Filters 25

Advent II

Chapter Index — Previous Chapter

---

O Rex Gentium!

She wakes in darkness and the warmth of his body. From his skin, against her cheek and below her hand, from his leg between hers, from his arm on her back and his hand on her bottom. She feels his chest move with his breaths, she hears each slow beat of his heart. She turns into his shoulder, smelling him. She has no words for his smell. It isn’t strong, it’s not sharp or sweet or musk. If she called his clear she would mean like the sky; inescapably, then, as air. His is life, filling her. She breathes deeply, his heart carries her back to sleep.

She wakes to dawn and the sound of the shower. She moves the blankets and sits against the headboard, she crosses herself and prays. She takes her phone from the nightstand, she answers texts from her mother and her sister. The shower stops. She unties her hair and runs her hands through, shaking out the small tangles. He leaves the bathroom, only a towel around his shoulders. He smiles at her, she smiles at him. She watches him dry his hair, the dark brown almost black for the water and the shadow of the towel as he makes a mess of the taper she cut. She looks in his eyes, the rapids of his eyes, so perfectly gray. At his face, his nose, his lips, at the pink in his cheeks. Smooth, he must have shaved before he showered. The thick hair on his chest, trailing to his abdomen, down. Back to his eyes.

“How were the cows?”

“Good. My dad helped,” he says. “How did you sleep?”

“Good.”

He sits on the bed, she reaches for him. Her fingertips then her palm touch his back. Always so warm. She squeezes, almost kneading, he pushes into her hand.

He says “They have chefs here. They’re making brunch.”

She could cover her face and laugh. She tries to smile, she isn’t sure if she does.

“Qué cosa.”

Why me, she thinks.

She pulls on his shoulder. He turns, she opens her arms to him.

She has one hand on her belly and one hand on her head. Her heart still races, her breaths are still quick. He sits up, again she sits up, again she runs her hands through her hair. He stands and takes his towel. He looks at her, she has a thought. She widens her eyes at him and looks to her left, then back. He tilts his head, he looks to his right, then back. She nods, his brow furrows, she nods again. He smirks. The closet door opens, she hears sliding drawers and twisting hangers and watches his clothing move through the air and land neatly on his raised right hand. He dresses, black underwear, a white undershirt he tucks into tan trousers, a black leather belt with brass buckle now covered by his navy crewneck pullover. He rolls his eyes, snapping as he spins to snatch a black blur from the air. His socks. She laughs.

“I’m going to shower. Would you—”

“I’ll wait,” he says.

He offers his hand as she stands. She closes the bathroom door and opens the door to the water closet. She finishes there, then examines herself in the mirror as she washes her hands and brushes her teeth. With her right hand she pulls at a lock of her hair, it’s now on a freckle above her right breast, just below her collarbone. She twists the lock and smiles. She sings, opening her clutch for her bracelet and moving the moon charm up one bead.

She touches the panel outside the shower to start the rainfall head; hot at once. She opens the shower and sits on the bench, singing still, raising each leg and then each arm into the water. Her hands move over her body, rubbing her skin. She steps under the water. Her eyes are closed, she tilts up her face. Her hair is flattened to her ears, her cheeks, her neck. She’s smiling, her hands over her heart high in her chest. She prays in thanks, she sings as she sits back to take a bar of soap and lather a sea sponge. The smell of apples and cinnamon fill the shower. She rinses, lifting up her arms, her fingertips still below the rainfall head. She touches the inner panel to stop the shower.

She dries her body, she stands at the mirror. She uses a small towel to lightly pat and squeeze her hair. She takes a bottle from the tray his aunt left as a welcome, a cream she rubs into her lengths and ends, then she combs. She opens the vanity drawer of the cabinets for the hair dryer, its plug in the drawer itself, to use only on her roots. She wraps herself with her towel and slides back the door. She laughs loudly. He’s in a handstand beside the bed. She walks around him, shaking her head, smiling.

Her towel goes on his in the second of three hampers. She dresses, black panties and black bra, black crew socks, light jeans and a powder blue shirt below a pastel yellow sweater. She opens the closet, he’s leaning against the bedroom door. He looks at her, she feels his eyes moving on her, to her sweater. She goes to him, his hand touches her waist, then slides to her back, pulling her.

He says “I like when you wear yellow.”

“I know.”

He bows his head. She feels his nose touch on the base of her neck, she hears him inhale. He straightens, she pushes onto her toes and they kiss.

Then they go to the kitchen.

Four are working. She looks from three who she assumes are assistants to one who must be the lead chef. She would think head chef but she wonders if it’s right, here, and for this family affair. He’s at the stove, he’s old, the others aren’t. He’s rotund and with a graying beard and thick-framed black glasses, and while all wear black kitchen slacks and black crocs and canvas aprons, the others wear black shirts with their cuffs buttoned back, he wears a forest green sweater with his sleeves rolled up. She looks at the assistants, a man and woman at the large counter, the man whisking something she doesn’t see, the woman slicing fruit. A second woman is at the coffee counter, pulling shots of espresso. She looks back to the stove. Donald and Derval are close but out of the way, talking with the chef. Behind them she sees James in an armchair, Michael on the side of the couch near him and Eileen on the other side, near the fireplace. She looks to the nook table where the others all sit save Lily.

Lily could seem the normal one, she thinks.

There’s space for them on the bench. Cups on saucers are brought by the second woman, who says “Flat whites.” Emilia thanks her, Andrew thanks her by name, Liz.

She presses herself into his shoulder to quietly ask “Do they always have this?”

He nods.

When Lily enters she’s holding boots and dressed for the cold in a violet puffer jacket and a red knit hat. She hugs her grandmother and gives a small smile to Emilia, who smiles back. She speaks quietly to her mother, something about Clementine.

Emilia asks “Are you going to see Clementine?”

Lily says “Yeah, I am.”

“Would it be okay if Andrew and I went with you?”

Lily says “Yeah, you can.”

He says “Shoes?”

“Just my Sambas.”

He’s back with their shoes and coats and her knit hat. They follow behind Lily on the heated path, past the walls and to the horse barn. She sees something subtle in how the girl moves, a weight in how she holds herself.

She whispers “How old is she?”

He whispers “Twelve.”

Just younger than Sofia, she thinks.

She expects stalls and the smell of animals but the door Lily takes opens on a kitchen and office with only the light smell of ozone. She looks for an air purifier she doesn’t find. The floor is blue slate tile, the walls are white. A square appliance is mounted to one wall and hanging on either side and on the other walls are large prints she recognizes for depictions of deserts and cowboys and cavalry as works of Frederic Remington. There is a conference sort of table with a light plywood surface and red-orange molded plastic chairs. There is a raised standing desk with the same sort of plywood surface, a white keyboard and wireless mouse and two large monitors on arm mounts. At the base of one leg of the desk she sees a brushed steel tower with an engraved Apple logo, pushed in beneath the desk is a black office chair she recognizes as the same kind as those of the dorm office. There is a stove and microwave, a dishwasher and refrigerator, all the same brands as the manor house and farmhouse, all in the steel finish. The counters are steel and clear except for a space filled by an appliance she thinks might be an autoclave. There are dark wood doors on either side of the counter, both are closed. She would guess one opens on the barn and the other on a storeroom, as there are two other open doors. She sees through one to a bed, the other to a bathroom with a shower, these surely accommodations for overnight care.

The next door Lily takes opens on a mudroom gated to the aisle. The mudroom smells of bleach, with a concrete floor and white tile walls and white plastic everything else. There are dispensers of cleaning chemicals on the walls, as are two hoses with sprayers and mops on hooks above buckets. The aisle is another sharp change, with floors and walls in the same dark brick as the house. The stall doors are the same dark wood framed in black iron. She smells the animals, she would think surely unpleasant but it’s not. The barn smells like a barn. There is a wall with the saddles and ropes she expects and a stack of cubbies Lily stands at, pulling a bag of brushes. Lily slings the bag over herself, then goes to a stall with an orange placard Emilia is sure she made herself. Clementine.

Short for a horse, she thinks. Chestnut coat, flaxen mane and tail.

“This is Clementine,” says Lily.

“She’s beautiful.”

“She is,” says Andrew.

Lily slides a red rubber brush onto her hand, then pets the snout of the horse as she begins making small circles with the brush on its neck.

“What kind of brush is that?”

Lily says “It’s called a currycomb. I use this first when she’s dirty. She’s not, but that’s okay, she likes it.” She runs the brush from the horse’s neck to its shoulders and down its flank, then she walks in front of the horse to its other side and repeats the brushing. She takes another tool from her bag, again Emilia asks and Lily answers. “It’s a dandy brush.” Lily uses it on the same spots as the currycomb, making long strokes and running it down the horse’s legs. “I use this after the currycomb, it helps get more dirt off. She really likes it.”

Lily keeps talking.

“When we were in Italy we went to a ranch, um, they call them ranches there too, but like some are called scuderia, and that’s what we went to. They had an entire herd of Haflingers.”

“Is that where you did the horseback ride?”

Lily says “It was! It was just hacking, that’s on a trail, so it wasn’t hard or anything. And it was wide enough we rode in twos, so like I was beside my dad and we were at the back, or almost the back because there was the other guide at the back-back. I think I told you about the mountains, we were on top of a shorter one, and to my dad’s side was the valley and we could see all the little towns and farms, and on my side were the mountains and we could see the peaks and all the snow. It was so beautiful. And the scuderia had a giant horse, too. He wasn’t fully grown but they said they saw all the signs of growth and they did the genetic tests to make sure. They said they were going to move him soon, before he got any bigger, to a university in Austria that specializes in giant equestrian care. Missouri State does that too, my parents take me sometimes to the Equine Center. One of their giant horses is all black and she’s so amazing.”

“Did you get to pet her?”

“I did!” says Lily. “They have a platform in the barn she lives in, and it’s tall enough you can reach her face. So you go there, and you climb up on the platform, and they have their team who leads her around, because she has a lot of space like just in the barn, but she does have a field that she shares with another giant horse. Um, oh yeah, so they lead her around, and then to the platform so you can see her close up. I really wanted to ride her but nobody gets to do that.” Lily giggles. “They have guest days, that’s when we visit, and we went last time because they were doing her hoof care. So we were all up on the platform and they rolled out the giant chute, um, what they hold her in, for her to stand in. They had to use a tractor to pull it, and it has like a ladder and its own little platform, because there’s a woman there whose job is just making sure she knows it’s all okay when they’re working on her hooves. And then the farriers have a lot of special tools for her, for just a giant horse. And there was a woman with us who was telling everybody everything,” Lily lowers her voice. “And I didn’t say anything but I knew it all, because it really is just all the same work they do with any horse, but they have to be really careful because she’s so big. We’re going next time they have the guest days, oh and also they have a summer program for young people and next year I’ll be old enough so I get to. I’m really excited.”

Emilia is smiling. “How fun.”

Lily explains the last without prompting, the finishing brush, then she says “I’m done now.”

“Is it okay if I pet her?”

“Yeah, it is,” says Lily.

“What’s the right way?”

Lily says “Oh! You put your hand down like this,” she turns her palm down, fingers together, “and you move slowly, so you don’t surprise her, and then you let her smell your hand.”

She does, watching the horse lower its head and sniff her hand. Lily says “Okay, she’s saying you can pet her. So now you rub her neck like this,” and she runs her hand in long strokes on the horse’s neck. “You want to keep doing it this way, it’s how horses like being touched.” Emilia does the same, long repeated motions, smiling now as the horse pushes into her hand. Lily says “See? That’s how she likes it.”

“Thank you for this, Lily.”

“You’re welcome,” says Lily.

Lily walks in front of them back to the house. She sees that something still in her steps, in her shoulders and the small movements of her head. She feels Andrew pull softly on her arm, she stops and looks at him.

He whispers “She still seems . . . ”

“She is.”

He looks at his cousin, now almost at the walls. “She’s like me, but not like me. Weaker.”

“She has that?”

He nods.

“Does she know? Can you tell?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can tell, but I think she knows.”

She looks from Lily, red ponytail now disappearing into the bailey, to Andrew. She wonders why he waited, she wonders that she thinks he waited. This is a stolen secret, she knows he doesn’t want it, that he would never take it, no wronging glimpse at the inner life of that sweet girl. For him to share it—“Oh,” she says. There’s a tremble in her heart, she could have tears for the girl what he asks, but a smile for what he asks of her. “You’re worried she thinks she’s–that.”

He asks “How do I tell her she’s not?”

“We’ll find a way.”

She might know already.

They return to the kitchen. Shortly, brunch service begins.

The dining room has a philosophy in form she recognized on first sight. The floor continues the orange stone from the kitchen but the room is darker, and warmer, its feel coming instead in natural wood with indirect light from the only stained glass she has seen in the manor. The room is long and with an angled bay at its end that for this space she would think to only call an apse. The two angled walls of the bay have built-in narrow tables with drawers, the surfaces holding beautiful green ceramic pots almost overflowing with succulents. Clerestory stained glass windows top these walls, the glass is green and gold and their detail is rows of interlocking rings. The recessed back wall of the bay has no windows or flourish, only a light on its focal painting. She knows the painting as Impressionist but she hasn’t seen the work beyond this room and couldn’t guess its artist, she would think not Monet, but whomever, she’s certain it is original. She could take a picture; she could search and then confirm wealth she would rather keep implicit. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t. Oh. Implicit like this brunch. She could sigh at herself. Stained glass also fills the cabinetry of the long walls and most impressively in the backlit panel in the ceiling overhead the table, the panel also detailed in rings, of rings in rings. The table she understood best, black walnut and proportioned exactly with the room, as with the glass above, its twelve identical chairs all with backs going well above the heads of any who sit. Wright indeed, the room within a room of the banquet table. Donald takes his chair at the head, James opposite, as from Sunday. She wonders about that again. Andrew sits on his father’s right, she on Andrew’s right, and Lily now on hers.

Quiet music plays. Christmas, jazz, she smiles when she hears a banjo. The tablecloth is cream-colored, she touches it to feel the linen. She looks at the china and the silverware: two forks, the service plate, one knife and two spoons. A small plate to the upper left with a butter knife across, and to the upper right a saucer and cup, empty glass, and glass of water. At the center of the table is a raised silver platter with sliced fruit, filling most of the remaining space are small baskets she thinks must contain pastries kept warm in the cloth covering them, then all throughout are glass bottles of water, jugs of cream, ramekins of butter, short pots of honey and small bowls of sugar, jellies and, yes, clotted cream.

She watches Liz round the table with a platter of milk, coffee, and juice.

He whispers “Mimosa or Bellini. Bellini?”

“Bellini.”

Liz stands at his chair, the empty platter beneath her arm. He gives their requests.

She holds her arms until Liz returns, she’s served a tall champagne flute. The drink is a lovely color, she would say of sunset, a layer of foam and garnished with a peach slice. He has a whiskey glass, his a darker orange with ice and thin apple slices and a stick of cinnamon. She smiles. He unfolds the cloth of one basket and takes a croissant. She looks at him, he looks at her. He shakes his head slightly, she nods slightly. He smirks, tearing the croissant and giving her the larger share, then he takes a second. She bites into the end of the pastry, at once covering her mouth for the feeling in her cheeks at what might be the best thing she has ever tasted. She sips her drink. It’s wonderful. It’s all so wonderful.

Lily turns to her. “What kind of music do you listen to?”

“Oh. I listen to a lot of Latin, Spanish music.”

“Is that just one genre?” asks Lily.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s—”

“What all are they?” asks Lily.

