He liked it a lot.
Then he tossed his phone onto the passenger seat and slumped in his seat, camera at the ready, and thought about everything that’d happened today.
What was a guy like Tobias doing hanging out with someone like Ghost? What was the point of buying a condo in a dead chick’s name?
And what the hell did a young male hooker and a couple of pissed-off Russians have to do with a ten-year-old girl who’d gone missing twenty years before?
Chapter Five
The foyer was knee-deep in shoes and backpacks when Tobias got home, and he added his own to the pile before heading toward the kitchen and the sound of voices.
All but one of his younger brothers and sisters sat around the table eating papayas and string cheese. Mirlande, now twenty-two and living at home while taking classes in hospitality at DU, was listening as fifteen-year-old Darlin discussed his upcoming soccer game. Sitting beside her, Guy, who was sixteen, had temporarily lost his habitual disaffected teenager sneer in favor of explaining to twelve-year-old Ruby why the kids should pool their Christmas lists to ask for a PlayStation 4 for the family instead asking for individual gifts. Because of their parents’ anti-spoiled-kids protocol, Christmas teamwork was the only way Guy would be getting his hands on a console unless he saved up the money on his own, and even then, there was a good chance their parents would demand that the cash go into his college fund.
“But I don’t like video games,” Ruby said, for what was probably not the first time, judging from Guy’s groan of frustration. “I want my present to be summer camp. Like on Bunk’d.”
“Where’s Marie?” Tobias bent to steal a bite of Ruby’s papaya and got a halfhearted smack on the arm in return.
“Upstairs listening to Lemonade for the millionth time.” Guy rolled his eyes.
“I know you didn’t just roll your eyes at Queen Bey,” Mirlande said mildly.
“I’m rolling my eyes at Marie!”
Ruby shot her older brother a dirty look. She put her hands together like she was praying and intoned, “Forgive him, O Queen, for his shortsighted maleness.”
“He knows not what he does,” Mirlande added, and one of them must’ve kicked Guy, because he made an outraged noise and turned to Tobias for help.
“Leave me out of this,” Tobias said quickly.
Like Tobias, his siblings were all adopted. Unlike Tobias, they were all black. Mirlande, Darlin, and Guy were Haitian, while Ruby was Jamaican. They primarily spoke English at home—Guy and Ruby still needed practice for school and Ruby’s grasp of Kreyòl wasn’t great anyway.
His manman was at the stove, transferring boiled pork shoulder to a baking dish, and the letter tucked inside his textbook in his backpack—forgotten in the drama at Ghost’s place—came to mind. His appetite vanished, despite the fact that griot was one of his favorite dishes, even when Manman chose to go the healthier route and broil rather than fry the meat.
“Hi.” He gave her a kiss hello on the cheek. She smelled like that same rose cream she always wore, and he wanted so badly to not be this angry with her.
“Home late.”
“A bit.” He tamped down the instinct to bristle at the way she checked up on him as if he were a child, reminding himself that it was only because she loved him and worried. And it wasn’t like she was wrong to worry. He had spent the afternoon breaking in to Ghost’s place. Not that he could say that, so he went with a small lie. “I went to see Church.”
She paused, the knife hovering in the air over the cutting board. She didn’t entirely approve of Tobias’s ongoing friendships with guys he’d met at Woodbury, but neither she nor Papa had pushed him to end the relationships. He was grateful for their circumspection. Church and Ghost were his closest friends, crucial to his happiness, and cutting off contact with either of them would be unbearable. He wasn’t sure how he could avoid hurting his parents if they asked him to.
Her tone was politely distant. “Oh? How is he?”
“Good.”
Manman nodded and resumed her preparations. The subject was closed.
He considered claiming that he needed to study—it wasn’t untrue, because he always needed to study—but it would make her worry. He wasn’t antisocial by nature, and if he didn’t make at least a token effort to interact with the family, she would notice.
“Want me to start the pikliz?” he asked finally. He was the only male in his family allowed to help cook because he was the only one with enough patience to do everything exactly as Manman demanded. She was very particular about her kitchen.
“That would be very helpful, cheri, thank you.”
He went to the sink to wash his hands. When he’d dried them, he pulled cabbage, carrots, and peppers out of the fridge before ducking his head into the pantry. “We’re not out of vinegar, are we? I can go to the store.”
“Behind the olive oil,” she said, with an air of why can’t men find things in her voice. It made him smile despite his mood, especially since the vinegar was exactly where she’d said it would be.
“Success.” He got out a large bowl and grabbed a cutting board.
She nodded distractedly, focusing on the pork, which he could smell from where he stood—faintly citrus, slightly sour, entirely delicious. “How was your day?”
He wondered what she would say if he told her that he’d broken in to someone’s house and hidden in the closet with a tattooed, mohawked private detective. “It was fine. How was yours?”
“Good.” She
