Sara was on her knees on the hardwood in the second-floor hallway outside Micaela’s room, the roll of paper towels at her hip, the spray bottle of cleaner balanced upright beside her knee where the bottle’s flat base had found a level board, and the black garbage bag pulled half-open at her other side with the lip folded down on itself to keep it open while she worked.
She dragged a rag along the seam between two boards. It came up brown at the edges where the blood had dried into the grain, the cotton picking up the residue in a long faint smear that thinned as she pulled the rag toward her hip. She dropped the rag into the bag, lifted the spray bottle, and worked the trigger once. The cleaner misted across the wood in a flat fan that beaded along the seam before it sank. She pulled a fresh rag from the stack beside her knee, wadded it against the pad of her thumb, and pressed her thumbnail down into the gap, working the cotton along the length of the joint and then back the other way.
The strand of hair at her temple had come loose from the elastic she had pulled it back with that morning. She had pushed it back twice with the back of her wrist and twice it had fallen forward again, sitting now against her cheekbone where the sweat from the work had begun to hold it in place. Her sleeves were pushed up past her elbows. The bruise on her right hand from Mireya’s grip in the delivery room was yellowing at the edges, the deep purple at the center fading toward the rim of the swelling.
She worked the rag along the seam and back. The brown came off the wood in a faint smear that grew darker at the corner where it met the next board, and she pressed her thumbnail harder into the seam to catch what had settled in the gap. She lifted the rag and looked at it. She dropped it into the bag, pulled another, pressed the trigger again, and started over.
She had been at it for two hours.
Her chest pulled a breath in. She let it out through her nose and pulled in another, this one shorter, and the next one shorter still until she was breathing in the rhythm she had been breathing in since she had carried the bucket up the stairs the night before.
She picked up another rag. The crying came and went on its own. The streaks had dried on her cheeks where she had wiped them with the back of her wrist and the new ones ran over the dried ones in fresh paths that caught the morning light coming through the window at the end of the hall.
She worked the seam along the baseboard. The wood there had soaked, the grain darker than it should have been, the white paint on the baseboard itself gone pink in a band six inches long where the blood had run off the boards and pooled at the corner. She worked it, the rag turning a faint rose in her hand as she pulled it across the paint and back, and when she lifted it the new color held in the cotton where the bleach in the cleaner had set against the dye.
She sat back on her heels. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist and it came away wet.
She gathered the lip of the bag in both hands, twisted it once, and tied a knot across the top. She pushed herself up from the floor with one hand against the wall to steady the lift. She bent and picked up the bag, the spray bottle, the roll of paper towels, and the short stack of clean rags, and carried them down the hall toward the stairs.
Her free hand trailed along the banister and the bag bumped against her thigh on every step, the weight of it shifting against the plastic in a slow sway that her hip caught and turned back into the bag with each landing.
Two other bags already sat by the front door, each of them tied at the top, each of them heavier than the one in her hand. She set the third bag down beside them on the hardwood and straightened up. She rolled her shoulder once where the muscle had bunched under the strap of her tank, picked up the third bag again by the knot to carry it out with the others, and reached for the doorknob. She turned the knob and the door pulled open.
Sena was standing on the porch with her hand still raised at chest height, knuckles loose, the wrist cocked, second of the three knocks she had meant to give still held in the muscle of her forearm.
Her hand stayed where it was for a beat past the moment the door had opened, the knuckles still loose, before her eyes dropped from Sara’s face and found the bags at her feet. The bags were in her line of sight, on the dark wet stain visible through the plastic of the closest one where the blood had soaked through the paper towels inside, on the second one tied tight at the top with the weight of it sagging the plastic against the floor. Her eyes came back up to Sara’s. Her hand lowered the rest of the way to her side.
Sara looked at her. The strand of hair was still at her cheek. The rag was still in her other hand where she had forgotten to drop it into the bag before she had come down the stairs.
“Sena, right?”
Sena nodded once.
Sara bent at the knees and lifted the bag she had just set down. She carried it past Sena set it beside the other two, the plastic settling against the wood with a soft give. She straightened up and pulled the latex gloves off her hands one at a time, folding them inward as they came off and stuffed the small balled-up pair into the front pocket of her jeans. She stepped back into the foyer and held the door open with her hip.
“Come in, mija.”
