“What are you going to do with all these?”

  “Hm?”

  Lucinda raised her voice over the whir of the sewing machine. “The face masks. What are you going to do with them?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d take them to give away at the farm stand,” Mom said. “That way anybody who needs one can just … take one.”

  “So much work,” Lucinda said. “Why not just buy them?”

  Mom didn’t say anything for a moment, and Lucinda wondered if maybe the sewing machine had drowned out her voice again. She was about to let it go, to move on to a new question, when Mom finally answered. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve always just liked the idea of taking something that’s old or torn or maybe not working the way it’s supposed to anymore and making it new again. It makes me feel like there’s something I can do, even if I can’t fix it, you know?”

  Lucinda wasn’t sure she did know. But she nodded anyway. She would think about it. For now, she thumbed through the thick stack of fabric that sat at the edge of the table. She recognized not just the dish towels, but leftover scraps from projects Mom had made back at home, and even some of the clothes she and Raquel had outgrown. All waiting to be turned into something new.

  “Looking for Sylvia’s laundry?” Mom asked. Her eyebrow was arched, and Lucinda felt her cheeks go warm. “Over there,” Mom said, raising her chin toward the living room. “On the bookshelf.”

  What had once been Sylvia’s lucky leopard-print blouse was now a face mask with three sharp pleats. Lucinda traced her fingers over the straight white stitches.

  “You can take it to her when you go back to the house,” Mom said.

  There was one more question Lucinda had to ask, even though she thought she knew the answer, and even though she didn’t like it.

  “Are you really going back home?”

  Mom stopped the sewing machine. “I really am,” she said. “I need to check on Mrs. Moreno, and the apartment. And I have some more salon deliveries to make. But I’ll stay until Monday, just to be extra sure you’re all settled. After that, I’ll come back every weekend until this is over. And, Lu, I promise, it will be over someday.”

  Sometimes it was hard to believe that was true. But she decided to try.

  She found Dad, Sylvia, and Juliette still on the patio, talking under the twinkling lights that Dad had strung up last summer. Seeing them sitting there together, she thought about her family and whether they could stitch all the pieces together into something new. She thought about Raquel and what they had outgrown, but also about what still fit.

  “I’ll be back in a sec,” Lucinda said. She was hoping she could convince Raquel to join them. And maybe they could give Sylvia the face mask together. But when she got to the back door, she froze. Her throat tightened. The door was swinging open.

  “Crybaby?”

  “Um … What exactly are you looking for?”

  Raquel pulled her head out from under the bed and unmuted herself to answer Daisy.

  After Sylvia left, she had taken the laptop to her bedroom and called another emergency meeting. Not everyone could join, but Daisy was there. So were Alice, Peter, and Olivia. Raquel had filled them in on what happened at dinner and what Sylvia said about never wanting to leave.

  “Sorry,” Raquel said. “It’s … my sister’s cat. I saw him a minute ago and just wanted to make sure he was still in here.”

  “Crybaby!” Daisy squealed. “Bring him out! I want to say hello to that sweet, handsome boy!”

  “Bring him out” was exactly what Raquel was trying to do, except Crybaby wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

  “I’m … sure he’s around here somewhere,” Raquel said. “Let’s keep going. How are we going to get rid of Sylvia? What other ideas do you have?”

  They all looked away from their cameras.

  “Anyone?” Raquel asked.

  “Oh, I know!” Daisy said. “What if you program her phone so the alarm goes off every twenty minutes tonight? If that doesn’t drive Sylvia away, at least she’ll be too tired and cranky to spend any time with your dad tomorrow.”

  That’s when Raquel heard Lu’s voice at the back door. “Crybaby?”

  “Hang on,” she interrupted Daisy. “Maybe we don’t need a new plan after all.”

  If everything worked the way Raquel thought it might, Lu would panic after seeing the back door that Sylvia had so thoughtlessly left open.

  But Raquel wouldn’t let her worry for too long. Miraculously, she would discover Crybaby under the bed—or wherever he was hiding now. It would have been a close call, but if anything had happened to Crybaby, Sylvia would be the one to blame. Maybe it wasn’t enough to convince Dad that bringing Sylvia here was a mistake. But it might be exactly what she needed to get Lu back on her side again.

