Somehow Nell made it all sound natural and noninvasive: What’s the origin of the name Vega? Are you married? Have you always lived in California? Do you have family there? What’s it like living there? And Vega’s answers, similarly, were direct, but she seemed not at all uncomfortable responding between small bites of pasta: It’s Mexican—you can call me Alice; No; Yes; My father and my brother and his family live about ninety minutes away; it’s warm most of the time.
Vega pulled out her phone and looked for something on it, then handed it to Nell.
“This is my backyard. That’s my palm tree.”
Nell’s eyes got huge.
“Oh my God. Dad, did you see this? She has a palm tree in her backyard.”
Nell stretched across the table to give Cap the phone. Cap saw the picture, a thick, short palm tree that reminded him of an ear of eaten corn. The sky was a ridiculous Windex blue behind it. No clouds, just power lines. It looked like a set from a science fiction movie.
“Wow,” said Cap. “You should not look in our backyard.”
“Yeah, it’s a little overgrown. We don’t do a lot of landscaping,” said Nell.
“The palm tree was there when I moved in,” said Vega. “I don’t have to water it or anything.”
Cap smiled and couldn’t look at her for a second, something about how she was trying to not make Nell feel bad, fusing a connection through shitty backyards. It made him feel shy.
“So,” said Nell, looking at the clock on the coffeemaker. “I have to go up in ten minutes to finish Civ. You want to update me on the case and tell me about your jaw?”
Cap glanced at Vega, who nodded. Be my guest.
“I’ll give it to you in five.”
Cap gave her the highlights, as he’d been doing since she’d been about ten or eleven. Back then he left out the worst details: the ones that involved abuse of children, or anything particularly bloody, but now she could take it. She listened intently and crinkled up her face at certain points, covered her mouth in shock when Cap told her about Evan Marsh.
“That’s awful—he was shot in the head?”
“Looked like it.”
“This all happened today?”
Cap nodded. Nell thought for a moment.
“So why did Ralz punch you in the face?”
“Getting to it.”
Cap described the fight; Nell looked back and forth between him and Vega, dark eyebrows arched.
“So you basically taunted him into attacking you?” she said to Vega.
“Basically, yeah,” said Vega.
“This is, like, a lot of drama, you guys.”
“Serious drama,” said Cap.
“So that kid they had in custody had nothing to do with it?” she said.
Cap shook his head.
“And you think Marsh was involved?”
“Would be a heck of a coincidence if he wasn’t,” said Cap.
“So what’s the link?”
Cap leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms up, swallowed a yawn.
“That’s why me and Vega are here, Bug.”
“Can I see the paperwork?” she said, getting her determined look.
“Finish your Civ and then I’ll show you what we have.”
“Oh, fine,” she said, standing, sweeping up her plate and glass. She leaned against the sink. “I can’t believe you saw a dead person today.”
“I know,” said Cap, quiet.
“Let me know before you leave, okay?” said Nell. “Excuse me for eating and running, Alice.”
Vega nodded and said, “Thank you for dinner. It’s really good.”
“The next time you come, maybe my dad will make shrimp tacos. It’s his thing.”
Vega looked at Cap.
“It’s my thing,” he admitted.
“I’m sure it is,” said Vega.
Nell didn’t linger. She bounded up the stairs like a deer and shut the door of her room. Cap looked up, heard the floor creak, and traced her steps. Bed, earbuds in, over to the desk where she sat in her wheeled chair and rolled gently back and forth while she read.
Cap and Vega were quiet, pushing food around on their plates. Cap sipped his beer and became instantly self-conscious that he was drinking it instead of club soda.
“You tell her about your cases,” Vega finally said.
“Yeah, I do.”
“She’s the reason, right, why you changed your mind about me? Working with me?”
Cap smiled. “Yeah. Usually I don’t know what I think about something until I tell my daughter about it.”
His phone buzzed on the table and he looked.
A text from Nell: “She’s not a guy, Dad. Call her Alice.”
“If I hadn’t met her, I might not believe that,” said Vega.
Cap thought hard about the acronym for Mind Your Own Business, tried to type “MYOB.”
“But if I had a kid like her, I’d probably do the same,” Vega continued.
He hit Send, then realized he had hit the “V” instead of the “B,” and his phone had autocorrected to “Myocardial.”
The text came back from Nell in a second: “Are you trying to say myob? Lol Dad.”
“She’s a piece of work,” said Cap, placing the phone on the table. Then he chuckled, almost just to himself. “That’s something my father says. Let’s put it this way: I think she’s pretty extraordinary for a person, not even just for a kid. But as a parent you can’t go around saying stuff like that. I mean, you can, but you’d be one of those parents you meet at Back-to-School Night who can’t stop talking about how little Timmy doesn’t play any video games and just loves practicing the violin all the time.”
Then Vega laughed. Actually laughed. Cap saw the teeth again and felt out of breath. He realized he had forgotten what it felt like to make a woman laugh. It was almost better than making them come. With Jules, even when their marriage was in the mud, he could still make her laugh unexpectedly, and boy would she punch the brakes as soon as she realized it. The look on her face could sear you like a steak—No way you are making me laugh, motherfucker.
Stranger still, laughing made most women, including Jules, look younger, the spontaneity of it trimming the years off, letting you see the little girl on a merry-go-round, the sixth grader at the roller rink. But with Vega, she looked older in some appealing way, the skin around her eyes and lips falling into easy creases. It made Cap think, This is what she will look like at forty, fifty, sixty with spotty skin and filmy pupils, spine curved over like a fishing pole. But then you will make her laugh and all the light will pour right out of her just like it did that first time at your kitchen table.
“You ever think about it?” he said, feeling like he could ask her anything just then.
“What?”
“Kids?”
Out loud the word was toxic. Vega looked at her plate and didn’t respond right away.
“I’m sorry,” said Cap. “Way too personal, right?”
“No,” she said plainly. “Not too personal. Kids are…” She paused but only for a moment. “Not for me.”