Chapter 13: Telling Mom

The study window was behind the leather chair.

I crossed the room and flipped the latch.

It stuck. I hit it with the heel of my hand and the sash flew up.

"Out," I whispered. "Now."

Noemi climbed onto the sill without a word and dropped into the hydrangeas on the other side.

I passed her the box. I put one knee on the sill.

Behind me the study door opened.

"Marisol?"

My father stood in the doorway in his dinner suit with one hand still on the light switch.

He looked at the open drawer. He looked at the window, and at my knee on the sill.

"Don't," he said. "Come down from there."

His face wasn't angry. It was frightened, and I had never seen that on him either.

I jumped.

Noemi hauled me out of the flower bed by my blazer, and we ran along the side of the house with the box between us.

"Marisol!" He was leaning out of the window. "Bring that back!"

A porch light came on next door.

He stopped shouting and pulled his head inside.

We caught the last bus at the corner. Forty minutes later we were on my grandmother's porch, and Noemi was still holding the box with both arms.

My grandmother opened the door in her robe.

"Nobody had better be dead," she said.

"Nobody is," I said. "Nana, I need the kitchen table."

She watched me set the box down and take off the lid.

She picked up the top card and read it. Then she took out another and read that.

"Seventeen of them," Noemi said quietly. "He never mailed one."

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