21. Mel #3
He makes coffee. Good coffee, better than I expected from a man who couldn’t cook two months ago. We drink it standing in his kitchen, not quite touching but close enough that I can feel the warmth of him.
“Walk me home, vineyard boy,” I say, setting down my mug.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We step outside into the morning.
The air is cool, clean, that particular Texas freshness that comes after a storm system moves through. Birds are starting their morning chorus. The sun is painting the horizon in shades of pink and gold.
And there, in the flowerbed by his porch, is the raccoon.
MY raccoon. The storm dumpster raccoon. The one who started all of this with his midnight dumpster raids.
He’s industriously digging. Paws working. Tail raised in that particular way raccoons have when they’re confident in their criminal enterprise.
“Is that-” I start.
“The raccoon. Yes.”
“What is he-”
The raccoon surfaces with an object in his mouth. Burgundy. Rectangular. He shakes dirt off it with evident satisfaction and begins parading it across the yard like a war trophy.
Santino stops dead.
“What’s he got?” I ask.
Silence.
“Santino. What is he carrying?”
“It’s… a book.”
“That’s not a book.”
“It’s a small book. A booklet.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
“That’s a PASSPORT.”
More silence.
“YOUR passport.” My voice is rising. “That’s your PASSPORT that you LOST. That you DEFINITELY lost and didn’t HIDE.”
“I can explain.”
“It was BURIED. In a ZIPLOC.”
“I panicked.”
“You BURIED your passport IN YOUR YARD.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly!” He’s red now, red to the ears, his hands spread in supplication. “You’d just agreed to let me stay! I couldn’t risk losing you to an ocean again! The passport was the only thing keeping me here and I-”
“LIED.”
“Temporarily misrepresented my document status.”
“You LIED.”
“Yes.” He doesn’t dodge it. “I lied. I’m sorry. I was desperate.”
The raccoon sits down and begins gnawing on the Ziploc like it’s a prize.
I turn and walk toward the road. Away from him. Away from the raccoon. Away from all of it.
“Mel-”
“I’m going home.”
“Let me walk you-”
“I’m going home ALONE.”
I make it about fifteen feet before he catches up to me. Doesn’t touch me. Just walks alongside, watching my face with that worried expression.
“You’re smiling,” he says.
“I am not.”
“The corner of your mouth says otherwise.”
“I’m GRIMACING. It’s completely different.” I keep my eyes on the road so he can’t check.
“It’s not. You’re trying not to laugh.”
“I’m trying not to MURDER you.”
“Same energy.”
I walk faster. He matches my pace easily. Behind us, the raccoon has extracted the passport from the bag and is now sitting on it like a throne.
“I’m still mad,” I say.
“I know.”
“You can’t just BURY things you don’t want to deal with.”
“I’m learning that.”
“It’s a terrible coping mechanism.” I say it to the gravel, not to him.
“Dr. Ricci agrees.”
I glance at him sideways. He’s watching me with that look, the one that says he knows exactly how ridiculous this is and how ridiculous HE is and he’s not apologizing for any of it because it worked.
“The raccoon exposed you,” I say.
“The raccoon is a chaos agent.”
“The raccoon is my hero.”
“I’ll buy him a medal.”
We walk in silence for another minute.
“The passport,” I say finally. “You really buried it?”
“In a Ziploc. Double-bagged, actually. I was thorough.”
“You were insane.”
“I was in love.” He shrugs. “Same thing, sometimes.”
I don’t have a response to that. So I just keep walking, until I circle back, snatch the passport off the raccoon’s throne before he can object, and flip it open, because if I’m going to be furious I want the evidence in hand.
The entry stamp is right there on the first page. Austin. The date. And beside it, in an officer’s blocky hand, the length of stay.
I do the math without meaning to. I’ve done enough of my own immigration paperwork to know exactly what that stamp means.
“Santino.” My voice changes. “This says ninety days.”
He stops mid-motion, the passport half-raised.
“You’ve been here-” I count back. The article, then the house, then the orchard. “A month, more. You’re past halfway on this. What’ve you got left, five, six weeks?”
“Thirty-nine days.” He says it quietly, not looking at me. “But who’s counting.”
And just like that it stops being funny.
Because I understand now why he buried the thing, not just to trap himself here, but because the passport is a countdown, and the second it runs out he isn’t my husband earning his way back.
He’s a foreigner overstaying, and his mother has lawyers who eat people like that for breakfast.
Thirty-nine days.
I hand him the passport. My hand isn’t quite steady.
“Don’t lose it again,” I say. “Or bury it. Or whatever.”
“I won’t.”
Neither of us says the other thing. That thirty-nine days isn’t very long, not for everything still unspoken between us. That whatever we are, we’re on a clock now, stamped in ink, and pretending otherwise won’t stop it from running out.
And if I’m smiling, really smiling, not grimacing, I make sure he can’t see it, because it’s tangled now with a colder feeling.
He sees it anyway.
So does the raccoon.