by Hester Young
Micky nods again. Blinks. The Popsicle trickles down her chin in a sticky green trail. Vonda and Daniel huddle by the back door, speaking in hushed tones.
Micky’s face remains blank when I go to sit down beside her. “Don’t sit on a scorpion,” she says, and I leap to my feet, peering around the concrete.
“Are there scorpions?”
“Luis saw one yesterday.” She looks up at me through her dark lashes. “He said look before you sit down. And check your shoes.”
She relates these recommendations matter-of-factly. I’m not sure she’s displaying the appropriate level of alarm. “It doesn’t seem very safe to play where there are scorpions. Maybe we should go inside.”
“The scorpion Luis saw was inside.”
Noah chuckles, as if an infestation of deadly animals is somehow amusing. “They don’t have scorpions where your aunt Charlie is from,” he tells Micky. “You’ll have to teach her a few things.”
She pokes the ground with her Popsicle stick, stone-faced. I get the message. Schooling ignorant adults is not her thing.
“I’m your mom’s sister,” I announce, a little too loudly. “Did you know that she had a sister?”
“No,” Micky says.
“I didn’t know I had a sister either. It was a big surprise.”
“She’s dead now,” Micky tells me. “So you don’t have a sister anymore.”
I don’t know how to answer. Her voice is toneless, but I recognize the self-protection in that flat affect, the refusal to reveal weakness. Should I offer words of comfort? Ask her how she feels? Ignore her weird comment?
Nobody speaks for a minute. Over in the swimming pool, Bryce takes a few experimental squirts with his water gun. “Are you going to have a baby?” he asks.
“I am. My belly’s pretty big, huh?”
He shrugs.
“You know, Micky,” Noah says, shading his eyes with one hand, “that baby in Charlie’s belly is gonna be your cousin. I never had any cousins, but I hear they’re pretty fun.”
“Why didn’t you have any cousins?” Micky asks, almost suspicious.
“Well,” Noah begins, “I was raised by my grandma and grandpa, so I didn’t know a whole lotta folks in my family.”
“What happened to your mom and dad?” She’s watching him intently.
I wince at Noah’s screwed-up family, wondering how he’ll explain his way around this. Back in Louisiana, we worked so hard to conceal the secrets his grandparents built their life around. I see no need to discuss that ugly, violent history.
Evade, Noah, I think. Make something up.
“Somebody killed my dad,” Noah says.
I cover my face with my hands. It’s not the whole truth, of course, but far more than Micky needs. What is he doing, unloading the deaths of family members on her? The girl is only six.
But Micky stares at him, her eyes round with understanding. “My mom got killed,” she says. “My grandma, too. Somebody shot them with a gun, and there was blood. Somebody killed them.”
“Yeah.” Noah glances at me, making sure I’m hearing this. We’ve been wondering how much Micky knows or understands about what happened. “I heard that. It’s pretty scary, huh?”
She won’t admit to fear. “Were you there when your dad got killed?”
“Actually,” Noah says, “yeah. Sort of. I was asleep in the car when he got shot.”
From his spot by the pool, Bryce catches my eye. He holds up his water gun, takes careful aim, and gets me in the neck. I clutch myself, feigning a dramatic death until it occurs to me this is absolutely the wrong game to be playing at this moment. Thank God Micky isn’t paying attention. She’s still hanging on to Noah’s story, determining how it intersects with her own.
“I was sleeping, too,” she tells him, tracing her empty Popsicle stick in the dirt. “Inside my house. Somebody came inside.” For a moment, her voice hovers in the burning air, unfinished, and I think she’s going to add something. I think she’s going to go there, somewhere awful. But she’s waiting for Noah, waiting for him to guide her.
“You must really miss your mom,” he says, and whatever horrific description might have awaited us is forgotten. She’s just a little girl, nodding and squinching her lips together in an effort not to cry. And she doesn’t. She holds herself together, miraculously. I should take notes.
