Viking by Daniel Hardman Page A

the same name as
her girls, she wasn’t ready for a wholesale repudiation of the life she’d begun on her
wedding day.
    It wasn’t so much an allegiance to Rafa, she told herself—it was a recognition that
marriage and motherhood had become dimensions that were indivisible from the rest of
her self.
    Julie Sterlyn was simply not all of who she was.
    Her pen finished its glum scratching and landed atop the sheaf of paperwork in an
untidy pile. Julie pushed it away and eyed Rafa’s letter once again. Sooner or later
she had to open it, if for no other reason than to pass on anything he’d enclosed for
Lauren and Kyrie.
    She picked it up.
    It was flimsy. Light. No surprise there—Rafa had never been long on words. Wandering
slowly out onto the porch, she worked a finger under the overlap and tore open the
envelope. The stamp seemed to stare reproachfully; Rafa’s terse but welcome love notes
had never needed postage.
    Unwittingly her feet took her to the swing that hung from the patriarchal weeping
willow by the driveway. Sitting down on the damp oak seat and rocking forward, she blew
to make room for her fingers and withdrew a single sheet of paper.
    The branches overhead creaked softly.
    Dear Estrellita
, it began. Angrily she brushed back tears and shook her
head. Emotional already. She pushed harder against the ground, then leaned back and
kicked out, her gaze lost in the budding green above. In a minute the saline blur was
gone and she looked down again, ignoring the ground spinning dizzily beneath her.
    Dear Estrellita—
    I will not contest the terms of the divorce. As you can imagine I am sad. But I
    understand.
    You might want to delay a little while. You and the girls will be better off if I
    die while we’re still married.
    I had my intake physical a few days ago and will be leaving for a two-week
    training tomorrow. It will be a relief—prison has been a nightmare.
    I am worried about Mamá. I try to write, but I’m afraid she can’t see well enough
    to read my letters. And she must be very lonely. Would you visit her for me?
    Please tell Palomita and Mariposa that I love them.
    I am sorry this is so short. I have a million thoughts in my heart, but you know I
    am not much of a talker.
    —Rafael
    As she finished, a flood of confusion and grief welled up from a region of Julie’s
heart that she had attempted to lock away, and she began to sob convulsively.
    She wept for her own innocence, shattered by a vicious crime against a stranger; for
Lauren and Kyrie, who would someday retain only vague recollections of the man who sang
them to sleep and taught them to pray; for Rafa’s mother, abandoned in an antiseptic,
impersonal institution with no son to brighten her days. She wept for herself, a widow
to selfishness and hate, doubt and recrimination.
    Had she been foolish to stay away from the trial once she reached the heart-rending
conclusion that Rafa was guilty? Already she regretted the lack of closure, the
emptiness of saying goodbye by proxy.
    Who would her daughters convict on the evidence when they were old enough to judge:
her, or Rafa? Would their cries for a father always haunt her dreams?
    Elemental anger burned back in reaction to the doubt. How could she be torturing
herself like this? It only increased the damage from Rafa’s crime, made her an
accomplice to her own destruction.
    He was the one who had betrayed his family, forsaken daughters and mother, and
violated her trust and his wedding vows. Julie’s fingers curled into a fist, crushing
Rafa’s letter to a tight ball. Her life had been gentle and happy until the decision to
divorce. She was a stranger to hate. Now she welcomed its searing pulse, stepped
deliberately into the laser focus and waited to be consumed.
    But instead the venom flickered and was gone, taking with it the fire, the ice, and
the whimper. All that remained was a persistent, ephemeral melancholy and the nagging
practical concerns