Carmen Morales is a twenty-nine-year-old transwoman who works for an insurance broker in Orange County while attending law school at night. She and her two roommates are celebrating the successful conclusion of her spring semester when she is summoned back to the Kern County home she was kicked out of eleven years before, by the Grandmother – “Abuela” – who refused to intervene. Her father has had a stroke and is in a coma.

At Abuela’s urging, Carmen reluctantly applies to be padre’s conservator, at least on a temporary basis. Pursuant to state law, the probate court appoints an investigator to determine whether a conservator is needed and, if so, if Carmen is an appropriate choice. The investigator, an attorney and former social worker named Andar Kasparian, interviews padre’s relatives and prepares a favorable report.

Weeks after she is appointed, Kasparian asks her out. After two weeks of fretting about it, they have their date. Having gotten good intelligence from Carmen’s younger brother, Kasparian takes her swing dancing after a nice dinner, and they find each other in the magic of the dance.

For a refresher on Carmen’s family tree, see this post.

Chapter 34: Milestones and Millstones

“I don’t want the night to end.” There was desire in his voice – now I really was sure – but mostly, there was wonder and longing. I sensed that this was someone who had been alone too long. Who had missed the warmth, the spark, the joy of human connection.

At a deep, fundamental level, I understood this man. I kissed the corner of his mouth and whispered, “the hotel bar’s still open. Let me buy you a drink.”

His fingers traced patterns on the exposed skin of my back. Despite the night chill, I hadn’t bothered with the cardigan. Even the memory of his touch was enough to keep me warm.

“Let me park the car, then,” he murmured.

“I’ll wait.”

My eyes followed him as he got back in the Mustang, then drove down the curve of the entrance way to find a spot in the adjacent parking lot. They followed him as he got out and walked back, drinking in the easy, graceful confidence with which he moved. The way his dark dress shirt showcased his strong chest and firm core. The way his eyes locked on me just as soon as he stepped out of the car.

His right arm slid possessively around my back and anchored at my waist; my left arm found his hip. The automatic doors swished open at our approach, and the woman at the reception desk looked up and smiled, needing no other words.

The bar was far from busy, but we still took one of the high tops rather than sit with other patrons. He ordered a Lagavullin; after a moment’s thought I asked for brandy. My mind came up blank when the bartender asked what kind, but Andar stepped in and picked one for me.

Then it was just us. Two people who’d only interacted professionally, up until a few hours earlier. Where to even begin? It was easier, when our bodies had been doing the talking!

Andar was watching me carefully, and covered my hand with his. “You okay in there?”

“What I’m feeling right now?” I shook my head. “I’ve never felt anything like this before. Which is stupid, I know! I mean, I’m twenty-nine, not nineteen! But –”

He squeezed my hand, stopping the flow of my worry before it got out of hand. “I’m thirty-four, Carmen. I feel the same way.”

“But you’ve been through this before!”

“Yes . . . But you’d be surprised how little help that is.” His smile was crooked. “Or maybe it helps in some ways, and makes it harder in others.”

I took a sip of my brandy, but didn’t move the hand he had captured. “You have to know what a hot mess I am.”

“Before tonight, all I knew was your background. Some of it, anyway. I only had a glimpse of who you are.” Now his smile was gentle. “And that came from you calling me up short on my . . . what was your phrase? ‘Stupid lawyer tricks?’”

I blushed. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. You forced me to see you as a person, not simply the subject of my investigation. Someone with integrity, and deep feelings, and a lot of courage.”

I snorted. “So you’ve decided to reform your scheming ways?”

He raised an eyebrow, silently communicating that he was well aware of my attempts to deflect. “I didn’t say that. But, I won’t use those tricks on you.”

“Because I’m on to you!”

“That, too.” His low voice and intense eyes said far more than his words.

It was the intensity that kept hitting me, breaking through my confusion and my natural caution, defenses constructed over a lifetime. I’d felt it, powerfully, when we were dancing, and now it surged again. Suddenly I couldn’t help myself. I put my free hand over the hand that held mine and blurted out, “I want you.”

Even as I said it, my mind blanked white in panic. I didn’t even know if I could perform. I never had. And we’d only had just one date – I might chase him away by being so open! ¡Dios mío! What am I THINKING!

Before I had a chance to walk it back or stammer out an apology, he stopped me. “I want you, too, Carmen. Tonight. Now.” The urgency in his voice exactly matched the pitch of my own desire. “But . . . you may not feel the same tomorrow. I don’t want to hurt you!”

