16. Josie
JOSIE
The papers went through weeks ago. I filed. He was served. He has not contested it and he has not answered.
I told myself I expected that. I told myself it was what I wanted.
But when Gideon called to let me know Vince had signed the service acknowledgment without a word, I stood in Rosa's kitchen with the phone still pressed to my ear and felt like the floor had dropped out from under me.
My hand went to the counter to steady myself.
The silence was worse than a fight would have been. It was worse than anything.
"Josie?" Gideon's voice was careful. "You still there?"
"Yeah. I'm here."
"I'm sorry. I thought you'd want to know."
I swallowed hard. My throat felt tight. "No, you were right to call. Thank you."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "He hasn't been in the office. Haven't seen him in weeks."
I didn't know what to do with that information. Gideon sighed and told me to call if I needed anything, and then the line went dead and I was alone in Rosa's bright little kitchen with the November sun coming through the window.
The street looked different and I noticed it piece by piece.
Rosa's window was fixed first. I came downstairs one morning and the broken glass was gone, replaced with a clean pane that let the early light through without the spiderweb cracks I'd gotten used to seeing.
The air was cold now, properly cold, the kind that bit at your fingers.
I stood there on the sidewalk in my jacket, staring at the window.
I went inside. Rosa was behind the counter, setting up for breakfast.
"Your window," I said.
She glanced up. "Yeah. Nice, isn't it?"
"Who fixed it?"
She shrugged, wiping down the counter. "Someone came by. Didn't leave a name."
"Someone."
"A crew. Professional. They were gone before I got here." She tossed the rag into the sink and met my eyes. There was something careful in her expression. "I asked, Josie. They said it was paid for."
"By who?"
"A benefactor. That's all they told me."
The word sat wrong in my mouth. A benefactor.
Like this was some kind of charity case, like the corner I grew up on was something that needed saving by a stranger with deep pockets and no face.
I looked at the window again. The work was clean, the kind of clean that cost money.
"Did they say anything else? Leave a card? "
"No card. No bill, either."
I frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
Rosa smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. "I stopped trying to make sense of it. The window's fixed. I'm not complaining."
I went to Omar next. His laundromat was three doors down, and when I walked in the warm air hit me, heavy with the smell of detergent. His window had been fixed too, and the graffiti that had been there for two years was gone from the brick beside it, the wall scrubbed clean.
"Omar."
He looked up from the machine he was loading and grinned. "Josie. You here to do laundry or just visiting?"
"Your window. And the wall."
"Yeah, I know. Beautiful, right?" He straightened up, shaking his head like he still couldn't believe it. "Came in one morning and it was done. Just like that."
"Who did it?"
"A mysterious benefactor," he said, and he said it like he believed it, like it was perfectly reasonable. "That's what they told me. Someone who wants to help the neighbourhood."
I stared at him. "And you just accepted that."
"What else am I supposed to do? The work's done, Josie. It's good work."
I kept asking. I went to every shop on the block, every owner I'd known since I was a kid.
Same answer everywhere. The work was good, the workers were fast, and nobody would say who sent them.
I started to feel like I was going crazy, like I was the only person who thought this was strange.
Nobody fixes a neighbourhood for free. Nobody does that kind of work and doesn't want credit for it.
So I stopped asking people and started looking at the work itself.
The glass in Rosa's window was tempered, low-iron, the kind that didn't distort.
I knew that because I worked with glass myself, knew the difference between the cheap stuff and the kind you paid for.
The brick had been cleaned with a soda blaster, not a pressure washer — I could tell from the way the mortar still sat clean in the joints, no pitting, no damage.
The new streetlight three doors down from Mercer's was LED, commercial-grade, and the concrete patch underneath it was still curing.
I crouched down beside it one afternoon, the cold seeping through my jeans, and ran my hand over the surface.
It was smooth, poured right, the aggregate fine enough that it would hold up through winter.
Whoever did this knew what they were doing.
And then I saw the invoice tucked under a brick at the base of the pole, half-hidden.
I pulled it out, my fingers stiff with cold.
Castellano Concrete. I knew that name. I knew it because I'd watched Vince argue with Rick Castellano in our kitchen four years ago over a batch that came in too hot, and I'd been the one to pour them both coffee and tell them to sit down and figure it out like adults.
Rick still sent us a card every Christmas.
I stood there with the invoice in my hand, and something cold slid down my spine.
The glass supplier for Rosa's window would be Mendez.
Antonio Mendez, who'd done the storefront for Mercer's six years ago.
The brick cleaning would be Ortiz — Miguel Ortiz, who Vince had trusted with a historic restoration downtown.
The electrical on the streetlight would be Eddie Kahale's crew, because Eddie was the only one Vince trusted to pull wire without cutting corners.
I walked the whole block. I checked every piece of new work, every repair, every surface that looked different from the last time I'd been paying attention.
The patched sidewalk in front of the bodega.
The repainted door at the hardware store.
The new downspout on the church. And I knew them.
I knew every single supplier, every contractor, every name that would be on the invoices.
I knew them because I'd watched Vince build those relationships over nine years of marriage.
I'd sat through the dinners, poured the coffee, listened to him talk through the bids.
I'd helped him build some of them, back when he still let me in, back when he still talked to me about the work like I was someone worth explaining things to.
