"And then?"
"And then Brent." She laughed, an awful laugh, with no air in it. "Brent's truck. Brent's credit cards that I didn't know about until the collections people called. Brent wanted the bigger apartment, the one on Maxwell with the yard, and I couldn't make the rent on it without—and I said, I'll pay it back. I'll put it back. As soon as. And then Sadie came, and then I was on maternity leave with no pay, and then I just—there was never an as soon as. There was never a month where there was anything left over to put back. And then he left, and it was me and two kids, and the check came every month, and it was the only thing in my whole life that came when it was supposed to come."
"So you told me it was in savings."
"Yes."
"Every time I asked."
"What was I supposed to say? That I'd spent your dead son's money on my husband's truck? You already hated me."
"I never hated you."
"You hated me the day he died." My mother's voice was getting loud now, and shaky. "You looked at me at that funeral like I'd pushed him off that roof. And I did, didn't I? I told him to take that job. I'm the one who wanted the house. I'm the one who said one more Saturday, just one more, and we'll have the down payment by spring." She was crying now, openly, standing in the middle of the kitchen with her arms wrapped around herself. "You think I don't know that? I know that every day. I look at her and I know that." She pointed at me without looking at me. "She has his face. She has his feet. She walks into a room and it's him, it's him walking in, and I—"
She stopped. She put her hand over her mouth.
The kitchen was very quiet. In our room, Sadie had stopped crying. I think she was listening at the door.
"So I let her be the strong one," my mother said, through her fingers, much more quietly. "She was always the strong one. She never needed me the way Sadie did. She had you. She had all of you, the whole Arriaga family, the aunts, the cousins, the barbecues in Moses Lake, a grandmother who calls every Sunday at seven like a train. She had a father everybody talks about like he was a saint. She had a check with her name on it every month. Even dead, he sends her more than Brent sends Sadie alive. And Sadie had me. Just me. Sadie's father forgets her birthday. So I—" Her hand came down. "So I made him remember. With her money. Yes. With Noemi's money. I bought Sadie a father. That's what I did. Is that what you came up here to hear?"