All these life-and-death personal disclosures are more than I can stomach. I spring up and dip a hand in the wading pool, where Bryce has busied himself with spraying the neighbor’s yappy dog through the fence.
“Mm, that feels nice!” I exclaim, although the water is lukewarm and far from refreshing. “Micky, why don’t you come for a swim?”
She casts me a long look. “I don’t really like the water.”
“Oh. Well.” I stop splashing. “Living in the desert must be right up your alley.”
Noah shoots me a look he reserves for only my most inane moments. “Let’s go inside,” he says. “I think Miss Emily just arrived.”
Micky watches us rise to our feet and wipe away the gravel dust from our hands and backsides. “Hey,” she says as Noah reaches for the sliding door. “When the bad guy killed your dad, did they catch him?”
Noah thinks about how to answer this. “It took a long time,” he says, “but the person who did it—well, they’re dead now.”
“Good,” she says.
• • •
“HOW DID IT GO?” Daniel asks us in the car.
Alone in the backseat, I say nothing. Noah and I haven’t had time to compare notes yet, but something about Micky terrifies me. Her composure, perhaps, in the face of such terrible events. Where does she get her dark calm, and why don’t I possess it? Here I am, an adult woman, still struggling with the occasional crying spell more than a year after my loss. Do I lack the emotional self-command of even a six-year-old?
“Micky’s a sweet girl,” Noah says, bracing himself against the passenger-side door as Daniel leads us boldly through a massive pothole. “It’s hard to imagine everything she’s goin’ through.”
“It looks like she’s in good hands, at least,” I venture. “Vonda seems very—experienced.”
“She’s fostered a lot of kids,” Daniel agrees.
I can’t help but hope that Vonda will let us off the hook, swoop in with all her maternal goodness and nurture this broken child in a way that Noah and I, so broken ourselves, can’t. “You said she might adopt?”
“She and Luis have been through a lot of short-term placements lately,” Daniel replies, watching me through the rearview mirror. “They’re looking for something more permanent. They usually take older kids, but I think they’d be willing to adopt Micky if there were a need.”
“No.” Noah’s voice is sudden, startling in its assurance. “Micky belongs with us.”
I lean against the window, pursing my lips. “Hon. I think it’s a little early for—”
“We’re the right ones, Charlie. Us.” Noah twists around in his seat to face me. “She’s supposed to be with us. When I was talkin’ to her today, I just . . . felt that.”
“You two did seem to click.” I don’t tell him how utterly inadequate that makes me feel. We came to Tucson to bond with my poor orphaned niece, but my motherly instincts have failed me thus far.
“Look,” Noah says, focusing on Daniel now. “Suppose we pursue custody. I know it wouldn’t be easy, but a lot of that is livin’ out of state, right?”
“It complicates things, yes.” Daniel veers out of a turning lane and zips through a red light.
“What if we were Arizona residents?”
I snap to attention. Would he really leave Sidalie? He can’t be serious.
Daniel runs a hand through his goatee. “Residency would certainly help,” he says. He works through the details quickly in his mind. “Char
lotte’s a blood relative, so we could bypass the home certification and place her with you right away. It would shave a lot of time off the adoption process, too.” He raises his eyebrows. “Are you two considering a move?”
Noah meets my gaze and smiles, apparently mistaking my stricken expression for one of passionate urgency. “Well,” he says, “we are now.”
Five
I’m all for retaining a degree of independence in one’s relationship, but even my commitment-phobic ass knows there are certain decisions in life a couple have to make together. Moving to Arizona so that you can adopt a disturbed child? On the list.
I keep up a good game face in front of Micky’s caseworker, but by the time Daniel Quijada drops us off at our car, I’m seething. He didn’t ask me, I think. Noah, you bastard, this is my niece, and you didn’t even ask me. I’m prepared, once we reach the privacy of our own vehicle, to deliver a scathing lecture of epic proportions, to remind him about the true meaning of partnership, to demand that my voice be heard.
