Yours to Keep (16 page)

But it wasn’t enough.

Chapter 14

The apartment smelled like Cara’s
chivo picante
—rich, meaty, garlicky. All six Travareses sat around the kitchen table, crammed together elbow to elbow, their chairs immobilized by walls and countertops and one another. Ana tried to be happy she was there. She
was
happy to see her niece and nephews. Marco, who seemed to have grown a foot in a week, looked enormous in his football jersey. Angel had shot up, too, a scrawny little dude with a mop of shockingly straight hair. Little Leta had cut all her hair off and pierced her ears a second time. The kids seemed to take up more than their fair share of space at the table, their energy so much bigger and less contained than the adults’. She could have been looking at herself and her siblings twenty years ago.

But, as happy as she was to be with them, she admitted to herself that she wished she were somewhere else. With someone else. Right now, Ethan was eating dinner alone at the enormous Hansen kitchen table. The vision made her lonely for him. And angry at him, for making her feel that and all the other emotions and sensations he’d drawn out of her. Part of her wished she’d never laid eyes on him. The rest of her …

She’d deliberately missed him Thursday night. She called the shuttle to come early, and she was out the door at five of six, not caring that she’d stiffed Theo his last five minutes. She was almost at the train station when it occurred to her that maybe Ethan had missed her on purpose, too. And why shouldn’t he have? She’d been so crazy, so hot and cold—a lesser man would have given up ages ago. He had to be done with her now. And that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? It was the only way it could be.

“Escúchame,”
Ricky said suddenly, and the kids’ chatter quieted. He was a good uncle, Ana thought. He’d done a good job of being a father figure to the kids, and they respected him. He’d kept himself out of trouble even though the odds against him had been overwhelming, and he was a good role model. She wished he’d been able to do better for himself. She wished …

But there was no point in going over it. It was the past.

“I’m starting a business,” Ricky said.

Ana shifted uneasily in her seat. In her neighborhood, there were only a few kinds of businesses that men like Ricky went into. Most of them were illegal. “What are you talking about, Ricky? What kind of business?”

He gave her a scornful look, reading her anxiety correctly. “What do you think,
hermanita
? You think I get into the blue-bag business?”

He meant drugs. She glared back.

“You have no faith, sister. I’m talking about cleaning houses.”

It was the one thing he’d always said he’d never do. She could tell from his expression that it humiliated him to say it now.

“We need more money,
hermanita.
If Marco’s going to keep playing football. For when he wants to apply to college.” He glared, daring her to mock him. As if she would ever do that.

She put her hands up. “That’s good, Ricky. That sounds good.”

His glance flashed back to her face, and his eyes narrowed. He crossed his arms. “I need your help.” He bit the words out between clenched teeth. “I need all of you to help me.”

Cara said, “Of course we’ll help you, Ricky,” and the kids murmured their support, too.

“Of course I’ll help,” Ana said, but it didn’t soften Ricky’s glare.

“We need a car, and we need a driver.”

Ana thought of Nati and her daughter, but before she could protest Ricky said, “Marco, you have to start earning your thirty hours right away.”

“Who’s gonna let me drive his car?” Marco demanded. “Who’s gonna risk his neck while I learn?”

“Ernie says he’ll do it.”

Of course he would. You could always count on Ernie, Ricky’s best friend since almost day one in the United States. Ernie would do anything for Ricky, and, on top of that, he was a little bit in love with Cara.

“Marco will own the car and insure it,” Ricky said.

“Can he do that? Is that legal?”

Ricky hunched his shoulders in exasperation. “So Ernie’ll do it. A couple thousand should do it for the car. Just something that isn’t a total piece of junk. You got some saved up,
right?” he asked, a failed attempt at casual.

She tried to meet his eyes, to deny it, but she couldn’t make herself do it.

Ricky leaned forward. He put both of his hands on the kitchen table and leaned toward Ana. His face was stern, his jaw set, his eyes slits. “I know you got money in the freezer. You better not be hoarding.”

“Ricky,” Cara said. The kids were like statues, watching. Ana had never seen them so still.

