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“Well what the fuck did you expect? Miguel wanted action.”
A door slammed.
I almost dropped my popsicle.
Anna had gone very quiet. The mix of fear and confusion on her face mirrored my feelings exactly. Michael looked between us, worry growing on his little face.
“What are they saying?” he asked us, startling us out of our shock.
“They’re just having an argument, sweetie,” I reassured in a shaky voice. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah.” Anna clearly didn’t have any more of an idea what was going on than I did.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said, trying to convince myself more than anything, just as the argument moved closer.
Both men burst out suddenly into the yard, yelling and swearing at each other. The baby, who had been snoozing on Anna’s shoulder, woke up and instantly started wailing. Michael cringed back behind the dog at the noise, and Pookie started growling in a low, menacing tone I had never heard from her before.
One of them was, of course, Luis, who came out after the other like he wanted to pull him back, still yelling at him in Spanish. “Damn it, Paco, this is my sister’s home, stop being a dick and leave her out of this.”
“It’s not her, it’s the fucking redhead! Who is she?” Paco turned out to be a small, wiry guy with a wispy black mustache and beard and some really unfortunate tattoos. He was red-faced and sweating and so blind with anger that for a few seconds, as he stomped toward Anna, he didn’t notice Pookie. But then the dog jumped to her feet to protect us, and he stopped in his tracks.
“Hey!” Anna had had enough. She bundled her wailing baby against her chest and stepped forward to stand with the dog, glaring between Paco and her brother like a couple of idiot kids. “Luis, did you bring this asshole over to my house just so you could argue, scare me, scare my kid, and upset Michael and Olivia too?”
Michael’s eyes got big, and he blinked at his Auntie Anna in almost comical shock.
Paco stared at her, then at me. His jaw worked.
Meanwhile, Luis came up and slapped a hand down on Paco’s shoulder hard enough that he winced. “No,” he said with a completely forced smile while his buddy stared holes through me. “This is just a misunderstanding. Paco had to tell me some things that wouldn’t wait.”
Anna clutched her baby tighter as she saw the look on Paco’s face. “Yeah, well, next time you and your punk-ass friends want to beat your chests and scream at each other, do it somewhere that is away from me, my home, and my baby.”
Luis reddened slightly, and his grip tightened on Paco’s shoulder until the smaller man grunted in pain. “Sorry, sis, sorry, Olivia. We’ll just take this elsewhere. Come on, Paco.”
Paco didn’t budge, instead stabbing a finger at me. “Who is this white bitch? What’s she doing here?”
Michael stood up, one hand still on Pookie’s bristled back. “Don’t you talk about my mommy that way!”
Oh God. I was about to lunge forward and scoop my son up out of harm’s way when Luis lost the last of his patience. He dragged Paco away one-handed, gripping him so hard that Paco went from red to pale. “I said come on, Paco! You and Miguel have made enough of a mess as it is without you getting paranoid over a family friend.”
He switched back to Spanish and kept lecturing him as he dragged him around toward the driveway and out of sight. The baby started to calm down with her mother rocking her, and I hugged my son, who still looked alarmingly shocked.
A few seconds later, a car door slammed, and then another. Two engines roared to life, and I winced. “What was that about?”
“I have no idea,” Anna mumbled. “I’ve seen Paco before, but I’ve never had something like that happen around us. And I sure don’t know why he was asking about you.”
“Yeah, that was really messed up and weird. I thought all your family friends knew about me.”
Michael petted Pookie, who was calming down as well now that the men were leaving. “You said a bad word,” he told Anna, who blushed.
“Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to. I just got mad because they came out and upset everybody.”
“Yeah. That guy was mean. I hope he won’t come back.”
“I’ll make sure Luis tells him not to.” She puffed out her cheeks in exasperation and grabbed a fresh popsicle before sitting down again.
Numb, I went through the motions of doing the same, and got Michael a new one too. I couldn’t even taste the popsicle anymore.
We spent twenty minutes talking about everything but the alarming incident that had just derailed everything, trying to get normalcy back. It only worked on the surface. The whole time, I was thinking back to being in the car with Viktor, the shooting, and even the fact that Luis had once been friends with the guy who murdered Viktor’s accountant.
