Her brows twitch, and she spears me with an intense look that shocks me with how much it resembles Celeste in that split second we shared a glance earlier tonight.
“You need to go see Mom soon. Preferably while Dad’s at home. I’m worried.”
My stomach flips, and I frown at her. “Has he been hurting you guys?” I wouldn’t put it past him, but his violent phases came and went when I was young and were few and far between by the time I left home. I have no idea what he might be like now because our paths haven’t crossed in a long time, thanks to our schedules never quite syncing up. There’s no love lost between us, so I’m happy to stay away.
Her gaze drops to the floor, and she shakes her head. “Not . . . physically. But he scares me. Sometimes he pushes Sam around, and the way he talks to Mom is just . . . not nice. He’s drinking more in between duty assignments, and Mom’s sleeping less.”
“I take it you’re sleeping less too. And Sam?”
She looks at him and snorts. “He could sleep through anything, but he stays up until he knows Dad’s asleep.”
That’s some comfort. Though Julian Santos, Sr., is a big, mean bastard, so I don’t know that Sam alone could handle him if it came to that. I huff a breath out through my nose and shake my head. “Dad and I don’t mix, baby girl. You know this. We’re like oil and water. Or flame and gasoline, really. If I go over there and he pulls something, it’ll just upset Mom worse than if I never showed up at all. There’s a reason I only visit when he’s gone.”
“You’re bigger than he is now.”
“It sounds like you want me to go beat him up or something, which I’m not about to do. Mom made me promise a long time ago that I’d let her handle him. She had a way with him that always settled his moods. Obviously, she still does if she wants you two to stick with me tonight. I’m just happy you have that option.” I open the fridge, hoping she won’t push me further. My stomach unclenches, leaving me with a hollow sensation I’m pretty sure a quick sandwich will fill.
She sighs and shakes her head. “No. I don’t know. I just think you need to see what he’s like now. Maybe it’s just me, but you haven’t been by since you moved back. You were gone a really long time.”
The hitch in her voice gives me pause, and I dump my armful of sandwich fixings on the counter and face her. She’s curled into herself, her hands in her armpits and her eyes big and pleading.
Heaving a sigh, I pull her into my arms and hold her tight. “Fine, I’ll check in with Mom and stop by this week.”
She squeezes me back and mutters a relieved thank-you into my shirt. Then with a final weary sigh, she pulls away and murmurs, “Good night, Maddy.”
“You can have my bed if you want, Bean.”
“Nah.” She gives me a sleepy half-smile. “You don’t fit on the sofa. You need sleep too.”
5
Maddox
Our old house seems so tiny it amazes me that Mom managed to raise five kids and never move. It’s a little three-bedroom place on a busy street off Wilshire only a few miles from the studio. Convenient, yet still in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city despite every effort at gentrification. I suppose it helped that J.J., Marco, and I were practically out of the house before Sam and Elle were old enough to stop sharing a bedroom. It also helped that Dad was away for most of the year, so Elle tended to share Mom’s room during those stretches, at least when she was younger.
Now she and Sam each have their own rooms, and the place looks like a normal nuclear family might live here. I walk in and call out a greeting. No one answers at first, but music comes from the backyard, and the scent of grilling meat hits my nose and makes my stomach rumble in interest.
On the way through the house, I pause at the fridge and grab a beer, pop the top, and wander down the narrow hallway toward the scent of food. I peek through the door to the bigger bedroom I used to share with my brothers. It still carries a whiff of sweaty teenage boy, but it’s nowhere near as rank as I remember. Instead of two sets of bunk beds, there’s now a double bed with crumpled sheets. The walls are covered in more of Sam’s artwork interspersed with pasted-up shots of Toni Valentine alongside her tattoo designs. If he put half as much effort into his schoolwork as he does into pure hero worship, he’d have a better shot at actually graduating this year.
I duck my head and step inside. Even without the bunks taking up half the space, the room feels half as big as the last time I was here. I know I’ve grown since I left, but I guess my perspective has also changed since I found a bigger world outside this house.
Pushing through the door to the bathroom, I peek my head into the adjoining room and find Elle seated at her desk at a laptop with a
