Jane Gloriana Villanueva used to believe in true love with all her heart. From the moment that she witnessed the transformative power of Stefana Rodriguez de Soto's impassioned love bring Raul Banuelos back from the near dead in Las Profundidades de mi Amor play out on the TV, Jane believed with her entire being that love could not only heal all things, but that she too would someday find that one great love. And she'd been right. Her brief love affair had been one to rival any of the stories she saw played out on her screen. She had met Michael Cordero, Jr., under usual circumstances, and it had been as close to love at first sight as it was possible to be. From that initial attraction, they had grown to be best friends and lovers. Michael had pretty much been the perfect man in every way Jane needed: he encouraged her, he shared her passions, he took the time to get to know her, and they lived by the same moral code. He knew exactly what she needed, he allowed her to be selfish at times, and he gave with all that he was. He was the man that romance novels were written about. He was her soul mate. Her one, true, love. The one that she could believe in.
But Jane Gloriana Villanueva didn't believe in love stories anymore.
Jane had just put Mateo down for the night when the storm hit, wild, dangerous, and unrelenting. She was used to the almost daily afternoon showers in Miami, but what was currently taking place outside the house was no afternoon shower. The sky had been overcast all day, but once the sun went down, the rain started, and now they seemed to be in the thick of it. Earlier Jane had checked the weather reports to make sure that it wasn't a tropical storm brewing, or worse, and the smiling face of John Gerard had assured her that it was just a summer storm. That knowledge did little to set her mind at ease, though, because the true storm was in Jane's heart, and that wouldn't pass nearly as quickly as the one raging outside her door.
After standing in the doorway of Mateo's room for half an hour, Jane quietly closed the door, fixed herself a glass of wine, and slumped into one of the dining table chairs, preparing herself to weather through the long night she was facing. Her fist unconsciously tightened against the papers that she held in her hand, crinkling the already crinkled pieces of paper that she had unconsciously been carrying around with her for hours. She had already read through the pages several times over, but she stared down at them now, smoothing them out on the table in front of her. It was the coroner's report. Surrounding all the medical mumbo-jumbo was the conclusion that Jane knew, but broke her heart to have to read: Michael Cordero, Jr. was dead, and it had been declared a homicide.
The report was the period to a sentence that she had been hoping would never find its end. 14 weeks after their wedding day, 14 weeks after she had discovered his body on the floor of the hotel hallway, covered in so much blood, and 11 weeks after Michael had succumbed to his injuries and passed away, the results of the autopsy had been sent to her, and Jane could no longer pretend that her love was anything but dead. She couldn't pretend that Michael was on some secret, undercover assignment; that this was another clever attempt to draw out Sin Rostro or Mutter. She and Michael had not fought, she had not gone back to Rafael, or realized that she had feelings for another man. That would have been so much easier on her heart than the fact that the man that she loved, the first man that she loved, the one that she was supposed to start a family and a life with in this very house, was dead.
They had buried him a week ago and Jane hadn't really stopped crying since.
Jane had been slowly withdrawing herself from her family ever since Michael had been declared dead 11 weeks ago, but she hadn't talked to anyone but Mateo since the funeral, and that had been in very limited quantities. The only reason she still had Mateo at all was because Rafael was currently in jail, and she feared that if she dropped him off at her ma's, she might never go back to pick him up. She feared that if she didn't have Mateo around as a constant reminder, she might not remember why she was supposed to wake up every morning.
She was worrying her family, she knew. They had all called. They were all desperate to hear her voice and Xo threatened that if Jane didn't pick up the phone soon, she would break into the house, still Jane ignored them all. She ignored her mother because she didn't want Xiomara trying to convince her that things would be okay, and that she just needed to occupy herself while time did all the healing. She ignored Lina who suggested that getting drunk would make the hurt go away. She ignored Rogelio and his kicked puppy-dog face, and his tears over losing his brogelio, and she ignored Rafael's collect calls from the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, because as much as she knew he needed her right now to aid in his defense, she just didn't have the capacity to care. She even ignored her grandmother because she knew that she, of all people, actually understood what Jane was going through, because Alba had also lost the love of her life once. But Jane didn't want to be understood; she wanted to grieve. She wanted to feel terrible, and mourn the fact that the love of her life, her other half, was dead, and nothing in the world would bring him back.
