The TV hummed low from the living room, colors washing over Camila’s face as she tucked her knees under a throw and watched cartoons with the kind of focus adults forgot how to have. A bowl of crackers sat untouched at her hip. Every so often she laughed in a single burst and then went quiet again. The AC pushed tired air that smelled faintly of last night’s fried rice.
Mireya sat at Elena’s kitchen table with the cold sweat from a water bottle sliding down her fingers. The laminate had a scratch through the middle that her nail kept finding. Elena perched across from her, one leg folded under, the other swinging, chipped nail polish bright against the chair.
“What’s it been like?” Elena asked. “Living by yourself now.”
Mireya shrugged and took a drink. The water wasn’t cold enough. “Pretty much the same as before,” she said. “Just quiet. I don’t hear my mom walking around at night. And Caine ain’t gonna be popping up any time soon.”
Elena nodded, mouth pulling into a small oh. Her eyes flicked toward the couch where Camila sat with her chest tipped forward, pulled toward the screen. “How’s she dealing with him not being around?”
Mireya glanced over. Camila’s curls were wild from the humidity. “Not good,” she said. “I’m thinking about taking her back to Georgia before her birthday. So, she doesn’t have to wait as long.”
“You’re doing her birthday out there?”
“That’s what she asked for.”
Elena low-whistled. “Damn, girl. I ain’t know cleaning floors paid like that. You driving out there whenever you want?”
Mireya snorted, a sound more breath than laugh. She twisted the bottlecap until it clicked. “If you only knew.”
They let the silence sit a second. The cartoon changed scenes and the theme song chimed two bars before dropping into chatter. Camila leaned left to reach a cracker, missed, and let her hand fall without looking.
A knock hit the front door—quick, then another like it was already permission. The door swung in halfway and Kike poked his head through.
“¿Qué onda?” he said, spotting them at the table before stepping all the way in. He wore work pants dusted gray and a shirt with a print of a movie gangster stretched thin across his chest.
His eyes swept the room and landed on Elena. “¿Dónde está Tío Luis?”
Elena tipped her chin toward the hall. “Sleeping.”
Kike nodded. “Wake him up. We gotta go. They waiting.”
Elena rolled her eyes big enough for him to catch it. She stood anyway, scraping the chair back, and headed down the hall.
The house held that small pause that came when another person left a room. Kike dragged a chair out with his foot and sat across from Mireya.
“What’s up, prima?” he said, smile lazy.
Mireya rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m your cousin again now that you figured out I ain’t gon’ fuck you?”
He lifted a shoulder, unfazed. “Cousins fuck, too.”
“That’s fucking gross,” she said, flat.
He laughed. “Speaking of—” He leaned back, balancing on the back legs until the chair creaked. “You hear Jamie shut the yard down for the rest of the month?”
“For what?”
“Either somebody tried to carjack Leo and shot him in the hand,” Kike said, eyes bright with the telling, “or he got his dumb ass stuck in a machine. Either way, la policia been there. And Leo, le falta la mitad de su mano.”
Mireya didn’t let anything shift in her face. She touched a ring of condensation her bottle had made and wiped it with her thumb. “Damn. That’s crazy.”
“Right?”
“Should’ve read all them posters about lock out, tag out,” she said. “Make sure he ain’t become a statistic.”
Kike barked a laugh. “Leo ain’t do no work to get shit caught in shit.”
From the couch, Camila glanced back at the noise, then turned to the TV again and hummed along with a commercial jingle she didn’t know the words to. The AC clicked off and the house grew too quiet in the seconds after.
Elena reappeared in the doorway, arms crossed. “Mi papa said to come back later.”
Kike shook his head. “They expecting us now.”
“El dijo que después,” Elena said, and she dropped back into her chair like that was the end of it. Her knee bumped the table. The salt shaker rattled.
Kike stood, annoyed but smoothing it over. He turned toward the door and then paused, eyes sliding back to Mireya like he had remembered a joke he wanted to tell at the threshold.
“You gon’ go check on your güero?” he asked, grin tilted.
“I’m good,” she said.
He chuckled, opened the door with a push from two fingers, and stepped out into the heat. The door shut on the tail of his laugh.
Elena watched the empty space where he’d been, then looked at Mireya. “What was that about?”
Mireya twisted the cap back onto the bottle until it bit. “Workplace accidents.”
~~~
Ramon had the TV black, the room holding the soft buzz of a window unit that only moved the heat around. The pistol sat on the coffee table, muzzle turned at the wall, the finish dull from a wipe-down that still left a faint solvent smell under the citrus cleaner Nina swore by. His phone lay faceup beside it, the cracked corner catching light. Under both, Leo’s phone sat a flat, swallowed thing, powered on but quiet, the “find my” already off and nothing else touched. He’d killed the ping and set it there when he got back, then let it be until the morning.