Nobody else would put these particular people on this street. Nobody else knew their names, knew which ones did good work and which ones cut corners. Nobody else had spent nine years cultivating those relationships.
It was Vince.
The certainty of it settled in my chest, heavy and aching. He was here. He'd been here, quietly, without telling anyone, fixing the street I'd asked him to care about for nine years.
I went back to Mercer's. My hands were shaking as I unlocked the back office. The computer was where I'd left it, the monitor dark, a thin layer of dust on the keyboard. I sat down and pulled up the security feed, the camera Vince had installed three years ago after the third break-in.
I hadn't checked it in weeks. I hadn't wanted to see the shop without me in it, hadn't wanted to know if the girls were managing or if the whole place was falling apart.
The feed loaded, grainy and grey. I scrolled back through the days, watching the timestamp tick backwards, looking for something that would prove I was wrong.
And then I saw him.
Two in the morning, four days ago. Vince, in a jacket I didn't recognize, out on the street in front of Mercer's with a push broom and a garbage bag.
He was cleaning. Not supervising, not standing back with his hands in his pockets.
Cleaning, with his own hands, the kind of work he used to say he'd gotten off this corner to avoid.
My chest went tight. I couldn't breathe right.
I watched him work his way down the block, methodical, thorough, the same way he did everything.
He bent to pick up something I couldn't see, dropped it in the bag, kept moving.
When he was done he stood there for a moment, just standing, looking at the shop.
I wanted so badly to know what he was thinking that it hurt. Was he thinking about me? About us? Or was he just looking at a building, doing a job?
Then he walked away, out of frame, and I was alone again with the silent grey feed and the empty street.
I stayed late the next night, waiting. I told myself I wasn't waiting for him, that I just had work to catch up on, inventory to check, orders to place.
But I kept the lights off in the back office and I watched the street through the window until my eyes burned and my neck ached from holding still.
The cold pressed against the glass. My coffee went cold in the cup beside me.
He didn't come. Maybe he knew I was there. Maybe he'd seen my car parked out front. Maybe he just didn't want to be seen, didn't want to face me.
After that night I kept the camera feed open on my phone.
I checked it more often than I wanted to admit, most nights, late, when I couldn't sleep and Rosa's apartment felt too small and too quiet.
I'd lie there in the dark, the phone glowing in my hand, watching the empty street and telling myself I was just keeping an eye on the shop. I told myself it didn't mean anything.
I was lying.
I dreamed about him. His hands, the way they used to cup my face when he kissed me, rough and careful at the same time, his thumbs tracing my cheekbones like he was memorizing the shape of me.
His mouth, the shape of it against my throat, the scrape of stubble on my skin, the way he'd smile against my pulse point like he had a secret he wasn't ready to share.
His warmth, the solid weight of him beside me in bed, the way he ran hot even in winter and I'd press my cold feet against his shins and he'd swear at me and pull me closer anyway.
I woke up reaching for him and found nothing but Rosa's guest sheets and the cold air coming in through the window I'd cracked because I couldn't stand how still the room was.
My throat was tight, my pulse was racing in my ears, and I felt like an idiot for wanting something I'd already walked away from.
For wanting someone who'd let me go without a fight.
God, I missed him.
I said it out loud to Rosa one morning, sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee I wasn't drinking. The mug was warm in my hands but it didn't help. She was making breakfast, eggs and toast, and she went still when I said it, the spatula hovering over the pan.
"I miss him."
She set the spatula down carefully. Turned around to face me. "Okay."
"That's it? Okay?"
"What do you want me to say, Josie?" She pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.
Her expression was kind, but there was something firm underneath it, something that said she wasn't going to let me off easy.
"You miss him. I believe you. But missing someone doesn't mean you should go back to them. "
I looked down at my coffee. My hand had gone to my pocket without my realizing it, my fingers closing around the iron ring I'd been carrying since I left. The metal was warm from my body heat. I didn't pull it out. "I know."
"Do you?"
"Rosa."
"I'm serious." She leaned forward, elbows on the table, her dark eyes searching my face.
"He's out there doing all this work, fixing the street, staying out of sight so you don't have to see him.
It looks good. It is good. But I have to ask you something, and I need you to really think about the answer before you go running back to him. "
I waited. My stomach twisted into a knot. I knew what was coming and I didn't want to hear it.
"Has he actually changed, Josie? Or has he just gotten better at looking like it?"
The question landed like a punch to the chest. I opened my mouth and nothing came out.
My jaw worked but no sound followed. I didn't know.
I wanted to know, wanted to believe that the man cleaning the streets at two in the morning was the same man who'd made me an iron ring with his own hands when he had nothing, the man who'd promised me we'd never forget where we came from. But I didn't know.
I'd thought I knew him nine years ago, and I'd been wrong about what mattered.
I'd thought he'd come back to the neighbourhood with me someday, thought he'd remember the people who raised us, thought he'd walk these streets with me again.
And he never had. Not once, not in nine years of asking, until I left.
So maybe this was real. Maybe he'd finally understood what I'd been asking for all along. Or maybe he was just good at showing me what I wanted to see, at finding the one thing that would make me soften, make me reconsider.
Rosa was still waiting, her eyes steady on mine. Patient. I could feel the weight of the question pressing down on me, sitting heavy in my chest, and I had no answer for her. None at all.