She smiles. “Well, my favorite is a singer named Natalia Lafourcade, she—”

“I like her name,” says Lily. “What’s her genre?”

She still smiles. “She makes all kinds. Pop and rock, and folk, and there’s jazz throughout, and then now lately, she’s been making her own versions of traditional music from Mexico.”

“Does she play the piano?” asks Lily.

“She does, it’s not in her early work, but it’s in a lot of her newer songs.”

Lily says “I really like musicians who sing and play piano. And that’s why I asked because, um, the way you talk about her, Natalia, she makes me think of Tyler Joseph. Have you ever listened to him?”

“I have, I’ve liked his songs.”

Lily says “Yeah, I–well–I know he’s kind of old now,” Emilia must suppress a laugh, “but I really like him. I like how he does just like whatever he wants with music. I can play a lot of his songs, like the ones where he plays piano. Derval gave me his CDs, I don’t have a computer or phone or anything, not until I’m older, so that’s how I listen to music. Oh, but, my dad has a record player in his music room, and he gets me vinyls sometimes and we listen together. The acoustics are really good in there, I just have headphones in my bedroom. They’re better for some songs, like it really depends, like singing sounds better in my headphones, but like the whole sound sounds better with the speakers. Do you know Coldplay? I know they’re also old,” Emilia nods as she does now laugh, she quickly covers her mouth, “and I like them a lot. My mom got me their CDs, and I learned how to play Clocks but that was really easy and I can also play Trouble but I think maybe my favorite song by them and I can play all of it is Amsterdam. If, um, if you know those songs.”

“That’s one of my favorite songs.”

“What else do you listen to?” asks Lily.

She thinks. She wonders what’s appropriate to name to a twelve-year old. Sofia listens to her music, but always together so she can gently explain. Sofia. Her parents didn’t want Sofia to have a phone, it was Emilia who asked, so she could text her sister while away. She wonders if that’s good enough. “Lately, George Harrison. He was in the Beatles.”

Lily says “I know George, my mom loves the Beatles. My parents went to the charity concert they played for Japan, for the, um, earthquake and the tsunami. And they’ve seen him play with his band, and they’ve also seen Ringo play and they have a picture with him. I like Ringo.”

“Me too.” She smiles, for Lily, and for the idea she’s had.

The assistants bring the meal, every plate is the same. An omelet, a slice of prime rib, asparagus spears and three small cakes, she would say three bites, of layered slices of potato. David blesses the meal, she cuts and tries each, halving the potato cake. She can’t find her voice, not for this, she can only listen while the others talk.

She wonders if the food is better than what they had in Texas. Surely not, but it is. To have it here, with him, with his family. Their family.

Her heart skips, she blinks quickly, she feels his hand on her thigh and his breath on her ear as he whispers “I love you.”

She’s on her belly on the couch in their guestroom, her head perched as she looks at him on the rug beside her.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

“What time is dinner?”

“Seven,” he says.

“I kind of want to see more of the town.”

“We can do that,” he says.

“I also had a thought. Lily was telling me how she only listens to music on CD?”

He says “Right, yeah, they’re strict about that, like how my parents were. Like how yours are.”

She nods. “I know you said I didn’t need to bring any gifts, but, I thought we could go somewhere and get her some albums.”

He grins. “That’s such a good idea. She’ll love that.”

“There’s a store here?”

He says “I’m sure, but I’ll ask Don. Other than that, if we’re seeing the town, if you want to see somewhere unique,” he trails off, she watches his eyes, clearly teasing her. “We could go to Bass Pro.”

She raises an eyebrow.

He says “It started here. The store’s enormous, like half the size of the mall. And they have an aquarium, it’s famous. It has penguins.”

She bites her lip. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“No. I need a nap.”

“Okay.”

She lets her hand fall to his chest.

She’s soon asleep.

“What time is it?”

“Not even two.”

She sits up, she stretches. She runs her hands through her hair. He stands, she takes his hand. She follows him to the kitchen as he speaks with his uncle, then through the northern hall to the garage. Again she looks at each car. The two Mercedes, Donald’s covered Porsche, the Subaru she knows as what Derval drives, past a large Toyota pickup and to the smaller pickup in the farthest bay. The other Toyota, the Hilux, the farm truck.

He drives them at first on the route Donald took to church, around and behind the Costco, until they turn at a bridge over the freeway. They pass through miles of bare trees and neighborhoods, to a thoroughfare with a Starbucks and a car wash she remembers passing through from the north with Cait, but here they go across, staying in the trees. The houses turn nicer, and nicer. He slows, for the speed limit and, she realizes, so she can look. “Oh,” she says. There are chicanes and past them raised crosswalks as speed bumps, these to serve better-weather foot traffic of the marketplace filling a small intersection. She sees restaurants, a café, a brewery, the businesses stuffed together while the houses she sees, though none extravagant, are all lovely and have spacious yards.

He says “This is where Cait lived when she was a student.”

“I see why she liked it.”

They turn at the next thoroughfare, passing university buildings.

“This is Missouri State?”

“It is,” he says.

It’s small. “It’s nice.”

He laughs. “It’s small.”

“Yeah.”

They continue, past a Brutalist building she finds interesting at the edge of campus, past houses, past tennis courts and a long public park and several large homes, turning again at another thoroughfare with a large hospital on which she sees a cross raised above one point of its varied roofline and across she sees also the fine red brick exterior and signage of a Canton Clinic. She wonders about that. They continue, still nothing but houses until they pass a church and a public school and she sees the signs of a dozen restaurants.

She laughs. “I see where we are.”

Bass Pro. One entire corner of an intersection is taken by a segment of the complex with a massive curved digital display announcing Wonders of Wildlife, Voted America’s Best Aquarium. The display is most of the façade here, with giant stones for its base and a dark green metal roof. The lot is very full, an overflow across the street also full, but as she looks between the lots he says “There are spots.” Sure enough, still a fair walk to the store but at least not one involving traffic. She looks around, so many trucks, she looks at him.

He’s putting on a navy Cardinals hat and sunglasses. “We match.”

She nods. She holds his arm.

The lobby is a great hall built to evoke the hunting lodge. There is a giant chandelier covered in antlers and stag trophies covering the walls. She can see an escalator and stairs, a second floor with a display of a herd of taxidermied deer overlooking the hall. There is a welcome desk with a woman who greets them, Andrew says “Hi.” The desk is between two pillars raising more than three stories to the ceiling, they’re made of wood, she looks closer, they’re trees, tree trunks, sanded and deeply oiled but with still uneven surfaces with knots and the shallow protrusions from cut branches. A corner of the hall has a fireplace with a tower chimney, it’s decoration, of course, but it has a roaring fire on heavy logs, a large Starbucks kiosk near it, and there are couches and armchairs, all wood-framed but with large red-and-black plaid cushions, squashy armchairs, all of them occupied. They continue on in the lobby, standing beneath the chandelier and above a bronze relief in the floor of the Bass Pro logo. She looks to her right, past more pillars into a far longer and larger hall where she sees fishing boats. Fishing boats. She looks back at the pillars; like masts. She smiles.

He takes her opposite the boat hall, she smells something sweet, she sees another large kiosk offering candied pecans and walnuts, pretzels, soda, slushies and corn dogs. She nods. He looks at her and points to the kiosk, she shakes her head. To the clothing department, she stops at a table of shirts in all colors bearing the Bass Pro logo. She touches one, she thinks of wearing it. She looks at him, he’s looking at something on the walls. She wants a shirt, she would wear it, somewhere. They move on to the women’s section, it’s not all camouflage but that’s where they stop.

“Is this where you dress me in all camo?”

“If we were going hunting,” he says.

“Did you ever go?”

He says “Yeah, my dad took us when we were younger, before we got too busy with sports. It wasn’t a regular thing, it was more about teaching us guns. He did want us to know what it was like, since he hunted so much growing up, but that was it. Don’s the same but he still goes sometimes since the guys he played baseball with like hunting. That’s another thing about Eily, she’s a good shot.”

“Peligroja.”

“Yes,” he says.

She touches a camouflage coat, she examines the liner. “This feels well-made.”

“It all is,” he says. “It has to be. When you can only afford one coat, better be one you can hunt in.”

She nods. She has a thought and looks all around.

“What?” he asks.

“I realized I haven’t seen any guns.”

“That’s because we’re not in the gun hall.”

The gun hall opens with a nature and wildlife display, an artificial cliff face with fake trees and plants and taxidermied mountain goats posed around a waterfall. So much of it she thinks she could call kitsch but she thinks better, how better to use the space than this? A glass elevator rises through the display, she sees a walkway running behind the artificial cliff, not maintenance, for customers, she sees its distant end at a staircase into the hall and a closer end on some kind of room with a large balcony and many windows.

“What’s that?”

“Restaurant, it’s called Hemingway’s.”

“Of course it is.”

They pass safes and hunting blinds, what she only knows to name with description as raised micro-cabins. Those could be cozy, she thinks. The walkway, she now sees, ends not only in the staircase but another hall contained within something of an overhanging second story, this with large windows she follows to impressive and large wood and glass doors and a beautifully carved and painted sign for, apparently, a museum of the NRA. A long and curving staircase leads to this museum, she looks at it, she looks closer. In place of spindles supporting the handrails are muskets, hundreds of them, and bronze statues of bald eagles on the posts.

“Gun museum and gift shop.”

He laughs. “They have Teddy Roosevelt’s guns in there, some of them. It’s pretty cool, for what it is.”

“I want to look at guns, now.”

He gestures out.

More guns than she has ever seen. Well, the most she’ll see in one place, she thinks. Countless rifles lining racks on walls behind cases, countless handguns in those glass cases. They stand away from the counter, too many customers, but they’re close enough for her look.

“How many guns does your dad have?”

“A lot.”

“Don?”

“Plenty.”

Her eyes move from the cases, to the stone floor of the hall, to wooden benches and standing brass signs with class offerings. Gun safety, hunter’s education, megafauna preparedness, select fire certification. Her eyes move back to the cases, to a woman talking with an employee. A handgun is taken from the display, the woman holds it.

She looks at him, he looks at her.

He says “Aquarium?”

She nods.

She likes it more than the aquarium in Corpus Christi, and then they reach the penguins.

They stand at shelves of stuffed animals in the aquarium gift shop. He takes a penguin, waving it at her. She shakes her head, he nods his. She does it again, he does it again. She smirks. The girl at the register doesn’t seem to recognize him but her eyes still linger. She takes his arm.

They reenter the store, he lifts his sunglasses.

“Don’t.”

“Okay,” he says.

It happens quickly. A shopper recognizes him, another, another, another. Thankfully not all at once but still the most she’s seen it happen. She likes that few ask for pictures, a young man does, and a pair of girls, but the rest seem glad enough to compliment him and shake his hand. She sees him smile. He says he doesn’t like it, and she knows he doesn’t like the idea, but it’s so clear to her how he likes the moment. Why would he feel annoyed? He wouldn’t, not at this goateed older man with kind eyes behind glasses saying something about Don as they shake hands, not at any of them for the joy of meeting a famous athlete.

They don’t leave, he takes her back to the clothing section and the t-shirts.

“I’m getting you one,” he says.

“I wanted one.”

He’s recognized at the registers, and as they leave the store.

She laughs at the parking lot. It’s night but it’s no less bright for the store’s Christmas decorations are all now lit. Every tree is covered in lights, a rainbow all around, to the roofline and the eaves. She has a thought, she turns and scans and above the glass wall of the boat hall she finds Santa and his reindeer. Perfect, then. She’s surprised to enter the truck and find it still warm. He drives them across the city, past the hospital and to another intersection she remembers and now the mall.

“Is it in the mall?”

“Right across,” he says.

She grins as they enter. Not a record store by presentation, a hobby store. She smells paper, ink, and plastic, she sees board games, trading cards and miniatures, and also comics books and video games and movies. She likes this store. It’s busy but a girl at the counter still greets them. Andrew says “Hi.”

She follows him to long tables with boxes of CDs. She claps her hands together. “I was thinking about getting her a bunch, but then I thought some are probably a bit too mature for her, or, I don’t know. I was thinking about Commit This To Memory and then I was thinking about Even If It Kills Me, and I know what she listens to so I think she’s old enough for the lyrics, but I just don’t think her parents will like how often Justin swears. My mom doesn’t.”

“Really?” He says it loudly. “Your mom doesn’t like ‘Let’s Get Fucked Up and Die’?”

She slaps his chest. He laughs.

She has him hold the albums as she finds them. Only two, she isn’t quick about a third, and for all she looks over she only adds a third. Then she sees more tables with milk crates of vinyls. She isn’t looking for Hasta la Raíz, the disc is among the three Andrew holds, but she sees the category flag of Latin and there it is.

Give Lily both, she thinks. She hopes her parents will like it too.

The girl at the register stares at him.

She puts her hand on his lower back. He pays, they leave.

“What time is it?”

“Quarter ‘til.”

“You didn’t have to let me look for so long!”

“We have plenty of time.”

They do, it’s not ten minutes to the restaurant. She sees cars wrapping the building’s drive-thru but only one in the customer lot, a black Mercedes he parks beside. They enter, she likes the smell, just different enough from other Chinese restaurants, she could say warmer. She sees only one table occupied, a family. She sees the man and woman at the table look at Andrew and she sees a girl behind the counter also look at him. Look him up and down. The girl’s mouth is already lifting in a smile, she begins to speak, he says “Just a moment, please.”

She squeezes his arm. “What’s good here?”

“Everything I’ve had,” he says. “I like the cashew. It’s fried chicken in an oyster sauce. Well, it’s gravy. It’s just gravy.”

“That feels right.”

They place their order, his cashew chicken, hers sesame. They take a booth, the man at the table stands and walks to them.

“Andrew,” says the man.

“Zach,” he says.

The man gives each a nod. She feels like he’s bowing. The man says “I am honored, truly.” The man raises his hand, they shake. “Thank you, for everything you have done.” She sees Andrew’s acknowledgment in the slightest tilt of chin. The man looks at his family, then back. “Do you know how hard I laughed when he said this is where you chose? My wife, too, it’s her favorite. We would have been here anyway.”

He says “It’s my uncle’s favorite.”

“Something about this town,” says the man.

He says “That’s what I always hear.”

The man smiles. “Picture?”

Andrew stands. The man is only just shorter and has only just narrower shoulders, but in that she finds his whole measure. His hairline is well-receding, his scalp gleams. His eyes aren’t quite dark, they could be hazel, they also gleam. She sees he is capable, in himself and to serve who he does, she sees also a depth of care, the signs of truth in his thanks. He can be trusted.

The man, Zachary, speaks very quietly as he holds his phone. “When you get your food, I’ll go outside. You do the same, we trade. I already checked for cameras, but—”

He says “None are facing where we’re parked.”

“Perfect,” says Zachary, and he must have noticed her ring as he looks between them and taps his wedding band. They nod, he smiles again and says “Congratulations.” He leaves them, turning back for a last “Thanks again, good luck in the games!”

Their food arrives moments later, surprising her for the speed. She watches Zachary exit, she watches Andrew wait, wait, and pick up his phone and follow. She closes her eyes and prays until she hears him return.

“What did he give you?”

He holds a phone to her, she takes it. It looks almost like his, most in the row of switches, but this has five instead of three, and it has no branding at all, only four gold dots, two on each side of the phone.

They talk. She likes her sesame chicken, she likes his cashew more. She sees the girl watching him as he takes their trays to the counter. Back to the truck and the cabin she thinks she shouldn’t have been surprised to still find warm.

“That was really good.”

“Well, it’s the best in Springfield, they voted on it, which I think, technically, makes it the best in the world.” He laughs.