Ricky turned on Cara. “This is about all of us, Cara. The kids, too!”

Ana felt something harden in her, a new resolve. “It’s my money. I’m not hoarding, I’m saving. To take college classes.”

The anger went out of him so suddenly that she knew it had been bluster. His eyes were all apology now. “I know. But, Ana. We have to help each other. You know that.”

He had made it possible for her to finish high school. Without him, she’d be sweeping floors like Cara. “It took me a long time to save that money,” she said, but she could hear the heat dying out of her protest.

“I’ll pay you back, I swear.” He wasn’t commanding now, he was pleading, and it hurt her heart that she was making her big brother beg her for twelve hundred dollars. A proud man, a hard worker, and this was all there was for him. “This business will be good for all of us. I’ll pay you back with interest. You’ll be an investor. But I need your help.”

It panicked her, thinking of how long it had taken to save that money, years and years. It choked off her breath, the vision of him stuffing those tens and twenties into the gaping pocket of his sagging jeans, watching him walk out of the apartment with all her work reduced to scraps of paper a wind’s breath away from disappearing forever.

“Can I—?” Panic suffocated the words.

He looked at her, and his eyes were round and sorrowful now. She knew that hers matched. The two of them, mutually assured destruction or survival. It was mad for six people’s lives to hang on twelve hundred dollars in cash, in a cardboard box in a forty-year-old freezer. God, sometimes she hated this country that she loved so passionately.

“Can I give it to you when you find the car you want to buy?” She wanted to hang on to it as long as she could. To postpone the inevitable.

His eyes got a little sadder, but they stayed right on hers. “That’s good,
hermanita
,” he
said. “That’s fine with me.”

She lay awake that night missing Ethan. She had done the right thing in cutting herself off from him, but now she had the romantic equivalent of phantom-limb pain, an itch of longing in the empty place he’d left behind. She wanted to see him, to kiss him, to touch him. She wanted to lay her head against his chest and feel the warmth of him seep into her. She wanted to tell him everything there was to know about her and her crazy, unlawful life.

He was the only person she could imagine telling about Ricky and the money. She couldn’t even e-mail her best friend, Kay, about it. Kay would tell her she shouldn’t have offered Ricky the money. Kay would write a long, lecture-y response about how it was time for her to stand up to Ricky, to hang on to what was rightfully hers.

But the truth was that Ana was maxed out. Even if she went to college, she’d never be able to get a better job and earn more money, because no legitimate employer would hire her. At this stage of the game, Ricky was simply a better investment than she was. It broke her heart to admit it, but it was the truth.

She wanted Ethan to know that, to know everything. He’d see it, too, the heartbreak and the necessity of giving her money to her brother. He’d see it, and he’d see through it, to her.

She could see him clearly, his gaze on her even, steadying her.

She took a breath that was more like a sob.

“You okay?” Cara asked quietly from her bed.

She made her voice normal. “Fine.”

It was good that she’d broken things off when she had. Another date and her willpower would have slipped away entirely.

“It can’t be that bad,” James said.

Ethan had buried his face in his hands, which meant that he couldn’t see the Dallas vs. Green Bay game, which meant that things were, indeed, bad. He sat slumped on the couch. “It’s that bad. And worse. I’m not even going to tell you about it.”

James paused the game, poured a generous finger of Oban into Ethan’s glass, and handed it to him. “You need to swallow this, and then you need to tell me what happened.”

Ethan obeyed. “It’s criminal to drink Scotch that good that fast.”

James sat beside him with his own drink. “It’s criminal to pause
Sunday Night Football.
So start talking.”

A gentle muzz descended over Ethan. For the first time since Ana’s phone call on Tuesday evening, he felt more numb than miserable. “I don’t even know where to start,” he admitted.

“Start with the date. Spare me no details.”

Ethan glared.

“I can’t help you if I don’t know where you went wrong.” James poured another generous drink into Ethan’s glass and handed it to his brother. “You kiss her?”

Ethan rested his forehead in the crook of his thumb and forefinger, massaged his temples.

“It’s a yes-or-no question, Eth.”

