Fat Girl (5 page)

“I SWEAR YOU HAVE A sixth sense for Isabelle’s lasagna.”

My emotions are still boiling, but as I step into the foyer I summon up a grin for Victor and sniff the air appreciatively. Mexican lasagna. It smells like home and family. Both of which the Torreses have been to me for as long as I can remember.

“If that’s an invitation for dinner, I’ll take it,” I say when I clasp Victor’s outstretched hand and lean in for a one-armed hug.

“As if you need an invitation.”

Suddenly attuned to the unusual quiet—no sounds of the active twelve-year-old, barking from the dog, or the blare of Gabi’s music—I ask, “Where is everybody?”

“Isabelle’s in the kitchen,” Victor replies, closing the door behind me. “Dwayde went to the park with friends to shoot hoops and took Rufus with him. And Gabi’s supposedly at the library, studying.”

My eyebrows raise in question. “You doubt that?”

“Damn straight. The only thing Gabi is studying these days is boys.” He shakes his head. “She’s driving me around the bend, man. I should have fought harder for her to stay at home to finish out her last year of high school. But no, Mama and I gave in to her cries about a change of pace, thinking she might get over her grief faster by being away from Springvale. I’d bet my badge she’s off hooking up with some punk-ass dude she doesn’t want me to know about.”

Gabi’s a good kid. After being sheltered in a small town and overprotected by Papa T until his death seven months ago, she’s acting out her loss through a little rebellion. I think about my own secret romance and say, “Maybe Gabi wouldn’t sneak around if you’d ease up and stop intimidating every guy she brings here.”

“Like that’s gonna happen. If they can’t handle an older brother protecting his baby sister, then they’re not worth their salt.”

“Gabi’s not a baby,” I say. “She’s almost eighteen.”

“Yeah, and I know what I was up to at eighteen.”

And I know what
I
was up to. With Dee. And the thirty-five-minute drive from her downtown office to the suburbs in snarling rush hour traffic gave me too much time to recall the intense history we share and the potent feelings attached to it.

For all of Dee’s prickly exterior, beneath it I found an irresistible vulnerability. Out of self-preservation, she played it tough and indifferent, but Dee’s feelings ran deep. Unlike any girl I knew, she looked past the cool jock image I put on for the small town to see. She looked straight into my soul and understood me better than anyone.

“Come on back,” Victor says, saving me from another descent into the past.

I blank my mind to the memories and follow him to the rear of the house, deliciously scented with spicy meat sauce.

“Mick!” Isabelle stops layering the tortillas to rush toward me. “I thought I heard your voice.” Her pretty smile is bright, but the semicircles beneath her eyes are more pronounced than they were three days ago.

“Hey, Bells.” I catch her up in a bear hug, giving her an extra squeeze. I pray I’ve done the right thing, because I’m about to rip open a Pandora’s box.

“Coke?” Victor asks me, his head in the fridge; oblivious to what’s in store.

“Sure.” I remove my jacket and drape it over the back of the chair. Then I sit, running my hand through my hair. It’s opportune that Dwayde and Gabi aren’t home. I need to do this now. Before I share a meal with them.

Victor flips the lids off the Coke bottles and slides one across the kitchen table. He lowers his long, wiry body to straddle the opposite chair and eyeballs me. After thirty years, we’re more brothers than friends, and he can read me well. “What’s on your mind, Mick?”

I take a swig of cola, wishing that it were something stronger. My gaze moves from Victor, his narrowed eyes set in his probing cop expression, to Isabelle, preparing the meal, and then back to Victor. I struggle with how best to phrase it, but no amount of sugarcoating is going to make this go down easy. Better to just get it said, I decide, and blurt out my confession without preamble: “I went to see Deeana today about taking the case.”

Everything goes still.

As if in freeze frame, the bottle angling toward Victor’s mouth stops midway. Isabelle’s hand pauses on the oven door handle, and for one countless moment the quiet is deafening. I can hear only the erratic beats of my heart.

Then things go back into motion. Isabelle turns toward me and Victor slams his bottle down on the table with enough force to rattle the salt and pepper shakers. “Christ! I made it clear that I didn’t want her representing Dwayde.” Each word is threaded through clenched teeth.

“You did, but Dee’s the best choice,” I argue in my defense and begin ticking off the reasons on my fingers. “She comes highly recommended by your lawyer and Dwayde’s social worker. She has the credentials and experience. Her practice is exclusively custody and guardianship cases, so she knows all the legal ins and outs. I was at her office, Victor. I saw the drawings and thank you cards from kids posted on the wall.

“You know Dee’s background. Helping children is more than just a job to her. Having been a foster kid herself, she’ll be able to relate to Dwayde. Plus, she’s as tough as ever and has the balls to stand up to his grandparents’ high-powered attorney. If not for our past, you would have already hired her.”

“But we do have a past,” Victor counters, “and you’d be smart to remember that.”

“I remember just fine, but it has nothing to do with Dwayde.”

“Maybe not. But it has everything to do with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, certain I’m not going to like the answer.

“I think you know.”

