She lifts her face to his. Her lips are so inviting. “I’m worried about him.”
He leans down, sighing into her hair. “I am too.”
“I … I was hoping Cletus told you why I have to stay away from you. I told him, so that maybe he would pass it on. My family…” She chokes on the word.
He pulls away then, unable to stop his finger from lightly caressing the back of her cheeks. Catching a tear in the crook of it, he lifts it to his own lips and kisses the saltiness there. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I do, though. For my sanity. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. And I want you to know that I understand, you know, that you have to move on.”
“‘Move on’?” What?
“I saw you talking to the new girl. Jessica, I think.”
“You saw me talking to someone and you assumed I’ve moved on? Are you insane? So should I be worried that I saw you talking to Chad Brisbane?” Because now he’s stressed. Cletus is in the hospital and Carly is moving on? Surely life isn’t that sucky. He curses under his breath. “Did Cletus tell you why I have to keep my eyes off you in the halls?”
She sighs. “Yes. And you’re doing a great job of that, by the way.”
“I’m going through the motions, Carly. But it means nothing to me. Jessica, seriously? Who the hell is that? Tell me I still have you, Carly. Tell me you haven’t given up on us. Because I haven’t. I’m yours. All of me. All the time. Every second of every day.” He wants to shake an acknowledgment out of her. He wants to hear her say that she’s still his, that she’s as bad off as he is. He wants to kiss the perpetual logic from her face.
“But you’ve been acting as if I don’t exist. I watch you. You look at other girls.”
He runs a hand through his hair. She’s backing away from him again. Dammit. “I’m looking at something, not someone. Something, anything else but you.” He won’t let her take another step back, he won’t. He hasn’t been looking at other girls, not once. If he was staring, it wasn’t at them, it was through them. There are no other girls. There is only her. He closes the space between them yet again, pulling her back into his arms. She tries to wriggle free, but he will not—cannot—allow it. Not until she hears what he has to say. She can make a scene if she wants to. He won’t back down. Not now. “I’m in love with you, Carly.”
His confession shuts down the hissy fit she was about to throw right here in the waiting room. He traces his fingers along her lips as they quiver under the weight of his words. He’s glad she realizes how profound they are, coming from him.
“You are?” she says, eyes round and wide.
Arden nods, sucking in a breath. “How can you not know that?”
She nestles against him, wrapping her arms around his waist. It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s like being embraced by bliss. “If my family wasn’t at stake, I wouldn’t be able to stay away from you,” she says, her voice vulnerable.
“It’s the same with me. Did Cletus tell you? Dad threatened me with your parents. He’ll send them back.”
She presses her cheek into his chest. “I know.”
“If not for all that, I’d tell him to go to—”
“I wouldn’t finish that sentence, if I were you.” They both turn to face Sheriff Moss in all his rage veiled by a thin mask of indifference.
The large room seems to shrink. His father’s presence, especially right now, is a smothering force. Arden’s lungs feel heavy. What will his father say? What will he do? Surely nothing, in front of all these witnesses. “Kindly unhand Miss Vega, son. Miss Vega, you’re free to go.”
Carly pulls away as if Arden had burned her. This nearly kills him. “I was just, I’m the one who called the ambulance,” Carly says, a tremor visibly running through her. “I wanted to make sure Clet—Mr. Shackleford—was okay.”
The sheriff’s indifferent expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t even look at her. He keeps his eyes strictly on Arden as he says, “I said you’re free to go, Miss Vega. Now.”
She bites her lip. “If it’s okay with you, sir, I’d like to stay until we get word on Mr. Shackleford.”
Finally, his dad looks at her, steel in his eyes. “Do tell your brother I said hello.”
And just like that, Carly’s face falls. Hurriedly, she collects her purse and walks out. Every step she takes pounds in Arden’s head.
His father fixes his glare back on Arden, closing the distance between them in three loud, militaristic strides. Then he makes it a point to soften his expression. “Son, have you heard any word on your uncle? Your mother called me. I came as soon as I could. She should be here any minute.”