Then, I open the car door.
The heat in our vehicle renders all other thought impossible. I let out a sound somewhere between a moan and a gasp. Noah slides into the driver’s seat and turns on the car, impervious to the blazing inferno around him.
“Huh,” he says, poking the screen of the GPS with his index finger. “It overheated.”
I can see why. Empty a bottle of water on our dashboard right now, and I suspect that it would vaporize into a giant steam cloud. You’d have yourself an SUV sauna, the white man’s tacky, twenty-first-century answer to a sweat lodge.
“We need to find a hotel,” I pant, hoping I can maintain consciousness for the three minutes it will take our air-conditioning to kick in. “Drive. Just drive.”
To his credit, Noah has a sixth sense for navigating desert cities. We quickly locate a midrange chain hotel along the highway that, in the oppressive heat of early August, doesn’t seem to be commanding a lot of business. After dumping our luggage, we settle ourselves by the pool and guzzle from courtesy water bottles they hand out at check-in.
“Nice view,” Noah remarks, and he’s not wrong. The electric-blue water crackles with sunlight, and if you ignore all the highway noise, the mountains and expansive sky evoke a sense of freedom never to be found in Manhattan’s congested horizon.
“So.” I plant myself at the pool’s edge and dip a foot in, ready to have it out with him now. “Tell me about this big move you have planned.”
He’s cleaning a spot on his Oakleys, too preoccupied to catch the edge in my voice. “Don’t know yet,” he says. “I’m still thinkin’ through some details, tryin’ to figure how this all can work.” He slips his sunglasses back on and sits beside me, the tips of his fingers skimming my shoulder. “You need sunscreen, baby.”
“What details are you working out, exactly?”
“The business, mainly. I could probably sell it. Pete Gantos might buy if I wanted to unload it. But he’s too green. It would tank if he took over.” Noah’s sunglasses obscure any view of his eyes, leaving me with only the reflection of my own incredulous face.
“I’m sorry, are you talking about work?” My own feelings about Tucson—or Micky, for that matter—do not seem to have factored into his plans whatsoever.
He pauses, like I’ve laid some cunning female trap for him he can’t quite make out. “What do you want me to talk about?” he asks carefully.
“Oh, I don’t know. The child that you just unilaterally decided to adopt? Maybe we could talk about that.”
His eyebrows draw together in an expression of bewilderment. “I didn’t unilaterally—”
“You didn’t even ask me!”
“Well, I know, but—”
“You made a major life decision without first consulting—”
“I didn’t consult you because you gave me the look!”
“The look?” I blink. Try to reel myself in with a deep breath and entertain the possibility that I’m dealing with a simple case of stupidity here, not total self-absorption. “What look did I give you, Noah?”
“The one where your eyes get all big. Like when you really want something.” He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, flustered. “I thought we were on the same page, babe. You said we made a connection with Micky, and then you gave me that look . . . I thought movin’ was what you wanted. I mean, you’ve been tryin’ to get me out of Sidalie for months, haven’t you? This seemed like the right time, the right reason.”
I twist my hair into a knot and wrap it with an elastic from my purse. “So let me get this straight. Me wanting to move, us building a better life for our baby . . . not a good reason to leave town. But Micky, some weird little girl you just met, that’s the right reason?”
He’s too smart to meet that one head-on. “You think Micky’s weird?”
“How could she not be?”
“All right,” he says. “Well, nothin’ wrong with weird. I mean, look at you. And I still love you.”
I roll my eyes, insulted. “Me and Micky. Two peas in a weird old pod. Thanks.”
“You have more in common with her than I think you realize.”
“What, besides our crappy genetics?”
“Did you see how well that kid held it together? She’s been takin’ care of herself a long time, since long before her mom turned up dead.”
“So?”
“So one parent left. The one who stayed didn’t do too well by her. The kid’s grown up way too fast, and now she’s on her own.” He gives me a pointed look. “Remind you of anyone?”
