"May I see?"
Sadie handed it over. Abuela looked at the drawing on the front for a long time, the three pairs, the shiny lines. She opened it and read what was inside, and she read it again. I watched her face, and I saw something happen in it, something come down over it, like a garage door rolling shut.
"This is a beautiful card," she said, and gave it back. "You know what would be even better? If you told him yourself. We could call him right now and you could tell him what it says."
"Connie," my mother said, "don't."
"Mom said not last night because it was Friday," Sadie said. "Can we? Mom, can we?"
"Not now, baby."
"Why not now?" Abuela said. "It's Saturday. Eleven o'clock. Brent's awake. Brent's been awake since six, I bet, thinking about his boat. I have his number." She was already taking out her phone. It was an old flip phone she refused to give up, with a cracked outer screen held together with—I noticed it then, and almost laughed—a little square of silver duct tape. "I have had Brent Vail's number for eight years, since he tried to sell me a Silverado with a bad head gasket. He has not changed it. Brent doesn't change anything he doesn't have to."
"Connie, I'm asking you."
"I know you're asking me." Abuela flipped open the phone and started pushing the buttons with her thumb, one at a time, slowly, loud. Each button made a little beep. "And I'm asking you, Joanna. Did Brent send the money for these shoes?"
My mother opened her mouth. She closed it. She looked at Sadie, who was standing between us in her boots, holding her card against her chest, looking back and forth from one to the other with a small line between her eyebrows. My mother looked at Sadie for a long time. And then she said, in a voice that barely came out, "Yes."
"Okay," Abuela said, and pushed the last button, and pushed one more for speaker, and set the phone on the kitchen table next to my torn shoe.