As the storm did its best outside, Jane's eyes rose enough to look at her surroundings. This was the house that she and Michael were supposed to turn into a home. They had gotten a little bit of a stat on it, there had been some things moved in, but it was still mostly empty because they'd been waiting until after the wedding to move in together. It was a good thing, Jane thought bitterly, that there wasn't much in it, because she knew that she would have to move soon, and there wouldn't be much that she'd have to pack up. Honestly, she should have cancelled the lease as soon as Michael had been pronounced dead, because with her income, and his survivor's benefits, she could barely make the lease every month, and she knew that she would eventually run out of money, but she couldn't bring herself to leave, not yet. It was all she had left of him, and as practical as she usually was, she wasn't ready to say good-bye. Not yet. And the thought of moving back in with her mom and abuela was just so suffocating at the moment, that it made her unable to breathe, just thinking about it.
Not far from where she sat, Jane's thesis lay where she had last set it down. She hadn't written a single word since Michael passed. For the first time in her life, her fingers didn't itch to tell a story, her brain was still, and her mind had stopped whirring. Writing had always been a release of sorts, for Jane. It was a way to make sense of her world, to put her innermost thoughts and desires, her questions, and her hopes, down, to cement them, to make them come alive. She always viewed writing almost like the sibling she never had. She never imagined that the flow of words would ever stop, but she hadn't so much as written out a sentence since her wedding night. Her inner voice had grown quiet, and the silence was deafening.
Jane sat unmoving at the dining room table until her eyes got so heavy that if she blinked she'd instantly be asleep. She forced herself to her feet, to go through all of the rooms to make sure that the house was locked down. When she got to the front door, she was startled by a thunderclap that was loud and frightening. Just then it hit her like a fist to the face: she didn't have Michael around to make her feel secure, to assure her that everything was going to be okay. It was just her. Just Jane, a widow and not even 30 years-old. Jane sunk to the ground in a fresh fit of tears, terrified and oh so utterly alone, as the wind and rain beat against her door. As Jane sat there, listening, she heard a distinct noise on her porch, almost like someone was out there. Willing herself to not even so much as breathe, she listened intently. There! There it was again. Someone was out there!
Petra pulled her car to a stop, and checked in the backseat to make sure that the girls were still asleep. They were. Fast asleep, and unable to comprehend that there was about to be another severe change in lives that had already experienced quite a bit of trauma in such a short amount of time. Obliviously, they slept on, both contentedly strapped into the matching car seats that had been suggested by Rafael which had probably been influenced by Jane, because for nearly two years now, Petra's life had, in one way or another, pretty much revolved around Jane Villanueva. She even had to endure comparisons to how much fucking better Jane was about being a mom then Petra was, and the comparison wasn't even close.
Petra hated the damn baby seats. It didn't matter that the car seats easily fit onto the double baby stroller that was necessary for getting around by herself, or that it was top rated, Petra hated the thing merely because it seemed to have Jane's signature on it. The stroller in question was folded up and in the back of her mid-size SUV, resting beside two small, but designer, suitcases that contained every piece of baby clothes Petra had been able to get her hands on. There were also two fully filled heavy-duty diaper bags, and all of their toys. It was so freaking domestic, it made her sick.
Petra took a moment to lament the loss of the sports car she had given up for the one she was driving now. Her beloved convertible didn't have nearly the space that she'd need for the girls so she'd had to get a new vehicle, but she refused to buy a mini-van. She'd settled on a GLS class Mercedes, after declaring that it was sporty enough to not be confused as a mom wagon, but would give her the space she needed to cart around all of the twins' things. Not that she ever intended to be that mom. It had fully been her plan to 100% utilize her nannies and nurses to take care of all things Anna and Elsa related: drive them to their events, classes, plays, recitals. What was the point of having money, if it didn't spare you from having to do all of the unpleasant things?
