The Book of Broken Hearts (32 page)

Please, Papi,
I thought.
Please let’s go for sundaes.

“We’ll deal with this mess later.” I stood from the couch and waited for him to follow. “Ready?”

“No,
queridita
. I’m not hungry anymore.”

“How about Scrabble? I haven’t let you beat me in a while.” I grabbed the game box from the shelf under the coffee table, but Papi didn’t budge.

He wouldn’t leave the couch, wouldn’t look up from the floor.

“Western Channel?” I reached for the remote, but he shook his head.

“Okay. Let’s go outside at least. We can peek in on Valentina,” I said cheerfully. “Emilio says she’s almost ready.”

Papi squinted, his nose wrinkling. “Who’s ready?”

“Valentina.”

“Your sister lives in New York,
querida
.”

“Not Araceli,” I said. “The motorcycle. Valentina.”

He waved me off and slumped back on the couch. “Valentina doesn’t have a motorcycle. She’s too young.”

Our kitchen was a war zone to match our yard—black holes and gutted walls around the stove, broken dishes on the counter. I poked around the house and opened the rest of the windows, turned the fans to full blast, splashed my face with cold water at the bathroom sink. I wanted to crawl into bed, wake up later to the news that this whole thing was a dream.

But I knew it wasn’t, and I couldn’t leave Papi alone again.

“You want something to drink?” I asked when I got back to the living room. “Lemonade? Maté?”

He shook his head, but his eyes were fixed on the wall over the television, scanning the photos that had hung there for all eternity, now complete with labels.

DAUGHTER LOURDES, ROAD TEST.

DAUGHTER MARIPOSA, HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION.

DAUGHTER ARACELI, COLLEGE GRADUATION.

DAUGHTER JUDE, SMILING.

Smiling
. I was, too. It was summer; I was maybe ten. I’d just caught a fish, a rainbow trout, and I held it up to the camera with pride.

There was no real sound in our house now. Only the soft whir of the fans and a stack of magazines on the hall table fluttering in the breeze and the endlessly ticking grandfather clock. Even Pancake was subdued, curled up silently at Papi’s feet.

I sat down next to Papi again and looped my pinkie finger in his. I wanted him so badly to joke about this. Or to
freak out and yell at me to clean it up before Mom got home, or even to start ranting about that treasure again.

But he sagged on the couch and squinted at the wall, breathing heavy through his mouth, trying desperately to memorize the pictures of the girls he’d one day—soon—forget.

For all Mom’s dislike of strangers at the house, the place had seen more strangers in four days than it had in my entire life. Strange people. Strange voices. Strange boot prints. Strange mouths on our blue coffee mugs, strange hands on the cold empanadas and
medialunas
, strange fingers dipping pastries in the
dulce de leche
Lourdes had sent. Susana prepared a feast for us too, sent it over with Emilio, and now the Vargas and Hernandez family food mingled on the dining room table in foil-wrapped dishes.

You’d think we were having a party, a celebration, but it was nothing like that. It hardly felt like home anymore, and with every bang of the hammer and whirl of the drill on the kitchen walls, my heart fractured a little more.

Emilio and Samuel knew a guy, and the three of them had shown up this morning to put the kitchen back together, Emilio and Samuel working on the walls while the other guy handled the wiring and hooked up the new stove. Mom had
left me cash for everything—labor, supplies. She didn’t want to deal with it face-to-face.

After everything I’d said to Papi the other day, neither did I. Emilio tried to talk to me in his soft, gentle tone, as if we were at a funeral, as if I were made of glass. He was patient, he was amazing, but whenever I looked into his eyes I saw my own shame, and my mouth filled with dust and I couldn’t speak.

Now I set out a fresh pot of Dark Moon blend with some of Celi’s mugs—birds, these three had. A matched set. I fixed myself a plate of Susana’s home-cooked favorites: fried plantains, some chicken thing, rice and beans,
pasteles
. I wasn’t hungry, but I hadn’t had a hot meal since the stove got destroyed, and everything smelled so good, so I heaped on as much as I could and slipped out the still-broken kitchen door with an overloaded plate and a hungry dog.

Please drop something, please oh please oh please, I love
pasteles!
I love everything! This is better than bunnies! Wait, bunnies? BUNNIES!
And he was off, leaving me alone in the barn with a taste of the island and a view of the bike we’d worked on all summer.

Valentina gleamed as if she’d just rolled off the assembly line. Yesterday Emilio added a set of white leather saddlebags trimmed with fringe—Papi had covertly ordered them from Duke the day he’d wandered off to get ice cream. They were the final accessory, and after Emilio had finished putting them on, it was dark outside and Papi was asleep and I stood in
the shadows of the barn, watching him polish the red Harley-Davidson logo on the gas tank with a soft cloth.

After all that, he packed up his tools. Valentina was completely restored.

Unlike my father.

I’d failed him, watched the light in his eyes go out after the fire. And now I sat in the barn looking at his prized possession, his Valentina, thinking about everything that had changed, everything that would end.

“What are you thinking about?” Emilio showed up a few minutes later with Pancake, both of them covered in sawdust, their eyes shining through the dirt.

I thought I’d wanted to be alone, but seeing him again in the barn, in the space that had somehow become ours, my heart rose.

“Endings. Life. Time machines.” I smiled. As usual, there was no judgment in his tone, no scorn. There was no need to avoid him earlier, and now I was glad he’d found me. “You know, fun stuff.”

