George woke to the smell of Spanish rice and a hip full of broken glass.
The cot had done him no favors — about a foot short and hard as a grudge. He sat up slow, testing his leg before he trusted it. Cold came up off the concrete through his socks. Across the basement, Ana stood at a two-burner camp stove, back to him, a knife going through an onion in quick, even strokes, chicken pieces already browning in the pot behind her. Sofia was still asleep on the bed they’d made her from folded blankets, twisted halfway onto her stomach, one knee drawn up under her.
He found the bathroom — a closet-sized thing with a toilet and a sink that ran cold only — and when he came back Sofia was up, cross-legged at the dinette, and Ana was setting down two plates.
George lowered himself onto the crate and put his glasses on. The meal came into focus in front of him. Rice. Beans. A tortilla, warmed soft on the pan’s edge. The same on both plates, same portion, set down at the same moment, one in front of Sofia and one in front of the crate he’d dragged over the night before.
“Thank you,” George said.
Ana went back to the pot without answering. Garlic hit the hot oil with a hiss.
He ate. Spooned the rice and beans onto the tortilla with his rough hands, folded it over into a single taco, and took a bite.
Sofia had a few bites, kicking her feet under the table, bopping her head to some imaginary song. Then she left the rest of her plate and was gone from her seat before he’d finished his first bite. A moment later she was back, dragging a purple backpack twice as heavy as she was, and dropped to the floor beside his crate without waiting for him to swallow.
She unzipped it on the floor and started laying things out in a row. A hairbrush. A sock with no match. A coloring book, its cover gone soft at the spine, butterflies across the front in colors that had nothing to do with real butterflies. She held it up for him, thumb pressed flat over the cover like she was presenting it.
“I like the butterflies,” she said, and set it aside. Then, half to herself, already elbow-deep in the backpack: “Where’s my—” She pulled things aside, checked the bottom, checked the side pocket. “My stuffy’s not in here.” She huffed, then reached into the small zippered pocket instead — and pulled out her prized contraband, a brightly colored foam dart gun.
She swung it up without warning, orange barrel crossing his direction, finger on the trigger, ready for mayhem.
George’s hand came down over the gun and Sofia’s hand together, gentle, turning the muzzle toward the floor.
“Whoa. Hold up, Wyatt Earp.”
She looked at him, more curious than chastened.
He took her small finger and laid it straight along the side of the frame, above the trigger. “Finger stays there,” he said, “till you’re ready to shoot. And you don’t point it at anybody you don’t mean to shoot. Not even a little bit. Not even pretend.”
“But it’s just a toy.”
“Doesn’t matter what it is. You practice the real rules on the pretend gun, so your hands already know them when it’s not pretend.” He turned the little gun over in his hands, checked the chamber out of habit, some old reflex that didn’t care what caliber it was looking at. “Every gun’s loaded. Every time. You treat it that way even when you know it isn’t.”
He stood behind her, hands over hers, and turned the barrel toward the bare wall by the stairs, where collateral damage would be minimized. She dry-fired it twice, then reloaded. Sent a couple of foam darts thumping harmlessly into a shipping box, and she grinned up at him like she’d just completed sniper school.
The corner of his mouth lifted, then settled.
He took the leather billfold from his jacket pocket and folded it open. His PI badge sat inside, tarnished brass gone dull at the edges, loose on its clip. He worked it free and pinned it to her shirt. Too heavy for the cotton. It dragged the fabric down and hung crooked no matter how he angled it.
“Deputy,” he said.
She looked down at it, then up, grinning wide enough to show the gap where a tooth was missing, then twisted around toward the stove.
“Mamá, look!”
Ana turned. Her eyes found the badge, then George, then went back to the badge.
“Muy bonita, niña.” A short breath went out her nose. She turned back to the pot and rapped the ladle hard against its rim before setting it down. Then she tipped the browned chicken in after the onions, added water from a pitcher, and let it come up to a boil.
George caught movement past the high window. He was up before he knew he’d moved. Weight off the crate, hand finding his hip, eyes on the window’s angle.
Ana froze at the stove, her eyes finding George first, then following his to the window. Sofia’s eyes went back and forth between them.
Nobody breathed loud enough to hear it.
A motor caught outside, sputtered, caught again, settled into a drone. Lawn mower. The groundskeeper, working the strip along the fence line.
George let his hand fall away. The hip made him pay for standing that fast — a slow bright line up through the joint — and he lowered himself back onto the crate in stages, waiting it out.
Sofia went back to the coloring book like nothing had happened. Ana went back to the pot, skimming foam off the top of a boil that had finally caught.
The quiet in the basement stretched on after. Nothing moved except the low burble of the stove and the drip of the sink in the back room, steady as a clock with no hands. George shifted on the crate, cumin and bay leaf drifting over from the pot.
“Smells good,” he said, to the room.
“Thank you,” Ana said, and didn’t turn around.
Sofia went back to the backpack and came up with a pink plastic case, no bigger than a pencil box, and set it on his knee like he’d asked for it.
“These are my little friends,” she said, and opened it.
A dozen cutouts where tiny figures lived, a mix of male and female, one slot empty. She pulled out several of them and set them in a crowd on the dinette.
“And this is the hero,” she said, holding it up with admiration. “She’s got a cool gun.” She set that one apart from the rest, alone, facing the crowd. “She’s gotta get past all these guys. They’re not gonna let her. She used to have a partner, but I lost him.” She marched the crowd in, knocked the hero flat, stood her back up. “She really just wants to go home.”
