“We’re not ax murderers.”
“Just heartbreakers.” I smiled, but Emilio was shaking his head, and I rushed to explain the rest. “I took an oath. A real one.” I told him the whole sordid tale.
Emilio turned to me at the end of the story, eyes fiery and intense. “Lemme get this straight. You and your sisters burned a bunch of my brother’s shit, stabbed yourselves with a knife, and swore an oath against my family over a Saint Michael candle?”
“He was an archangel, not a saint. And it was just against your brothers. All the males, actually. Your mom is probably fine.” I kicked the ground, dust swirling on the path. “Actually, I’d have to read it again to be sure.”
“Did you put a curse on us?”
“No.”
“What about future kids? Or my uncles? Anything I need to warn my aunts in Puerto Rico about?”
I shook my head.
“What if I see a black cat or a ladder? Do I have to watch my back on Friday the thirteenth?”
“Yeah, okay, but I was twelve. They were looking out for me.”
Emilio shook his head. “You stabbed yourself with a knife and burned your hair in a church candle. Where I come from, we got a word for that: loca. You were right. You are crazy.”
“But your brothers—”
“You think I’m like them.” It wasn’t a question. His voice lost its playfulness; he was suddenly edgy and cool. When I looked into his eyes, I saw something else there too. Hurt.
“Not anymore,” I said. “Not after getting to know you this summer. And being at your house, seeing you with your mom . . . I just . . . you’re not what I expected.”
He started on the path again, silence chilling the air between us.
“I’m sorry. All I remembered was seeing you at BHS,” I said. “All those girls following you around, hanging on your every word. ‘Oh, Emilio! You’re so cute! We love you, Emilio!’ ” I’d meant it teasingly, but the words floated on a current of jealousy, and I silently cursed them. My cheeks flamed.
Emilio was laughing though, and the hurt I’d seen in his eyes vanished. “Can’t help it if everyone falls for me. I’m charming, what can I say?”
“You’re annoying, that’s what you can say.” I tried to punch him in the arm, but he caught my hand and held it. Heat crept slowly up my arm.
“I’m not, you know.” He took a step closer.
“Not . . . annoying?” It was only a whisper, but it shook like the aspen leaves overhead.
Quaked, that’s what it’s called. Quaking aspens.
“Not like my brothers.” He took another half step. His dimples deepened as the space evaporated between us.
I looked at the path again, focused on a shiny black beetle making its way across. It stopped when it reached Emilio’s foot. “I’m . . . I came here to say sorry for the weirdness. I didn’t want you to think it was your fault. Or to stop coming around—”
“Why would I stop coming around?”
A little blue flame flickered in my stomach, but I snuffed it out. “All the craziness with my family. I figured you’d bail.”
“Not a chance, princesa.” He smiled, eyes lingering on my mouth. “You’re paying me.”
I tried to laugh, but it got twisted into a nervous hiccup, so I tugged out of his grasp and started back toward the garage. Immediately I felt his hand again, warm skin against warm skin. He stepped in front of me and grabbed my other hand too, all his fingers lacing through mine.
“Do you trust me?” he asked. “I need to know if you trust me.”
He was dead serious, and the question lingered, binding us with invisible thread. For that one moment we were both vulnerable, both achingly honest. Even the trees seemed to hold their collective breath, waiting to see who would speak first.
“My father has Alzheimer’s.”
There it was, a whispered confession floating into outer space, where it would live on for eternity. Unlike us.
“When they first diagnosed him,” I said, “I didn’t think it was a big deal. I figured he’d forget stuff. Stupid stuff like when you space and put the milk in the cupboard or your socks don’t match.”
Emilio was speechless, still holding my hands, still looking into my eyes.
“Mom and I used to tease him. I mean, before we knew. He’d go to the kitchen to microwave popcorn for movie night, and we’d find him making omelets or pie or some crazy thing.” My voice cracked, but I pressed on. “We called him Señor Olvidadizo, Mr. Birdbrain. Mom teased him that he used up his smarts at work every day so there wasn’t any left for us when he got home. We had no idea. . . . He’s not that old.”