“Yes,” Ethan said, resigned.

“And she seemed into it.” James poured himself a glass and sat back.

“She was definitely into it.” His body remembered.

“Because I’m a good brother, and a good man, I’m not going to make you tell me more. Although I always give
you
the juicy details.” James took a sip.

“Much against my will.”

“I know you love it.”

The truth was that Ethan didn’t really mind his brother’s too-much-information habit. It was mildly entertaining. Except for the time when James went down on the dancer—that whole sordid story was something Ethan still wished he could wipe from his memory forever.

But there was no way he was going to dish details about Ana.

James eyed him, considering. “So, she was into it, and then—”

“I saw her on Monday night, too. It was—” He had to stop, couldn’t even let himself think about it.

“Say no more,” James said with a sweep of his hand. “Unless you want to. Because you know I’m always amenable.”

“She was going to come over on Saturday. I was going to arrange for Theo to be elsewhere. Maybe with you, if you could take him. And then she called Tuesday and broke
things off. Said she didn’t want to see me anymore.” He looked into his glass as if it might hold the explanation.

“So something happened between Monday and Tuesday.” James sipped his Scotch.

“When I first asked her out, she said her brother wouldn’t approve. Could he have, I don’t know, forbidden her?”

James made a face. “What kind of brother forbids his grown-up sister to date?”

“I don’t know. He’s Dominican. Really traditional, I think. He raised her, basically, so he’s more of a dad than a brother. And I get the strong feeling he wants her to marry someone Dominican.”

“Okay, makes sense. But wouldn’t she have just said that?”

“I don’t know. God, Theo’s going to freak. He’s crazy about her. Apparently he played guitar for her. I didn’t even know he still played guitar. He doesn’t play when I’m around. Did you know he still played?” It stung.

James, who’d been leaning way back on the couch, sat up. “Yeah.” If Ethan hadn’t known him better, he’d have said the expression on James’s face was sheepish.

“Jesus! Have you heard him play?”

“No.”

“So how’d you know?” James got a shifty look.

“Just tell me.”

“Promise you won’t kill me?”

Ethan closed his eyes. If he hadn’t killed James yet, he probably never would. “Promise.”

“I helped him with the money to buy his new guitar.”

If circumstances had been different, Ethan would’ve lit into him, but he didn’t have the energy for all-out battle. He said, “Don’t do that. Don’t buy him guitars or condoms or anything behind my back. It’s my job to know what’s going on in his life, and it’s my job to decide how much money he has and what he spends it on.”

“I didn’t know you didn’t know, if that helps,” James said. “Well, I kinda suspected.”

“How much was the new guitar?”

“I gave him a couple hundred.”

Ethan took the Lord’s name in vain a few more times. “Just don’t do that again, okay?”

“Okay. Well, so if Theo’s crazy about Ana, then we know he hasn’t been telling her lies about you. What has she told you about why she doesn’t want to go out?”

Ethan gave a brief outline of Ana’s arguments against their going out, concluding with the Tuesday-night phone call.

James wrinkled his nose. “Too many different excuses. She’s grasping at straws. She likes you, but something’s freaking her out. Could she be in trouble with the law? Maybe she’s illegal or something?”

Ethan laughed dryly. “She’s lived here for twenty years. I think they’d have managed to track her down by now if she were.”

James nodded. Tilted his head. “Married?”

That possibility was so horrifying that for a brief moment Ethan thought he might throw up. What if the “brother” who might kill him was actually a cuckolded mate? How well did he know this woman? “I guess anything’s possible.”

“Look,” James said. “The good news is there’s hope. She’s sending mixed messages, so it’s possible she’s really into you, just having some issues.”

“So what do I do?”

James shrugged. “You’ll think of something. Make it good, though. My guess is you’ve got one more chance at most.”

“You’re really comforting.”

“If you wanted comforting, you should have talked to a woman. I just tell it like it is.”

“So no advice at all?”

“Drink more,” James directed, refilling his glass.

Chapter 15

Every time the furnace came on or the house shifted or a car drove by on the street, she started.

“You waiting for my dad?” Theo asked after the third time.