Hope began to wail again as Cam stepped forward, phone clutched in one hand, car keys in the other. “Get your shit. We need togo.”
19
EMBRY
We need to go.
I handed Hope to Juana without stopping to ask why and spun back into the hallway, snatching my phone from the stair post, heart sinking as the screen lit up with a flurry of messages from Decoy, all sent in the half hour I’d spent failing to settle Hope.
Decoy:m’s pretty sick
Decoy:might take him to a walk-in centre, get something to stop him puking all the way home
Decoy:has he still got his appendix???
Shitshitshit. My thumb hovered over the Call button, but Cam appeared at my elbow.
“I spoke to Decoy already. He’s gonna pull into the first A&E he sees. It’s probably nothing, okay? But it won’t hurt to get on the road, just in case.”
“What the fuck is even happening?”
Cam kicked my boots closer to my feet. “First I’ve heard of it, but apparently he’s been under the weather a few days. That’s why they were coming home, but Decoy says it’s got worse in the last couple of hours, so he wants to get Mateo checked out...”
A slender shadow flickered at the top of the stairs. Too late, Cam noticed Liliana, frozen in a beam of hazy light from the streetlamp by the landing window.
“What’s happened to my Pápa?”
She was a child who needed the truth. A child who could handle the fucking truth. So I gave it to her. “Pápa got sick on the road. Decoy’s taking him to a doctor and we’re going to go and meet them.”
“I’m coming too.”
“No.”
Liliana advanced down the stairs, her gaze already set with belligerent tenacity. “Yes.”
“No.”I caught her as she made to pass me. “Go back to bed.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Liliana.” Juana emerged from the kitchen, Hope screaming in her arms. “That’s enough.”
“Why is it enough? If Pápa’s sick, he needs me. He’ll always need me; he told me that.”
“He needs you to stay here and behave.”
“No!” Liliana shouted, wrenching her arm free of my hold and pushing her way to the front door, snatching the first pair of shoes she found—mine, naturally. I hadn’t got round to stamping into them. “I’m going and you can’t stop me.”
She crammed her dainty feet into my boots and threw the front door open, already scanning the bikes and cars outside, looking for Cam’s SUV, sharp enough to have spotted the keys in his hand.
The commotion emptied the kitchen into the hallway. Suddenly there were so many bodies between us. I couldn’t get to her and white noise filled my head, merging with Hope’s distress to become a wall of sound I couldn’t shove past—an obstacle that usually afflicted Saint, not me. A brother who kept moving regardless, and fuck, I wished he was here right now.
I found my way to Liliana and guided her outside, letting her feel the bitter wind blowing in from the sea. “I know you’re scared, but I need you to stay here and look after your sister while I go get Pápa and bring him home, okay? He’ll feel better knowing you’re doing that for him.”
Liliana speared me with a glare that could slay a man where he stood, but unshed tears shone in her eyes. “I know what an appendix is. If it’s bad, they’ll have to cut him open, and what if he dies like you did? What if I’m not there again and I never get to say goodbye?”
“You don’t need to say goodbye. He’s not dying. Even if he needs his appendix out, it’s nothing to him. He’ll be fine.”
Silence heavied the air, the words sour on my tongue. I’d never spoken such shit in all my life, and Liliana knew it. Not because I hadn’t spat facts, but because she’d survived an existence where nothing was ever that simple. She’dseenmen die. Stepped over their bodies to escape. And she was right about what had happened to me every time I’d gone under the knife. That was the thing about telling your kids the truth; you could never un-tell it and lie to them.