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  “I already fucking told you nothing!” Beat-up Dumbass hissed, raising a hand to his eyes and draping it over them.

  The not-beat-up guy didn’t even glance at the other man. I was pretty sure his nostrils had flared at some point, and I could definitely see his loosely hanging hands were opening and closing into fists. His voice was low and almost hoarse. “Can you please tell me why the hell he’s on the chair, looking like he just got his ass beat?”

  Because he had? I opened my mouth, closed it, and mentally shrugged. I wanted to get the hell out of there, and it wasn’t like I had some allegiance to the beat-up guy. “He got jumped, and I helped him. I didn’t want to leave him out there.” My eyes bounced back and forth between the chair and the muscles—I mean, the guy in the boxers that only covered about a third of his thighs.

  “Jumped?” One of the man’s thick eyebrows seemed to creep up a half inch on his broad forehead.

  I’d swear his chin jutted out as he picked at my words to repeat. I’d had enough experiences pissing people off in my life—specifically my mom—to know those three traits were a sign of someone who was angry but trying not to be and failing miserably.

  I probably made it worse by adding, “On the lawn outside.”

  The width of his shoulders seemed to double, bringing attention to bulky biceps flexing to life with the hands he was fisting in pretty obvious anger. I couldn’t tell how old he was… but it wasn’t like that mattered.

  “He got jumped on the lawn outside?” the newest stranger asked stiffly, his shoulders rolling back, his stubble-covered chin inching out a little more.

  Why did I feel like I was tattling to Dad? “Uh-huh.”

  The man on the recliner groaned in exasperation.

  I would have been worried about being a big mouth except Beat-up Dumbass didn’t look like he’d make it five feet on his own.

  The half-naked man’s biceps became even more bunched as his hand—a large one—went up to grip the top of his buzz-cut dark hair. “Who?” the man asked in that raspy, deep voice of his that had nothing to do with a head cold, like mine did. I had a feeling it wasn’t a sleep-induced voice either.

  “Who what?” I asked slowly, trying to decide the best way to bail on this conversation as quickly as possible.

  “Who did it?”

  Should I have asked them for their names and addresses? I shrugged, my discomfort growing by the second. Get out, Diana, a little voice inside my head warned me.

  “It’s none of your fucking business,” Beat-up Dumbass muttered as angrily as someone who may or may not have internal injuries was capable of.

  But at the same time as he gave his response, I blabbered, “Three guys.”

  “Outside this house?” Half-naked Man pointed toward the floor with an index finger.

  I nodded.

  There was a moment of silence before:

  “I’m gonna fucking kill you,” the man hissed, not completely under his breath, his head swinging over in the direction of the recliner. The hand dangling at his side tightened into a fist that had me eyeing the door and taking a step in reverse.

  And it was probably that, that had me blurting out as I took another step back, “All right. I’m going to bounce now. I’d go to the doctor if I was you, buddy. I hope you get better—”

  The not-beat-up guy’s attention slid back to me as a shaky exhale left his broad chest, his hand went loose once more at his side, and he blinked. “Who are you?”

  I didn’t like telling strangers where I lived, but it wasn’t like I was Batman, saving strangers in the night because I was trying to save the world from crime. I was just an idiot who couldn’t ignore someone in need if I had the power to help them. Damn it. Plus, if either one of them—or both of them—lived in this house, they were going to eventually see me around. “I just moved in across the street.”

  The man with the hard face and tiny boxers seemed distracted as he looked me over, like he was trying to sniff out if I was lying or not. I’m sure the only thing he would be able to tell was the fact that I was really regretting trying to be a good person and getting involved in this awkward-ass situation.

  Glancing back and forth between the man standing there and the other one on the recliner, barely holding it together, I figured I could leave. I wasn’t leaving the beat-up guy alone, and maybe the other man was pissed off at him, but who the hell knew what the backstory between them was. You didn’t say you were going to “fucking kill” someone unless they’d pissed you off enough times in the past. I’d been there. Maybe he was right to be mad. Maybe he wasn’t. All I knew was that I had tried my best and it was time to get the fuck out.

