Lew Martell met Maria Sanchez when Nick was three years old. Lew married Maria when Nick was four, and legally adopted Nick as his own when he was five. Though they didn’t share blood, as far as Nick was concerned, Lew was his father in every way, and knew to the core of his soul that Lew felt the same way. Even a few years later, when Maria and Lew brought Nick two little sisters, he’d never been made to feel anything other than they were one hundred percent a family.
Yes, there was a blank space on Nick’s birth certificate where the biological father’s name should have been. Nick didn’t care. When he was eleven, and a middle school project about genealogy raised questions, Maria had sat her son down and explained the truth: She had gotten pregnant via a one-night stand when she was twenty. Drunk at a party, she’d made a foolish choice—but she was adamant that Nick knew she never thought of it as a mistake. That she took responsibility for her choice, that Nick had been a gift from God to her, and most of all, that she never regretted her decision to keep her baby.
Maria told her young son that she never even knew the man’s last name, which is why she hadn’t put one on the birth certificate. All she could tell Nick was he was white, probably some basic Anglo-Saxon mix, and he’d never known she was pregnant. Ashamed of her situation, she hadn’t tried to contact him. Maria had left her job and home in New York to live with relatives in Miami until Nick was born. When she met and fell in love with Lew, it had been another gift from God to her, and they built a family together, made a good life for their three kids.
Young Nick had been surprised, but didn’t give the news much thought. It did explain why even though Nick was proud to be Puerto Rican, there was something there that always felt . . . off. He’d heard some of his aunts whispering once when he was six years old, something about his white father, and he’d assumed it was about Lew . . . maybe not. Maybe his gut instincts had been strong even then. Also, his nose was too narrow, his hair was a little straighter, different from his mom and his relatives; and though he got as deep a tan as most of his relatives in the summer months, his skin just wasn’t quite the same rich dark gold as his mother’s.
So even at the young age of eleven, Nick was glad to know the truth about his conception because it helped some things make sense, things he felt that before he just couldn’t make sense of or verbalize. And knowing the truth . . . He’d pushed it into the recesses of his mind and went on with his life. It didn’t alter who he was. He had a dad who loved him. That’s all that mattered.
Now, as he walked up the front steps and unlocked the door to his parents’ house, it was his father he couldn’t wait to see the most. He knew his mom would be proud, but his dad would be bursting with it.
“Hello?” Nick called out as he stepped into the living room. The spicy aroma of his mother’s cooking wafted in the air, enticing and comforting him at the same time.
“Ah!” His mother came in, rushing to hug him. She leaned back to look up into his face and held his cheeks. “You look good, mijo! You need a shave, but your eyes are smiling.”
“I’m twenty-nine, Ma,” he grumbled, teasing back. “You ever gonna stop telling me when I need to clean up?”
“No.”
“I don’t shave on my days off. I take a break. I’ve told you this.”
She shrugged and made a disdainful face that clearly expressed her thoughts.
He just chuckled. Her dry sass was one of the things he loved most about her.
“So what’s the big news?” she asked, her features brightening again. “I can’t wait to hear whatever you’re here to tell us. And I’m glad you asked for a family dinner to share it, so I get to see you.”
Nick rolled his eyes. He faithfully came for a family dinner every other Sunday. “Like you don’t see me. I come by!”
“Not enough.”
He groaned and nudged her gently with his elbow. “Admit it, you’re just happy to have an excuse to cook something special.”
“You said you had really big news, so yeah . . . I might’ve made one of your very favorites.”