I could tell from the way he said it that he knew what he was talking about. And he was echoing my own fears, too – the fear that my emotions were completely overwhelming me. That I was losing control. Losing myself. My mother had paid – and, according to Uncle Fernando, was still paying – for one night of self-indulgence, almost thirty years ago.

I didn’t care. My heart rebelled at the cautions, screaming defiance. For the love of God, do you WANT to be a virgin in another year, when you turn thirty? What’s WRONG with you! It’s not like you have to worry about an unwanted pregnancy!

But something in his eyes gave me pause. Something he wasn’t saying, that was resonating in a different way, or in another register.

Padre paid a steep price, too. Steeper than Momma, probably. “This isn’t just about my fears, is it?”

He drew a deep – and somewhat unsteady – breath. “No, not entirely – though I’m being one hundred percent honest about not wanting to hurt you! But I have my own demons to fight. I was the one who broke things off with Sona, six years ago, and when I came back here, I was running. It was . . . Well. I . . . haven’t been with a woman in a long time.”

This wasn’t the confident, self-assured lawyer I thought I knew, and I guessed that it had taken a real effort to let me inside, to see past his professional facade. I felt a surge of protectiveness flow up beneath the magma of my desire and for a moment my warring emotions were almost dizzying in their intensity.

I raised a hand to stroke his cheek, feeling the roughness of his stubble. He’d told me he’d have a beard like an Old Testament Prophet if he didn’t shave twice a day. “I don’t want to hurt you, either. I want you now, but I don’t want you just for now. If that means it takes longer – for either of us – then it takes longer.”

He managed a bit of a smile. “Even if that means more trips to Bakersfield?”

“I hear the freeway runs both ways,” I said, trying to sound playful.

But he nodded, not falling for my effort to downplay that particular fear. “I’ve noticed that, too – on my many trips to Glendale. Don’t worry about that part.”

“Then I promise you this, Andar Kasparian – we’ll take however long we need.”

“Yes,” he agreed, before adding, “But I hope to God it’s not too long!”

“Amen!” I said fervently.

We said more after that – easier words and simpler topics. The important things had been said. Much as my body cried out for release – release that had been THAT close! – my heart and soul sang with the knowledge of both his desire and his care. I knew myself well enough to understand that the fears of a lifetime wouldn’t just disappear. But for a half an hour, at least, they didn’t drive me.

We held hands like teenagers as I walked him back to his car. The lightest of breezes swirled the airy fabric of my skirt and raised a spray of goosebumps down my arms.

His strong hands came up and gripped my bare shoulders. “’Til Friday, then?”

“Friday,” I confirmed. “My treat, next time.”

“Nope,” he smiled. “My town, my treat. You can buy when I’m down in the OC.”

“Stubborn!”

“And that’s one of my better qualities!”

I looked up into his eyes and smiled. “Shut up and kiss me.”

He obliged. Thoroughly, and very satisfactorily.

~o~O~o~

I slept late, my sleeping mind swirling with dreams of what might have been, and when I finally woke, my unfulfilled desires were a physical ache. Since my bottom surgery a year earlier, I’d never felt anything like it.

I slipped a hand inside my light cotton shorts and gently touched myself. I’d had to overcome my embarrassment over the course of the year; the surgeon who had done my vaginoplasty told me in no uncertain terms that all her work would go to waste if I didn’t keep to the dilation schedule she set out for me. It had always been a clinical thing for me, though. Something I did out of duty, like the laundry or the dishes. Or, I don’t know. Wiping. Wiping after peeing had taken some getting used to, that’s for sure.

This morning, though, my gentle touch triggered – or intensified – a flood of warmth and an almost electrical buzz that radiated up my core, causing me to catch my breath.

I lay still for a moment, staring up at the boring hotel-room ceiling, savoring the moment. Among the freight train of worries that I’d been pulling behind me every day, the fear that I might not be able to enjoy sex as a woman was one that I hadn’t shared with anyone. It almost seemed ungrateful to think it. If that was the price I had to pay for having my body match my heart, I wouldn’t have a single regret for my choice.

I’d still want it, though. Of course I would. I wanted it all.

I smiled and spoke my thought out loud. “I guess I was just missing the secret ingredient!”

For a brief instant, I was sorry I hadn’t brought my dilator with me on this trip. Shaking my head at my shamelessness – what would tia Consola think! – I hauled myself out of bed and made my way to the bathroom.