He hadn’t asked Mireya for the long version. She’d texted what mattered. Predator. Chomo. That was the word. He didn’t need the rest. The part where she’d said don’t tell Caine hit sideways—sounded wrong—but he wasn’t in the business of being in other people’s relationships. He stayed out of what didn’t belong to him.
Water clunked through the coffee maker in the kitchen. Nina came out of the bedroom with steam on her shoulders, hair wrapped high in a towel, another cinched at her chest. She padded past in house slides, stopped by the counter, then glanced toward the door at the low shoe rack.
“Hey,” she said, voice careful from a morning where the light felt loud, “you know where those nude flats I just bought are?”
Ramon didn’t look over right away. “Nah,” he said. “I ain’t seen them.”
She drifted to the rack, leaned in, started checking pairs. Flip-flops, sneakers, a pair of heels still in tissue. Her hand touched his sneakers and she lifted one. The rubber was scuffed dark. There was a brown smear dried along the edge where the sole met the leather.
“Is this blood on your shoe?”
He raised his eyes. She held it up between two fingers. He didn’t say anything.
“Is it?” she asked again, and the way her mouth set said she already knew.
Ramon tipped his chin once toward the table. “What answer you want that’s gonna make you feel better?”
She stared at him through a beat that scraped. “Did you kill anybody?”
“No.”
“That the truth,” she said, “or the feel-better answer?”
“The truth.”
The AC ticked and caught. She kept the shoe up a second more, then put it back like it was hot. She bent to grab her own flats from a box by the door and straightened without looking at him.
“I’m making coffee,” she said. “You want a cup or you already on edge enough?”
“I’m good.”
Ramon sat back deeper into the couch and let the cushion take weight he hadn’t noticed. The living room smelled like bleach and last night’s onions. Outside, a siren rose and sank, farther than usual. He slid a finger along the pistol’s slide to make sure the safety sat how he’d left it, nudged it so the barrel pointed farther away from the room.
A notification popped at the edge of Leo’s screen where it lay under his, bright enough to reach through the tinted glass. Snapchat. A girl’s name. Little heart next to it. He stared at the light, then reached over and thumbed the side button until it went black. He set his own phone back on top like a lid, then lifted the remote.
He scrolled past the smiling host, past a local weather loop, past a rerun half-dubbed, and found ESPN. The ribbon of scores crawled. An anchor laughed at nothing. Ramon set the volume low, enough to make the room feel normal, and leaned back.
In the kitchen Nina poured. The smell sharpened. She didn’t bring him a cup. He didn’t ask. The day felt thin and long, the kind that stretched until a man looked at a clock and realized it had only been ten minutes.
He let the sports noise fill the space and left Leo’s phone under his, facedown, quiet, the light gone like nothing had ever asked to be seen.
~~~
The kitchen lights hummed over the stainless sinks. Bleach sat in the damp air, mixed with the sweet-sour of juice and the ghost of chicken nuggets from lunch. Caine shouldered the door with his hip and stepped in from the hall, the rubber soles of his shoes giving a tired squeak on tile. He peeled off his blue gloves and wadded them, then tucked them into his back pocket out of habit.
Laney stood at the sink with her sleeves pushed to the elbows. Water ran steady over a stack of kid-sized forks and cups. The spray tapped against metal and the clink of plastic made a small rhythm. A cardboard box sat open on the counter near the microwave, the flaps turned back to show bread, canned fruit, rice, and a family pack of chicken wrapped tight. Condensation beaded the plastic and slipped.
Laney cut her eyes over when she heard him, then tipped her chin toward the box. “That’s for you,” she said. “From my daddy.”
Caine came up to the counter, set his palms on either side of the box, and looked through what was stacked inside. He felt the weight of the chicken to judge it. “Y’all think I’m poor, poor, huh?”
His mouth pulled into a quick grin that didn’t aim to hurt. The cardboard smelled faintly of cold meat and dust.
“It’s Godly to give to those in need,” Laney said. The faucet hissed as she rinsed suds from a tray. “If it makes you feel better, he gives Mr. Charlie whatever he, Caleb, and my husband bring back from huntin’.”
Caine chuckled from his chest. “Makes me feel a lot better ‘cause I like my food from a grocery store. I don’t need it looking at me.”
Laney shut the water and shook her hands once over the sink before reaching for a towel. She turned, the towel working slow at her fingers. She wasn’t standing close to him. Still, she took half a step back, the kind a person took without thinking. Her mouth eased, but her eyes stayed watchful. “You ever gone huntin’ before?” she asked. “Or even just shootin’.”
“Huntin’, no.”
She lifted an eyebrow, catching that he had answered only part. She let it live in the air and didn’t press. She set the towel down and dragged it across a wet line on the counter. “What do you even do with yourself then? When you got time.”
He shrugged, palms braced on the counter, shoulders loose from the day’s work. “Wasn’t much beside my kid, her mom, work, and football back home.”
“You still with your daughter’s mother?”
