The Do-Over, page 4
“Didn’t you hear what happened when I asked Dad about making carnitas?” Raquel asked.
Lu slouched at the edge of the trunk, elbows on her knees. “Dad told you no,” she said. “He said Sylvia already had something planned.”
Raquel plopped down beside her. The car rocked. Crybaby lifted his head and whined.
“No.” She shook her head impatiently. “I mean after that.” The words wanted to fly out of her mouth, but she forced herself to hold them back. She needed to help Lu follow the facts along with her. She flipped to the first page in the notebook, scribbled out a sentence, and held it out to Lu.
“ ‘I didn’t even know you could cook,’ ” Lu read aloud. She wrinkled her nose. “So?”
“So, he’s never cooked for her. He’s never made her carnitas, his signature dish. Mom’s favorite.”
Lu shrugged. “Maybe she’s a vegetarian.”
“Or maybe,” Raquel said, jumping out of the trunk, “they’re not as close as they seem. Maybe he doesn’t like her enough for carnitas. You heard what Sylvia said. They’ve only been here a few days.” She started unloading the packs of toilet paper Mom had insisted on bringing along with them in case Dad’s stash wasn’t big enough. Raquel suspected that what Mom really wanted was to find another place to store it all. At least they had convinced her to toss out the sourdough starter before they left.
Next, Raquel pulled out a garment bag and started to lay it on the ground.
“Be careful with that!” Lu said. “It’s my skating dress. The competition is coming up, remember?”
Raquel didn’t want to argue with her. Not now. “I remember,” she said, and gently draped the bag on top of the toilet paper rolls. “Help me with the cat food.”
Lu scooted off the back of the car, and together they heaved the fifty-pound bag of cat food onto the gravel.
“Why does it matter when Sylvia moved in?” Lu asked. “She’s here now.”
Raquel pulled out Lu’s exercise equipment—a jump rope, a rolled-up yoga mat, two five-pound weights, and some kind of giant rubber band. Mom and Lu just loved to tease her over how strict she was about deadlines. And yet no one ever bothered Lu about her own stubborn commitment to her fitness routine.
Finally, she uncovered her suitcase. She unzipped it to make sure the laptop was still intact and that her family-size box of Corn Chex hadn’t gotten too crushed on the road. Of course she knew there were grocery stores in Lockeford and she didn’t have to travel with her own breakfast cereal. But it was her secret-weapon writing fuel, and she felt better knowing she had it with her. She re-zipped the suitcase and placed it on the ground.
“I know it’s not what we planned,” she said, “but just think. Now we have the chance to observe Sylvia. Get to know her weaknesses. That way, if Dad doesn’t decide on his own to make her leave, we can make sure she doesn’t want to stay.”
A footstep crunched on the gravel behind them.
Raquel gasped.
Lu bit her lip.
They both turned around.
Juliette stared back at them, raising her fingers in an awkward wave. Lucinda clapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late to take back what they had just said. How long was Juliette standing there? What did she hear? Most importantly, was she going to tell their parents?
Lucinda shot a panicked look at her sister, but Raquel hadn’t taken her eyes off Juliette. She put a hand on her hip. “It’s Juliette, right?” she said. “Are you spying on us now? Well, there’s no need. We haven’t said anything we wouldn’t say to your face.”
It was harsh. Even for Raquel, who was never shy about expressing her opinions. Lucinda crossed her arms tight over her chest, not sure what to say or even where to look.
Juliette kicked at the gravel. “Relax,” she said. “I only came out here because my mom told me to help you guys unload.” She raised her eyes to the top of the oak tree where barn owls sometimes roosted. Not that she would know that. “I think she want us to be … friends, or something. And the thing is, once my mom gets an idea in her head, it’s impossible to talk her out of it. So here I am.”
Sylvia sounded almost a little like Raquel, Lucinda thought. Though she never would have said it aloud. She regretted even thinking it, half-worried her sister might be able to read her mind.
