November sagged early across the field, the light going thin over the uprights until the posts looked like bones against a washed-out sky. Practice had emptied the turf. The water coolers bled off cold in slow drips. A last whistle echoed from the locker room and died.
Caine cut across the painted numbers with his duffel bag dangling by the strap. The fabric thumped his thigh every few steps. His breath came even. He rolled his shoulders once, the way he did when his back remembered the weight of pads even after he took them off.
The chain-link gate rattled when he pushed through. Beyond it, the lot stretched hard and gray. A few cracked leaves chased each other in the wind like they had somewhere to be. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Unknown. 912.
He let it ring once more, then answered. “Yeah?”
A beat of low road noise, then a voice he knew now from too many calls in the past few weeks. “Caine? Ryan Aplin.”
He didn’t smile, didn’t change his pace. “Yes, sir.”
“Catching you after practice?”
“Just finished.”
“Good. I’ll keep it short. You know that the program decided to let Coach Helton go.” Aplin’s voice stayed easy, almost conversational. “I’m feeling good about where things stand on my end. I’m expecting to get the big chair.”
Caine sidestepped a pothole wide enough to swallow an ankle. He watched a moth burn itself out against a light over the visitors’ side. “Alright.”
“And I meant what I told you. We want you in to compete right away. With J.C. making it official and jumping in the portal, there’s a lane. You fit what we do.”
Caine didn’t fill the space. The wind came off the lot and bit his ears. He reached his car and set the duffel bag on the hood, palm flat on it a second longer than he needed.
Aplin kept talking. “I’ve already been in with compliance. We’re not guessing. We’re doing the work. Your file’s moving the right direction. But I need something from you to keep that momentum. I don’t want to waste your time or mine.”
A barge horn pulled across the night from somewhere way past the levee. Caine watched his breath lift, then go invisible. He could hear a band practicing three blocks away, nothing clear, just the thud of drums falling out of time with his heart.
“What you need?” he asked.
“A verbal. Today.”
The word sat there. It didn’t feel like a spotlight. It felt like a hand held out across state lines.
Aplin added, “We both know the market. Some folks sniff back around after a playoff run, but half of them aren’t ready to walk compliance down the hall. We are. You’ll have a real shot to start as a freshman. That’s not recruiter talk.”
Caine looked at the lot like it might answer for him. The last of the JV kids cut up across the sidewalk, all noise and energy that didn’t know what it cost yet. He thought about the earlier weeks when the calls had come hot and steady, logos stacking in his missed calls like they were buying stock. Then the way silence started to muscle in when people did the math on risk. He thought about paperwork, and how a man with a badge could reach in his life and stop the clock just by making a note with a dull pen. He thought about doors that opened if someone walked the hall with you, and doors that stayed shut if they didn’t.
“Caine, you there, son?”
“I’m here.”
He ran a thumb along the zipper of the duffel bag.
“Full ride?”
“Everything covered. We’ll get you set up real nice.”
Caine stood with one hip against the car door, head tipped enough to watch the sky go from light gray to darker gray. He pictured Camila in her tiny socks, feet slapping the apartment tile, the way she hollered when she delivered a block to the exact wrong spot and decided it was a masterpiece anyway. He saw Mireya smoothing a flyer flat with the side of her hand. He didn’t let the thoughts pull him anywhere. He let them pass like cars.
“Alright,” he said. “I want to play y’all. For Georgia Southern, Coach.”
On the other end, Aplin’s breath shifted. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
Aplin kept going. “One thing. Don’t announce. Not yet. If compliance hiccups, I don’t want this turning into a circus for you. Or for us. We’ll keep it tight, then make it look clean when the green light hits.”
“I got you.”
“We’ll be in touch. I’ll text you after this with what we need from you next. Keep your phone on you.”
“Bet.”
“Good. Talk soon.”
The line clicked. The screen went back to his own reflection. He let the phone drop to his pocket and listened to the lot for a second. A can skittered somewhere. Far off, somebody laughed, the sound breaking flat in the cold air.
He picked up the bag and slid it onto the seat, then leaned into the car enough to click the lock with his knuckle. He didn’t move to drive. He just stood there under the light, feeling the choice settle into his body the way a bruise does when the heat leaves and the outline shows up.
He pictured a map. New Orleans to Statesboro. Interstate and pine trees and the kind of darkness you get in places where the sky is bigger than the city. He pictured a field he hadn’t touched yet and a room he’d have to walk into with the same face he wore everywhere, the one that didn’t flinch first.