  She just had to find Crybaby.

  “What’s going on?” Olivia asked.

  “Yeah,” said Alice. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Raquel said as she scanned the room. “Just looking for that cat.” The closet. Of course! She should’ve checked there first. Lately Crybaby liked to curl up in the corner and rest on top of the comic book boxes.

  But he wasn’t in the closet, either.

  Lu and the rest of them were in the kitchen now.

  “Calma, mija, I’m sure he’s in here somewhere,” Dad was saying. “The door can’t have been open for very long.”

  “I was sure I had closed it,” Sylvia said. “I’ll never forgive myself if anything … Marcos, where do you keep the flashlights?”

  “Maybe he’s with Raquel,” Juliette suggested.

  Raquel checked inside Lu’s laundry basket and underneath the dresser. “I would have noticed if he left the room,” she muttered to herself. But maybe not if I was too focused on splitting up Dad and Sylvia to pay attention.

  Lu’s footsteps thudded down the hall. “Crybaby? Are you in there?”

  “Was that Lucinda?” Peter asked. “What’s happening? She sounds upset.”

  “Gotta go,” Raquel said to the screen, thoughts racing. “I’ll explain everything on the group chat.”

  Mom raced over from the loft as soon as Dad called to tell her what happened. She had already changed into the sweatpants and the old concert T-shirt that she usually slept in, Raquel noticed. Which made her feel even worse. Knowing she caused the kind of emergency Mom would bolt out of bed for.

  Lu was sitting on the sofa, her face all wet and pink and blotchy. Mom held both her hands.

  “He couldn’t have gone very far,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll come straight home as soon as he’s hungry. Just like when he sneaks downstairs to visit Mrs. Moreno.”

  Raquel’s phone pinged again. It hadn’t stopped since she sent that message to the group chat. She got up off the carpet and drifted into the kitchen to look at the screen.

  Raquel put the phone back in her pocket.

  More tears streamed down Lu’s cheek. “But what about the coyotes? You said there are coyotes.”

  Mom pressed her lips together and stroked Lu’s hair. “Your dad and Sylvia are looking for him.”

  She didn’t say they’d find him, though.

  I should have closed the door. Raquel thought again. It was a thought that had crowded out all the other ones since she realized Crybaby was really missing. I should have closed the door and I should have known this was going to happen.

  She couldn’t stand to just sit there any longer. “I want to go out and look for him, too. Dad and Sylvia are searching the orange grove. I can go check the cherries.”

  Mom glanced out the window. “I know you want to help, mi amor, but it’s too dark out there.”

  Juliette, who had been sitting at the kitchen table, so quietly that Raquel almost forgot she was there, spoke up.

  “What if we go out together?” she said. “Me and Raquel?”

  Mom bit her bottom lip, thinking about it.

  Raquel didn’t want to go with Juliette. She wanted to find Crybaby on her own, and then she wanted to stay up late, whispering and laughing with Lu. Just Lu. But if letting Juliette tag along convinced Mom to let her search, she wouldn’t argue.

  “Please, Mom?”

  “All right. But stay together.”

  Once outside, Raquel checked her phone again and groaned as she scrolled through the messages.

  “On the track team, we call that a text avalanche,” Juliette said.

  Raquel jumped. “What?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just saying, we call that a text avalanche. You know, when one person sends something and everyone has to respond, and the messages come pouring in faster than you can keep up with them.”

  Track team was nothing like newspaper club. “It’s not like that.” Raquel silenced her phone and tapped on the screen to turn on its flashlight. “Anyway, I just want to focus on finding Crybaby, if you don’t mind. And it was nice of you to offer to help and everything, but I can do it myself. Lu is my sister, after all.”

  Juliette jogged out ahead of her. “I wanted to help. I’ve never seen Lu so upset, and I’m good with animals.” She shined her flashlight down the first row of cherry trees.

  “Of course you haven’t seen her upset. You barely know her. And how can you be good with animals? You don’t have any pets … do you?”