“I was never on my own. I had my grandmother.”
“Micky’s not on her own either,” he says. “She’s got us.”
I’m about to tell him that is not a foregone conclusion when my phone rings. “Hello?”
A woman with a gruff voice quickly identifies herself. “This is Lieutenant Pamela Soto of the Tucson Police Department. I’m looking for Charlotte Cates.” She doesn’t sound like she wants to be making this call.
“Speaking.” I assume she’s part of Donna and Jasmine’s murder investigation, although what these people think they’ll get from me, I don’t know.
“You’re Donna DeRossi’s daughter, is that right?”
“Biologically, yes.” Noah mouths, Police? to me, and I nod. “Like I told Detective Vargas the other day, I really didn’t know Donna. I’m not sure what you think I can—”
“We need to meet.” Lieutenant Soto’s tone leaves little room for negotiation. “When would be a convenient time for you?”
It occurs to me that the TPD are getting pretty desperate if they’re still pumping me, of all people, for information. But really, what else do I have to do with my time? And maybe Lieutenant Soto can tell me something about Micky, her family and her upbringing. Detective Vargas was a stone wall when he called last week, but Soto’s a woman. She might help me.
I glance at my watch. “I could meet you in an hour. What’s the station address?”
“An hour?” She sounds surprised. “Are you in town?”
I can see that she and Vargas have not communicated well with each other. “Yeah, I’m in town. Do you want me to come by or not?”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes. But don’t come by the station. I’ll meet you at Dino’s on Fourth Ave. It’s near the university. A little pizza joint.”
Something’s not right. Why would a cop—and a lieutenant, a higher-up—want to meet me outside of the station? “Look, I really don’t have anything useful for you. Ask Detective Vargas. I can’t answer any of your questions.”
“I knew your mother,” she says quietly. “Maybe I can answer some of yours.”
• • •
PAMELA SOTO IS about five foot six, with short, dark hair; black eyes; and deeply creased, golden skin of some indeterminate race. Her arms are in
ked with various tattoos: a wolf, a scorpion, the figure of a man standing atop a circular maze. From her face, I’d put her somewhere in her fifties, but she’s remarkably fit. Her black, form-fitting T-shirt reveals broad shoulders and a trim, muscular frame still capable of pursuing a suspect on foot or taking down a bad guy. It doesn’t take a genius to surmise she’s gay.
“Pam Soto. Thanks for making it out.” Though she greets me with a solid handshake, I can tell that my pregnancy has startled her. She avoids looking at my belly the way a man tries not to stare at breasts.
The restaurant, a funky little Italian spot, crawls with university students. I watch a girl with rumpled sex hair and layers of tank tops stretch out in her booth, limbs long and languid in the manner of one who regularly sleeps past noon. Feeling positively geriatric, I join Pam at a corner table, where she has a pizza and pitcher of water waiting.
“So you said you’re a lieutenant with the Tucson police?” I can’t hide my skepticism; her outfit and physique don’t belong on someone with a bureaucratic desk job.
“Was, yeah. I’m retired.”
“Oh.” So this meeting is 100 percent personal. I’m not sure how to feel about that.
For a moment, she stares at me, eyes taking in the details of my face, searching, not finding what she’s seeking. “You must look more like your father,” she tells me.
“So I’ve heard.”
“This is . . .” She exhales, and I notice that her hands are shaky. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d ever meet you. Donna didn’t talk about you much.”
My discomfort grows by leaps and bounds each minute. “She left when I was eighteen months old. I doubt she had a lot to say.”
Pam offers me a slice of pizza, something with feta and spinach that may easily prove to be the best part of this meeting. I take it.
“So,” I ask, though I already have a pretty good idea, “how did you know my mother?”
“We were together the last fourteen years,” Pam says. “Love of my life.” I remain poker-faced, and she swallows. “I hope that’s not a problem for you.”