She smiles but it falters as she has a thought. “I—” she hums.

“What?”

“I was just thinking it would be nice if I could make everybody champurrado.”

His eyes move off her for an instant. He says “We could have come back tomorrow, but it’s open.”

“What’s open? Is there a Mexican market here?”

He’s buckling his seatbelt and starting the truck. She quickly buckles hers. The drive is longer, back to the mall and then around, on and on, more and more of the city.

“Where does it end?”

“We’re not halfway.”

To a shopping center with restaurants and the second Hy-Vee she’s seen tonight and tucked in a corner, there it is. SUPERMERCADO YAMILÉ.

She doesn’t understand.

“There aren’t even that many in College Station. How is there one here?”

He only smiles at her.

“Something about this city?”

He says “The biggest small town. America’s last melting pot. All I’ve heard, people just come here, people you’d never expect, not a lot of them, but from all of them. It’s why there’s a large enough Cantonese community to have all those restaurants, and a Vietnamese community, and Filipino, and Ukrainian and apparently even Israeli, and I think this might be, spiritually, the farthest it is possible to get from the Levant. It’s like how the second greatest pitcher in Cardinals history came from here, how he met his Irish wife here because her best friend is from here, how he retired here.” He begins to laugh. “Maybe,” he still laughs, “maybe it’s why the Mormons thought they found Eden. Maybe they were right, they just didn’t go far enough south.”

She touches his hand. He says “The store?”

“Right.”

He holds the door, she enters. She takes it in. Everything she could think, packed together, so much she now wants, and the smells. He lifts a basket, he follows her as she walks straight down one aisle, head turning all over the shelves, to the back. She saw on the front the sign for the hot counter and bakery but no mention of the dining room, there are booths and tables, many with people eating. She walks slowly down the hot counter, past a dividing wall and to the bakery. She notices the cases are dark but the workspace is lit and an older man is behind the counter, washing his hands. He’s a large man with fat cheeks and a mustache. He notices her, he double-takes and quickly dries his hands.

María Emilia Cruz Amador possesses unusual beauty. She knows this as she knows her face but her understanding has always gone without conscious thought. It is a fact of her life, from her childhood to when she blossomed, to her maturation and her arrival as a young woman. Where she values herself for her beauty, she would hope it only as complement to the whole of her person. She never stays self-satisfied under her own gaze and she has never thought less of those who lack her blessing. She doesn’t think of it at all, not even enough to not consider the lack as something to be considered. It still defines her. Her sin is the thoughtless vanity of expectations built in a life of favored treatment. If confronted she would rather think it earned, but she hasn’t been confronted and she hasn’t had to think, so it stays unspoken and unthought and in that honestly for how she understands she, too, has been set apart. But where Andrew is his own provenance, the treatment she receives and has received is her provenance. To have any one, when she has all: her hair, her eyes, her ears, her cheeks, her nose, her lips, her chin, her face, to have her skin, to have her body. Her power is seen. People are so kind to her, they offer so much to her, and, there, is her vanity. But. However the world favors the beautiful, her better is of the soul.

Emilia is a beautiful girl. She also has a lovely face.

There was reciprocation in her difficulty with other girls and the long line of limerent boys she utterly ignored before Andrew. She wanted to make friends of her peers, she was lonely, but she never felt it was something undeserved. She understood the cruel resentment of girls and as the distaste was mutual there was no place for indignation. It was another fact of the world, this one she disliked. To be friends with boys? No boy wanted to be her friend. She ignored them, they were all the same to her, all equally faceless. She was accustomed to their spontaneous confessions of love. Oh. Sometimes boys do that. She doesn’t know, has never thought, how many she crushed. As is only right. She didn’t ask for their attention and she didn’t want it, her existence drew their attention, they saw real beauty, and whether they were ever good enough—they weren’t, were they? She sought humility as Foreign. In her love for her native tongue, but a flaw in that as she used it to distance herself, as it could only be. As Other. In her countenance, but were she blonde or brunette most would assume without second thought she simply enjoyed the sun. Her hair with her eyes on her face, she appeared to them as Other, but in the way the so beautiful seem alien. A discerning eye would make the subtle difference. It would then, for having dwelt on her, become forlorn.

The bakery is closed, she doesn’t notice.

“Hay mucho.”

She doesn’t notice the man nod, the lights of the case come on.

The man greets her. “Buenas noches, güerita.”

She smiles at him. “Hola, don.”

The man chuckles. “Recordaría haberte visto.”

“Ah, sí, vine por Navidad,” she says, looking at Andrew, he nods at the man.

The man grins at Andrew. “Maravilloso. ¿Qué le pongo?”

She looks over the case, finding each item she wants. “Un bigote, y una mantecada, y también una de naranja, por favor. Y si vendes tu masa seca, entonces me llevo medio kilo. Gracias.”

The man says “Claro que sí, solo un momento.”

She turns on the spot, looking on the aisles as the man fills a small white paper bag with the pastries and a plastic bag with the dry masa. Andrew takes them, they thank the man, he raises a hand. They go back into the aisles, the first she noted, shelves of candies, cookies, and snack cakes.

She points at an assortment bag of candy on a high shelf, he lifts it for her, she holds it.

She thinks of their luggage. “¿Crees que tenemos espacio en nuestro equipaje?”

He says “Si tú quieres, podemos enviar una caja.”

She’s tempted. “Lo haría . . . no lo haré.”

She has him take the candy. They’ll have room.

She finds the piloncillo and chocolate tablets in the same section of shelves in an aisle with baking ingredients, she hands him also disposable pastry bags and a flag-branded package of Mexican wheat flour. In the spice aisle she hands him Ceylon cinnamon, a plastic pack of whole sticks and a jar of it ground. She then lifts a small glass bottle of pure vanilla. They have this, they must. She hands him the bottle.

They go to the front. She turns again on the spot, a last look at the aisles, then back to him.

He asks “¿Listo?”

“Sí, creo.”

He asks “¿Qué te pareció, es lo que esperabas?”

“No esperaba esto,” but she smiles.

She sees the girl at the register notice them. The girl eyes him. She eyes the girl, a streak of red in her hair, garish makeup and managing past her apron to put her chest on full display. He empties the basket on the short conveyor.

“Buenas,” the girl says to him, drawing out the word. “¿Algo más para ti?”

He doesn’t respond, moving and arranging the last of the items and only then looking at the girl. “Sorry?”

“Oh, uh—” the girl’s face freezes. “Is this all?”

“It is, thanks,” he says.

He pays, taking the two paper grocery bags in one arm. She looks at the girl, meeting her eyes. She looks at him, raising her left hand to push her hair behind her ear, then she reaches for his free hand as he reaches back for hers. Outside, to the warm truck, holding her tongue just long enough to offer him his pick of the pastries.

She laughs and laughs.

She sits cross-legged on the rug in front of the couch wrapping the last album. She ties a ribbon around each, she puts a sticker on each with her name and his. She tucks them in the closet drawer with his presents, she changes to her pajamas. She texts her sister and her mother, he enters, he undresses and joins her on the bed.

She turns, her head held by her left hand, her right hand on his chest.

“How was it?” he asks.

“I had a good day.”

“Good,” he says. “What do you think about the town now?”

“I like it,” she says. “I liked it before the market.”

“You see it,” he says.

“There’s something about it. It’s so much bigger than it feels. College Station never felt big, and Gainesville’s so spread out. Here, there’s all of it, you see all of it, everywhere we went, we were still in all of it, but it’s so quiet you would be right if you said nothing is here. That nothing ever happens here, because there would have to be something for something to happen.” He’s smiling. “It’s like I’m from Mexico and I’m from Texas, and people know what that means, it’s not all true, but it’s closer than farther. Cait,” she laughs a little, at herself, “is from Dublin, and I don’t know what that means, but I know Ireland, that’s a place. And like for your grandfather, he’s from Ava, what do people know? They know small towns, not everything, but their idea is true enough. What’s the idea of being from Missouri and from Springfield? What is its sense of place? Quiet and Christian and I guess with Bass Pro and they would be literally right but completely wrong. I can imagine a conversation like, someone asks you where you’re from and you say ‘The town of Nowhere,’ and they give a dry laugh and kind of roll their eyes and say ‘That must not be very big’ and you say ‘Five hundred thousand people live there.’” He grins. “It’s a last town on Earth and I mean that by sequence, this is the last kind of town, it’s the final kind of place people have figured out as a way to live together. And–and,” she says. “I see you here. You’re from here.”

He grabs her, pulling her, kissing her.

“I love you so much,” she says.

“I love you” he says.

---

O Emmanuel!

She wakes in darkness and the warmth of his body. From his chest against her arm, from his hand on her belly. She turns to him.

“What time is it?”

He says “Just four. You can go back to sleep.”

She rubs his chest. “Así que tenemos un poco de tiempo . . . ”

She dresses while he showers after his return from the barn. White underwear, black sweatpants and thick yellow socks, a white t-shirt and a purple Gators sweater. He dresses, they go to the kitchen. It’s still dark beyond the windows, Anna is there alone, pouring coffee.

He hugs his mother, his mother kisses his cheek. He says “I’m going to find Don.”

Anna pours a second mug, they take them to the nook.

His mother looks at her. She looks at her coffee.

“I’m sorry we haven’t been able to sit down.”

Anna smiles. “It’s just been a few days, and I’ll be calling you when you’re back at school.”

She smiles. “I’d like that. I’ll call you, too.”

“Good,” says Anna.

They’re quiet.

Anna asks “How have you been feeling? How have you been?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I keep thinking I’m not thinking about it, but it’s all I think about. I feel the same, and I thought it’s because he’s the same man, he hasn’t changed, I just have the name for what I always felt in him. But now I think what I feel hasn’t changed because all I have is the name, and the name doesn’t describe–that.” She gestures weakly. “Do you understand?”

“I don’t,” says his mother. “I understand him. I think it would be nice if that’s why I don’t.”

She wonders who can. “Did you see it, when he was born?”

“No. There are days I want to think I saw something. I don’t trust myself,” but his mother smiles. “He’s my son, I can’t read in and think myself more wise, especially not when I know James saw it.”

“He did?”

“Whatever he could have seen, whatever he could have known when he first held him, he knew. I had liked Peter, for my grandfather. James named him Andrew. James understands it, because he doesn’t understand his son, so he can see this all in perfect logic.” His mother smirks. “This.”

“Was he like that when you met?”

Anna smiles. “Oh, yes.”

“Did you like that about him?”

Anna says “I disliked that about him. We weren’t friendly, we were barely acquainted and all we did was argue.”

Emilia laughs. “Andrew hasn’t told me that. He only said you met through your sister.”

Anna says “We did. Before Allison and Nathan were married, she would drag me along on some of their dates, and he would bring James. We argued from the first night, we disagreed over everything.” She sips her coffee. “I enjoyed it, I looked forward to it. He was accustomed to being the smartest in the room, but for all his brilliance, he was so arrogant.”

“When did he change?”

Anna says “Not quickly, but he showed me he could. The first moment was after a dinner at my parents’ house. We emptied the sitting room with our candor. I was working for the bank by then, and James was half-arguing, half-explaining his plans for the shop after the military. He thought I would approve. I didn’t. I told him exactly how he was going to fail. I sent him quiet, then he said ‘You’re right’ and he stood and he went out the door.”

“Oh,” she says quietly.

Anna says “After that, I didn’t see him again for weeks, not until another dinner. I didn’t know he would be there, it was Allison and Nate and I, and a boy I’d just started seeing named Benjamin. James got there, he looked Ben over and the first words he said to me were ‘He’s not good enough for you.’ Ben said ‘You are?’ James said ‘Yes.’ Ben looked at me and said ‘Well?’ I was as mad as I had ever been, I couldn’t speak. Ben walked out, I followed him to his car. He said ‘You could have said something.’ He gave me a look, he expected me to leave with him. I hadn’t gone there with him.” Anna shakes her head. “I didn’t go back inside. I sat on a bench, I was still fuming. James sat beside me. He said ‘He would have punched me if I were wrong, and you would have slapped me if I were wrong.’ I slapped him.”

Emilia laughs.

Anna says “He laughed. He said I only did that because he said it, I said he was right, but he had it coming. He laughed again and said he expected a slap every time we argued. But then he looked at me, and he said ‘I need your help.’ He said he was glad to see me, and he was glad to talk, because he brought his plans with him, and he offered a stake in the shop, right there, for helping him. I agreed, we shook hands. I still didn’t like him. I told him that, I told him he wasn’t good enough for me. He laughed. He said ‘You think I agree with you on everything now just because you’re better than me at math?’”

“No.”

Anna nods. “I wanted to slap him again, but he was smiling at me, and he was staring in my eyes. I was not going to lose by looking away. We kept like that, until he looked away, at the restaurant. He said ‘Let’s get a table, I’m done waiting to take you to dinner.’ I said ‘Well, we already have a table.’”

Emilia smiles.

“After dinner we went back to Nate’s. James laid out his papers in the kitchen and we worked on them for hours. I say my sister had left already, she had, so I had to let him take me home, but I stayed because I wanted him to take me home. He knew that. When we were outside my house, he said ‘You would kiss me if I’m right.’ I kissed him goodnight.”

She quietly says “I like that story.”

Anna smiles.

“How was your sister?”

“So smug,” says Anna.

Emilia laughs.

They’re quiet.

“How do you,” she shakes her head. “How have you gone through this?”

“With James,” says his mother. “He humbles us, we humble each other. What he has, that, that isn’t ours. The moments I’ve slipped and felt I did something to earn this,” she holds on that. “James has told me what’s made him happiest is knowing he took after me. But I look at him and all I see is his father. How could that be me when I see all of him that isn’t? James. He could raise a king. I don’t think it’s poetic. I don’t think he proved himself for the burden by being the man who would reject it. I think it’s what I didn’t see, that Andrew is the answer to a prayer he hasn’t told me.”

Emilia sighs, she slowly turns the mug, her thoughts quicken, the turning quickens, she feels her heartbeat and right then his mother reaches for her, a hand on her wrist, a hand on her hands on the mug. “He loves you. You are the light in him.”

She nods, she blinks quickly but, no tears. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” says his mother, squeezing her hands.

They finish their coffee.

She hears the bells on the dogs’ collars, Donald and Andrew come through from the mudroom. Andrew continues on, Donald greets them and lights the fireplace, the dogs take their bed, then he’s out.

His mother asks “Would you like to help me with breakfast? I’m making biscuits and gravy.”

“I would!”

She eats too much. She skips lunch.

He comes in as she’s reading on the bed. Not a book from the library, the second of the two she brought, a third Coetzee, his last with definite provenance, smuggled from the country. Age of Iron.

He takes his boots from the closet. He says “Mike needs to go shopping.”

“Sure. Do you want me to go with you?”

He says “Yeah, but I think he wants to talk.”

“That’s fine. I’ve been meaning to take a bath.”

He nods.

“When will you be back?”

He says “Probably with dinner.”

He leans over, they kiss.

She soon closes her book, a folded post-it between the pages. She slides off the bed to the rug, slowly sitting back as she kneels. She takes her rosary from the nightstand and prays.

She fills her bottle with ice and water in the kitchen, she returns to their guestroom. She undresses and robes herself and enters the bathroom. She looks over the tray from Cait, reading the handwritten note explaining each unlabeled bottle. She starts the bath, she pours in the largest bottle, a mineral suspension. She checks the note, she takes a bath pillow and tray from the tall cabinets. She places them on the tub and adds the floral sachet, she soon smells rose and chamomile. She lies on the chaise, she texts Sofia and sends a picture to Andrew.