Ignoring the storm, Petra took a minute to watch the two sleeping babies. Her daughters. The concept was still something that took time to get used to. She had taken Jane's advice and talked to a shrink, and had been working through her issues and depression. She had thought she was making headway, too. She had lit up the first time she'd heard Elsa laugh, but then all of that progress had effectively been washed down the drain as soon as Anezka stuck that needle in her arm. All of the bonding that she had done, all of the working through her feelings of inadequacy, all of the time that she had started spending with the girls? Gone. Now months had passed, and they seemed like strangers again. They didn't know each other. She had missed out on the important developmental months, but if there was one thing that Petra could take away from this whole experience was that she had never spent so much time thinking about her daughters as she had over the last couple of months. The only other person she had thought about more was Jane.
Jane. God if there was something Petra could do, some pill to take that would have erased that damn girl from her life, she would have taken it gladly, a million times over. No, her marriage hadn't been great, and yes she was enthusiastically cheating on her husband, but if Jane had never showed up…She didn't really know the end to that statement, but her life had certainly become completely derailed after they met. Rafael might have still left her, but it might have taken him five more years to do so. Her mother would have still been the cold, evil, witch that she was, but perhaps with the money, she would have been able to separate herself from Magda, put her up in a nursing facility or something. She didn't know, maybe she would have run away with Zaz. Maybe anything. The second those brown locks, and brown eyes, and full caring heart barged her way into her world, though, Petra's whole world had changed. And she wanted it back.
She hated Jane. She was just so sweet, so innocent, and so god damn interfering. Jane never knew when to mind her own business. Jane never knew when to back off and leave things alone. Jane didn't know how to not be so loveable. Petra loathed that she had managed to so thoroughly wrap Rafael around her finger. She hated that Jane was the girl that everyone in the world seemed to want. She hated that guys would trip over themselves just to please her, because how could you not want to please Jane? How could you not love her when her capacity for love was off the charts and so fucking genuine. Jane stole everything that Petra wanted and had, but despite all that, every time she wanted to hate her-and Petra really wanted to hate her- Jane made it so that she couldn't.
How could Petra ignore the fact that it wasn't Rafael at her side when her daughters were brought into the word? Or how much she had attempted to work on a solution to Petra's Milos problem? And the hospital…for the first three weeks of her months long nightmare, Jane would come into her hospital room and talk to her. Petra knew that it was just because she had come to speak to Michael, knew that she only came into her room when she was taking a break from watching the love of her life die from wounds he'd never recover from. She knew Jane's visits were merely a bid for escape, but that hadn't stopped those visits from breaking up the monotony, from giving herself something to look forward to, to making her feel seen, and present, when no one else had.
Even though Jane stopped coming by once Michael had died, for those first few weeks, Jane had been there while Petra had been trapped inside of her body, and once she was gone, daily she was reminded of how truly, truly alone she was in the world. Once she was gone, she was trapped with no one to notice, no one to care, and no one to realize that the person that they had spent years around was not the person who was currently floating through her life. How the hell could no one notice! She had been married to Rafael for five years! They had slept together! Anezka didn't know how to run a hotel. She didn't know how to be her. How could no one notice?
Petra wishes that she could say that she never felt as alone as she had the day that she woke up in the hospital, but the truth was she'd always been alone. She had lived her life thinking that she was the only daughter of a woman who never wanted her. She and Jane had a lot more in common than they had ever given credence to. Both of them had been the result of young and foolish love (Magda had let it slip once that she had fallen in love and Petra had been the result. Her father had disappeared once he found out the news, and Magda vowed to never make the same mistake again), but whereas Jane had grown up knowing the love of her mother, and grandmother, and had been nurtured and treated like a treasured jewel, Petra had grown up in contempt. She had grown up feeling like her mother was keeping tabs on everything that she did for her daughter. That every outfit that was bought, every meal that was cooked, every minute that was spent on her, was all borrowed time that she would someday have to pay back, and she was right.
