I took the pregnancy tests out of the bag and hid them in the closest cupboard.
“Javi?” I called out. I listened for the sound of hammering or the clank of tools. A folding ladder was propped against the wall in the foyer along with a stack of air filters and a pack of nine-volt batteries. When he didn’t answer, I went upstairs to look for him.
A light was on in Vero’s bedroom. Javi was sitting at the foot of her bed, in front of her open closet, her photo album spread across his lap. I leaned against the doorframe, tipping my head to see the pictures. I recognized the childhood photos of Javi, Vero, and Ramón. The three of them had grown up together in the DC suburbs ofMaryland. Vero’s and Ramón’s mothers were sisters, both divorced, and had moved in together when their children weren’t much older than my own. Javi had entered the picture not long after. He and Ramón had met in elementary school and became fast friends. Javi, who was as easy to love as he was neglected at home, had practically been adopted by Vero’s family.
He traced a photo of Vero lovingly with a grease-stained finger. Her smile was wide and rimmed in cake frosting. It had been taken after her high school commencement ceremony, and Javi’s and Ramón’s arms were draped over the shoulders of her graduation gown.
“You’re here awfully early. Everything okay at the shop?” I asked him.
Javi glanced up, startled, as if his mind had been someplace else and he was surprised to find himself in my house.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and returned the album to Vero’s closet. I had taken some of her clothes and toiletries to her mother’s house after her arrest, but her precious belongings had stayed behind in this room. Javi wasn’t the only one who selfishly wanted to hold on to them. “Ramón cut me loose early. Said I was too distracted to be any use. Thought I’d come over and check the air filters and change the battery in Vero’s smoke detector. Guess I got distracted doing that, too.”
I didn’t bother to point out that all his tools were downstairs. “Want to talk about it?” I sat on the edge of the bed beside him. He fidgeted with the purple plastic bat ring on his left fourth finger. As far as I could tell, he hadn’t taken it off since he and Vero had exchanged drunken vows during an impromptu wedding in an Atlantic City casino chapel two months earlier. The ceremony might not have been official, but I had little doubt he meant it when he saiduntil death do us part.
“Not being able to see her is making me crazy,” he said, getting up to pace the room. “If I could just talk to her, I’d have a better grasp of how she’s handling all this. As it is, I have to rely on Ramón to tell me howhethinks she’s doing, like we’re in goddamn grade school.”
“You can’t just call her?” I knew Vero’s mother had refused to let him see her. Norma was still holding a grudge after he’d ghosted Vero the night before she’d left for college four years ago. Though Javi had had good reasons, and Vero understood them, Norma had never forgiven him for breaking her daughter’s heart. She had forbidden Javi from coming to visit, citing his own criminal record as her reason, convinced he was a bad influence on her daughter. But Vero and I were guilty of far worse things than Javi had ever done.
“She hasn’t picked up her phone or returned my calls all week. She’s not even reading her text messages. I don’t know what’s going on with her. I’m worried something’s wrong.”
I didn’t know what to tell him. The last time I’d spoken to Vero had been at least five days ago. If I confessed to Javi that I shared his concerns, it would only fuel his anxiety. I took the album from his hands to keep him from worrying a hole in it.
“Vero’s resilient, and she has Norma and her aunt Gloria watching over her. If something was wrong, I’m sure Ramón would know.”
He closed his fingers around his bat ring, looking defeated and tired when he nodded. “I should probably get Ramón’s van back to the shop. Thanks for the talk.”
When Javi left, I got up to return the album to the closet and found a handful of loose photos on the shelf. The fresh-faced girls in the images wore sweatshirts with Greek letters on the front. They stood arm in arm in front of a huge brick house, and there was Vero, grinning in the middle of them.
I understood why Vero kept these photos hidden under her album. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to look at them, and it made me curious why she would bother saving them at all.
A little more than a year ago, she’d been preparing to graduate with honors. But when the university learned her sorority had been hosting organized gambling nights, Vero got stuck holding the bag—literally. When the police were called in to investigate, the sorority’s backpack of ill-gotten cash had gone missing from Vero’s room. The girls all believed Vero had stolen it, and charges were filed against her for larceny. Unable to prove her innocence, she’d dropped out of school and fled the state. That’s how she had come to live with me and the kids in Northern Virginia.
I thumbed through the photos. Could one of these girls have stolen the money? Was that the reason they’d been so quick to pin the crime on her?
I felt like I was looking at suspects in a lineup. Or characters in a story.
Delia burst into the room with Zach hot on her tail. “Mom! Zach stole my favorite Barbie, and he won’t tell me where he hid it!”
Zach collapsed in a tantrum, shouting that he was hungry and demanding cookies.
The photos pulled at me, a mystery begging to be solved. But there were two other dilemmas that required my immediate attention. I tucked the photos back on their shelf and closed the closet door. “Okay, kiddos. Let’s go find your Barbie and figure out what’s for dinner.”
CHAPTER 2
Just after nine o’clock that night, there was a soft knock on my front door. As much as I had been looking forward to seeing Nick, I wasn’t feeling ready for it. I had only just managed to get the kids to bed thirty minutes ago. My hands were still pruny from scrubbing burned cheese off the frying pan, the laundry I’d pulled from the dryer was in a pile on my sofa, the floor was a minefield of Barbie dolls and Matchbox cars, and the front of my holey sweatpants were drenched after Zach’s tantrum in the bathtub. I smelled like baby shampoo and kitchen smoke, and I probably looked like a house fire.
I threw my hair up in an elastic band on my way to answer the door. Nick came over most nights after work, and while he kept a toothbrush, a razor, and a stick of deodorant in my bathroom, he used the key hidden under my downspout only when I couldn’t manage to stay awake long enough to let him in.
I peeped through the window before unlocking the door. Nick smiled back at me, his brown eyes twinkling. A balmy breeze rippled his tie and ruffled the dark, thick waves of his hair.
“Hey,” he said over the chirping of crickets. The tiny frogs Zachloved to chase were singing, too, almost loud enough to drown out the low hum of the highway a few miles off and the planes flying over Dulles. Spring had sprung early in Virginia, bringing with it warmer temperatures and gentle thunderstorms, and my neighborhood in South Riding was ripe with the smells of daffodils, wet asphalt, and a hint of the trash bins left out for morning pickup.
“Hey,” I said back, my heart doing a little jig at the sight of him. He’d shaved that morning before he’d left the house, but his full lips were already framed in sexy dark stubble. It hardly seemed fair that he looked that good after a full day of work, while I looked like one of Delia’s off-brand Barbies after her brother got hold of it and dragged it mercilessly by its hair through the playground. I pulled Nick slowly into the house by the end of his tie.
“Rough day?” he asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