  Juliette trudged farther down the row, hopping over a hose. “Not exactly. Our landlord doesn’t allow them, so Mom signed us up to volunteer at the animal shelter. We used to go every Saturday before, you know, all this.”

  “That’s kind of … cool, actually,” Raquel said. Although she had a hard time picturing Sylvia in an animal shelter.

  “I know. And Mom makes these adorable videos of the dogs and cats, to help them get adopted. I was telling Lucinda about it. You should check them out sometime.”

  There was a rustling in the tree behind them. They spun around and pointed their flashlights in the branches.

  “Crybaby?” Raquel called.

  But it was only a squirrel.

  She turned in a slow circle, trying to force her eyes to see farther into the darkness. “It’s too big,” she said, more to herself than to Juliette. “We’re never going to find him, are we?”

  “Let’s keep looking,” Juliette said, and turned to walk down another row of trees.

  Raquel had left her notebook behind in the bedroom, but she made a mental picture of it now. She imagined writing down the facts she had gathered so far about Sylvia.

  1. She drives a red car and wears leopard-print shirts, neither of which belongs on a ranch.

  2. She likes recipes that need special pots and pans to cook them.

  3. She makes videos as her job and also, apparently, in her spare time.

  4. She has a daughter the same age as me and Lu.

  5. She isn’t Mom.

  Some of the facts were more annoying than others. But even Raquel could admit there weren’t enough of them yet to tell the whole story. If one of her staffers turned in an article like that, with so many holes in it, she’d ask them to go back and find out more.

  “Wait, did you hear that?” Juliette held up her hand to signal that they should stop walking.

  “Probably just an owl,” Raquel said. “They live in the oak trees.”

  “No,” Juliette said. “Listen. Over there!”

  She took off toward the center of the orchard. Raquel ran after her, and as they got closer, she heard it, too.

  Meee-ooowoar.

  “That’s him!”

  Juliette got to the tree before she did. She aimed her flashlight up into the branches, and Crybaby’s eyes glowed back at them.

  Meee-ooow, he whined again.

  Raquel staggered backward and let out a small, shaky laugh. “There you are!” She tossed her phone to Juliette. “Hold this for me. I’m gonna go get him.”

  Crybaby was perched on a thin branch about halfway up the tree. Every time he moved a cautious paw to climb back down, the branch would shake and he’d cry and cling again.

  “Don’t worry,” Raquel said. “I’m coming!” She wedged her foot into a fork near the bottom of the trunk and pulled herself up. Lu would have been faster, she knew as she squinted to find another toehold. Lu would have known where to move next. But, slowly, Raquel climbed until, hugging the trunk with one arm, she could reach out with the other and pull Crybaby into her chest. “Gotcha.”

  He purred loudly as she cradled him in the crook of her elbow and made her way back down the tree.

  “Look who I found,” Raquel said, leaping off the last branch.

  But Juliette wasn’t there.

  Raquel’s cell phone lay blinking in the dirt. Messages flashed on the screen.

  Crybaby spent the whole night curled on Lucinda’s pillow, and the next morning, he dozed in her lap, stretching his neck every few minutes to remind her to keep scratching behind his ears.

  “I don’t think I have ever seen a more spoiled gato,” Mom said as she stirred a splash of creamer into her coffee. She joined them for breakfast, just like she had promised, and Lucinda wondered how many alarms she had to set to wake up on time.

  “I think he ran away on purpose,” Dad said. “Just for the attention.”

  That made Sylvia bury her face in her hands. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for letting him get out,” she said. It was at least her fifth apology that morning. “I don’t know where my head was at, but I can promise you it won’t happen again,” Sylvia said.

  “No harm done, Sylvia,” Mom said. “Really. It was an accident. Anyone could have made the same mistake.”

  But Sylvia’s the only one who did, Lucinda thought. Maybe Raquel was right all along. She shouldn’t have trusted Sylvia so easily.

  In all the commotion of the night before, she hadn’t had a chance to thank her sister. Or even to hear exactly what had happened out in the cherry orchard.