  “All right, well, bye and good luck,” I said. Before either one of them responded, and later on I realized I hadn’t learned anyone’s name, I was out the door and walking across the street, going home. That had been uncomfortable and not something I’d want to go through again. I had tried. I just hoped it didn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

  I took my time walking back. The adrenaline pumping through me had disappeared, and I was tired. I picked up Josh’s bat off the lawn and crossed the street, wondering what the hell that had all been about but knowing my chances of finding out were slim to none. As I made it to my lawn, I zeroed in on a short, skinny figure standing behind the screen front door in just a T-shirt that was a size too small and underwear, his hands were on his hips.

  “Lou? What the fu—dge are you doing?” I snapped, raising my hands at my sides.

  The smile that came over his face said he knew exactly what I’d been on the verge of saying, and I wasn’t surprised. Of course he knew. My brother had thrown around the word “fuck” like it was the name of his imaginary third kid. Not for the first time, I remembered my parents had never complained to him about how he needed to stop saying certain words in front of the kids. Huh.

  “I didn’t know where you went, Buttercup,” he explained innocently, pushing the door open as he used his nickname for me.

  And just like that, my irritation at him for staying up crumbled into a thousand pieces. I was such a sucker. I opened the screen door fully and bent to pick him up. He was getting bigger every day, and it was only a matter of time before he said he was too old to be carried. I didn’t want to think about it too much or anticipate it, because I was sure I’d end up locking myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine, snotting everywhere.

  Bouncing him in my arms, I pecked his temple. “I went to make sure the neighbor was okay. Let’s go to sleep, all right?”

  He nodded against my mouth, already a mostly limp weight. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s going to be okay,” I answered, fully aware that was a partial lie, but what else could I say? I hope he doesn’t die from internal bleeding, Lou? No. “Let’s go to bed, Goo.”

  Chapter Two

  “Diana,” my mom called out from the kitchen as my dad and I maneuvered my flat screen on to the entertainment system he had just finished building with my assistance. My job had mainly consisted of handing him screws, tools, and his bottle of beer. Before that, he’d installed Mac’s giant, human-sized doggy door in the kitchen while I’d sat next to him watching.

  I wasn’t the handiest person in the world, and the fact I was exhausted after the last five days didn’t make me the best assistant for building and installing things. Looking back on it, I should have changed the date for when I closed on my house so that it wouldn’t have fallen at almost the same time my job was being relocated. It was a lot more work than I had expected. I was lucky it was summer and the boys were now gone with their other grandparents, the Larsens, for the rest of the week. They’d been picked up the day before, and that, at least, had worked out perfectly since I’d offered to help paint the new salon, which had taken a twelve-hour day with multiple people handling rollers and brushes.

  “Si, Ma?” I called out in Spanish as my dad wiggled his eyebrows, raising his hand in a C-shape that he tipped toward his mouth, the u
niversal gesture for wanting a beer. I nodded at the only steady man in my life, purposely ignoring all the lines around his mouth and eyes—all the signs of how much he, like my mom, had aged over the last few years. It wasn’t something I liked to focus too much on.

  “Ven. I made some polvorones for you to take your neighbors,” she answered in Spanish in that tone she’d used since I was a little kid that left no room for argument.

  I didn’t completely manage to muffle my groan. Why hadn’t I expected this shit? “Mom, I don’t need to take them anything,” I shot back, watching my dad choke back a laugh at what I’m sure was my are-you-kidding-me facial expression.

  “Como que no?” What do you mean no?

  My mom was old fashioned.

  That was an understatement. She was really, really old fashioned and had been my entire life. When I first moved out of the house, you would have figured I’d gotten pregnant at sixteen in the 1930s in Mexico. More than ten years hadn’t dulled her reaction every time she was reminded I didn’t live under her roof anymore. Her values and ideals were no damn joke.

