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Snow Tart
270774
The line connects after two rings. Ricardo holds his breath — it feels the same as when he isn’t. “Castro speaking.”
Time seems to stop. It resumes, shuddering and jilting, when she speaks again. “Hello? Who is this?”
“Sorry,” Ricardo blurts, and the line goes silent. Shit. He swallows, and then switches to Portuguese. The syllables are heavy on his tongue, a little unfamiliar from years of disuse, but it could never leave him entirely. “Hey, mãe. It’s me.”
His mother makes a noise, over the phone, that Ricardo’s never heard before. It’s something strained and taut and disbelieving, and it sounds fragile in a way that he can’t reconcile with his memories of her, vivid as they are. He starts talking again, stumbling over himself, as if he could drown it out. “It’s me, I swear. This isn’t — it’s not a — I don’t know. It’s me.”
“Oh, Jesus.” This is less like his mother’s voice than Rack’s imitation, and yet he knows it’s real, ten times more real than anything that happened downstairs — a hundred times, a thousand. Her voice shakes and wraps and he would recognize it even if it were worse than this. “Oh, god — Ricardo? Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that, mãe.” Ricardo feels like his chest is collapsing. There’s a sharp pain, there, worse than anything that he’s felt since he died. He presses his forehead into his hand. “I’m sorry. I can’t, but I just — I wanted you to know that — I’m okay.”
His mother inhales, slow and labored. He hears another noise and realizes, with horror, that this is the first time he’s ever heard his mother cry.
“Where are you?” she demands again. Even through tears, she’s managing to sound firm and commanding. “Come home. Come home. Or — no—” Ricardo hears, faintly in the background, the sound of a chair scraping. “I’ll come get you. All you have to do is tell me where you are, Ricardo, I’ll get a flight.”
“I can’t. I can’t right now.” Ricardo’s throat is tightening again, his eyes hurt, and suddenly he realizes that he’s crying, too. He doesn’t know when it started. There are more important things. “I can’t come home. I can’t tell you what’s happening. When I can, I will, but I don’t know when that’ll be.”
“Ricardo,” his mother says again, in a tone he doesn’t understand, and he pushes past it.
“I love you,” he says. “Mãe, I love you. I just really wanted to say that.” He has to stop, for a second. It’s hard, he realizes, to talk and cry at the same time. He can’t remember the last time he tried. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything.”
“Jesus, Ricardo, I don’t care,” she bursts out. He hears her sniffling, hears rustling as she switches the phone to her other ear. “Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter. I love you so much — god, my boy, you’re alive—”
Not really. There’s a little lump sitting in the pit of Ricardo’s stomach, but he ignores it. “Yeah. I’m okay. And I’m—” He lies, a little. He thinks it’s justified. “I’m safe. Things are just complicated.”
“Well, for fuck’s sake, Ricardo, I would hope it’s fucking complicated,” says his mother, and Ricardo laughs, a strange ragged sound that shares the same breath as a sob, and she does too. It’s the strangest thing he’s ever experienced, but none of this is normal. She’s still laughing when she speaks again. “It better be fucking complicated, for what you put me through—”
“I’m sorry,” Ricardo says again, and he means it so much he aches, even when he’s still weakly chuckling. “I’m sorry.”
He hears her inhale, then exhale again, slow and unsteady. She’s centering herself. Her voice still shakes, but she sounds more like herself. “Alright. You can’t tell me where you are. You can’t tell me what you’ve been doing. You can’t tell me why you disappeared, or when you’ll be home.” Another deep breath. “What the hell can you tell me? Give me something.”
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