“Great,” Miel said, and the word came out so soft even Aracely missed the sarcasm.
“You can’t do that again,” Aracely said. “If you’re not really here, you can’t help me. I’d rather you tell me that.”
Miel nodded, her cheek rubbing against the quilt.
“I know I’ve expected a lot of you,” Aracely said, and the lowering of her voice made Miel know what she meant, how Miel had been handing her eggs and lemons and glass jars since she was six, her small hands holding them up. “But you’re not gonna disappoint me by telling me you can’t do it. Everybody has bad days.”
Miel shut her eyes, guilt braiding thick in her wrist and snaking deeper into her.
Aracely ran a hand down Miel’s hair. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
She almost asked what she meant, the night Aracely had to bring her home, or the lovesickness cure Miel had wrecked when she did not open the window fast enough.
But it didn’t matter. The answer was the same either way.
“No,” Miel said.
A knock echoed up from downstairs. Sam’s mother. She was the only one who never used the doorbell. She thought it was too formal when the four of them were so much like family.
Aracely went downstairs. Miel pulled herself off the comforter, tripping over clothes she’d left on the floor yesterday and the day before, and followed her.
Sam’s mother stood in the front hall.
“Have either of you seen Samir?” she asked.
Aracely’s eyes crawled over to Miel. “You were supposed to meet him somewhere, weren’t you?”
She could see Aracely holding her back teeth together. Her eyes flinched a little wider. Miel could almost hear what she was thinking. Yes, Miel. Say yes.
“Yes,” Miel said, letting her gasp sound like a sudden realization, as though she’d forgotten and now remembered. “Yes.” She glanced toward the watch Sam’s mother wore on her left wrist. “I’m late, but I’ll make sure he’s home early.”
Sam’s mother looked between the two of them, her gaze careful and considering.
She did not believe them.
Miel knew how tall Sam’s mother was, taller than Sam or Aracely. Her long skirts, skimming the floor, made her look even taller. But she never seemed this tall when she laughed, or when she taught Miel the difference between sweet basil and tulasi. She had a tulasi tree on the side of her house that she never cut or picked from, and its green and purple leaves seemed to give off a stronger scent for being left alone.
She seemed this tall only when Sam and Miel brought home grass snakes. Or when the parents of one of the girls she looked after did not notice that their daughter was so nervous so often she bit her fingernails to bleeding.
Or when she wore this kind of worried look. It was those moments, and this look, that made Miel hesitate to call Sam’s mother Yasmin. It didn’t matter that she’d told Miel to. This woman was so much a mother, so much an adult, and any reminder of that made addressing her by her first name feel strange and irreverent.
“Do you want to stay until he comes back?” Aracely asked. “I’ll make café de olla.”
Of course Aracely would think the answer was coffee mixed with cinnamon and piloncillo in a clay pot. It made their lies feel as weak and thin as skim milk.
“No,” his mother said. “Thank you.” She nodded at Aracely and left, turning toward the door.
She must have been willing to believe them, or pretend she believed them, for now.
Aracely leaned into Miel. “Find him.”
Sam mother’s had barely left, the sound of her steps on the front walk just faded, when Aracely reached for her keys.
“Are you gonna help me look?” Miel asked.
“No,” Aracely said. “I’m gonna check on Emma Owens.”
“Now?”
“You better believe now,” Aracely said. “Your boyfriend”—she shrugged into her coat—“in case you haven’t noticed, isn’t ready to have this whole town know his legal name. The last thing we need is to worry about that woman keeping her mouth shut. I’ll let her talk all night if that’s what it takes.” She sighed. “And God knows it probably is.”
She was out the door before Miel could tell her not to, that there was no reason, and no use.
ocean of storms
The surface of the river was as dark as juniper berries.
All the stories were lies. His mother’s fables about chukar partridges and women who disguised themselves as lynx. Miel’s fairy tales about stars falling in love with moons.
What had his great-grandparents’ stories of stars and moon bears gotten them? It hadn’t let them stay in Kashmir with their countless saffron crocuses. It hadn’t saved their family trade, built of the delicate work of bringing those flowers to life and then slipping the rust-colored threads from their centers.