Arden knows his mother didn’t call. The news had spread over the police scanner. Cletus is the sheriff’s uncle, if only by marriage. If an ambulance was called for him, his father would know about it in about ten seconds.
Stupid, stupid, Arden thinks. As soon as he saw Carly he should have told her to leave. He shouldn’t have indulged in her company, shouldn’t have risked her family’s safety like that. He should have known his dad would show up, even though he despises Cletus. It’s all about appearances. Especially since tonight is the memorial for Amber’s death. Now he’s had to make a hospital visit to ill family, in addition to giving a speech about how he misses his daughter later this evening. The crowd will practically be eating out of his hands.
Even now, he’s acting like Father of the Year. But Arden will have none of it. He wants to stay and see how Cletus is, but he can’t stand the thought of remaining under his father’s scrutiny any longer. He thinks his uncle would understand. “She was here for Uncle Cletus,” Arden says, keeping his voice low. “Not for me.”
His father arranges a pleasant smile on his face, tucking away his fury for a more private setting, Arden is sure. Even his voice is monotone when he says, “You can see how I might have trouble believing you.” As far as the spectators are concerned, he just made mention of the weather or the number of patients in the waiting room.
“It’s the truth. I swear to you, I’m staying away from her.”
“We’ll talk about this later.”
“You’ll see that nothing happened here.”
The sheriff offers a slight nod. It’s the best he’s going to get, Arden realizes. Who knows how long his father intends to keep him in suspense. But at least Arden is showing a cooperative attitude. It’s all he can do to fix this, to make it better.
No, that’s not true. Instant nausea overcomes him. I can do more.
He clasps his father’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “I’m so glad you’re here, Dad,” he says loudly. Then he brings a very surprised sheriff in for a hug. “I expected you to be making the last few arrangements for Amber’s memorial.”
The waiting-room audience might as well be passing around a tissue box. The sympathy is almost palpable here. Arden wants to yell at them, to scream at them for being such naïve little fools.
His father pats him on the back before separating himself from the embrace. “Everything’s going to be okay, son,” Sheriff Moss says, his voice resonating throughout the room. He can’t quite hide the astonishment in his eyes though. This is the most Arden has ever given him, since way before Amber’s funeral, and they both know it. “You’re probably worn out from football practice, aren’t you? Listen, why don’t you run on home and get showered for tonight? I’ll stay here until we get word on your uncle.”
Arden nods obediently, trying not to press his lips together, doing his best to look anxious instead of disgusted. “Thanks, Dad. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” The words taste bitter, acidic on his tongue. Bile competes with expletives to be next out of his mouth. But neither wins. He pushes himself further than he thought he could. “Can I grab you some dinner from the cafeteria? You must be starving, what with all the extra shifts you’re working. I don’t know how you do it.”
His father smiles, and this time it’s authentic. And why wouldn’t he be
genuinely pleased with his son’s newfound enthusiasm for public family unity? “Thanks, son, but you need to rest up. I’ll see you at the house.”
Fighting regurgitation, Arden makes his way around the sick and injured people, and out the automatic glass doors of the waiting room. Behind him a chatter builds, and he hears his father greeting someone with a false, emphatic camaraderie. The sheriff is playing the part, and the crowd is gobbling it up, like he’s some sort of celebrity.
A bit of doubt claws at Arden’s insides as he hoists himself into his truck. Did I do enough? Will the sheriff have mercy on us this time?
He tries to reconcile the word “mercy” to his father. And he can’t.
Twenty-Nine
I unpack a box of clothes and set it on the bed to fold and put away. The next box has books in it; I can shelve those later.
Miss May’s house is not as grand and spacious as Cletus’s mansion, of course, but it’s pretty nice. Modern. Clean smelling, which is more than can be said about some parts of the old plantation house I just moved out of, I guess. And the best part is, she has an honest-to-goodness spare bedroom, which she doesn’t use to store other things in, like most people do.
