Counting by 7s(22)

Dell continued, unable to stop himself.

“So that’s kind of comforting—knowing that the worst thing in life is already behind you. I mean, once it actually is behind you. Which it won’t be for a while, obviously.”

To Dell’s horror, her level of distress seemed to increase with his every word.

What was he talking about?

Dell cleared his throat and tried to steady his voice as he finished with: “Because this is life. And these things just happen . . .”

Wow. Did he really just say that?

How many kids go to school and come home to find that both of their parents are dead? Maybe in war-torn Somalia or someplace like that. Then maybe he could legitimately say: “These things happen.”

But here?

In Bakersfield?

A total meatball move.

Dell bit down on the inside of his left cheek and held his mouth closed until he could detect the taste of blood.

That’s what it took to shut himself up.





Chapter 19


pattie nguyen

A leader organizes people whether they know it or not.




It was a slow afternoon at the salon and Pattie was doing inventory, which was never her favorite thing.

But it had to be done. Bottles of nail polish vanished almost every day. She was certain that it was the result of theft from both her workers and her clients, so it was essential to stay on top of the situation.

As a small-business owner, you had to show that you cared about these things, even if the nail polish, bought in bulk, only ended up costing her sixty-nine cents a pop.

That was one of the secrets to success: caring about the big things and the small things.

Or in Pattie’s case, you cared about everything.

She wished all of her customers just wanted red nails. Red was lucky.

But Pattie carried over one hundred shades in their squat little glass containers.

She put down a bottle of fire-engine red and picked up peacock blue, a new shade that was very popular but carried no good fortune.

With the annoying blue in her right hand, she looked through the front window and suddenly saw a dusty sedan pull into the parking lot.

A police car was right behind it.

Not good.

Maybe if she had kept the red bottle in her hand, this wouldn’t have happened. She knew that wasn’t logical, but still.

And then she watched, her heart rate increasing, as her two kids got out of the dirty Ford and rushed toward the salon.

Really not good.

Pattie dropped the little glass bottle straight into the trash. She was going to discontinue carrying the unlucky peacock-blue nail polish.

In the very first week of school, Quang-ha had cut classes and gotten into arguments with teachers. He was in danger of being expelled.

Pattie had asked the principal for counseling. She firmly believed that her son needed a voice of authority to scare him back onto the right path.

But not real authority!

Certainly not the police.

And then before she could make a guess at what he’d done, her kids were inside the salon and they were both talking at once.



Quang-ha wanted his mother to know that Mai had lied.

This was suddenly an important moment for him because the playing field was being leveled.

Now he wasn’t the only one who twisted words to the people in charge.

But Mai, speaking rapid-fire in Vietnamese, raised her voice above his.

This wasn’t about lying.

This was about a car accident and a girl who had lost her parents. Mai only cared about that.

Quang-ha argued that they didn’t even know the little kid. Getting involved on any level was trouble.

Pattie tried to sort it out but it wasn’t long until both of the police officers were standing in front of her getting ready to launch an avalanche of questions in her direction.



Before they could, Mai took her mother’s hand and pulled her toward the door. Pattie followed, moving right past the two cops.

Mai led her straight to Dell’s car, where she wordlessly opened the backseat door so that her mother could be face-to-face with Willow.

Pattie saw grief.

Her eyes focused on a version of her own young self, and so many other children in Vietnam who grew up without parents, some abandoned because of their ethnicity, others because of tragedy.

And her arms reached out wide.



After Pattie signed the bottom of the paperwork that gave her legal responsibility for Willow for the next twenty-four hours, the police cruiser charged out of the parking lot like a getaway car.

That left Dell Duke.

He wanted to be invited home with them. He was now really part of this.

But Pattie ignored him as she went about closing the nail salon early, barking orders in Vietnamese to the two manicurists.

Dell hung around the cash register trying to be relevant.

It wasn’t working.

Even though Pattie stood barely over five feet tall to his five foot eight inches, she kept edging him toward the door.

“We talk tomorrow.”

She said this more than once, and then suddenly she had a hold of his right elbow as she literally led him outside.

Dell managed to say:

“I should probably get your home number. I mean, I have it in Quang-ha’s files at the office, but I . . .”

Pattie either wasn’t listening or wasn’t interested.