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He looked away again but I caught his scowl.

“Maybe you should, since it’s kind of silly to fight with people,” I advised.

“What do you know? You’re a teenager.”

“I am not! I’m twenty-two and my birthday is next month,” I said.

“I just get confused because you’re the size of a toddler,” he explained, and we continued shopping.

He was leaving the next day for his vacation, so before we got out of the hearse, I gave him the gift that I’d stored in the back seat. “Here, this is for you.”

“Why?”

“It’s your Christmas present! Take it.” I watched as he eyed it warily and then opened it.

A big smile spread across his face. “Hey! Look at this,” he said. He opened the sunglass case and put them on. “Do I look like a Navy pilot?”

“Exactly, just as handsome,” I answered. “You were always squinting when we drove and now you’re going to the beach, so I thought you might need them.”

“I love these glasses. Thank you, Kat. Did you open what I gave you?”

“What…” I suddenly remembered that he had brought a gift to my terrible dinner party, a red bag that I had set down and forgotten. “I’m sorry, I didn’t. A lot happened and it must be under some of the bed parts in the living room.”

He didn’t seem to mind that I’d ignored it, but I did. The moment I got home, I ran to dig through the rubble until I found it. He had given me a picture in a frame, but not of me and him. It was one he had taken at Thanksgiving when I’d been at his house and his grandchildren had also stopped by.

“He gave me a framed picture of me with Oliver,” I said out loud.

“What? Oh, I remember him,” my mom said, peering over my shoulder. “The guy with the bad aura.”

“He doesn’t have a bad aura!” I protested, holding the frame against my chest. I hadn’t even heard her come up behind me, but she had gotten good at navigating all the crap in this room. So had Maël—I did believe that he used to be a gymnast, because he was so agile.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Mom asked me. “If so, we can do a cleanse that may help.”

“He’s not my boyfriend but if you want to try a cleanse, go for it. He’s had a tough few years.”

For the first time in days, my mother looked excited. “The next time you go out, buy some palo santo smudge sticks,” she ordered. “Then we’ll get him into a bath with Himalayan salt and I’ll play my sound bowl.”

“You’ll be in there while he’s naked in a bath? No, never mind, I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I said, because I didn’t want to discuss someone’s bare body, not again. We’d already had an argument about Maël remaining dressed at all times, which might not have been the way he lived on a regular basis. His penchant for nudity would have explained why he hadn’t brought any clothing in their bags.

I spent the rest of that Sunday cleaning up the apartment as best as I could and trying to introduce Maël to the wonders of soap and showers. “And while you bathe, I’ll take your items of clothing down to the laundry room and wash them.” He had three items, but only if he had underwear. “It will be my pleasure,” I said.

He stared at the water running out of the shower head. The song was very faint now, even softer than when I’d first moved in, but he was so focused on it...

“Do you hear anything weird?” I asked.

He looked at me. “No,” he stated. Then he left the room.

I was so startled to hear him speak that I almost fell into the tub.

The next morning, I had to get to work. “Look at my whiteboard,” I told my mother. I tapped that with the pen when her eyes wandered toward the window. “Mom! This is a list of things for you to accomplish today while I’m gone.”

She squinted at it. “It’s very complex.”

“No, it isn’t,” I answered. “You can buy milk at the store on the corner. I got you the phone on Friday and you can use it to contact the new attorney and discuss your issues.” I got a funny, unhappy feeling when I talked about that phone. I hadn’t put her on my plan; I had bought a prepaid version so that she didn’t start making crazy international calls to friends back in Mexico or give it to other people to use, like strangers on the street. That had happened before and she’d lost a lot of expensive stuff that way.

I went through the rest of the items on the list I’d prepared but it was obvious that she wasn’t paying attention, and eventually, I gave up.

When I’d first moved into the Milaflores Building, I’d been excited at the thought of never having to leave and go to an office again. But now I was rushing out of the door so that I could get to one as quickly as possible. The space that Oliver had rented wasn’t too far away, and it was easy enough to take a rideshare there. It would have been easy to take my own car, too, which Gramps had bothered me about when we’d been Christmas shopping. But today, he was on his way to the Caribbean. He had already texted me pictures from the airport.