“They talked to all of us after the shooting, yes. They searched his locker.”
“Did they find anything unusual?”
“I don’t think so. They didn’t even find his extra jacket in there. Hector always kept one in his locker in case the weather changed. He didn’t like the cold. Maybe he gave it to his friend.”
“A friend at work?”
“No.” The teenager looked over his shoulder and kept sweeping.
“Omar, is there something you didn’t tell the police?”
“I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“This isn’t Guatemala. The police won’t do anything bad to you.”
Omar kept his eyes on his broom. “I have to go peel carrots.”
Adele squinted inside the mullioned windows. Chez Martine wasn’t open for lunch on Sundays. The staff would just be cleaning the place out and preparing for Sunday dinner. “Do you have a break when I can talk to you?”
“Maybe you can come around back? I will speak to my boss.”
Omar’s boss, a hefty Colombian who seemed to tower over his largely Central American staff, growled at Omar in Spanish that he had “five minutes” to speak to Adele. Then he handed Omar a giant bucket of carrots. “Peel while you talk.” He had a commanding presence. Adele felt as if she were being ordered to don an apron and do the same.
“I don’t want to get fired,” said Omar. He worked fast as he spoke. Adele watched the carrots flying through his fingers, the knobby orange peels gliding across his sun baked hands. His fingernails were chipped and uneven. They looked like they belonged to a hand much older than seventeen years. There were fresh pink scars across the knuckles. She wondered what sort of journey he’d endured to make it to see his mother here in Wickford. She wondered how they were faring as a family now.
“Nobody is going to fire you for telling the truth,” Adele promised him.
“Even when the truth is against an important person?”
“What important person?”
Omar wiped his hands on his white apron. He licked his chapped lips. He seemed to be weighing some secret he was deciding whether he could trust her with. Adele sat very still.
“My mother,” he said finally. “She still lives at her employer’s house. Here in Wickford.”
“She’s still a live-in? I thought after you arrived . . .” Adele’s voice trailed off. She saw at once what the boy was telling her. His mother’s living accommodations weren’t sufficient to take him in.
“Omar,” she asked softly, “where are you living?”
Omar kept his eyes on the carrot peeler. “I have a cousin. He lets me sleep on his couch sometimes. My mother does my laundry when she can at her employer’s. But some nights, my cousin has no room. So I—” Omar nodded back at the restaurant. The lovely cobblestoned restaurant with the glass mullioned windows. It was a great place to dine. It was no place for a seventeen-year-old boy to live.
“Does your employer—?”
“Jorgé knows. He sounds mean but he has a good heart. He is only the kitchen manager, however. The chefs don’t know. And the owner definitely doesn’t know.”
“Do you stay over at the restaurant often?”
“Not so much—until the weather got cold.”
Adele knew what the boy was saying: When it was warmer, I sometimes slept outside.
Omar kept his gaze on his work. Adele could only imagine the stress he was under. He had no place to live. He didn’t speak the language. He’d endured a traumatic journey. After so many years apart from his mother, he probably didn’t even really know her anymore. Nor could she take care of him. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Adele was asking about Hector, no one except his boss, Jorgé, would even know the teenager’s situation.
The boy must have sensed something in Adele’s gaze because his shoulders straightened. “I’m seventeen. A man. I can take care of myself,” he said. In his world, seventeen was a man. Adele decided to let his problems go at the moment and concentrate on his account.
“So—when you were staying at the restaurant, did you see something?”
He glanced up at her and then quickly looked away.
“Omar, please. If this has something to do with the shooting, I need to know. Hector’s family needs to know.”
“I want to help,” said Omar. “But I have family, too. I need this job. I have loans to repay. If I don’t pay, there is a man in my town back in Guatemala—he will take it out on my older sister!”
“I promise you,” said Adele. “I will not tell anyone where I got the information.” After Vega’s breach of confidence, she would never divulge anything ever again.