experience any loves greater than this one.

Somehow, Mateo had thought that once he had her to himself, the doctor in him would take over—that he would examine his daughter and check her for normalcy and health—but it doesn't.

He doesn't.

He only adores her.

He counts her fingers and toes not to see if any are missing or malformed but to learn each one for itself so that he can love it more perfectly, no matter what it looks like. He carefully thumbs through her thick, black hair, taking care not to touch the soft fontanel atop her skull. He supports her neck. He memorizes her cries. He doesn't try to shush her because he already loves her voice.

Before she arrived, Mateo hadn't really thought of what she might look like.

Right now, she's ruddy, like all newborns are, more pink and dun than anything. She bears little broken lattice bursts of red beneath her skin, at the tip of her nose, and across her cheeks, in places where she ruptured blood vessels, exiting the womb. Her face squishes, and her eyes jam shut. She can't seem to straighten out anything on her for more than a few seconds at a time.

Eventually, she'll take shape. She'll recolor. She'll straighten up. She'll acclimate to having space, to breathing and being and the closeness of other people.

Nine and a half minutes have elapsed since her birth.

She doesn't look much like him or much like Bonnie, Mateo thinks. She is only just herself, and so impossibly small. If anyone has ever had daintier little ears than she does, he wouldn't believe it. Her movements halt and jerk, and she quickly tires of rowing her limbs against the air, trying to swim through this world.

Mateo knows that no matter how his daughter grows, she will become more beautiful to him with every passing minute.

His baby is sensitive.

When Mateo has difficult days at the hospital and comes home weary and raw, she seems to intuit his mood and struggles in his arms until his care for her overwhelms his worry for himself. Only when Mateo softens does the baby soften, as well. She won't sleep on him until the tension relaxes out of his shoulders.

On one occasion, Mateo arrives at the bachelor cottage after having quarreled with another surgeon at the hospital and lost. He feels thunderously angry and spends a long while recounting his troubles to Bonnie in a furious whisper before taking the baby into the parlor so that he can rock her to sleep.

Though Mateo doesn't say a word once he has the baby with him, she shrieks and writhes in his arms for a full hour until Bonnie finally has enough of it and recommends that Mateo to go take a walk through Gramercy Park so that he might calm his nerves.

I don't need to calm my nerves, Mateo insists. I've talked to you about it. I'm fine. Done is done.

But Bonnie gathers up the baby and shoos Mateo out the door just the same.

Come back when you can manage not to scowl, Bonnie tells her husband not unkindly.

Mateo doesn't return to the house until well after sunset.

When he arrives at the front door, he can still hear the baby screaming.

Feeling much more at peace with himself, he collects the baby from Bonnie so that Bonnie can go upstairs to enjoy a bath. Five minutes after Bonnie quits the parlor, the baby quiets. Five minutes after that, the baby falls soundly to sleep, warm and temperless in Mateo's arms.

The baby breathes milk breaths upon Mateo's neck. She softens, turns to jelly. Though she sometimes snuffles in her dreams, she remains entirely silent otherwise, content because Mateo is content.

It's because she worries about you, Bonnie tells Mateo later.

Mateo worries about the baby, not because she faces any special dangers, but because he can never guess how very many things there are to protect her from in the world.

One night, Mateo is upstairs bathing the baby in the bathroom sink. He dabs her with warm water, washing under her neck and around the bulb of her belly.

But then a crash.

It comes from the downstairs—from something clattering onto the floor from a height.

Later investigation will reveal that the fallen thing was a framed painting come loose from its hangings on the parlor wall, but for the moment it may as well be a tiny Armageddon.

Bonnie shouts from the bedroom, Is everything all right?

Before she can even finish asking her question, the baby lets out a startled yelp, and Mateo feels the baby's heart leap where he holds the washcloth pressed against her chest. The beat startles through her little breastbone, as hard and quick as an urgent knock upon a door.

Before the baby was born, a falling picture frame never would have bothered Mateo.

Now Mateo wishes he could find some way to wrap his daughter's little heart in cotton and keep it safe from ever bruising.

It's all right, Mateo both soothes his daughter and assures his wife. Papa's here. I've got you.

The next day, Mateo comes home bearing a new tin of nails and a hammer. He spends the evening securing every painting and mirror in the house.

Mateo and Bonnie don't name her, not for the first three months.

Instead, they call her little endearments—sweeting, angel, precious child, summer peach, little lady—paying no mind to the alternations.

Maybe if there were a birth certificate for them to sign and file with a city clerk, they might feel more motivated to make a final decision. As it is, they are contented to not decide anything and to refer to their daughter by any number of variations on the words perfect baby girl.

Mateo remembers one late night pillow talk they shared before the birth. It concerned what they might call their daughter or their son, whichever they might happen to have.

Bonnie suggested a family name—but not one from her family, who all went by dull things like Percival and Peter, Bernice and Martha. Bonnie said that maybe they could choose a name from Mateo's pedigree. Mateo agreed that a family name might be nice, and especially since a family name might help his mother and father to come around to everything.

To actually act like family.

It's just, he said, our names aren't simple.

Usually, Bonnie might have teased Mateo for hemming and hawing, but that night, she didn't. She set her hand on his hand upon the quilt.

No, no they aren't, she said. But they're still beautiful.

His own name is a convolution.

Though his parents named him one thing, they've always called him something else, and the sign currently outside his office door reads differently than whatever documentation still exists of him in San Juan.

Of course, he doesn't think of himself by his own name—hardly anyone ever thinks of themselves by their own name in their minds, he doesn't suppose.

Bonnie calls him by his given name but without any accent or inflection to it, an Americanized version of the Spanish. He loves the way his name sounds on her tongue and loves Bonnie for loving parts of him that he must keep secret from the world.

Even so, he also sometimes wonders if nowadays he doesn't really have three names instead of just the two: his Spanish name and his American name, with Bonnie's name for him flagging somewhere in-between.

Maybe someday his baby will have another name for him than even those.

Honestly, Mateo doesn't even know if the baby should have his surname or his alias.

Lopez or Lucas.

Puertorriqueño or American.

Most days, Mateo thinks he loves what he must keep secret about himself more than he loves those parts of himself that he can freely advertise, but sometimes he hears a nasty word thrown at someone else—someone like him but not him—on the street and feels, if only for a second, unspeakably grateful that his secrets are secrets after all, that he can hide, can be concealed.

Guilt always finds him afterwards.

He always feels ashamed to feel ashamed.

In his heart of hearts, he knows that if it had been up to him rather than to his parents whether he would be Mateo or Matthew, he might have never been able to choose.

He doesn't want his little lady to have to have two names or three.

He doesn't want her to have to feel ashamed.

In a way, it resolves his dilemma when he realizes that, unlike him, his daughter will never be able to hide. She won't ever have a choice put to her, no matter how he calls her. Everything that she is, anyone can see on her plainly.

They dedicate her to her one living grandmother, whom she has yet to meet.

They call her Santana Luisa Lopez, and it fits her right away.

During those first many months, Mateo writes letters upon letters to his parents, inviting them to come meet their granddaughter over supper or on a weekend, but the envelopes always return to him unopened and with nary a word written on them in reply.

Mateo doesn't show the letters to Bonnie because he knows that she often blames herself for things which aren't her fault, including his mother and father's unflinching stubbornness towards her and Mateo's life together.

Rather than trouble Bonnie with a situation that she can do nothing to change, Mateo binds the letters up with twine and hides them away in his desk drawer at his office.

Mateo knows that if only his parents could see Santana, they would love her at once. She is the most charming little infant, amiable and inquisitive. To know her is to love her.

When Mateo thinks of his parents' arrogance, steep anger rises in his chest. His only comfort is the fact that Santana doesn't yet know what she lacks. She has her mama and her papa, and a great, big house and handsome yard to explore. She spends her afternoons with Bonnie in the garden and her evenings with Mateo in the parlor. She has begun to crawl and babble, to cut teeth, and to eat solid food.

Sometimes, when Bonnie is elsewhere in the house and he and Santana find themselves alone together, Mateo speaks to Santana in Spanish so that tongue won't sound strange to her, should she ever have occasion to meet her abuelo and abuela.

A fire breaks out at the Bellevue late one Saturday night in December. Mateo is not on call when it happens, and, even if he had been, he probably wouldn't have as much as glimpsed the flames or smelled the smoke, being that the blaze occurred in a women and children's pavilion far off from the surgical wards where he performs his usual work.

Four patients perish in the fire, and many other persons, including some of the nurses, suffer from smoke inhalation as the result of it.

The Times runs a report on the incident the day after it happens, and Mateo reads the article aloud to Bonnie over Sunday brunch.

As Mateo goes to leave the bachelor cottage later that evening, Bonnie stops him in the front foyer and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him into a kiss so deep and purposeful that it nearly sways Mateo from his feet.

For a moment, Mateo allows Bonnie to wash over him like a wave, to catch him up and subsume him, as he hangs from her lips like a drowning man clinging to the one preserver that will keep him afloat. He knows precisely how she means without her having to say it, and he kisses her back, desperately, his hands sliding to hold her at the small of her back until the tide of the kiss shifts, and he lifts her up, up, up off the floor.

In the breathless moment afterward, neither Mateo nor Bonnie speaks; they just run their thumbs along the contours of each other's faces, grateful and sad at once.

Upstairs, Santana gives a wail from her cradle.

Bonnie nods and starts away into the house.

Mateo nods and starts away onto the street.

Mateo has never regretted his decision to make a life with Bonnie, but he has often regretted that he and Bonnie can only share a life at certain hours of the day, and never more so than after Santana's birth.

Every day, Mateo races from the hospital or his office to catch a five o'clock streetcar. Every day, Mateo can hardly wait to reach his stop, to run home so that he can see his girls.

Doffing his coat and hat in the front foyer somehow seems to take too long. He hates to waste any of his time with either Bonnie or Santana. He can't wait to shower them with kisses, to hold them, to just be home.