Sena stepped over the threshold. The canvas bag bumped against her thigh as she passed Sara, and her eyes went back to the bags for a single beat before Sara pushed the door closed behind her.
The foyer held the smell of the cleaner Sara had been using upstairs. It was sharp and chemical, the citrus, a note of orange. Sena’s nose moved once.
Sara walked ahead of her through the foyer. They crossed through the living room and Sena’s eyes went, once, to the throw blanket folded over the arm of the couch and then off of it to the remote that sat on the cushion.
Sara crossed to the sink, ran the water hot, pumped soap into her palms from the dispenser on the windowsill, and worked it through her fingers, between the knuckles, around her wrists, under the nails. Sena stood in the middle of the kitchen with the canvas bag still on her shoulder and her hands loose at her sides. Sara rinsed her hands under the water until the soap had all moved off her skin. She turned the water off, pulled a dish towel from the handle of the oven door, dried her hands by pressing the towel against each finger and then the heels of her palms, and turned around.
“Sit down,” Sara said. She nodded toward the stools at the island.
Sena stepped to the nearest one. She slid the bag off her shoulder and set it on the floor at her feet, sat down on the stool, and folded her hands together on the granite countertop in front of her with the thumbs resting against each other.
Sara folded the dish towel into a small square and set it on the counter between them and put her hands flat on the granite on either side of it.
“I’m sorry,” Sena said. “I should have called first. I haven’t heard from her in a few days and I just wanted to check on her. As her friend.”
Sara held her eyes for the length of a breath. “Sena. I know who you are. To Mireya.”
Sena’s mouth opened. Whatever she had been about to say stayed behind her teeth. Her hand moved a fraction on the countertop, the knuckle of her index finger pressing down against the granite as her fingers tightened around themselves.
“It’s okay, mija. I’m not telling you that to scare you. I’m telling you because I’m about to tell you something and I want you to know that you can be in this kitchen for it.”
Sena’s eyes held on Sara’s and she nodded.
Sara pulled a breath in through her nose and let it out, the air leaving her in a thin sustained stream that she held until her lungs had emptied.
“Mireya is in the hospital. She has been there for three, four days. She went into labor early and she lost a lot of blood. The baby came too early.”
Sena’s hand came up off the counter and pressed against her mouth, her fingers settling flat against her lips.
“The baby is alive. She’s in the NICU. She’s very small. They are taking care of her.”
Sena’s eyes stayed on Sara’s face.
“Mireya’s heart stopped during the delivery. They brought her back. She’s awake now.”
Sena’s other hand came up off the counter to join the first at her mouth. Her shoulders pulled in toward her ears, and her chest pulled a breath in that caught in the middle and stuttered before she pulled the next one in over it. The lower lids of her eyes had gone wet, the moisture held along the lash line where the surface tension caught it.
Sara watched her.
“You should go see her.”
Sena’s hands dropped from her mouth to the countertop and pressed flat against the granite, one on either side of where her elbows had been. Her shoulders were still drawn in.
“I—” The word caught and she swallowed and tried again. “I don’t know if she wants me there.”
“Mija. She needs you there.”
Sena held her eyes.
“My son has been at that hospital since it happened. He has not left except to go get my granddaughter and bring her back. That boy is carrying as much as he can carry. Mireya needs something to hold on to that isn’t him. Something softer than he can provide. You understand me?”
Sena’s hands stayed flat on the granite, the pads of her fingers pressing into the stone, and her chest pulled a breath in and let it out, her shoulders held in the place they had drawn to.
“I’m not asking you to go and try to compete with him. I am asking you to be what you are to her. Go be that.”
Sena’s hand moved on the countertop, her fingers spreading once against the stone and then pressing back into it.
“Okay.”
“Good,” Sara said. She picked up the dish towel from where she had set it on the counter, folded it again along the seam she had already pressed into it, and set it back down. “I would offer to fix you something, but my hands aren’t fit to touch food right now. There is food in the fridge. Help yourself to anything you find. There is coffee if you want. There’s water in the door.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat something anyway. For me.”
Sara walked around the island. She stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and the foyer and turned, one hand on the frame.
“She’s at Touro. Room 442. The NICU is on three. Tell the nurses at the desk that you are family. Don’t let them turn you around.”
Sena nodded.
