Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
“ D amian,” my mother blinked. “You know, I woke up and thought I would see you today. Here.”
She handed me the basket of laundry, and I took it because the other option was to drop it on the ground. She rustled around in her purse, coming out with some keys that she used to unlock a nearby Honda. It was the same car she’d had when I left twelve years ago. Sections of clear coat had chipped off, leaving rusting patches behind.
“And who is this?” She glanced at Cassander, and my muscles tensed, my brows pulling together. I had to swallow once before answering.
“This is Cassander. Cass, this is my mom, Rosario,” I said. Every time I’d pictured coming home again, I’d always imagined me being smooth and superior and Mom being shocked and on her back foot.
She didn’t even look surprised . It was as though I’d gone to the supermarket for dinner and was coming back with a rotisserie chicken. Me showing up after a decade was expected. What surprised her was Cassander , who she kept eyeing like he was going to pull off his face Scooby-Doo style and reveal that he was actually the bank executive burning down abandoned buildings.
My mom shook her head, muttering under her breath about how now she was going to lose both of her kids to gringos, then ushered us toward the car.
“Come on. Hurry. I made enough for all three of us, and I don’t want it to burn. You know, Susie has been raising the prices in the laundromat, but she doesn’t fix up any of the machines. I’ve been here for two hours and only got that load of laundry done. I left the rest with her. She’ll wash your laundry if you pay a premium. And I know she does it on purpose with leaving so many machines broken.”
“Ma, we aren’t staying. We’ve got to…” I trailed off, not really sure what we had to do.
My job was gone. While I wasn’t technically on the run, I wasn’t exactly welcome back at the SPA. Unknown people wanted me dead. And until it was all resolved, I probably shouldn’t touch any of the money I had in my official bank account. Which meant the secret accounts I kept were going to have to sustain me until…
Until Twenty-one gave the all clear. Twenty-one was going to write an email in the drafts folder, and my life would get back on track. And until then, I wasn’t getting involved with Mamá Reyes and her nonsense.
We were going to leave Desert Flower and go somewhere else.
Yes. I held out my mother’s laundry.
“We’ve got to go, Ma,” I said. “It was good seeing you.”
My mother stared at me, then crossed her arms. Her lips went tight, and I had seen gang enforcers and professional interrogators that had shown more emotion on the job than she did staring down her own son.
I began to sweat, the hot sun suddenly brighter, the air around me thick with tension.
“Damian,” my mother said softly. “Get in the car.”
Which was how I found myself sitting in the back, laundry in my lap, as Cassander clicked on his seat belt in the passenger seat.
Okay. I could still salvage this. We would stay for lunch, then leave.
Where will we go? I would work that out later.
How are we going to get there? And now the voice in my head began to sound like my mother when she was picking apart one of my lies as a teenager.
Yes, Ma, of course I was going over to my friend Tara’s house to study. For what test? Geometry. I knew I was taking algebra, but she was taking geometry. Sure, I was failing algebra, so she was helping me. Study for her geometry test.
Either way, I had ended up not being able to go to the party that had been talked about for the rest of the school year and instead had to study for my “algebra test” all that Friday night at our kitchen table under my mother’s watchful eye.
At the next stoplight, my mother fixed the rearview mirror.
“So, what are you doing home, Damian?”
“Vacation,” I said shortly. “They told me I had to use my days.”
“Your… shipping company did?” She eased the car forward when the light turned green, driving down the main drag just under the speed limit. A teenager in a red truck sped past, blaring his horn.
She flipped him off, then looked back up in the rearview, catching my eyes.
“Yeah. My work did.”
She made a noncommittal humming noise, turning onto our street. “And you, Cassander? How do you know Damian?”
“He saved my skin.” Cassander’s smile wrinkled the corners of his eyes when he turned his face toward my mother. “Literally.”
My mother laughed, as though he had been joking, and he smiled wider. I narrowed my eyes. His vaguely European accent was gone, replaced with a California drawl.
“So, you’re also in shipping?” My mother turned on her blinker, pulling into the driveway of our one-story house.
“International trade,” Cassander said.
“Oh.” My mother’s eyes trailed over his face. “So you’re gone a lot?”
“I won’t be staying long.” Cassander was steady under her scrutiny, which was better than my sister and I had ever managed. Whenever she had given us that look, we had cracked like walnuts.
“Ma, leave him alone.” I couldn’t tell what time it was; the clock on the dashboard blinked erratically, switching between 11:26 a.m. and 3:54 p.m.
“My son brings home a boy and I’m not allowed to ask any questions?” She turned around in the seat, the car still running, blasting us all with blessed air-conditioning. At least that still worked.
“Ma. We aren’t staying.” I said the words firmly, trying to bring them into being with breath and certainty, even as I could feel Desert Flower around me, sucking me back in.
Everything in this city was the same. A few stores might have gone out of business, but on our street, I saw the same cars, the same houses. No one had even changed their paint color while I was gone.
It was as though the past twelve years had never happened. I had never escaped.
“You aren’t staying?” My mother’s voice was hard, nearly brittle. “Home for the first time in twelve years, and all I get is a ‘we aren’t staying’?”
My mother’s voice was relentless, a tidal wave of anger that swept me off my feet.
Why did she get to be angry? I should be angry. I was the one who got to be angry.
I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, Cassander interrupted.
“While I do enjoy a good familial reunion, you said there was food?” Cassander blinked innocently, as though he hadn’t stepped in between two MMA fighters about to go at it in a cage match.
My mother smiled at him, and I could see her turn it on, see her take one look at him and begin making judgments. I had brought this boy home, but she was the one who was going to charm him.
“Are you hungry? Come. Come. Come in.” She took the keys out of the ignition, opening her door and letting in the hot desert air.
