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She mulled over the details of Alex's case. No leads, reassurances, or theories from the police. Since contact between her and Ximena had been minimal in recent months, she hadn't kept up on the progress of his case. Maybe she'd been lying to herself about his disappearance being different from the beginning, making it easier for her to brush off. The possibility sat uncomfortably in her chest. When Ximena called months ago, upset that she couldn't contact him, she didn't have the bandwidth to stop her only sibling from falling apart. Ximena’s world collapsed in with Alex’s disappearance while Vera’s crumbled into dust for entirely different reasons.
Her shoulders drooped at the memory of her sister begging her to come home back then. She needed help putting together social media accounts and posting flyers around town. She wanted Vera to be the go-between for their family and the local police. Ximena left countless voicemails sobbing into a message that Vera would hear days, sometimes weeks later. Coming home hadn't been an option. Not with the undercover operation and investigation going on in D.C. The order had been to remain in the city, regardless of how desperately she was needed back home. The guilt of that was a still-searing burn.
For five months Ximena was left alone trying to find him. When she’d called Vera on her way to a debriefing five months ago, she’d be hysterical. Vera supported her by suggesting she file a police report and promised to call her back. That call hadn’t come to fruition for another week while she was knee-deep in work. Ximena hadn’t forgiven her and she couldn’t blame her. Filing a missing persons report, setting up volunteer search parties, telling everyone in Fort Collins who would listen; it all fell on her little sister because of her choices.
The Fort Collins police labeled Alex a waste of time because he was an adult and he could go missing if he wanted to. He’d been lost and forgotten like a pair of car keys.
She could be there for Ximena and Alex now, though. The idea of possibly doing a body identification on her cousin, on her family, just wasn’t how she thought it would happen. She thought he’d come back, that he’d be home by now. Spiny guilt threatened to hollow her out with the idea that she may have been wrong.
Catching sight of a speed limit sign, she checked her speed. Her foot lifted when she saw the bar hovering over eighty. Traffic had thinned out, leaving only the sides of the road to distract her. The shrubbery lining the highway had turned dull and brown for the coming winter. A smattering of used car dealerships and strip malls decorated intermittent lots in shades of tan.
Vera’s nostrils flared as she inhaled sharply. She could find out definitively whether the body was Alex even if she didn’t believe it was. If she had to face the next three months doing nothing, replaying what happened back in D.C. on a hell loop, she would start doing worse things than destroying her home decor.
The sprinkling of buildings and houses between the cities finally transformed into Fort Collins and a greater sense of familiarity crept in. The mom-and-pop grocery store she biked to with her friends as a teen. The abandoned playground they all joked was haunted, daring each other to run around it after dark. The library she sat in filling out college applications for weeks.
A popular Greek restaurant came into view as she paused at the first stoplight. Looking away, she found the neon lights of the movie theater ahead. There weren’t just innocent childhood memories the town was painted with. Invisible threads connected a web of moments she could see perfectly if she closed her eyes. Each one was interwoven with a name she hadn’t said in years. Not saying her name made it easier to pretend she didn’t exist under the same moon, somewhere out there, happily living her life. Vera tried another set of counted breaths. They were why coming home remained difficult. A single cluster of months a decade before had turned all the familiar places into echoes of what could have been.
The shops soon morphed into homes along the road, a mixture of wood and trim. Even now, at thirty-two, with mountains of memories made in and outside the city limits, it held the same feeling it did growing up—a bit foreign and angular and slightly off-kilter. Like a painting that turned yellow over time but the image remained underneath.
After a string of suburban turns, a small home materialized through the light rain. Pulling into the short driveway, she parked.
Ximena’s single-story home looked like a staged magazine shoot; the dark shutters against the bright white paint gave it a modern feel most of the homes on the family-filled block lacked. The window boxes were sprouting orange mums in their black soil like bursts of sunshine popping up out of the dark.
Vera rubbed her chest at the sight. The two-bedroom structure was more of a home than D.C. or any other assignment ever was, whether she preferred Colorado or not. It was her light in the dark and the ache she couldn’t reach beneath her ribs testified that it’d been too long since she’d been back.
Making a run for the front door, her breath danced in front of her in the fast-dropping temperature. Digging out the spare key she kept on her key ring, she unlocked it and dove inside out of the cold.
Not much had changed since her last visit a year ago. The small foyer bled into the bright living room where a plush cream carpet ran across the space. The gray couch and matching wingback chairs were littered with magazines and medical books. Blankets, papers, and clothing were strewn across the floor haphazardly as if Ximena had run in and out, dropping things as she went. It was the way it always looked, messy and homey. Locking the door behind her, she dropped her duffle bag at her feet.
“Puta lluvia,” Vera cursed as she pushed wet strands of hair off her face.
The tsk of a tongue sounded mockingly at her. “Who have you been kissing with that mouth?” Vera froze.
Chapter 3
Vera
Teddi.
Vera.
Vera.
Teddi.
Heat flushed up her neck and burned across her face. A tsunami of memories flooded her. She was stone. Immovable as she stared across the living room, blinking hard as if her eyelids would erase her.
Impossible. She couldn’t be real. In Ximena’s house, in her house. The robotic staring wasn’t helping. She wasn’t budging. Not a mirage, not her imagination. Teddi Leon was a memory made manifest.
“Don’t they have rain over in your big, shiny city?” Her voice was sarcastic but not unkind. She leaned casually against the doorway to the kitchen like she owned the place.
Her hair was longer than the last time she’d seen her, the thick sandy blonde strands reaching below her shoulders. Dressed in dark denim, boots, and a sweater that hugged her now-muscular build, she had an air of confidence about her. At ease, even, and of course, just as beautiful. Painfully, distractingly beautiful.
Running her eyes down her body beneath her brow, Vera looked away quickly before clearing the choking lump from her throat. “What’re you doing here, Teddi?”
Producing an apple from behind her like a cheap magic trick, she bit into the red flesh, the sound challenging the roaring heartbeat in Vera’s ears. “Waiting for Mimi. She told me you were getting into town today.”
“I’m not sure why you’d need to know.” The way her voice turned sharp made her own shoulders stiffen. She couldn’t help the poorly-veiled fury, the years-old pain that came back whenever she saw her. Pain in the shape of anger. She found it easier to swallow it that way over time.
