Chapter 24
Samantha
Iwent to Mamá Rey’s on Sunday because Bella had been threatening it for weeks, and I had run out of useful excuses.
Also, because some part of me, a part I had been trying very hard not to examine, suspected I needed warm food, loud family, and at least one Mexican mother calling me mija before I could survive whatever came next.
Mamá Rey lived in a house on the south side that smelled, from the driveway, like cumin, warm tortillas, and a lifetime of Sunday afternoons.
Bella was already there, barefoot and laughing at something her sister Celia had said.
Celia stood by the stove, one hip resting against the counter, holding her child, who bore her eyes and Bella’s opinions.
Sierra, Bella’s older sister, was outside on the patio with Mack, who had been handed a plastic soccer ball by one of the kids and was now losing to a six-year-old with the grave concentration of a man defending a championship title.
The television was on in the other room, a soccer game nobody was watching. Somebody’s child was shouting at the dog through a screen door that had not closed all the way since the 1990s. Somewhere in the kitchen, something sizzled in a pan, and the sound alone made my body loosen by half an inch.
Mamá Rey hugged me like she knew me.
That was the first thing.
She had never met me before in her life, and she hugged me like I had been promised.
“Mija,” she said, which was a word I had not earned and she offered anyway.
She put a plate in my hand before I said a full sentence.
Pan de polvo with my coffee. Enchiladas verdes with three kinds of salsa ranked by the amount of apology she offered when she handed them over.
A small bowl of arroz con leche she pushed toward me with a look that suggested I would be eating it whether I wanted it or not.
I wanted it.
“Where are your people from?” Mamá asked me.
Not where are you from?
Where are your people from?
The Mexican-mother question, asked in the Mexican-mother way, was a question about who had shaped you before she decided whether she was going to shape you now.
I told her.
Kansas City on one side. Minnesota on the other. A mother who had been a nurse and a father who had taught high-school science. Both gone inside two years of each other, when I was twenty-four.
Mamá listened with the complete attention of a person who had decided my answer mattered.
“Your mother knew you were good at pictures?”
“She did,” I said. “She bought me my first camera.”
Mamá nodded once. Satisfied. Then she moved to the counter, came back with a bag of pan de polvo, and pressed it into my hand with both of hers.
“Take. For tomorrow. You eat when I am not here. Yes?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyebrows lifted.
“Mamá. Not ma’am.”
My throat tightened before I could stop it.
“Yes, Mamá.”
Bella caught my eye across the kitchen and did not say anything, because Bella understood that this was one of the things a prosecutor learned not to interrupt: a person discovering, in real time, what it felt like to be fed by someone who expected nothing in return.
Later, I stood near the back door with a paper plate in my hand and watched Mack let Celia’s youngest steal the soccer ball from him for the third time.
Celia laughed from the patio, one hand on her hip, the other holding something bright and cold.
Sierra stood beside Mack, trying and failing to look like she was not charmed by the fact that he was letting a six-year-old destroy him at yard soccer.
“You’re terrible at this,” Celia called.
“I’m building confidence,” Mack said.
“You’re getting beaten by a six-year-old.”
“Development takes many forms.”
Bella leaned against the doorframe beside me. “This is what he does. Shows up, pretends he’s not soft, then lets a child destroy him at yard games.”
“A noble sacrifice.”
“A suspicious one. He likes being invited back.”
I looked at the yard: children running, the dog barking, Mack losing on purpose, Sierra’s smile trying not to become a laugh. Inside, Mamá moved through her kitchen as if feeding people were a form of prayer.
It should have felt overwhelming.
It did.
But not in the way I expected.
Bella studied me for a second, then nodded toward the side porch.
“Walk with me,” she said.
“That sounded official.”
“It is. Bring your coffee.”
The side porch was narrow and shaded, tucked behind a line of potted herbs and one stubborn bougainvillea that had decided subtlety was for weaker plants.
From there, the family noise softened without disappearing: Mamá’s voice in the kitchen, Celia calling after one of her kids, Mack protesting some invented yard-soccer injustice, Sierra laughing like she had already heard his defense and rejected it.
Bella sat on the porch step and patted the space beside her.
I sat.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
The late-afternoon light moved across the yard in warm bands. I held my coffee in both hands, even though it was too hot and I should have set it down.
“Talk,” Bella said.
“About what?”
She gave me the look. The one that had probably made grown men confess to crimes they had not committed just to make it stop.
“Fine.” I exhaled. “Silas brought us both into his office. A reporter called about me and Evan. Someone saw us at Paramour. The trade stuff is public. The whole thing is converging.”
“Converging,” Bella repeated. “That is a very diplomatic word for everything is happening at once and I am processing it through denial and caffeine.”
“I’m not in denial.”
“You’re in something. Let’s figure out what.”
She took my coffee out of my hands, set it on the step between us, and turned toward me with the focused calm of a woman about to dismantle every defense I had built.