As I headed for the shower, I caught a glance of my reflection in the mirror over the sink and paused. The changes in my body over the course of the past eight years were significant – really, they were miraculous, even if the miracles were all medical and scientific. But most had come so gradually that I’d never had any sense of discontinuity. I always looked like me.

Despite that, I had to accept that no-one would mistake the “me” I saw in the mirror now as being a guy. I’d been blessed with my mother’s fine bones, and even my features, strongly marked with padre’s Oaxacan heritage, were cast in Momma’s more delicate mold. It was no wonder that the tia’s and tio’s immediately recognized me as her child.

I was beyond fortunate that I hadn’t been too affected by male puberty. At 5’7”, I was a little taller than most of the Latina girls I’d grown up with, but not all of them and not by much. The facial feminization work had been relatively minor, and I’d had both a tracheal shave and VFSRAC well before taking the last step. Hormones had been more than sufficient to handle the rest, distributing fat to my chest, hips, and rear end, slimming me in other places, and trimming down my muscle mass. My B-cup breasts weren’t going to win any state championships, but they looked good on my slender frame. I had no complaints.

Andar didn’t have a mental image of me from before. All he saw, last night, was the “me” I was seeing this morning. And he had wanted me. If I had doubted his words, his kisses had been plenty convincing!

“Maybe,” I said to the girl in the mirror. “Just maybe – you’ll do, Carmen.”

And with that positive thought, I got ready to face the day.

~o~O~o~

As I made my way to padre’s room, I heard a familiar voice reading aloud. “Frémont denied responsibility for the raid, denied even that the colonel was his prisoner, yet lectured the stunned Californio on the complaints of Americans in the Sacramento Valley. Vallejo shrewdly assessed the captain as having ‘a very elastic conscience.’”

The voice was my brother’s.

I paused in the doorway, taking in the scene. Padre was again propped up in the bed, his eyes closed. Abuela was sitting next to him, her hand resting lightly on his wrist. Ximo was on her other side, a slim volume in his hands. He was clean-shaven, and I knew instantly I’d been right to suggest it. Why would you hide such a fine, strong jaw?

Abuela’s highly active hearing had picked up the sound of my approach while Ximo had missed it, and she turned to face where I was standing. “Carmen.”

“Is my walk that distinctive?” I asked her.

She didn’t bother responding.

Ximo, on the other hand, closed the book with a snap, like a teenager who’s been caught looking at porn. He hopped up and gave me an exaggerated greeting.

I closed the distance between us and surprised him with a heart-felt hug. “I owe you one, ’mano,” I whispered close to his ear.

He pulled back and gave me a puzzled look.

“Later.” I smiled and let him go. “Good morning, padre.”

My father did not react.

“How’s the patient?” I asked Ximo.

Abuela responded before he could. “They say he is improving. Still no words.”

“He was awake earlier.” Ximo sounded apologetic. “Abuela can’t see when he blinks, though.”

“You were able to communicate with him?”

“Some.” He shrugged. “Nothing much. When he got tired of answering questions, I asked if he wanted me to read to him and I got a single blink.”

I glanced down at the book in his hands. “Bear Flag Rising?”

“Señor Cortez was reading it to padre when I bumped into me that time. He, ahh . . . he loaned it to me. You know – for padre.”

Abuela snorted.

“What do you think of it?” I asked him.

I thought he’d laugh it off – or maybe shrug it off. Surprisingly, he gave Abuela a nervous look, then said, “It’s pretty wild. Not what we were taught in grade school, that’s for sure!”

“It shocks you that the men who stole California from the Mexicans were thieves?” Abuela shook her head. “The Mexicans and the Spanish were thieves, too. Especially the churchmen. So what?”

Ximo stood his ground. “Señor Cortez said his wife’s family was in California even before the Spaniards. But there are plenty of Anglos who think even she doesn’t belong here.”

“Cortez! He has no sense, and never did! They won. We lost. Were you raised to expect life to be fair?”

I decided to step in. “By you? By padre? Please.”

“Good. Then do yourselves a favor, and don’t grow more foolish than we left you!”

Ximo was rolling his eyes, and it seemed like a good time to get him out. “Abuela – I’ve got to get Ximo caught up on a couple of things before I drive south. We’ll be back.”

