Antes | Oscar Diaz

may, june, july.

Cesar turns ten on a sunny day in May.

He doesn't know, yet, that Oscar is going to be gone for a while. Oscar's filled Claudia in, meaning she's finally sat down and listened when he tries to tell her what's going on. She spent so long walking out of rooms and crawling into bed and playing on her phone that it all hits her at once. All the little details. All the hard-to-swallow truths.

A real lawyer might have gotten him even less time, maybe had the charge dropped to a misdemeanor, but as it is, the guy's a public defender. If they're lucky it'll add up to less than five years, so that's all Claudia can bring herself to hope for. In the meantime, she smiles real big in any photos folks are taking at the local Chuck E. Cheese, Geny Martinez there with one hand curled protectively over little Ruby's shoulder. Claudia feels for her; the woman is clearly two weeks overdue; last Claudia heard she's having twins.

She touches her belly, briefly, just at the thought. Shakes her head when Oscar gives her a concerned look. She's pretty sure she doesn't quite count as a real adult yet, and she's not looking to change that. Cesar's other little friends are there, his usual crew and a good chunk of his fourth grade class.

It's a good birthday, she thinks. Pizza and cake for the kids, Monty Finnie talking about wanting to take Monse on a trip one of these days, Oscar's arm around her waist. At some point, when things are winding down, she puts her hand on his knee and says, unthinking, "I'm going to miss you so much."

His fingers curl. Pressure against her lower back. "Don't talk like that," he says, quiet.

"I will," she says, holding his gaze. "Cesar, too."

"Todavía no sabe," he says. "Today's not—"

"Tomorrow, then," she says. Waits until he nods, then kisses him, and when Cesar and his little friends start making noise about it she hugs Cesar close as payback. From the way he laughs, he doesn't seem to mind.

The next day is a little different. Claudia's been back for a week—moved out a little earlier than planned, but the circumstances were extenuating. Yoli got weepy and made her promise to come around during the summer. Claudia really wants to keep it.

They're running out of time, is the thing. Oscar's last sentencing is barely a week away. After that, it'll just be Claudia and Cesar for the summer. The kid needs some warning, even if Oscar clearly doesn't want to disrupt his day to day. Claudia told him he should have thought about that before he got arrested, and when they got into it that time Oscar just walked out the door. She was mad he left and glad he did; they feel complicated, lately.

She's not sure how she's supposed to get through this anymore. It comes in waves, this all-encompassing hopelessness. Five years if they're lucky. She wants to hold onto him and push him away all at once, isn't sure what will make any of this easier.

She's been trying to figure out where her life is going for coming on a year now, and she knows even less than she did when she was still homeless. She hates to remember it, Oscar telling her she'll always have him. That's a lie, and she wants to call him out on it. But she doesn't want to spend the last few days she's got with him arguing, even if it settles under her skin sometimes. She's still learning how to get through the days again. Still feels an undercurrent of sadness when she gets up in the morning and finds him and Cesar with their heads bent over the comics section.

The truth of the matter is this: Oscar is going to jail, and Claudia's going to take care of Cesar for three months. Come August she leaves Freeridge behind—not forever. But she's leaving it, anyway; there's no way to spin this story any differently. She'll be a four, five hour drive from Oscar any given day of the week. She'll be starting all over in a new city. She hates the guilt that's settled in her, all for getting into the program she wanted. San Diego is where she's supposed to build a new home, but it burns, ugly, that there's no way she and Oscar get to make that together.