After supper, Mateo and Santana have a ritual: while Bonnie clears the table, Mateo takes Santana into the parlor with him, just the two of them, alone. When Santana was a newborn, Mateo would rock her, sometimes in the dark. As Santana grows older and begins to be more alert, Mateo will sometimes stand holding her at the bay window and looking out over the yard, telling her about the flowers, the birds, and the trees.

Santana watches Mateo, agog, whenever he speaks.

She likes your voice because it's deep, Bonnie tells him. It soothes her.

Don't you have such pretty long eyelashes, such pretty eyes? Mateo coos, bouncing Santana on his hip. You're Papa's perfect girl.

Santana reaches up to paw at Mateo's mustache, to put her chubby hands upon Mateo's cheeks.

Eventually, Mateo will bathe her and change her into bedclothes. Sometimes, he and Bonnie will lie down on Bonnie's bed with Santana in-between them, and they'll watch her, smiling.

It always hurts Mateo's heart to hear the clock downstairs chime nine or ten. Sometimes he'll try to ignore it, to stay, but Bonnie will always remind him that he has to go.

What will your neighbors think of you coming home so late?

Hang the neighbors.

You shouldn't talk like that in front of the baby.

Can't I just stay until she's asleep?

As Mateo steps out the door into the night, headed for Gramercy Park, wondering if he'll be able to find a hack to convey him to his apartment, he always feels as though he's left something behind him.

He finds it difficult to sleep in his apartment, in his lonely single bed. He envies other men—Stewart, Fowler, and Wright, his dearest friends and colleagues at the hospital—who spend every evening with their wives and children, taking them for granted.

When Mateo does finally drift off, he dreams of his pretty baby, with her beautiful dark eyes.

Just a few weeks after Santana's first birthday, Mateo notices it: her resemblance to his mother.

Santana has Bonnie's thick hair and boasts a darker complexion than any relatives from Mateo's side of the family, but those little variations aside, she is all her grandmother. She has Mateo's mother's face and eyes, unmistakably so. Her full lips, her daintiness, and the smallness of her chin—those features all belong to Alma Luisa, a woman Santana has never met, who doesn't want to meet her.

Mateo has learned so much about what it means to love, just in the twelve short months following Santana's birth, but now he learns another lesson: namely, how strange it is that he can love his child so much though she looks so strikingly like someone who has hurt him, and how strange it is that he can do so without feeling any pain at all, just adoration upon pure adoration.

Bonnie plays the piano for Santana—just little lilting songs, nursery rhymes.

No one ever instructed Bonnie concerning how to play in formal lessons. She taught herself the notes when she was a new bride and had so many lonely hours to spend, cooped up in the bachelor cottage while Mateo was away at dissections.

Now Bonnie sits with her and Mateo's daughter in the long light of early evening, plucking out the notes and singing softly in the baby's ear.

She likes music, Bonnie says.

She does, Mateo agrees, knowing how Santana smiles when he whisper-sings her Spanish lullabies.

Both he and Bonnie smile then—both of them at the baby. It's nice, Mateo thinks, that their daughter should enjoy something that the both of them so enjoy as well. He likes that they have something to share as a family.

Maybe she'll be a pianist, Bonnie muses.

Maybe she'll sing opera, Mateo jokes.

Mateo would love Santana no matter how many or few her accomplishments, of course, but somehow dreaming about all her little maybes makes him happier than he could possibly explain.

In November, there comes a knock at the door.

It sounds just as Mateo arrives home from his office, when he hasn't even had the chance to step into his dressing slippers or greet his girls just yet. For a second, Mateo can only stare at the door, motionless and stupid, standing in his waistcoat and without a hat.

No one ever comes to the bachelor cottage without an invitation from him. Perhaps it's a solicitor. Mateo has seen a paperboy casing the neighborhood recently.

It couldn't surprise Mateo more when he opens the door to see his mother, Alma Luisa, in a mutton-sleeved jacket and wool felt hat, standing before him on the stoop. She purses her lips so thinly that they would slice anyone who kissed her and holds her hands concealed within a fur muff and very tight to her body.

Nearly four years have passed since Mateo last saw or spoke to her in person.

She doesn't greet him.

Rather, she tells him, in Spanish, Your father is dying.

When Mateo doesn't respond immediately, she elaborates.

You should come home to make your peace.

The recalcitrance Mateo feels whenever he finds himself at odds with someone hardens in his belly. Mateo holds to the door with a fast grip and doesn't shirk from his mother's gaze.

Only if he would like to meet Bonnie and the baby, Mateo says firmly. You have a granddaughter, you know.

Please, Matthew, your father is an old man. He wishes only to see his son before—

David will see the best of me or none of me at all.

I shall send for you for the funeral, then.

I won't attend it without my family. You may send David my love, if he'll have it.

Good evening, Matthew. I am sorry to have bothered you.

Alma has already walked from the front door to the gate by the time Bonnie appears at Mateo's shoulder, Santana perched on her hip and yanking at her hair.

Who was that? Bonnie asks, peering out into the yard, confused that someone would arrive at her home unannounced.

My mother, Mateo admits.

Bonnie knows better than to ask whether or not Mateo invited his mother inside the house. Silent and curious, Bonnie stares out at the yard, searching for traces of Mateo's mother's shadow upon the lawn, but the old woman has already gone, leaving nothing behind her.

By now, the sun has begun setting over the city. The electric streetlamps along the road have started to buzz to life. A chill hangs in the violet firmament.

Strange how Mateo's eyes seem almost to burn.

Without another word, Mateo coaxes his girls back inside the house. He closes the door behind them. He sighs.

All the while, Santana babbles between him and Bonnie, no closer to meeting her grandmother today than she had been yesterday or on any day since birth.

A telegram arrives for him on the evening of December 11th.

It reads simply: DEATH.

Mateo supposes that it bears all the English that his grieving mother could muster.

As Mateo sits in the living room, clutching Santana to his chest, Bonnie comes to him and sits on the piano bench. She fixes Mateo with a serious look and sets a glass of scotch down for him on the end table.

You could go to the funeral, if you like, she tells him, more pleading than granting permission.

Before Mateo can argue, she makes her case.

You'll hate yourself if you don't say goodbye, Mateo.

I'll hate myself if I do, he protests.

Four years have passed since Mateo last spoke to either his mother or his father, save for the brief exchange he held with his mother last month on the front stoop.

Papa, Santana babbles, stroking Mateo's mustache over his lip, petting it as though it were a little kitten or a rabbit. Papa, Papa, Papa! She grabs Mateo's nose and laughs at her joke. She doesn't realize that anything is sad or difficult or less than simple.

Mateo wants to tell Bonnie that he can't go to the funeral, not without her and Santana there to steel him up. He wants to explain that he can't give in, not after so many years and so many hurtful words passed between himself and his parents. He wants to weep because his father chose to hate his family without ever meeting them. He wants to rage and wrest and crumble from the unfairness of everything.

But Mateo can't very well do any of those things when his daughter has his nose caught between her fingers.

He laughs, and Bonnie laughs, too, and Santana.

At first, the laughter hurts Mateo's chest, but then it breaks like a cloudburst into warmth and light. Mateo chortles from the back of his throat.

Is your papa silly? Bonnie asks Santana.

Papa kishbbbb, Santana says, grabbing Mateo's face between her chubby hands and leaning forward to press her lips sloppily to his.

Mateo loves that when his baby kisses him, she doesn't close her eyes.

Mateo attends the wake and sits at the front, near the casket, the only family mourner. His mother sits, unacknowledged, near the back of the chapel, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief, unable to understand English or to show the full extent of her grief in public. Mateo hates that his parents still cling so helplessly to their old lies and that his father does so even in death.

When his father's colleagues, all the old pharmacists and chemists, take Mateo's hands and clap him on the back, wishing him condolences and saying what a good man David was, Mateo feels like telling them, You never knew him at all.

Mateo knows that he is a hypocrite, of course.

He tells just as many lies as David ever did, and his wife lives locked away, the lady of the house feigning that she is nothing but a lowly maid, just like Alma did for years in his childhood home. Of all the people who attend David's funeral, only Mateo and Alma know Mateo's given name. To everyone else, Mateo is someone and something other than what he is. No one besides her blood relatives knows that Santana exists at all, let alone her name.

For a moment, Mateo allows himself to wonder if one day Santana will grow to resent him, like he does his parents. Will she hate him for lying about himself? About her? Will she sit at his funeral and wonder if there was ever anything genuine in him or if everything about him were just falsehoods and pretense?

Mateo stops his mother as he sees her about to board a hack back to her dead husband's home.

Come live with me, he begs her in Spanish. Please, Mama, come home. I want Santana to meet you. I named her for you—Santana Luisa. She looks just like you, Mama. I want her to know who you are.

Maybe if Mateo didn't own the deed to his father's home now, his mother would rebuff him, but, as it is, she knows that Mateo has the authority to tell her where she can and cannot sleep tonight. Her only rightful place is where Mateo deems it to be.

If the world knew she were David's widow, she might have some other choice, but the maid goes where the master bids her.

Mateo holds fast to her wrist until she nods her head, agreed.

On the streetcar ride back to the bachelor cottage, Mateo's mother asks him only one question.

Does she understand Spanish?

Claro, Mama, Mateo says. But only just a little.

At first, Alma doesn't want anything to do with Santana.

She won't speak to or hold the baby even in brief. If Mateo didn't know that Alma had raised a baby once herself, he would almost think that she were afraid of children. She seems so wary whenever Santana is around—like she doesn't want to risk falling in love with Santana by mistake.

Sometimes Mateo thinks he sees Alma looking at Santana out of the corners of her eyes—watching the child with a kind of fearful resentment grained into her features.

Her reticence maddens Mateo even just to glimpse.

Of course, if not wanting to know his child were his mother's only indiscretion in his house, Mateo might be able to bear it.

Unfortunately, Alma also doesn't want to admit that she has moved into the bachelor cottage permanently. She acts like a houseguest, even after Mateo sends for her things from Union Square and furbishes the second upstairs bedroom especially for her.