Magda's love was conditional, and she expected to be taken care of as soon as Petra could do so. Petra quickly learned how to cook, to clean, to keep house. When she protested, her mother would shout at her that she was teaching her how to be someone's wife one day. She fed Petra as little as possible, and if Petra ever complained about being hungry, Magda would jeer that it was good, because men didn't want fat wives. She was forced to learn the violin as a means for income, and she hated it. She hated that she had been forced into learning how to play because it might have been something that she actually enjoyed doing had she had the chance to properly. As a child, she would sneak away whenever there was opportunity, and listen to the orchestra play. She knew how to sneak into the opera house, and she'd stay, sometimes for hours, in the dark, crouched down behind an old forgotten box and smushed between a broken chain link gate, and she'd close her eyes, listen, and be carried away. When Magda had first 'gifted' her with the violin, she thought it was the start of dream. Magda quickly killed any such notion.
She made her practice until her fingers bled, and then practice some more. She made her play to the point that she hated the violin, and all sound that came from the instrument. Petra had had drams of breaking the piece of metal, plastic, and wood, or beating Magda with it, but as terrible as the woman was, she was still rodina, still family, the only family that Petra had in the world. Or so she thought.
Then along came Anekza. Unpolished, unlettered, unloved. She was a wreck of a human being, with Petra's face. She was who Petra might have turned out to be, had Magda not been her mother: still innocent, still kind. Even though Anezka was the kind of person Petra had spent her life trying to distance herself from, Petra couldn't get over the fact that she had family. Someone who loved her, someone for her to protect, maybe even one day someone she could love. But then, on a day when Petra had come back feeling alone, more alone than usual, on a day when she had bonded with her girls for possibly the first time, Anezka had taken all of that away. And no one had noticed. Except Jane. And that, too, infuriated her. The debt that she had accumulated with that woman, she knew she could never possibly repay it, and Petra hated feeling indebted to anyone.
Petra wished she could say that she never felt more alone than she had that day, but Petra was always alone, would always be alone. She was the only person in the world looking out for Petra, and not even the two girls in the backseat could change that. Petra had herself to look after, and the one conclusions that she had come up with after week after week of being trapped inside her body was that as long as there were the Janes in the world, the Petras would keep coming up snake eyes.
Petra's eyes fell on the gun that was sitting on the seat beside her, and was reminded of what she had come here to do. She was alone in this place; she didn't anticipate anyone stopping her. She checked to make sure the safety was still in place, checked the chamber to make sure that the gun was loaded. Her eyes fell to the house across the street, the house that Petra had bought and had subsidized so that Jane and Michael could afford to live in the city. Through the heavy down pour she saw Jane's shadow move through the house, probably locking doors, turning off lights. Arming the alarm. For the first time in Jane's life, she was the one who was alone.
Making her decision, she picked up the gun, and emerged into the deluge that she had somehow not truly noticed. Petra tilted her head up to the sky, taking in the feeling of the rain soaking her to the bone, marveling in the fact that the rain covered everything, including her tears.
The shadow of Jane had disappeared from the window, and Petra knew it was now or never. She opened the back door of the SUV, making a mental note of the twins. They had gotten bigger in Petra's absence, filled out and had gotten chubby. If she was looking at both, she could tell, a little, Anna from Elsa without needing any prompting. She had been startled, the first look that she'd gotten of them after she'd been un petrified, to realize that they'd changed in her absence. She didn't know her daughters, and she was tired of feeling like she never would.
Petra left the girls in the car, as she picked up everything that she could gather into her arms, and made a quick dash across the street. She overestimated her strength, and ended up dropping a few items unceremoniously on the ground. She tensed, waiting a few seconds, but when no one moved, she continued with her mission, going across the street again, this time to get the girls, and the remaining bag. Struggling slightly under the weight, she carried one carrier in each hand, checked and double checked that no cars were coming, and crossed the street. She had just made it up the steps, when the door swung open to reveal a bat yielding Jane, who paused, bat in mid-swing when she saw it was Petra standing there, soaked to the skin. "Petra?" she gasped.
Petra froze, and for a few seconds, she and Jane just stared at each other. But then Mama Jane immediately sprang into action. She took one of the car seats from Petra, bringing the baby inside and out of the rain, going back for Petra and the other baby, once Anna had been safely deposited inside the entry way. Jane pushed the plastic covering aside, making sure that first Anna, then Else were okay, before she spun on her heels to once again face Petra. "What are you doing here, and why on Earth do you have the babies out so late, and in this weather?" Jane was contented to see that the babies were sleeping peacefully, but that didn't keep the judgmental tone from out of her voice. Petra was amazed that Jane's hands hadn't managed to find themselves on her unnecessarily rounded hips. "Well?"