  She would be the only person moving into a new neighborhood that would want to take her neighbors something instead of vice versa. She didn’t seem to understand that most people probably wouldn’t want to eat food from people they didn’t know because everyone assumed there was going to be Anthrax or crack in the ingredients. But even if I told her my reasoning for not wanting to take her treats around, she probably wouldn’t listen anyway. “Its fine, Mamá. I don’t need to take them anything. I already met the people on both sides of me. I told you, remember? They’re really nice.”

  “You need to be friends with everyone. You never know when you’ll need something,” my mom kept going, telling me she wasn’t going to let this go until I agreed.

  I dropped my head back to look at the television, suddenly getting reminded of being a little kid at her mercy all over again, of all the times she made me do something I really didn’t want to because it was the ‘polite thing.’ It drove me nuts back then, and it drove me nuts now, but nothing had changed. I still couldn’t tell her no.

  Out of the corner of my eye, my dad was taking DVDs out of a box to set in the compartments underneath the entertainment center, purposely not getting into the middle of our discussion. Wuss.

  “Come get them. They’re better when they’re warm,” she insisted, as if I didn’t know that firsthand.

  I blew out a raspberry and swung my gaze up to the ceiling, asking for patience. Lots of it.

  “Diana?” Mom called out in that tone I refused to believe I used on Josh and Lou.

  For one brief moment, I felt like stomping my feet.

  Resigned to the inevitable, I headed to the kitchen. The cupboards were a faded, stained oak, but they were real wood and still in excellent shape. The countertops were tiled and dingy, the grout a shade of color only found on things that had been around before the Vietnam War, but not much worse than the ones at the apartment the boys and I had been living in. Luckily, my dad had already told me he’d help me fix up the kitchen when I was ready, claiming we could do it ourselves with a little help from my uncle. On top of the kitchen remodel, the floors needed some tender loving care and the appliances the owners had left were from the nineties. I wanted to repair and replace those things before I even looked at the cabinets. The fence had seen some shit go down, too. But everything did what it needed to do for the most part, so I’d get to it all eventually. Someday.

  “Diana?” my mom called out again, unaware that I was standing right behind her. At an even four foot ten inches tall and with a personality that was nearly saint-like 75 percent of the time—the other quarter of the time she tapped into her inner Napoleon—she didn’t outwardly seem like a force to be reckoned with. Her black hair, shot through with chunks of silver in the last couple of years, was brushed down her back. Her skin tone was darker than mine, almost bronze, her frame stouter, but there was no doubt about it, I might take after my dad more physically, but I knew my pushiness came from her. To give her credit, I also got my loving side from her, too.

  “I’m here,” I said to Mexican Napoleon, who I’d barely realized had a Rubbermaid tower stacked up behind her. Where she’d gotten the plastic containers from, I had no idea. Half my set didn’t have lids anymore.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” she asked, glancing at me from over her shoulder.

  I took my mom in one more time, shaking my head, remembering when I used to go door-to-door selling cookies for my Girl Scout troop and she’d tag along, half the block behind me; it had been her way of showing me she was there if I needed her, but at the same time letting me know what it was like to stand on my own two feet. I hadn’t appreciated that kind of stuff when I was a kid, thinking she was hovering, but now... well, now I understood her all too well. Most of the time at least. In this case, I didn’t want to. “Esta bien. I’ll be right back,” I replied more than a little whiney. I didn’t want to go.

  She narrowed her nearly black eyes at me. “Stop making that face. You want them to like you, no?”

  And then I wondered where I got my need to be liked from, damn it.

  While I got my dad another beer, my mom split the containers into two plastic grocery bags, and I headed toward the front door, yanking on a chunk of my dad’s short hair on the way out as he finished tightening something on the entertainment center. He let out a hoarse “Oye!” Like he was surprised I’d done it.

