The moon is barely over half full, but it is huge and flat in the sky above the pi?on. Along the edge of the road, the gravel and dust shine silver. There is no sign of the coyote. Blue light pools among the chamisa and clumps of scrub grass, as cold and clear as water. Amadeo has the sense that if he reaches out with his fingers into that blue light, they will find clean, icy depth.
Connor. Amadeo scrambles onto his hands and knees. His jeans are torn clear away from his left leg, his knee and shin scraped bloody. The truck’s tail is in the ditch, the windshield is dark and gaping, and the engine ticks. The fender, which has been ripped free against a tree trunk, gleams.
Connor’s seat has indeed been flung through the windshield and landed in the middle of the road, somehow upright, facing down the road away from Amadeo.
Amadeo crawls toward his grandson, his vision blurred. For a second, a fraction of a second, Amadeo imagines himself in that future, alone with his bottles, having squandered every good thing.
When Amadeo reaches the seat, he’s afraid to touch it, so he crawls to face the child. The baby isn’t moving, and his face is round and shining in the moonlight. Shards of safety glass are strewn across his still body, like stars fallen from the black sky all around.
Connor’s eyes are open, his head canted up, as though he’s mesmerized by the moon. Blank eyes. Amadeo thinks of his own mother, and the cooling stillness of her as he clutched her hand.
Amadeo is making a strange honking animal sound, and he’s just realized that they are sobs when Connor turns from the moon. He looks his grandfather full in the face, and then his expression crumples and he sends up a long angry howl, gorgeous and rich and miraculous and slicing through the night.
It’s truly cold now, and Angel’s denim jacket, chosen hours ago for the quick early-evening outing with Ryan, is unequal to the task. Though the sky is clear, the air has that dry, metallic tang of snow. Her eyes are trained tensely on the street, willing her father’s truck to appear. In the distance a coyote yelps in a quick series. Somewhere else, an answering wail, unsettlingly human.
The cry makes Angel think of Connor, and then of La Llorona, the sad haunted woman who drowned her children for her selfish love of a man. She thinks of herself, leaving her child behind for her own selfish love.
Her cheeks burn with the cold. She wonders if she’ll be found tomorrow, features glazed with ice.
Where is he?
The night is enormous, the stars icy points. There are no streetlights on Lizette’s block. At the distant reaches of the road stands one, its dirty orange light cutting a single circle in the dark.
“Don’t worry, I’m coming,” her father said, and she could hear, even in those four words, that he was drunk.
“Please hurry,” she said.
Angel has the sense of herself as a spark, a lone spark in the vast desert, easily extinguished.
Finally, headlights come swiftly toward her, swinging up and down with the bumps in the road. With relief, Angel steps into the road and waves with her whole arm, as if her life depends on it. When the car is almost on her, though, she realizes with terror that it’s not her father’s truck: it’s a dark sedan. Angel backs onto the curb and considers running. Could she make it out to Riverside Drive?
The car slows. Angel’s fear is a fist around her throat, and then she understands, all at once, that it’s her mother. Her mother, in her old Aladdin sweatshirt, hair in a messy ponytail. Angel can’t step forward, so frozen with relief is she, but she bursts into tears.
“Honey.”
Her mother gets out of the car, envelops Angel in her arms. She’s warm from the car’s heater, from the warmth that is always hers. Angel clings to her as if to a buoy in the rocking, infinite ocean. She’s heaving, her face drenched. Angel tries to speak, but her voice is clotted with tears.
Her mother holds her close, cupping the back of Angel’s head with a palm as though she’s an infant. “Listen,” her mother says. “There’s been an accident. But everyone’s okay, sweetie. Everyone’s safe.”