“I think,” you say, though your voice sounds foreign to you, “she may be the answer to something I stopped asking a long time ago.”
You do not leave her there.
There are cameras out now. Phones lifted, whispers sharpening, the entire hungry orchestra of public attention tuning itself around the scene. If you were the man the business pages describe, you would stand up, call an assistant, handle this discreetly, sanitize the moment, move it into a private room with filtered water and legal caution.
But that man is already losing ground.
You help Rosa to her feet yourself. She sways, lighter than she should be, and Camila moves instinctively to support her other side. In that instant, something stuns you again. Rosa looks down at Camila with wet eyes and an expression so full of aching tenderness that it is almost maternal, almost familiar, almost unbearable.
