Page 51 of The Crush
“I grabbed things I think I’ve seen you in recently,” he explains, passing Daniel the bag after climbing the front porch stairs. He leans in, lowering his voice to mutter in my ear. “I grabbed that one thing you asked me for. From under the bed? And I packed you…underthings, too, which I’m already trying to block out, so if I did something wrong you’re on your own.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, laughing for a moment before tears threaten again.
“Hey, don’t cry anymore, okay?” Gabe wraps his arms around me. “Would it make you feel better to know that Mamá has told both Dad and Aarón they’re sleeping in the barn tonight?”
“Really?”
“Well, she’s threatening it at least. When she’s not busy praying over the rosary for your sins.”
“Speaking of which…” I say as he lets me go. “What about you? Are you in trouble?”
“I’m on dear Dad’s shit list but what else is new?” He shrugs, but I know he can’t possibly be as indifferent as he’s pretending to be.
“Gabe,” Daniel says, setting the bag down and extending his unbandaged hand. “I appreciate everything you did. I’m sorry that things got so—”
“Pretty sure that wasn’t only your doing, Danny,” Gabe replies, frowning and accepting the offered hand with a firm shake. “I wish I could have done more.”
“You did plenty,” I argue, and Daniel nods in agreement, turning to give me a kiss on the top of my head before he excuses himself by saying, “I’ll give you guys a bit.”
Gabe waits until the door closes before asking, “How are you holding up, hermanita?”
I sigh, taking a seat on the front steps illuminated by the porch light. “Fine? I guess?”
Right away, Gabe sits next to me, his long limbs folding up somewhat awkwardly in the small space. “Well…you certainly made an exit.”
“I don’t know that it’s really set in yet.” I bury my head in my hands. “I mean, right there at church. How—everyoneknows.”
Gabe rests his hand on my back. “I’m sure there are small children that don’t. Some infants, maybe, that are unaware.”
“Thanks.” I turn my head to look at him, searching for the answer before I finally ask. “Whyareyou so okay with this?”
He shifts on the steps, shrugging again. “Danny is a good man. I trust him.”
“Why?”
He quirks a brow at me. “Should I not?”
“No, no, I just…Why are you sticking your neck out to help us?”
“Maybe I’m trying to balance your brother scales,” he replies, looking out ahead of him like there is something very interesting to see besides a dirt road at night. He stays like that for so long that when he speaks again, it jars me as if I’d fallen back asleep.
“María,” he says softly. “You were still pretty young when she passed so she probably didn’t get to give you the talk.”
I look at him with confusion. “The talk? As inthetalk?”
“No, notthattalk. Although she pretty much gave us that one, too.” He chuckles. “No, she had a rule with all of us.” He gets really quiet for a moment as a comforting evening breeze drifts by, and I sit with him until he’s ready again. “If we were ever out somewhere and we needed to go home, but we were too scared to call our parents, we could call her, and she’d come get us. No matter what. No questions asked.” He smiles. “Did she ever tell you that?”
“Oh, no, she…I was only ten when she died.” Though I can still picture her so clearly, that same heartfelt grin I see on Daniel sometimes. “So you would have been…”
“Sixteen.” His eyes are on the toe of his boot pressing into the wood of the steps. “I was sixteen.”
He’s quiet again, so much quieter than I’m used to, until at last he says, “I was sixteen, and I was out. Was a few months after she died, and I was driving too fast trying to make it home by curfew, and…” He lets out a big exhale. “Some fucking deer jumped out in the road. I swerved in time so I didn’t hit it, but I ended up in the ditch. We’d had a bunch of rain earlier that day, and I couldn’t get my truck out, and we—we kept trying to get it out, but it wouldn’t budge.”
I’m still listening, following the stops and starts of his story.
“I had passed the Sanchez farm a ways back, so I started walking, hoping I could use their phone. It took me forever, but I finally got there. When they handed me the phone, I was too scared to call home, so…” He stops again, swallows hard. “I called her anyway. I knew she was gone, but I guess I hoped that somehow the rule still stood.”
I close my eyes, picturing my brother as the lanky youth he was at that age, praying that a promise still stood even after the woman who made it was no longer on the other end of the line.
