"Good." He tapped the armrest of the gaming chair twice with one finger. Done. Then he looked up at her, and his eyes were wet, and his voice was a little boy's voice. "Then why did I come here?"
It was Kiara who moved first. Luz would remember that too.
"Mr. Montoya," Kiara said, "the apricot tree's still out back. You want to see if there's any left?" There weren't; it was October; the apricots had come and gone in July, and Mr. Bek's question about the cutting had never been answered. But Abuelo's face turned toward the kitchen and the back door like a plant turning toward a window, and he said, "The birds get them all," and Kiara said, "Let's go yell at the birds, then," and she got behind the gaming chair and pushed it, rolling and bumping, across the kitchen linoleum and out through the sliding door onto the patio, talking the whole time about birds in a voice so ordinary that you would never know her hands were shaking on the headrest.
Luz watched them through the glass. Abuelo in the astronaut chair, under the apricot tree, pointing up at the branches. Kiara crouched beside him, nodding.
Then she turned around and her mother was standing in the middle of the empty living room with her arms crossed tight over the grey cardigan, holding her own elbows.
"Upstairs," Luz said. "Please. Just for a second. Please."
For a moment she thought her mother would say We don't have time, and something inside Luz got ready to scream. But Inez only looked at the clock on the microwave, which was the only clock left in the house, and then at the back door, and then she nodded once and went up the stairs ahead of her.
The lavender room was a disaster of spilled paperbacks and pens. MISC sat in the middle of it all, upright, sealed, three layers of tape across the top.
Luz knelt down and started picking at the tape with her fingernail.
"Luz — "
"I have to show you something. I've been trying to show you for six weeks." The tape wouldn't come. She dug at it. "Every time I try, you hand me a box."
Her mother didn't answer. She crouched down on the other side of MISC, and after a second she took her keys out of her cardigan pocket and slit the tape with the edge of the house key, three quick strokes, and pulled the flaps open.