"So, I don't know," Oren said. "I think you show up. And you say you made the thing and you lost the thing, and you let him decide what to do with that."
"That's terrifying."
"Yes."
"Why are you helping me?" I said. "Honestly. You've been awake since yesterday. You spent your morning digging through a fake snowbank looking for a horse's head for a woman you met twenty-four hours ago. Your sister's kids are probably still vomiting. Your mother's probably called you nine times."
"Fourteen," he said. "She called fourteen times."
"What did she say?"
He took out his phone and unlocked it and slid it across the table to me. On the screen was a text thread with someone named MAMÁ, and the most recent message, timestamped 3:12 a.m., said: WHO IS THE GIRL. Under that, at 3:13 a.m.: She has a nice laugh. Under that, at 3:14 a.m.: Is she the reason you finally lost that hat. Under that, at 6:50 a.m.: I am not saying anything. I am just asking. Under that, at 6:51 a.m.: I took the Reserved card out of the album. I put it back. I took it out again. I don't know what to do with it, Oren, help me.
I laughed. I couldn't help it. It came out of me like a sneeze, and I put my hand over my mouth, and Oren grinned, and the waitress looked over at us and smiled the way waitresses smile at couples, and I took my hand away from my mouth and said, "Did you answer her?"
"I said you were a stranger who dropped something on me."
"What did she say?"
He scrolled. The reply, 6:58 a.m.: That is how your father and I met. He dropped a whole tray of tamales on me at a church picnic in Nogales. Not that I'm saying anything.
"Your father left," I said, before I could stop myself.
"Yeah," Oren said. "She doesn't usually lead with that part." He took the phone back, and looked at it, and put it face-down on the table. "You asked why I'm helping you. I don't really know. I think because you threw a thing into a lake when you were ten and you've spent twenty-four years trying to fish it out. And I liked watching you yell at Bryn. And you laughed in the picture." He looked out the window at the snow. "I've taken thirty-six of those pictures. I don't think I've ever laughed in one. Not really."