Several weeks after the funeral, Alma still politely declines all but the barest of meals, refusing to unpack her clothing from its valise, and never daring to use any household objects without asking her son for full permission first.

Though she has a little English, Alma won't speak a word of it to Bonnie. She insists on Spanish only, to Mateo, or silence altogether.

One night, just as Mateo goes to leave the bachelor cottage for his apartment, he finds several folded dollar bills tucked into his shoes in the foyer—payment for a service rendered.

His temper flares. Not wanting to wake Santana asleep upstairs in her crib, Mateo very quietly takes Bonnie into the kitchen with him and tells her that he has made a mistake. He apologizes for bringing his mother into their home. Somehow, Mateo had thought that Alma might be more accepting after his father died. He had thought that grief might change and refine her—that she might learn to love.

I'm sorry, Mateo says, that she looks at you that way.

It's all right, Bonnie tells him.

No, it isn't! This is your home, and you're my wife, the mother of my child! What's more, you're a human being, a person of your own account. How dare she think that she can ignore you or treat you like you're nothing when you're everything in the whole world?

She's only afraid, Bonnie tells him.

Of what? Mateo demands, not of Bonnie but of his mother, upstairs and unable to answer him for herself.

Bonnie shrugs with one shoulder.

That you don't love her anymore? That you'll never forgive her? she offers.

Of course I love her! Mateo shouts, forgetting to mind his voice.

A sharp cry sounds from through the ceiling—his sensitive babe, startled by his volume, in the nursery above the kitchen. Mateo feels a pang through his chest. He had never meant to scare his child or to contend with Bonnie concerning his mother. He curses himself.

Alma brings out every quality that is most unbecoming in him.

Somehow it always comes down to this: Mateo, six years old and standing in the garden, wearing a colander upside-down on his head for a hat, pretending that he is a sea captain, and Alma scolding him that he must come inside and be serious now, telling him again and again that he mustn't give himself over so easily to fantasies.

Back then, it was always, You are not a pirate, Matthew. You are not a soldier. You must come indoors and have your tea and lessons. You must not pretend so much.

Now it is, You are not a husband, Matthew. You are not a father. You must not pretend that what you have here is normal, that you have made yourself a family.

Though Alma has yet to speak those words aloud since moving into the bachelor cottage, Mateo hears them in her every action, in her reluctance to accept this place as a home.

Mateo finds himself halfway up the stairs, ready to serve his mother with his choicest words and news that she will soon find herself living elsewhere, as she is no longer welcome at the bachelor cottage.

Only as Mateo reaches the landing and hears Santana whimpering does he think better of his intentions.

Never mind his mother.

Mateo wants to be with his precious baby girl, to remind her that he loves her more than anything in the world and that he will always choose her first, over everything else. Mateo hurries down the hallway to the nursery, passing by his mother's bedroom door without pause.

It couldn't surprise Mateo more when he enters the nursery to find his mother, Alma Luisa, standing over Santana's crib, dangling her black rosary beads above Santana's face so that Santana can play with them.

Santana has stopped crying now. She stares up, tears still spangling her pretty eyelashes, and reaches for the trinket suspended above her head, unaware of who holds it. Her chubby fingers fumble over the crucifix.

In the split second before she realizes that her son has come inside the room, Alma Luisa regards the baby wearing soft features and a gentle smile that rejuvenates her by years. The arc of her brow, the contours of her cheeks, the vigor in her expression match her granddaughter's features by every whit. She is now what Santana will be fifty-five years into the future.

When Alma hears the door creak, she stiffens, caught. She straightens over the crib.

By the time her eyes meet Mateo's, she has hardened again.

The infant is not baptized, she says in Spanish.

It isn't a question. She pauses for a second, considering. She wets her lips. She speaks again.

But from Saint Anne came Jesus.

Mateo can think of nothing to reply to her, but Alma doesn't seem to mind. Without another word, she begins to jiggle the rosary, catching the baby's eye.

Alma's attitude doesn't altogether improve right away.

Instead, she warms to the baby gradually, like a cat accustoming itself to new visitors to its home.

At first, Alma will only hold Santana if both Mateo and Bonnie are otherwise unable to do so themselves, like when they set the table for supper or as Bonnie helps Mateo doff his coat when he comes into the foyer from out-of-doors.

It takes two full months before Alma can bring herself to call the child Santana and another month after that before she will refer to Mateo as the child's father and Bonnie as the child's mother.

All the while, Alma still refuses to speak to Bonnie, though her English improves by increments the longer she lives in the house. If ever Alma has something to say to Bonnie, she insists on saying it first to Mateo and making him translate her words.

For her part, Bonnie bears the injustice well.

She is nothing but kind to Alma, and she holds herself to the highest standards of conduct as a housekeeper and hostess. Her already impeccable mothering becomes something not only beyond reproach but utterly praiseworthy in every regard. She is an attentive, lively, and intelligent parent, and under her care, Santana flourishes, acquiring many new words and learning the most endearing little manners.

Of course, Mateo can't help but wonder if Bonnie isn't overexerting herself trying to please someone who will never approve of her.

Though Bonnie tries not to show it, she is oftentimes as sensitive as her and Mateo's daughter. Not only does she dislike doing wrong, but she also dislikes even giving the impression of having done so. It doesn't sit well with her, having someone think so poorly of her, and especially entirely without reason. The longer Alma withholds endorsement from her, the more Bonnie frets for it.

Mateo tells Bonnie again and again that his mother is unduly stubborn, that there is nothing that Bonnie could do to enter his mother's graces.

Bonnie tries to insist that she doesn't mind.

But.

It surprises Mateo when no one greets him after work.

Usually, Bonnie waits for him at the door, holding Santana's hand in her own. Sometimes his mother joins them, following at a distance. Santana runs all over the house now, and when she sees Mateo in the foyer, she charges at him on tiny legs, throwing her whole body at his knees, shouting Papa! Papa! Papa!

Tonight, Mateo arrives home to no such fanfare.

The house is quiet, the kitchen devoid of cooking smells, everything long and lonely.

Bonnie? he calls to no answer. Mama?

He listens to the house and hears only vast silences. There are no voices echoing anywhere, no footfalls on the floorboards. It is most unusual that a house with a toddler in it could be so quiet, unless the toddler were sleeping.

Maybe she is asleep. Maybe everyone is.

Mateo goes to the bottom of the stairs.

Bonnie, my love? Are you abed? he calls, keeping his voice low enough so as not to wake Santana, if she is asleep, but loud enough that Bonnie, who always listens for her child, could hear him if she were near.

When no one answers him, Mateo stalks into the kitchen to check out the backdoor into the yard, wondering if perhaps Bonnie and Alma have taken Santana outside to play in the garden. When he sees that they haven't, he frowns and quickly mounts the stairs.

As he ascends to the upper storey of the house, Mateo's heart rate increases with each step. Though the logical part of him knows that there is likely a good explanation as to why no one has responded to his calls, he still can't help but feel increasingly anxious.

Horrible images begin to fill his mind: his wife and child hurt, his mother dead.

He starts thinking through his doctor's training. What would he do if he were to happen in upon a gruesome scene? The papers talk about such awful happenings these days, the murders in Manhattan. What if someone found out his secrets? What if someone decided to teach him a lesson for overstepping his bounds? He wouldn't be able to stand it. He couldn't. He begins to hyperventilate—

Bonnie? Mama? Santana? Are you here, my loves? Please answer me!

Then Mateo hears it.

Weeping.

It isn't from his baby.

Mateo enters the nursery to find Bonnie in her rocking chair, cradling Santana against her breast. Though Santana appears worried, chewing her lips and sticking her fingers in her mouth, she isn't the one in tears.

Bonnie presses her face into Santana's hair, crying into so many thick, black curls, stifling her voice. When Mateo enters the room, she doesn't look up. She just sobs and rocks.

She hates me, she keens. She hates me because I stole you away from her.

You didn't—, Mateo tries to insist, but Bonnie won't hear it.

I can only imagine how I'll feel when some young fellow comes to take Santana away from me! she cries. Me, cooped up in this house, having loved Santana and cared for her for so long, and him, just some no one, just some boy I've never met before who thinks he can provide for her better than I can! I'll hate him for taking her from me, I will!

That won't happen, Mateo says, even as he realizes that he cannot promise such a thing.

Bonnie sobs again, kissing Santana's hair.

Mama, Mama, Santana says, unaware of how many hopes and anxieties rest on her, even now.

Mateo speaks to his mother later that evening, just the two of them together in her bedroom.

You must be kinder to Bonnie, he warns her in Spanish. You must be polite. She is the lady of this house. She is my wife. You will treat her better or—by God—you will not see Santana anymore. I will not permit it. I'll move you into my apartment, and I'll stay here, damn my reputation.

Alma doesn't say anything. She glares at Mateo with sharp bitterness in her eyes, biting her lips into her mouth and holding her hands clasped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles blanch. After a long minute, she gives a single, terse nod.

Mateo isn't certain what his mother just agreed to do—to treat Bonnie better or to move into his apartment?

He decides to give Alma one day to demonstrate that she can change.

To her credit, Alma does try to improve her behavior.

Unfortunately, she does so in her usual way.

She begins to speak to Bonnie, at first only in Spanish but then later in little snippets of broken English. She limits the topics of her conversation with Bonnie to household concerns.

Tonight, we make meat pies, yes?

Need more soap.

Kitchen dirty. I clean.

Bonnie is a most excellent homemaker, but Alma can always find some way to subtly boss or bully Bonnie concerning household chores. Somehow, the rooms at the bachelor cottage are never clean enough for Alma's liking, the pantry never has the right foods in it for Alma's tastes, and Bonnie cannot manage to perform her various tasks on a schedule of which Alma approves.

Though Bonnie refuses to complain about Alma's constant criticisms to Mateo, he can see how they grate on her all the same.

After spending the first twenty years of his life living under his mother's roof, Mateo knows how it is to never perform well enough at anything to earn his mother's approval, as well as how obnoxious her censure made to sound like helpfulness can be.

The only reason Mateo and Bonnie suffer through his mother's antics is because of how virtuously Alma cares for their child.

