Chapter 20: Chapter 18: Present Tenderness IV.

"Impossible!" shouted Mrs. Prats, jumping from her chair with an energy that didn’t belong to her age, pointing an accusing finger at the center of the table. "I had a straight, Héctor!" She pointed at her cards. "Where did you get a four of a kind?"

"That’s the game, Graciela."

"That’s cheating!" she replied, lunging toward him and pulling at his sleeves. "Come on, tell me — where are the extra cards?"

"Calm down, Graciela, you’re frightening Ryne."

She collapsed back into her chair, crossing her arms, indignant at life itself. "Nobody gets four fives in real life. That only happens in movies and in cheaters’ houses."

Mr. Arrit collected Mrs. Prats’ chips, arranging them into a neat tower in front of him. He built his small kingdom.

I counted in silence.

He had thirty-two. I had thirty-three left after that four of a kind.

"Ryne," Mrs. Prats told me, dragging her chair to my side of the table with the determination of someone switching sides. "We’re a team now."

"Why?"

"To help you win," she whispered. "I don’t mind losing. I just don’t want Héctor to win."

"Isn’t that cheating? That’s precisely the first rule."

"Not if everyone agrees." She straightened up. "You agree, don’t you, Héctor?"

"No," he replied, shaking his head.

"We’re the majority, Ryne, so we win. Did you hear that, Héctor?"

Mr. Arrit simply raised his hand, resigned to every argument Mrs. Prats would ever make.

"I have a proposal for you, Ryne." He looked at my chips, then at his. "Last round. All in."

I stayed quiet for a moment. His proposal was interesting — especially before seeing the cards.

I felt like a mouse in a corner. Yet at the same time — and as contradictory as it sounds — freer than ever. Is this how gamblers feel?

"I accept, but Mrs. Prats deals the cards."

He nodded, placing all his chips in the center. I did the same.

Mrs. Prats looked at me. Then at him. Then back at me, with the expression of someone who has already lost and can therefore offer opinions freely.

She shuffled the cards first. Her fingers trembled as she did it — for some reason she was anxious about the outcome. Not as anxious as Mr. Arrit, whose foot tapping against the floor gave him away. Clue one, before we even started.

Mrs. Prats finished dealing, giving us permission to look at our cards. Mr. Arrit was already smiling, even before seeing his.

I looked at mine slowly.

Ace of spades. King of spades. Queen of spades. Ten of spades.

I was one jack away from closing the royal flush — the strongest hand in the game.

I looked up at the center of the table, then at my chips, then at nothing in particular.

"I’m not sure if I..." I murmured.

Mr. Arrit let out a short laugh. Just one.

"What?" I said.

"You say that when you have a chance of winning," he replied, in a voice I didn’t recognize as his. "If you were truly unsure, you’d fold. Like the previous round, where you had a flush and still lost. You don’t hesitate — you prefer to regret later rather than stop yourself."

I looked at him.

"When you say you don’t know," he continued, "it’s because something in your hand works in your favor and you don’t want me to know it."

The silence at the table lasted exactly three seconds.

"Is he right, Ryne?" Mrs. Prats asked. I nodded, somewhat embarrassed by her tone. "And I believed you blindly! Héctor, I’m switching to your team."

"Mr. Arrit, I don’t like lying — if I’m being honest," I added, because it was true, at least in that moment. "If you want an all-in, I accept. And I’ll tell the truth. I’m going to win."

He nodded.

Mrs. Prats held her breath from her chair, unsure which side to root for.

"Are you ready?" he asked, lowering his hand like a gentleman. I nodded, smiling — the first real smile of the entire game. "Graciela, would you do the honors?"

She began to place the five cards on the table.

Four of hearts.

Three of spades.

Nine of diamonds.

Two of clubs.

My heart stopped. I looked at my hand. A jack of spades. A jack of spades.

And then I saw it.

Mrs. Prats froze before the last card — it was obvious she had already seen my hand.

"Ryne," she whispered breathlessly. "The jack came out."

Of hearts.

Final hand. A straight — common.

I don’t know how to put it into words. I only felt the absence of that excitement as suddenly as losing a part of yourself you had grown fond of.

"You can go first, dear." He inclined his hand — a gesture I now read as mockery.

I looked at my cards, at my pitiful straight, at my possibilities reduced to this. I don’t know what I was losing, but it felt like everything had been taken from me.

"A-a straight," I managed to say without losing composure.

Mr. Arrit looked down at my cards.

Then he raised his with that calm he brought to everything.

A full house. Three jacks and a pair of kings.

And there it was, in his hand, among the three jacks.

The jack of spades.

I stared at it for a moment without saying a word. The card that would have completed my royal flush had been in his hand the entire round, and he had known it from the beginning — from the moment he smiled.

"No!" Mrs. Prats slapped the table. "Ryne should have had the complete royal flush! Why do you have that jack?"

"Having you as a teammate does more harm than good," replied Mr. Arrit, collecting the chips with that exasperating calm. "That’s why I won. I knew I had what she needed."

"And how did you know she needed it?"

He didn’t answer right away. He arranged his tower of chips, one by one. Then he looked up at Mrs. Prats.