She turned to face me again, and it felt like her blind eyes were boring into me. “Do you?” Technically it was a question – but it came out like an accusation.

“I’m not keeping things from you,” I assured her – and it was even mostly true. “This isn’t the place, though.” Padre might be sleeping. But then again, he might not be, and there are things I don’t want to say to him right now.

She turned back to the bed, a thoughtful expression on her face. Softly, she said, “No, you are right. Ximo can fill me in on the drive home.”

“Good. I’ll see you shortly.” With that, I pulled Ximo out of the room. When he started to say something, I signaled him to wait.

Once the elevator doors closed on us both, I said, “Don’t assume she can’t hear you in the hallway.”

“Frickin’ witch,” he grumbled.

“Coffee?”

“Nah, I’m good.” He gave himself an unconscious scratch. “Had a couple cups before I picked up the hag.”

“Then let’s go sit outside for a bit – it hasn’t gotten too hot, yet.” The doors pinged and opened.

“Sounds like a plan.” He grinned. “So . . . he took you dancing?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, sounding sappy. “Thanks for that.”

We walked outside and found a spot on a short sitting wall that was still in the shade. “He any good?”

“At dancing?” I shot him a sideways look.

“Yeah – mostly!”

I nodded, smiling. “Yes. I’m probably a better all-around dancer, but he knows a lot more about swing. And, well . . . anyway. It was great. Reallygreat!”

“I’m happy for you,” he said simply.

“Thanks, ’mano.” I gave him a one-armed hug. “How’s things with Sherillyn?”

He was quiet for long enough that I started to worry. Finally he shrugged, and when he answered his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “She takes my breath away.”

“That’s . . . good, right?”

“Yeah, it’s good. But I woke up in a cold sweat, thinking she’ll snap out of it and figure out that she can do a whole lot better.”

“Don’t borrow trouble, bro!”

“I know, I know.” Deliberately changing subjects, he said, “What was all that about with Abuela? She suddenly has a problem with reading books or something?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Kind of a running feud she had with padre, I guess. She doesn’t see any practical application to things like history.”

“She frickin’ pushed us hard enough to study, when we were kids!” he protested.

“Yeah, but as far as she was concerned, doing well in school was all about getting ahead.”

“I guess.” He absently kicked a pebble, sending it arcing out into the street. “I could never get worked up about it. School, I mean. Even Abuela stopped trying to get me to care after a while.”

“I remember.”

“Now, I kind of wish . . . .” His voice trailed off.

“You wish you hadn’t blown it off?”

He nodded.

“Because of Sherillyn?”

“No.” He paused, then shot me a smile. “Mostly ‘no,’ anyhow. I think. It’s like I told you a couple weeks ago, after I broke up with Anna. I’ve just been drifting. I don’t want to wake up at forty and find out this is all there is, you know what I mean?”

“Do you want to go back to school of some sort?” I tried to keep my question as neutral as possible. I remembered our earlier conversation very clearly, so it was obviously bugging him. I didn’t want him to think I was pushing, though.

“If you’d asked me a couple years ago – maybe even last year – I’d have said no fucking way. I danced off the stage at graduation, I was so happy to be done with all that. Now, though . . . I don’t know. Maybe? But it’s a pipe dream. I’ve gotta work. And I’ve got padre to think of, too.”

I felt a moment of panic – and guilt! – about the consequences of dropping responsibility for padre on his shoulders, so my response was probably sharper than it should have been. “You need to pull family in to help with padre!” I wagged my finger at him. “You do! Don’t be trying to do everything! Anyway . . . it’s looking like the next stop after the hospital will be skilled nursing, and he’s likely to be there for a while.”

He nodded. “Yeah, sure looks that way. But . . . I still gotta work, you know.”

“I worked full-time while I got my degree. Did a lot of it online. And I’m still working full time.”

“I know, but . . . you’re smart, like Sherillyn. You’ve always been good at this stuff.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m no smarter than you are. Took me six years to get my BA, and I wasn’t exactly getting high honors. I have to be motivated to learn anything, just like you. And I have to work my butt off. None of it comes easy!”

He looked at me like I had three heads.

“Listen to me!” I said, exasperated. “I almost lost my scholarship a year ago, and that would have flushed me right out of law school. Just ’cuz I had a slow recovery coming out of a surgery, and I got all down about it. I put the time in, but I just couldn’t find the mental energy to get anything to stick. After I got that warning notice from the scholarship committee I was in a constant panic for two whole semesters.”