Sara turned out of the doorway and her footsteps crossed the foyer and started up the stairs. They paused once at the landing, started again and went down the hall upstairs, stopping above the kitchen ceiling where Sena could track them by the floorboards. After a beat the sound of the spray bottle’s trigger came down through the wood, faint, three quick pulls in succession and then a fourth that fell on its own.
Sena sat at the island with her hands flat on the granite. The pulse in her wrist worked against the stone, her eyes fixed to the counter.
~~~
Caine sat in the chair beside the bed with his elbow on the mattress and his hand resting on top of Mireya’s on the sheet. His thumb passed once along the line of her knuckles and settled at the joint of her index finger.
Mireya was up against the pillows. The gown hung loose across her collarbones where the cotton had bunched at the tie behind her neck, and the sheet was pulled to her waist and folded once where her hands had been working it before she had let it settle. The stuffed eagle Camila had dropped the night before sat on the bedside table next to a paper cup of water with a bent straw, the bird upright now where Mireya had set it down to lean against the lamp.
A telenovela ran on the TV on the opposite wall at low volume, the audio thinned to a level that let the hum of the air conditioning come through underneath the dialogue. A woman in a kitchen was arguing with a man in a suit, her hand cutting the air between them in fast horizontals as she spoke. The man had a hand braced against the doorframe of the kitchen, his shoulders square to her, his other hand at his side. The woman’s apron was streaked with flour where she had pressed her palm against her hip, the white dust caught in the fold of the fabric and on the inside of her wrist where she had wiped a knuckle across her brow earlier in the scene.
Mireya’s eyes moved off the screen to the wall above it where a round institutional clock sat with black hands against a white face. The clock read ten past ten. She watched the screen for another beat and her eyes went back to the clock. The minute hand hadn’t moved.
Caine watched her watch the clock.
“Watching the clock gonna make it go by slower,” he said. His thumb moved on the back of her hand. “They’ll let us know if anything goes wrong.”
Mireya nodded and her eyes went back to the screen. The woman on the TV slapped the man across the face. The man caught her wrist on the follow-through and held it between them, his grip closing around the bones of her forearm. The dialogue picked up speed. Mireya’s hand turned under Caine’s on the sheet, her palm coming up against his, and her fingers threaded through his and closed.
Two knocks came at the door, quick and close together. The door pushed open a few inches and Stephanie’s head appeared at the gap.
“Hi, Mireya. Is it okay if I come in?”
Mireya’s eyes moved off the TV to the door, then to Caine.
Caine’s eyes had moved off Mireya the moment the knock had come and they were on the lanyard at Stephanie’s chest where the ID had turned with the angle of her body in the doorway. They moved from the lanyard to the line of her shoulder in the gap, then back to Mireya.
“Yeah,” Mireya said. “Come in.”
Stephanie stepped into the room and the door closed behind her with a soft catch of the latch. A manila folder was pressed flat against her chest under her crossed forearm. A small paper bag with a ribbon handle hung from her other hand, tissue paper folded over the open top and a corner of ribbon trailing across her fingers where the handle had twisted.
She crossed to the foot of the bed. Mireya picked up the remote with her free hand and pressed the mute. The woman in the kitchen was shouting silently at the man, her mouth working around words that didn’t reach the room. The flour on the apron caught the light from a window the camera had pulled wide to show.
Stephanie stopped at the foot of the bed and her hands stayed where they were, the folder against her chest, the bag at her side.
“How are you, Mireya?”
“I’m okay. I’m waiting to go see my daughter.”
Stephanie’s eyes held on her face. “I heard you’ve been able to see her.”
“I have.”
Stephanie’s eyes moved off Mireya’s face to Caine and stayed there. “I don’t think we’ve met. Are you Caine Guerra?”
He nodded once, the chin going down a fraction and coming back to level.
“I’m Stephanie. I’m a social worker here. I’ve been working with Mireya through the pregnancy. I’m checking back in with her now.”
Caine’s eyes moved off Stephanie back to Mireya. Mireya’s eyes stayed on Stephanie.
“Mireya, would it be all right if you and I talked for a few minutes? Just the two of us.”
Caine leaned in toward Mireya. His thumb moved on her hand and his voice came low against her ear, pitched to carry across the eight inches between his face and hers.
“No hables con el gobierno.”
