The Retreat by Karen King

Author:Karen King [King, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781837906727
Published: 2023-10-12T16:00:00+00:00

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Carlos’s accusation kept going over and over in José’s mind. He had been so angry that it was all he could do not to strike his cousin. How dare he accuse him of harming his beloved abuelita?

His grandparents had been there for him all his life, showering him with love and kindness. This house had been his second home, and both their deaths had hit him hard. When his grandfather had died his grandmother had tried to manage by herself, a fiercely independent woman, she had always been too stubborn to ask for help. José had made sure that he visited her as often as he could, bringing food supplies with him, checking the house and grounds to see what needed doing and had asked Mario to keep an eye on her and report back to him if she was struggling or ill, giving him a spare key to the house just in case.

It was Mario who had found Abuelita collapsed on the floor, using his spare key when she didn’t answer the door one morning, who had phoned for the ambulance and also phoned José. Mario’s quick actions had saved her life, but she walked with a stick from then on. José visited as often as he could, and had moved her bed into the downstairs room telling her not to go up the stairs. She had been a proud woman and hated asking for help.

She found it difficult to sleep and was often awake early. When he’d been staying over one weekend she had woken at six and decided she wanted to look at the family album, so she had whispered to him later when he found her, but instead of waiting for José to get up and help her she had gone up the stairs to fetch it and slipped on the way down. José had heard her scream, jumped out of bed, raced down and found her in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs. She was still breathing so he had called an ambulance, held her hand until it came, telling her that he loved her, willing her with all his might to live and she had told him to take care of El Sueño, to return it to its former glory in memory of her. He had shushed her, told her that an ambulance was on the way and she would be fine, that she was going to live for many more years. But he was wrong, she didn’t survive the day. He had been heartbroken.

He had been grateful that she left him El Sueño because it had so many wonderful memories for him, and he vowed to keep his promise and restore it to its former glory but he would have preferred to lose his home, his job, everything he owned than his grandmother. She had been more of a mother to him than his own mother. It made him angry that Carlos suggested he had caused their grandmother’s death so he could take her house.

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