“Carmen – I’m sorry. Honest.” He shook his head. “I had no idea. It just always seemed like this stuff came easy to you. Like we weren’t even related, know what I mean?”

“Well, you are three years younger. That doesn’t mean so much now, but it was a lot, when we were chavos.”

“I guess,” he repeated, but slowly, like he was thinking about it. “When you came back, you seemed completely different – and I’m not just talking about you being a girl! Mostly, I’ve stopped trying to connect you with the brother I remember. The part about you being smart, though . . . that didn’t feel like it had changed.”

“Got nothin’ up top that you don’t have.”

He gave me a calculating look. “A crapload more hair. Just sayin’.”

“There, you’ve got me.” I smiled. “You look better without the facial hair, though.”

That got a snort. “Yeah. Sherilynn thought so, too. Chicks!”

“We’re smart, that way.”

“You say so.”

“I do. . . . Going back to padre for a minute, though?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to fill you in on some stuff. You can decide how much you want to tell Abuela.”

He rolled his eyes. “Dealing with that witch is probably the worst part of the job!”

“I just hope it stays that way.”

“Huh?”

“Look, I know she’s a hardass,” I explained. “But I’d rather deal with her than deal with padre.”

“Oh.” He thought about that for a minute, then shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s gonna need. I mean, I’m going to have to figure all that out. But we got along okay, these last few years. He didn’t bug me, I didn’t bug him.”

“Peaceful coexistence?”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about.” He shot me a sly smile. “All you have to do is open your mouth, and everyone knows you’re a geek.”

“You know what I meant!”

“Yeah, I just like yankin’ your chain.” The grin faded. “That’s mostly right, I guess. I mean, we pretty much stopped even eating together. Now’n then, he asked me to do some stuff around the house – cleaning or painting or fixing shit. You know, maintenance. But he never asked me for rent or anything.”

My curiosity peaked, I asked, “did anything change, you know, back when Uncle Fernando’s shit all blew up?”

“Well, padre was freakin’ pissed, I remember that.” He thought for a minute. “For a while there, he got all kinds of crazy, like, going through all the crap in your room, looking for fuck knows what. Was talking all about how Uncle Fernando had swindled him, or something. Then he just shut up about it.”

“Did he say anything about why?”

“Padre? Fuck, no! Not to me, anyway, and I sure wasn’t gonna ask him. Not my monkey, not my zoo, know what I mean?”

“Was that when you stopped eating together?”

His faced scrunched up in a thoughtful frown. “Uh . . . maybe? I mean, he wasn’t even eating for a while there, when he was all manic. Then he just kinda got, I don’t know . . . maybe more withdrawn? Like I said, I wasn’t gonna poke the bear.”

“I don’t blame you. . . . Well, I think I can fill in the blanks some.” I told him what I’d learned from Uncle Fernando, from Abuela, and from the Court records.

When I got to the part about Uncle Fernando funding Domingo’s music school, Ximo shook his head in disbelief. “I call BS. I don’t care what he told you, that fucker’s Domingo’s father!”

I opened my mouth to say something, but he kept going. “He is. Momma loved him, not padre. She left you and me behind, because we’re padre’s chavalos – but she took Domingo with her. Why? And now we find out Fernando dropped a couple hundred thou on his education? I’m tellin’ you – it’s BS!”

“I hear you. And even Fernando agreed it was the logical conclusion. But . . . padre believed him when he said he wasn’t Domingo’s father.”

“How do you know that, though? Only because Uncle Fernando said so!”

I shook my head. “No. We know it because padre gave up all the equity in his house to pay off as much of that debt as he could.”

“Yeah.” He seemed to deflate. But then he thought some more and said, “Padre could have been wrong, though. Anyway – didn’t she name him after Uncle Fernando? It’s ‘Domingo Fernando,’ right?”

“Sure – but you’re Joaquim Augustin, and I was Carlos Angel. If he’d had a fourth son, it would have been something-or-other Javier. Padre wasn’t exactly hard to predict.”

“I don’t know, Carmen. It just seems obvious to me.”

“I don’t know either, ’mano. You may be right. When he told me he wasn’t, though . . . I believed him. I can’t tell you why, for sure. I just did.”

“Maybe. But that pendejo is a born salesman. You know that.”

