Maysa looked up, her eyes determined.
“A family with a man is sometimes better.”
Daisy waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
“How is it better?”
“The man can help to build a better home, sometimes with stones, so it will be warmer. He can sometimes find work or food while the woman cooks and cares for the children. Do you understand?”
Daisy nodded. “Go on.”
“We need more aid than the households with a man, but that is not taken into consideration when aid is distributed.”
What Maysa said made perfect sense, and Daisy didn’t see that ever changing. The aid organizations were working hard to be scrupulously fair in their distribution of supplies. The only time a woman would get more is if she were pregnant or breastfeeding. Then she would almost need even more aid, because she wouldn’t be able to cook for her family, or go out to the community well and get water for her family. The women were in a catch-22. Which was the whole reason W.A.N.T. had been started.
One-quarter of the families here in the internally displaced person camp were headed by women. Quick math told Daisy she was dealing with about two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand. The task seemed insurmountable. Even though W.A.N.T. was now bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, there was no way they could cover feeding that number of people daily, and still continue their other endeavors.
“Maysa, this is exactly the kind of information I need. I’m going to be here for the next two weeks. I am going to have some of my teammates coming here too. Can I come back and ask you more questions?”
“Yes,” Maysa smiled.
“Is it possible that you can bring other women to talk to us?”
The woman nodded.
“Thank you.”
It was the fourth time he’d left a voicemail, and three texts had gone unanswered. If he had the sense God gave a gnat, he’d give up.
“That’s the third time you’ve looked at your phone in the last half-hour,” his sister Maria teased him.
He looked up and realized that everyone around the dining room table was looking at him. Most of them had grins on their faces. Assholes. Except for his Mama—he could never say anything bad about her.
“Mijo, is something wrong?” his mother asked.
Leo sighed. “No, Mama.”
“You haven’t said a word all evening,” she coaxed. “Tell us what’s wrong.”
He looked around the table at all the amused faces of his brothers and sisters and managed not to wince.
“That’s not true, Mama. I told you that your dress looked gorgeous on you, and I’ve never seen you look more beautiful.”
“Kiss ass,” his brother Martin coughed under his breath. He was seated next to Leo.
Leo had to fight back a laugh.
“Yes, you did. You’ve always been so sweet.”
“Mama’s right,” his oldest sister, Therese agreed. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “And because you’re so sweet, you’re going to tell us what has you so preoccupied. Mama is bound to be worried. Is it a girl?”
The look he shot his sister promised retribution.
“Is it? Is it a girl?” his mother asked. It was her fondest wish that the last of her chicks would get married. That would be Leo.
He couldn’t lie. “Yes, Mama, it’s a girl. But, she’s someone I met while overseas. So don’t be thinking wedding bells. She’s not local.”
He watched as her mother’s face fell, and felt like all kinds of a heel. “But she lives in the States, she just works a lot overseas.”
“When can we meet her?” his mother pressed.
Ah fuck. I sure put my foot in it this time.
“That’s the problem, Mama, she’s not returning my messages.”
Martin and Luis hooted with laughter.
“Our baby brother has finally met his match,” Luis crowed.
“Leave your brother alone,” their mother admonished. “It’s okay, Mijo, she’ll call you. Of course, she’ll call you.” Her faith in him was blinding.
He looked around the table. His sisters were all nodding, his brothers were all smirking. Yep, it was a typical dinner at the Perez family table.
“So, who is the girl?” Martin asked later when they were outside on the back porch watching the myriad nieces and nephews playing on the jungle gym that their parents had set up in the backyard.
“She’s a bigwig at an international charity.”
Martin took a sip of his beer.
“So you met her while you were working overseas? Did it have anything to do with the doctor who was rescued?”
Leo was done trying to figure out how Martin always put two and two together. Martin was a detective with the Virginia Beach Police Department. He’d been a police officer for over twenty years. As a child he could put a puzzle together faster than anybody he’d known, he was the kid who figured out the plot of the movie a third of the way in. So of course he could put together the fact that when Leo was ‘out of town’ and someone like Doctor Squires had been rescued, that he and his team would have something to do with it.
“You know I can’t answer that,” Leo said to his brother.
“Yeah, I know. But it’s funny how the daughter of the good doctor manages a humongous international charity.”
Leo glared at his brother.
“Just saying.” He held up his hands.
Leo rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have a case you should be working on?”
“Sure, it’s called getting my brother married off.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be supplying Mom with great-grandchildren?”
“Bite your tongue, my daughters are still in college!”
Leo laughed and took a long sip of his Pacifico beer, then shouted at his nephew. “Derek, play nice with Lyndsey, or you have to come inside.”
“Uncle,” came the plaintive whine.
“If you’re not careful, I’ll also tell your grandmother you want to