“Fifty?”
“Fifty-two,” I said. “But looking back, we remembered him doing other weird things even a few years ago. Stuff that we thought was, like, midlife crisis. One time, totally out of the blue, he used some of their retirement savings on a Caribbean time-share, and he couldn’t understand why Mom was upset that he didn’t discuss it with her. He thought she was being ridiculous. But later that month he broke some stupid generic wineglass, and he cried like he’d ruined this family heirloom or something. He was apologizing for days. It made no sense.”
“How did you finally find out he was sick?” Emilio asked.
“One night he called me from his office, totally panicked.” I let go of Emilio’s hands and we sat down in the grass. “He babbled on and on, and I was like, ‘Papi, are you drunk?’ He was stuttering. He finally made this coughing sound, then he said real fast, ‘I don’t know the way home.’ ”
“You serious?”
I yanked out a clump of grass, sprinkled it over my bare legs. “He’d been sitting in the parking lot for twenty minutes. I thought he was messing with me, but then he got super serious. Mad. Even then, he sounded so . . . freaked out, I guess.”
“What happened?”
“My neighbor drove me down to get him—I made something up about Papi getting the flu, so they dropped me in the parking lot. Papi had the truck. That’s when I learned how to drive stick. Crash course.” I yanked up more grass, dropped it again on my legs. “When we got home, he wouldn’t look at me. All he said was, ‘Jude. Not a word to anyone.’ And I knew he meant it, because he never calls me Jude. Always Juju or querida.
“I was scared and I kept my mouth shut, but it happened again the next day, and I had to tell Mom. She took him to different doctors, months of appointments. They gave him antidepressants and told him to cut back at work. Didn’t help.” My stomach twisted as I remembered the frustration, the lack of answers. “It felt like forever, not knowing anything. Finally they got him to see a dementia specialist. They did tests and scans to rule out other stuff. Early onset Alzheimer’s, they told us. I never heard of it before.”
“How do they treat it?”
“Medications, healthy eating.” I shrugged. “They say they’re trying to slow the progress, but there’s no cure. Mari says he’s supposed to do puzzles and exercises. Who knows. They can’t predict shit. It feels like a guessing game.”
“Is that why you take pictures of me and el jefe all the time? Like, memories or something?”
“Yeah. I’m really not trying to launch your modeling career.”
“I don’t need you for that.” Emilio nudged my knee with his. “But . . . working on the bike is good for him, right? Keeps his mind busy?”
“That’s the weird part. The Harley . . . sometimes he can’t remember what he had for breakfast, or where his shirts are, or that it’s summer. But ask him anything about the bike, and it’s like he’s back in Argentina with his crew. He remembers everything about his old life. It’s insane.”
“Definitely not insane.” Emilio brushed the grass off my knee. “Your pops is mad cool.”
“Seriously?”
“Jude. He was in a motorcycle gang. He biked around South America. He has a 1961 panhead, for chrissake. Dude’s a living legend.” Emilio laughed, and when I saw his face, open and genuine, unchanged from t
he moments before I’d confessed the family secret, I knew I’d made the right call in telling him. He must’ve known Papi had something like that—Alzheimer’s, dementia, memory loss. But it felt important to say it out loud, to trust him with the fragile, eggshell words.
Warmth spread throughout my insides. I had an ally again, a friend. A real one who knew the truth and wouldn’t freak out, wouldn’t bail.
I wanted to thank him, to tell him how much that laugh meant, how all the stuff he’d said about Papi made me feel safe and happy and somehow okay. Instead, I slipped my hand in his and squeezed it once, and he squeezed back, and pretty much everything about that moment rocked my grass-covered socks until I realized, with utter dread, I was late for meeting Mari.
Chapter 16
Araceli smiled at me through the split screen of Mari’s laptop. On the other side, Lourdes watched on from her kitchen in Mendoza. Occasionally her husband passed through, Alejandro, a blur of light blue and white in his lucky fútbol jersey. It was tournament season, and Argentina was kicking butt.
