She ran a hand through her hair, moving it away from her eyes and smoothing it back. “What did you say?”

The jackhammer was working overtime, and I felt like a high school kid again, embarrassed over a crush.

“I said, A-plus.” I nodded toward the shore. “Let’s head in.”

I slid onto the board before she could object and paddled in, letting the tiny waves push me forward. I rolled off and squeezed my eyes shut as I submerged myself in the ocean.

I came up for air, and Liz was standing right in front of me.

“That’s not what you said,” she said.

The sun was a third gone, spraying pinks and yellows across the horizon.

I stood. “No, it wasn’t.” “I heard what you said.”

The water was cold around my feet, my toes digging into the sand. “Okay.”

She moved her eyes away from me, looking down the shore. Beads of saltwater clung to her cheeks and neck. A sliver of her stomach was visible where her rash guard had ridden up. She pulled her hair around, gathered it at the bottom, and squeezed the water out.

She cut her eyes back to me. “You can’t take that back, you know?”

I reached down and ripped the Velcro leash off my ankle and tossed it to the ground. “I don’t want to.”

“You say that now,” she said, the green in her eyes bright. “But somewhere down the line you may want to. Something might change, and maybe you won’t feel the same way.”

High tide was coming in, and the water crashed a little higher against our legs.

“I don’t think so, Liz,” I said, as sure as I’d ever been about anything.

Her eyes held mine, probably waiting for me to look away, to see if what I’d said was impulsive or impetuous. I didn’t look away. “Fine,” she finally said. “Fine?”

And standing there against the sunset, the pinks and yellows glowing against the blue and white of the water, Liz said to me, “I love you, too.”

THIRTY

We went back to her place, cleaned ourselves up, and walked down to Peohe’s for dinner.

Our conversation in the water had confirmed things between us. In reality, we weren’t telling each other things we didn’t already know. You spend that much time with someone in the way that we did and you just know. But saying it out loud had obliterated that invisible barrier that stayed up until each person came clean. An easiness and sense of permanency descended on me as we strolled to the harbor, holding hands.

The hostess recognized Liz and placed us at a table near the immense window overlooking Glorietta Bay. The lights of the downtown high-rises were gleaming in the early evening darkness.

We ordered a bottle of Merlot and our food, and Liz was looking at me a little funny as she finished her first glass.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing’s really changed,” she said, a faint pink sunburn on her cheeks. “But it feels like everything’s changed.”

“I agree.”

“You think that will be a problem?”

“Only if we continue to analyze the hell out of it.”

“Then let’s not do that.”

I picked up the wine bottle, held it out, and refilled her glass. “Agreed.”

“Tell me about your day,” she said.

I recounted my trip to the casino, my conversation with Carolina, and Miranda’s arrival.

“Well, that’s a load,” she said when I finished. “Maybe I should hold off on what I have for you.”

Our food arrived, and we were halfway through it before I responded.

“Tell me,” I said.

She wiped her mouth with the linen napkin, dropped it back in her lap, and tented her elbows and hands over her plate. “I called the cop who handled Simington’s case.”

The ease and comfort from earlier began to slip away. “And?”

“Name is Asanti. Works out of Imperial Valley in El Centro. Seemed like a good guy. Gave me what he could, which wasn’t much different than what we already knew.”

I forked the last piece of salmon and shoved it in my mouth.

“The names of the two vics were Miguel Tenayo and Hernando Vasquez,” she said. “On the record, he said they were both illegals and not a whole lot of effort went into the investigation.”

“Off the record?”

“Vasquez’s family is in El Centro.”

I set down the fork, letting it clink against the plate. “Legally?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s why he gave it to me off the record. A wife and two kids. He found them during his investigation. He knew that if he put that in the case report, INS would jump all over it.” She pulled her elbows off the table and folded her arms across her chest. “Like I said, Asanti seemed like a good guy. They already lost a husband and father. He didn’t see the point in making it worse.”

I pushed my plate away, the food suddenly feeling heavy and uncomfortable in my stomach. A woman left without her husband and two boys without their father.

Thanks to Russell Simington.

My father.

“The way Asanti put the case together, Tenayo and Vasquez still owed part of the mule fee after they’d made it across,” Liz said. “They were late in paying up. Simington was sent to punish them. Those details came from Simington himself. Tenayo had no family here, and Vasquez’s wife said she knew nothing of the details of his coming across. They came across separately.”

The black water rippled with silver outside the window. Anger was beginning to boil in my gut. It was one thing for a father to choose to stay outside of a family. It was another thing entirely to take away a man’s chance to choose.

“I told Asanti we’d be out in the morning,” Liz said.

I shifted my gaze from the water to her. “Thanks.”

The check came, I paid, and we walked outside into the cool air.

Liz looked up at the sky. “It’s supposed to get ugly the next few days. Lots of rain.”

I grunted in response, unable to shake what she’d told me from my head.

We walked back up the street in silence, her hand warm in mine. We were halfway up the walk to her house when I stopped. “You don’t have to go tomorrow,” I said.

She stared at me, her eyes searching. “Do you not want me to go?”

“No, it’s not that. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”

Liz gripped my hand a little tighter and pulled me toward the front door. She fished her keys out of her pocket and unlocked the door, then turned to me.

“When you said earlier that you loved me, I said that maybe something would come up and maybe you’d change your mind. You disagreed.”

“And I meant that, Liz.”

“I know.” She placed her hands lightly on my chest. “There is nothing that I’m going to hear about Russell Simington that is going to change my mind as to how I feel about you.”

It was the second time Liz had said something like that to me, and yet I couldn’t disentangle myself from what Simington was and who I was. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her. But there was this continued nagging in the back of my mind that something ugly would emerge and everyone would look at me differently.

Her hands moved from my chest to around my neck. “Now. Earlier, I didn’t get to see you change.”

I pushed Simington out of my mind, refusing to let him ruin the rest of my evening, and focused on the woman I now freely admitted was the most important person in my life. “Your loss,” I said.

“Care to come in and show me what I missed out on?” It was an offer I couldn’t—and didn’t—refuse.

THIRTY-ONE

To find El Centro, you head east on I-8 and push through the El Cajon valley, the mountains of Alpine and Julian, and descend into the desert-covered region that reaches toward Arizona. It has become the furthest suburb of San Diego—if a community one hundred miles away can be considered a suburb—home to not only bedroom commuters but Mexican immigrant families that like the nearly visible proximity to their homeland. Ten minutes to the east and you are in Arizona. But ten minutes south and you enter the poverty-stricken zone of Mexicali.