Jaw muscles ticking, I curve my hand around the bottle. “Why don’t you spell it out for me just the same?”

“All right, I will,” he says, as if relishing the chance to knock some sense into me. “When Dee took off, you were a fucked-up mess.”

“Victor!” Isabelle interjects.

“I’m not going to coddle him, Isabelle,” he continues without taking his hard gaze off me. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d stop writing. Or when you’d start drinking like your old man.”

Those first few years after Dee left are tattooed on my soul. I don’t need Victor’s swift kick in the nuts to remind me of when sleep wouldn’t come unless I was passed out drunk. When getting through the next hour wasn’t possible without a shot of Jack Daniels. When no matter how much booze fogged my brain or how many willing bodies I used to exorcise Dee, I still couldn’t forget.

“I know you loved her, Mick. We all did. But you took it the hardest. And it still affects you, man. That’s why you don’t stick with one woman. It’s why you chose to follow your father’s ambitions instead of your own. It’s why you haven’t written in years.”

The armchair psychology grates on me, mainly because it’s true. Swirling the last of my cola, I say with a nonchalance I’m not close to feeling, “Let me know when you’ve finished your analysis,
Doctor
, so we can get back to the matter at hand.”

“Refute it, then,” Victor challenges me. “Better yet, tell me you saw Dee today and didn’t feel a damn thing.”

“I went to see Dee today only to hire her,” I repeat, sidestepping the question.

Victor snorts with derision. “I don’t know which pisses me off more. That you took it upon yourself to go hire my son the very lawyer I told you I didn’t want or that I can see you’re already halfway back in love with her.”

Temper as vicious as a pit bull snaps at my throat. Springing to my feet, I brace my palms on the table and lean forward. Victor shoots out of his chair just as fast, and we square off, nose to nose.

Good.
I’m itching for a fight. It’s what I know. “What I feel or what I do about Deeana is none of your fucking business.”

“It involves my son so I’m making it my business.”

“Vittorio! Micah!” Isabelle shouts. “Stop this. You are brothers.”

“Stay out of it, Isabelle,” Victor orders, his nostrils flaring. “If Mick thinks he can kick my ass, let him try.”

“Is that what you want?” She slams the oven door closed. “For Dwayde to come home and find the two men he respects the most going at each other?”

Temper is no match for the hot tug of guilt, which turns my anger inward. I should be past this shit. Past reacting like my old man. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. Victor.” I straighten and scrub my fingers through my hair. “After everything you and your family have done for me, I went to Dee because I owe it to you to fix this.”

“Christ!” Victor seethes, slumping back in his chair. “Do you have any idea how insulting that is? My parents weren’t thinking about repayment when you were only eight and lost your mother, leaving you with nobody but a drunk for a father. They gladly took care of you because they loved your mom, and they loved you like a son. You don’t owe us shit.”

He’s wrong. I owe them more than they realize. “I’m not talking about checks and balances, Victor. This is about my promise to Papa T.” I swallow around the fisted lump I get whenever I think of Cayo Torres—the man who for all intents and purposes was my father—dying of cancer.

“I gave him my word. I promised to always look out for his family. And I’ve let him down. I’ve let all of you down.”

Victor sighs, his own grief still heavy. “You haven’t let anybody down. Papa wouldn’t hold you responsible for this any more than we do.”

“If I hadn’t lost my cool—”

“When are you going to give yourself a pass on that? O’Malley was the asshole, coming at you and the kids like that. And whether you had hit him or not, the story still would have made headlines, because you’re news. And that’s just the way it is. So I’m asking you—no, I’m telling you—to let this go. Dwayde is our son and we’ll make the call on who should represent him. And it sure as hell won’t be Deeana Chase.”

“Fine.” I shove away from the table, tension grinding in my every muscle. “You don’t want to hire Dee. I’ll stay the hell out of it.”

“
I
want to hire her.”

We swerve our heads in Isabelle’s direction, and Victor asks in disbelief, “You’re siding with Mick?”

Isabelle walks over to her husband and embraces his stiff shoulders. “We’re all on the same side, Victor. Dwayde’s.”

“He went behind my back.”

“Out of love for us.”

Victor curses under his breath. “What do you think seeing her again is going to do to my mother?”

“I think it will finally give her the closure she’s needed. That you’ve all needed.”

“Isabelle—” he protests.

She smooths her cheek over the top of Victor’s crew cut. “The Franklins are threatening a court order. Dwayde’s scared. I’m scared. Let Dee help him. Please, Victor. Don’t fight me on this.”

I witness my friend battling himself in silence. I’ve never known him to deny his wife anything that was important to her, and I doubt he’s going to start now. True to character, he releases a breath and says with all the reluctance he obviously feels, “Don’t count on this being a cathartic experience for me, Isabelle, but I’ll do whatever you want.”

“
Gracias, mi cielo
,”
she whispers in gratitude and Victor’s expression softens.

Not so when he turns to face me. His features darken with judgment and censure. “A leopard doesn’t change its spots, Mick. So word to the wise, don’t go losing your head over Dee again.” And with a pointed look at my zipper, he adds, “Either one.”