He adjusted his hoodie at the throat and turned back toward the field for a moment. The posts were black now. The grass looked silver at the edges where the frost was thinking about it. He wasn’t cold.
He put his hand on the roof and tapped out a rhythm only he knew. Once. Twice. Then he pushed off the car, shoulders loose. When he reached the driver’s door again, he opened it and got in.
He didn’t start the engine yet. He set the phone face down, screen dead. He let the quiet have the last word.
Then he turned the key.
~~~
Cold drifted in through the windows. The kind of cold that lived in tile and baseboards. The TV murmured from the living room, blue light cutting over a couch where Anne and the kids sat in a pile—Claire curled into one armrest, Peyton draped long and careless with a throw blanket bunched under his sneakers. Roussel ate alone at the kitchen table.
The tray on the table steamed where the film had been peeled back. Gravy congealed at the edges, potatoes glossy, corn like beads. He’d stabbed the brownie first just to break it. He chewed and listened. The microwave clock blinked green in the corner like it had something to say.
From the living room, Anne’s voice floated back, low and soft against the canned laughter. Peyton spoke up over it.
“Ma, I been looking at Xavier,” he said, casual, like it wasn’t much. “If I go pharmacy, that’s the best program.”
Roussel set the plastic fork down and waited to hear if he’d misheard. He hadn’t.
He stood without pushing the chair back. The legs rasped against linoleum anyway. “The hell you just say?”
Peyton didn’t look away from the TV at first. Then he turned, shoulders coming up like he already knew the answer. “Xavier. It’s—”
“That’s out the question.” Roussel’s voice didn’t rise. The sound stayed flat, a board across a doorway. “You hear me?”
Anne’s eyes cut toward the kitchen. She didn’t speak. Claire pulled the blanket tighter around her legs and watched the TV without blinking.
Peyton sat up. “I’m saying it’s the best school for—”
“I don’t give a damn what it’s the best for,” Roussel said, stepping to the threshold between rooms. The smell of butter flavor and cheap plastic clung to his hands. “You not going to no HBCU while I’m still breathing.”
The words hit the air and hung there. On the TV, a laugh track washed over a joke nobody in the room had heard.
Peyton scoffed, small and nervous. “Why? Because Black people go there?” He said it like a dare he wanted to lose.
Roussel smiled without humor. “Because it’s not where my son goes.” He let the sentence breathe, then added, “Something wrong with you I guess if you think that’s your lane.”
Peyton’s jaw shifted. “I want to be a pharmacist,” he said. “That’s the best program.”
“Then find another program,” Roussel said. “Plenty of schools not built for—” He cut it off, swallowed the word before it made a mess he’d have to clean. “Plenty of schools.”
Anne’s hand rubbed the couch seam once, slowly. Her eyes stayed on the TV. Claire looked from her to Peyton and back, face blank.
Peyton stood all the way. “That don’t make sense.”
“Sit down.”
“No.” He tried on a new voice, deeper than his face. “You not choosing my life ‘cause you don’t want me around Black people.”
Roussel stepped into the living room and felt the carpet soften under his boots. The TV light rolled across Peyton’s cheekbones, pale and then blue again, like the boy was disappearing and coming back with every frame. “What you say to me?”
Peyton’s throat worked. He didn’t repeat it.
“That’s what I thought.” Roussel didn’t look at Anne. Didn’t look at Claire. He looked at the boy who had his last name and none of his fear. “It’s final.”
Peyton’s mouth twisted. “You always doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Acting like everything I touch is you losing something.” He reached for the remote and turned the TV down a notch. “It’s my life.”
Roussel took two more steps forward, then stopped like the line was taped on the floor. “You don’t have a life to choose if you can’t follow simple directions.”
Peyton laughed once without joy. “Directions like don’t talk like my friends. Don’t listen to this music. Don’t look at that girl.” He spread his hands. “Now don’t go to the school that’ll get me where I want to go.”
Roussel heard what he wanted to hear first. “Friends.” He let the word curdle. “The way you talk’s been changing. You think I don’t hear it? You think I don’t see what you’re looking at on that phone?” His gaze flicked to Anne. “You hear this? What he just said?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t move.
Peyton took a breath. “I’m going to Xavier.”
The house sharpened. Even the refrigerator hum sounded like it was listening.
