Soul Kiss (18 page)

"Your mami, she's a good person. You need anything, you call me." Oscar pulled a business card out of his back pocket. Over Daniel's shoulder I saw that it read
Oscar Hernandez, Graphic Design
, with a website and a phone number.

Daniel looked down at the card and the box, and I did, too. When we both looked up, Oscar was gone.

I walked over and closed the front door, locking it and throwing the deadbolt. "Daniel. We really have to call the police now. Something could have happened to your mother."

He shook his head. "She always told me no police. I remember when I was in third grade, a police officer came to our school to make a presentation and gave us all these little fake badges. I was so proud, I wore mine home. My mother took it away from me and told me I should never, ever trust the police."

"She must have meant back in Cuba," I said. "The police are here to protect us."

"Maybe you. Not people like me and my mother."

I was really starting to get freaked out. First Daniel's mother running away, then the robbery, the gangbanger, and now this feeling that he couldn't trust the cops. The only think I could think of to say was "What's in the box?"

Daniel tugged on the combination lock. "I don't know."

"Open it, then."

"I don't have the combination." His voice was sharp and I could see he was on the verge of tears. I took his hand and led him over to the kitchen table. He put the box down on the table as I picked up the chairs.

We sat down next to each other, the box in front of us. It was an old lock, probably just three numbers to open it. "What's your birthday?" I asked.

"January 21."

I took the lock and started fiddling with it, trying as many combinations of his birthday as I could. Nothing.

"Think, Daniel. What else could it be?"

We tried his mother's birthday, and his father's, and their anniversary.

"I don't know," he said. "Why would she leave me this box and not the combination? And where is she? Is she all right?"

I reached over and hugged him. "I'm here. I'm going to help you."

He started to cry, and I let him rest his head against my shoulder and cry until he couldn't anymore. Then he leaned back against his chair and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

I managed to flip the lock over and look at the back. There was Spanish writing there. "What does this mean?" I asked.

He looked at it. "Just the name of the company that made it."

"So your Mom brought it from Cuba with her?"

He shrugged. "I guess so."

Then his eyes lit up, and he grabbed the box from me. He twirled a combination on the lock and it popped off the hinge. "What did you do?"

"I remembered something my mom said. How I should always remember the day and time we left Cuba. December fifteenth at two o'clock. I never knew why she kept reminding me of that. But the combination for the lock is twelve-fifteen-two."

We both looked at the box. "Well, we'd better open it." I reached out, but Daniel took my hand.

"I'll do it." He lifted the lid and we both peered inside at a pile of papers.

"It's my old Cuban passport." Daniel lifted it out of the box. It was all written in Spanish, with a picture of six-year-old Daniel. His mother's old passport was just below it.

Under that were a bunch of what looked like ID cards. A whole pile of them. Daniel fanned them out on the kitchen table in front of us. There were new ones for every year, with Daniel's picture changing. But there was something wrong.

"That's not your name," I said, pointing. Though the cards all had pictures of Daniel and his mother, none of them showed the same name, though they all had pictures of Daniel and his mother. "These are fake IDs."

"Strange." He dug into the box again, pulling out some faded pictures from Cuba, of Daniel and his mom and dad when he was little. Some paperwork, all in Spanish, and a yellowed clipping from a Spanish-language newspaper. About two hundred dollars, in tens and twenties. And a single piece of paper with the name Egidio Lopez and an address in Miami.

"Who's that?" I asked.

He shrugged. "No idea. Never heard the name before."

"Maybe he's a friend of your mom's, or a relative." I pulled out my cell phone and called directory assistance for Miami, and asked for a phone number for Egidio Lopez. A recording told me, "At the request of the customer, that number is not published."

"Not helpful," I said to the phone.

"What am I going to do?" Daniel asked.

It was weird to see him so uncertain. "You can't stay here by yourself," I said. "Leave a note for your mom with my cell phone number. You can come stay at my house."

"I shouldn't."

I opened my phone and called home. "Mom, Daniel's mom had to go away suddenly. Is it okay if he comes over to stay?"

"She just left without making arrangements for him?"

"He's seventeen, Mom. I guess she figured he could take care of himself." I started spinning the story, trying to hit an angle my mom would go for. "But she had to go so fast she couldn't leave any food behind. And you know Daniel doesn't have a car or a license. He won't have anything to eat."

"Fine. He can come over here. But make sure his mother knows where he is."

"Thanks, Mom."

I looked at Daniel. "See? Just leave her a note. She may not come back until late, and she wouldn't want you staying here by yourself anyway, not after what happened."

"I should try and clean up before we go," he said.

"I'll help." I neatened up the living room while he tidied his mother's bedroom and his own.

By the time I was finished, he came out to the living room with an old camouflage rucksack. "I put some clothes in, in case she doesn't come back for a couple of days."

"Good idea."

I went over and hugged him. "It'll be all right, Daniel. You'll see."

We locked the apartment and I drove us over to my house, neither of us saying anything. When we got there, my mom grilled Daniel on where his mother was, but he didn't have to lie. He said he just didn't know, and he was so obviously upset that my mom believed him.

The Big Mistake and I each had a pair of twin beds in our rooms, in case we ever wanted to have sleepovers. I'd had a bunch, when I was little, though the Big Mistake never had. "Daniel can have the extra bed in Robbie's room," my mom said.

"Is that okay?" Daniel asked Robbie. "I can sleep on the sofa."

"It's all right with me," Robbie said.

