“I’m passing all my practice tests, but I’m waiting for Trinity so we can leave together,” says Christy.
“She got a 180 in science!”
“That’s awesome,” Angel says, muted.
“McDonald’s is giving hiring bonuses. We’ll schedule it so one of us can watch the kids while the other works, which is sad, ’cause when are we gonna see each other? Anyways, I’m good on all the subjects but language arts.”
“You just gotta try harder,” Christy says. “You’ll get it.”
Carefully, Angel asks, “Are you in touch with everyone?”
“Ysenia wants to get her associate’s as a medical assistant, but she’s working until April starts school. Tabitha and the kids moved in with her sister in Albuquerque.”
From the stroller, Ricky fusses. Christy ties back her hair and gets up to release him. “Jen’s taking the test next month. She got a job working at her church’s day care center, which is awesome because she’ll be with Nathan all day.”
“Precious Lambs of Heaven?”
Christy laughs. “She can actually be pretty cool. Jared tried to get back with her, but she told him to get out of her face, which, good.”
“You ever hear from Lizette? How’s she doing?” Angel keeps her voice even, but fears they’ll hear the whole history in her question. Maybe Lizette has told them everything, and they’ve been laughing at her behind her back.
“Wait, are you for serious? You don’t know?” Christy says. “I thought you two were best friends.” Her surprise shades to sorrow, and she and Trinity exchange a look.
“What?” asks Angel. Christy seems about to speak and then stops. “What?”
“You really didn’t hear?” Trinity asks gently. “Mercedes got taken. I guess Lizette started using.”
“No,” says Angel.
Christy regards her sadly. “I know.”
“We saw her at FoodMart,” says Trinity.
“She’s all skinny now.”
“I almost wouldn’t’ve recognized her but she came up and was like, ‘Hi, guys,’ all smiling, but not herself, you know? When she told us about Mercedes, she’s like, ‘Shit happens, but guess I’m free now.’ I was like, ‘Do you even feel? I’d kill myself if Kristiana got taken.’ ” She touches her daughter’s back.
“She didn’t mean it, Trinity. You could tell she was fronting.”
“But I just saw her in December,” says Angel. That clear cold night comes back to Angel again, as it does many times each day. But instead of thinking about the accident and Connor and how much she nearly lost, or about Lizette’s meanness, she thinks about something she hasn’t remembered until now: the crib in Lizette’s dark living room, the shadowed hump that Angel assumed was Mercedes. How she wishes she’d checked on her, laid a palm against the sleeping back. She wonders if Mercedes was already gone or if that night was one of the baby’s last with her mother.
“Why didn’t she just let me love her?” The question comes out as a croak.
“We all love her,” says Christy. “But chiva—it’s, like, impossible to fight.”
Trinity shakes her head. “Things were never going to go right for Lizette, with the crap she went through.”
“No,” Angel says. “That’s not true.” What she means is that there were a million moments when events might have unfolded differently for Lizette, when a word, a gesture, a smile from a caring adult might have changed her course, might still.