Chapter 5
VIOLET
Patrick is building a tower out of cereal boxes when I walk into the kitchen the next morning. He's arranged them in a stack, one on top of the other.
I spot his favorite, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, on the bottom. In the middle is the Kashi I have every morning instead of the egg-and-cheese bagel I actually prefer from the corner bodega. And finally, on top, the Cheerios I always try to get Patrick to eat instead of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
"What're we building, bug?"
"Castle," he says without looking up. "For the dragon."
He's standing on his tiptoes on the kitchen chair, tongue poking out in concentration, trying to place a single Goldfish cracker on the top.
"Is that the dragon?" I ask, pointing to the Goldfish.
"Nope." He scrunches his face up at the question, as if he's perplexed how I could ask something so silly. "That's the dragon."
He points to a rubber dinosaur sitting on the counter. It's a stegosaurus, but I've learned not to correct him on taxonomy. In Patrick's world, everything with more than two legs is a dragon, and everything with fewer is a person. Airtight logic.
"He needs a tall castle," Patrick explains, "because he's scared of the floor."
"Smart dragon."
"The floor is lava and he doesn't want to burn up his feet."
"Another prudent decision from Mr. Dragon."
As soon as I finish the sentence, the Goldfish cracker slides off the top box and lands on the table. Patrick's face crumples for exactly one second before he picks it up and eats it. Problem solved.
"What's for breakfast?" he asks, still carefully studying the tower, as if trying to figure out where a fourth box could go.
"Well, looks like the Cinnamon Toast Crunch is load bearing at the moment, so Cheerios it is."
"Fiiine."
"Tell you what. You eat Cheerios, and I'll put honey on them."
His eyes light up. "OK!"
I laugh, plucking the box off the top and pouring a bowl. I add the milk and finish with a little drizzle of honey before placing it in front of him. He digs in right away.
Patrick is four years old, with gorgeous red curls and bright green eyes. He looks like me, and I am grateful for that every single day. He doesn't look even a little like his father. Not yet. Maybe not ever, if I'm lucky.
While Patrick eats, I lean against the counter with my phone and open Google News.
I type Chicago into the search bar the way I do every morning, quick, practiced, like checking the weather.
I scroll through the results. A warehouse fire on the South Side, city council budget hearings, and a profile on some new restaurant in Wicker Park.
Nothing about the FBI. Nothing about Lance. There never is. But I check all the same.
Patrick is still chomping away, and I switch over to a different search, this one for the FBI Chicago field office. There's nothing noteworthy. Staff announcements, press releases, the usual stuff.
Every time I check I expect to see Lance's name with some blurb about how he's being transferred to New York. I even search his name. Nothing comes up, the same as every time I've checked over the last several months. The relief that washes through me is the same as it always is.
I close the browser and set my phone face-down on the counter.
Our apartment is small, a two-bedroom in Sunnyside, Queens, on the third floor of a walk-up that always smells like laundry detergent for some reason.
Patrick has the real bedroom. I have the one the listing called a "bonus room," which fits a bed and a desk if the desk doesn't mind being touched by the bed.
The apartment's small, but it's clean and cozy and the rent is manageable. I love the neighborhood. There's a Dominican bakery on the corner, a decent playground a couple of blocks over, and a laundromat that stays open until midnight.
Most importantly, it's the kind of place where nobody asks questions and everybody minds their own business.
Exactly what I needed fourteen months ago when I got off a bus at Port Authority with a sleeping toddler on my shoulder and a duffel bag full of everything we owned, and Kylie was waiting at the curb.
"Mama, the dragon fell."
I crane my neck, spotting the wayward stegosaurus on the ground right by the kitchen bar. With a quick lean, I pluck it off the ground and set it back on the table. Patrick picks it up right away, patting the little dinosaur's head reassuringly.
"Big guy have a little tumble?" I ask as I crinkle up the bag of Cheerios and fold the top flaps closed.
"He's okay," Patrick says, nodding his head as if in that moment making the decision about how the dinosaur feels. "He just fell asleep. He was having a bad dream."
"What kind of bad dream?"
"A scary one. But then he woke up and his mama was there, so it was okay." He nods toward another dinosaur toy on the table, another stegosaurus, this one a little bigger.
Something catches in my throat. I lean down and press my lips to the top of his head, breathing in the warm, sweet, little-boy smell of him. Baby shampoo and whatever indefinable thing it is that makes your child the center of your universe.
"That's right, bug. Mama's always here."
A knock, two quick and one slow, which is Rudi's knock, and then the sound of her key in the door, because I gave her one and she's never once waited to be let in.
Rudolfa Cantos is sixty-two, Puerto Rican, retired from the MTA, and lives across the hall in 3A.
She watches Patrick on the days kindergarten's closed, like today's teacher conference day, and refuses to accept more than grocery money in return, claiming my son is "better company than the television, and the television doesn't make me laugh nearly as much. "
She showed up at our door with a plate of arroz con dulce the day we moved in, took one look at Patrick, and informed me that she would be his abuela whether I liked it or not.
I liked it very much.
Rudi's the one exception to the general "everyone minds their own business" rule of the neighborhood. An exception I'm eternally grateful for. She comes in and immediately crouches to Patrick's level.
"Buenos días, mi amor. What are we building?"
"It's a castle," Patrick says. "For the dragon."
"Floor's lava," I add.
"Ah," Rudi says with a knowing nod. "Claro." Then she turns her attention to me, her brow crinkling with worry. "You look tired, mija."
"Long night. Writing."
She gives me the look, the one that says she knows there's more to it than that but isn't going to push.
Rudi's got a sixth sense for things like that.
She doesn't know about Jessica or Lance or the fact that the woman across the hall built an entire new life from scratch.
But she senses it. She's careful with us in the way people are with things that might not last forever.
"Go," she says, waving me toward the door. "We'll be at the park at ten, lunch at noon, then nap at one. The usual. I'll text you."
I kiss Patrick goodbye, twice, because once is never enough, grab my bag, thank Rudi profusely as I always do, and head for the door.
Once I'm out in the hallway, I pause and listen.
I do it every time I leave. I'm never sure exactly what I'm listening for.
Maybe for Lance in the shadows, letting slip a cough that would let me know he's there.
But, as always, I hear nothing. Just Rudi and Patrick talking through the door, Patrick saying something in a silly voice and Rudi laughing loudly.
I allow myself a small smile at the moment.
I take the stairs the way I always do, fast, one hand on the rail. I've had more than one nightmare about this stairwell. Turning the second-floor landing and finding Lance leaning on the wall below me, a wolfish grin on his face.
Found you.
Outside, Sunnyside is waking up. The bakery's already open, the empanada aroma thick in the morning air, the sunlight golden and warm.
I check behind me once. Nobody's there.
I tell myself to relax, head to the subway, and I don't look back again until I'm underground.