The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(81)

“The bright light can’t be good for you,” I said. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“No, I like it out here.” Turning to her husband again, she asked, “Can I get a pill?”

A raven landed near us and eyed the ground for any crumbs. Tareq waved it away. “Drink the lemonade,” he said. “It should help.”

“I’d rather have something.” Her eyes were pleading.

“I’ll leave you two to catch up.”

I didn’t know what to make of this exchange between them, or the tension that I sensed beneath their pleasantries. Why wouldn’t he give her something for her migraine? “Are you all right?” I asked her after he left.

“I’m fine,” she said.

For the first time, it occurred to me that the perfection my sister wore like an armor was starting to show some cracks. It could only be grief, I thought; grief had done this to her. All at once my irritation disappeared. I reached across the side table to touch her arm, and immediately she put her hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. “Oh, Salma,” I said.

“I’m fine,” she said again, and took a long sip of her lemonade. From the neighbor’s yard came the rattle of a wire fence being opened, followed by the joyful barking of a dog. “Why do you have to leave so early anyway?” she asked.

“I told you, I have to go back to work.”

“You mean the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Nora, why are you doing this?” she asked me warily. “Mama doesn’t want to run the restaurant anymore, and she shouldn’t have to. She’s getting on in years, you know. She just wants to retire.”

“She can still retire. I can buy her share of the business so long as you keep yours.” Then, warming up to my idea, I said, “We could be partners, you and I. The Guerraoui sisters. How about that?”

“That sounds nice, but then what? Who’s going to run it?”

“You don’t think I can?”

“It’s not that. I just thought you wanted to write music.”

“I do want to write music, but I’m also not letting Baker get away with murder and I’m not giving up on Dad’s dream.”

“It was his dream, Nora, not yours. You don’t want to be living someone else’s dream, trust me.” Her voice brimmed with rage. She swiveled her legs off the ottoman and sat facing me, looking at me so intently that I thought she might grab me by the shoulders and shake me. “Look, if you’re going to do something as crazy as writing music, you might as well commit to it. Get rid of the diner and go write the best goddamn music you can.”

I was startled by her sudden passion. What could have caused it? And was it connected to the strain I had noticed earlier with her husband? These two made an ideal couple, or so I had always thought. “What’s going on with you?” I asked, bewildered by the turn our conversation had taken.

My sister gazed at me, as if deciding whether to trust me with whatever troubled her. A horned lizard skittered across the deck, finding some shade under the twins’ bicycles. The raven came back, taking a few hesitant steps toward the dining table. I waited. Salma seemed about to unburden herself, but the glass door slid open, and my mother appeared. She was out of widow’s white, and the cobalt blue of her dress made her look much younger. In her hands was a tray laden with summer dishes—vegetable kebabs and calamari salad and grilled eggplant and cut watermelon. The twins followed behind, arguing about who had won the game. Tareq came out, too, carrying a pot of coffee. And just like that, the moment of intimacy between my sister and me was over.

We moved to the table, where Tareq opened his gifts, commenting nicely about each one with a few nice words. From Aida, he received an unwearable silk tie, in a pattern of blue stripes on a bright yellow background. (“Thank you, habibti. Yellow is my favorite color.”) From Zaid, a fancy pen. (“I’ll use it to write my prescriptions.”) From Salma, a state-of-the-art audio system. (“I can’t wait to try it out.”) From my mother, a box of Belgian chocolates. (“These are my weakness.”) And from me, the card I had given him earlier. (“You’re so thoughtful.”)

But for the rest of the day, I found myself in the throes of a deep melancholy. How rare it was for my sister and me to talk about anything, let alone about something intimate. And just as we were about to, the moment had passed.





Jeremy




At the end of June, I had to go to a two-day training session on de-escalation techniques that Vasco had ordered a few weeks earlier, when the Bowden incident was still on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. The training was taking place in San Bernardino and, rather than drive the fifty miles back and forth, I’d decided to stay in town with one of the other deputies. For two days, we sat in a classroom and were told very different things from what we’d been told at the academy: attempt to defuse a tense situation with words, not weapons; if the suspect is agitated, demonstrate empathy by paraphrasing his statement; do not become emotionally involved in the encounter; assess the outcome before resorting to force. At the end of each unit, though, the trainer insisted that we had to do all this while putting our own safety first.

At dawn on the third day I drove back home, going straight to the police station for my regular shift and afterward to the community center, where I met Fierro for his support group. I was bone tired, and went for the coffee that sat at the table under the wall clock, pouring myself a giant cup and hoping it would be enough to keep me awake through the evening’s session. Fierro was in a foul mood. The promotion he’d been promised at the Walmart had not materialized, he told me, and he would remain sales associate for the foreseeable future. “Something else will come along,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I sounded convincing.