How to Love

her safety seat. She’s talking more and more now, baby jabber and snatches of conversation repeated back to me. It’s kind of the coolest thing ever.

Soledad comes in and drops her purse on the counter, swipes a chunk of banana off the cutting board. I snort. “That’s for Hannah.”

“Sorry. Starving.” She smooths an affectionate hand over the top of Hannah’s head. “So, Lydia talked to me when we were leaving,” she tells me, not bothering to work her way up to it at all. “She wants to take Hannah to the library one day this week to get her a card.”

“What? Why?” I spread a little bit of peanut butter on the toast and cut it into tiny triangles, then put it on the tray of the high chair. “There you go, baby girl.” I glance at Soledad, wrinkle my nose. “What does she need a card for? She’s fourteen months old. I take out books for her.”

“I know that. But I guess Lyd wants to spend some time with her.”

My spine straightens. “Really.”

Sol stares back. “Really.”

“How special.”

Growing up, I spent more time with Lydia than with any of my aunts or cousins, which is why it doesn’t totally make sense that I’ve never gotten over being afraid of her. When I was ten and eleven she and Soledad and I used to go out to expensive lunches and get pedicures, reading gossip magazines and picking out our favorite dresses on each page. She’s got a successful photography business and trolls flea markets looking for cool antique rugs for her hallways; she bought me an incredible rose-quartz necklace when I turned thirteen. She’s never turned the full force of her dragon-lady tendencies on me, not exactly, but still I’ve always found her totally terrifying, the way I’d be scared of a she-wolf or a teacher I couldn’t impress. I can’t get over the notion that there’s something huge and important about me that she finds totally lacking.

On top of which, until this morning she’s showed about as much interest in Hannah as one might show for memorizing the finer details of the Terms and Conditions agreement on iTunes. So it’s possible I’m not feeling a whole lot of Catholic charity toward one Lydia LeGrande at this particular juncture.

“I think we’re busy that day,” I announce grandly, and my stepmother rolls her eyes.

“I didn’t tell you a day.”

“Well, Hannah and I have a very busy social calendar.”

Soledad smirks, just the tiniest bit. “Reena.”

“Sawyer’s been back for a day and suddenly she’s angling for a Grandmother of the Year Award? Seriously?” I scowl, pouring milk into Hannah’s sippy cup. “When was the last time you even saw her hold this kid? Never is the answer, in case you were wondering. Never.”

“Never,” Hannah echoes cheerfully, tossing some peanut butter toast onto the floor.

Soledad raises her eyebrows. “Reena,” she says again, more quietly this time. “Calm down.”

“You calm down.” God, that makes me mad. “No. I say no. And why was she talking to you, anyway? If she wants to talk to me she can talk to me. I’m right here. I’ve been right here, if you remember, for the last two years.”

Soledad nods slowly. I can’t tell if she’s disapproving or maybe a little impressed. “Yes, sweetheart,” she says after a moment, and presses a kiss to my temple before she goes. “I remember.”

* * *

My cell rings just as Hannah goes down for her nap, and I dig it out from the bottom of my bag, where it vibrates beneath a bottle of ibuprofen and a board book of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s Aaron. I smile. “Hey, mister,” I say, wedging the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I dash down the stairs. I wave good-bye to Soledad and hurry out the back door. “What’s up?”

“Corner of Las Olas and Third Ave,” he tells me, a delighted grin evident in his voice. “Suck on that.”

“What? No way.” There’s this drag queen who looks like Celine Dion that hangs out around town, and if Aaron can prove he’s seen her, I have to buy dinner, that’s the game. Aaron buys dinner more often than not. “Did you get a picture?”

“What do you think, it’s my first rodeo?” He laughs. “Of course I got a picture. Steaks on you, Chicken Little. You still around tonight?”

I hesitate. Aaron is Shelby’s twin brother, the one who moved to New Hampshire before I could ever meet him in high school. Now he’s a boat mechanic at a marina on the Intracoastal and probably the best thing to ever happen to me, dating-wise. Still, this day’s not even half over and all I want is to sit, very quietly, in a room all by myself. “How’s tomorrow?” I ask, hedging.

“Tomorrow works,” he says good-naturedly. “Take a drive downtown in the meantime, see if you can’t catch her yourself. We’ll go Dutch.”

“How generous,” I tease—they’re my rules, after all. “Listen, I’m working brunch, so I’ve gotta go, but —”

“Yeah, yeah. No worries,” he says, and then, hesitating: “You okay, though? You sound … I don’t know. Something.”

The thing about Aaron is that I could probably tell him, no problem. He’s a reasonable human, more easygoing than I’ve ever hoped to be in all my time on this earth. Odds are he wouldn’t be weird about Sawyer turning up out of nowhere. Odds are he’d be totally cool.

Still, though. Still.

“Tired,” I answer, which technically isn’t lying. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

* * *

“Where the hell have you been?” is the first thing Shelby says when I get into work ten minutes later, before Hi or How are you? or anything else remotely civil. She’s home for the summer from college in Massachusetts, where she’s learning to be a doctor and also to talk like the characters in Good Will Hunting. Shelby flew back to Broward in the middle of her freshman year to help me deliver Hannah, memorizing all the bones in the human body between my contractions and charming the nurses into helping her with her homework. She was eighteen years old, and she was my labor coach. Not everybody has a friend like that.

“I had to put the baby down,” I tell her, glancing around the empty restaurant. We don’t start seating until noon on Sundays, and it’s only a quarter of.

Shelby makes a face. “Uh-huh.” She looks at me pointedly as the phone on the podium rings, like she knows exactly what—exactly who—I’m searching for, and doesn’t know why I’m wasting her time trying to be slick about it. “Good morning. Antonia’s,” she says, all syrup, but she’s staring at me like my hair is on fire as she scribbles in the reservation book, and I stand there and wait for what’s next.

“First of all,” she tells me once she hangs up, sex-kitten purr gone and replaced by her hybrid half-accent —Shelby’s lived all over the country, and you can hear it in her voice. “Super-Sperm Sawyer is in the kitchen with Finch at this very moment. So probably you should start there.”

“Shh,” I hiss, eyes darting toward the back of the house. I open my mouth to explain, although in the end all I can come up with is “He was at church, too.”

“Yeah,” Shelby says all attitude. “I bet.”

I stare at her. “What does that even mean?”

Shelby shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t like his hair. It makes him look like a cancer patient.” Shelby has never been one to reserve judgment. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I didn’t know it was going to hit local news outlets so fast,” I say, sinking into an empty chair. I’ve had a headache for the last twenty-four hours and think longingly of the ibuprofen in my purse, though at this particular moment even finding a glass of water feels like an Olympic endeavor.

“Oh, don’t even joke.” She stops, looks at me. “Did you tell my brother?”

I roll my eyes. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Bullshit. Reena,” she begins, voice going soft and urgent. If she’s nice to me I’m going to burst into tears. I start to shake my head but here he comes though the swinging doors from the kitchen, and even after all this time the room seems to orbit around him, like he’s got a perpetual spotlight on him everywhere he goes. I think, suddenly: Risen from the dead.