Manuela went back to sleep, and Gabriela turned on the TV, just to keep her mind busy. She watched Cada Dнa on Telemundo for a while and then switched to an English news channel, hoping to find out something about the robbery. She didn’t think there’d really be anything about it on TV, she thought she was just being crazy, so she couldn’t believe it when she saw the reporter standing in front of the Blooms’ house.

It was very hard to understand what was going on. Not because her English wasn’t good enough- she didn’t speak fluent but she could usually understand most of the news on the TV- but because she didn’t believe that a house getting robbed was such a big news story, on the TV news, it just didn’t make any sense. But then she heard what the lady was saying, how one of the men who’d broken into the house had been shot and killed by Adam Bloom. Mr. Bloom himself was on TV, talking about why he used his gun. Gabriela still couldn’t believe it- she thought she had to be asleep, having a bad dream. Then she heard the reporter saying,“Police are identifying the dead man as thirty- six- year- old Carlos Sanchez of Queens.”

Sitting on the couch, she stared at the TV for a long time- maybe for seconds or minutes or hours, she had no idea. Finally she was able to think. She couldn’t understand how this could have happened. The Blooms were supposed to go away; the house was supposed to be empty. And why did Mr. Bloom shoot Carlos? She knew he had a gun- she’d seen it in his bedroom closet when she was cleaning, and sometimes he even left it out on the little table near his bed- but she couldn’t imagine that kind man killing somebody even if his house was being robbed. It just didn’t make any sense.

Then it hit her, what this really meant, and she started crying like she was at a funeral, but she wasn’t crying for Carlos. She didn’t go to church very much lately, but she still believed in Jesus Christ and that even bad people like Carlos had some good in them somewhere. But she still couldn’t feel bad that Carlos was dead, not after all the bad things he had done to her. The one she was crying for was her papi. Carlos wasn’t the only man Mr. Bloom had killed with his gun, because now her papi was going to die, too.

Gabriela was still sitting on the couch crying when Beatrice called and said, “Did you hear what happened at the Blooms’ house last night?” Beatrice said she was in Forest Hills, at work in another house, and everybody was talking about it.

“Yes, I saw it on the news,” Gabriela said.

“The guy who was killed,” Beatrice said. “They said his name is Carlos, Carlos Sanchez. It’s not your old boyfriend Carlos, is it?”

“Don’t tell anybody you know that,” Gabriela said. “Please.”

“Why?” Beatrice asked. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Gabriela said.“I just don’t want the police coming, asking me questions, when I’m so worried about Papi.”

“You okay?” Beatrice asked. “You don’t sound good. I’m worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Gabriela said, crying. “But please, please don’t say anything to the policнa. I’m begging to you.”

Gabriela was scared, even more scared than she was when she found out she had HIV. At least there was medicine she could take for HIV, but she couldn’t think of any way to make this okay. So many people knew that Carlos was her exboyfriend. The Blooms and the other people she worked for didn’t know because she never wanted them to find out about the drugs and the HIV, but Beatrice and her whole family knew, and Manuela knew, and neighbors in Gabriela’s building knew. And what about all the times over the last couple of weeks that Gabriela had talked to Carlos on his cell phone? There was no way the policнa wouldn’t find out.

Gabriela was thinking about killing herself again- she could jump off a bridge or take pills. Pills would be very easy. She had a new bottle of sleeping pills and could take all of them and be dead very quickly. If she was dead it would probably be better for Manuela, too. It wasn’t going to do her any good having a mother in jail. Beatrice could raise her good and give her a happy life.

At seven thirty, after Manuela left for school, Gabriela got the sleeping pills out of the cabinet. She was planning to text- message Beatrice, to tell her what she was going to do, so Beatrice could discover her body and not Manuela. She just hoped that she died before Beatrice arrived at her apartment. The worst thing would be if she woke up alive in some hospital bed.

She was about to type the text message when the doorbell rang. She looked through the peephole and saw a man with dark hair.

“Who’s there?” she asked, and the man said, “Police.”

She was surprised. She knew the police would come, but she didn’t think they would come this fast. She was going to lock the door and take the pills, but she was afraid the police would break the door down and call an ambulance and save her.

She opened the door, hoping she could convince him to go away so she could have a chance to kill herself.

“Yes?” she said.

“You Gabriela?” he asked.

He was in a leather jacket and was wearing dark sunglasses. He didn’t look like police.

“Yes,” she said. She couldn’t remember ever being so scared.

The man reached into his jacket for something. She thought she’d see a badge, but it was a gun. She looked into the dark hole and saw her poor papi’s face.

six

Marissa got out of bed at around noon and headed down the main staircase. She was about halfway down when she suddenly stopped and couldn’t get herself to go any farther. Although it looked like the blood was all gone, she remembered what that guy had looked like, with that big piece of his jaw missing and all the blood, and got so grossed out she felt like she was going to throw up. She took the back stairs instead and went right into the kitchen. She was planning to ignore her father, give him the silent treatment after their argument last night. She didn’t see him downstairs, and her mother wasn’t around either.

“Ma!” she called. No answer. Usually she loved it when she had the house all to herself, but after last night the idea of being alone kind of freaked her out.

“Mom! Dad!”

Her dad came out of the den, finishing a call on his BlackBerry. “Okay, Lauren, I’ll check back with you later on that. Bye- bye now.”

At first Marissa was kind of surprised that her dad was acting so normal, that he was able to get back to work so quickly after going through so much trauma, but then she decided it made perfect sense. After all, he wasn’t exactly in touch with his emotions. She remembered how he didn’t cry at all at his father’s funeral- even at the cemetery, when they lowered his father into the ground, he was stone- faced-and then a few months later he was a mess, snapping at everybody all the time, drinking too much. It would probably take him a few weeks before he realized how he actually felt about the shooting, and in the meantime he would take his anxiety out on her and her mom.

When her dad came into the kitchen Marissa was at the counter, pouring a cup of lukewarm coffee.

“Hey, good morning,” he said, sounding inappropriately upbeat. “How’d you sleep?”

She waited several seconds before mumbling, “Shitty.”

“Aw, that stinks,” he said. “Maybe you should take a nap later or something. Oh, and by the way, I’m really sorry about last night. I was just feeling exhausted and stressed and I shouldn’t’ve taken it out on you.”

“Whatever,” she said, not ready to forgive him yet.

“No, not what ever,” he said, mimicking her. “I was wrong and I’m sorry. Friends?”

He extended his arms, inviting her to hug him.

“Friends,” she said grudgingly.

They hugged loosely; then she took a sip of the coffee. It tasted sour and murky.