Chapter 7: The Kitchen

By midnight the guests were gone, the bounce house was deflated, and my daughter was asleep upstairs with a truck in each fist.

The deputy who took the Polaroid had put it in a plastic bag and said what deputies say.

There was nothing to charge, and no one to charge it to.

I stood in my mother's kitchen with the lights off, scrubbing a clean pan, and Dell stood in the doorway with his arms folded.

"I'm staying inside tonight," he said.

"You're staying in your truck."

"A man stood outside your fence with a camera, Ximena."

"And I can't help wondering why he picked this week to find us."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you walked into my yard on Wednesday, and by Thursday a man I've been refusing for two years knew your name."

The pan hit the sink harder than I intended.

"That picture exists because you came back."

"That picture exists because someone has been watching this house for longer than I've been here."

"You don't know that."

"I know it the way I know the sound of a car I've heard before."

"Who are you, Dell?"

I had never asked him that.

I had spent four years not asking, in fact.

The refrigerator hummed.

"Somebody who should have stayed gone," he said. "And can't."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have that won't get you killed."

He crossed the kitchen in three strides and took the pan out of my hands.

I should have hit him.

I put both palms flat against his chest instead and pushed, and he did not move an inch.

"I hate you," I said.

"I know."

"I have hated you every day for four years."

"I know."

"Then why are you still standing there?"

"Because you're still holding my shirt."

I was.

I had both fists in the cotton, and I could not remember closing them.

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