She turns the faucet back and removes her robe. She looks at herself in the mirror as she ties back her hair. The bathroom has a wired stereo system, a cable and remote are in a thin tray of a drawer above the vanity drawer. Other than phones she hasn’t seen any smart devices in the manor house. She thinks it isn’t a concern shared by the brothers, she wonders if it’s something of affluence and taste. Her phone chirps, she sends another text to her sister, then connects her phone to start her music, the volume low. The remote and her bottle go on the tray, she enters the bath.

It’s wonderful. She looks through the window overhead to gray skies.

She thinks, and she thinks.

She’s still in the bath when she hears something faint. A voice. Then louder, a knocking on the bathroom door. She pauses her music, hearing what must be one of the girls from their muffled “Emilia?”

“Come in.”

It’s Lily. “Oh, hi, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in the bath.”

“Hey, that’s okay. What’s up?”

Lily shakes her head. “I just, I kinda wanted to hang out with you, but, since, you’re, you know, um.”

“No, no, you can! Have a seat, get comfy.”

Lily sits on the chaise. She looks to her left and right and shrugs and reclines.

Emilia pushes back the tray and moves around the bath, her head on her arms crossed on the tall rim.

“Did you want to talk about something?”

“Yeah,” says Lily. “I realized I’ve been talking so much and just about music and my horse and I thought, um, I wondered what else you like.”

She shakes her head. “You haven’t. I’m always happy to talk about music, and I really enjoyed meeting Clementine. But since you asked, I also read a lot.”

Lily says “I do, too.”

“What have you been reading lately?”

Lily says “Just manga, um, I mean besides school stuff.”

“What’s that like? I’ve never read any.”

“You haven’t?” asks Lily.

“I’ve looked through just pages at bookstores. I know they’re read right-to-left.”

Lily says “They are, but, like, you haven’t read any at all?”

“I haven’t. I’ve watched anime, and movies. Andrew and I watched Spirited Away.”

Lily says “I love that movie.”

“Me too.”

“But, like, that’s it?” asks Lily.

“That’s it.”

Lily jumps up. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Okay,” and she laughs as Lily runs out of the bathroom.

Lily is right back, breathless and with her arms full. She has a square cushion she lays on the floor beside the bathmat and five books. Two large volumes, both rather like very thick magazines, and three small volumes. She sits on the cushion, the small volumes are put on the tile, she holds up the large volumes. Lily says “This is Shonen Jump and this is Shojo Beat. The way they work, they’re called serials, if you know what those are?”

“I do.”

Lily says “Yeah, so, Shonen Jump is like, fighting stories, and Shojo Beat is, well, it’s for girls. The authors, they’re called mangaka, they write and draw the stories, well most of the time, sometimes it’s a writer and an artist. And it depends but some of the artwork is really good,” she flips through each large volume. The first has pages in black and white, the second has pages in cyan and white.

Emilia leans in to better look at the pages. “I like the coloring of the other, I’ve not seen that.”

Lily says “Yeah! So the mangaka write chapters every week, and in Japan they publish every week, but all the month’s chapters get combined and published here in English. Derval started reading them first, and Eily used to but she didn’t care for them really, so now it’s just Derval and me, and we both have subscriptions but I have to wait for her to tell my mom whether I can read them. I don’t like that, but, well, that’s the rule, and I mean, she usually says I can, and I have these too, and I can just read these,” she puts down the magazines, picking up one book. “They call these books tankōbon and they’re collections of a lot of chapters from one story.”

Emilia reads the cover of the first. “‘Spy X Family,’ what’s it about?”

Lily says “It’s just Spy Family. I know, I don’t get why they do the ‘X.’ It’s about a man who’s a spy, and his wife, well—” she shakes her head. “Let me start over. It’s about a girl named Anya, she’s just a little kid, and she’s, um—” she shakes her head again. “She can read minds, and she’s an orphan, and she gets adopted by the spy. His codename is Midnight and he’s trying to stop a war, and he adopts her as part of his cover. His cover name is Loid and he doesn’t know she can read minds. Then he meets a woman, her name is Yor, and she’s an assassin, but he doesn’t know that, and she doesn’t know he’s a spy, and it’s all, um, well, they agree to get married, but they both don’t know why the other actually wanted to get married, but Anya knows. Also, eventually they get a dog who can see the future, and the dog and Anya are like, they understand each other, since Anya can read his mind and see his visions. And also, Loid and Yor are falling for each other, even though they’re already married.”

“That’s funny, I like how it sounds.”

Lily says “Yeah! Um, it’s still like in the magazines, but the anime just started, and Derval and I watch episodes. I really like the music too, it’s a lot of big band.”

“I like big band music.”

“Yeah!” Lily holds up the next, Emilia knows this title.

“I’ve seen Dragon Ball. I know how popular it is, it’s very popular in Mexico, too.”

“Really?” asks Lily.

“Yeah. There’s street art, giant murals of Goku and–he’s the only character I know.”

Lily says “Like with Vegeta?”

“Maybe? The one I’m thinking of, he had a green head.”

“Piccolo! Or maybe Cell. Was his head like,” and Lily puts down the book and raises her pointer fingers, putting her hands on either side of her head. Then she says “Oh wait,” and she puts her hands on top of her head, opening them out as a V.

Emilia is smiling. “No, he had a white headwrap, like a turban.”

Lily says “Piccolo! The first, with my fingers, Piccolo has antennas but I meant Cell.”

Emilia laughs.

Lily says “Piccolo was Goku’s enemy, but then he became Goku’s friend. That’s like, that happens a lot in the story. Goku beats a villain and makes him promise to join his team.”

“I like that.”

Lily says “Me too. So, I have all of them, and I’ve read all of them, and I also have all of these,” she holds up the third. “This is called Aria. It’s set in the future, on Mars, when they’ve terraformed it so people can live on it just normally. It’s about a girl named Akari and she lives in a city that’s just like Venice. I mean like it’s even called Venice, basically, and it has canals, and she wants to be a gondolier. Those are the people who row the boats in the canals.”

“That’s interesting, how different the stories are.”

Lily says “Yeah they are, that’s what I like about all of them.” Lily opens this book, turning through until she shows a full-page panel of who must be the girl of the story, piloting a gondola beneath a bridge of one such canal.

“That’s very pretty.”

“Yeah, I really like the art. And I like that it’s, um, not a big deal? Like sometimes Spy Family is that way, where it’s just Anya in school, but then Loid’s gotta stop a bombing or something. And Dragon Ball, they’re always fighting. But in this one, it’s just, it’s what she wants in life, and it’s not a big dream, but it’s her dream. It’s,” she trails off.

“Low stakes?”

“Yeah,” but Lily frowns. “I’m talking too much again.”

“You are not! I like hearing about this.”

“Really?” asks Lily.

“Yes, really.”

Lily says “Okay, well, still. Um. What else do you like doing?”

Emilia laughs. “Music and reading is a lot of it, and I’ll be adding some manga to that. I spend time with Andrew, he’s most of the rest. And there’s school, and I work at the school.”

“What do you do?”

“I work in one of the dorms where the athletes live.”

“Like Andrew?”

“It’s where he did his first year, now—”

“Oh yeah he has a house.”

“He does. I’m the assistant for the woman who manages the dorm. Whatever she needs, I help her get done. It’s a lot of paperwork, but I also make calls for her, like when a dorm needs repairs.”

“Because the athletes are always breaking things?” asks Lily.

Emilia laughs. “All the time. My office is the dorm office, it’s in the dorm center, which is where students hang out and study, and it also has the laundry center. I help her keep track of supplies and all the things we need to order. It’s very quiet, but on the fun side, whenever there’s a holiday, I do all the decorating. Andrew helps me with that. Well, he’s there and usually we’re just talking, but he moves boxes, when I ask.”

Lily rocks, just once.

“I see a question.”

Lily says “Um. Yeah. I know what I said, and I know what you said. But just now, when you mentioned Dragon Ball and Mexico, it made me remember when you talked about Spanish music and,” Lily trails off, she rocks again.

“You can ask.”

Lily still shows hesitance, but eventually she says “My mom told me, she was talking to all of us, not like that, it was just at dinner one night. It was about Andrew and you and she said how you’re from Mexico, because of, um–Sister Mary Grace, we call her Sister Grace, and she’s from Mexico. And Sister Grace was telling us about all the things like that happened with President Buchanan and Mexico, and I said I wanted to ask you about that to Eily, and Eily said I shouldn’t, but all she said is I’m just not supposed to ask that sort of thing, and I understand that it’s rude but also I don’t understand because like I just don’t know and I’m not trying to be rude and I tried to look it up on the computer but it was all just like what Sister Grace and school said, and I would look it up on my phone but I don’t have a phone, and, and, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

She already loves this girl.

“You’re wondering how it is I’m here?”

Lily nods. She whispers “I’m sorry.”

“No,” she says, and she makes sure Lily sees her smile. “My mom.”

“She’s American?” asks Lily.

“She is, but my mother would tell you she’s Tejano. She was born in Texas, and so was her father, and his father, all the way back to my quinto abuelo, that’s my great-great-great-great-great grandfather.” Lily smiles. “He fought for Texas after they declared independence from Mexico. Because of that, my grandfather and his family were–they were fine.”

“What about your dad?”

“He was born in Mexico, he’s—”

“Where?”

“In the state of Jalisco. It’s—”

Lily says “I know where that is! Sister Grace is from Guadalajara. She showed us pictures of the land and all the mountains, they’re beautiful.” She lowers her voice. “She also told us tequila is made there, because it has to be made there to be tequila.”

“It is, it does, in the state of Jalisco, and they are, they are beautiful. It’s where I was born.”

Lily asks “Is that where your parents met?”

“It is. You know, a few nights ago, Andrew and I talked with your parents, and they told us about how they met. It reminded me just a little of how my parents met.”

Lily says “How did they meet?”

“Do you want the full story?”

“Yeah!” says Lily.

“Okay,” she says. “My mom has four sisters and she’s the youngest. Her name is María Ester, but everyone calls her Maite, because her mom is also named María. My name is also María, María Emilia. You see why we go by different names?”

Lily giggles. “I like that.”

She smiles. “Her parents are from a town called Rusk, but my mom was born in a town called Nacogdoches, those are both near Houston in East Texas. The energy industry is very large there, and her dad worked in natural gas, and his work took him from a town called Henderson, back to Rusk, to Nacogdoches, and finally to Houston just after my mom was born. It was nice, when she was young, because her mom’s family lived there.”

She considers her words.

“My mom was a lot younger than you when the Repatriation started, she doesn’t remember much. Most of her family on her mom’s side chose to go through the relocation program since, well, that would make the moving process a lot easier than if they were formally deported. What she remembers most is the time she spent with her favorite cousin, Fina. Fina had to move.”

Lily nods.

“My mom was young, she didn’t understand, she was sad and confused, so many of her family members were gone, so many people in her parish were gone. She buried herself in books and school and church, she read so much, and she was a good student in school, most of all with math. She kept taking math, and she kept doing well, and she did very well on her SAT, and that meant when she graduated from high school she was able to go to the University of Houston for free. She knew she wanted a degree in math but she didn’t know how she wanted to use it, she knew she didn’t want to be a teacher, but that was it. She graduated from there and she still didn’t know.”

“What’s her degree?” asks Lily.

“Applied mathematics, in statistics.”

“Wow,” says Lily. “What did she do?”

“Accountancy, she’s an accountant, well, an auditor, for Texas A&M, the university.”

Lily says “Aunt Anna does that. I know she started as an actuary, if I said that right, and now she does all the accounting for their business.”

“You did, and she did, and she does. Actuaries and accountants do different things, and so do auditors,” she sees Lily waiting to ask. “Anna worked for a bank when she was an actuary, and if I remember right, she had just moved to the managing of retirement funds when she left to handle the finances for James’ shop. Auditors and accountants have bureaucratic differences in Texas, my mom is still an accountant, that’s a licensed title she has to maintain, but she works in auditing university spending. It’s a big school and the programs have large budgets, and her department makes sure it isn’t improperly spent. All of these require a lot of math, and it’s also what I’m studying, statistics and accountancy.”

“Wow,” says Lily. “I get good grades in math but I don’t like it.”

“I don’t always like it, but I’m good at it,” she says. “But that whole time, my mom was also thinking about the Church. Through college she wondered if that was her vocation.”

Lily says “I’ve thought about that. Like we make the prayer at school a lot, but, and I know I’m young, but I can just tell it’s not what I’m supposed to do.”

“I felt the same way when I was your age. My mom didn’t, she didn’t feel pulled in either direction, she was open to the Church, and she knew she needed to go

“I felt the same way when I was your age. My mom didn’t, she didn’t feel called, but she didn’t feel not called, she was open to the Church, so while she was in college she was also going through discernment. She had been working as a waitress since high school, and she was also doing that through college, and since school was free and she was living at home, she was able to put a lot of money in savings. She’d always wanted to take a long trip to Mexico to see her family, she’d only visited twice since everything, and both times it was for funerals. She’d been keeping in touch with Fina, especially when she got a job and could call her whenever she wanted, and, oh, Fina’s had quite a life. The relocation program found a job for her dad in Guadalajara, so that’s where they moved, and then when Fina was older, she followed a boy to Mexico City. They broke up very quickly after that, but she stayed there for a while and–well, she got married and moved back to Guadalajara. So, when my mom graduated, she worked all summer and planned her trip for the fall, so she could see Fina and her kids, and all her family, and make a pilgrimage. The one she went on is called La Romería de la Virgen de Zapopan.”

Lily says “Sister Grace told us about that, and she also told us so much about the one for Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Yeah, my mom wanted to make that pilgrimage, but the timing didn’t work out, at least not at first, and it was for the best, anyway. She went with Fina and her family and her aunt and uncle and a lot of her other cousins as they made the long walk with the crowds from the Cathedral all the way to the Basilica. My mom loved it, and right after that, she and Fina went to a town close to Guadalajara called Lagos de Moreno. The Church has a deep history there, and they went on a discernment retreat. Fina had her kids of course, she went with my mom because she was alone, and at the same time, my dad was there.”

“Um, like, on the retreat?” asks Lily.

“Not exactly. My dad is a professor.”

“What does he teach?” asks Lily.

“The history of Mexico, and he specializes in the history of the Church in Mexico. His name is Ernesto, and back then he taught at the University of Guadalajara. Before that, before college, for almost all of his version of elementary school and middle school and high school, he spent it with the Jesuits. He’d kept up with them all through university, so by the time he was teaching, they would invite him to give talks. My mom and her group went to one of those talks, and as it happened, Fina and my dad had dated when she was in Mexico City. After his talk, they talked, and that’s how my parents were introduced.”

“What happened then?” asks Lily.

“My mom liked him, she went to all of his talks, and when the retreat ended they spent an entire day together. My dad knows Lagos de Moreno very well, so it was like he gave her a personal tour. They walked everywhere, they talked all day, morning to night. My mom stayed. Well, she went back for paperwork, but she stayed. That was October, they were married in December, and I was born in July.”

Lily is quiet, then her eyes widen. Emilia smiles and nods. Lily covers her mouth, her own smile.

“I think I’m finished with my bath.”

“Oh, sorry! I’ll leave,” says Lily.

“If you want, you can sit down in there and we’ll keep talking.”

“Okay!” says Lily.