“Ella es trabajadora social, Caine.”
“Es lo mismo.”
Mireya’s hand tightened around his. She turned her face toward him and held his eyes for the length of a breath.
“Caine. Ve a por un café. Yo estaré bien.”
He shook his head once then pushed up out of the chair, the vinyl giving under him as his weight came off the cushion, and her hand slid off his as he straightened. He bent over the bed and pressed his lips to her hairline above the temple, held them there for a beat, and straightened the rest of the way up.
He looked at Stephanie then he walked around the foot of the bed and past her to the door, pulled it open, and stepped through into the corridor.
Stephanie waited.
She let the silence sit for a beat, the muted TV running its argument on the wall and the monitor running its count on the cart and the hum of the air conditioning moving under both. Then she walked around the foot of the bed to the side where Caine had been sitting. She stood beside the chair, the folder still pressed against her chest, the bag still hanging at her side.
“Mireya. Before we get into anything else, are you safe with him?”
Mireya’s eyes were on the door where Caine had walked out. Her hand was on the sheet where his had been, the fingers loose, the palm down. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at Stephanie.
“Yes.”
“Take your time with the answer if you need it.”
“I don’t need it. He’s been here every day since I got here, since I woke up. Caine would never hurt me.”
Stephanie’s eyes held on hers then she nodded once.
“He’s like that with people he doesn’t know.”
“I understand.”
Stephanie reached past the IV pole and set the paper bag on the bedside table next to the cup of water. The tissue paper crinkled as the bag settled. She kept the folder against her chest.
“Have you named her?”
“Micaela.”
A small smile pulled at one corner of Stephanie’s mouth. “That’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you.”
“How are you doing? Really. I know things have been moving fast. You’ve been through something very traumatic.”
“I’m tired. I’m waiting to see her again. I want to hold her. They said maybe in a few days, depending on how she does.”
Stephanie nodded. “And inside. Where are you?”
Mireya’s hand that had been resting on the sheet went still under Stephanie’s gaze.
“I’m okay. I’m focused on her. I’m focused on getting better so I can take her home.”
Stephanie held her eyes. The TV ran its argument on the wall behind her, the man back in the frame now with his hand on the woman’s shoulder and the woman pulling against the grip.
“I’m going to be straight with you. The team is going to want you to do a psych eval before they discharge you. After what happened in the delivery room, especially in the postpartum window, it’s standard.”
“I figured.”
“It’s not a punishment. It’s so the people who are working with you have a clear picture of what kind of support you might need.”
“I know.”
Stephanie’s hand on the folder tapped once against the cardstock, the pad of her index finger flat against the surface and then away.
“After everything you’ve been through, Mireya. The pregnancy. The delivery. What happened to you. The NICU. Professional support is something I want you to seriously think about. Not because I think you can’t handle this. Because what you’re handling is more than most people are ever asked to handle.”
Mireya nodded. Her eyes had gone past Stephanie to the foot of the bed, on the rail where the blanket had bunched up against the metal.
“I’m going to come back and check on you in a day or two.”
Mireya nodded again.
Stephanie picked the paper bag back up off the table and held it out across the rail. “Something for your daughter.”
Mireya took the bag. Her hand closed around the ribbon handle and she lifted it across the sheet and set it in her lap. She lifted the tissue paper out by the corner, set it on the sheet beside her thigh, and looked into the bag.
A small stuffed rabbit with white fur and pink ears. A thin pink ribbon tied around its neck in a small bow that had been pressed flat in the packaging.
Mireya lifted the rabbit out by its ears. The body hung from her fingers, the small weight of it pulling the legs down toward her wrist. The fur was soft against her thumb where she ran the pad across the side of the head. The eyes were plastic, black, glossy, set close together along the muzzle.
“Thank you.”
“Take care of yourself, Mireya.”
Stephanie walked around the bed to the door.
The room held the muted TV and the monitor’s count and the hum of the air conditioning. Mireya looked at the rabbit in her hand. She turned it once in her fingers and the ribbon at its neck shifted with the motion. She brought it up against her chest, the small body pressed against her sternum where the gown bunched at the collar, the heel of her palm flat against the rabbit’s back.
Her eyes went back to the TV. The woman in the kitchen was crying now. The man was gone from the frame.
The clock above it read twenty past ten.