We all went to bed a little later. It was weird knowing that Daniel was just on the other side of the wall, instead of way across town in his own apartment. In the morning, my dad made us all gluten-free Belgian waffles topped with strawberry jam. I couldn't help feeling that I could have made them better. But I kept my mouth shut.

"These are very good, Mr. Torani," Daniel said. "Thank you for taking me in."

"I hope you hear from your mother soon," my father said. "I can see why you'd be worried."

"I left her my cell number," I said. "So she can call as soon as she gets home."

"You want to play Xbox?" Robbie asked Daniel when we were finished breakfast.

"Sure," Daniel said.

"Don't you have to work at ComputerCo today?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Only every other Sunday now. Sales are down so they're cutting back."

I was pissed that the Big Mistake was appropriating my boyfriend, but I couldn't say anything without seeming whiny. Instead I sat in my room with my iPod plugged in, listening to music while I read our history homework.

Daniel's mother didn't call. At dinner, my mom said Daniel should plan to stay until we heard from her.

"Thank you, Mrs. Torani. I really appreciate it."

"Melissa, you could learn more than just how to read quickly from Daniel," my mother said. "He knows how to be polite."

I glowered at her but didn't say anything.

Daniel's mother didn't call Sunday night or any time on Monday. Since Daniel was coming to my house, we decided to skip studying in the library and go right home.

My mother had left a frozen chicken in a big dish in the refrigerator, with directions to put it in the oven when I got home. But I couldn't just do what she asked; that wasn't me. Since I had some time, I poured some kosher salt into a big pot and left the chicken to brine there while I chopped up some carrots and onions to go in with it.

Daniel sat at the kitchen counter and watched me. "What if she's dead?" he asked, as I scrubbed potatoes. "What if whoever broke into our apartment killed my mom?"

"I think you should call the police," I said. "At least you could report her missing, so if anything happens they would know." I had this terrible vision of poor Mrs. Florez lying dead somewhere, no one knowing who she was. I had seen a bunch of shows on TV like that, where the police had a body they couldn't identify.

But I didn't want to upset Daniel even further by saying that. And I could see that he was reluctant to make the call. Sometimes not knowing is better than knowing, I guess.

I scattered the vegetables in the bottom of the roasting pot and washed my hands. "I need to get something from my room," I said. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

Where did they take dead people, I wondered as I walked down the hall. The morgue, right? I would call the morgue and see if anyone had brought Mrs. Florez there. I found the phone number online, and used my cell phone to call, closing my bedroom door so Daniel couldn't overhear me.

"Hi, I'm wondering if you have any dead ladies there," I said, when a woman picked up. "Her name is Mrs. Florez, but you might not know that."

"Who's calling?"

"I'm a friend of her son," I said. "He's really worried about her."

"Hold on." I listened to some of that gentle jazz music while I was on hold. If I'd been an upset person I probably would have gotten even worse from that crap.

A man got on the phone. "Can you describe the woman you're looking for?"

I thought back to Mrs. Florez, and once again I had a clear picture of her in my head. "Maybe five-foot-seven, about a hundred twenty pounds," I said. "Black hair. Like thirty-five years old?"

I heard him typing, then he said, "Sorry, no one by that name, or matching that description. Have you called the police?"

"I will." I hung up. Phew. At least Daniel's mother wasn't dead. Well, maybe she was but the police didn't know yet. Or maybe she was dead somewhere else; they had to have morgues in a bunch of places, like Philadelphia or even New York.

I went back to the kitchen. The pot full of salty water and chicken was really heavy, and Daniel had to help me pour the water down the drain. "Why are you doing this?" he asked me, as I rinsed the chicken under the faucet.

"The salt molecules go into the cells of the chicken and break down the protein in the meat. That lets more water get into the chicken."

I started patting the chicken dry with a bunch of paper towels. "When you roast it, the heated protein starts to draw in tighter and squeeze out the water. So the more water there is to start with, the more that's left in the chicken after the roasting, which makes the meat moister and more tender."

I put the chicken into the pot with the vegetables and sprinkled some water over everything. "There's more stuff about the pressure of the salt water but I got bored once I figured out the basics."

"Cool," he said. "Have you been reading cookbooks?"

"Just one, about the science behind cooking. It's a lot more interesting than just reading recipes. But the guy has a tendency to drone on, though."

We studied while the chicken roasted. At dinner, my mom was impressed at how good the chicken was, but that didn't distract her from worrying about Daniel's mother. "Has she done this kind of thing before?" she asked.

Daniel shook his head. "Never."

She put her fork down. "Why don't you tell us what happened, exactly."

"She got a call from someone and she left," Daniel said. "She wouldn't tell me who called or what it was about."

"And you haven't heard from her since?"

He shook his head. I noticed that he wouldn't look at anyone, just down at his plate.

"That sounds very worrying," my mother said. "We should call the police. She could have had an accident and not be able to get in touch with you."

That was exactly what I had been telling Daniel since Saturday night, so I was glad he was hearing it from someone other than me.

"She may just be distracted, Caroline," my father said. "I'm sure she knows what a good boy Daniel is." He looked over at Daniel and smiled. "I'll bet she trusts you a lot."

I could sense Daniel's confusion. On the one hand, this was such strange behavior from his mother that he had to be worried. But she had told him over and over again not to call the police if anything happened, and so he didn't know how to react.

Fortunately, my dad shifted the conversation to me. "This chicken is delicious, Melissa. If your mom doesn't watch out you might be taking over all the cooking duties in the house."