Roussel turned, walked back into the kitchen, and picked up the plastic tray. The gravy wobbled when he lifted it. He thought about the line at the grocery store last week. The nurse on the third floor who’d smiled at his badge and then stepped away when he smiled back. The boys in his caseload who mimicked a swagger they hadn’t earned and the ones who had. The way people looked through him when he wasn’t in uniform. The way his own son looked past him now.
He came back to the doorway holding the tray in one hand. “You’re not going,” he said again, calm.
Peyton stared back. “You can’t stop me.”
The fork rattled against the brownie well. “Watch me.”
Peyton’s chin lifted. “Why? Because you hate—”
The tray left his hand before the word finished. It flew flat and ugly across the room and hit the wall above the TV. Gravy smeared. Potatoes slid down in a slow slump. The corn sprang everywhere, bright dots against the carpet. The tray bounced and clattered on the floor.
Claire flinched. Anne’s breath caught like a hiccup she couldn’t swallow. Peyton didn’t move.
Roussel’s voice came from a tight place. “That’s final.”
He turned and walked to the front door. The cold draft met him when he pulled it open, a thin knife of November air that smelled like wet leaves and a neighbor’s dryer vent. He stepped out without his coat. The door banged hard behind him, wood on wood, and the sound ran down the hallway and went quiet.
~~~
The bell on the glass door dinged once, a clean sound in the thin, fluorescent light. Mireya paused mid-fold, fingertip pressing the seam of a ribbed tank flat. Air slipped in with the opening door. It carried the dry smell of cold concrete from the sidewalk and a trace of rain that never landed.
She looked up. Janae stood in the doorway with the girl she was always with. Janae held her gaze and stopped there, like she was deciding whether to come in or to make a scene right on the threshold. Then she stepped over, smile floating but not soft. Tasha kept moving, a quick scan of the sales rack, the kind of scan that knew the red tags from across the room.
Mireya didn’t drop her eyes. The music in her AirPods thumped low, more habit than volume. She took one shirt from the stack, then another, the motions neat, slow. Janae’s look was a small weight on the air. Mireya let it sit.
They drifted the long way, hands sliding hangers, metal rasping against metal. Sequins flashed. A fake-leather skirt cracked when Janae pinched the hem. Tasha picked up two pairs of shorts, different washes of black, tags stiff. When they reached her table, Mireya squared the stack and lifted her chin.
“Y’all need anything?” she asked.
Tasha held up the shorts. “Which one better?”
Mireya glanced once. The left pair had that dye that bled if you looked at it wrong. She touched the other at the waistband, feeling the thickness.
“Those,” she said. “They won’t fade when you wash them.”
Tasha nodded like she had been hoping for that answer. “Bet.” She kept walking, shorts hanging off two fingers.
Janae stayed put, eyes still on Mireya. “I didn’t know you worked here,” she said.
Mireya slid the folded tank into the pile, lined the edge with the table’s lip, then held out a hand in a small, quiet gesture that said look around. Nothing else to say. Of course.
Janae shifted the clothes in her arms. A couple tops. A skirt on top of the pile, pleated, mid-thigh, the kind that softened in the mirror and then sagged after one wash. Mireya stepped around the table, close enough to smell Janae’s lotion, something vanilla that clung without being loud.
She lifted the pleated skirt with two fingers. Shook her head once. Put it back on the rack behind Janae without hurry. Then she reached to a higher bar and pulled down another skirt. Shorter. Weight in the fabric to keep its shape. She held it up between them.
“Get this one,” she said. “It’ll make your ass look amazing.”
The words landed. Janae blinked, mouth parting before she caught it. The pause was small, but it was there, the kind of opening that told you who was steering. She reached for the skirt without taking her eyes off Mireya. Her fingers brushed Mireya’s for a second.
“Okay,” Janae said, voice even like it had to be. “That’s how you feel?”
Mireya’s mouth twitched at one corner. Not a smile. Not not a smile. She let the skirt go and stepped back to her side of the table again. The music in her ear ticked through a drum fill. She slid another shirt flat with the side of her palm.
“If y’all want a dressing room, let me know,” she said. “Or when y’all ready to check out.”
Janae didn’t answer. She turned to Tasha, skirt on top of the pile now, and the two of them moved down the aisle toward the mirrors. Their heads bent together. Tasha said something low. Janae’s laugh came out quick, then stopped just as quick. They checked the stretch on a dress sleeve. They looked back once.