~~~
Caine pushed through the heavy door of the family waiting area down the hall from Mireya’s room and let it swing closed behind him on its slow hydraulic. The room was empty. Two rows of vinyl chairs ran along opposite walls, the cushions sagged at the seams where weight had been settling into them for years, and a low table sat in the middle of the floor with a stack of magazines fanned across it that nobody had touched. A coffee station against the back wall held a pot that was half full and a tower of styrofoam cups beside it that had drifted off its stack at the top.
He crossed to the window at the far end and stopped in front of it with his hand on the frame. The blinds were drawn halfway up. Downtown New Orleans laid out below in roofs and parking decks and the long bend of the river past it all, the surface of the water catching the sun in flat broken patches that moved with the current and pulled apart again as they passed under the bridge. He stood at the glass for a beat and let his eyes track across the view, the river and the bridge and the parking deck two blocks over where a man on the top level was walking between rows of cars.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and thumbed it on. The lock screen had eleven texts banked against the top edge of the display. Three from Autumn. Two from Tatum. One from Coach Riley, telling him to take the time he needs. The rest broken across the guys, each with a small chevron beside the name showing more than one message in the thread. He thumbed the lock open. Autumn’s messages opened in a column with the timestamps faint underneath them.
you good?
Caine where are you.
ok.
The first was from two days ago. The second from yesterday morning. The third from sometime in the last couple hour, the timestamp showing six minutes past nine her time.
He pulled up her contact and hit the call. He brought the phone to his ear and turned a fraction back toward the window so the river was at the edge of his vision.
The line rang three times.
The fourth ring cut and her voice came on, low and flat at the edge.
“Oh. So you are alive, nigga.”
“Autumn.”
“Three days, Caine. You don’t text, you don’t call, you don’t pick up. Nothing. And now you’re like everything is normal.”
“I’m in New Orleans.”
The line held on her end.
In Los Angeles, She was at the vanity in her bedroom at her parents’ house with a planner open in front of her and a felt-tip pen in her hand, the cap of the pen pinched between her teeth where she had set it during the last entry she had been writing. A coffee mug sat at her elbow with a lipstick mark printed on the rim and the brown of the coffee inside gone cold against the porcelain.
When Caine said he was in New Orleans, her pen stopped on the page mid-stroke and the line of ink ran a small tail beyond the notes she had been finishing.
“New Orleans.”
“Mireya delivered.”
She set the pen down on the desk, the metal of the clip tapping once against the wood as she let it go. She took the cap out of her teeth and set it down next to the pen. She turned in the chair a quarter turn so her shoulder was to the vanity and her eyes were on the carpet between her feet. Her voice came back lower than it had been at the open.
“It’s early.”
“Yeah.”
Autumn pulled a breath in through her nose and held it for a beat before she let it out. “Are they okay?”
“They alive. They both alive.”
“What does that mean.?”
He looked out the window at the river. His hand came up to his jaw, scratching at the stubble.
“Mireya, her heart stopped on the table. They got her back.”
“Jesus, Caine.”
“My daughter Micaela’s in the NICU. She’s so little.”
“Caine.”
“I been here since I got the voicemail.”
Her hand had come up to her mouth and her fingers pressed against her lips. Her eyes were on the carpet between her feet, on a spot where the weave caught the light from the pool through the window behind her in a slow shift as the surface moved under it.
She let a beat go.
“What do you need?”
He pulled a breath in and let it out before he answered. “I need a favor.”
“Okay.”
“I left from McKay. I ain’t got too much shit here at m I mama’s. I been in the same two outfits since I got off the plane.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Can you go to the penthouse, grab me some shit, bring it down here?”
“Why don’t you just buy new stuff?”
“I don’t got time to go to a store. I don’t want to lug a bunch of new shit around.”
“You are in a hospital. There are stores in the same building. You don’t have to lug anything if you order it to the hospital.”
He snorted a laugh, the sound short and dry in the empty waiting area, and his shoulder came off its angle against the window frame.
“Autumn.”
“Even in a crisis you can’t stop being weird.”
The laugh came out of him again, longer this time, pulling through his chest and stopping at the edge of the rest of it. He shook his head once at the window.
“So you gonna do it?”
