“What was that for?” I ask.
“For getting home safe,” he says. “Come. To the kitchen. I prepared a small dinner for us. I tried to have hope, Molly, but I was worried. I thought maybe the police would come and take me away or maybe you would never come back. I had bad, bad thoughts about if they…” He trails off.
“If they what?” I ask.
“Rodney and his men,” he says. “If they…hurt you the way they hurt me.”
I feel the room tilt thirty degrees at the very thought, but I breathe deeply to settle myself.
“Come,” Juan Manuel says.
I follow him to the kitchen, where he’s laid out a spread. It’s the leftovers from the Olive Garden, put together beautifully on plates for each of us. He’s even lain Gran’s black-and-white-checkered tablecloth for additional Italian ambience. The effect is charming. Our tiny kitchen nook is transformed into a scene on a tourist postcard. It feels as though I’m in a dream, and it takes me a moment to recover my voice.
“This looks so lovely, Juan Manuel,” I manage to say. “Do you know that for the first time in a long time, I think I can eat a full meal?”
“We eat, and you tell me everything,” he says.
We sit down together, but no sooner than he’s seated does he spring to his feet once more. “Oh, I forgot,” he says.
He hurries to the living room and returns with one of Gran’s candlesticks and a matchbox. “Can we light this?” he asks. “I know it’s special, but today is special, too, no? Today, they catch the right man?”
“Yes, they drove him away in a police car,” I say. “And I hope this means good things for both of us.” Even as the words leave my lips, doubt creeps in. One thing is to have hope; another thing is to trust that all will end the way it should—for Juan Manuel, and for me.
He places the candle between us. Just as we’re about to pick up our forks, my phone rings in my pocket and I practically jump out of my chair. It’s Charlotte. Thank goodness.
“Charlotte?” I say. “This is Molly. Molly Gray.”
“Yes,” she answers. “I know. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m quite well. Thank you for asking. I’m here at home with Juan Manuel and we are about to take a Tour of Italy.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s not important. Can you tell me how things went inside the hotel? I saw it happen, from the coffee shop, but did the plan work? Did they catch Rodney in flagrante?”
“Things went very well, Molly. Listen, I can’t talk much now. I’m at the police station. Detective Stark wants me in her office. You and Juan Manuel stay right there, okay? Dad and I will be your way as soon as we can. This will probably take a couple of hours. And I think you’ll be very pleased with the results.”
“Okay, yes. Thank you, Charlotte,” I say. “Give my regards to Detective Stark.”
“You want me to…are you sure?”
“There’s no reason to be impolite.”
“Okay, Molly. I’ll say hello from you.”
“Please tell her I can read nods.”
“You can what?”
“Just say that, please, exactly that. And thank you.”
“Okay,” Charlotte says. Then she ends the call. I put my phone away.
“I’m terribly sorry for the interruption. I’ll have you know that it’s not my usual practice to take calls during dinner. I don’t intend to make a habit of it.”
“Molly, you worry too much about ‘this is right’ and ‘this is not right.’ I just want to know what Charlotte said.”
“They caught him in the act. Rodney.”
“En flagrante delito?”
“In flagrante, yes.”
A smile spreads across Juan Manuel’s face and into his dark-brown eyes. Gran once told me that a real smile happens in the eyes, something I never really understood until right now.
“Molly, I never had a chance before to speak with just you, to say sorry. I never wanted you to be involved in any of this.”
I have picked up my fork, but I immediately put it down.
“Juan Manuel,” I say, “you tried to keep me out of this. You even tried to warn me.”
“Maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I should have told the police everything. The problem is I don’t trust the police. When they look at people like me, sometimes all they see is bad. And not all police are good, Molly. How can you tell who is who? I worried if I talked about the drugs and the hotel, maybe things would get even worse—for me and for you.”