Cassander glanced in the rearview mirror, catching my eyes and raising both of his eyebrows. The smile on his face looked almost sympathetic, a twitch of his lips that I didn’t recognize from any of our previous interactions. He was sorry for me?
I felt my hackles begin to rise. He didn’t get to be sorry for me. He was the one who had been walking shoeless on a Paris street! He was the one who had reacted to getting shot at by grabbing hold of the nearest person and hanging on like a limpet.
Cassander got out of the car, following my mother to the front door, where she was fussing with the security gate. I could see her mouth moving, even if I couldn’t hear the words, and I saw every trick she was using in the book. Slight helplessness, curiosity, getting him to give her a scrap of information so that she could begin building her dossier on him.
She knew he came from Europe. She knew he spoke fluent English. She knew his clothes were expensive and tailored.
She knew her son had brought him home.
I groaned, banging my head back against the headrest. Why Desert Flower ?
Of all the places in the world, why had something brought us here? My stomach tensed as I remembered his words. If he’d done something, he’d saved my life, and I should be grateful.
If we’d stayed in Paris, a quiet thought reminded me, we would probably be dead just like the other SPA agents.
If we’d stayed in Québec, we’d have been trapped in the hotel room and killed.
A chill shivered up my spine. I might not like my mother. I might not want to be here. But I didn’t want her dead. I didn’t want the house I’d grown up in shot up because of the life I had chosen in order to get out of Desert Flower in the first place.
At the thought, I got out of the car, juggling the laundry. Next door, one of the venetian blinds lifted just enough. I raised an elbow, the basket still awkward in my arms. “Hi, Mrs. Perez!”
The blind dropped, and I shook my head.
My mother finally got the security gate open, ushering Cassander in and barking at me to hurry up. Inside, we hit a wall of blessedly cold air, and the sweat on my forehead practically froze. Something smelled delicious, and my stomach rolled over in hunger.
Paris seemed too long ago. The crepes and half a falafel I had eaten were long since burned away by adrenaline and all the running. My mother took the laundry from my hands, putting it on the living room couch and gesturing for both me and Cassander to sit at the table.
My grandmother’s crucifix still hung on the kitchen wall, the massive wooden representation of Jesus hanging on the cross looming over the kitchen table. As my mother bustled around, pulling out utensils and paper napkins scrounged from McChicken’s, she got to work on Cassander.
Listening to her, I had to appreciate her skill. I thought I was an expert, but she learned in short order that we had just come from Paris, Cassander’s fight with his brother was fairly recent, and he had never been in America before.
“No, my business takes me elsewhere,” Cassander said vaguely, looking around the kitchen as though he had never seen one before.
Opening the oven, my mother pulled out an enormous Pyrex filled with enchiladas, the melted cheddar cheese hiding most of the red enchilada sauce. She put it in the center of the table on a worn trivet that I’d made in high school shop class. Then, she went back and turned off the Keep Warm setting.
On the stove, she took the lids off pots of Mexican rice and black beans. It was enough food to feed a table of six, eight people.
I eyed my mother suspiciously. “Are you having a party later?”
“No, no, like I said, I had a feeling you were coming today.” She smiled sweetly at Cassander. “Did Damian tell you I’m psychic?”
All of my anticipation at the delicious homemade meal melted away, and my jaw clenched, my heartbeat speeding up, my gaze narrowing down to my mother’s placid smile.
“He did not.” Cassander turned to me, one eyebrow raised. “Is it a familial trait?”
From the mocking tone in his voice, I could tell he didn’t believe her. Still, I had to force out one long breath before I could speak.
“Mom.” It was all I could manage, that one word trying to be a warning and also containing thirty years of condensed anger, a hand grenade I was clutching so tight my knuckles were going white.
My mother huffed out a breath but walked back into the kitchen, returning with three colorful plates that she filled with food. Handing the first one to Cassander, she smiled at him. She thrust my plate at me, and I barely managed to catch it.
My stomach rolled over, gurgling in anticipation. I picked up my fork, using the side to cut off a piece of enchilada. It practically melted in my mouth.
The tortilla had a hint of the oil it had been fried in, but the enchilada sauce added a slight kick, and the chicken was so tender that I barely needed to chew it. The cheese added another layer of fattiness to the bite, and by the time I looked up, I had finished half the serving.
I expected to see Cassander’s mocking smile, the twist of his lips and the crinkle in the corner of his eyes indicating a sarcastic comment on the tip of his tongue. But instead, he was polishing off the last bite of food, using the tines of his fork to scrape up a remnant of enchilada sauce.
Even my mother seemed taken aback.
“Would you like more?” But she was already standing up, scooping his plate out from in front of him, and serving him more of everything.
“I admit, all of the excitement of the day has left me… famished.” He glanced at me, raising an eyebrow, and I couldn’t help but tilt my own head in acknowledgment.
“Yeah, you know how international flights are.” I managed a smile that Cassander met archly. “They can really get your blood going.”
My mother frowned, looking between us, and for one heated second, I realized she was putting the pieces together wrong. Then, my face really flushed because I had accidentally implied to my mother that Cassander and I had joined the mile-high club.
Gently, my mother put the plate back in front of Cassander. “Eat. Eat.” She looked at me, her brows twitching together. “Damian! Eat your food.”
I turned back to my plate, finishing my own serving at a more leisurely pace. The food did seem to settle something inside me. It also made every question I had that much more intense.
Why had the gunmen in Paris been after Cassander? Who had sent them? Who had attacked us in Québec? SPA or Green Scales?
Why was the SPA trying to kill me?
The back door slammed open, and both Cassander and I leapt to our feet. Two bodies shot through the door.