Chapter 5: The Garage

I hadn't climbed out a window since I was sixteen.

Back then it was Lupe waiting in her brother's Camaro at the end of the road.

At twenty-seven I got one leg over the sill, caught my sleep shorts on the latch, and nearly went into the rosebush headfirst.

I went around the back of the west wing in the dark, keeping to the wall.

Past the dead lemon tree my grandmother had planted.

Behind the pool, where the water threw blue light up the stucco.

The motion light in the courtyard never knew I was there.

The garage was a separate building behind the east wing, three bays and a storeroom at the back.

Abuelo used to keep the storeroom locked with a padlock the size of my fist.

The side door was open an inch.

I slipped in.

"Over here," Mateo said out of the dark.

He was crouched at the storeroom door with his phone flashlight on and the big padlock open in his hand.

"How did you get that open?"

"The combination's his birthday." He shrugged. "Everything in this house is his birthday."

He was right. The gate code, the alarm, the safe in the office. 0-3-1-9. March nineteenth.

I'd never thought to try it on the storeroom.

Inside it smelled of dust and motor oil and old paper.

There were the boxes, eight of them, stacked against the back wall under a tarp.

Pilar's handwriting on the side in black marker: IGNACIO, OFFICE, STORE.

Store.

A broken lamp.

I pulled the tarp off and opened the first box.

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