“Did you mean what you said to Theo?” His voice was sandpaper rough after what had probably been a very long night.
“That I would send the Fantastic Four after him if he ratted out my mom?”
“That the charges against you were dropped and you’re coming home.” His dark eyes bored into her.
Vero nodded.
Javi reached for her, faster than I’d ever seen him move before. He took her by the waistband of her jeans and pulled her down onto his lap, crushing his mouth against hers. Norma crossed herself and covered her eyes as Vero reached down blindly for the recliner’s release lever. The footrest popped up, and they fell backward, their lips still locked in a kiss.
Gloria took her sister by the arm and dragged her into the kitchen.
Neither Javi nor Vero came up for air as pans rattled on the stove and the coffeepot began to sputter.
I turned to the mysterious young man who was still duct-taped on the floor. I couldn’t very well cut him loose until we knew who he was. He pleaded with me through the duct tape on his mouth as I knelt beside the coffee table and inspected his personal belongings. According to his ID, his name was Brian. According to the logo on his key fob, he drove a Mazda. And according to the stack of crumpled receipts Wendell had found in his wallet, Brian spent a lot of time at the local Hooters. His table number was the same on all three of his visits, and he tipped his server very generously each time. I turned over one of the receipts. A phone number was written on the back.
I glanced over at the recliner and debated interrupting Javi and Vero to tell them what I’d found. But they were so happy, so in the moment, their faces close as they kissed and talked and laughed in low tones. I didn’t have the heart to spoil it. This mystery, too, was solved, but the reveal could wait a little while longer.
I picked up the knife and turned toward Brian. He started hyperventilating and squeezed his eyes shut as I crouched beside him. “Before I let you walk out of here, I want you to answer three questions with a nod or a shake of your head. Can you do that, Brian?”
He nodded fervently.
“Were you paid to vandalize this house?”
He nodded, cautiously at first.
“Was the woman who paid you a gorgeous brunette with long, dark hair?”
He nodded again.
“If I cut you free, are we ever going to have a problem with you again?”
He shook his head so thoroughly, I thought he might pull a muscle.
Quietly, I cut the duct tape from his wrists and ankles. I left his mouth covered as I handed him his wallet and keys, and he bolted out the front door.
When Brian was gone, I headed up to Vero’s room alone to pack my things. Norma and Gloria were sequestered in the kitchen making breakfast, and I was feeling a bit like a third wheel waiting for Javi and Vero to finish celebrating her newfound freedom.
I stripped the linens from the trundle and returned it to its place under her bed frame. I considered whether I should strip Vero’s linens, too. After all, we hadn’t been optimistic enough the day before to even discuss what would happen if we managed to solve the mystery and get her charges dropped. For all I knew, Vero’s mother might want her to stay here. The only reason Vero had ever left Maryland was because she hadn’t had a choice. Now that she was free, I couldn’t be sure where she envisioned going next.
Would she want to come home with me and my family? Or live here with her own?
Or would she take Javi up on his offer to run away together and start a new life someplace else? I had no doubt he would take her wherever she wanted to go.
Suddenly, I felt the overwhelming need to pack Vero’s bags for her and whisk her away with me, back to her room in my house.
I sat on her bed and looked up at the collage of finger paintings and macaroni art on her wall, the pictures the children and I had mailed to her in the weeks after the police had taken her away from us. I wanted to pack them all up, too. As much as this was Vero’s room, I didn’t like picturing this as her home. Her home was supposed to be with me and the kids. It was on my sofa, splitting abag of Oreos and a bottle of wine after the kids went to bed. It was running errands and doing school pickups together in my minivan. It was picnics in the park with Delia and Zach. But it wasn’t up to me to choose what home meant to Vero. And now that she was free to decide for herself, the only person who could make that decision was her.
I packed my clothes and gathered my toiletries from the bathroom, then I headed downstairs, unable to resist the smell of coffee and French toast any longer. Javi and Vero hadn’t been immune to the promise of breakfast either. Javi had just sat down at the kitchen table, where Norma and Gloria were already fussing over him, bringing him coffee and plates of food and sliding over a chair for him to rest his cast on.
“We were gone for less than a day, Javier! How did this happen?” Norma asked, pouring a generous helping of syrup over his French toast.
“The security camera in the backyard wasn’t working, and I climbed out the window to fix it,” he said between mouthfuls. “I lost my balance and I fell.”
Gloria and Norma gasped.
“That was a very foolish thing to do, mijo! You could have hit your head. Or broken your neck! What would we all have done if we’d lost you?”
Javi stopped chewing. His eyes lifted to Norma’s as she refilled his coffee mug. She paused mid-pour, the pot suspended in the air as Javi blinked at her, his mouth slack with surprise. Vero raised an eyebrow at her mother, hiding her amusement behind her coffee mug.