She picked the pen up off the desk and set it back down. She looked at the planner. The morning was laid out in time blocks, two of them marked gym in her own shorthand and one of them marked an errand at her father’s downtown office that Garrison had asked her to handle when he had gotten back from Sacramento. She ran her thumb across the page, the pad of it brushing the ink she had laid down an hour before, and then she closed the planner with the flat of her palm.
“I’ll do it.”
“Thank you. I’m gonna call Alvaro and tell him to let you up. And whatever the ticket is, whatever the bag fee is, whatever the car to the airport is, send it to me.”
“I never expected to pay for that shit, nigga. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
He laughed again. “Alright. Alright.”
He ran his free hand back through his dreads, the pads of his fingers moving from his front hairline to the nape of his neck and pausing there with the weight of his hand resting against the muscle.
She let the line sit. Her eyes had stayed on the planner, her hand flat on the leather cover.
“I’m sorry. About all of it.”
He pulled a breath in and let it out against the receiver. “Thank you.”
“I’ll text you from the penthouse so you know I got everything you want.”
“Alright.”
The line held on both ends for a beat then she ended the call. The phone screen lit once in his hand against his ear then went dark. He brought the phone down off his face and looked at the screen until it dimmed.
He stayed at the window with his free hand on his jaw. The river moved past the rooftops in its slow bend and the patches of sun moved with it.
~~~
Caine sat in the chair beside the bed with his lower back slid down against the cushion, his legs stretched out across the linoleum and his ankles crossed at the foot of the bed frame, his head resting back against the upper edge of the chair where the vinyl had gone warm under the weight of him. The room sat in the low warm pull of the lamp and the moving wash of the television on the wall opposite the bed, the colors shifting across the painted drywall and the curtain rod as the picture changed.
Mireya was up against the pillows, her shoulders cushioned and her hands folded together on the sheet over her stomach.
They were watching another episode of a telenovela as they had been all day. A woman in a long coat walked down a dim hallway with a phone pressed to her ear, the volume turned down to a level that let the dialogue carry across the room in fragments under the hum of the air conditioning. She reached a door at the end of the hall and paused with her hand on the knob, her body angled toward the wood, her ear still pressed to the phone.
Caine’s eyes were half-closed. His breathing had gone slow, the cotton of his shirt rising and falling against the rail of the chair in a rhythm that had pulled long enough that it sat under the rhythm of the monitor on the cart at Mireya’s shoulder.
Mireya watched him watch the screen. Her eyes moved across the line of his jaw where the stubble had come in at the corners, the dreads pulled back loose at the base of his neck where he had tied them off with a band, the line of his shoulder where it pressed against the cushion and the slow rise of his chest under the shirt. She let her eyes hold on him for a beat longer than she meant to.
“Caine.”
His eyes opened and his head turned a fraction on the cushion of the chair back. The lamp light caught the side of his face and the lower lid of his eye where the red had settled in along the inner edge.
“You good? You need me to get you something?”
Mireya shook her head, slow, the strands of hair at her temple shifting against the pillowcase with the motion. She held the silence for a beat, her eyes on his face.
“Can I tell you something?”
Caine pulled himself up a few inches in the chair, his palm pressing once against the armrest to lift his weight, his shoulders settling higher against the cushion. His hand came up and rested on the mattress next to her thigh.
“Yeah. Just prepare me first if it’s wild.”
Mireya snorted a laugh. The sound moved through her chest and she pressed her lips together to keep it from running longer, the corners of her mouth pulling once before they settled.
“It’s not wild like that.”
“Alright.”
She looked down at her hands on the sheet. Her fingers were laced together over the place where the bump had been until a week ago, the knuckles of one hand pressed against the back of the other, her thumbs resting along each other.
“Te guardé rencor durante mucho tiempo. For football. For what it gave you. For what people gave you because of it.” She let the words sit. Her eyes stayed on her hands. “I felt like I was always second best. Second to you. Second to football. Second to Camila. Second to everyone else. Like nothing I ever did made me first for anyone.”
Her eyes stayed on her hands.
“Mireya, sabes que eso no es cierto. It ain’t never been true with me.”
She shook her head. “You know how I came up, Caine. I never believed that. Nunca creí que me lo mereciera.”
Caine pulled his legs back from the foot of the bed frame, his ankles uncrossing, his feet finding the linoleum in front of the chair. He sat forward, his elbow coming to the mattress next to her hip.