  Not dragging my feet at all, I went ahead and dropped by the neighbors on either side of me first. The younger couple wasn’t home, but the older one thanked me even though I was positive they had no idea what polvorones were. Somehow I managed not to laugh when I first noticed my mom had taped my business card to each of the red-lidded containers along with a Post-it that read in her slanted handwriting FROM YOUR NEW NEIGHBOR AT 1223. She’d also thrown one of Louie’s old markers into the bag. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a red car pulling over in front of the house of the guy who had gotten beat up, but I didn’t pay much attention to it while I talked to my neighbors. His business wasn’t my business.

  Once I was done with them, I crossed the street, heading to the house not directly in front of mine but just to the left. When no one answered the door, I left the cookie-type dessert on the doorstep.

  Next was what I thought was the most beautiful house in the neighborhood. I’d been admiring the buttery yellow bungalow from the moment I first drove down the street. I hadn’t seen who lived there yet; the old Buick hadn’t moved once from the driveway, and if it had, I hadn’t noticed. The flowerbeds and yard were so perfect, with so many varieties I couldn’t even begin to name them. Everything about the landscaping was well-maintained and thought out, from the stone birdbath to the gnomes hidden within the flower bushes—it was like something out of a magazine. I walked up the concrete steps, looking around, getting ideas for what I’d love to do to the front yard when I had the time and money, so maybe around the time Josh was off to college. There wasn’t a doorbell, so I knocked on the slab of wood next to the small glass window built into the center of the door.

  “Who is it?” an elderly female voice, higher pitched and nearly squeaky, asked from the other side.

  “Diana. I just moved in across the street, ma’am,” I called out, taking a step back.

  “Dia-who?” the woman asked just before the lock on the door turned and a head of perfect, nearly transparent white hair peeked out from the cracked door.

  I smiled at the lined, pale face that appeared. “Diana Casillas. I’m your new neighbor,” I offered like that would help.

  Two glaucoma-ridden eyes blinked at me before the door swung open wider and a woman smaller than my mom—and thinner too—appeared in a pink house robe. “My new neighbor?” she asked, blinking those milky eyes at me. “With the two boys and the big dog?”

  At first glance, her eyes said she couldn’t see well, but her knowing I had the two boys and being
aware of Big Mac, told me I couldn’t let this woman fool me. She knew what was up. I could appreciate that. “Yes, ma’am. I brought you some cookies over.”

  “Cookies? I love cookies,” the elderly woman commented as she slipped glasses over her fragile nose with one hand. The other rose toward me, thin and heavily veined.

  “Mexican cookies,” I explained, picking one of the containers out of the bag.

  And the smile melted right off the woman’s face. “Mexican cookies.” Her voice had changed, too. “You Mexican?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at me as if she was barely noticing I had some yellow and tan in my skin tone.

  Unease tickled my neck, making me hesitate. “Yes?” Why the hell was I answering like it was a question? I was and it wasn’t some secret. I couldn’t exactly hide it.

  Those small eyes got even smaller, and I didn’t really like it. “You look a little Mexican, but you sure don’t sound Mexican.”

  I could feel my cheeks start to get hot. That familiar burn of indignity scorched my throat for a brief second. I’d lived in multicultural cities my entire life. I wasn’t used to someone saying the word “Mexican” like the greatest food on the planet wasn’t from there. “I was born and raised in El Paso.” My tonsils tickled, my face getting hotter by the second.

  The old lady hummed like she didn’t believe me. Nearly hairless eyebrows went up. “No husband?”

  What was this? A CIA interrogation? I didn’t like the tone of her voice before, now the husband thing… I knew where this was going. I knew what she was going to assume considering she was already aware of Josh and Louie’s existence. “No, ma’am,” I answered in a surprisingly calm voice, holding on to my pride with both hands.

  The thin slivers of her white eyebrows went up half an inch on her forehead.

  That was my cue to get the hell out of there before she could ask something else that was going to make me mad. I smiled at the woman despite being pretty sure she couldn’t see it and said, “It was nice meeting you, Miss—”