But there’s something missing here at Miss May’s. I have a key, free run of the pantry, and my own bathroom. Rent is cheap. It’s even closer to the Uppity Rooster than the mansion was.
What’s missing is Cletus. Our philosophical conversations. Our breakfast banter after I get off work at the Breeze. Our mutual, slightly psychotic craving for caramel cheesecake at four in the morning.
At least he’s not dead. Which, after the stroke he’s had, the doctors say, is a miracle.
But there is not room for me in Cletus’s house anymore. For the next few months, he requires round-the-clock care, so the nurse had to take over my room there—it was the only space not used for storing old books, magazines, or deer heads and other miscellaneous, unfortunate taxidermy.
Plus, I saw the look on Sheriff Moss’s face when he caught me in Arden’s arms at the hospital last week. It was this look of finality. If I stayed at Uncle Cletus’s house any longer, the sheriff might misinterpret my intentions toward Arden. I’ve tried calling the sheriff every day since the hospital incident, to explain myself. That it’s not what it looked like. That Arden and I were both there for Cletus and nothing more. But Sheriff Moss is too busy to return my calls.
Too busy. Too holy.
Whatever.
I finish unpacking another box and decide that the smell of frying bacon in the kitchen downstairs is just too tempting to pass up. I follow the alluring scent until I’m practically drooling over a plate of it cooling on the counter. A napkin absorbs its greasy goodness. Miss May pours me a glass of orange juice.
Then she picks up a crispy piece and bites at the corner of it. “Almost unpacked?”
“Yep,” I say. That’s the great thing about not having many material possessions. It takes very little effort to play musical houses with them. Uncle Cletus would add that having fewer possessions gives you less to lose too.
But so far, I feel I’ve lost everything already and it has nothing to do with my clothes or my earphones or my books. No box could ever feel the emptiness I feel right now. Arden and I still have to ignore each other at school, which is actually way more difficult now that I know he loves me. I didn’t get a chance to say it back to him—well, I didn’t collect enough courage in time to do it. And now he might not ever know.
The only comfort I have is that my family will be here soon. I’m hoping Mama will take pity on me and have me back at the house. I don’t want to miss out on the twins, and more importantly, I have to start pushing my parents to get documented this time. To apply for citizenship. It will be much easier to stay on them about it if I live in their house.
“Have you heard from Cletus lately?” Miss May asks, extracting me from my line of thought.
“Talked to him yesterday. He doesn’t like the heart-healthy diet he’s on. And he thinks he’s hallucinating without the moonshine.” He also said the nurse was curved like a mountain highway in Argentina, but that seems too vulgar for Miss May’s proper ears.
“Sounds like Cletus.”
My pocket vibrates then, and I know it could only be Julio. He’s been calling and giving me updates on my parents as they make progress toward us. At first, the calls were short, just a sentence or two. Then, as he got more excited about their arrival, we would talk at length about what we’ll all do together when they get here. I suppose he’s forgiven me in his own way. But he hasn’t invited me back home yet, so maybe not. Ultimately, it will be Mama and Papi’s decision though.
Sure enough, Julio’s number lights up my screen. “Hello?”
“Carly?” Julio sounds stuffy, like he’s got a cold. “Carly, what have you done?”
“Huh? What do you mean?” I take a seat at Miss May’s kitchen table, bracing my forearm on the cold surface of it.
“Carly.” Julio’s voice sounds so full of heartache now. “What have you done to make El Libertador break his promise to us?” He takes a moment to sniffle. I’ve never heard my brother cry before. “When Mama and Papi got to Austin, immigration was at the bus station checking everyone who came through. They were taken into custody, Carlotta. Mama said she had to beg the officer to call me.”
“Ohmigod.” This earns me a worried look from Miss May. I’m envisioning a raid. Guns being pointed at my parents, and my brother and sister. The unimaginable terror they must have felt. Maybe it wasn’t like that. Maybe they just boarded the buses and asked for documentation. “Are … were they hurt?”
I assume they weren’t, because Julio ignores my question altogether. “Some kind of protection he offered us, eh? But he took our money. All that money. And now what? We’re just supposed to start from scratch?”