“Well, we don’t need your help,” Raquel snapped. “We were doing just fine without you—or your mom.”
Lucinda cringed. The thought of yet another argument made her stomach twist into knots, and anyway, the situation wasn’t exactly Juliette’s fault. She looked around frantically, searching for some way to change the subject before Raquel blew up again.
She pointed at Juliette’s T-shirt. It was dark green with a cartoon illustration of avocados doing jumping jacks. Avo-cardio was printed across the top.
“That’s funny,” Lucinda said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Huh?” Startled, Juliette looked down as if she had forgotten what she was wearing. “Oh, I made it,” she said after a wary pause. “With this silk screen kit I have.”
“DIY, huh?” Lucinda said, nodding knowingly. “Our mom is going to love you.”
“Lu!” Raquel objected. But Lucinda could tell the distraction had worked. Raquel was already beginning to calm down. Her fingers had uncurled. Her jaw had relaxed. Her sister could be bossy, but she wasn’t mean. Raquel took a step back and tilted her head, more curious about Juliette now than accusing.
“Listen, I don’t know how much you heard,” Lucinda continued. “But we didn’t mean—” She stopped. What had they meant exactly? “It’s just that we weren’t expecting your mom and our dad to …” Her voice trailed off again. It felt like too much to explain all of a sudden.
Then again, maybe she didn’t have to.
“Believe me,” Juliette said. “This is not what I was expecting, either.” She dug a little hole in the gravel with the tip of her running shoe.
Raquel sat down on the top of her suitcase. She leaned toward Juliette, ready for the story. Her reporter stance. Lucinda wouldn’t have been surprised if she uncapped her pen and started taking notes. “So what happened?” Raquel asked.
“Mind if I sit?”
Lucinda slid over to make room for Juliette in the back of the car. Crybaby stretched his neck, let out a puny meow, and fell asleep again.
“I know this sounds bad, but when my mom’s office shut down, I got a little excited that we were going to be able to spend some more time together,” Juliette said. “But then Mom thought it would be best if we spent the lockdown with Marcos. We didn’t want him to be alone, you know. Since no one knows how long all this is going to last.”
Lucinda’s breath caught as prickles of guilt crept up her throat. She and Raquel had started referring to everything that had happened—the school closing, the parties getting canceled, the stocking up on pasta and paper towels—as the big All This. And not once since All This started had she thought about Dad being on his own up here. She had Mom and Raquel. And Crybaby, of course, and all she had been worried about was when the rink would open. When everything would get back to normal again.
Yet, at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel the way she had when she saw Sylvia take Dad’s arm and lead him up the steps. Or when Mom had asked if it was all right to use the shower in the ranch house. It was like reaching into the closet for her favorite cardigan and realizing Raquel had taken it without asking again.
It was their job to worry about Dad—hers and Raquel’s—not Sylvia’s and definitely not Juliette’s.
Raquel must have felt it, too. “We wouldn’t have left our dad on his own,” she said. “We talked to him almost every day on video chat, and anyway, we’re here, aren’t we?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Juliette said. She reached for one of the boxes of chocolate-dipped granola bars Mom had brought from home. “Can I have one?”
Lucinda nodded.
“Mom doesn’t ever let us buy stuff like this,” Juliette said as she unwrapped a granola bar. “Packaged, I mean.”
She took a bite. “Anyway,” she continued after swallowing. “After Marcos told her he wanted you two to come stay up here, Mom thought he’d need her help more than ever—two girls to take care of and the farm stand to run and everything. But now I think that if your mom is here, too, then …”
Lucinda had been tracing spirals in the dust on the bumper. She shook off her hands. “… Then maybe he doesn’t need your mom to stay anymore?”
“Exactly,” Juliette said. “And if she doesn’t have to stay, that means I can go back. Some of the girls on my track team are still meeting up to train every morning. But I can’t join them because it’s too far to drive from way out here. Your dad kinda lives in the middle of nowhere. No offense.”