Mireya kept her hands busy. Fold. Stack. Align. The air in the boutique had that detergent-clean ache in the back of the throat. A heater clicked somewhere. Outside, a bus sighed at the curb and rolled on.
She watched the mirrors at the end of the row without looking like she was watching them. Janae held the skirt against her body and turned sideways. Tasha leaned in, mouth close to Janae’s ear. They were whispering. Mireya didn’t need the words. She knew the rhythm. Question. Joke. Decision. Janae kept glancing back up the aisle.
Mireya set another tank on the stack. She pressed the next shirt flat and thought about the way Janae had blinked. The small flinch. The wonder of it.
Tasha walked back first, a handful of hangers knocking soft against her wrist.
“Where y’all dressing rooms at?” she asked.
Mireya pointed with two fingers toward the back. “Second and third door on the left.”
“Appreciate you,” Tasha said, and kept moving.
Their voices dropped low again. The door to a dressing room clicked shut. A hanger scraped. Paper tags rustled. A zipper caught and then freed.
Mireya adjusted the sign that said NEW ARRIVALS, the edges curling from old tape.
The dressing room door opened. Janae stepped out in her jeans, the new skirt hooked over one finger. She didn’t put it back. She didn’t try it on either. She carried it like a decision in progress.
“Y’all good?” Mireya asked, voice easy now.
Janae’s eyes skimmed Mireya’s face, then dropped to the neat stacks, the careful edges. “We good,” she said.
She went back to Tasha and the whispering started again. Tasha laughed into her wrist. Janae shook her head and looked back one more time.
Mireya let them have the last look. She picked up the next shirt, smoothed the cotton, and set it in its place.
She watched them for a moment, then went back to folding.
~~~
The chain net clicked like teeth every time the ball dropped through. The court sat behind a low line of oaks, paint gone to chalk in the lanes, a cold river wind pushing dry leaves in slow circles across the concrete. Belle Chasse was quiet in November the way it never was in summer. No gnats, no wet heat. Just the flat slap of rubber, breath showing faint in the shade.
“Run it again,” Bird said, chin tipped up, the ball cocked against his hip like he owned it.
E.J. let out a small laugh through his nose. “You gon’ keep talkin’ or you gon’ hoop?”
He rolled his shoulders once, checked the right side of his waistband with a quick touch. Metal pressed into bone. The weight kept him honest. Kept him from jumping on rebounds or getting cute with blocks. Couldn’t risk it showing if a shirt rode up or somebody came fast from the street.
He gave the ball a hard bounce, stuttered right then slid left. Bird bit on the first move anyway, young legs fast but easy to read. E.J. let him recover, braked short, rose. The shot arced clean, kissed the rim, dropped. The sound carried across the empty park.
On the bench, Tessa had her hands sunk in the sleeves of a gray hoodie, knees angled toward the court. Blond hair tucked messy under a cap. She looked like she had been cold first and then decided to be brave about it. When the ball fell, she clapped twice, small and quick, then tucked her fingers back into her sleeves.
Bird raked the miss back out of the net and dribbled up on E.J. “Bet you can’t block this one.”
“Do it then,” E.J. said, voice lazy.
Bird drove hard to his right. E.J. slid and let the kid go by. He could’ve punched the ball free like always, but the grip of the gun nagged his skin. He played the angle instead, made Bird lay it up too high. The ball skated off the glass.
“Trash,” E.J. said, half-smiling.
“Man, whatever,” Bird panted, grabbing the rebound. He shot again, bricked again, then flopped into giggles that showed the boy trying to be older than he was.
Tessa’s phone lit her face blue, then darkened. She looked at E.J. and then at the road and then back at her shoes. He could feel her wanting to talk from across the paint.
Bird checked the ball back. “Loser take it out,” he said.
“You already took it out twice,” E.J. said. “Scoreboard say I’m up.”
Bird rolled his eyes and fired from the top of the key. The ball kissed front iron and died. He jogged after it, hands on his shorts.
“I’m tired,” he announced like that meant the game was noble and complete.
“Sit down then,” E.J. said. He tossed Bird the ball and jogged toward the bench. The wind carried the low diesel tang from the highway, that off-river smell that always lived here even when you couldn’t see the water.
He dropped down next to Tessa on the splintered plank. His arm slid along the back of the bench, easy. She leaned out of reach like the wood had a bubble line drawn on it.
