Amadeo is feeling optimistic. It’s been a while since he’s slept with a new woman whom he wants to see again; usually he cycles through a few predictable old connections, or meets strangers in Espa?ola or, at least before his friends started settling down, at liquor-fueled parties at Abiquiu Lake. （His mother pretends to assume he came home after she went to sleep, and if they cross paths in the morning as he lets himself in, she’ll merely comment, “You’re up early.”） He feels both more and less hopeful about the prospects with Brianna, because she is different from these other women: earnest, self-contained, less likely to be interested in him.
When Brianna drove him home, afterward, the night was dense around the car, the dashboard lights cozy. The road rose and fell, curved in all the familiar ways, but still Amadeo had the wild sense that he could be going anywhere, he and this girl, that they could drive all the way to Denver or even farther—Seattle, Canada. Escape, adventure: Why hasn’t he done more of that in his life? Why has he stuck so close to home like a decrepit house pet that no longer brings anyone any joy? There’s nothing holding him back. He was suddenly so itchy for adventure he wanted to yell. He pressed an imaginary gas pedal in the floor mat as if to urge the car on into the thrilling night, and, as if they were piloting the car together, they crested a hill and sank with exhilarating speed.
Now his uncle turns slowly into the drive and rolls to a stop in front of the house. “Thanks, Tío.” Amadeo slams the door, gathers his shopping bags from the bed, and the truck backs out, rumbles away.
At first Amadeo thinks what he’s hearing is an animal howling, except it is coming from inside the house: his daughter, sobbing. Oh god. A mountain lion attack. Or Angel has been beaten up. Raped at gunpoint. He envisions the endless parade of twisted perps whose glowering mug shots crowd the evening news. Or, worse: the baby has fallen, his little teacup head cracked on the linoleum.
He bangs into the house, plunges down the hall past grinning school portraits toward the cries, which are coming from the open bathroom. An image comes to Amadeo of himself bent over the coffin of his infant grandson, a grown man laid waste by grief.
“Angel!” he shouts as he turns into the bathroom.
There she is, on the edge of the tub, her shirt gathered to expose her belly. At her feet, in his bouncer, Connor. Asleep, his head canted, heavy on his weak neck.
He can’t be sleeping, not through these sobs. “What happened? What’s wrong?” Amadeo drops to his knees, runs his hands over the baby’s face, pinching little arms and legs. The baby twitches and erupts into cries of his own.
“What are you doing?” Angel yells. Her face is red and rubbery, slick with tears and snot. “I just got him to sleep. Why would you wake him up?” She pushes Amadeo and, still sobbing, leans down, unhooks the fussing baby from the bouncer, lifts him carelessly. The little head falls back on the neck and Amadeo draws a sharp breath.
“Let me.” Angel’s in no shape for anything. He takes the infant in both hands, holds him against his chest. It’s the first time, he realizes, he’s questioned Angel’s competence. Until now she’s seemed like an expert.
It dawns on him that Angel is terrified. It’s obvious. How was he so utterly snowed?
He remembers what Brianna said about Angel being at risk for hurting her own child. “What happened?”
“Look at me.” Abruptly, Amadeo is afraid, because what if she has divined what transpired between him and her teacher?
But she’s pointing at the stretch marks on her abdomen, red and rippling, like an aerial photograph of a delta.
“What? I don’t see what you mean.”
Angel throws a roll of toilet paper at his head. “Liar.”
“Hey,” he says sternly, turning himself and the baby away. “Careful.”
“You do so see. I’ll never wear a bikini again!”