Free Interim Goddess of Love by Mina V. Esguerra Page B

probably just goddess smoke-and-mirrors at work. Nothing that can't be defeated by destiny. He liked her, she liked him, and didn't the world deserve to be less lonely?
    I knew what I would do. I would make the world less lonely. So I decided to call Kathy and tell her that her most secret wish was about to come true.
    An hour later, w hen Tita Carmen walked into the dining room, which I used as a study area most nights, I probably still had the look of confusion on my face.
    " I think I was just hung up on," I said, before she asked.
    " Who were you talking to?"
    There was a basket of baked goods in the middle of the table. She picked out a mamon and sat at her usual seat.
    " This girl I was helping with something," I said. "We started to disagree, and suddenly the line was cut."
    " Bad signal?"
    " I don't think so."
    The mamon smelled great. She tore bite-size pieces of it, and I got hungrier with each bit of sponge cake she put in her mouth. Tita Carmen paused to chew, and said, "I miss the old phones. Now you can't properly hang up on someone. Back then you could really bang a phone and make your point."
    " I don't know what her point was," I said. "I was helping her with something, and I thought that I just gave her exactly what she was looking for…"
    " You just reminded me of your mom, just now," Tita Carmen said.
    " That's weird. I've wanted to tell you that a few times now."
    Despite this, I must say that Tita Carmen, my mom and I didn 't look that much alike. We all looked related only to people who knew we were, and that didn't count. But what we lacked in physical resemblance we probably made up for in mannerisms and other habits. There was something about the way Tita Carmen always reminded me to turn off the light at bedtime, and the way she greeted my visiting friends. It might have been her voice, and her choice of words.
    I didn 't see her much when I was growing up, so it was easy to forget that she and my mom came from the same place. Of course they'd have similar habits, share the same vocabulary.
    " Why do I remind you of her?" I asked, almost expecting her answer to be similar.
    " When we were younger, I was always getting into trouble, and your mom would always try to help me," Tita Carmen said. "But I wasn't always happy about it. And she'd ask me why I was so annoyed, when she was only trying to help."
    Yeah, that was my mother. She was always doing right by someone, offering good deeds even if they didn 't want them. There was this one time --
    " Wait. You think I've turned into my mom?"
    Because wait one second! My mom was the ultimate "will martyr myself for friends and family and bitch about it to my daughter when I'm punished for my good deeds." I love her, but it's true, and I sat through one too many of these conversations. It was exhausting sometimes, getting that peek into my mother's life.
    Tita Carmen was obviously thinking of the same thing. "Don't worry, you're a mild case," she said. "No one carries the burden of the world like your mom."
    I laughed. "Thank you. That sounds like her."
    It was nice to talk to someone who knew her like I did. It had been just mom and me for a long time.
    " Why'd you get hung up on?" she asked, grabbing another pastry.
    Now that Tita Carmen was being uncharacteristically chatty, I wanted to be able to share with her that it was kind of my job now to help people like Kathy Martin. I wasn't in it because I was a serial do-gooder, or thought going around playing Cupid was fun. They found me .
    But Quin said I shouldn 't tell people. It wasn't forbidden or anything, but he just thought that it would freak people out.
    " It's this friend," I said to Tita Carmen, trying to be vague. "I just told her that I'm about to give her exactly what she wanted, and instead of being happy…well there."
    " I'm probably the expert on people who reject things they say they want," Tita Carmen said. "Be patient with her. Some people aren't used to getting what they want -- their