While I hadn’t intended to leave her a mess, it wasn’t like Vero to walk past one without tidying up.
I stood at the bottom of the steps in the foyer, listening for the sound of a shower running upstairs or the thump of reggaeton through the walls of her room.
“Where’s Vero?” Delia asked.
“She must be taking a nap. Why don’t you go play with your brother,” I suggested, nudging my daughter toward the playroom.
I climbed the steps to Vero’s bedroom. Soft music bled through the closed door, a moody boy band ballad I’d never heard before and was sure she’d make fun of if it came on the radio in her car. I knocked, listening to the creak of her bedspring and the slow shuffle of feet on the floor. Her door opened and she peeked through the crack, wearing a mismatched pair of flannel pajamas I’m pretty sure were mine. Her eyes were ringed in day-old mascara, half-hidden behind wisps of tangled dark hair that spilled from her loose topknot.
“Who are you?” I asked, pushing open the door. “And what have you done with my nanny?”
I waited for her to remind me that she was actually my accountant, but Vero only turned back to her bed and plopped facedown onto it. I sat on the edge of her mattress, wedged my hand between her face and the pillow, and pressed my palm to her forehead. Her skin wasn’t clammy or hot, but her hair smelled faintly like a dive bar.
“Your weekend with your cousin was really that good, huh?” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d come home hungover after a night out with Ramón. But it was the first time she came home from her cousin’s looking glum. She buried her face deeper in the pillow, and a knot of worry cinched in my chest. “You want to talk about it?”
“No,” came her muffled reply.
I was pretty sure there was only one thing that would pull her out of this funk. “Then get up,” I said, rising to my feet and dragging the pillow out from under her head, making her hair stand up with static. “We’re going shopping.”
She opened one eye, wide and uncertain. “For what?”
“Christmas presents. And Dairy Queen drive-through.” Vero had never met a chili dog or a milkshake she didn’t like. “But if you’re too tired to come along—”
“Don’t leave,” she said, bolting upright in the bed. “And do not buy anything without me. I’m coming with you.”
Two minutes later, the shower sputtered on in her bathroom and that knot of worry finally began to unwind. Vero was obviously having trouble with her family, and as much as I loved that she felt so at home with mine, it bugged me that she didn’t seem ready to confide in me about it.
After a quick run through the DQ drive-through, she started to perk up, only to wilt again as I pulled the van into the packed parking lot of the home improvement store.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“Shopping,” I answered.
“You said we were Christmas shopping. This isn’t Christmas shopping,” she whined as we hauled the kids out of the van and toted them into the store. “Christmas shopping is done at the mall. Or on the internet at the last minute with gingerbread and candy canes. Or on the couch in front of the Home Shopping Network in fluffy slippers and pajamas.” She snatched a coupon book from a greeter by the door.
I plunked Zach into the front of a shopping cart. He wiggled in his seat, reaching his pudgy, sticky fingers toward the slow-spinning ceiling fans in the lighting aisle, his high, shrill whine building momentum the farther I pushed him in the opposite direction. I grabbed a stud finder with beeping, blinky lights off an endcap and set it in his lap, silencing him with a distraction.
Vero plucked the stud finder from his hands. “Trust me, kid. Your mom does not need one of these.” She gave him a bag of Cheerios when he started to fuss.
I handed her my shopping list. “See if you can find these. Georgia wants a car care kit and Mom wants one of those window-mounted bird feeders. While you’re in Lawn and Garden, we could use a snow shovel for the house. I’ll head over to the tool department and grab something for my dad.”
“Here,” she said, surrendering her coupon guide. “Stick to the sale items. Don’t spend too much. We just paid off your credit cards.” She disappeared into the crowd with Delia in tow. I pushed my cart into an aisle packed with shoppers and sales associates, grabbing the last cordless drill off the island display for my dad and dropping it triumphantly in my cart. I navigated slowly past the racks of household tools. The aisle was full of women, all of them carrying printed gift lists, probably for their husbands. I wondered how many of them would have empty workbenches in their garages a year from now.