“I knew you felt that way back when we was in high school. When Mr. Landry started helping me with the ACT.”
Mireya’s eyes came up off her hands. Her eyebrow pulled a fraction toward her hairline.
“Los dos somos testarudos. Los dos nos mantenemos firmes. Only difference between you and me was people kept stepping in to help me. Coaches. Mr. Landry. They saw me because of football. Or because I was a young Black boy they needed to help for them, you know?” He paused, the lamp light catching the side of his face where it angled toward her. “Nadie se ofrecía a ayudarte. Lo vi. Lo intenté, pero lo que hacía nunca iba a ser suficiente.”
Mireya’s chest pulled a breath in. The cotton of the gown lifted at the collar and settled.
“I saw it then. I see it now. Nunca pensé que estuvieras por debajo de nadie.”
The lower lids of her eyes went wet. The moisture sat along the lash line for a beat and she blinked once, the lashes pressing together and pulling apart, and a single tear caught on the lower lash on her right eye.
“Lo siento. Por haberte guardado rencor. For carrying it around all these years.”
“Mireya.”
“Camila felt it. I know she did. She felt that energy around her every day of her life y me odio a mí mismo por ello.”
Caine pulled a breath in and started to speak. Mireya shook her head once.
“Let me finish.”
He nodded.
“I don’t want that around Camila anymore. I don’t want it around Micaela. I don’t want to be the mother who carries that.” Her voice caught on the next word and she held it in her chest for a beat before she pushed it out. “No quiero ser como María, deseando la muerte a sus hijas porque estoy enojada por no haberlo logrado..”
His jaw worked once at the hinge, the muscle pulling tight under the skin and holding before it released
The telenovela ran on the wall behind him. The woman in the coat was inside the apartment now. The man she had come to see was at the kitchen counter with his back to her, his hands flat on the countertop, his shoulders set against whatever was coming.
Caine’s eyes stayed on Mireya’s.
Mireya watched him, the silence between them ran the length of three breaths and into the start of a fourth. The drip clicked once into the cannula at her wrist.
“You don’t need to worry about Maria, Caine.”
“¿Estás seguro?”
She nodded.
“Maria is going to be Maria until the day she dies. I’m not going to be her. That’s the only piece of it that’s mine to hold.”
Caine’s jaw worked again. He pulled another breath in through his nose and let it out, slow, the air leaving him in a thin sustained stream.
“Alright.”
She held his eyes for a beat longer. Her thumb moved once against the back of her other hand on the sheet, the pad of it passing across the joint of her index finger and settling.
“Gracias por dejarlo todo y venir hasta aquí. For being here every day. For sleeping in that chair.”
Caine shook his head, the dreads moving once against the cushion of the chair back behind him.
“Mi amor. You ain’t gotta thank me for none of that. I was gonna be here for Micaela being born no matter what. Y ya te lo dije, ahora te tengo a ti. Yo me encargo de todo. Me, you, Camila and Micaela.”
Mireya nodded. The corner of her mouth pulled a fraction and let go.
Caine sighed. “I just wish the food in this bitch wasn’t dog shit. I been feeling guilty getting UberEats every night.”
The laugh came up out of her before she had set herself for it. It moved through her chest in a wave, her shoulders moving with it, the cotton of the gown shifting at the collar. Her hand came up off the sheet and pressed against her mouth, the fingers settling flat against her lips to hold the sound where it was, and her chest kept moving under the cotton with the run of the laugh past where she had tried to stop it.
A smile started at one corner of his mouth and pulled across to the other, the lamp light catching the lift of his cheek.
Mireya lowered her hand from her mouth. Her eyes were still wet at the lash line but the laugh had settled into her chest and the rhythm of her breathing had come back to the slow pull it had held before. She turned her face back toward the wall and the screen.
Caine eased back into the chair. His shoulders settled against the cushion and his head went back to where it had been against the upper edge, his legs stretching out across the linoleum until his ankles crossed at the foot of the bed frame again.
The telenovela ran. The woman in the coat was shouting at the man at the counter now, her free hand cutting the air between them, her phone hanging at her side. The man wasn’t turning around. His hands stayed where they had been on the countertop.
Mireya’s hand came off the sheet and found Caine’s. Her fingers threaded through his and closed. Caine’s thumb settled against the back of her hand.