  She and Mom had been scouring the pantry for a can of tuna they could use to lure Crybaby back to the house when Jules charged through the back door. “We found him,” she said as she stalked across the kitchen. But she didn’t explain. Or even say another word. She just marched straight to her bedroom.

  Raquel came in minutes later, carrying Crybaby. He wriggled out of her arms and galloped toward Lucinda, who had dropped to her knees to pick him up. “Where was he?” she had asked.

  “Stuck in one of the cherry trees.” Lu expected her to tell them more, to fly into the whole story as usual. But all Raquel said was “He must have climbed up too high and couldn’t figure out a way down again.” And Lucinda was so happy to have Crybaby back in her arms that she didn’t think to ask more questions, or to wonder why her normally chatty sister seemed so quiet.

  Now she wondered. She tried to get her attention, but Raquel’s eyes stayed glued to the strawberry-quinoa breakfast bowl, not even nibbled, that Sylvia had put in front of her.

  Sylvia looked down at her watch. “It’s not like Juliette to oversleep,” she said. “She must be tired after all the excitement last night. I’d better go wake her so she can get ready for school.”

  Raquel’s head popped up. “Hey, Mom, maybe Lu and I should do school in the loft. That way Jules will have the place to herself. We won’t disturb her.”

  Mom swallowed one last gulp of coffee. “All of your books and things are here,” she said. “Besides, I have a big day of sewing planned.”

  “And besides again,” Sylvia added, “Jules is going to be so happy to finally have some company, even if you’re technically going to two different schools.”

  Even after two months, Lucinda thought, it was strange to think about how people could be in the same place together, but also not.

  Mom yawned and brought her mug to the sink. She rinsed it out and turned it upside down on the drying rack. Then she came back to the table and kissed the top of Lucinda’s head and walked around to the other side to kiss Raquel’s. Just as if they were really going off to school.

  “You two come see me at lunchtime, okay?” she said. She started for the back door just as Jules walked in from the hallway. They all turned around.

  “There you are! I was just about to go wake you,” Sylvia said. Her smile melted like the crayons Raquel and Lucinda had left out on the balcony once.

  Jules was wearing a new DIY T-shirt. This one was white with iron-on letters that spelled out #TeamSylvia.

  Lucinda dropped her spoon. It hit the edge of her bowl with a noisy clang that frightened Crybaby off her lap. How could Jules have known about Team Sylvia? Panicked, she looked across the table at Raquel. Her sister’s shoulders tensed. She was crumpling her napkin into a tiny ball.

  “Good morning, everyone!” Jules said. It was like she had walked in with venomous snake around her neck and everyone could see it but her. “Ooh! Quinoa-strawberry. Nice!” She served herself a bowl and sat down.

  Sylvia laughed nervously. “Jules, honey, what are you wearing?”

  Jules swallowed and looked down. “This? You should probably ask Lucinda and Raquel about it.” She took another bite. Chewed. Swallowed. “Oh, and ask them to tell you about how they turned our lives into some weird reality-show dating competition for their friends. Are you Team Sylvia or Team Andrea? I think we all know whose side I’m on. Is there any more fresh orange juice?”

  Mom took her hand off the doorknob and walked slowly back toward the kitchen table. “Lucinda, Raquel, what’s going on?”

  Lucinda’s mouth was too dry to speak. “It’s … We …”

  “It’s nothing,” Raquel said, coming to her rescue like always. “Just a little inside joke that got slightly out of hand, that’s all. And anyway, she was in on it, too!” She pointed at Jules. “Don’t you remember? You wanted to leave as much as we wanted you gone!”

  “Raquel!” Dad said.

  Sylvia put her hand on Jules’s shoulder. “You need to tell me what this is about.”

  Jules ignored her. “I wanted to go home,” she shouted at Raquel. “But I didn’t want you to sabotage my mom’s relationship!”

  She looked up at Sylvia. “She was the one who ruined your cake. And I knew the face mask thing wasn’t just some misunderstanding. Oh, and here’s the best part: She’s also the one who let Crybaby out. To frame you.”

 

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