Following their frank discussion regarding her behavior, Alma becomes a devoted grandmother, putting Santana down for naps, feeding her mash, and watching over her while Bonnie attends to chores. Alma doesn't speak to Santana much in either Spanish or in English, but Santana babbles to her all the time.

'Buela! 'Buela! 'Buela!

Mateo had never noticed the true extent of his mother's smallness until he saw her holding Santana on her hip. Though Santana is but a little thing herself, she somehow almost dwarfs the old woman.

When she pokes her fingers into Alma's mouth or tugs at Alma's hair bun, Alma bears the abuse unceasingly well, never saying more than No, no—an admonishment she can make in both of her languages at once.

Mateo makes arrangements through his father's lawyers to sell the house in Union Square. He doesn't tell his mother what he is up to because he does not want to upset her. When the deal goes through, Mateo arranges to place the money into a private bank account—a secret trust fund for Santana. It is a healthy sum, worth many thousands of dollars.

Though David Lopez never gave anything to his granddaughter when he was alive, he has given her something now, a legacy that will support her should she ever become the last Lopez living.

When Mateo tells Bonnie what he has done, she smiles in way that doesn't reach her eyes, her expression somehow tight.

You're a good father, she says. But I'm not sure you're a good son.

Mateo shrugs. I'd rather it be that way, he shrugs.

When he watches Santana playing with a set of wooden building blocks upon the parlor rug, he feels no guilt. He would give anything to provide for her, and his old childhood home was not something so very difficult to part with, to that end.

What are you building, little one? he says, sitting down on the floor beside Santana. May I build with you? What shall we make, you and I?

Santana does not answer him with words, but she does hand him one of her building blocks, setting it clumsily onto his lap. She stares at him with her great, dark eyes, unaware of anything except that her papa is here with her, in this moment.

Santana isn't an ill-behaved child, but she is a curious one.

She trespasses everywhere—into the cupboards in the kitchen, the pantry, and even the crevice between the sofa couch and the wall. If ever Mateo, Bonnie, or Alma leaves anything where she can reach it, Santana seizes the object for a plaything, whether it is a ball of knitting yarn or a dirty cooking ladle or, in this case, a pipe stuffed full of tobacco powder.

Mateo only leaves the parlor for a moment to help Bonnie reach something on the top shelf in the kitchen, but when he returns, Santana has already wrought her damage.

Black and brown tobacco spores trail from the end table, where Mateo originally left his pipe, to the piano bench, where Santana leans, chewing on the pipe bowl rather than the stem. She holds the pipe upside down, coating it in baby spittle.

Mateo doesn't mean to startle Santana, but he doesn't want her to ingest raw tobacco and make herself ill, either.

Santana! Santana, no! Give that to Papa! he shouts, crossing the room in three long strides.

He holds out his hand and stoops to collect the pipe but doesn't have the chance to do so before Santana startles. Her little body jolts, and she pulls the pipe away from her mouth as though it had burnt her. Tears well in her eyes.

She isn't accustomed to her papa raising his voice at her.

Her little mouth opens wide, and she drops the pipe onto the piano bench. By now, Mateo has memorized her every cry, from hurt to hungry to tired to upset.

She lets out a heartbroken wail, and Mateo's heartstrings fray.

Oh, sweeting, he says, stooping down to gather Santana into his arms.

He picks her up, forgetting her mess, his only care now to soothe her and show her that he meant her no harm, that he still loves her and always will. He kisses the suture in her brow and both of her wet, chubby cheeks.

I just don't want you to make yourself sick, he tells her, using his softest voice. If you eat that, you'll hurt your tummy. It's icky, Santana. We mustn't chew on Papa's pipe.

Papa's pipe, Santana echoes, hiccupping a little as her tears start to quell.

I know it isn't fair, is it? Mateo commiserates. Papa puts the pipe in his mouth all the time, doesn't he? Why oughtn't you to do it, then, hm?

Papa kiss, Santana says, grabbing Mateo's face with both of her hands.

Papa kiss, Mateo agrees, pressing his lips to her temple, glad that Santana is still at an age where she will forgive him of his hypocrisies so very easily.

Come November, Bonnie falls ill.

Early on, she insists that she is only fatigued—that caring for both Santana and Alma requires such a lot of work, is all—but as the days hasten by, her condition worsens, and rapidly.

Within the week, Bonnie becomes very unwell indeed. Sometimes she will sit on the sofa couch in the parlor to rest a spell when she feels lightheaded, but mostly she refuses to slow down or to immobilize herself whatsoever.

You're very gallant but very foolish, she tells Mateo when he suggests to her that she should remain abed to recuperate her strength. Your mother can hardly keep up with Santana nowadays! She wouldn't be able to manage without me, and you don't make it home from work until after five o'clock every night, so you couldn't help her at all. The house would fall to shambles! None of us would ever get supper.

Bonnie insists that she'll recover soon enough, but Mateo can't help but think that he's never seen Bonnie so wan and frail, not even in the mean hours immediately following Santana's birth.

Every physical activity seems to tax Bonnie now. She coughs when she scoops Santana into her arms. She sweats even doing the simplest chores. At night, she falls into bed asleep before Mateo even leaves the bachelor cottage for his apartment, oftentimes still dressed in her day clothes and atop the quilt on her bed rather than tucked in underneath it.

If things were different, Mateo could take Bonnie to the hospital for an examination.

As it is, he brings home medicines for her—cough suppressants and fever reducers. He tells the landlord at his apartment flat that he shall be away visiting relations outside the city for a few days and then spends the weekend at the bachelor cottage, insisting that Bonnie go to sleep while he both tends to her household responsibilities and administers to her condition.

Despite Mateo's best care, Bonnie soon develops a pain in her belly. A rash spreads out over her navel and breasts, rosy like Christmas against the darkness of her skin. The rash fades to white when Mateo presses on it with his hands. That's a good sign, for now.

Though Santana cries for Bonnie and tries to climb into bed with her, Mateo and Alma always catch her before she gets too far inside the bedroom. They frequently hush Santana and keep her either downstairs or in the nursery so that Bonnie can sleep without interruption.

Mama is sick, Mateo tells his daughter.

You kiss Mama better, Santana suggests.

If only love were such a cure-all as a toddler believed it was.

After another day, the rash ceases to fade, even when Mateo applies pressure to it. It turns darker, and some of it even splits and bleeds. Bonnie's fever soars to one-hundred and six degrees. She becomes delirious.

Part of Mateo had known it before, but now he is certain: Bonnie has contracted the typhus fever spreading around the city.

Over the last few months, Mateo has seen typhus cases at the hospital. Though the Bellevue attempted to deny admittance to any patient infected by the disease in order to prevent an internal epidemic, several contaminated persons did in point of fact find their ways into the wards before obtaining correct diagnoses, and Mateo entered the wards where those patients had kept their beds. Did he bring the typhus home to Bonnie from his workplace unawares?

Guilt pangs him.

Mateo administers Bonnie a purgative, and she vomits within the hour. He bathes her sores and dresses them in gauze. He even brings up the block from the icebox and arranges it under her pillow so as to cool Bonnie's head and protect her brain from the fever.

Alma detains Santana in the nursery, trying to distract her with toys and songs, but Mateo can hear Santana wailing from all the way down the hall.

Mama! I want Mama! 'Buela, Mama!

Her little voice breaks and splits.

I need to see her, Bonnie coughs. I need to see our girl before I—

Only just a few days ago, Bonnie had been up and about, laughing and playing the piano. She has deteriorated so quickly. Every time Mateo treats one of her symptoms, another seems to crop up in its place, hydra-like. Had it happened like this with all the patients at the hospital? What else can Mateo do?

If he were at the Bellevue, surrounded by his colleagues, Mateo could bleed Bonnie of her infected blood. As it is, he can only open the windows to Bonnie's bedroom to let in fresh air and coax her to imbibe brandy in hopes that the alcohol might balance her circulation. He rubs camphor on her chest in an effort to clear her lungs and dabs her brow with a wet cloth.

Please, please, he begs her, all his heart seams unraveling and fraying down to threads.

She loses and regains consciousness at intervals, like a drowning woman bobbing above and beneath the water. Her respiration turns labored. She vomits again when Mateo gives her more brandy, spitting it up like an infant. The rash spreads out over her whole body, except for to the palms of her hands and soles of her feet.

Mateo finds it increasingly difficult to administer to her. His vision clouds with tears. His hands tremble. A pain jabs in him as though it were a knife. He feels it in his chest and belly and core. He can hardly move around the hurt.

It seems like no matter how often he wipes Bonnie's brow, he cannot seem to relieve her perspiration.

There are a million things he wants to say to her still, a million ways he wants to kiss her, a million years he had meant to spend at her side. He had wanted her to know free, honest, unabashed living again sometime in the future. He had wanted Santana to have brothers and sisters. He had wanted to tell Bonnie how glad he was that she asked him to ask her to dance five years ago at that hall in Satan's Circus.

He doesn't even know if she can hear him now.

My angel, he cries, curled against her body in the bed. I'm sorry. Bonnie, I am so sorry.

... market... and sweet potatoes..., she mumbles.

It isn't like how it is in books, having his true love die in his arms.

At two years old, Santana speaks a smattering of English, Spanish, and baby jabber. She has a tendency to mumble. She scarcely uses articles. Papa, give mine. 'Buela open, por favor. Look at birdie! She doesn't understand pasts and futures, only presents.

Everything with Santana is very simple.

Everything except for this.

She sits on Mateo's lap, facing him, her tiny hands balled in his waistcoat, steadying her as she leans forward to examine his face. Her mouth hangs open as she makes her assessment, her lips parted into a perfect, pouting O. Light from the electric lamp in the corner reflects against the deep darks of her eyes.

Papa crying? she asks, patting at Mateo's chest.

Sí, Santana. Papa is crying.

Mama kiss better.

No, sweeting. She—she—

Mateo gasps and pulls Santana in close to him, holding her over the wound he feels in his chest. His fingers tussle through her hair, and he presses his lips to her head. How can he explain something to his daughter that he can't understand one whit for himself? Words shouldn't have to exist for this. He doesn't know what he can possibly say.