She finishes. She leaves the bathroom and walks around the bed, seeing only the red of Lily’s hair above the back of the sofa. She puts her bathrobe on its hook in the closet and looks at herself in the mirror. She unties her hair, she opens a drawer. She’s kept held in thin cloth her yellow lace underwear, she lifts the garter belt, she looks again in the mirror. She thinks of her mother. What her mother would say. She sets it back in the drawer. She thinks of him. His eyes. She lifts it again and dresses. Then gray sweatpants, black socks carefully rolled over her stockings, a black t-shirt and an oversized blue Florida sweater.

Lily has pulled the ottoman from underneath the sofa, her legs stretched on it. Emilia joins her.

“Where were we?”

Lily says “Oh! Um, when you were born. What happened then?”

“Okay,” she says. “My dad was teaching, and my mom was staying home with me. We were close to where my dad’s mom lived, my abuelita, and my first memories are all the time I spent with her. Her name was Gloria.”

Lily asks “What was that like?”

“So my dad is one of twelve.”

“Wow,” says Lily.

“Yeah. His dad owned a farm, and my dad grew up working on it, but from when he was young he was a very good student, and with so many kids, it was easier for his parents if they could get some out of the house.” Lily smiles. “Because he was such a good student, he was recommended for a program at a Jesuit boarding school in Guadalajara. He was there all week. Class and books, and a lot of chores, too. In his first couple years, he went back home on the weekends, but,” she pauses. “Have you studied Mexico, besides what you learned from Sister Grace?”

Lily says “Um. We’ve talked about the Cristeros, and we’ve talked about terrorism, like against the Church, and the cartels, and we talked about how everybody thought there was going to be a civil war, but then we talked about, Don José and um,” she’s bashful. “‘Portillato?’” Emilia smiles and nods, Lily smiles. “And how all that stopped before President Buchanan.”

Emilia says “Yes, there was so much violence. Some was against the Church, but what was worse was how much of it was indiscriminate and just cruel. The Mexican government was very corrupt. Mexico has a long history but its government doesn’t, the United States is almost two hundred and fifty years old, so think about all the history here in just that time, think about how much things have changed. Well the government of Mexico is isn’t even a hundred years old. Back then, it wasn’t even sixty years old. In a way, they were all kind of new to it, you know?”

Lily nods.

“That’s a really simple way to put it, but it’s helped me when I think about Mexico. Also my dad gave me that comparison and it’s his job.” Lily laughs. “Mexico has a long history with a certain type of person, in English the word is warlord. There’s a word in Spanish, caudillo, and there’s a word they got from the natives, and it’s cacique. The caciques, the caudillos, they held a lot of power. When Spain still ruled Mexico, there wasn’t a full government, they were fine with the local warlords, so for a lot of its history, those men basically ran the country. They still did even after independence and the revolution and the constitution. With the size of Mexico, with the corruption and the bad economy, even the new government wasn’t stopping them, they kind of couldn’t, or they didn’t know how, at first. By the seventies it was like some of the states were their own countries, the warlords controlled everything, the police were bought off and the military was a problem, too, because the warlords had a lot of soldiers loyal to them. There were also the cartels. In the seventies the cartels started pushing out the warlords. That meant violence, it meant murders and kidnappings, it meant war, really, and the war was in the streets. So the people of Mexico were living with all this violence, and at the same time the economy was falling apart. There were people who were tired of all of it, the revolutionaries, but they weren’t the only ones, there were the people against them, the reactionaries, and you had all of these groups fighting each other. Jalisco was one of the safer states during the violence, but even though it was safer, my dad’s school decided it would be safest if the students stopped going home on weekends. It meant my dad didn’t get to see his mom.”

Lily nods.

“He talked to her as much as he could, but it was so hard for him to not see her. He did what my mom did, the only thing he could, he poured himself into books. He was the best student in his school, and when it came time for high school, things had gotten so bad really the only safe place was Mexico City. My abuelita told him he needed to go to school there, and he didn’t want to, but she had told him to, so he did. He applied to a Catholic boarding school and he was accepted. It was all the same as before, books and chores, missing his mom, and after that, well, not long after he was done there, they knew Buchanan was going to run for President. They knew he was going to win, and they knew what would happen.”

“What was it like?” asks Lily.

“Everyone was scared, he was scared, but he told me more than that, he was excited.”

Lily says “He was excited?”

“He was. He wondered if it might be exactly what the country needed. So many people left because of how bad the country had become, and he thought those were exactly the kind of people Mexico needed. They would be back, they would need food and houses and jobs, they would need to join together because now the only way ‘out’ would be through changing the government. What surprised him most was they didn’t need to, the Mexican government changed before that. It was Don José. Presidente José López Portillo. He knew how to fix the problems, that’s what he’d been doing his entire presidency, keeping his plans hidden as he put all the pieces together. When he finally moved, it was fast. All those violent groups, the organized crime and the cartels, el crimen organizado, los carteles,” Lily’s smiling, “las milicias, los caciques y los caudillos, los revolucionarios y los reaccionarios, y todo! All of them! One by one, suddenly it was the Portillato, and the government just beat them. Their soldiers, their bought politicians and judges and cops, the generals, los generales, fought and beat, arrested and convicted and put in prison. ¡Encarcelado! That’s what my dad saw, from being trapped away from his mom because of the violence to it as good as stopping entirely.” She takes a breath. “There’s still corruption, there’s still a cartel, but it’s a big country, and for a hundred years old I think it’s doing great.”

Lily is grinning.

“My dad almost went to seminary. For him, he said he thought he had been discerning the priesthood his entire life. One of his brothers is a priest and two of his sisters are in the religious life. My dad thought he’d do the same, the Church had been his entire life, and with the violence, he couldn’t see himself with a family. More and more he felt pulled to serving people that way. But then everything changed, he saw it change, everything he’d hoped and prayed for was happening, and happening in the right way. And then Buchanan, and somehow that worked, too. He saw the money pouring in, all the American investments, the Americans themselves moving in. He saw the new construction and all the new businesses and the new jobs. He told me, it was seeing that, he had to understand it, how it all fit into the history of Mexico, and he wanted to write about it. Most of all he realized he wanted to tell his kids about it.”

“I like that,” says Lily.

“Me too!” She laughs. “My dad was a good student there, he wasn’t top of his class, but he was near it, and even as he knew he could go back to Guadalajara, the program he wanted was in Mexico City, so that’s where he went to college. He studied literature and history, and as he started into his doctorate, that’s when he met Fina, she was just working, they met at church. They dated for a while, but, it wasn’t meant to be. He got his doctorate, and he impressed a lot of people in school, and best of all of that, he got an offer to teach at the University of Guadalajara, and then he could be back by his mom.”

“Wow,” says Lily.

“His father had passed away by then, and my dad’s oldest brother and his wife had taken over the farm. My abuelita Gloria lived with them. Well it was her house! But they all lived there together. I don’t remember much, but almost everything I remember is with my abuelita, she’s who first taught me to play the piano.”

Lily says “That’s like me, I mean, you know my mom plays, but grandma Rose taught me first.”

She smiles. “I didn’t know she played, that’s nice.”

Lily says “Yeah, she plays for their little church. She sings, too.”

“My abuelita did that, she would play the organ sometimes. We went to church so much back then, just us three, my abuelita, my mom, and I. Sometimes we’d be at Mass every day, sometimes twice. My abuelita loved it so much, but I know a lot of those times it was because of how many kids were in the house. She needed a break.”

Lily says “I know what that’s like.”

“On your mom’s side?”

Lily says “Yeah. My mom’s the youngest, and I’m the youngest, and I do have a lot of cousins but all the ones my age are boys and the girls are like Derval’s age or even older than Andrew and all of them have husbands and babies already. I like seeing all of them and I do really like seeing the babies but they’re just babies, you know? But we do that too. When we’re in Dublin, if we’re there for a while, my mom and my nana and me go out just us.”

“So you see why she just had to get out sometimes?”

“Definitely,” says Lily. “Um. And then your mom became an accountant?”

“Yeah, well, a while after that. My mom is always thinking about the future, and she was planning out how they would support me and my sisters before they were even born. She loves Mexico, maybe as much as my dad, but even with how things changed, she felt it would be better if we grew up here, and my dad agreed. We’d have more opportunities, and my mom would, too, when she started working. She knew she was going to be an accountant, but that meant she needed to go back to school, and she decided to wait until I was old enough for school. My dad, all that time, looked for teaching positions here, and then it lined up perfectly. He accepted an offer from A&M, I finished the first grade, and we moved to College Station. It’s also close to Houston, and back then my abuela María still lived there, so she came to live with us, and I got to spend a lot of time with her instead. My mom went to A&M, and she was in her last year of school when she got pregnant again. She gave birth to my sister Sofia just after she graduated. She stayed home until Sofia was one, and she had her CPA and she was working just doing people’s taxes. A few years after that she had my sister Julieta, and then she got an offer to work for A&M. She didn’t start as an auditor but that’s what she moved to. And I have one more sister, Elodia. I was in high school when she was born.”

“Wow.” says Lily.

Emilia laughs.

Both are quiet

Eventually Emilia says “You mentioned your cousins. What about your aunts and uncles?”

“Oh!” says Lily. “My mom has two brothers and three sisters. Conor, Colin, Colleen, Caroline and Claire. My uncle Conor and all my aunts live in Ireland but my uncle Colin lives in England because he’s a soldier, I only know a little about what he does, my mom says he can’t talk about it and that really makes me want to know what he does, but, whatever he does, he doesn’t have a family, and I’ve only gotten to see him a few times. My uncle Conor was also a soldier, he did that for a long time, but he’s the oldest so he was done before my mom was even in college, and he has a family. We go almost every year though to Dublin, and also my nana and my grandad come visit us here sometimes.”

“What do you like about it when you’re there, what do you do?”

Lily says “I love it, everything, all of it, everything’s so close we can just walk everywhere, and the church we go to, it’s also called Saint Agnes, and it’s, we’ve gone a lot to the Basilica in St. Louis, and I know it’s not more beautiful than that, but like, I like it more, and it is so beautiful, and we can just walk to it! And we can walk to the grocery store and the chipper, for fish and chips, and the fish, oh wow, it’s like, the one thing here, the fish isn’t good, well it’s not bad, but, well, it is bad, compared to how good it is there. Sometimes actually, I think maybe when it’s time for college, I imagine what it would be like if I went to college there like at Trinity like my mom. But I don’t know, that won’t be until I’m older and—” Lily stops. “And.” She’s breathing quickly, her hands clench the hem of her sweater.

Emilia doesn’t know what to do.

But Lily talks again. “Does, does Andrew ever,” she shakes her head. “Does he ever make you feel like everything’s going to be okay?”

“Yes, he does.”

Lily is breathing very quickly now. “And sometimes can he, have you ever seen him—” she shakes her again, now sharply. “Nevermind. I’m sorry.”

“Lily, it’s okay.”

Lily nods, this as sharply. “Is it true?” she asks. “Does it end up okay?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Okay,” says Lily, and she closes her eyes. “At dinner, when we had steak,” she’s slowing her breaths. “He tapped his head, and he smiled at me, and I had been feeling better since he got here, but it wasn’t until he did that that I thought it was because of him but that didn’t make any sense but now you say that so it does make sense.”

Emilia says nothing.

Lily opens her eyes. She asks “Do you know why?”

“It’s who he is. He makes me feel the same way, every day.”

However Lily feels about this, she’s quiet.

Emilia is also quiet, until she has an idea. She takes the television remote from the table at her side and holds it up. “Want to watch TV?”

Lily says “Yeah!”

She flips through channels, increasingly uncertain until a splash of color, SpongeBob.

They watch the rest of the episode, thankfully another follows.

Soon she feels Lily’s head on her arm, the girl is asleep.

She also falls asleep. She dreams of him.

Her eyes open. It’s dark, the television is off, the fireplace lit, a blanket now draped over her, over them both.

He’s sitting, he’s watching her, a rare kind of smile on his face.

He mouths Hey.

She mouths Hi.

His eyes move, her eyes move, to Lily still asleep on her arm. She smiles at him.

She mouths What time is it?

He roughly signs as he mouths Five-thirty.

She lifts her right arm from the blanket, tapping it as she looks at him.

He shakes his head, he mouths Cait.

She moves, gently touching Lily. “Lily, hey.”

Lily mumbles as she wakes. “Oh? Oh. Hi.” She blinks several times and sees him. “Hi Andrew.”

“Hey, Lily,” he says.

Lily slides over, she stretches. Emilia does as well. Both rub their eyes, both run their hands through their hair.

He claps his hands on his knees and stands. “We brought pizza.”

Lily asks “Jax and Gabe’s?”

“You know it,” he says.

Lily bolts from the room.

He laughs. “She woke up fast.”

She’s only just finished standing when his hands are on her face and he’s kissing her.

“What happened?” he asks.

It takes her a moment. “We just talked, about my family, and hers. And about manga.”

He kisses her again, her left hand goes to the back of his neck, keeping him there.

Then she says “I am very hungry.”

She holds his hand to the kitchen. The pizza is perfect, as if it could be anything less.

They take their shoes and coats. He holds a paper bag, she holds his arm as they walk, now well into night, down the hill, up the hill, to the farmhouse. From the bag he takes cheese and chocolate and two bottles of wine. She looks at the cabinet with the wine chiller, she looks at him, he shakes his head and touches one bottle. She touches it; cold. From the cabinets, glasses and a plate, a cheese knife from a drawer. He carries a bottle and the glasses to the living room, she the plate. He goes outside for firewood, she looks at the cheese knife. He starts the fire, he looks at her. The knife is down, she looks at him, then at the cheeses, then back, smiling. He smirks and sits on the rug, fingers running over the cheeses as they fall into small cubes.

She smells the wine, it smells nice. She looks at the bottle. She looks again, reading the fine details on the label.

“That’s so much alcohol.”

“You won’t taste it,” he says.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?”

He laughs.

She doesn’t taste it. It’s sweet and tart and it clings to the glass and one glass progresses to entirely too much. She feels almost no different, just a flush in her cheeks and one feeling new to her, a rush of heat in the tips of her ears. She rubs one absentmindedly.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“My ears are burning. Are yours?”

He shakes his head. She wonders if he could drink enough.

She has a different thought.

“What do you do when you see something,” she searches for the words. “Something you should stop?”

He says “I have to see it. If I’ve seen a place before, especially if I’ve been, it’s easier to go back, but that’s it. If I see it, and I can stop it, I stop it.”

“How?”

“I keep doors closed.”

She grins. “What else?”

“I’ll break something. Something small, in just the right way.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” his eyes move, he smiles. “I never told my dad this. After I graduated, just before I moved to school, there were these bank robberies in Atlanta. It was two men and a woman, one man was the driver, the woman was the scout, she would go into the banks in heavy makeup and a wig, and the second man would come in masked and with a gun. They worked fast, just minutes in and out.”

“You stopped them?”

“I’d say I made it happen sooner. It was a Friday, I was just in my bedroom, I was lying on the floor, looking out at everything. I like following cars, following them around the freeway. I’d move over and look at buildings, but it’s summer, it’s Friday afternoon, everything’s slow. So I was on a truck, like some roadwork machine, and where it was on the freeway passed over a bank. I saw people inside crouched under desks, and I saw two people running out. The guy had a gun in his jacket, but I had just a bit more of a clue something was wrong when I saw their bags were filled with cash.” She laughs. “Their driver pulled up, he didn’t floor it, but they were still moving fast enough that when I dropped the front transmission the driveshaft hit the pavement and the entire car flipped.”

“No!”

“I was worried about the paramedics, but, then there were so many cops. And the news,” he laughs. “They didn’t have video, and all they said was the car turned over after the engine dropped. I thought, yes perfect, get it wrong, give me cover.”