“Can’t be as fun as watching Samuel tell an electrician how to install an outlet. Talk about good times.” Emilio sat next to me on the bench. “
El jefe
still lyin’ low?”

“They drove to Denver yesterday. Mari’s back from New York, and Lourdes and Celi flew into DIA this morning.” I poked at the chicken on my plate. After the fire my sisters booked the first flights they could find, no more long-range
planning or procrastinating. “Mom thought Papi could use a day away. They’re all on their way back now.”

Papi didn’t want to be here for the kitchen work. He was mortified—Mom told me as much. He still didn’t remember how the fire started, only that it was his fault. I was certain he remembered the aftermath though: the firemen. The smell. Emilio staying with him after I flipped out.

He hadn’t looked me in the eyes since.

I tried to shovel in some food, but it was useless. I set the plate on the ground and let Pancake go to town.

“Valentina . . . she’s perfect, you know? Like new. And I know it sounds stupid, and totally illogical, but part of me wished . . . I don’t know.” I looked into Emilio’s caramel eyes for the first time in forever. “Papi remembered
so
much about that bike. I thought if we fixed it, somehow it would fix him, too.”

I never wanted to believe them—my sisters, the doctors, Mom, all the research and the websites—but they were right. The bike couldn’t fix Papi. It was blind hope, a daydream that never stood a chance anywhere but in the softest part of my heart. If motorcycles—or any object from a person’s past—could cure this thing, it would no longer exist. People would unearth their family treasures, polish up the old jewels, bring their loved ones back from the moon.

“It’s not stupid, Jude. You love him.” Emilio leaned in closer, ran his hand over my hair. “You did so much for him this summer. You’re not a doctor, okay? And I don’t know your
sisters. But anyone can see how happy you make him. Every single day, you make him smile.”

I rested my head on his shoulder, admiring Valentina while Pancake scarfed down Susana’s food. Far away and muffled, the drills and hammers continued their incessant march.

“We’re almost done in there.” Emilio tucked a loop of the hair behind my ear. “Just have to attach the new door frame. After that I’m not doing anything. You wanna go for a ride? Mango shakes or something?”

“I should wait for my sisters,” I said. “Maybe in a few days when things settle down?”

“Jude . . .” Emilio brushed a layer of sawdust from his shorts. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

The words, soft as they were, dropped into my stomach like river stones. I knew it was coming, knew it was on the near horizon. He’d take the road and find some wild, beautiful place that time hadn’t touched, and he’d leave this summer behind, our ride up the mountain pass, our lips pressed together under the sky. He’d ride all the way to the sea, like he’d planned, and by the time he heard the ocean, I’d be a memory.

It was another inevitable good-bye, and I thought I’d prepared for it. But now there was a giant hole inside me, a black space that already missed him, edging its way toward my heart.

“My offer still stands,
princesa
,” he whispered. He stared at my face as if he were trying to memorize it, as if he already knew my answer. “I meant what I said. I want you to come with me.”

I’d promised Emilio I’d think about his invitation, give it serious consideration. And I had, only now it felt more like pie-in-the-sky dreaming. Back then I still believed Papi might get his last ride. I still thought my sisters would postpone their visit and, by extension, the genetic test that would confirm which of us was bound to Papi’s legacy. I thought I’d have time to outrun it, to slip away in the middle of the night while the demon looked the other way.

But now I knew the truth. None of us had time. Time had us.

“You took good care of Papi this summer,” I said. “Me too. I’ll never forget it.” The last part was a whisper, a breeze. “I really wanted to go with you. I wanted to see all those places, all the thumbtacks on your map.”

Emilio’s eyebrow rose. He finally nailed it, perfect, and it sent a jolt right through my heart. “You were in my room, huh?”

I smiled despite the sadness. “Maybe.”

“I knew you were a stalker.”

“No,” I said. “Just . . . okay. Kind of stalkerish. Your mother was in there with me. Um, part of the time.”

“Like
that
makes it better.” Emilio laughed, but soon his dimples faded and he reached for my hand, wrapped his fingers around mine. “You’re gonna say no, aren’t you?”

“I can’t go with you.”

His eyes clouded, dimples totally vanished. “You going to the Dunes, then? With Zoe and them?”

A ground squirrel scampered across a rafter. I turned my face toward the sound. He was fast, a little beige blur against the old wood.

“Christina,” I said. “Zoe called me after the fire. That fireman, Jeff? He’s her brother. He told her what happened. She said I needed to go with them, get my mind off everything.”

Before the fire, Zoe and I hadn’t spoken since the
Alice in Wonderland
preview, and she was worried about me, she’d said. Hated that we’d been apart all summer. She wanted us to make up for lost time on the road, put all the awkward stuff behind us before we left for college.

“Sand Dunes is a cool place.” Emilio tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but I sensed it anyway, sharpening the edges of his words. He kicked at the dirt floor with the back of his work boot. “I been there once. You’ll like it. Good for pictures.”

I scanned his face, the full curve of his lips, the scar on his chin. “I told her no. I’m not going. It didn’t feel right, not after everything this summer.”

His eyes widened and he grabbed my hand. “So come with me. We could—”

“My sisters will be here tonight. I need to deal with all this family stuff. See what they decide about Papi.”

“I don’t have to leave this week,” Emilio said. “We could let your sisters get settled, see how things look later this month?”