My Stepbrother Is My Secret novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Two Inches

Ruben begs her to sign, Mateo halts her concrete pour in front of the whole crew and is right, and their locked-trailer lunch is interrupted by Lupe at the window.

I didn't scream.

I don't know how.

"Dad," I said. "You scared me to death."

He was in his robe with his reading glasses on their cord around his neck. He had a coffee mug in both hands.

He'd been out here a while.

I couldn't tell how long.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "You either, huh?"

"I went for a walk."

"In the dark?"

"Around the pool. It's cooler."

I was in my sleep shirt and shorts with my hair tied up crooked.

My feet were bare and bone dry.

The east wing door I'd come out of was twenty feet behind me.

My father looked at me for a long moment.

Then he patted the stone beside him.

I sat.

"Your abuelo used to sit right here at five," he said. "Every morning. You remember? With his coffee and his little green book."

"I remember."

"He said the house was quiet enough to think."

He turned the mug in his hands.

"Mija, about last night. About the paper."

"Dad."

"Just listen to me. Please." He looked so tired. "I was alone in this house for sixteen years after your mother. Sixteen years. Pilar makes me happy. Mateo's a good boy. I want one family. I want Sunday dinner where nobody walks out."

"Have you seen the original?"

He blinked. "What?"

"The codicil. The real one, with the ink. Have you held it?"

"The lawyer has it. Pilar gave him a copy for us." He frowned. "Why?"

I wanted to tell him.

I wanted to say, look at the date, Dad, you were there.

But the east wing door was twenty feet behind me.

I could still feel Mateo's hands on my hips, and I didn't trust my voice.

"No reason," I said. "I have a pour at seven."

I kissed his cheek and went inside.

At 6:58 I was standing on the Mines Road site in my yellow hard hat with six concrete trucks lined up behind me, drums turning.

The warehouse slab was two acres of rebar mat on chairs, tied and ready.

My crew had been tying it for a week.

At 7:00 a black pickup pulled through the gate.

Mateo got out in a white hard hat and a pressed blue shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He'd slept maybe ninety minutes.

He'd slept ten hours.

"Morning, Varela."

"Ibarra. You're in my way."

He didn't move. He walked past me onto the mat with a tape measure, stepping between the bars.

The crew watched him. Thirty men and women in hi-vis, every one of them with a coffee.

He crouched, measured, moved four feet, measured again.

"Hold the pour," he said.

My stomach dropped.

"Excuse me?"

He stood up. "Your spacing's off along this whole bay. Twelve on center called out. You're at fourteen."

"I've got six trucks idling."

"Then they'll idle."

"Do you know what that costs? Do you know who's paying for those trucks?"

"Varela Construction," he said evenly. "Which is why I'm not letting it pour a slab that cracks in two years."

Somebody on the crew whistled low.

I walked out onto the mat and took the tape out of his hand.

I measured.

Fourteen inches.

I measured the next bay.

Fourteen.

I'd signed off on that bay myself on Friday afternoon, tired, in a hurry, thinking about his hands.

Thirty people were watching me.

"Two inches," I said, loud enough for every one of them. "He's right. It's on me. Grab your tie wire, we're fixing it."

Nobody laughed.

They grabbed their tie wire.

We fixed it in two hours and forty minutes, all of us on our knees in the sun, Mateo too, his pressed shirt soaked through.

We poured at 10:12.

At lunch I went to the site trailer to eat my burrito alone and hate him.

He knocked and came in and locked the door behind him.

"Don't," I said.

He pulled the blinds down, one, two, three.

"You did that in front of my whole crew."

"You'd have done it to me."

"I'd have done it nicer."

"No," he said, "you wouldn't have."

That was true.

That made it worse.

He came around the plan table. I backed up until the edge of it hit the backs of my thighs.

"Ibarra, there are thirty people out there."

"Then be quiet," he said, the way I'd said it to him at two in the morning.

He kissed me.

My hard hat fell off and rolled under the table.

His mouth tasted like the lemon lip balm I kept in my vest pocket. I'd put some on before lunch. Now it was on him.

He lifted me onto the plan table and the drawings for the whole warehouse crumpled under me.

"These are the only copies," I said into his mouth.

"I'm the engineer," he said. "I'll print more."

His hands went under the back of my shirt, flat and hot on my spine.

My hands went to his belt.

Somebody rapped on the trailer window.

We broke apart.

I shoved my shirt down, grabbed my hard hat off the floor, and jammed it on my head.

Mateo turned to the wall and pretended to read the safety poster.

I yanked the blinds up.

Lupe Garza was standing outside the window in her hi-vis and her big gold hoops, holding two Cokes.

She looked at me.

She looked past me at Mateo.

She looked at me again, very slowly, and pointed at the door.

I unlocked it.

She came up the steps and let the door bang shut behind her.

"Your hard hat's on backwards," she said. "And the ingeniero's wearing your lip balm."

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