I smiled. “I remember Uncle Augui saying he could sell locusts to a farmer.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

I thought about it some more, but I kept coming back to the look in Uncle Fernando’s eyes when I’d asked him the question directly. No false bluster. No ‘how dare you!’ Maybe he’d snowed me . . . but I didn’t think so.

Still . . . no way to prove anything. It was just a hunch. “We’ll probably never know for sure,” I said. “And I don’t suppose it matters to our lives – or to what we’re doing for padre. The money’s gone, that’s for sure.”

“I guess.”

We sat quietly for a bit, and I gave Ximo some space to process everything I’d told him. It was a lot.

But his next comment surprised me. “Once his comp money comes in, we’ll be able to cover the mortgage and I can take care of the bills. Will that be enough?”

“I wish I could just say ‘yes.’ But it’s going to be super complicated. First thing you need to know, though, before I tell you why, is that I’m going to be with you through all of this, okay? I’m not just gonna drop it on you and head for the hills.”

“Okay.” The steadiness in his voice impressed me. “So, walk me through it.”

I nodded. “Even if he gets approved for MediCal tomorrow, he’s been in the hospital for close to two months now. That’s a mountain of debt. When they come to collect, he’ll have to go through bankruptcy. I can’t think of another way around it. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that there are some exemptions in California. We’ll have to figure out which ones make the most sense for him, but given how little actual equity he has in the house, I think we’ll be able to shield it and his car and most of his personal stuff. But it’s going to be a nightmare to go through it.”

He took that in, then nodded. “We can deal with that. And, look . . . if he loses the house, he loses it. Like you said earlier, he’ll probably be in a nursing home for a long time anyway. We can get an apartment, if that’s what it comes to.”

“By then, he should have income from Social Security Disability,” I said, trying to be positive. “It won’t be a ton, but it’ll help. I’ll pitch in, too. I don’t have a lot of extra either, but I can definitely do something. And I’m hoping I’ll be able to earn more, once I’m done with law school.”

He kicked another pebble. “That’s part of why I’m pissed at myself. If I hadn’t spent the last few years just cruisin’, I’d have some more options here.”

“Bro – don’t be beatin’ on yourself,” I scolded him. “You’ve held down a steady job for years. If you want to move on from it, that’s great, too, but it’s not like you’ve been sittin’ by a pool drinking margaritas all day!”

“Yeah, but –”

I cut him off. “Ximo, don’t! Padre’s spent his whole pinche life looking back. Regretting things he did, or maybe things he didn’t do. You’re twenty-five, you’re healthy, and you’ve just stumbled into what sounds like a great relationship. You have your whole life to look forward to!”

My vehemence stunned him into momentary silence. Finally, though, he smiled ruefully and said, “You know what I regret the most?” Without waiting for my response, he answered his own question. “I regret that you weren’t around all this time. I guess I needed someone who cared enough to give me a kick in the ass!”

This time, I was the one who was stunned into silence.

He stood up, briskly brushed some grit off the back of his shorts, and held out a hand to pull me up. “C’mon, ’mana. Let’s go see the witch.”

~o~O~o~

Another afternoon, another trip over the mountains and back home.

It had been a productive trip, and I felt like Ximo was going to be in a good position to take over for me as conservator in a week’s time. He certainly seemed to be rising to the challenge.

Mostly, though, I was daydreaming about Andar. I’d had several playful text exchanges with him, and I felt like neither of us were far from the other’s thoughts. Every time I remembered being in his arms, my body almost hummed with pleasure. Friday, I told myself. Five days.

Coming down from the mountains, I smiled as I saw the signs for Glendale. I was minutes from the family that cherished him. Maybe smothered him, a bit – I could understand that. But there was no question that he loved them deeply, and the love went both ways. It was the way a family should be.

I wanted to call him, but the phone interface on the Kia was primitive. I couldn’t just punch up my contact list or anything.

Maybe he was thinking of me, though, since my phone began to ring just as I passed the first Glendale exit. Of course, he’d driven this route so often he probably knew exactly when I’d be passing by his home town.

I pushed accept. “Hello?”

“Carmen?” The voice was male, but not Andar’s.

I momentarily blanked. “Yes?”

“Carmen, it’s Brian Braddock. We got notified that Dace Gutierrez’ truck has been found. The police ran the plates and waited to arrest him, but he spotted them and ran off.”

“Oh!” I wasn’t sure whether it was good news or not; for some reason, Brian sounded worried. “Well, at least he’s been spotted, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s why I called you. He’s in Santa Ana.”

— To be continued

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