This Could Be Us (Skyland, #2)(17)

A familiar ache nicks my heart. I miss my folks. My dad, a ginger with freckles and a gangly frame, couldn’t have been more different from Mami’s first love, Lola’s father, Brayden, but he was what she needed, and I know she loved him. Lola now lives in the South Carolina house where we grew up, but when we cleaned out Mami’s room after the funeral, I found a few scraps of timeworn, faded paper tucked into a shoebox at the back of my mother’s closet. Poetry she’d written for Bray. About him.


Your skin is summer night and your kiss is all I want.



That line is burned into my brain. At the time, I tried to imagine Edward writing something like that to me, or even me writing something like that about him.

I couldn’t.

Edward.

Shit.

This walk through memories makes me miss Mami, which happens all the time even though she has been gone for years. I still pick up the phone to call her when something good happens. And for the bad things too. I started dialing our old home number last night, only to remember Mami’s gone.

But my sisters are still here.

I fire off a group text so I can catch them up.


Me: Hey! I need to tell you both something. It’s important. Can we FaceTime?




Lola: Is it bad? What happened?




Nayeli: Lemme put the babies down.



My little sister, Nayeli, had six kids in eleven years. She went through a heavily Catholic phase and decided to “trust the Lord” to give them His will. Needless to say, she now has an IUD. Lola says she may have kids one day, but maybe not the traditional way. Since her “bi awakening,” she’s not sure when or if she’ll want the dick again.

“What’s popping, Sol?” my older sister, Lola, asks, her eyes sharp on my face and her brows dipped into a frown. She jokes that her claim to fame is that she’s the most “undiluted” of us. Mami being African American and Puerto Rican and Bray being African American, Lola’s darker complexion is hued with rich red undertones. Her hair, usually puffed into a luxuriant textured mass around her head, is tamed today into straight backs with baby hairs teased out at the edges.

She’s gorgeous and she knows it.

“Hey, mijas!” Nayeli waves, holding a suckling infant to her breast with one arm and propping up her phone with the other. A long braid slinks over one shoulder, and she squints at us from behind her glasses, looking more like Mami than any of us. “I miss you.”

“Miss you guys too,” I say. It’s only as I see their dear faces that I realize how much.

“We can kiki later,” Lola laughs. “I love you. I miss you. Yada yada yada. The Boricua High Council is in session. What’s this about, Sol?”

“Yeah, well, um.” I take a deep breath and force it out. “It all started last night at dinner.”

I launch into an explanation of what happened, watching shock ripple over their faces. Hearing it all out loud makes me realize just how outrageous my situation has become.

“What does Edward say?” Lola demands.

“He says it’s a misunderstanding.” I scribble Lupe, Inez, and Lottie’s names in the corner of my notepad. “And that he’s being set up.”

“By who?” Nayeli asks supersoft because my niece in her arms is doing the slow blink of soon-to-be sleep. “Who does he say would do such a thing?”

“He says it’s CalPot’s director of accounting,” I tell them. “Judah Cross.”

“And why exactly does Edward believe the director of accounting would set him up to take the fall for six million dollars being embezzled?” Skepticism sharpens Lola’s words. “Better yet, why does he think we’d believe it?”

“Lola, don’t leap to judge,” Nayeli says. “Have you talked to him at all since he was arrested, Sol?”

“No. He hasn’t called. I don’t… I have no idea what’s going on. The lawyer says he’ll call today.” My voice cracks, but I clear my throat. “I know it sounds ridiculous, Lola. I get it, but I’m not ready to even consider that Edward actually did it. That he would put our family in a situation like this. That I’ve been living all these years with a man who’s capable of doing this. That I’ve had his children and—”

“Okay,” Lola cuts in firmly. “All aboard the hysterics train. I need you to get off at the next stop. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m a cynic. You know that. Edward has never given you reason to believe he’d do this, so we’ll just wait and see how it plays out.”

“I wish I could get away,” Nayeli sighs, patting Angela’s little back. “I’d be on the next plane.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” I rush to assure them. “Yasmen and Hendrix were here last night. They’ll come back today.”

“The new semester just started for me here,” Lola says. “And you know middle schoolers are the worst. Just look at Inez.”

I smother a chuckle because Inez is truly entering that piece of work phase of adolescence. It looms ahead like an oncoming train.

“Don’t talk about your niece that way,” I chide unconvincingly. “She’s actually a lot like you at that age.”

“Then you truly are in for a ride,” Lola says ruefully. “Remember the shit I put Mami through?”