CHAPTER NINE
“It was always gonna be him, wasn’t it?”
I WAKE UP TO a noisy house.
Shrieking kids, slamming doors, clanging of pots and pans. Ah, Saturday mornings at the Mendez house. Oh, how I misseth thee—not.
Rolling over in Mama’s bed, I stretch, twist, and yawn. I have a foggy memory of her kissing my forehead and telling me she was heading out and that I should come to the restaurant for breakfast when I’m up.
With another lazy yawn, I get out of bed and promptly begin making it, folding the duvet just beneath the pillows, the way she prefers it. Mama never leaves her bed unmade.
Donning my shoes, I exit the room and am almost bowled over in the hallway by one of the kids.
“Sorry!”
Another crashes into the other. “It’s Aunty Lexi! It’s Aunty Lexi!”
I’m not their aunt, but as far as they’re concerned, every adult in the family who isn’t their “Mama” or “Papa,” is “Aunty” or “Uncle.”
“Hi, Aunty Lexi!”
And then I’m swarmed. Hugged, crowded, and bombarded with questions. I have nothing to give them, and it makes me sad. I’m the “Aunty” who always shows up with cool gifts.
Before I’m able to extricate myself from them, I dig out the last bit of loose cash I have in my back pocket—two hundred and seventy-five dollars—and tell them to split it up among themselves.
And then I was out of there.
I cross the street to the two-story craftsman-style home I spent a lot of my formative teenage years in, with four hellion boys and their spoiled, screaming baby sister. It’s one of the nicest houses on this street, towering over our single-story Victorian cottage.
I’m about to use the brass lion-head knocker when I remember that Trent gave me a key last night. It’s still early, and I don’t want to wake Monica if she’s still asleep, so I pat myself down for the key and find it tucked into the front pocket of my jeans.
Letting myself in, I inhale with a sigh. The Garza home still smells the same. Like green leaves and rain. As I walk around, touching surfaces, I notice that while the smell is the same, a lot of interior remodeling has been done and adapted to more modern styles. It’s nice, aesthetic and tasteful, but the homey feeling I remember is gone. It feels somewhat cold now, empty. Which I suppose it is, in a way.
I don’t get to mourn the loss, though, because Monica saunters into the open-plan kitchen just then.
“Lexi! You’re here.”
Warm, welcoming, and graceful are three words that come to mind whenever I think about Monica Garza. Tough when she needs to be, but kind and nurturing always. Jamaican born, she stands tall at about six feet, with a rich, deep-amber complexion and soft brown eyes.
I slap my palm over my mouth. “Can I go freshen up and come right back? I’ve got morning breath and I stink.”
“Of course. Go, go. I’m just about to make breakfast.”
I scurry off to the guest bedroom where my suitcases are deposited at the foot of the bed. I fetch out my toiletry pack and head straight for the bathroom.
Showered and dressed in a fresh change of clothes, I feel more awake and people-ready as I amble out into the house. Monica is in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
“Okay, I’m clean and huggable now,” I say.
Laughing, she turns away from the stove and pulls me into a hug. “It’s really great to have you here again, Lexi.”
“I’m happy to be here.” We break apart. “I was supposed to come over last night, but they got a hold of me. I drank one too many beers and crashed in Mama’s bed.”
She chuckles and shifts back to the stove to flip her fritters. “Well, if there’s one thing the Mendez family knows how to do, it’s live.”
I help myself to a cup of coffee. “Yeah…but sometimes I wish they would do more.”
“There’s nothing better than a content man, Lexi,” she tells me. “People who can be content and joyful even while having little or nothing at all are to be envied. Real contentment is not an easy thing to come by, no matter how much wealth or ‘things’ one has.”
I shrug and take a sip of coffee. “Is Tillie still asleep?”
“She should be up, but she takes forever to come out of her room in the mornings. She spends twenty minutes just to ‘do’ her eyebrows alone. And then there’s the fake eyelashes.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “You girls these days.”
This makes me cackle. “How old is she now again. Fourteen?”
Monica snorts. “I wish. She turns seventeen in three months.”
“Damn.”
“Yup.”
Monica is the biological mother to only two of the Garza siblings—Tripp, the youngest son, and Tillie, the only daughter and last child.
Word on the street is that Flavio Garza was a big-time playboy who had an obsession with Black women, so all of his children are half-Black, half-Italian. There are rumors that he has a son in France as well as another set of twins in England.
Trenton and Trueman’s mother was a successful burlesque dancer in Vegas who saw them as an “accident” since she and Flavio were merely friends with benefits. She wasn’t keen on being a mother and spent the first couple years of their lives resenting them. When Flavio married Monica, and the twins started spending the weekends with her, they would bawl their eyes out when it was time for them to go back to Vegas. Eventually, Monica proposed to adopt them, which their mother happily agreed to. Tripp was born soon after, then Tillie. Years later, after his mother died, Torin came to live with them.
Flavio told me and my sister all of this one afternoon while he was dropping us off in town. It was maybe two months before he died. I remember him being emotional about Monica, telling us how grateful he was for her, how strong she was and how she “saved” him. I’d only half-listened to his ramblings that day while I played games on my phone, but after he died and I saw how Monica had juggled it all on her own, without complaints, while being exceptionally graceful and never cracking at the seams. All I could remember was Flavio singing her praises. She is one hell of a woman and my admiration for her knows no bounds.