Just.

Papa loves you, Santana. Papa loves you so much. I won't ever leave you. Te promito.

He supposes that the man who opens the door must either be one of Bonnie's older brothers, Robert or Alfred, or her brother-in-law, whose name he doesn't know.

He has never met any of Bonnie's family members before.

He feels sorry to come to them for the first time bearing such awful, heart-ending news.

Is this the Brown residence? he asks, tipping his hat. I-I'm sorry to arrive unannounced. I'm Mateo Lopez. I'm—

We know who you are, the man interrupts.

He makes no moves to allow Mateo inside the house. Instead, he grips the top of the door with one hand and leans into the frame, the rest of his body slumped into an S-curve somehow equal parts lazy and menacing. He blocks the entryway with his person, and his expression appears hard, though his features are familiar in a way that almost distracts Mateo from the task at hand.

The man must either be Robert or Alfred.

He doesn't introduce himself.

Mateo says, I'm really very sorry, but—would it be all right if I came inside? I have to, um—I ought to—just—

Something jagged snags in Mateo's chest, obstructing his speech. Tears burn at his eyes. He swallows once and then swallows again. God. Bonnie was only nineteen years old, still so young and vibrant. Just a week ago, she had been up and about, laughing and playing the piano. She had always wanted Mateo to meet her family.

The man at the door stares at Mateo for a long time. He draws a deep breath from the bottom of his lungs—something close to a sigh.

My sister is dead, isn't she? he surmises.

Mateo nods, yes.

The man—Robert or Alfred—shudders like someone just splashed his bones with cold water. He draws a whistling breath through his teeth and leans more heavily against the door, his shoulders curling over and his head lowering as seconds pass and the shadows stretch longer over the street. Briefly, Mateo wonders if the man might attack him.

The man doesn't.

Instead, he asks, Where is she?

It's the right question.

She's in our home, for now, Mateo manages. She only just—just passed yesterday. But you see, I haven't a place to—well, my father bought two plots in Green-Wood, one for me and one for him. He was buried last December, and, well, you know how things—

Our people have a place in the Bronx, the man says gruffly. I can make the arrangements.

Before he can stop himself, Mateo asks, Is your father still alive?

No, the man says. He passed just after Bonnie went away.

Mateo nods, the awful jaggedness in his throat suddenly sharper than ever. He can't think of anything else to say except, Bonnie and I have a daughter.

In a way, the new information isn't apropos of anything.

In a way, the new information is apropos of everything.

The man doesn't blink. He doesn't nod.

He says only, You can send Bonnie to us by carriage tomorrow morning.

Junior surgeons may not excuse themselves from work because their household maids die, which is why Mateo finds himself performing a tracheotomy at the very hour when the Browns have scheduled Bonnie's funeral.

Dr. Lucas, his attending surgeon says, pausing to retract some skin along the edge of the incision. Are you well? You seem gaunt.

Mateo wants to say that the problem is that he doesn't know how to both grieve and parent his daughter at the same time.

Santana keeps asking for Mama, and Mateo doesn't know what to tell her. Santana wants Bonnie to sing to her, to hold her, to kiss her goodnight in her bed. Mateo can't seem to explain gone forever in a way that makes sense to a two year-old child. Whenever Mateo says, Not tomorrow and not the next day and not the next day after that one or the next day after that one, either, Santana simply considers the information for a moment and then says, Next day, Papa.

Ever since Bonnie drew her last breath, Mateo has found it difficult to breathe for himself, let alone to think. He doesn't know if he wants Santana to stop asking about Mama or to never stop asking about Mama ever. Really, Santana doesn't even know enough to feel sad—she only feels confused because she hasn't seen someone she used to see every day for the better part of a week now. It puzzles her that Papa cries so much.

Will she even remember Bonnie one a month from now?

Mateo doesn't have any real memories from before he was three years old, he doesn't think.

His attending surgeon stares at him. If he could, Mateo would take a scalpel to his own heart and cut it out because it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. As it is, he can only manage a queer, stilted shrug, lifting one shoulder as he attempts to smile. He feels like someone is strangling him.

My apologies, he says. I haven't slept well this week. My... bedroom window lets in a chill.

His attending surgeon nods.

Ah, he says, as if that explains everything.

Mateo doesn't bother to inform his landlord that he will be absent from his apartment over the weekend. He doesn't bother to bring any extra clothing along with him so that he will have something fresh to wear tomorrow and the next day. He doesn't wish Stewart, Fowler, or Wright good evening before leaving the hospital.

He just goes home to the bachelor cottage, to his daughter, and sits with her in the dark, as though she were still a newborn.

Though usually Santana would squirm, unwilling to have her papa cradle her while she was awake and ready to play, tonight she relaxes against his torso, breathing her heavy toddler breaths.

She has always been a sensitive child.

Though she doesn't comprehend what it means that her mother has died, somehow, she seems to understand the significance of this moment, at least.

Somehow, she seems to know that things are different now.

On Monday, Mateo doesn't go to his office, despite the fact that he is scheduled to excise a node from an important lady's neck at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Instead of showing up to work, he lingers in the parlor at the bachelor cottage, lying on his back upon the sofa couch. He stares up at the ceiling, wondering if he might be able to hear the broken mechanism in the clockwork in his heart if only he listens for it closely enough.

Somehow he can't seem to pick it out over the oppressive silence of the house.

His mother fixes him breakfast and sets it on the end table, but he ignores the offering, allowing the hot smells to first cool and then run stale, meat and eggs congealing on the plate.

Santana toddles into the room around noon, curious to see her father lounging about at the house during regular daytime hours on a weekday. Even at her young age, she knows it isn't the usual way of things. She sets a hand on his kneecap.

Papa sleeping, she mumbles to herself.

He isn't sleeping, of course.

His mother doesn't bother to bring him lunch, but she does call him to supper. When he doesn't heed her summons, he hears her speak to Santana in Spanish.

Your papa is a stubborn boy.

He doesn't have the energy to explain the difference between heartbreak and stubbornness to her.

After supper, Santana enters the parlor again, this time with herMiss Mulock's Fairy Book clutched firmly between her hands. She wants Mateo to read to her, as he so often does during their usual evening convention.

Determined to hear a story, she sets the book on Mateo's stomach and then latches onto Mateo's pant leg, using the fabric as leverage so that she can heave herself onto the couch. She struggles, breathing heavily through her open mouth. It takes all of her strength to grapple her way up, her frilly baby skirt bunching around her waist.

Mateo reaches out automatically to help her, grabbing her under her arms to lift her onto his lap.

Pleased, Santana settles in. Pleased, she retrieves her book, holding it up to Mateo as if he hasn't already noticed it.

Papa read? she asks, shaking the book by its end cover so that the pages fall open in a cascade. She holds the book by one corner, dangling it for Mateo to take into his grasp. I wanna princess. I wanna princesa, she says.

She means that she wants her papa to read her a princess story, of course.

She always, always does.

Mateo accepts the book from his daughter and even forces himself to sit up a bit on the sofa couch, propping his back against the cushions. He thumbs through the book pages until he finds the beginning to a story. He doesn't much pay attention to what story it is. At the same time, Santana readjusts herself on his lap, coming up right against Mateo to have his deep voice close to her ear. She wants to see the illustrations. She wants her papa to hold her up.

Mateo tries to focus on the words.

The, um—The Sleeping Beauty—in the, in the—in the Wood, he stumbles.

His vision blurs. His shoulders wrack.

Santana endures his silent sob as though it were but a hiccup. She doesn't comment on it or shame him for it. Instead, she traces over the page with her tiny finger, finding the image of the princess slumbering in the briar. She waits for a long time for Mateo to resume speaking, as patient as any two year old girl can be.

When Mateo allows nearly a full minute to pass in silence, Santana points haphazardly at the words upon the page.

Princess sleeping, Santana feigns to read. Princess sleeping. She, um, and fairies, and she, um, she go sleep. Pretty princess. Buenas noches, princesa.

Mateo draws a whistling breath, steeling himself. He swallows the jaggedness wedged in his throat.

Did the prince come to rescue her? he asks, pointing to the next illustration.

No prince! Santana shouts, covering the picture of the prince with her palm. No prince!

For the last few weeks, no has been Santana's favorite word, and her answer to almost every question, regardless of what said question might be.

When Mateo laughs a bit at Santana's adamancy, it surprises him, for he hadn't thought he was capable of real laughter anymore.

No prince, he repeats, allowing Santana to turn the page. He presses a kiss to her hair, more grateful than ever just to have her.

Mateo possesses just one photograph of Bonnie, taken just a few months before he and Bonnie met, when a photographer came to Bonnie's workplace in Satan's Circus and offered to make prints of the staff for one dollar per person.

In the photograph, Bonnie is impossibly young and impossibly serious. In some ways, she looks like the woman she would grow to be. In others, she prefigures herself, an uncertainty to her which is childish and raw.

When Bonnie came to live at the bachelor cottage, Mateo discovered the photograph tucked into the pocket of one of her old pinafores. He asked Bonnie if he could keep it with him at his apartment so that he could have her with him even on nights when they slept apart. She told him he was the silliest person she had ever met. But she gave him the photograph.

Nowadays, he keeps it in a silver clutch in the pocket of his surgeon's bag. He can't decide whether he never wants to stop looking at it or to never look at it again.

Though at first she was only a nuisance at the bachelor cottage, following Bonnie's death, Alma becomes Santana's only caretaker during the day, as well as the lady of the house at all hours. She assumes responsibility for the countless chores and duties that once belonged to Bonnie, parents her granddaughter, and, perhaps most surprisingly, gives good counsel to her son.

She finds him sitting in Bonnie's bedroom, hunched over on the bed, facing towards the window, looking out at the city rapt in wintering twilight.

It is now Tuesday.

A full week has passed since Bonnie died.