Mari still hadn’t said a word about me being twenty minutes late this afternoon. I’d brought Papi home for a nap—he’d been snoozing ever since—and the moment Mari got back from Witch’s Brew, we Skyped my sisters. Now we were updating them on Papi’s medications and his daily regimen and everything Mari had read in the literature.
Lourdes nodded solemnly. “What did we decide about the test?”
“Papi does a hundred tests every time he goes to the doctor,” I said. “Which one?”
Lourdes shook her head. “The—”
“We’re still getting information,” Mari said. “Mom’s in touch with the doctors. We don’t have any details yet, but I’ll let you know.” Mari’s eyes widened and Lourdes clamped her mouth shut. A strange look passed between them, almost like a warning. Mari was used to running the show, despite Lourdes being the oldest, and one little family tragedy wouldn’t change that.
I waited for the conversation to turn to Transitions, for someone to finally let me in on Mom’s plan, but no one mentioned it, and I didn’t have the heart to ask.
Thirty-seven minutes in, according to the Skype countdown, Celi finally said the M word: motorcycle.
“Papi’s pretty into it,” Mari said. “They’re out there almost every day working on it.”
“What about the chemicals?” Lourdes asked. She’d been in Mendoza for more than a decade, and she spoke with a faint accent that made her sound both familiar and strange. Familiar, like my mother. Strange, because she wasn’t Mom, but she was getting closer. It showed in her voice, the lines around her mouth, the firm set of her shoulders. “Isn’t it bad for him to be exposed to that stuff?”
“Right now they’re just taking it apart and seeing what it needs,” I said. “No chemicals.”
Celi raised her eyebrows. “Who’s they?”
“Papi and the mechanic.”
“Who?” Celi asked again. “Wait, is that the cute boy Mom told us about?”
In the background Alejandro whistled. “Juju has a boyfriend?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “He’s just a guy from Duchess.”
“Duchess is the motorcycle shop,” Mari said. “Juju and Papi hired him.”
Thanks for being helpful! I shot her a look, and she shrugged, like, What?
I realized then, if for no other reason than protecting Celi’s heart, Mari wouldn’t say Emilio’s name. It was up to me, but I couldn’t reveal it either. Secrecy had been my plan all along: Keep Emilio’s identity in the background, let him finish up the bike and disappear as if he’d never been here. As if I’d never broken the oath.
But I remembered our conversation this afternoon, his hands warm in mine, eyes soft and encouraging, and suddenly it felt unfair. Wrong.
I wanted to spill it. I wanted to tell them that Emilio, more than any of my old friends, continued to show up when he said he would. He listened when I felt like talking, didn’t push when I wanted to stop. He showed me stuff about motorcycles and made sure I understood what he and Papi were doing. He didn’t freak out at Papi’s episodes, and he didn’t treat him like a kid in need of a babysitter.
I wanted to tell them how amazing he was with Valentina, how he seemed to know her on some deep level, more than you could learn from the manuals.
I wanted to tell them how Papi’s eyes sparked whenever Emilio showed up, how Emilio loved to hear about Papi’s travels and all the people he met and the miles he covered.
I wanted to tell them how Emilio was becoming a good friend, someone I was warned against my whole life but who’d taken better care of my heart than anyone.
But when I saw Celi’s hopeful face, her lips curved in a shy smile, all the right words evaporated.
“How do you know the kid really works there? What if he’s trying to rip you off?” Lourdes’s brow furrowed with concern; even Alejandro pulled up a chair to offer his two pesos.
“Juju, Mari,” he said. “Be careful with these people. They could be taking advantage. How do you know you can trust him? Why didn’t you go to the dealer?”
“Harley-Davidson was way expensive,” I said. “Three times as much.”
“So you found some random kid?” Celi raised her shoulders, like, What the hell?
“Harley referred us to Duchess. Papi and I met the owner, got his opinion, saw all the guys working there, and hired—him.” I stopped short of saying his name. Lourdes probably wouldn’t remember, but Celi would. She’d spent enough time at Johnny’s house to know his little brother, and it’s not like there were tons of other families in Blackfeather with kids named Emilio.