“Trenton tells me you’re helping him out with something?” she says as she adds a fresh batch of fritters to the skillet.
I am? “Uh, sort of.” I rest my hip against the counter, loving the aroma of her saltfish fritters. I’ve always enjoyed watching her in the kitchen. Her style of cooking is so different from ours. Two different cultures. “I got myself in a pickle and he helped me out. So now I kind of owe him.”
“Were you always in contact with him? Because he always made it seem like you weren’t.”
“Oh, no, we weren’t,” I say quickly. “We ran into each other in Vegas.”
“Hmm,” she muses. “It was always gonna be him, wasn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“Oh, nothing.” She tucks away a secretive smile, as if she knows something I don’t. “I was just thinking that Torin will be happy to hear you’re back.”
Pfft. That sorry-ass, emotionless prick who showed not even an ounce of remorse after I confronted him? Who couldn’t have cared less that he hurt me? Oh, please. “I doubt that.”
I remember how pissed Monica was when she found out Torin and I were dating in secret. Not only had he been too old for me, but she didn’t support teenagers dating. She said where she was from, teenage girls ‘dating’ was a big no-no. Even if they were at the age of consent, mothers would still whoop their daughters’ asses if they found out they were talking to a boy let alone having sex. So, suffice it to say, Monica did not support our relationship.
“I don’t know, but I believe there’s more to that breakup than you think, Lexi.”
This pulls a frown from me. “What do you mean?”
“It’s—”
“Mom, have you seen my—Oh, my God. Lexi?”
Tillie barges into the kitchen and halts when she sees me, her face splitting into a grin. She’s the spitting image of Monica and is fast approaching her height. I remember how she used to follow me around whenever I was here, sit on my lap or between my legs whenever we were playing games or watching movies. But she’s all grown up now, filled out in all the places men will appreciate.
“In the flesh,” I say, mirroring her grin.
She breaks into a skip and crashes herself into me. “It’s so good to see you! I nag Miss Mendez all the time about when you’re coming home.”
The last year or so withstanding, I came home all the time, I just make an effort to avoid seeing them. Mama knows, too, which is why she doesn’t let on when I come or go.
“It’s great to be back,” I say. “You’re so tall and…filled out.”
She giggles and pushes my shoulder playfully. “I can’t stay a kid forever.”
“I wish you would,” Monica grumbles. “Everyone’s grown up and moved out. You’re my last baby.”
“I’m sure one of your boys will give you a grandbaby by the time Tillie goes off to college,” I say.
She scoffs. “With those boys, I’ll die waiting.”
Tillie smirks mischievously. “Or maybe I can give you a grandbaby.”
Monica whips around and swats at her with the spatula but Tillie dodges her, giggling hysterically. “Don’t even joke about that! No boys until you’re twenty-one, you hear me?”
Tillie rolls her eyes as she picks up a mug and pours herself coffee.
I wag my finger at her. “I say no boys period. They all screw you over in the end. Just focus on building your career, your finances, your self-esteem, and self-confidence, so when the time comes you can choose the man you want, not the man you need.”
“What Lexi said,” Monica concurs.
“So, are you back back?” Tillie asks me over her mug of coffee. “If not, for how long, and what are you doing today? Will you be here when I get home?”
I snicker. Tillie might have changed in appearance, but she’s still the same excitable, intrusive little girl who talks too fast and asks too many questions. “I’m back in L.A., yes. But Redlands, just for a few days. And I plan on spending today at the restaurant with Mama, see how she’s doing. The last time I was there it was still being remodeled. I’ve only seen pictures of the renovations.”
“Awesome, you can drive down with me then!”
“You’re going there?”
“Yeah. I work there on the weekends. Miss Mendez didn’t tell you?”
I shrug. “She might have. But that’s great, though. I used to wait tables, too, from when I was fifteen until I was eighteen. But only during the summer.”
“Alicia does, too,” she says. “We both plan on going to culinary school, so the experience is great. We’re learning a lot from Miss Mendez.”
“If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll deny it to my last breath: To better your culinary skills, pay closer attention to Rosa. For managerial and entrepreneurial skills, pay closer attention to Mama. They compete all the time over who’s the better cook, and Mama will strangle me for saying this, but Rosa is better. Mama’s strengths lie in managing, directing, and building.”
“I would imagine,” Monica chimes in. “She held supervisor positions at some of the best restaurants until she landed that big managing job at POLA before…” she trails off and gives me a sympathetic look.
Before she got cancer and had to give it up.
We’re momentarily doused in silence before Tillie breaks it with her perkiness. “Oh my God, I’m starving. Can we take breakfast to go, Mom? I don’t want to be late.”
“Of course.”
A few minutes later, Tillie and I spill out into the garage with Tupperware containers of saltfish fritters, sausages, and eggs.
I whistle at the sporty yellow convertible parked next to Monica’s Prius. “This is you?”
“Yep.” She grins proudly. “My bothers got it for me on my sixteenth birthday.”
“Nice. They told you no boys allowed inside?”
“Ugh. As much as I want to date boys, boys don’t want to date me. They’re all scared of my brothers.” We slide into the car. “And there’s nothing, nothing, I can do without them knowing. It’s so annoying. They’re like walking satellites. Sometimes I hate being a Garza.”
“I can imagine,” I mumble.
Firing up the engine, she slides me a look. “They do the same thing with you, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulls down the handbrake. “They know everything about you, Lexi. Everything.”
She hits the gas.
Of course they fucking do.