Petra didn't know what to say. She hadn't planned on encountering Jane tonight. It had been her plan to leave the girls sitting on the porch, Harry Potter style, no note, but really, would one be needed? But the rain and motherly instinct prevented her from doing that. What if something happened to them in the middle of the night? This was a good neighborhood, but even still. The whole purpose of leaving the girls with Jane was so that they'd be taken care of.
"While I am glad that you are out of the hospital, and I am happy to see you," she sighed, "I thought I made it clear that I didn't want to see anyone right now."
Petra's mind was wheeling as she struggled to find a way to explain her presence. She felt cornered and out of her element, so she did what she always did when she felt like that. She drew herself up to her full height, and looked down her nose at Jane.
The other woman looked horrible. Her hair was every which way, her eyes were red rimmed and it was obvious that she had been crying, a lot, her clothes were a mess, and stained with food. No guy would be falling over themselves over this girl, Petra thought a bit happily. "Oh, trust me, this is for business, not pleasure."
Jane's brow furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"I'm here," she began stiffly, "because this is my house." She could instantly tell that Jane was not expecting her to say that.
"I don't understand-,"
"When Rafael and I were going through our divorce, I purchased this house under my maiden name in case I needed a place to stay. For the sake of the Marbella I decided to lease this place to you at half the cost."
Jane balked at the woman in front of her. "You? You subsidized me and," her voice faltered, "Michael? Why?"
"Yes. It was a business decision. If you moved out of Miami, Rafael's mind would constantly be on you and Mateo, and not on business. I did what was best for the Marbella."
"Thank...you? I didn't know that you were subsidizing,"
"Well I was," she snapped, lest her motives be called into question, "And now I'm not." Confused, Jane didn't say anything, waiting for Petra to continue. If her rent doubled, she definitely couldn't stay here. "Because of Rafael's criminal activity, the Marbella's assets are currently frozen up in a federal investigation, as are mine." It was a truth. After so much hard work trying to escape the clutches of poverty, between Derek, Milos, and Anezka, she had pretty much lost everything. All she had left to her name was that damned Mercedes and this house, both of which had been purchased under the name Natalia and not Petra, and were, according to her lawyer, free from seizure as she could claim it as her primary residence and her primary vehicle. She had a couple of thousand dollars squirreled away too, but other than that, all of her wealth had been tied into the Marbella, and as long as it was seen as assets gained from illegal means, she had no access to it.
"I need a place to stay, and I can no longer stay at the Marbella,"
"You-,"
"And I refuse to have my daughters without a home." She exhaled. "So, since I am the legal owner of this property, I will be moving in."
Jane gaped at the woman. "You'll…? No. You can't move in here, Petra!"
Petra's back stiffened, and she lowered her most fearsome gaze at the shorter woman. "I don't need your permission, Jane, and I assure you I can."
Jane felt her face getting red, and she was feeling so many things at once, she couldn't quite but them to words. "Are you serious, right now, Petra? Do you have any idea what I've been through?"
"Need I remind you of what I've been through, and remind you just how much anyone cared about that."
"I am sorry,"
"It is unfortunate what happened to Michael, but he's been dead for nearly three months now." She saw Jane wince, but that didn't stop her from continuing. "I'll allow you to stay here long enough for you to find another residence, but I'll," she almost forgot about the girls, "we'll," she amended, "being stay here, too."
The two of them stared at each other, and there was the tiniest spark of old Jane playing behind her sad brown eyes. "You're unbelievable, Petra."
"Two months should be enough time, don't you think?" Petra shot back. "Unless you don't think that it will take you nearly that long, and you wish to be out by the end of the week?"
Jane realized that she was still holding the coroner's letter in her hand. She didn't see the slightest sign of compassion in Petra's eyes. "It's a cold world, Jane," Petra declared, almost as if Jane had spoken words aloud. "Get used to it."