Cold steals through me. I’ve never seen Julio panic over anything.
He sniffles again. “So I want to know, Carlotta Jasmine Vega, what you have done.”
The hospital, is all I can think. “I didn’t do anything.” I offer Miss May a fragile smile and motion to excuse myself from the room. She nods.
“Calm down,” I say casually in Spanish, walking down the hallway to my bedroom. I shut the door behind me and sit on the bed, bringing my voice down to a whisper. “He saw me at the hospital, and Arden was there. But I wasn’t there with him. I’m serious, Julio. I stayed away from Arden. I did what I was supposed to do.” Except for the part where I ended up in his arms. But I’m not about to tell Julio that. Guilt settles on me like weighted dust.
“All I know is that Mama and Papi are on their way back to Mexico, Carlotta. How can I trust you? How do I know you tell the truth anymore?”
“That’s not fair. I came to you about the sheriff.” I lower my voice further, as if the word “sheriff” were cursed with the promise of unspeakable death. Nervously, I glance at the door. Would I be able to hear Miss May approach? “I told you what he said to me. I tried to tell you this might happen, that this is the kind of man he is. You didn’t want to listen to me.” Oh, but Julio is having none of it.
“You fix this, you hear me? You fix this!”
I close my eyes against the raw torment in his voice. Out of everyone, Julio had the most to lose. And it’s technically my fault, all of it. “I … I don’t know how to fix it.” The feeling of helplessness feeds the hysteria fermenting deep within me.
“Not good enough, Carlotta.”
“Julio, please.” But I don’t know what I’m asking for. Forgiveness? Support? A comforting word? I deserve none of those things.
“What about your boyfriend?” Julio’s voice gains about two octaves. I knew he felt more betrayed than he let on about Arden. Not only that I was dating someone without his knowledge; that would be bad enough in its own right. But it’s who I was dating that’s the real clincher for him. And why shouldn’t it be?
“What about this Arden?” he says, his voice more subdued. “H
e can talk to his father.” There is the sound of small hope in his words, and it sickens me.
I shake my head, but the action is lost over the phone. “He’s not close with his dad, Julio. They don’t like each other.” Understatement of a handful of millennium.
“You better talk sweet to him then,” he snaps.
Of all the things I would predict about my future, my older brother encouraging me to talk sweet to a boy wasn’t one of them. Julio is truly desperate. “I’m not supposed to talk to him at all, remember?”
“What does that matter now? El Libertador has already gone back on his word.”
Oh. Well. That’s a good point. All deals with the sheriff are officially off. I hate myself for feeling a tinge of relief. I can see Arden now—at the cost of my family. “Arden isn’t the answer.”
“What about this Shackleford man? The one you were staying with? Can he help us?”
The seed of an idea sprouts inside my head, germinating as I talk it out. “Cletus? Hmmm. Maybe he can…” Probably not in the way Julio wants, though. I doubt even wise, all-knowing Cletus could rescue our parents from the jaws of deportation, even with his connections. Saving my family is a lost cause and I know it. But retribution isn’t. “Let me call you back, okay? You work tonight?”
“Of course I do.”
“Call in sick.” Then I hang up and dial Arden.
Thirty
Arden perseveres down Cletus’s driveway, so awash with anger that if the moonlight was bright enough, his knuckles would show tighty whitey on the steering wheel. He’s thankful though that the moonlight is held at bay by low-hovering clouds; this meeting needs all the secrecy it can get.
Instead of pulling under the carport, he drives straight beside the house, around to the back. Putting the truck into park, he notices two bicycles leaning against the house by the back screen door. His anger fades slightly to nervousness.
Julio is here.
Julio, Carly’s older brother, but more importantly—and admittedly more scary—is that Julio is as close to a father figure for Carly as Arden is going to meet any time soon. He’s never met a girl’s father before, but he always thought he would handle it well if the time ever came. He would be charming and suave and somehow appear completely innocent under the scrutiny of a fatherly radar.