Mateo had been scheduled to assist the Chair of Surgery with a radical splenectomy earlier in the afternoon, but he hadn't bothered to leave the house or even send word to the hospital that he would be absent for the procedure.

Fowler or Stewart probably took his place at the table anyway.

It's no matter, not really.

Mateo clutches Bonnie's photograph in one hand. He thumbs over it again and again.

Alma steps into the room, uninvited. She stands behind Mateo, and he doesn't turn to look at her. He can hear her weight upon the floorboards, though. Santana is asleep in the nursery, across the hall. They'll wake her for supper in an hour or two.

You must return to the hospital tomorrow, to your practice, Alma says.

Mateo's parents had always cared more about him attending medical school and becoming a surgeon than they had anything else, including his own druthers.

Now it doesn't surprise Mateo that his mother would worry more about his work than about anything else.

She wouldn't want him to disgrace her by failing in his profession, after all.

The old recalcitrance hardens in Mateo's belly.

Suddenly, he feels unspeakably angry.

If Alma hadn't pushed Bonnie so hard, Bonnie might never have become susceptible to the fever. If Alma hadn't nagged and hedged and made herself so damned insufferable to have in the house, Bonnie might not have worked herself to death. She might have rested. She might have even had someone to care for her.

Alma always hated Bonnie.

She hated that Mateo wanted Bonnie and Santana and his life at the bachelor cottage more than anything that she and Mateo's father had chosen for him for themselves. She hated that Mateo didn't marry some prim, white debutante who could give her creamy little grandchildren and a sense of belonging in America. She never acknowledged any of Bonnie's virtues—neither Bonnie's playfulness nor Bonnie's deep desires to please and to love. Mateo will be damned if she even met Bonnie's eyes once during the whole time that they lived at the bachelor cottage together!

Alma only ever viewed Bonnie as his hindrance and mistake.

She probably feels hopeful, now that Bonnie has died, that Mateo will marry some other, better girl.

She has no idea that no better girl exists.

If it were up to Alma herself, she would remain forever at the bachelor cottage, keeping Santana Mateo's dark secret from the world, while Mateo repented of his youthful stubbornness and moved on, making a new family for himself elsewhere.

It might please Alma if Mateo never returned to the bachelor cottage again.

She wants him to go to work.

Do not—, Mateo starts to say.

But Alma doesn't listen to him.

You must return to the hospital tomorrow, she says sternly, because your daughter needs you to provide for her. You have a responsibility to care for your child. You may comport yourself however you wish otherwise, but you must attend your work and be a father to her. You cannot keep her if you haven't a profession and a place to live.

Alma pauses, her weight shifting on the floor as she turns to go away. When next she speaks, she does so in the smallest voice that Mateo has ever heard her use.

Santana loves you, Mateo.

It is the first time that Alma has called Mateo by the name she gave to him at birth since he was only one year old, when their family arrived in America.

The sound of the name on her lips jolts Mateo, but by the time he looks up, his mother has already disappeared down the hallway, heading to the kitchen to prepare supper for him and his child.

The Bellevue board nearly discontinues Mateo's residency.

His landlord threatens him with eviction if he goes missing again.

Stewart, Fowler, and Wright badger him, asking him to where he disappeared and what he could have possibly been thinking.

The Chair of Surgery tells him that he is very disappointed in his failing in character.

Mateo bears all the chastisements as though they were nothing. He promises to improve himself and to never behave so recklessly again. Whatever reparations he must make, he makes.

He cuts down on his office hours for one week in order to take on two extra hospital shifts. He brings in his landlord's milk after the delivery cart stops at their building. He buys his friends a round of drinks at the pub on his own dollar. He performs the most phenomenal emergency appendectomy that the Chair of Surgery has ever seen before an amphitheater crowded with medical students.

He tells no one that his wife has died and doesn't wear mourning attire.

He goes home to his baby girl every night.

Papa's here, he says. Papa's got you.

Things don't return to normal after Bonnie dies, not after two weeks, not after one month, not after the season changes. The house still wants for laughter. Mateo still feels as if someone had excised some vital part of him by surgery. There are still so many bleak and awful evenings, more lonesome nights than before. The bachelor cottage goes without something unrecoverable.

But gradually things happen.

Christmas comes, and Alma makes pasteles in the oven. At first, Santana is wary of the new spiced smell and strange texture of the dish, but after her papa assures her that the pasteles are delicious, she becomes most enamored of them, and singsongs, 'Buela, more, please! scrabbling her fork against her plate.

On Christmas day, Alma plaits Santana's hair and ties it in pretty velvet ribbons. Santana still looks like Alma in both retrospect and miniature, but she also bears a hint of Bonnie somewhere around her eyes.

She loves the wrappings on her gift more than the gift itself.

Mateo loves watching Santana, but aches to hold Bonnie's hand in his own as he stands in the doorframe, taking in Santana's delight. He hates to think that Bonnie is missing this—Santana spinning in the parlor, the ribbons in her hair trailing the ribbon clasped in her hand. Santana dances circles upon the rug, dimples deep in her cheeks as she laughs through prism light.

Her laughter sounds much like Bonnie's.

She grows up so quickly.

By the time the New Year dawns, Santana has begun to talk so much more than before. She learns to count to five on Mateo's fingers when he holds them up to her. She sings a song about a Puerto Rican frog in Spanish with Alma. When Mateo reads to her at night, she can sit through almost a whole fairytale without squirming very much in his lap. Alma teaches Santana to recite the Hail Mary before bedtime, and, though Santana mumbles through most of it, she seems to know the cadence of the prayer, at least.

Mateo doesn't know how to feel about his daughter praying.

His own religion is science and humanity. Bonnie believed in angels but not especially in God.

Part of Mateo hates the idea of his daughter being made to parrot beliefs before she can possibly examine them logically for herself, but part of him abides the prayers because they harm no one and because they are a routine, and Santana needs a routine now.

One day, Mateo realizes that Santana hasn't asked him about her mama in a very long while—maybe for several weeks, maybe for several months. At first, he feels a pang in his heart, but then he thinks that maybe Santana's silence on the matter is for the best.

Mateo still isn't ready to talk about Bonnie yet, not to his mother, not to his colleagues, and not even to Santana. His eyes still cloud over with tears whenever he remembers some little thing about her. He feels like he failed her, like hiding her away in the bachelor cottage brought about her death, like he should have been able to cure her fever if he were a better doctor, husband, and man.

He resolves to tell Santana all about Bonnie when she is older.

Time will heal him, he thinks.

Until it does so, he is content not to answer the questions Santana no longer asks.

Santana contracts a summer head cold and spends her days abed, sniffling and suffering through the meekest little cough. Though Santana isn't very ill, it still loosens the seams of Mateo's heart to see her even slightly miserable, and he does everything he can to recuperate her health.

Papa, fix it! Santana cries, hoarse, taking Mateo's hand and pressing it to her throat, showing him where she hurts.

Mateo wets his handkerchief and wipes her nose with it, careful not to abrade her skin. He rubs Musterole on her chest and opens in the windows in the nursery to let in fresh air for her to breathe. When Santana mewls, he rather unnecessarily checks her heartbeat with his stethoscope, simply because he knows that it comforts and fascinates Santana to see him do it.

There is nothing wrong with her heart.

Two weeks pass before Santana entirely recovers. Once she convalesces, it is as if her illness never happened to her at all, as far as it concerns her.

Mateo finds Santana playing with her porcelain doll on the floor beside her bed, chattering to it, the color back in her cheeks and her voice returned to its full volume. He enters the nursery and sits down beside her, leaning up against the bed frame, crossing his feet and resting his hands in his lap. He grunts with the effort of getting down onto the floor.

Hello, little lady, he smiles. How are you feeling today?

Um, good, Santana answers, distracted with trying to dress her dolly in a frilly new petticoat.

Are you all better? he asks.

It takes Santana minute to reply; her little fingers struggle to pull the petticoat on under the doll's overskirt.

All better, she repeats. Papa, you fixed, um, fixed my, uh, mouth. And my, uh, tummy.

She points to her chest.

You gived me besos, she says.

I did give you kisses—and medicine, Mateo says, in awe at how perfectly simple Santana makes everything. May I have another kiss, sweeting? he asks her, pointing to his chin so that Santana will know where to aim her lips.

Santana doesn't comply with his request right away. Instead, she turns her dolly upside-down so that its skirts and petticoats fall over its head. She holds the doll aloft like a torch or a flower, watching its legs flop back and forth as she moves it. After several seconds, she sets the doll down on the floorboards and nods, scooting over to where Mateo sits and climbing into his lap.

All better, she coos, pressing wet lips against the stubble on his chin.

It troubles Mateo that Santana has no playmates.

In his heart, he knows that it is his own fault that his little girl has no contact with the outside world, but part of him can't help but blame their neighborhood, their street, their house for her isolation.

Back in 1873, David Lopez spent his fortune to purchase the bachelor cottage, acquiring it immediately after Mateo gained acceptance to the Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

Ostensibly, David made the purchase in order to allow Mateo to live close to the school and to have a place to sequester himself while he went about his studies. However, the real reason David purchased the bachelor cottage, as opposed to one of the apartment flats next door to the Bellevue proper, was because it had always been his ambition to own an expensive American property.

For a Spanish planter's son, land and real estate were the true measure of wealth, and no man could be important unless he owned a fine home with a good yard attached to it.

Though David's own place in Union Square was not itself unimpressive, David wanted his son to live in a home that told anyone who passed by it that the occupant was a Patriot and Successful and a Man of Means.

David wanted the oldest, most American house he could afford, so naturally he purchased a property in a private, well-established neighborhood: an 1844 brownstone at the heart of Gramercy Park.

The brownstone boasted a yard with an English-style garden and a terrace, a solarium on the back porch, servants' quarters, and indoor plumbing, all built in. Its rooms were many and spacious, its embellishments both noteworthy and tasteful.

Inside, the house came mostly furnished, all in fine array. Sunlight poured in through the windows during the afternoons and moonlight in the evenings. Though its moldings originated in faraway places like France, Belgium, and Italy, the fact that so many styles converged within the same four walls marked the bachelor cottage as a uniquely American domicile itself.

