“It’s okay.” He still stared forward, as if he risked losing his obviously shaky grasp on his composure if he glanced over and saw any expression of pity or sorrow on her face. “She didn’t suffer. At least, that’s what Miguel said.”
“How…what happened?”
Alex pulled his bottle of water from the cupholder next to him, took a long drink, then replaced the cap and set the bottle back in place. Maybe he really was thirsty, or possibly he wanted to think over his reply before he spoke. “I guess she had another seizure last night. It was bad, but not so bad that Valentina or Manuela thought she needed to be moved to the hospital. And my mother apparently agreed, because she could have overruled them if she had to. At first they thought they’d made the right call, since she woke up this morning and seemed to be a little better. But then this afternoon….”
He was silent for a few seconds, and Caitlin could see his jaw working. She wished she could tell him that it was all right to cry, that he’d just lost someone very important to him, but she didn’t know if he’d really appreciate hearing that from a girl he’d only met a few days earlier, no matter what physical intimacies they might have shared. Instead, she folded her hands in her lap and waited.
After a long moment, he continued, “This afternoon she seized again…and again. My mother called the paramedics, but…my abuelita was gone by the time they got there. There wasn’t anything they could do, so they left. I guess my parents are making the arrangements now.”
And what a lot of arrangements those would be. When a prima passed, it wasn’t just a matter of calling the funeral home and setting that particular chain of events in motion. That was part of it, of course, but the entire clan network would have to be notified, and the prima-in-waiting would have to assume the title of head of the family and anoint her own prima-in-waiting. The young woman in question was always identified long before that, of course, as soon as the strength of her own powers made it obvious that she should be next in line, but it wasn’t made formal until the new prima assumed her role as head of the clan. Caitlin wasn’t sure how such things were handled in the de la Paz family, but with the McAllisters, becoming prima also meant taking ownership of the big Victorian house on Paradise Lane and living there. Angela had bent the rules on that quite a bit, as she spent at least half her time in a house she and Connor had bought up in Flagstaff. Was that what Alex’s mother would do now? Be in her own home in Tucson part of the time and in Maya’s the remainder of the year?
The silence in the car was so thick, Caitlin was surprised she couldn’t see it surrounding them like a dense, choking fog, one that seemed to prevent her from speaking. She picked up her own water bottle and drank some, hoping that would help to clear the thickness in her throat. “Alex, I — ”
“It’s okay,” he said. He sounded normal enough. Then again, she’d only known him for a couple of days. She had no idea what he was like when he was grieving. He didn’t seem like the sort of person to bottle things up, but maybe he was right now, just because he had something else even more pressing that he needed to focus on. “At least she can’t suffer anymore. We witches and warlocks all know that there is a next life to move on to, so it’s not as if she’s gone forever. I’ll see her again someday.”
Maybe that was something you could be fatalistic about when discussing the death of an older person, someone who’d lived most of her life…although realistically, Maya should have been around for at least another ten years or so, depending on how long-lived the de la Paz witches tended to be. However, Caitlin couldn’t quite adopt that same attitude about Roslyn’s death. True, her friend had passed the veil and moved on to another world, a place where she would no longer be in pain. But that didn’t make it any less difficult for the people left behind, the friends and family who should have been able to see her grow into the woman she would have become…the man she might have fallen in love with someday and with whom she could have started a family of her own.
Those thoughts only made Caitlin want to cry again. But if Alex was holding it together after learning that he’d lost his grandmother, then Caitlin would do the same, even if the hurt inside her was like an empty, gnawing ache that wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it.
“So…your mother is the prima now?”
He nodded, mouth tightening, and Caitlin realized that had probably been the wrong thing to say. Luz Trujillo would always be his mother, of course, but now, as prima, she also belonged to the clan as a whole. Their relationship would never be quite the same again. But since she couldn’t take the words back, Caitlin only sat and waited, hoping Alex would answer and wondering what she would say next if he didn’t.