“I get that,” Lucinda said. And she did. She would have wanted to train too if she could.
Raquel tapped her pen against her teeth. “So, it sounds like we all want the same thing,” she said. “You want to go home, and we want you to leave.”
“Raquel!” Lucinda said. Maybe it was true, but she could have been nicer about it.
“No, it’s okay. She’s right,” Juliette said. “The thing is, I don’t know how to convince Mom. I’ve already tried.”
Lucinda swung her legs back and forth over the edge of the trunk. The faint smells of strawberry and cut grass swirled on the late-April breeze as the sun began to sink. This had always been her favorite time of day at the ranchette, when she and Raquel would climb the oak trees while Mom crocheted on the front-porch steps and they all waited for Dad to call them in for dinner.
“It’s too bad you don’t have someone else you can take care of,” she mused. “Someone else who needs you.”
“That’s a great idea!” Raquel exclaimed. She turned to Juliette. “Do you have any relatives, friends … anyone who might need your mom’s help?”
“Already thought of that,” Juliette said. “Mom’s cousin Gabby lives on her own, and I know Mom was really worried about her. But now Gabby’s moving back in with her parents, so it’s too late.”
Raquel stood. She shoved her notebook in her back pocket. “Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe Gabby needs help packing … or … she needs a ride. Anything to get your mom out of the house for a couple of days. That’s all we need. What if we send an email pretending to be Gabby and—”
“Kel!” Lucinda interrupted again. “That’s a terrible idea! We can’t do that.”
Juliette paced between them. “You’re right,” she said. “It won’t work. Mom will know the email address is a fake.”
“Thank you,” Lucinda said, grateful she finally had some back up.
Then Juliette continued, “Maybe instead I could say that Gabby called and asked me to deliver a message!”
Lucinda’s mouth fell open. She couldn’t believe they were actually thinking of going through with this.
The front door creaked open then, and they all went quiet. Sylvia called out from the porch, “Everything going okay out there?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Raquel called back.
Raquel chased a pea around her plate with her fork, hating to admit that she actually kind of liked the meal Sylvia had prepared. It was just that Sylvia made such a fuss over the paella, chopping onion and sautéing chorizo and grinding up spices in Abuelita’s old stone molcajete. She even brought out a special pan to cook it in. “It was made in Valencia,” Sylvia said as if that fact would astonish them. But it didn’t look much different from a normal pan except that it was wider and had two handles and would take up way too much room in Dad’s cupboards.
And in fact, the more Raquel thought about it, the paella wasn’t so different—definitely wasn’t better—than anything Mom could have made at home if she had the time. Even without a fancy Spanish pan and tiny vials of spices. If you took away the shrimp and sausage, it was more or less arroz con pollo, wasn’t it? Same as they ate almost once a week.
Raquel looked around the table. Across from her, Lucinda was sneaking nibbles of shrimp to Crybaby, who pawed greedily at her leggings. Mom sat on the spare chair they had dragged in from the hall closet—as if she were the guest here—quietly chewing a giant forkful of rice. Dad swirled the ice around in his glass of water so the cubes clinked against the sides. Sylvia caught her eye and smiled, which sent Raquel’s eyes back down to her plate. They had already talked about the drive (it had been fine, no traffic), about the weather (cool for this time of year), about the pandemic (what a strange time to be living through; no one could believe it was happening). Raquel was losing patience. She and Lu—and Juliette, if they could really trust her—needed to come up with a plan to get Sylvia out of the house. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be.
“Your allergies don’t seem to be acting up, Marcos,” Mom said after a while. “Springtime used to be so hard on you. Are you taking something new?”
Dad was still chewing, and before he could swallow, Sylvia put her fork down and answered for him.
“Local pollen,” she said excitedly. “The idea is that by taking a spoonful a day, you can expose your immune system to small doses of the allergens in the air. Over time, you lose your sensitivity to them.”