“First question,” she said. “Do you want him?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
“That’s not…”
“Yes or no. Do you want him?”
The directness of it hit like a flashbulb, impossible to look away from.
“Yes,” I said.
The word came out quieter than I intended.
“Good. That’s settled. Now the harder question: what are you going to do with that information?”
“I don’t know. There’s the trade and Silas’s concerns. There’s the reporter. There’s the fact that he still owes me more than a hallway conversation.”
“Correct.” Bella pointed at me. “Do not do his work for him. I cannot emphasize this enough. If he wants access to you, he can bring the truth with both hands and no defensive nonsense.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
“I know men. I know avoidance. I know you. The Venn diagram is irritating.”
I stared at her. She stared back. Neither of us blinked, because blinking was a concession in whatever this was.
“My problem,” I said slowly, “is that I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of being the one who moves first. Of putting myself out there with someone who might leave.” I swallowed. “Of trusting someone and having it cost me.”
Bella was quiet for a moment. The family noise filled the space between us: a child yelling goal, Mack objecting on procedural grounds, Mamá laughing from somewhere inside the house.
“I’m going to say something,” Bella said, “and you’re going to listen without deflecting, because I know you and deflecting is your superpower and I’m not allowing it right now.”
This is going to hurt.
“I noticed you the second you walked into my office,” Bella said. “You were not loud or trying. You moved like someone who knew exactly who she was. That’s rare, Sam. People feel it. I felt it. And I would bet everything I own that he felt it too.”
My throat tightened.
“I don’t feel fearless,” I murmured.
“Of course you don’t. Fearless people never do. They just keep moving.” She leaned forward.
The porch went quiet around us, or maybe I stopped hearing everything else. Just Bella’s voice and the truth sitting between us like something that had been waiting to be said.
“One of you has to stop pretending this doesn’t matter,” Bella said. “That can be you. But do not confuse moving with fixing. You can move toward what you want without carrying what he owes you.”
I sat there, hands folded in my lap, feeling the heat from the coffee cup near my knee. The yard breathed around us. A dog barked. Mack lost another argument to a child and accepted defeat with suspicious dignity.
And somewhere inside me, a piece that had been out of alignment since Case Whitfield published my photographs under his name clicked into place. Not dramatically. Just a quiet internal sound, like a lens finding focus after a long time shooting blind.
“You’re right,” I said.
“I know.”
“No, I mean…” I looked through the porch railing at the yard. “You’re right about all of it. About him and about me. I’ve been waiting for him to be ready, but I’ve been hiding behind that too.”
Bella’s eyes softened. Not much, because Bella’s eyes did not do soft easily, but enough.
“There she is,” she murmured.
There she is. Still Sam.
The same words from the bar. Different now. Deeper. Recognition of readiness.
“Well,” I said, reaching for my coffee. “That’s settled then.”
“Oh?” Bella arched a brow. “What’s settled?”
“I’m done hesitating.”
“Now that,” Bella said, “is the kind of decisive energy I like to see.”
The screen door opened behind us, and Mamá Rey appeared with a small plate of pan de polvo, because apparently the woman had a spiritual alarm that went off whenever emotional clarity required powdered sugar.
“You girls eat,” she said.
“Mamá, we’re talking,” Bella said.
“Talking needs food.”
She handed me the plate first, because of course she did.
I took one cookie. Let the sugar dust my fingers, the crumb soften on my tongue, and the sweetness settle somewhere I had not realized was still hungry.
Then I pulled out my phone and looked at the time.
He would still be at the facility. He always stayed late on days when his head was loud. And his head had been loud for weeks.
Bella watched me, her expression shifting from triumph to something warmer. She did not ask what I was planning. She did not need to. She had spent the last twenty minutes building the runway, and now she was watching the takeoff.
“Go,” she said.
“I haven’t finished the cookie.”
Bella took the plate from my lap. “I’ll handle the evidence.”
I stood. Looked at her: this woman who had dragged me to a bar when I wanted to disappear, brought me home to a family that fed me, and seen me clearly from the first day we met without once looking away.
“Thank you,” I said.
And meant it with everything I had.
“Don’t thank me,” Bella said, holding the plate like a legal exhibit. “Just don’t come home tonight with a story that starts with I chickened out.”
I went back through the kitchen to say goodbye. Mamá Rey pressed the bag of pan de polvo into my hand again, as if I might have forgotten I had been loved on the way to the door.
“Drive safe, mija,” she said.
I nodded because my throat was too tight for anything else.
Outside, San Antonio was doing its thing: golden hour hitting the houses, the air warm and heavy with summer. People moved along the sidewalk in both directions, making their decisions, walking toward whatever came next.
I got in my car. Set the warm paper bag on the passenger seat. Started the engine.
I was not going to fix him.
I was not going to carry the truth he owed me.
But I was done pretending I did not want to hear it.
I did not go home.