Page 69 of The Crush
Isabel
I mighthave gotten a bit carried away. A bit.
I bite my thumb as I peruse the grocery bags, so many that we started putting them on the floor when we ran out of space on the counter and the table. Simply looking at them, I’m suddenly so overwhelmed that I’m not even sure where to start.
No, no, this is good. First holiday together. I should make it special. Of course I should. And this one in particular.
I look up when Gabe walks in and leans against the kitchen doorway, appearing to do a similar survey of the haul before he says, “I think that’s it. My truck is empty, but still feels like there should be more.”
“More?” I sputter, feeling overwhelmed again. “Look at all this stuff.”
He frowns, coming to stand beside me. “Hey, it’s fine. Mamá’s kitchen always looks like this before she starts cooking for Día de Muertos. So did Abuelita’s.” He pauses, thinking. “No, hers was worse.”
My grandmother had passed about a year before I was born, and while I’d never had the chance to experience her cooking, knowing she and my grandfather taught my mom was enough to speak for it.
“I guess I forgot howinvolvedit is,” I say, glancing toward the front door. “Where did Danny go?”
“Tadeo grabbed him. Needed his help with something. I told him I’d get the rest,” Gabe explains, looking at me carefully. “You okay, hermanita? I could stick around for a bit.”
“No, no, I’m good,” I lie, knowing he really needs to get back to help at home, too. “Are you still coming by later?”
He gives me a look that says the answer should be obvious, but he confirms it by saying, “Of course. Everyone knows Tadeo gives out the good candy.”
I smile, thinking back to when we were kids and always saved this house for last, kept this tradition just for us. Aarón and Eli already too grown up to spend a night being a kid, Daniel eventually either away at school or working.
Gabe and I would leave our bikes in the front lawn and homemade costumes by the front door so our eager hands could be free for the homemade treats. Sugar skulls and sweet empanadas that made our fingers sticky as I happily sat in María’s lap while Tadeo told us spooky stories. Gabe nearby with a newly gifted pair of scissors and a stack of thin colorful paper sheets to turn into papel picado.
The two of us would stay until the last of the treats had been eaten and the last paper had been hung. The sugar crash already starting as María called to tell my mom we were heading home and Tadeo lifted our bikes into the back of his truck. I usually had to be carried out more often than not, already half asleep by the time I was secured into the front middle seat.
Gabe bumps me with his hip, bringing me back. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I just want to do something special for Danny and Tadeo, you know?” I look around once more, the kitchen suddenly feeling empty despite everything we had hauled in. “For all of them.”
Fifty-Three
Daniel
That fucking tractor.
At this point, it needs to be replaced, and I keep wondering if we should dip into the money I have saved even though my dad keeps insisting it’s not necessary.
There’s surely enough for a down payment at least. I’d lived lean when I’d been in the DEA. Gotten along fine living in my subsidized apartments, driving my issued cars, and eating whatever I could grab to go. There’s enough, even with what I’ve already mentally set aside.
“Danny, that you?” Isabel calls from the kitchen. I’d come in through the front door instead of the back after checking and seeing Gabe’s truck was already gone, my face and arms still smeared with engine oil and dirt after I did my best to scrub my hands clean under the garden hose.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The sound of splashing water and the reverberating clang of pans knocking together in the sink echo out as I bend to remove my boots, giving me enough pause to ask, “Everything all right?”
There is a suspicious silence as I walk toward her, prompting me to ask the question again before she calls back with a bit of a waver in her voice, “Ipromiseit looks worse than it is.”
Her hair up in a high ponytail and a sweatshirt tied around her waist, Isabel is wiping up water by the sink when I look into the kitchen, placing her in the epicenter of what appears to be a very colorful explosion. Only instead of a radius of destruction, there is now a rainbow of fruits and vegetables resting haphazardly on cutting boards, fresh marigold flowers lying next to equally orange pumpkins, pink bags of flour next to brown paper packages of meat.
“I know it looks like a lot,” she says when she turns to me, and there isn’t a single explanation she could offer that would convince me that itisn’ta lot. More than the three people living in this house could ever begin to eat, even with the help of Gabe, Eva, and however many of the dead should happen to come calling over the next two days. My chest tightens.
“Isabel, you didn’t have to…”
“I wanted to,” she says. “And it’s really only five…no, six dishes.” She counts again on her fingers. “Maybe ten.”