George watched her hands reset the figures. Outside, the mower cut its engine.
“Does she ever make it home?” he asked.
Sofia’s hand paused over the hero, the question just sort of hanging there. She went back to sorting them into their slots, slower now.
The pot moved off the burner. The room went quiet enough that George could hear Ana’s rosary beads clicking against the counter edge, set down and picked back up, once, twice.
“When’s Papá coming home?”
George shifted his weight off the bad hip.
“Papa’s on a special mission right now,” he said. “Sarah’s lost. He’s going to find her, and then he’ll bring her home.”
“But when?”
His lips parted, but nothing came out.
“I don’t know.”
The pot lid came down hard enough to jump on the burner. Ana picked up the knife. Carrots and potatoes fell into rough chunks, the strokes too even, too fast.
George kept his eyes on his own hands.
Ana tipped a handful of chopped zucchini and cabbage into the pot, stirred once, and let it fall back to a simmer. She ladled a bowl and set it on a tray, then sliced a lime into wedges at the counter, knife working quick and precise, the rosary looped now over her wrist where she could feel it without looking at it.
George shifted on the crate, cleared his throat.
“Look, I know it’s hard, cooped up down here,” he said. “My hip doesn’t much like it either. But Miguel can handle himself. You people know how to endure this kind of thing. You just gotta have a little faith.”
The knife stopped.
Ana stabbed it point-first into the board, leaving it swaying upright on its own. She set two lime wedges on the rim of the bowl without looking at them and picked up the tray.
“Wait — what are you doing?” George said.
She kept moving toward the stairs.
“I’m taking this up to Father Nicholas.” She said it without turning, one foot already on the first step.
“You’re not going up those stairs. Not worth the risk, not for a bowl of soup.”
She stopped halfway up the stairs, didn’t move for a second.
Then she turned and came back down, jaw set, and dropped the tray on the counter hard enough that some of the soup spilled over the rim.
“He’s given us this. All of it. I want him to know we’re grateful.”
“It’s my job to keep you and Sofia safe from anything that might come down those stairs.”
She turned to face him full on, squared up in a way she hadn’t been all morning, and gestured at the cane hooked over the edge of the dinette.
“And you’re going to stop them? With that?”
Heat came up George’s neck and into his face. “Hey! I was a cop for over—”
The door at the top of the stairs opened.
Iron on iron, heavy. George was already moving.
He put himself between Ana and the stairs. The revolver had cleared leather fast — muzzle up, steady on the head of the stairs.
Ana pulled the knife back out of the board and moved up next to his shoulder.
A shape descended into the light before the man did — hand on the rail, moving slow. Then Father Nicholas resolved out of it. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then didn’t. A small crease formed between his brows, as his gaze flicked from the revolver to the knife and back again.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
Something hit Father Nicholas square in the chest.
Not hard.
A foam dart bounced off him and landed at his feet.
Father Nicholas looked down at it. Then back up.
“We’re okay, Padre!”
Sofia came up from behind the crate — dart gun leveled, badge crooked, thumb up.
Ana and George turned to look at Sofia. Slowly. Together.
“I heard a commotion,” Father Nicholas said. “I just wanted to make sure everything was — that everyone was all right.”
Ana turned back to him. “We’re fine, Padre. I’m sorry. Everything’s fine.”
He nodded. Pressed his lips together, eyes moving between them. He turned and climbed back up the stairs one step at a time until he reached the door, pulling it shut behind him.
George lowered the hammer of the revolver and reholstered. Nobody spoke. The same close air settled back over the room, same as it had all morning.
Ana didn’t go back to the stove. She set the knife down and picked up the rosary, and held it.
“You told me to have faith.” She wasn’t looking at him. “You don’t know what you were asking for.”
“They left Mark in the driveway. I could see him from the window and I— I had Sofia. What was I going to do, I had Sofia. I got her in the truck. I was strong. For all of it, everything, I don’t even know how. And then I looked down and she had no shoes on. Her little bare feet. That’s the thing that finally broke me. Not—”
“She asks me when we can go home. Every day, she asks. And I keep telling her soon. Every time. Soon, soon, soon. I don’t — I don’t know what soon means anymore. I don’t know if it’s true.”
“I’ve buried a child already. I’m not going to lose this one too.”
Outside, the light through the high window had shifted again, a little further along the wall than it had been that morning.
“And I don’t want you to lose yours either, George.”
George lifted his head. “Thank you. She’s stubborn. Always has been. But she’s tough. Tougher than me.”
Ana’s eyes found his, softer now.
He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was still sore from where he’d taken the punch the night before. “Miguel could’ve just walked, could’ve left me on the floor to bleed.” He put his glasses back on, looked at her. “He went to find my little girl instead.”
The rosary moved through Ana’s fingers, bead by bead.
“He will find her,” she said. “I know he will.”
George took a deep breath. Let it out slow. Then he looked over at Sofia, down on the floor with her little figures, the badge still crooked on her shirt.
“They grow up fast,” he said. “Enjoy this time with her. They don’t stay that size for long.”
The bowl she’d made for Father Nicholas was still on the tray, gone cold. Ana picked it up and put it in George’s hands.
“Sit. Eat.”
She ladled two more bowls and set them on the dinette, a table built for two.
George reached for his spoon.
Ana rapped the back of his hand, once, with two fingers.
“Grace first.”
Sofia folded her hands, closed her eyes, and began. “Bendícenos, Señor, y bendice estos alimentos que por tu bondad vamos a tomar...”
George bowed his head.