At the door of his room, Aurelio turned around. He looked at Inez for a long moment, and Luz could see him reaching for something, the way you reach in the dark for a light switch you know is there.
"Did I go home today?" he asked.
"Yes, Papi."
"Was it still there?"
Inez put her hand flat on his chest, over the Walgreens windbreaker.
"It was still there," she said. "You told a man how to take care of the porch."
He considered this. "Good," he said, and tapped her hand twice with one finger, and went inside.
They did not talk in the car to the apartment, or while Inez called the pharmacy to miss her first shift in four years, or while they ate cold tortillas with peanut butter on the floor of the new living room, the coffee can on the windowsill between them.
At nine-thirty Luz went into her new room, which had white walls and smelled like somebody else's carpet cleaner, and lay down on her mattress on the floor and stared at the ceiling. After a while she heard her mother in the hallway. Not taping. Just standing there.
"Luz," her mother said through the door. "Can we talk for a second?"
Luz lay there and looked at the ceiling. She thought about saying Now you want to talk, which was true, and which would have felt good for exactly one second. She thought about saying It's okay, which wasn't true yet, and which would have been her handling it again.