His eyebrow went up at that. “Nah. She ain’t like that I came out here.” He tipped his chin at her. “That a problem? I know with religion and all.”
Laney shook her head. The towel kept moving, pushing a circle of water to the sink’s lip. “Just wanted to make sure my sister wasn’t helpin’ a young man cheat on a child’s mother, too.”
“Oh, you know about that?”
She nodded like the weather had confirmed it. “That’s between you and Rylee Jo. Mama ain’t gon’ care one way or the other, but I can’t say the same for my daddy, so try to keep that a secret.”
Caine’s laugh came out through his nose before he could stop it. He bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head once. The box rustled as he shifted it an inch. Laney looked up.
“What?”
He gave a small shrug. “That’s not the reaction I would’ve expected from you after what you told me about the girls working the daycare.”
Laney slid the box a little so she could wipe the counter under it. “Rylee don’t work here,” she said, plain. “And thank God Himself for that. Good night, Caine.”
“Good night, boss lady,” he said, then added. “Tell Pastor Hadden, I said thank you.”
She only nodded.
Silence set down for a second. The hum from the soda fridge filled it, and a laugh from somewhere in the hall bounced once and faded. Caine ran his thumb along the corrugated edge and glanced at the folded list tucked between cans. Milk. Eggs. Bread. Sugar. The handwriting sat neat and careful.
Laney wrung the towel and hung it on the sink edge just so. She had kept the space between them measured. He could feel it without looking at her.
He shouldered the door with care so the latch didn’t slam and carried the box outside, the cardboard edges catching against his jeans as he went. The fluorescent buzz followed him to the exit, and the warm air pressed against his face when he stepped outside.
~~~
The room hummed with vents and the soft beep of a monitor tucked behind Leo’s shoulder. Harsh light pressed against the white walls. He lay propped up, wrist swaddled, the cast running to his forearm. He kept lifting the hand, turning it a few inches either way, pulling it back into the halo of light as if the angle might change what was there.
Index. Thumb. The rest gone under stiff layers.
He remembered the raw picture better than the clean one. The burst of heat. The sudden wrongness. Middle and ring gone in a red spray. Pinky holding on by stringy meat that wouldn’t obey. The way sound folded in on itself after. The taste of metal in the back of his throat that stayed through the night.
His wife sat close enough to touch him but angled away, legs crossed, phone up. Short videos spilled air into the room. Laughter from strangers. A beat that stuttered. She glanced over, mouth a straight line, then sank back into the scroll. Her thumbnail tapped the glass in a steady rhythm.
The gauze itched. He pressed the edge of his cast to the sheet, chasing relief he couldn’t reach. The nurse had given him ice water and a button that fed fog through a tube. He didn’t push it. The fog made the edges blur and then the image of his hand came back sharper. He let the pain sit, a mean dog he knew by name.
Boots hit the floor outside before the knock. Two NOPD officers stepped in, belts heavy, shirts wrinkled from the day. One Black, one white, both carrying the tired look that came with fluorescent halls. They gave their names and the white one set a card on the tray as if this were a normal visit. The Black one lifted a small notebook.
“How you feeling, Mr. Ardoin?”
He didn’t answer. The hand hung up there in the light. He watched the place where middle should be, tried to feel where it had been. The pulse fluttered under tape. He breathed.
They tried again. Where had it happened? What time? Who else was there? Was there an argument? Did he know the person? Was it a robbery? The words stacked without edges. He let them make a pile by the door.
His wife muted her phone. Her eyes followed the officers and then slipped back to the screen. A dog in a costume ran into a wall and she huffed a small laugh. Leo looked at his thumb and made it touch the index in a slow pinch. The rest would never meet again.
“Mr. Ardoin, we want to help,” the white officer said. “We just need something to go on.”
Leo looked past him to the blank TV screwed to the wall. The TV had a red dot on a sticker that said serviced last year. He thought of the last thing he had eaten. He couldn’t remember chewing it.
The Black officer took a step closer. “You said last night it was dark. But if you can give us any detail at all.”
He hadn’t said much last night. He had been inside the bright circle they cut around you when they roll fast from the ambulance, the ceiling tiles moving like cards. He had held on to the image of his hand so hard that his teeth ached.
He let the hand drop and felt the weight at the end of his arm pull different now. He lifted it again, slow, held it there, and finally let his eyes leave it. He met their faces. He saw in them a question and the promise of more questions.
“It was a white guy,” he said. His voice sounded stiff, scraped on the way out. “Blonde hair. Old. Dirty. Probably homeless. Missing some teeth. Guessing from meth.”
Silence stretched in the room. His wife looked up for real this time, then down again when neither officer moved.
The two men glanced at each other. It was quick and full. The notebook hovered. “Are you sure?” the Black officer asked.
Leo nodded once and let his gaze return to the hand. The monitor kept its patient beat. The phone in his wife’s palm lit her face blue. He found the point where the gauze curved over nothing and stared until the rest of the room fell away.