The bachelor cottage stood as a monument to David's hard work and perseverance.

It represented everything that he and his wife had sacrificed in order to give their son a better life when they moved away from Puerto Rico. In David's eyes, it was his twenty years spent working as a pharmacist, purchasing a shop, creating a thriving business, saving, and making investments—suffering in silence to hide an unspeakable secret—built from brick and mortar.

On Mateo's twenty-first birthday, David deeded the property to Mateo as a gift and charged Mateo to maintain it well.

While Mateo has always felt grateful to his father for establishing him in such a fine home—and particularly as Mateo might never been able to make a life with Bonnie had he not possessed a property at which to keep her—he does regret that his daughter will grow up with no one but white-haired old millionaires for neighbors.

Santana will never know the same childhood joys Mateo did, playing stickball in the street during the summers, racing home down crowded sidewalks after school. Their neighborhood is devoid of child-sounds. It is quiet and moldering, like a graveyard, and even the leaves falling from the trees take care not to draw attention to themselves as they make their graceful, pirouetting descents.

To the best of Mateo's knowledge, Santana is the only little girl who lives on the block, and less than one-dozen people even knows that she lives there.

Perhaps it is for the best that way.

Of course, Gramercy Park is not entirely prejudiced.

Before the war, the good men of the neighborhood hid fugitives in their cellars and garden sheds; the bachelor cottage may even have once been a way station itself.

Mateo's neighbors claim to like the Negroes and abide Mateo both employing and keeping Negro women on his property entirely without complaint. When they see Alma and Santana through the slats in the garden gate, they smile politely at them and wiggle their fingers in greeting. They are benign, old Yankees who believe that all is well as long as everyone remains in his or her appointed place.

Occasionally, Mateo has heard them call Santana a pretty little pickaninny.

And yet.

For all their purported toleration and magnanimity, Mateo's neighbors in Gramercy Park would never allow their own grandchildren to play with Santana, even if they knew her true paternity. Perhaps especially not even then.

There is no one in Gramercy Park for Santana except for her aged grandmother and busy father.

Thankfully, Santana knows how to entertain herself whenever her caretakers cannot entertain her. She sits quietly with her dolly or tracing over the pages of her fairy book with her fingers. She sings little, lilting songs by her lonesome in the garden and talks to herself for hours inside the nursery. If she feels at all bored, she doesn't express it. If she longs for companionship, she may not know the words to ask for what she craves.

Mateo supposes that, as in so many cases, Santana doesn't understand what it is that she lacks.

He doesn't know whether to feel grateful or sad that his little daughter has already become so self-reliant.

Santana first learns to memorize.

She is only four years old when Mateo overhears her sitting in the parlor, saying the words to one of her fairy stories aloud. He stands up from the kitchen table and leans against the doorframe, listening to her, hands in his slack pockets. He doesn't announce his presence.

His first clue that Santana isn't really reading is that there are no electric lights on inside the parlor; the whole room is dark, with only a little bit of residual light creeping in from the kitchen. His second clue that Santana isn't really reading is that she holds her book upside-down in her lap, even as she points out the words on the page.

She manages to make her recitation with admirable clarity, even if she does skip over some parts to the story and mumble through the larger words that she hasn't yet the faculty to understand.

When Santana notices Mateo watching her, she smiles and beckons him over to the sofa couch to join her.

Papa, read me the stories? she asks him.

Let us read them together, peach, he suggests.

Mateo starts by turning on the electric lamp and righting the book in Santana's grasp. He sits beside Santana on the sofa couch, wrapping one arm around her tiny shoulders. She stares at him with great, dark eyes, infinitely interested in his every action, and he points to the words on the page. He begins to sound them out phonetically, indicating the letters as he speaks each syllable aloud.

Whenever Mateo's mouth dips open in a long O or his lips pop with an explosive P, Santana giggles and snuggles in tighter against him.

She whispers each word after he does, saying it again and again and again, breaking it into pieces upon her tongue as though it were somehow the sweetest candy.

Santana learns to read by the end of the year—only simple primers, of course, but still books all the same.

The c-a-t dr-inks milk, she discerns. The d-og ea-ts b-bo-nes.

Mateo feels so proud of her accomplishment that he could almost burst, and he struggles to keep the happy news to himself.

At the hospital, he asks his colleague Stewart, At what age did you youngest child learn to read?

Stewart furrows his brow. At five or six years in age, he says, in school. Why do you ask, Lucas?

Mateo shrugs, biting back his grin. No reason, he says. Only, I have heard tell of a little girl who can read herself books at the age of four years, and she is just a wee thing. I had wondered if she was very clever, then.

Stewart nods. She must be very clever, he allows.

It is most fortunate that Stewart chooses to turn away from Mateo just at that instant, for if he had remained looking at Mateo's face, Mateo never would have been able to keep any secrets; Stewart would have seen the truth about everything in the brilliance of his smile.

How strange it is that as Santana grows, she becomes more and more like a person whom Mateo feels certain that she can scarcely remember.

Though Santana still mostly resembles Alma, she also bears hints of Bonnie just around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, and certain of her expressions almost seem to bring her mother back to life.

Most often, Santana recalls Bonnie in moments of somberness and stern attention—when she bites her lip and furrows her brow, when she pouts, and when her face sets in consternation, confusion, or deep consideration.

She is such a serious little child, not mirthless by any means but also entirely more considerate than Mateo himself had ever been at her age.

One might suppose that it would pain Mateo to live with such a constant reminder of his lost love, to see traces of Bonnie without ever being able to enjoy her company again, but, somehow, it gladdens him down to his bones to know that Santana bears her mother with her wherever she goes, in her glances, in her queries, in her times of deepest thoughtfulness.

He loves that Santana is his and Bonnie's forever.

He also loves that Santana's likeness to Bonnie is so much more than just superficial.

It delights Mateo to find that Santana shares Bonnie's eagerness to please, her cleverness, her wit, and her desire to never do wrong, if she can help it.

It further delights him that Santana sometimes has a way of speaking that is like how Bonnie used to do so, for she places stress onto the same words as Bonnie would have done. Even the timbre of Santana's singing voice is like Bonnie's, though at a higher pitch and with less years in it.

It surprises Mateo that so much of Bonnie has passed to Santana, even without Bonnie present to pass it on in person.

One afternoon, Mateo finds Santana sitting at the piano bench, plinking on the keys. Light pours into the parlor through the bay window. It catches in Santana's hair, still wet from a recent bath, spangling her curls. Santana hardens her face in concentration.

She is Bonnie, teaching herself to play.

When she looks up at Mateo observing her from across the room, Santana offers him a serious sort of smile—another one of Bonnie's expressions, brought back from the dead.

Don't be sad, Papa, she tells him.

I'm not sad, Mateo says. I am happy because you are growing up to be such a fine young woman.

A giddier smile creeps onto Santana's face. It isn't Bonnie's, but it is beautiful.

Let me play you a song, Papa.

Please, peach, please. Anything you want to play.

Alma begins to pester Mateo to socialize.

A young man of your age, she tells him in Spanish, should not spend his every evening with an old woman and an infant. You should be making new acquaintances, recreating.

What she really means is that she would like Mateo to remarry, and he knows it. The implication in her statement stirs up the old recalcitrance in him—and also brings out an ache in his heart, still fresh after two and a half years.

Santana is no longer an infant, Mateo retorts in English. She is nearly five years in age. And I have many acquaintances at the hospital. I needn't go out anywhere. I'm not a schoolboy who must attend balls and luncheons in order to live well.

But then Fowler and Stewart approach Mateo one afternoon following a lecture.

They tell Mateo that they have joined a new but very distinguished gentleman's club, and that they find their membership in the club most invigorating. They concede that Mateo may not need such a diversion in his life as they do in theirs, considering that he is still a bachelor and able to do as he pleases, while they both have wives, numerous children, and countless responsibilities between them.

However, they say, we would still like you to consider attending the club, Matty.

They've already spoken with Wright, who has promised to come along to a meeting if his wife doesn't henpeck him to death for doing it.

Mateo consents to try out the club and shows up to a meeting on the same night that Wright does.

He knows that his mother would be most disappointed that he has chosen to take his diversions at a place where there will be no opportunities for him to interact with eligible ladies.

That knowledge alone entices Mateo to act both quickly and rashly.

By the end of the night, he has become a novice member of the New York Grolier Club.

In making his first introduction to them, Mateo is most pleased to learn that the Groliers are actually a bibliographic society and boast a vast library, named after a former Treasurer-General of France. Though he has not always felt fond of his school studies, Mateo has always loved books and reading for his own personal edification and leisure. Having unlimited access to the Grolier resources agrees with him very much.

During his first few trial weeks of membership in the Grolier Club, Mateo's colleagues at the hospital remark that he has begun to look very well indeed. They tell him he has color in his cheeks again.

One of the senior surgeons even compliments Mateo as they perform a ligature of the aortic artery together, saying that he has never observed a junior resident possessed of as much focus and precision as is the fine, young Dr. Lucas.

Whatever regimen you have created for yourself, keep at it, boy, he advises.

I have every intention to, sir, Mateo tells him honestly.

It gratifies Mateo to engage with other adults besides his mother. In a way, he feels like a man, once starving, invited to a vast feast and granted permission to eat his fill. The conversation at the Grolier Club meetings stimulates and invigorates his mind. His companionship with the other grown persons there helps him to remember parts of himself that had corroded and cobwebbed in the years since Bonnie's death.

Even so, Mateo cannot help but feel somewhat guilty for enjoying his time spent away from Santana.

Is he a terrible father for not wanting to dedicate his every free hour to living with her inside the bachelor cottage? Is it awful of him to keep her locked up when he himself may go about the city, at his liberty? Oughtn't he to keep her company whenever he is able to?

Mateo finds he must remind himself that it is healthful for him to take in some personal relaxation.

After all, even Bonnie had needed her half-hour or hour of respite every night, and she had been the most attentive and eager parent Mateo has ever known.

