Chapter 8: Lawyer and Client

On Thursday night Emiliano came to the duplex with a folder and a bag of takeout, and neither of us said it was a date.

It was ten o'clock.

Camila was finally asleep in the crib by the window, and the kitchen table had a stack of paper on it as tall as my forearm.

"Eat," he said, and slid a carton across to me. "You've been living on bakery rolls."

"How do you know?"

"You smell like cinnamon, and your hands are always dusted."

I looked down.

There was flour in the creases of my knuckles.

I ate the rice.

He opened the folder and put his glasses on, and for a while we only went through the pages.

Soledad's lawyer had served a list of everything I was supposed to have done wrong.

Leaving a family dinner.

Spending the court's money on a crib I hadn't bought.

Having a man at the house after dark.

"That last one's a photograph of me carrying furniture," he said. "I'd like to thank the photographer."

I smiled, and my phone buzzed on the table.

An unknown number.

It was a picture of my own front door, taken from the street, with the porch light on.

Under it, one line.

Count the pictures.

I put the phone down very carefully.

"Alma?"

"It's fine."

My hands had stopped listening to me.

I tried to pick up the fork, and it rattled against the carton.

"Alma."

I heard the chair scrape.

Then his hand closed around my left wrist, warm and dry, with two fingers resting along the inside of it.

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