“What happened to them?”

He says “They were fine. They went to the hospital in handcuffs.”

She laughs.

They’re on the second bottle, she still only feels the flush. She stands, her head feels fine, her vision clear, her steps precise as she moves to pull the bench from the piano and sit and lift the fallboard. She flexes her hands, spreading her fingers over the keys, she stands again to adjust the bench. She plays scales, all in tune. It shouldn’t have surprised her.

She plays, she sings to him.

He only watches her.

She turns around on the bench, he stands. He’s in front of her, she looks up at him.

She mouths What?

He shakes his head. He bends down, his head going under her arm, she feels his hands, one below her thigh, the other around her waist. She feels the whirl as he lifts her and puts her over his shoulder, she’s laughing, her feet dangling as he carries her up the stairs.

---

Vigil

She wakes in darkness and the warmth of his body. He envelops her. Her back in his chest, her legs wrapped with his, her arm on his arm on her belly, her hand on his hand on her breasts. She shifts, he shifts. She turns to him, her hands reaching for his face.

She wakes to the sound of sliding drawers as he dresses after his shower. She looks through the glass above, she sees only clouds. She crosses herself and prays, she sits, her legs moving over, her feet to the rug. She takes her clutch, opening it for the bracelet. She moves the charm up one bead, she looks at her rosary. She touches her ring.

“I need to go to church today, early,” she trails off.

“Okay,” he says.

“And then tonight, because of tomorrow, I thought,” she trails off again.

“I’d like that, too,” he says.

She smiles at him, she takes his hand as she stands. She showers, she dresses. Underwear and socks, her second pair of faded jeans, a faded yellow long-t and the purple Gators sweater, then her Sambas.

His mother and aunt are in the kitchen, they arrange pyrex baking trays on the large counter. Andrew leaves by the hall to the mudroom, he comes back carrying the cream dispenser, a wide steel pot with a valved nozzle in one hand and its stand and lids in the other. He assembles the dispenser.

His cousins come, they all go to the dairy kitchen. She’s taken peeks but hasn’t entered, it’s a happy moment. She looks straight up and through a skylight, then all over, at the tiling and the tables and the equipment. She turns, her eyes reading framed certificates hanging on either side of the doorway to the mudroom. USDA and MDA, a kitchen inspection signed at the middle of the month and food handling certifications for the entire family. The walk-in is large, it might be half the size of her parents’ kitchen. She didn’t think it would be filled only with dairy and it’s not, though for the kitchen she did just briefly wonder. A plastic curtain detailed with brown cows divides the room, the nearer shelves are labeled by contents, all repeating Manor. Milk and cream, clotted cream, buttermilk and whey and stacks of wheels of butter wrapped in waxed paper. The farther shelves are also labeled, these repeating Donations, Pasteurized. Different kinds of glass bottles, small hexagonal jars and blocks of butter, all with stickers with thick green borders. These shelves also have labels of the packaging dates and the scheduled pickup. Today, in the afternoon.

Andrew lifts the first of the pans she knows holds raw cream. She and the others take towels to hold around their pans before carrying them to the kitchen. He pours the cream through a mesh cover on the dispenser. She watches, her wrists on the counter as she holds at either side of a pyrex tray. Derval fills the trays, opening the valve and watching closely as it fills, then she turns the valve back and wipes it with a dish towel. Cait takes the full tray from the kitchen. Lily, now talking to Emilia, slides the next empty tray, this repeats as Anna now takes the full tray from the kitchen. Emilia slides hers as Eileen takes a full tray.

They work fast. They do this every week, she thinks.

Lily slides the last empty tray. The first eight will bake in the ovens of the dairy kitchen, the second eight in the ovens here. A timer is set for each oven, four timers on the large counter, counting down from six hours. She knows they’ll turn them then, and they’ll bake another six hours, or five.

She hears the bells on the collars of the dogs as they enter with his uncle. She watches Donald as he lights the fireplace and hugs his wife, as they kiss and leave together. Anna leaves, then Derval and Eileen. She looks at him, he looks at the couch. Lily is there, on the arm beside the fireplace, a throw covering her legs. He sits on the other arm, she beside him, her legs drawn up as she leans on him. Lily watches Saturday morning cartoons. Anime. She smiles.

His uncle comes back to start breakfast. His grandfather enters, he talks with Donald and pours himself coffee. His grandmother enters, she talks with Donald and pours herself coffee. Her phone chirps, Sofia. She reads the message, she has a thought, she opens the camera, she has a second thought. She would take the picture surreptitiously but she doesn’t want to show her sister the kitchen. She pulls at his arm, she turns, he turns into the frame, the room now covered enough. She sends the picture to her sister. She thinks, she pulls on his arm again, she takes a second picture, this showing the kitchen. She sends it to her mother.

The episode ends, his aunt is back. She pokes him, they stand, he moves to the nook bench, she joins Cait at the coffee counter. Cait draws the shot but now gives her the jug of steamed milk. She fills her cup for the latte. A good enough job with the art, she thinks.

She takes her cup on a saucer to the nook. Rose has been talking, she now addresses her in crashing segue—“Emilia, I know accounting is a good career, Anna does that of course, but you know David did something like that with keeping track of numbers when he was a sailor. I’ll tell you, when I was at Bell, the boys–already big, both little oxes–the boys were in school, and it was up to Donald to make sure he and James got to school on time. It was close in Ava, and they had their bikes, we only had a truck. It was a Ford diesel, it was brand new, they were making so many with all the talk about diesel during Korea, it was seven thousand dollars and we had the money from David’s service in the war–he was on a tanker, just like his dad, but it was nice because he still had plenty of time at home, he enlisted after Donald but he got special leave when James was born, oh but you must know that already–David wasn’t sure about the truck but I insisted and he was glad I did. David would get up early, I didn’t usually need to wake him, I had my alarm set but he would just get up–a clock in his head, he knows what time it is–and he drove me to Springfield, it was a long drive and we talked there and back every day, I liked that. I hadn’t worked until then, I took care of the boys. That was my only job, with Bell. Bell had introduced UNIX–well they’d had it since, I don’t know, ten years, 1970–and I started as a mainframe operator, but then they introduced the terminals and I could make a little more if I learned them. That was System III, I was good at it, the other women asked me just all sorts of questions and then they had me doing so many tasks, and then all of a sudden they moved us to System V, but that took barely anything to learn, it was the same as before, you just told it what to do and it did it. Oh, right, but before that, it was nice when David had calls that kept him in the city because he would pick me up right at five–I didn’t like the winter there, it got so dark downtown, I would sit in the lobby and read and that room had a draft–but then I was a systems operator and we had the money for a car. It was my Honda, David didn’t ask, he said Rose, whatever you want, we have the money because of you, and I did my research and I knew those were best, and then we had enough to get a third car when Donald was old enough, and if I had to work late that was fine—”

She slowly lowers her cup, she covers her mouth, fighting laughter. He squeezes her leg, she almost bursts. She slaps his leg, he laughs.

Breakfast is served in white low bowls, not skillets but that’s the meal. Fried breakfast potatoes with American cheese, red and green bell peppers, onions and sausage and a fried egg.

She wonders again about this family. She wonders if his father can cook.

They clear the table. She watches Andrew, Michael and Eileen at the sink. His brother gives him each bowl, he rinses it and gives it to his cousin, who loads the dishwasher. They talk around him, she thinks baseball, she catches names. Donovan, then Edman.

Lily is looking at her, the girl is clearly nervous.

Lily says “Do you want to go to my room and read manga with me?”

“I really do.”

She looks to Andrew, she would have smiled anyway but here it’s unbidden. Something quietly captivating her in his look. He wears an orange Florida shirt, his sleeves are pushed back, a blue sponge in hand and a yellow dish towel over his shoulder as he cleans a pot. He smiles back.

She follows Lily through the northern hall, to the family wing and the sunroom and left, then on, up one short staircase then a second as her bedroom sits closest to the master hall.

It is something. The same form as their guestroom though smaller and with no fireplace and rather than opening in the center the door is on the far left of the southern wall. The bed and its nightstands are the same but the lamps are different, in form and shades, these gold. Lily has her bed made, tidy for the girl, a cream comforter and a small violet blanket, this tossed near the pillows. A crucifix is on the wall above her bed, two doors are also on its sides, both closed, neither sliding. There is a single very large rug, yellow as its primary color but otherwise all colors by large flowers, she likes the rug. The curtains as well, open cream blackout, closed lavender voile. She again admires the courtyard and the trees. There is a small vanity on the wall to the left of the french doors, it fits the girl, with pictures on its mirror and a tray where she can just see the contents. Lip gloss, a bottle of perfume, a white ribbon. On the western wall are built-in cabinets, a Yamaha piano she recognizes as the same model as her own and a full-sized desk in that same black walnut with the same kind of chair as she saw at the desk in the barn. It has a yellow elbow lamp in one corner and a stack of books, sketchbooks at the top, then a clear standing organizer with erasers and dozens of ballpoint pens, pencils, colored pencils and markers, an electric pencil sharpener beside and two manual pencil sharpeners atop. The surface of the desk is mostly covered by a green crafts mat. At the back of the desk are several clear plastic CD organizers, maybe half-full. In the other corner of the desk is a white Sony stereo with large headphones connected by, she sees as she moves further into the room, a very long cable spooled on the side of the desk. In the space between the cabinetry on the left of the desk is a tall pinboard with more pictures; for all the red hair she assumes Lily with Cait’s family, and a very pretty drawing of a horse so well-done she can tell at once is of the manor, she assumes in the field in summer, of Clementine. In the space between the cabinetry on the right of the desk is a Marian icon with a wood-beaded rosary looped over it. There are no posters on the walls but many framed pictures and what she knows as prints, one being a copy of the Charles Sheeler barn print hanging in the kitchen, a second and third of Monet’s Water Lilies. She smiles. The southern wall is where the room differs most. Built-in shelves with so many horses. Horse figurines and toys in all sizes, stuffed animals, mostly horses. She sees Lego, she checks, yes, with Lego horses. Nearer the bed is a bright orange floor lamp and a giant blue beanbag chair at the part of the shelves holding books. Fewer than her old bedroom, but there’s the manga. At these Lily sits, and she sits. She sees the anthology magazines, there are numbers on the spines of each, they’re arranged in order. She smiles at the gaps. There are few, as Lily said, she does get to read most of the magazines. In those gaps are what she thinks are pieces of clay with handwritten labels of the missing numbers. The patience of this girl, she thinks, or maybe not, she would rather wait the years and read them through. There are the small volumes, the tankōbon, easily counted by the numbers on their spines; more than a hundred.

Just as she hoped, Lily pulls the first volume of Spy Family.

“Do you wanna read—?” starts Lily, holding it to her.

“Yes, I do.”

Lily takes a newer book from the series for herself, then offers the beanbag chair. Emilia accepts but sits forward, almost touching shoulders with Lily who has her back on the bag. It takes a few pages for the reversed flow, then she has it.

It’s great, she says so. “This is great.”

Lily grins at her.

They read until Cait comes to call them for lunch, they eat, then they stay in the kitchen. They all go to the walk-in to help load milk crates with the pasteurized dairy, the crates go on a handcart, the handcart stays in the walk-in as they rotate the pans. Andrew and his mother handle the pans in the dairy kitchen, she watches as Cait supervises Derval and Eileen turning the rest. Cait’s phone rings from the counter, Emilia follows Andrew and Cait behind Donald as he pushes the handcart to the northern hall, to a church van parked just outside. She stays inside with Cait, watching him through the glass. Andrew wears no coat, his sleeves still pushed back as he lifts crates two at a time into the back of the van. He and his uncle shake hands with the driver and then wave him off. Andrew turns back, looking at her through the glass, he smiles at her, she smiles at him. He points at his uncle, they stay outside, walking around the manor house.

Lily is beside her. “Do you want to read more?”

They go back to her bedroom but they don’t read. Instead she has Lily tell her all about school and her friends, but soon enough the girl, no longer apologetic for talking, nevertheless becomes emphatic that Emilia talk about herself, about her life and her friends. Emilia talks about her sisters.

Lily doesn’t have a moment as she had in their guestroom, but she does eventually ask about him. Everything implied as it takes her so many words, so indirect with her phrasing, but Emilia understands what she asks.

Does she, can she, trust Andrew with her life.

“Completely.”

His cousin says “Okay. Then I think, um.” She doesn’t finish the thought. “Okay.”

They read again until her phone clicks with reminder. She tells Lily they’re going to the early Mass. She considers inviting the girl before Lily asks if she can come. “Absolutely,” she says. Lily finds her mother, Emilia finds Andrew. He’s in the library, playing chess with his brother. It becomes his cousin, his aunt and his mother, all with them in the Hilux as he drives.

It begins to snow.

Cait suggests something of a detour after Mass.

“Through Rountree, it won’t be long. It’s on the way, really.”

It is on the way, the street they take from the church goes on and on north, a quiet artery cutting all the way through the city, past the back of the mall and a long park, through neighborhoods until the other side of the hospital campus she recognizes for the distant cross glowing blue in the night. Through and on into Rountree, Cait’s old neighborhood. He drives slowly, his aunt giving him close directions as he turns at columns made from large rocks and mortar, some showing orange in the headlights, to a narrow street. She sees why. The houses, almost all with Christmas lights. No programmed spectacles, the houses are the attraction. They leave to a wider street with houses scarcely less nice, to more turns and more houses, to the marketplace, the buildings and the trees bright in every color of light.

It’s all so wonderful.

They pull the finished trays and take them to the dairy kitchen where the timers now count down their short settling. When settled, they go in batches through the blast chiller before they’re lidded and left in the walk-in. She watches television with Lily while Rose and Derval finish dinner, chicken and dumplings.

She’s quite full. She leans back on the bench in the nook, she texts her sister then holds her phone flat below her hands. Andrew sits beside her, he also leans back. She rubs his thigh.

Lily is there. “Do you want to watch a Christmas movie with me and Derval?”

“Absolutely,” they say.

They follow her to the family wing and now right of the sunroom, to hall and then to a room she imagines once might have been filled with toys but now has couches and a large television. Derval isn’t there, not for minutes, not for when Lily has the movie, a disc, in the player, not to when Lily apologizes for her sister and is about to go looking. Then Derval arrives, carrying bowls of popcorn and with Eileen behind.

“Sorry,” says Derval as she hands a bowl to Emilia.

“No, don’t be,” says Emilia. “Thank you.”

Derval says “You’re welcome. Eileen said I had to make more popcorn.”

“You didn’t make enough for me,” says Eileen.

“I didn’t think you would watch,” says Derval.

“What else would I be doing?” asks Eileen.

“Anything else,” says Derval.

“It’s Christmas,” says Eileen.

“You don’t like anime,” says Derval.

“I like watching with you,” says Eileen.

She hears Lily’s small desperate “Can I start it now please?”

She bites her tongue. She feels Andrew’s silent laughter.

“I’m sorry,” says Derval. Eileen also apologizes.

It is anime, subtitled Japanese, and it is a Christmas movie. Tokyo Godfathers.

It’s great. The popcorn is also good but there she’s thankful at a pause and Derval leaving to bring them water, a pitcher and stacked glasses on a second tray.

She doesn’t notice all the times Lily looks at him. He notices.

The family attends midnight Mass.

They say their goodnights to his cousins and his aunt and his uncle. They walk through the halls to the guest wing, sharing goodnights as his grandparents and his brother go to the left, as his parent stop at their room. They continue on to the farthest room. He opens the door for her, she enters, he enters.