"Graciela," he said. "Show me your nails."

Mrs. Prats blinked. "What?"

"Your nails," he repeated. "Show them to me."

A silence fell over the table.

I turned slowly to look at her.

She had her hands on her lap, with the expression of someone caught mid-sentence in their own conviction. But as the tension left her, she raised her hands.

Her nails were short, the same light pink she always wore. But on her right hand, on the index finger, something essential was missing: a small dot, a thin line of polish.

"Graciela."

"Mrs. Prats." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

We both said it at the same time, looking at the evidence.

"I just wanted you to win," she replied, in that voice of hers when something innocent goes wrong. "They were the cards for the straight, dear — I only marked them a tiny bit in the corner so you’d know which ones to go for."

"And which ones not to go for," said Mr. Arrit. "From the first hand I noticed the mark in the corner of the jack of spades. I knew it was a card that would benefit you. So I kept it."

Mrs. Prats opened her mouth. Closed it. Then opened it again.

"That’s cheating, Héctor."

"You marked the cards, Graciela."

"To help Ryne!"

"And in doing so, you helped me," he replied, with the serenity of someone who has spent seventy-two years watching things turn out backwards. "Trusting you as a teammate was setting myself up to lose. It was only a matter of figuring out when you were going to intervene."

Mrs. Prats looked at me with that expression that moved slowly between guilt and a laugh she still wasn’t allowing herself.

"Ryne," she said very quietly. "I’m sorry, dear."

I didn’t respond.

Mr. Arrit held my gaze with that calm expression of his.

"Don’t take it personally," he said, and his hand reached my head with that gesture of his. "It’s just a game, child."

"I’m not taking it personally," I said. "I’m just surprised to have lost."

Something in his eyes shifted slightly. He didn’t smile, but he was close.

"Let’s go to the dining room," he said, getting up. "I have bread and plenty of jam."

Mr. Arrit’s kitchen smelled different at that hour. The sweetness of the jams was still there, but softer — mixed with the warmth of the toaster and the reheated coffee he brought out without asking if we wanted more.

He set three plates on the table.

He took the yellow jar from the windowsill — peach and ginger — and opened it with that dry twist of someone who has done it hundreds of times. The smell arrived before anything else, sweet with that warm undertone that filled the whole kitchen.

"We were all winners tonight," he said, setting the jar in the center.

Mrs. Prats took it first, spreading jam on her bread with a generosity that asked no permission. Then she passed it to me.

Mr. Arrit took his bread without touching the jar.

I watched him for a second. Then he took the jar from my hands, without saying a word, and spread twice the jam on my bread — covering every centimeter all the way to the edges.

He handed it back.

"And yours?" asked Mrs. Prats.

"I can’t eat sugar," he replied, picking up his black coffee. "Ryne knows that well."

Mrs. Prats set her bread down slowly, looking at him.

"Then why did you open the jam, Héctor?"

"Because I won," he said. "And the winner decides who eats well."

She looked at him for exactly three seconds.

"I want double too," she said.

"The jar costs five dollars," he replied.

"Héctor—" she started, but a sound interrupted them both.

It came from me. An innocent laugh, born without permission from the moment — filling my mouth before I could decide whether to let it out.

They both looked at me.

And then it spread.

We stayed like that for a few minutes, with the coffee and the bread — Mr. Arrit alone without jam, and Mrs. Prats helping herself to a second layer with the dignity of someone collecting what they’re owed.

"Time to do the dishes, Graciela," he said when we finished.

"But I—"

I placed a hand on Mr. Arrit’s arm. "What if we all do them together?"

He smiled and nodded.

"I call drying," said Mrs. Prats.

"No, Graciela — don’t push it."

We stayed a few minutes longer. Mrs. Prats with the sponge, me rinsing off the soap, Mr. Arrit placing each piece in its exact spot with that methodology of his. Not talking much. Not needing to.

"Maybe Michael would have liked playing with you all," I said quietly, almost without meaning to.

Mr. Arrit looked up from the plate he was putting away.

"What did you say?"

I stopped for a second.

"That maybe Nolan would have liked to play," I corrected, without changing my tone. "He was very competitive."

Mr. Arrit looked at me for a moment. I saw something difficult to name in his eyes — something that was neither pity nor judgment.

"It’s not wrong to remember someone you loved," he finally said. "Just don’t lock yourself inside it. Allow this moment to be yours too — without needing him to be in it for it to matter."

I looked at him.

"A moment for yourself, child," he added, simply.

I didn’t respond right away.

I looked back at the card table, remembering how good I had felt sitting there. The jars lined up on the windowsill, the warm light, the smell of peach and ginger still present in the air.

"I like this place," I said. "I like being here with you both."

Mr. Arrit nodded, putting away the last plate.

"Do you have another game?" I asked.

He looked at me with that half-expression of his — the one he gets when something amuses him but he’s not quite willing to admit it.

"I have one where you buy countries and put down little houses," he said.

I smiled.

Not a decided smile, not a useful one, not an employee-of-the-month smile. It was mine — the real one. I know because of the beating in my heart.

"I want to play a little longer."