Chapter 12: The Garage Vow
The taste of him lingered—salt and bitterness and something metallic, like she’d bitten her own tongue. She stayed on her knees on the cold concrete, the gritty texture pressing into her skin through her jeans. She stared at the oil stain between her hands, a Rorschach blot of shimmering rainbows on black.
Dominic leaned heavily against the workbench, his breathing still ragged. He’d zipped his jeans. The simple act felt obscene in its normalcy.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she had said. Her own words echoed in the hollow space behind her ribs. They were true. The garage was still a cage. The house was still a silent judge. Her body still felt like a borrowed, betrayed thing.
But she had wanted to remember. To reclaim the feeling for herself, before it was weaponized again. The memory was hers now, filed under degradation, not destiny.
Dominic cleared his throat. The sound was like gravel shifting. “You shouldn’t have…”
“I know what I shouldn’t have done.” She pushed herself up, her legs unsteady. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, a useless gesture. “It was my choice.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said, his voice low. “That you think any of this is a choice.”
The fluorescent light above them buzzed and flickered. In its stuttering glow, he looked ancient, the lines around his eyes carved deep. The protector, helpless.
The side door to the house creaked open.
Neither of them moved. A slice of yellow light cut across the garage floor, widening. Catalina stood in the doorway, backlit by the kitchen bulb. She held a mug. Steam curled gently upward. She took a slow sip, her eyes scanning the scene: Valentina standing too straight, Dominic braced against the bench, the charged, thick air between them.
“Dinner’s cold,” she said. Her tone was light, conversational. It was the most terrifying sound Valentina had ever heard.
“We’re not hungry,” Dominic said.
“Of course you are. You’ve been working hard.” Catalina’s gaze drifted to the tool chest, to the shadowed space where Valentina had cried. Then it swept over her daughter, lingering. She stepped fully into the garage, letting the door swing shut behind her. Her footsteps were quiet on the concrete. “You look upset, mija.”
“I’m fine.” The words were automatic, brittle.
Catalina stopped a few feet away. She smiled, a small, knowing thing. “You two have always had your little talks in here. Your secret meetings.” She looked at Dominic. “Remember when she was seven? She hid back there after she scraped her knee on the bike. You fixed it with a band-aid and a socket wrench. Told her it was a magic tool.”
Dominic said nothing. His knuckles were white where he gripped the bench.
“The point is,” Catalina continued, setting her mug down on the fender of the Corvette, “this garage has always been where you hide from me. Where you make your little pacts.” She walked over to Valentina, reached out, and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Her fingers were warm. Valentina flinched. “Your father thinks he can protect you from the world. From what we are. But he can’t even protect you from himself.”
The air left the room. The hum of the cooler, the buzz of the light—it all faded into a high-pitched ring in Valentina’s ears.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dominic’s voice was a rumble, a warning.
Catalina didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on Valentina’s face, searching. “It means I smell it. The guilt. The shame. It’s pouring off you both. It’s different than yesterday.” Her smile widened, but her eyes were flat, obsidian. “Did you think I wouldn’t know? That I can’t see the mark on her every time you touch her?”
Valentina felt her stomach drop. A cold sweat broke out on her back.
“Cat, stop.” Dominic pushed off the bench.
“Stop what? Naming it?” Catalina finally turned to him, her composure cracking at the edges, revealing the fierce, frantic energy beneath. “You think your little promise in the dark changes the math? She is ours. She came from us. Anything you do with her is just a variation on the original theme. A smaller circle inside the big one.”
“She’s a person,” Dominic ground out. “Not a theme. Not a circle.”
“Isn’t she?” Catalina’s laugh was short, sharp. “Then what was today? Comfort? A father’s love?” She mocked his own earlier words. “She was scared of losing us.”
Valentina found her voice. It was a thread. “He said I was the chain.”
Catalina went very still. The simple statement, thrown back at her, did more damage than any shouted accusation. Her face paled. The control she wore like a second skin seemed to tighten, to crack. She looked from Valentina to Dominic, betrayal washing over her features.
“You told her that?” The lightness was gone, stripped away. Raw hurt bled through. “You reduced our life to that? To a chain?”
“It’s what you’re making it into,” Dominic said, taking a step forward. “Using her to bind me tighter. To prove some sick point.”
“The point is family!” Catalina shouted, the sound exploding in the cavernous space. “The point is that we are the only three people on this planet who are made of the same thing! The same blood, the same flesh! Everyone else out there calls her a monster. They call you a pervert. They call me a whore. They are right! But we are our monsters. We belong to each other. And you,” she jabbed a finger at Dominic, “you keep trying to build a door in a wall that has no exit!”
She was crying now, angry, hot tears. “You want to protect her? You can’t. The world will eat her alive. The only safety is here. With us. As we are. As we must be.” Her wild eyes landed on Valentina. “You felt it. You know it’s true. You can lie to him, but don’t lie to me. You came to him today because you needed to feel real. Where else can you go for that?”
Valentina opened her mouth. No sound came out. The truth of the question was a vise around her lungs. There was nowhere else.
The three of them stood in a broken triangle amid the carcasses of old cars. The domestic pretense of dinner was ashes. The secret was no longer in the shadows behind the tool chest; it was standing right in the middle of the room, heaving and sobbing and demanding to be seen.
Catalina wiped her face, smearing mascara like a bruise. She picked up her mug. The coffee was cold. She looked at the dark liquid, then threw the mug against the side of the Mustang. It shattered with a spectacular, violent crash, leaving a dark drip trailing down the primer-gray door.
“Fine,” she whispered.