Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(76)

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes were glistening. “I’m really messed up about it.”

I felt like I’d been ripped out of my own life and placed in someone else’s. I was used to solving family problems for other people. I was used to custody battles, adoptions gone wrong, unfit parents, delinquent kids—all the horrors of parenthood from the outside.

This . . . this was like reading through a mirror. Everything felt backward.

I wondered if Ralph had felt this way when he learned he was going to be a father. I realized I’d never be able to ask him.

Suddenly, the morphine wore off. My best friend was dead. I’d spent the last two years of his life trying to push him away.

You want to understand somebody, Ralph had once told me, look at what he’s willing to give up.

I steadied myself against the porch rail.

“Tres?” Maia asked.

“I’m all right.”

She studied my face, knowing damn well I wasn’t all right.

Across the street, the older couple toasted each other with glasses of champagne. Nat King Cole kept singing from the living room.

“I want this baby,” Maia told me. “But it’s dangerous.”

“Better health care,” I managed. “The doctors are good.”

“No. There’s something else. My brother.”

“You don’t have any siblings.”

“Present tense, that’s true. But . . . I did. An older brother. He died at age ten. He never saw a doctor. We couldn’t get good treatment because of who my family was—warlords, landowners, traitors. We didn’t even know what was wrong with him. He was frail, clumsy. He broke bones a lot. Finally his body just . . . quit on him. Since then, since I came to America, I’ve figured out what he had.”

I was silent for a verse of “We Three Kings.” “Muscular dystrophy?”

“I’ve been talking to doctors,” Maia said. “It passes through the mother’s side, even if the mother doesn’t have it. A boy child would have about a fifty percent chance of inheriting the disease.”

“And . . . is it a boy?”

“I don’t know yet, Tres. I kind of don’t want to know.”

Maia’s present was still next to me on the porch rail. I stared at the green bow and said nothing.

“You didn’t choose to be a dad, Tres. You’re not obligated to help. Especially not . . .”

She didn’t finish, but I understood: Especially not after Ralph’s death.

I slid her the present. “Open it.”

She looked at the battered shoebox. One of the many things I’ve never mastered is gift-wrapping. The box looked like it had been packaged by a clumsy, color-blind kindergartner.

Maia set her tea on the railing and opened the box. Inside, wads of tissue paper and a smaller box. Inside that, a still smaller box. This one black velvet.

She opened the hinged lid.

“Corny, I know,” I said. “Ana helped me. She guessed the right size.”

Maia held up the ring like it was critical case evidence. “Tres—”

“I didn’t know about diamonds. The guy said that one was good. I didn’t figure you for a diamond person, but Ana thought it was the right thing. So—”

“Tres—”

“If you think it’s a bad idea . . .” My face felt hot. “I mean, I know it’s weird.”

“You’re proposing to me?”

“You could keep the Austin apartment for business. The house here is huge. I mean . . . I never figured myself for old-fashioned, but the kid needs a dad. I mean, he’s got one, but he needs one full-time. So, yeah. I’m proposing. Marriage, I mean.”

“Jesus.”

“Is that a no?”

She threw her arms around me and kissed me hard. The tea hit the porch and went rolling, splattering all over the place. The diamond ring dug into my neck.

When she finally let go I felt dizzy, like I’d just been pulled back from the edge of a cliff.

“That’s a yes, stupid,” she told me. “A very big yes.”

She kissed me again, and I tried to force myself back into my life, but I couldn’t do it. Something had changed. Something huge.

Nat King Cole was playing inside. The air outside was getting colder.

Mrs. Loomis called to us from the front door. She had atole for us to try. She and Sam were waiting to play Old Maid. We’d promised them a game.

Maia ran her hands through my hair. “Tres, do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”

“None,” I admitted. “Absolutely none.”

“That makes two of us,” she said. “Come on.”

She took my hand and led me inside, where the rest of our makeshift family was waiting.

JULY 14, 1987

WHEN SHE WAS SURE THE POLICEWOMAN was gone, thirteen-year-old Madeleine White opened the passenger’s door of the Mercedes and got out.

She stared at her brother’s body. A halo of blood glistened around his head. His fingers were curled like claws into the dirt.

She didn’t want to get closer. She wanted to run. But a hot, scratchy rope knotted around her heart, pulling her forward.

She had watched the argument.

Until the end, she’d been more afraid of Frankie than the policewoman. Even now, as he lay motionless on the pavement, Madeleine was certain he’d get up. He was dazed, or faking it. You couldn’t kill Frankie that easily.