She goes to her side of the bed, she puts her phone on its charger on the nightstand. She touches her rosary, about to remove it to kneel and pray. She feels something, she looks at him. Something is wrong.

That air has fallen on him. She grabs her phone, she sees nothing, she puts it back. He didn’t grab for his, she thinks. She looks at him. He’s different, his eyes aren’t locked, they seem to move on something. There’s something different in his shoulders and the small movements of his hands. She wonders why he’s quiet, she wonders why he doesn’t tell her. She wonders if it’s that she knows. He only stands. She shakes her head, touching her rosary and just as she would kneel he’s there. He holds out his hand, she takes it. Into the house, through halls, through doors, up two short staircases and a door he doesn’t knock at into a room she sees empty with an icon she finds without its rosary, across the flower rug and to the far side of the bed where she sees pink socks in little white house slippers. Her heart breaks for the girl.

Lily rocks, her entire body shakes, her hands spasming as her knuckles are a stark white for how she clutches her violet blanket and her rosary. Her eyes and cheeks are red, her face streaked with tears. She makes sounds, pained gasps, loudest when she sees them.

Emilia falls, she doesn’t know what to do, she can only hug the girl.

She looks at him. He’s smiling.

She knows his smile. Where did she see it? Always so warm. He’s radiant. When did I see it? When was he happiest? How could he be happy? She could think to be enraged but she has never felt a greater absence of anger, instead only a lifting in her heart. She remembers, how could she forget? The first day and night, when he ran to her and carried her and she knew. His joy, he glowed like the sun because he had finally helped. She looks at his cheeks, there’s a redness, into the gray of his eyes. She is struck as he is struck, his sadness runs as deep as his love, and from both, his joy.

She falls in love with him again, and again, and again.

He says “Hey, Lily.”

Lily whispers “Hi Andrew.”

He holds his hands out for the both of them. She takes his right, Lily takes his left, her blanket falling but still holding her rosary. They help her to the bed, she sits beside her. Andrew picks up the blanket, lifting it out to rest around his cousin’s shoulders. He lowers onto his left knee.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says, “and whatever I can do, I will help you.”

Lily looks at her, Emilia can only smile at the girl.

Lily whispers “Do you promise?”

He says “Yes, I promise.”

Lily nods. She doesn’t speak at first. When she speaks, she speaks slowly. “I’ve been,” she shakes her head. “What happened is,” she shakes her head. “Andrew, I can, I can,” she stops. She looks at him. She says “Can you,” she breathes so quickly, but finally—“Do things move if you want them to?”

He grins. “Yeah, they do.”

Lily coughs, astonishment. “Really?”

He stands, he raises his right hand toward the shelves. A chestnut horse plush comes to him. “See?”

Lily puts her hands on her head. Her eyes are filled with tears but she’s smiling and she coughs again, relief. “I can do that too.”

He puts the plush on Lily’s nightstand. He says “Show us.”

Lily stands, she looks at the plush, it’s drawn to her, she takes it and holds it to her chest.

He laughs. “How did you guess about me?”

“I don’t know,” Lily says, and she uses part of the blanket to wipe her eyes. “I just had a feeling.”

He says “I had kind of the same feeling about you. For me, I got this after I turned twelve. Was it like that for you?”

“Yeah it was,” Lily says, her voice higher. “I was just drawing at my desk, and I dropped my pencil, and I reached for it, and I pretended it would move and then it did move. I dropped it really quickly but I started thinking about it and, and then—” Her voice breaks, she makes another pained sound.

He asks “Have you told anyone, or showed anyone?”

Lily shakes her head.

“Not your parents, or your sisters, not anyone?”

Lily shakes her head.

“Because you’re afraid you’re a Broken.”

She watches Lily close her eyes, tears falling with her quiet “Yes.”

Tears also fall down her cheeks.

“Lily,” he says, and Emilia suddenly breathes deeply as she sees Lily’s eyes open. “You aren’t. There is nothing broken about you.”

Lily gasps, and then she sobs. She almost falls, he catches her, she buries her head in his chest, he hugs her tight.

When Lily has calmed, he helps her sit back on her bed. He says “You need to tell your parents.” Lily nods. “So tomorrow, today, we’ll all sit down together, Emilia too, and I’ll explain everything to them, or whatever you want me to. Is that okay with you?”

Lily nods again. She asks “Am I—” she stops.

He says “No, this is something else, something a lot of people have. I know someone else, a friend of mine at school, he has this too, just like you. He’s doing great, and you’ll hear about it in the news, any day now.”

Lily says “Thank you Andrew.”

He only smiles, but then he says “You know, by the time you’re done with school, if you want, you’re going to be able to do something really cool with this. Maybe some new sport. Like psychic polo.”

Lily giggles.

They wish her goodnight, she says wait, hugging them both with her own “Good night!”

They walk slowly to their room.

They sit on his side of the bed.

She feels fresh tears.

He doesn’t speak, she doesn’t speak. Her hands are on her thighs, she thinks of him, she feels his presence, his weight beside her. Warmth grows in her cheeks, she blushes, heat grows in her navel. She would like him to kiss her now. She feels him rise from the bed and she hears the snap of the lock as it turns on the door and she just starts to look at him when his hands are on her body, moving her, and then he’s kissing her.

But he breaks the kiss.

He’s smiling. “You need to go to bed.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know, it’s okay,” he says. “I’m right here.”

---

Christmas

She wakes in darkness and the warmth of his body.

“What time is it?”

“Almost six.”

“The cows?”

“Lily got up early. My dad did, too, but, Lily got up early.” She hears his smile. He says “Merry Christmas.”

“Oh!” she laughs and sits up, she crosses herself and prays. When she opens her eyes the lamps are on, he’s smiling at her. She hugs him, they kiss.

She says “Merry Christmas.”

She sits back, she notices presents on his nightstand. She jumps from the bed, all but running to the closet for his presents.

From him, a colorful bundle of Merino socks, she had given hints. Then a framed picture of them together outside the restaurant in Texas. His arms around her, her hands on his chest. He’s looking at the camera, she’s looking at him. She hasn’t seen this picture. He says “Reinauda took this while you were distracted.” She smiles. The third is small and thin. She can tell the box is wooden before she unwraps it, she has a feeling before she opens it, confirmed as her eyes widen at the maker’s mark on the underside of the lid. Silver earrings with ruby drop pendants. She kisses him.

For him, a gift left in Florida he’ll see soon enough, then a Marian pin to match hers. Gold filigree and white and blue enamel. She would have rather given it to him before today, or put it on his lapel when he’s in his suit, but it’s fine, she got his smile. Then a summer shirt, a white linen guayabera. Its left pleat is unadorned, its right pleat detailed with a wide band of gold flowers.

She smiles at his smile as he holds it out. He quietly says “I like this shirt. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says. “I also got you a photo.”

He unwraps it. It’s small, a yellow frame, the picture is from the night he proposed, the picture he took as they were on the floor of his living room, the picture she sent her parents. Of a kiss, her left hand on his neck. Her favorite part is how he took it.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” he says.

She texts Sofia, her mother, and her father. She’ll call them when she can. She brushes out her hair, then she showers. She washes her hair, singing as she massages the shampoo into her roots. She leaves the lather to move down her hair as she washes her body. She rinses and sits back on the bench for the conditioner. She rinses again to finish. She wraps a towel around herself and opens the bathroom so he can shower while she finishes with her hair. Again the first pass with a small towel, then a different cream. From the drawer she takes the dryer, attaching a diffuser as she runs it on her roots, then changing it to cool air as she dries her lengths and ends.

He’s dressed, his black suit, white shirt, and the carmine red tie she gave him. She dresses. Red underwear and sheer black stockings, then she sits at the closet vanity. She ties her hair back with a gold ribbon, she does her makeup. A muted red balm for her lips, a softest pink blush for her cheeks. Then her dress, long and flared in carmine red, with a square neck, almost puffed shoulders and buttoned cuffs, her Marian pin at the left of the bodice neck. Black pumps with block heels, her dark gray coat and her shawl, a bronze-gold rebozo, folded and given to him as he gives her his pin. She places it on his lapel, she pats his chest, they kiss.

The family attends Mass. James drives them on the same route as Andrew, into Rountree, to the edge of campus and now through, past dorms and sororities and the university concert hall. Here perfectly framing the end of the street as its portals face east stands Saint Agnes Cathedral.

She watches him touch the water of the stoup and cross himself, she does the same. She removes her coat, he holds it and helps her with her shawl. She arranges it, wrapping it on her shoulders and covering her hair. They enter, at their pew they kneel and cross themselves, then they sit.

She admires the church. It’s not a lavish space, it’s small, she sees no stone, the floor is carpeted and the walls are plastered. But there are large arched stained glass windows on the northern and southern walls, stained glass oculi above them both, the Stations of the Cross between the windows near their bases, and below them, lit garland and wreaths. A large nativity display is on the western wall left of the chancel, lit trees start there and are placed up to the chancel, around the base of the apse, below the crucifix, stopping then beside large stained glass doors behind which stands the tabernacle. The center of the ceiling holds a stained glass dome, she likes it, she likes most the mural of the Christ looking down from the great curved ceiling of the apse. She can tell this space is not original, renovated to match sensibilities that were probably a decade old when the work started, but whatever the space was before, she knows redemption in the mural; here as all are equal under the eyes of God.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The Bishop is the celebrant.

“Peace be with you.”

She likes the homily.

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.”

The family stands for the Eucharist. His father doesn’t, nor his grandparents. He stands, she stands. She looks at his back, thinking. They take Communion, they return to their pew and kneel.

I should be glad, she thinks. I’m not.

She doesn’t like that she’s not. She likes that he remembered what she forgot, and so brief was her lapse, but she lapsed. She doesn’t like that she couldn’t restrain herself, if he hadn’t, and they had, and had they then stayed seated—she feels no guilt, she feels awful guilt. What would her mother say? Her recent dreams have been free of her mother’s judgment, her mother’s judgment, no, the voice of her conscience, herself. Herself falling silent in his eyes as she knows with no words behind the thought, Trust him. His restraint proved them both again but he shouldn’t have needed her test. She feels that lapse and that guilt. Each time she would begin to justify herself—I’m going to marry him; we are married now, really. But you aren’t. You are his wife, whether he’s your husband, he can leave you, but he won’t, he can’t, he can’t—her head trembles, her heart falls. Little word, little thought. Mine, his desire is mine. Mine, mine desire. He loves you. There is love, guilt, joy and fear and all so awful angst. Love for him, awakened at its time, no fear of the torrent, a torrent itself, a storm, the rains. Guilt for their haste, its time hasn’t come, that proof in the care they take for what they avoid as they play the careless guests. Such care, just beads and a charm and remit on their lust, descend, be filled without purpose, let him take you again, and again, and again. I let him, I ask him, I demand him. Forgive me, I need him. She hopes his aunt would understand, she hopes her mother understands. Her mother, whatever to be said of her moment of weakness, she didn’t avoid it and she truly married her father. They aren’t married because of what they avoid. Such guilt, but such joy. Joy in their all, in his eyes and the warmth of his body. Angst in their all, to then lose him in coldness if she asks that question when he no longer cares to answer.

When he no longer cares to answer. You beautiful girl.

Her mother understands her beauty, her mother saw and understood in whole measure when she was born and first crawled to her breast. There, María Ester had the lifetime of fear motherhood incurs sharpen to a point. She knew what had to be done. She had left, she hoped to never return. Both nations may have prospered, what was the cost on America? It did evil that good may result and it was justly condemned. There was something dark and cold in Texas, she first found warmth in the south. Yes, Mexico had its share of wickedness, but from the soul emerging rather than descending and even still. Her daughter’s future could not be in frontier Mexico where devils still run. The men she would attract, her mother knew they would lose her to a monster. They moved. Somewhere she could grow, somewhere quiet to be left alone, Maite’s deepest prayer, until a man of singular quality. And then she left, but all was well. Her mother was not surprised her prayer was answered and she will not be surprised at how. She knows already. She lacks the words.

Of the girl and her beauty and everything she sees and knows, it is from him she most understands because he makes her feel worthless, because her beauty proves him none. What Andrew understands of her beauty; he doesn’t. He loves her face. This is how he shatters her pride. That he chose her, when she knows he could have any woman his eyes turn upon. She is not the jewel on his arm but the light in his heart. What is that, how could she be? Something she can’t see in herself, something she wants to believe exists but only he can see and know and love in her and this is how he rebuilds her. His sin is pride. Behemoth, as supreme among men, and terror, in strength cleaved to him unto death. Such pride, such strength! And she is his EQUAL. A girl! This girl! This being wholly alien to him who has only her person to offer his, her person he can love as himself and in that know the works of love for what is required to love in the right way, the woman who completes him as she shatters the monster of his pride, that he could love her, and as she loves him, she rebuilds him.

So what would her mother say?

“Go in peace.”

The closing hymn is sung, she turns to him, he already reaches for her, taking her, embracing her, his hand on her shawl and the back of her neck as she whispers only for herself to hear “Te amo, te amo, te amo.”

James cooks breakfast, pancakes and bacon. She likes it more than brunch.

Gifts. In the family wing, in its salon. She looks through french doors to red trees and snow falling on a statue of the Virgin, she looks in the room and at the Christmas tree and all the presents beneath. She sits at the middle of one couch, Andrew to her right, his mother to her left. She hasn’t wondered about what she’ll get, now she does. It’s a family affair of passing presents, one is laid before her, another, another, another. Quickly her own pile, and not until Anna adds several with the same style of ribbon does she see how many came from Donald and Cait. She would shake her head but Lily, who has been bringing stockings stuffed with small treasures, now delivers hers. Red and with Rudolph and her name stitched in gold. That question floats to mind, she tries to push it back.

So many clothes, a Cardinals t-shirt that makes her laugh, then a pink sweater she touches to feel cashmere and she wonders about the tag before she sees the short band of Burberry check inside the collar. She’s blinking quickly as she moves to the last. The wrapping alone, she unties the ribbon, she carefully loosens the fold on one side, then the other, then at the seam. She turns over the box, lifting the lid. A mint green hooded raincoat, she can tell its quality before she touches the fabric, before she moves the collar and must slow her deep breath at gray banding in its liner with repeating serifed letters of Mackintosh.

She looks at Cait, the woman is beaming.

Cait says “Andrew told me how it rains a lot in your part of Florida.”

She can barely laugh. “It does. Thank you.”

Cait says “You’re welcome. Stand up, try it on!”

It fits wonderfully. She hugs Cait, still wearing the coat.

From Anna, the one book she wanted, and a gold necklace and bracelet. She opens his parents’ gift, a narrow box with a thick envelope laid below a handwritten summary of the papers of an account, her heart skips at the total. Anna leans in to explain, Emilia covers her mouth. She hears that question. She feels tears, she hugs his mother, she feels his hand on her back.

He pulls her, she hugs him, he laughs. “Lily,” he whispers.

Lily has reached their gifts, she’s carefully unwrapping the vinyl. Emilia realizes Lily hasn’t guessed as her eyes widen and then she tears through the wrapping on the CDs. Lily is grinning, she pushes the vinyl into her father’s hands, she stands, stepping carefully through the gaps between all the opened presents, to hug them, Emilia first.

Dinner is started. Cait and Derval prepare the rolls, Anna has only final touches on the turkey before it fills one oven. She asks if she can help, Cait says, well if you’d really like, the potatoes. So, the potatoes. A small mound she peels, content to say nothing as she listens to the others talk; as she then talks with Anna who helps her with the dicing. The bowls with the dough are covered in cloth and put in an oven in the dairy kitchen to proof, the diced potatoes are rinsed and left to soak in a pot in the walk-in.

