JONAH DROVE HER HOME. SHE TOLD HIM TO GO QUICKLY, BECAUSE the apartment’s front door was open and the light inside was on and she knew that her father must have come home from his walk furious. She wanted to be able to go in and speak to him without having to contend with his anger at seeing Jonah’s truck.
She kissed Jonah and told him she’d call as soon as she could.
The truck whistled off and she waited a moment on the sidewalk. She breathed. Closed her eyes. Felt the night heave around her. “Okay,” she told herself.
She climbed the steps and went inside and halted. She had prepared to be screamed at as soon as she entered. Her mind failed, at first, to interpret the scene. Papá sprawled on the futon. Rodrigo paced.
Rodrigo looked at Luz and started to speak. “Moses fue a buscar—”
For me, Luz thought. He was looking for me.
Blood covered Papá’s face. His shirt was wet. He held an ice pack to his forehead and blinked, lids slick and red, as Luz came and fell to her knees beside him. “Papá, Papá,” she was saying, and he reached for her hands with his free hand, and Luz thought, I made you go looking for me, even as she imagined what must have happened—Papá walking, distraught over his daughter. He spares the apartment a last glance and passes beneath the watery globe of a streetlamp, a seething cloud of insects. He loses himself in thought—Oh, my Luz—as the dark clings to him and he marches himself breathless. Is it my fault, bringing her to this place? Of course he wonders this. Can he trace his daughter’s mistake to the choice he made, long ago, to leave home for El Norte? His Luz, his daughter, who has she become to allow this to happen? And this is when, his senses shrouded by thought and the heavy night air, somebody behind him grunts: Hey. Papá turns and glimpses a figure and a flash of movement. Dread ices through him in the helpless instant before the pistol barrel whips out of the dark, and everything—inside and out—bursts bright and soundless. He is on his back, the world reassembling in a dim throb, as the figure turns out his pockets and disappears. Warm blood floods into one eye, and Papá thanks God for the small grace that most of his cash remains back at the apartment. Nothing hurts yet but it will soon, and he thanks God.
“This is my fault,” Luz told him, while he lay bleeding on the futon. “I’m sorry, Papá,” she said.
Her father’s eyes sought her. Guilt thickened like sludge in her belly.
“Okay,” Luz said. “Okay, Papá. I will go.”