#i recommend checking out vikki carr's version in addition to streisand's

[jtl07]

lets you see the wonder of it all

[on ao3 as well]

Ava Silva doesn't know she has an aunt. Doesn’t know that she’d taught Ava's mother how to swim when they were kids, in a pool in Madrid, how Ava’s mother had been afraid of the ocean the first time their family had visited and how her sister - Ava’s aunt, who Ava doesn’t know - had held her hand and told her it was okay, that she’d never leave her side. Doesn’t know how devastated her aunt was when she remembered that her sister - Ava’s mother, who Ava barely knew - had never made the same promise. 

Camila is the one who finds her, the aunt that Ava doesn’t know. It’s while Camila was searching for Diego, a curious thread she had pulled and pulled and led to an aunt and an uncle and two cousins with families of their own. (She’d gone to Beatrice first, hesitant and uncertain; they both agreed that all they could do is give Ava what they have - their information, their support - and give Ava a choice.) 

Ava’s hands shake when she hits ‘Send’ on the introductory email Beatrice had crafted to her aunt. It’s in her name - Bea’s - but it’s Ava’s story and Ava’s question. Ava doesn’t know if her aunt will agree to meet, doesn’t know what she’ll even do if the answer is yes, gears herself up instead for a ‘no.’ 

Her sisters - bound not by blood, but by love - take her out into the city as a distraction. It works, for minutes at a time. But they’ve always worked best when it’s all of them together, and they all take turns taking Ava’s hand, taking their time, giving her smiles and understanding when Ava’s is slow to return. 

The answer is waiting for them when they get home. 

It’s a yes. And Ava hardly knows what to do with herself. (She panics and frets, makes jokes and then threats, cries and laughs and at times feels like she’s teetering on some existential edge. But Beatrice and her sisters pull her back gently each time, lets her feel, lets her live, lets her love.) 

The meeting takes place near Cat’s Cradle, a cafe where the owners are fond of Beatrice and even more fond of Ava, so it’s no trouble at all, they respond, all smiles to Ava’s request for privacy. (Beatrice gets up to leave five minutes before the meeting time per a prior agreement with Ava that she will standby at the bookstore next door. Bea says it’s okay, that she’ll spend the time reading but Ava knows she’ll just be pacing the aisles until Ava calls, a frown on her face, her hands fidgeting along the bookcases. Ava lets herself linger in their parting kiss, lets her hands wander just a little bit; smirks at the way Bea’s lips chases hers when she pulls back. ‘Such a gift,’ Ava thinks, hands and heart warm and full, as she watches Beatrice walk away, ‘to know.’) 

Ava doesn’t recognize her aunt when she enters the cafe, only knows it’s her because of the way she looks at her: like a ghost, like regret, like a niece she’d never met. Until now. 

They sit across from each other at a table in a quiet corner and they’re waited on by Ava’s favorite server. The conversation, of course, is stilted at first, years of not knowing weighing their tongues. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find you,” is the closest her aunt gets to crying and Ava knows it doesn’t change anything, doesn’t change a damn thing - but at the same time, Ava doesn’t want to change anything at all. 

And she knows, she knows it doesn’t change a thing but Ava reaches across the table anyway, and holds her aunt’s hand. There’s an ocean of grief ahead of them (behind them, all around them) but the thing Ava’s learned about the ocean is that you never turn your back on it - you must always, always face its waves. 

Her aunt - who Ava doesn’t know but wants to - squeezes her hand and Ava remembers another thing she’s learned about the ocean: sometimes it’s easier to face when you’re not alone. 

“You should have this,” her aunt says, voice tremulous as she pulls gently out of Ava’s grasp. She wipes quickly at her eyes before pulling a small box from her bag. “It was our mother’s - your grandmother’s,” she explains as Ava opens the box to find a simple ring, a diamond set in a white gold band, solitary and brilliant. “She’d promised your mother that she could have it when she passed.” 

Ava doesn’t touch it, doesn’t ask because she doesn’t know where to start. Why had she wanted it? What was she like? Two generations of her own blood that she had no recollection of. She doesn’t know how her mother had intended to use it, what it had meant - to her grandmother, to her mother; doesn’t know what it means to Ava herself. It’s a way to connect but it also highlights their disconnect; it’s joy and grief in equal measure. 

And all Ava can do is what she’s done since the beginning: She opens her hands, holds one side of her heart in each trembling hand, ties them together with her fingers, and trusts, believes. (She doesn’t pray, she never has - she wouldn’t know who to pray to, what to pray for, not when she’s had to fight for everything she has - but she understands the clasping of hands, the bowing of one’s head, the surrender to what has been done, and what will be.) 

Ava Silva does know this: When she hugs her aunt, it won’t be for the last time. When she goes to the bookstore, Bea will come to her immediately, eyes searching, ready to comfort, to confront, to console, and Bea will hold her when she steps into her arms, one palm to the space between her shoulder blades, the other cradling the back of her head. When they go back to Cat’s Cradle, her sisters will be ready with dinner and movies, ready to roll their eyes at Ava’s appropriately inappropriate jokes, ready to roll with whatever is thrown into their collective laps. 

She knows: One day, she’ll give Bea the ring in her pocket. One day, they’ll have a ceremony where all of her, all of their families will be present. One day, the painful, beautiful, sacred truths of life won’t feel so heavy in her chest. 

(She knows: This is the life she chose, and she will hold on to it as closely, as tightly as she can.)