Chapter 11: The Locksmith Comes Friday

Dahlia stood at the front gate in the dark with a banker's box on her hip and rain in her hair.

I came across the yard in Gabriel's shirt and my own jeans, and he came behind me with a flashlight.

She looked at the shirt, and then at Gabriel, and then at the sky.

"I'm not going to say anything," she said.

"Good," I said, and unlocked the gate.

We sat at the kitchen table with the candles lit.

Dahlia pushed the box across the wood.

"I took it out of his trunk," she said. "He was inside his mother's house drinking, and he left the car open."

"Why?"

"Because at one this morning he told me to forget the money. He said I'd get my name back when you signed, and not before."

She held up her phone.

Rafael had texted her: Bring the box to Mama's by six. Say nothing to the wife.

"The wife," Dahlia said. "I'm not doing it."

Gabriel put a hand on the box and did not open it.

"If he finds out you took this..."

"Let him." She lifted her chin. "He made me a prop in his joke. I'd like to be the punchline."

I almost smiled.

It was the first time I had felt anything but tired in a week.

We were still sitting there when the sky began to go gray, and a car turned in at the gate.

Then another.

By the time I stood up, there were three, with a van behind them, and a man with a locksmith's case on the front lawn.

It was Friday.

Rafael got out of the first car, and Marisol out of the second.

A third man in a gray overcoat stepped out of the last one and stayed beside it, looking at his watch.

I had never seen him before.

"Odette," Rafael called. "Let's end this politely."

I went out onto the porch.

The neighbor was already on his lawn in his bathrobe. Two women with dogs had stopped at the fence.

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