Mateo must care for himself in order to care for Santana, mustn't he?

The club seems to do him good, both personally and professionally.

After great deliberation, Mateo determines to maintain his membership and submits a full pledge to the organization, much to the delight of Fowler, Wright, and Stewart.

Though Mateo does still harbor some guilt on club nights, he also immensely enjoys his conversations with the other Grolier men, most of whom are doctors, bankers, and captains of industry, brilliant in their own fields and highly amiable.

The men spend their meetings discussing art and literature. While some are churchgoers, many of them are secular humanists, like Mateo. They find God in paintings and sculpture. They learn the secrets of the universe in books and scientific treatises.

When the opportunity allows, they engage in philanthropic pursuits, donating books to worthy causes and hosting symposia for the public.

They often end their nights drinking and playing billiards, though they are by no means a rowdy group or poorly comported in the least.

On nights when Mateo must attend meetings rather than go straight home to see Santana after work, he makes sure to bring books to her as a treat afterwards. Though the Groliers haven't much in the way of a children's collection, they do own numerous classic tomes and even many newer volumes. Mateo gives Santana the book list for the library and allows her to choose her own titles, as long as he deems them appropriate for a child of her age.

Though Santana can read quite fluently by the time she is five years in age, she still enjoys it when Mateo reads aloud to her in his spare moments, and she often asks him to explain to her unfamiliar ideas and allusions from her books.

Surprisingly, she seems to have the most questions on those rare occasions when Mateo can bring her a children's book.

She doesn't think about her world in the way that other little children do.

She is such a serious little thing.

Papa, she says one day, pouring over her reader. Where is Africa?

Far away, little lady, Mateo answers. I can bring you a map tomorrow to show you where it is.

I should like that, Santana says.

You should? Mateo teases, smiling at his daughter's gravity.

She either ignores the teasing or doesn't notice it.

Yes, she says, turning her attention back to the open book in her lap, studying the pages. I should like to see where Africa is, for Mr. Parley says that that is where the largest elephants come from.

Santana can neither attend school nor take private lessons with a tutor at the bachelor cottage for more reasons than Mateo can count.

For one thing, Santana possesses no birth certificate or proof of American citizenship. For another thing, there are no Negro schools near Gramercy Park.

To make the matter even more complicated, Mateo doesn't trust that a governess or lecturer would keep his family secrets, even for handsome pay.

It would seem too unusual for a bachelor surgeon to hire someone to educate his maid's young granddaughter, and admitting his own paternity is a risk that Mateo cannot take, both for Santana's own safety and the sake of his livelihood.

All the same, Mateo will not suffer Santana to grow up uneducated.

He decides to become her schoolmaster himself.

Before supper, Mateo and Santana study mathematics, music, and sciences. After supper, they read, write, spell, and discuss geography and history.

On nights when Mateo must be away from the bachelor cottage, he assigns Santana lessons and has her read without him. If she shows an especial interest in any particular topic, he will try to find relevant literature for her to peruse concerning it. It is Mateo's belief that knowledge is one of the glories of humanity. He wants his daughter to enjoy every opportunity to enrich her understanding, never mind the fact that the whole world might try to deny her this right, were they given a say in her development.

To Mateo's delight, Santana turns out to be a very clever student.

She encounters difficulty with only just one subject.

Writing.

Mateo brings home a slate and chalk so that Santana can practice writing. She has already been able to recognize the letters of the alphabet for nearly a year and a half. Mateo expects that Santana will not have any trouble learning to mimic the characters she already knows from the page for herself on her tablet.

But then Santana can't seem to press down hard enough with the chalk to leave a mark against her slate.

And then the slate keeps turning on the table, slipping out from under Santana as she struggles to make out an inscription upon it.

When Santana does manage to leave marks, they are illegible and uncoordinated, one on top of the other. Her little hand trembles as she drags the chalk along dusty black. Her wrist moves at odd angles and in such a way that Mateo cannot even think as to how to correct the mistake.

Though Mateo encourages Santana, it doesn't take long for her to become frustrated.

Papa, don't make me do it! she cries, tears curling down her cheeks as she pushes her slate away from her. I don't wanna write! I don't wanna! It's too hard!

It had been so long since Santana had thrown a tantrum that Mateo doesn't know precisely how to respond.

He ends up permitting her to go to bed without first making her complete her lessons.

She hasn't written a single ABC upon her tablet.

Mateo can hear Santana sobbing upstairs in the bathtub, even as he remains downstairs in the parlor, cleaning her school supplies from her writing desk. He picks up the slate and holds it between his hands, thumbing away chalk dust.

Though Mateo loves to learn, his own memories of his schooldays are not all kind ones. He never struggled to master any skill or subject in school intellectually, but he did sometimes find it difficult to concentrate on his tasks. From time to time, he would shirk his work and play the scallywag during class.

He remembers one occasion on which his schoolmaster rapped his knuckles with a baton after he failed to decline his Latin. He held his tears until he made it halfway home for the evening. When Alma opened the door to find him weeping, he lied to her and said that he had bruised his hand in a scuffle on the schoolyard, for he couldn't bear to tell his mother that he had failed to complete his lesson. The thought that he had might have disappointed her and his father caused his whole heart to ache.

Mateo waits until Santana finishes her bath and Alma combs out the kinks in her hair, drying it with a towel and braiding it for the night. He lingers at the bachelor cottage later than he would normally.

Santana, sweet peach, would you like me to read you a story? he asks, appearing at the doorway to the nursery.

Santana sniffles and nods. She reaches over to her nightstand, procuring a book for him from out of a tall stack.

As Mateo takes a seat at the edge of her bed, he feels his heartstrings picked apart, as if with a seam ripper.

I'm very proud of you, he says, leaning down to kiss Santana on the brow. I always am.

Though Santana still sniffles, she also manages a smile.

They're at the supper table the next night when Mateo notices it.

He asks Santana to pass him the salt, and she sets down her fork, reaches across the table, lifts the shaker, and submits it into Mateo's grasp, all with her left hand.

Mateo continues to watch Santana throughout the meal.

Her right hand remains daintily in her lap under the table, while her left hand moves quickly and adroitly about, manipulating food, drink, and utensils with the greatest of ease. After the meal, she clears her plate to the sink and stands on her little footstool, propping her plate up in the basin with her right hand and scrubbing the porcelain clean with the washcloth in her left.

Mateo doesn't understand how he had never noticed it before. He thought he knew everything there was to know about his little girl. Has she been keeping secrets from him? She has always been so clever.

Once Santana completes her task, Mateo calls out to her, grinning.

Let's go practice your handwriting, shall we?

For a split instant, Santana looks frightened, not just to fail but to fail her papa, in particular. She glances from Mateo to the floorboards and back again, wringing her little hands together in front of her pinafore. Though she is far too timid to refuse Mateo anything he asks of her outright, she seems unable to make herself to go join him.

Mateo's heart seams loosen.

Come, come, he beckons. I have worked it all out. I know how to help you. Yesterday, your teacher had made a mistake. Today, he knows better. Won't you give him another chance, precious girl?

Santana bites her bottom lip, still wary, but then a smile starts to curl at her mouth. Soon, dimples deepen in her cheeks. She doesn't speak but nods in reply, extending a hand to Mateo so that he can lead her to her writing desk.

She trusts him so fully and implicitly that it almost startles him to contemplate it.

She is willing to follow her papa anywhere, willing to believe that he can do everything in the world to help her as she has need of it.

It isn't an instant fix.

Teaching Santana to write with her dominant hand requires more effort than simply setting chalk in her grasp and encouraging her to have at it.

Before today, Mateo had never considered the mechanics of left-handed writing in much depth at all. Working out how to angle the slate so that Santana won't drag her hand or even elbow through her writing requires trials and corrections on Mateo's part. Determining a way for Santana to hold the chalk without straining her little wrist requires even more trails and corrections on hers.

Gradually, father and daughter develop a method in which Mateo supports Santana's hand with his own as she makes her strokes upon the slate. Mateo helps her to press down hard enough to leave marks and guides her in the unfamiliar motions, A... B... C.

Santana wears her most somber expression all throughout the lesson, mouth tight and brow furrowed in concentration. Her wrist is weak and unaccustomed to performing such meticulous work.

When she completes her first set of letters, she frowns at the outcome, disappointed to see them so small upon the vast, black slate.

They're too tiny, she complains. And shaky.

But you've improved so much since yesterday, Mateo notes. Imagine how much you will improve again tomorrow.

It takes a long while before Santana feels enough at ease to practice writing without Mateo holding onto her hand. It takes another long while after that for her to learn to shape her letters.

At first, Santana writes very sloppily, to the point where she feels ashamed of her hand. When Mateo checks over her work, she hunkers low in her chair and apologizes before he can even open his mouth to speak.

I'm sorry, Papa. I can do better.

Though Mateo does encourage Santana to practice, he never has it in him to scold her. When he sees practicing her penmanship rather than playing with her dolly before bedtime, he wonders if his heart seams won't unravel from sheer adoration. Has there ever been such a diligent little girl, so devoted and good?

It takes a long while for Santana to improve her handwriting to the point where it becomes not just legible but expressive. She traces over old letters she finds stashed in Mateo's desk, biting her tongue between her teeth and paying painstaking attention to every jot and tittle. Eventually, she begins to produce not just print but script.

She shows it to her papa.

Is it all right? she asks, nervous and unable to meet Mateo's eyes.

In all honesty, her writing looks not unlike Mateo's own, but it is also somehow more graceful, more careful and refined.

Mateo takes Santana's stationary into his hands.

It's beautiful, he tells her. Absolutely perfect.

Spanish translations:

abuelo : grandfather

abuelo : grandmother

Claro : Of course

por favor : please

Sí : Yes

Te promito : I promise you

Buenas noches, princesa : Goodnight, princess

pasteles : a traditional Puerto Rican Christmas food, similar to a Mexican tamale, usually made from plantain or sweet potato paste, meats, and spices, and rolled in a banana leaf. In New York, Alma must modify the recipe because she does not have all the traditional ingredients available to her.