Lunch is light, Chinese, a different restaurant, picked up and brought back by Andrew and Michael. They share his cashew chicken.

Instead of afternoon tea, she makes churros and champurrado.

Andrew helps, pulling pots and bowls and a pan, stirrers and whisks and the few ingredients she needs from the house. She makes the choux. Water, sugar, salt and ghee combined in the first pot on the stove, she whisks well and brings it to a boil, then she pulls it from the heat as he turns over the bowl of wheat flour. She stirs with a wooden spoon until it pulls cleanly into a ball, then she prepares the coating as the dough cools. She grates part of a piloncillo cone, mixing it with sugar and the ground cinnamon in a wide dish. She then has him add vanilla and eggs to the dough as she stirs it into a paste, then she leaves him to fill the pastry bag as she begins on the hot chocolate.

She whisks masa and water in a bowl, checking continuously with a spoon until it’s thin, the bowl is pushed aside. The partially-grated piloncillo cone goes with the second in a ziploc, she uses a meat mallet to break the cones into pieces, then adds them to the water of an enameled iron pot. Andrew puts a small pot on the burner to her right, a glass bottle of milk and measuring glass on the counter to her left. A third pot goes on the other side of the stove, he fills it with ghee and starts the burner on low, then he leaves a Thermapen, kitchen shears and a spider strainer on a towel beside the stove. She whisks her pot until the sugar dissolves, he brings her tongs, with them she holds the cinnamon sticks, turning each over a lit burner. She blows on them, touches them, breaks them and adds them to the syrup. She lets it simmer, now infrequently stirring as she explains the work to Derval. She takes a spoon to check and smell the syrup, she nods, she gives the spoon to Derval who smells it and smiles. With a slotted spoon she removes the pieces of cinnamon, then at Derval’s offer his cousin unwraps the chocolate tablets and adds them whole as she stirs well until they fully melt. She has Derval measure and add milk to the second pot and start its burner on low. Andrew brings the masa, he pours slowly as she whisks quickly, then she has him whisk as she moves to the churros. She checks the temperature, just right, she squeezes dough into the ghee as rings in rings of a pinwheel, separating the end with the shears. With the strainer and the tongs she flips, when golden-brown she pulls, turning them over in the dish with the coating, then leaving them to cool on a wire rack on the pan. She makes a second pinwheel, then the rest as sticks as she trades back with him. Derval brings mugs to the counter, she slowly pours the milk as she whisks. She adds the pure vanilla, salt and a dash more of the ground cinnamon, then trades with him again as he whisks so she can finish the churros.

She checks, perfect coating on the spoon. She tastes it and smiles, she gives the spoon to Andrew, he tastes and smiles. She coats a second spoon and gives it to Derval, she also tastes and smiles. With a hand mixer she froths, with a steel ladle she fills each mug. Andrew moves the mugs to the large counter as she plates the churros.

She watches the family. She’s sent them quiet, even Rose.

She stands with him at the sink, giving him the dishes he washes by hand. He soon shakes his head at her, she touches his shoulder and leaves for their room.

She calls her mother. She tells her Merry Christmas, she tells her how she misses her, she tells her they’ve been to Mass four times this week. She tells her she’s having a really good day. She tells her father she loves him, she tells him of the books she’s read this week, she doesn’t mention the library. She talks with each of her sisters, Sofia last and longest. She misses her sisters, she misses her sister.

He calls for her, she takes her shoes, they go to the dairy kitchen. Donald loads the sanitizer with racks of mason jars, the machine runs only briefly. They wash their hands and take latex gloves, they uncover the trays, Andrew brings the now-steaming jars. She watches his cousins and then Cait as they use large steel spoons to skim the clotted cream and fill the jars. Cait shows her with a second, she mimics, she does just fine. Some of the jars, hers among them, are lidded and go in the standing vacuum sealer, then stickers with thick blue borders are applied to denote the manor stock Andrew then takes to the walk-in. The many remaining jars go in pots on the stove to pasteurize, then through the blast chiller and the vacuum sealer. Stickers with thick black borders are applied. These also go with the manor stock though she knows they’ll be shared as gifts. Last is the whey, collected and dispensed and also labeled for the manor.

The turkey is done, Anna makes gravy with the drippings. The rolls and mashed potatoes are done, an apple pie and peach cobbler cooling. Canned cranberry sauce in a simple dish, stovetop stuffing, his grandmother’s sweet potato and green bean casseroles. Everyone helps move the food to the dining room, James blesses their meal. No music plays, the food is good but it doesn’t keep her tongue, she talks with Lily at her side and with Eileen across.

Everyone helps with the dishes, it takes no time.

She sits on the couch, she texts her sister, she looks up, he’s there. He looks over his shoulder, into the gallery, then back.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s time, come on.”

She shakes her head.

He grins. “Come on.”

She reaches, he takes her hand.

The grand salon she also understood on first sight. Wright first, from the compression of the narrow halls on the courtyard to the release in this large space with its tall barrel-vault ceiling. The hardwood floor with no rugs and intricate metal grates throughout. The tapestries, the wainscoting of the walls, the heavy curtains held in recesses on either side of the french doors. The furniture, the sofas and chairs all at angles to the centerpiece. The centerpiece, the Steinway. A beautiful room for music.

She sits at the piano, her mind so full. She thinks of the piano, the Steinway, of her parents’ house, of her parents, of her grandmother. She looks at her ring. She thinks of playing at church, she thinks of playing for her family, she thinks of playing for him. She thinks of her first keyboard, she thinks of her grandmother dying and her empty Quinceañera and her second keyboard, she thinks of graduating high school and her Yamaha. She thinks of the first time she played for him, the first time she sang to him. She wonders if it’s nerves or if she doesn’t want to sing because she wants that only to belong to him. It could be both, and she knows this isn’t her house and it isn’t her day. It is, will be, is, her family’s house here, too. It is, she thinks, it is. It is. She thinks of her grandmother, she thinks of the nights she cried, she thinks of a night she cried, happy as she was, for the hurt of knowing he would never meet her abuelita. She wonders what her grandmother would play. She doesn’t know, but it’s okay. She plays. She doesn’t sing, and it seems quite suddenly the family has all joined them. They don’t sing and they don’t stare, they shouldn’t, this isn’t a performance. His aunt, his mother, he watches her. The others talk. What a lovely sound.

She concludes. She’s smiling, if she cried hers would be happy tears.

Derval makes popcorn. They watch Jingle All The Way.

To the credits, as she watches Michael lift his phone to call his girlfriend as he leaves, to Eileen collecting the bowls and the glasses and the trays, to Derval standing and stretching and untying her hair as she leaves for, Emilia would guess her bedroom, from soft footsteps and a door soon opening and closing. To Lily looking at them.

“Now, you think?” he says.

“Okay,” says Lily.

He goes to find her father, she goes with Lily to find her mother.

They meet in the living room, they go to Donald’s office. They sit, Lily between her parents. She looks from the girl, then to her father and her mother. There’s something in their look, but Donald smiles. He says “You got a surprise? A last present?”

She smiles, she looks at Andrew. He looks at Lily who asks him with her eyes to start.

He says “In a way. You’ll understand this is a gift, but before that,” he puts a finger to his lips. He shows his phone, he turns each switch and then the phone off. He points at Donald, who frowns but follows. Andrew sets his phone on the coffee table, tapping beside. Donald, frowning deeper, follows again.

Andrew mouths Don’t touch.

The room becomes very quiet. He looks at Lily.

Lily says “It’s about what’s been going on. Um. What’s been bothering me.”

Her parents react sharply. Their backs and shoulders stiffen, they share a look, they look at her and him and then at their daughter.

Lily looks at Andrew. “Should I just show them?”

“There’s no wrong way,” he says.

Lily nods. A baseball on the table is drawn up, she plucks it from the air.

His uncle says “Lord.”

Cait laughs, she hugs her daughter, she kisses the side of her head, she says “When did this happen?”

“After school started,” says Lily, now looking to Emilia between her words. “I’ve been, um, I was really scared, but not anymore, because I talked to Emilia a lot, and last night I talked to her and Andrew and he said it’s okay.”

“You were scared?” asks her father, she hears such tenderness in his words.

She watches more looks between Lily and Andrew.

Lily says “I was afraid—” she feels everything she can feel of the weight the girl puts in her words. “I was afraid I was a Broken.”

Andrew says “She’s not.”

Her mother gasps, tears at once, she pulls her daughter close, whispering in her ear. Her father pales, his eyes closed, a hand on his shaking head, a hand on his daughter’s back.

She takes a tissue.

In time, Andrew says “A friend of mine at school has this. He’s another football player, and he’s doing fine.”

Donald slowly nods.

She hears Lily’s quiet “I’m okay, mom” and Cait’s quiet “Look at you!” as she repeatedly kisses her daughter’s cheek.

Cait takes a tissue. She says “Thank you,” she wipes her eyes. “This is wonderful.”

“Yes, it is,” says Donald. “It is a gift. You want to show us again?”

Lily does, now holding out the baseball where it rises above her palm. Donald laughs, speaking almost as quietly as his daughter as he says “Little psychic flower,” he laughs again. “Yeah, look at you.”

Lily hugs her father, Donald repeats. “You’re really okay?”

Lily says “Yeah, I am. Andrew said it’s okay and I know he’s telling me the truth, dad.”

Donald says “You know something? I know that too. I love you.”

Lily says “I love you, dad,” and they hug again. Her parents share another look above her head. Cait speaks to Lily. “We’re going to talk so much more about this, but just for a little bit, I think we need to talk with Andrew and Emilia, so if you want to go watch TV, we’ll be right out. Okay? I love you.”

“Okay mom. I love you.” Lily hugs her parents again, then she hugs Andrew and Emilia, to them a whispered “Thank you.”

The silence breaks as Lily leaves the room, it returns.

Her parents look at him, they say nothing.

Cait rubs Donald’s knee, he’s smiling, his eyes glisten, his head shakes softly. She sees his emotions holding his tongue. Eventually Donald says “Thank you, both of you, thank you so much.”

Andrew looks at her, she’s smiling, she can’t speak.

He says “I haven’t had many moments where I’ve been happier than knowing I could help her.”

“Well, you did,” says Donald.

They’re quiet.

Donald says “You have a friend who has this?”

He says “I do, and I’m not being circuitous. He’s a year below me.”

“He’s fine?” asks Donald.

He says “He is. More than fine. The way it happened, well–I saw and we talked about it, and he explained how it works for him. It’s not the heights, it’s not the depths. It’s a light touch. I don’t know that if what Lily has will be any more than what you’ve seen, maybe a bit farther, maybe a bit larger, based on what he can do.”

“You’ve talked about this with your dad?” asks Donald.

He says “Some. I found out about them over the summer, and he and I only talk about this face-to-face. Based on my friend, how he’s explained it, my guess is a lot of people don’t know they have this, and then those who do, I wonder if a lot of them are afraid, like Lily, thinking it’s something it’s not.”

Donald looks at Cait, she nods at him, he nods.

“We understand this, how this all worked out. She’s always loved you best, you’ve always been her favorite. Though maybe it’s Emilia now, from what I hear,” Donald smiles at her. “That’s a gift, too, and I am so glad. I can’t pretend I understand these things too well, but it makes sense to me, how she would know she could confide in you. She knows what we know, and it’s your person, Andrew, and from his, we know yours, Emilia, and that’s all we ever needed to know, but I am still thrilled to get to know you, and I am thrilled you’re already close with her.” He stops, frowning. “Cait and I, we’ve been waiting for her to tell us what was wrong. We were—” he rasps, “real scared, it was something else.” He clears his throat. “We didn’t know what to do, we didn’t want to push her, we just had to have faith, and trust there was a right time for when she would tell us, and that’s what this was. From Emilia to you, from the both of you to us. Finding out it was this, and to know you already put her at ease, and now us at ease. My God, I am so thankful for you both. Thank you.” Cait, breathlessly, says the same.

Her parents share another look.

Donald says “There’s something here I can say we both don’t understand, or I can say we didn’t, because I think we both do now. You gave us the words. How you talk about this, that you could answer her question, and not for her to trust you because it was her desperation being answered, but for her to know, because we know, that you speak certain truth. About this. And what I see, that presence I’ve seen in you for so long, here now, I realize there’s been a focus to it, I realize you knew all the truths there are to know about what was bothering her, and you just were waiting for her to tell you. You understood as soon as you got here.”

Andrew says “Yes, I did.”

Cait is smiling, a tear runs down her cheek.

Donald says “They know?”

“Of course,” he says. “Since the first day.”

Donald is smiling. He speaks, too quietly for her to hear. What have you made, James?

Donald says “Does she know?”

He says “She didn’t ask that, and I didn’t tell her, but I didn’t lie to her. She might realize, in time.”

Donald nods and rubs his eye. He says “So he’s one too.”

He says “Yes, he is.”

“It was the both of you there,” says Donald.

He says “Yes, it was.”

Donald laughs, quiet and short and from the heart. He rubs his eyes again. “And I offered to make some calls.” He laughs again, then he stands. “Okay, stand up, Andrew. You haven’t hugged me in ages, I want a hug, give me a hug.”

He smiles. “Okay, Uncle Don,” and they hug.

Cait also stands, she looks at Emilia and raises her arms, gesturing. They hug, Emilia blinks back tears. “I’m so thankful, I didn’t think,” she sighs. “I already love all of you.”

Cait says “Not one of those beautiful black hairs more thankful than me. I love you too.”

Donald clears his throat again. He says “And you play football? That’s cheating.”

Andrew laughs.

She stops him in the sunroom for a kiss.

It’s late.

They take coats, they take boots. She holds his arm along the heated path, out of the bailey, around the horse barn, to the fence. He kneels just past it so she can climb onto his back. He runs, effortless, to the base of the hill and into the trees, her face tucked in against the wind. She doesn’t know they approach a fence, only when he leaps, she’s laughing, and on, deep into the snow-bright forest. To the edge of a clearing where he kneels and she stands.

She looks up, not a cloud in the sky.

He says “We’ll go slow, okay?”

“Okay.”

He lifts her. She feels his right arm around her back, his right hand holding beneath her shoulder. She feels his left arm around her legs, his left hand holding at her thigh. She wraps her arms around his neck. He says “I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

They rise, to the treetops, she sees the lights of the manor.

“Higher.”

Higher, then, until she sees the lights of the city.

“Higher.”

Higher, then, and he doesn’t stop. Not until the haze of light is far below and the stars reveal in her eyes.

---

They lie in bed, each staring at the other.

Her cheeks are still flushed, her eyes still red.

She whispers “Why me?”

He touches her cheek. She cries. His hand withdraws. She turns, lying on her back, covering her eyes with shaking hands as tears flow out from beneath. “Why me?” She feels him push up from the bed, she feels him above her, his hands taking hers, his fingers weaving with hers as he holds them to the pillow. She feels his tongue and his lips on her neck. She feels his right hand leave hers to run through her hair and slide to hold the back of her head. She turns her cheek to him, she feels his lips and his teeth on her ear. She feels his left hand leave hers to hold her cheek and turn her face. He wipes away her tears, she looks in his eyes, lifted, rushing upward, cast in the rapids of the gray that seizes her fully, that he sees her fully, those eyes that see and know and ravish. She feels his lips on hers, his tongue on hers, his breath with hers.

He breaks the kiss. “No.” he whispers. “Only you. Only ever you.”

She gasps out, she pleas to him, now, again, and forever. “Así dímelo de lleno.”

---

Chapter Index — Previous Chapter