Raquel cleared her throat. She had read about this once. “Actually, there isn’t much evidence that—”
“I figured it couldn’t hurt,” Dad said, talking over her.
“Couldn’t hurt?” Sylvia said. “I swear by it.” She leaned toward Mom. “I’ve been trying to tell him he should start stocking it at the farm stand. Along with some artisanal soaps and maybe specialty preserves from some of the local growers. It would bring in an entirely new customer base, don’t you think?”
“What’s wrong with our old customers?” Raquel tried to break in again. It had been mostly neighbors who shopped at the farm stand, and tourists heading east into the Sierra Nevada or west toward the vineyards and the ocean beyond them. A famous chef from Sacramento came once a week for fresh produce. The Lockeford-Clements Gazette had even written a front-page story all about it. Abuelita had saved the clipping and framed it at the farm stand. Why did they need new customers all of a sudden?
But Mom sent Raquel a warning glance, so she didn’t press it any further. She just went back to pushing peas around her plate.
“Well, it sounds like you’re taking things in some exciting new directions,” Mom said, smiling.
Sylvia nodded. “We don’t want it to be Lockeford’s best-kept secret anymore, do we?” She squeezed Dad’s hand.
One word stood out to Raquel. We. Not only had Sylvia taken Mom’s place at the table, but now she was talking about the farm stand as if it were hers? Raquel pushed her plate away. “May I be excused? I need to work on a story.”
“You’ve hardly eaten,” Dad said.
“I’m not hung—”
“Raquel!” Mom said. She raised an eyebrow. She didn’t have to. Raquel knew Mom was serious when she used her full name.
“Fine,” she muttered and shoveled up a forkful of rice and chicken.
Sylvia dabbed the edges of her mouth with a paper towel. “A newspaper story, huh?” she said. “I’d love to read it. I don’t know if your dad has told you, but I work in the communications industry, too. My agency produces videos for social media. That’s how your dad and I met, actually. Marcos hired us to make some videos to advertise the farm stand.”
“Oh,” Raquel said flatly. But Sylvia didn’t seem to notice that no one—absolutely no one—was interested in hearing all about their love story.
“And we just hit it off, didn’t we?” She gazed up at Dad. He laughed, and his cheeks turned a little red. Lucinda grimaced, and Juliette squeezed her eyes shut.
“Anyway,” Sylvia said, turning back to Raquel, “I’d be happy to show you around my office someday once all this”—she gestured around the room—“is over and things get back to normal again. Maybe you can even get some real-world experience.”
Raquel took a sip of water and set her glass down. A little too hard, possibly. “No thanks,” she said. “I’m interested in journalism. Facts. It’s not the same thing as what you do.”
Mom tilted her head way back and exhaled heavily. This time it was Dad’s voice that was a warning. “Raquel.”
Sylvia pressed her hand on his again. “No, no, she’s right, Marcos. My mistake. But the offer always stands in case you ever change your mind.”
Everyone was quiet after that. Raquel thought the conversation was finally over. She would take a couple more bites to satisfy Dad, then find some excuse to get Juliette and Lucinda into the same room so they could figure out a way to stop this.
Instead, Sylvia kept trying to get to know them. She was definitely persistent, Raquel admitted. She had to give her that much.
“So, Lucinda,” Sylvia said. “I hear you’re quite the athlete.”
Lu scratched Crybaby under the chin as he circled her ankles. “I guess,” she said. “I haven’t been able to practice much lately.”
Sylvia reached to the center of the table and spooned another serving of paella onto her plate. This meal was never going to end. “I bet you and Jules have a lot in common. Maybe you can start jogging together. Jules can show you all the best spots.”
Juliette rubbed the bridge of her nose. “She already knows the best spots. This is her house, remember?”
Sylvia frowned and put down her napkin. But it wasn’t because of Juliette’s tone, Raquel realized.
“Why are you rubbing your head? Is it hurting?” Sylvia asked. “You look a little pale. Do you feel all right?”
“Not really,” Juliette said. Then she sneezed.
