My mother comes apart, and I've never once known what to do with her crying.
Mila crosses the courtyard and lays a hand flat on my mother's back, "Come on, Marie. I know somewhere quiet. Plus, I know where Ruby hides the good tequila."
My mother goes to her, turns right out of my arms into Mila's like water running downhill.
The two of them head off toward the hall with their heads bent together, my mother already talking, Mila already listening.
I stand in the courtyard by myself and watch the two women I'd walk into a fire for walk away from me arm in arm.
Dante comes and stands next to me. "Your mother?"
"Yeah."
"She staying?"
"Till it's safe."
He nods, watching them go. "Good women look after each other," he says. "Your only job is to stay out of the way and let them." He claps me once on the shoulder, hard, and goes.
So, I stay out of the way.
I go to the garage and work on nothing for a couple of hours, and every so often my mother's laugh comes down the hall, cracked and watery and real, with Mila's voice low underneath it.
I don't go in, check on them, or see how they’re both doing.
Whatever's happening in that room is bigger than me, and I've done enough deciding for the women in my life.
I let them have each other.
* * *
It's nearly midnight when the knock comes.
I'm on my bunk with my boots off and a book I've read the same page of six times.
The knock is soft, two knuckles, and I know it's her before I'm off the bed, because nobody else on this property knocks like they're not sure they're allowed to.
If it was any of the brothers, they would’ve busted in by now.
She's in the hall in a T-shirt and sleep shorts, bare feet on the cold concrete, her hair down around her shoulders.
"Your mother," she says, "is asleep on my bed."
"She's what?"
"Three shots of Ruby's tequila and a full accounting of every stupid thing you did between the ages of four and eighteen, and then she stopped talking mid-sentence and she was gone. Out cold. Wool coat and all." Mila's arms are crossed and she's losing a fight with a smile. "I got her shoes off. I wasn't about to move a sleeping woman who's had the day she's had."
"I'll come get her. I'll put her in my?—"
"Don't. Let her sleep." She goes quiet for a second. "It was good for her. The talking. She needed it and so did I, and we're good, Finn. Your mother and me. We're good."
"Then where are you sleeping?"
And she looks at me.
It's the look she used to give me when we were kids and she'd already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up.
A look I haven't gotten off Camila Bacani since she was twenty-two years old.