“Tell her you ain’t goin’,” he said to Bird without looking, jerking his chin at Tessa. “Go ‘head, tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Tessa said, mouth twisting.
“That she shouldn’t take her goofy ass to Mississippi,” E.J. said, voice even. “Whole state full of methed out white people.”
Tessa snorted. “Louisiana full of methed out white people.” She looked past him, out at the court, like she was talking to the trees. “You act like you don’t know none.”
“Yeah,” E.J. said, “but we know where they at here. In Mississippi, they everywhere. You pull off at the wrong Dollar General and boom, now you in a horror movie. Motherfuckers playing banjos. Hill have eyes ass motherfuckers.”
Bird cackled. He set the ball on his lap and leaned forward on his knees to be in the grown conversation. “She thinks Hattiesburg fancy.”
“I didn’t say fancy,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes. “I said school. An actual one that answers emails and has a website that works.”
E.J. cut a glance at her. The soft pink had come back to her cheeks. She always got that way when the air bit a little. “Emails ain’t no reason to cross a state line.”
“It is when the schools here stop calling back,” she said. “It’s two hours. Not the moon.”
“It might as well be,” E.J. said. He stayed leaned into the bench back. Close, but not touching. He could feel the space she kept like a thin glass wall.
She nodded toward Bird. “He could come with me sometimes. There’s parks. There’s gyms. People hoop in Mississippi.”
“People die in Mississippi,” E.J. said. He said it calm. An old fact. “And out here too. I ain’t moving to die somewhere I don’t know.”
Her jaw tightened. “You think I’m asking you to die?”
“I think you asking me to not be where I need to be,” he said.
He watched the street while he said it. A truck rolled past slow, windows tinted. E.J.’s body clock did the count without effort. Plate. Pace. Where it turned. Whether the driver looked twice. They were still on the watch. Young Melph had long memories and no respect. Tessa didn’t need the details. Bird didn’t either. The gun was the only part of that conversation he let near daylight.
“Why you got that look?” Tessa asked, voice low.
“I don’t got no look,” E.J. lied.
Bird popped up. “I’m shootin’ ball again,” he announced, as if saving them all. He jogged to the free throw line and bricked on purpose to make himself laugh.
E.J. let the corner of his mouth tip toward a smile, then flattened it. He leaned in just enough that his words stayed theirs. “I’m for real. Don’t go up there. I want you here where I can keep an eye on your ass.”
Tessa shook her head. “You think everybody gonna hurt me.”
“I think everybody could,” he said.
Her eyes softened and then sharpened, like she found the part of herself that could stand up to him. “You’re not my daddy.”
“Didn’t say I was.”
She moved a fraction away. His arm stayed resting on the bench back like a streetlight that had been there before either of them sat down. The wind pushed a candy wrapper across the paint. Bird chased it with his shoe like it was a tiny animal.
“Come with me,” Tessa said again, softer this time.
E.J. looked at the court. Bird set his feet, lifted, and finally swished a clean one. The net hiccuped and settled. E.J. let it be an answer.
Tessa exhaled, almost a laugh, then rubbed her palms together to warm them. She scooted another inch away. The space felt loud.
“Tell her, Bird,” E.J. said, not looking from the court.
Bird dribbled in place, then glanced over at them, a sly grin sneaking across his mouth.
“I know y’all hunching,” he said, voice hitting the word like he had been waiting his whole life to get it off.
Tessa dropped her face in her hands. A little groan leaked through her fingers. Her shoulders shook with a laugh she tried to bury.
E.J. barked out a laugh he couldn’t stop. “Boy, what the fuck you know about any hunching?” he said, amused more than mad, the joy showing in his voice even as he tried to play the big brother.
~~~
Night settled early in November, thin cold in the air that snuck through the cracked window and made the curtain lift and fall. The TV out in the living room sang bright cartoon voices, all sugar and nonsense. Caine sat on the edge of Mireya’s bed and rubbed a line in the sheet with his thumb until the fabric pilled. He kept his eyes on the spot where the paint had bubbled at the corner near the floor.
“Reya,” he called, not loud. “Come see.”
Her steps came soft down the hall, then a pause in the doorway. She had on sweats and a big T-shirt, hair up, the tired under her eyes deep like it lived there now. She looked at him first, then past him like she was checking the corners.
“What?” she said. “Why you look so stressed?”
He let a breath go slow. “I got something to tell you.”
Her shoulders went tight under the cotton. He saw it hit her, the thought of metal and a number stitched into the fear she carried for him. Her eyes cut to his waistband, then back to his face.