“Sounds suspect,” Lourdes said.
“Papi’s happy,” I said. “He loves working on it; it’s like he’s back in Argentina. Did you guys know he biked all around South America?”
“Really?” Celi said. “That’s so cool! And romantic! Like Che.”
“Before all the killing,” Mari said.
“Don’t be morbid, Mari.” Lourdes rolled her eyes.
“Anyway, back to Papi,” I said. Che. Really!
“What does Mom think?” Lourdes asked.
I’d been spending my days with Papi, giving up my last summer like Mari’d said, but maybe that was the easy part. So far, other than a few meltdowns and confusing moments, our days were filled with laughter and sunshine and the memories he shared from his biker days. I’d been writing them down, tagging all the pictures I’d taken, scanning his old albums. I was collecting them for him on my computer, curator of his memories.
But Mom worked all day. And she came home and cooked and took Papi to appointments and asked the big questions. What if? When? What next? She was the one who had to deal with the paperwork and social workers and Big Future Contingencies. She knew Emilio was there to restore the bike, but once the project got under way, she hadn’t said much about it.
I had no idea what Mom thought.
My sisters’ faces were etched with worry. I wanted to reach through the screen, slip my arms around them like I used to. I wanted them to be here. I wanted them to promise me they’d figure something out, that all of us would be just fine.
Go back to bed, Juju. . . .
“Mom’s got more important things to worry about now,” Mari said. “I’d really like to get him on a stricter exercise program, but . . . I don’t know. He loves the Harley. He’s . . .” She looked at me and smiled. It was a small smile, but a real one. “He’s happy when they’re working on it.”
“You sure you trust this mechanic?” Celi said.
Lourdes and Alejandro leaned forward, filling their half of the screen with kind, concerned faces. I looked at Mari and held my breath. Here in Colorado, she had seniority. A shadow of doubt from her could shut the whole thing down.
After a million years Mari nodded. “He knows his way around the bike, and he’s not put off by Papi’s mood swings. He’s a good kid.”
“Super good,” I said. My heart lifted at her
unexpected praise.
“Keep an eye on things,” Lourdes said. “But as long as you trust this kid, I don’t see a problem with letting Papi work on the bike.”
“Me neither,” Celi said. “Sounds like it might actually be good for him. Juju, what’s wrong? Why do you look so emotional?”
“I don’t know.” I spoke through the sudden tightness in my throat. “I just . . . I figured you guys would do the united front thing. I thought we’d have to stop working on the bike.”
Celi ran her hands through her chocolate-brown hair and sighed. “We’re just worried. It’s hard being so far away. We want to be there too.”
“We can manage,” I said. “Mari’s here and—”
“I know,” Celi said. “We miss you guys.”
“I’m trying to find a cheap ticket,” Lourdes said. She was totally tearing up. We all were. Family tragedies had a way of smashing everything apart and then gluing it all back together.
The problem was no one ever knew how long the glue would hold.
Celi’s apartment echoed with the sudden cannon boom of fireworks from New York City, two hours ahead of us.
“Happy Independence Day, Americanos!” Lourdes said.
“I’m going up to the roof to watch,” Celi said. “I love fireworks.”
“Do you guys have everything you need over there?” Lourdes asked. “Can I send anything?”
“Dulce de leche,” I said. “The real stuff.”
We exchanged a round of besos and promised to check in again soon. The screen went blank, and Mari shut her laptop and stared at me.
“Sorry I was late today,” I said, hoping to preempt a lecture. I lost track of time and—”
“I got the author.”
“What?”
“The call today. I’d offered representation to an author along with four other agents last week, and today was D-day. She picked me. I can’t even tell you how excited I am about this book.”
“Mari, that’s awesome!”
“I know! I can’t wait to show it to you!” She beamed. “Mom said she’d meet us at the Bowl straight from work. Let’s get Papi ready and pack up the cooler.”