“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s ball.”
She nodded once, like she allowed herself to breathe. He didn’t make her wait.
“I committed,” he said. “Georgia Southern. Today.”
Her mouth parted, then closed. He kept talking, steady, because if he stopped it would turn into something else.
“It’s Statesboro. By Savannah. Full ride. They want me there. Chance to start. Coach been on me. Compliance moving already. He asked me not to say nothing yet, but I’m telling you.”
Mireya’s hand went straight into her hair, fingers pressing like she was trying to hold something in. She turned away from him and faced the wall. The hum of the fridge in the kitchen sounded louder than it should have. From the living room, Camila laughed at something on the TV, then coughed, then laughed again.
Caine waited. The minutes stretched thin. “Say something,” he said.
She closed her eyes and licked her lips. When she opened them, everything she was holding came out hot.
“You lied to me,” she said, voice rising fast. “You said you wasn’t never leaving us. You sat right here and said that.”
“I can try to make it work so y’all come,” he said. “You and Camila.”
“Make it work?” The laugh that came out of her cracked. “So, I can pack up my whole life to follow you to some little nothing town and be stuck while you out there being a big man? So, I can be the one at home while you get tired of me and start fucking them little sorority girls? Because that’s what’s gonna happen, right? Your baby mama at home with a toddler while you out ‘starting’ or whatever and acting brand new.”
“Mireya,” he said. He kept his voice level. “It’s not that.”
“It is that.” She stepped toward him and then back, pacing two tight steps because the room was small. “I’m not giving up everything for you. I’m not getting left behind. I’m not. I got dreams too. I got school. I got work. I got a daughter who needs me. I’m not going to be the pathetic little girl that follows a boy because he says he love her. If you leave, Caine, I’m done. We’re done.”
He opened his mouth and shut it. The cartoons out there cut to a commercial, then back to bright theme music. Camila sang two nonsense words with it, happy in her own world.
Mireya pointed toward the living room, eyes bright with tears now and fury under them. “Go tell your daughter you abandoning her to play fucking football,” she said, Spanish hard on her tongue. “Anda, díselo.”
He felt that land in his chest. The words were a fist and he didn’t try to dodge. He stood up with the same quiet he used when Camila was asleep. He picked up his keys from the nightstand and the metal clicked light in his hand. He went to the doorway and paused.
“Mireya,” he said, but anything else died on his lips.
She stared at him, chest moving quick.
He walked the short hall. The carpet had a ridge in it that always caught his heel. In the living room, Camila sat with both legs tucked under her, eyes wide at the colors on the screen. A knight and a dragon, nothing that made sense. She looked up when his shadow crossed the light.
He crouched. “I love you,” he told her. His voice softened the way it only did with her. “Daddy loves you.”
Camila reached for him without looking away from the TV, a reflex of small hands. He kissed her curls, the smell of shampoo and snack and child warm in his nose. He stood, then. The door was two steps away.
Behind him, where the bedroom door was still open, Mireya made a sound like the end of something tearing. “Fuck,” she said. It came out more like a breath. Then louder. “Fuck.”
He put his hand on the knob and pulled it. The hinges complained. The night air from the stairwell was colder than inside. He shut the door behind him and the thud carried through the thin walls.
Mireya screamed. It wasn’t long. It was the size of the room. Her hand went to the lamp on the dresser, and she threw it without thinking, a sweep of arm and then the crash that followed. The bulb burst into powder and the shade skidded under the bed. The noise startled Camila and she started to cry from the living room, confused and loud. Mireya stood with her hands open and empty, chest heaving.
In the hall, feet moved. Her mother’s. Mireya knew the weight of them. She knew the pause outside the door before it swung wider, her mother reaching in without stepping over the threshold.
Maria took in the mess with one look. The broken lamp. Mireya’s red eyes. The picture frame knocked at an angle on the wall. She didn’t ask a question. She didn’t move toward her daughter. She shook her head once, tight, like a sentence without words, and kept walking down the hall to her room. The door clicked shut behind her.
Mireya stood alone with the ringing in her ears. Out front, Camila sobbed for a beat, then for two, then louder when the cartoon went to another commercial. The night pressed gentle at the window.
The air in the bedroom held dust that glittered in the streetlight. Mireya wiped at her face with the heel of her hand, then looked at the broken lamp like it was proof of something she couldn’t unsay.
