He nods. “It is. My stepfather was.”

“Was?”

“Oh, yes. He’s passed. Mama, too.”

“Oh.” I can’t say he seems very upset by it, but I add, “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Time. That’s it. He’s not acting like he’s from another place; he’s acting like he’s from another time. Another century. I look down at my feet, his feet. I point at his spats. “I didn’t realize that those things were making a comeback.”

He smiles at me. “They’re quite comfortable. And, Julia, I’m sorry if I gave you reason to be suspicious of me.”

“I’m not suspicious.” Crazily uncomfortable, yes. Suspicious, no. Well, maybe a little. Okay, I’m so suspicious I’m practically itching.

“You don’t seem the type to ask just anyone his life story.”

I blush, then cross my arms. “Well, sorry. But you’ve just coincidentally shown up in my life three times in the past couple of days, first saying you have a message for me, then saying you want to protect me. You don’t even know me. And then you go and order Griffin’s favorite drink, so I’m just freaking out a little here.” I realize I’m babbling and clamp my mouth closed.

He doesn’t speak for a moment. Then he says, “I’m sorry, but I do understand. I see how it would all seem rather coincidental, but that is all it is. Even the fact that your beloved and I share an affinity for egg creams.”

I look up. “My … beloved?”

I spend the rest of my five-hour shift trying to convince myself that everything about Eron DeMarchelle is normal, that anything wrong with him is just a product of my overactive imagination, much like those feelings that Griffin is haunting me are. Though even my overactive imagination can’t seem to figure out how this guy knew that Griffin was my boyfriend. Er, beloved. Whatever.

Since the mall is like a morgue again, I can’t throw myself into my work. So I stack cups. This time, I make a sort of Eiffel Tower. Eron hums around like a busy bee, cleaning every surface with a wet rag. Then he finds a mop and bucket in the back. The floor of Sweetie Pi’s is so sticky it probably hasn’t seen that mop in a decade. Then he gets on a ladder and starts to clean a year’s worth of dust from the top of the freezer. He’s, like, Robo-Employee.

After the Eiffel Tower has collapsed, I sit down and start to yawn, just watching him. “You are making me look bad,” I mutter.

He smiles as he wrings out a rag in the sink. “It’s been quite a while since I’ve worked so hard I could feel it in my bones. I enjoy that feeling. Makes me feel … alive.”

I notice he’s blushing again. “Ooohkay,” I say, thinking that if I worked that hard, the last thing I’d be feeling is alive.

At the end of the shift, he helps me untie my apron. His fingers tickle the back of my neck. I shiver as he slides the apron from my body and folds it neatly, but I blame it on the air-conditioning and the chocolate milk shake I just slurped down. When he walks me outside to my mom’s car, we don’t speak much. I don’t have anything to say to him that isn’t a question, and I know I’ve asked more than the polite share of those.

He holds the mall door open, and just as I’m thinking, Oh, how sweet, he extends the crook of his elbow to me. I stand there for a moment, wondering if he’s just trying to check the time on his wristwatch, but then I realize he isn’t wearing one. Tentatively, I put my hand on his forearm, and he clasps his hand over it, just like in those old-time movies. We’re strolling. People stare at us. My heart starts to thud madly under my camisole when he turns and smiles at me. “It has been a pleasure, Julia,” he says, taking my hand in his. I know it’s all sticky with chocolate syrup, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Those eyes never leaving mine, he bends slightly and delivers a kiss to the top of my hand.

CHAPTER 20

Eron

Mama used to have a saying: “You get what you get.” I’ll admit she wasn’t the most poetic of women, but at the time, she was raising eight children who weren’t her own while barely able to speak their language. I think that was the first full sentence she learned to say in English, because the DeMarchelle children were always asking for more. More pasta, more space on the mattress, more everything. She’d curse at them in Italian, her native language, and then at my father, for dying and leaving her alone, and then she’d just smile at me and slip me an extra slice of warm pane.

It’s been almost a hundred years and I can still taste that bread, feel it toasting up my palms. It was one of the few things that made life in the DeMarchelle household happy.

I’d come to Ellis Island with little more than my name, Geronimo Bianco, and then I lost even that, not two days after we’d set foot on American soil. Mr. DeMarchelle, my stepfather, helped Mama make the arrangements for Papa’s casket, and probably pretended to be charming and gentlemanly only because Mama was a handsome woman and he could see a great opportunity. After all, he was recently widowed and had more children than he knew what to do with. And Mama couldn’t speak a lick of English; she’d expected that Papa would handle all that. When Mr. DeMarchelle took her in front of a judge a day later, she was thinking it was just another step toward becoming an American citizen. She didn’t expect to become Maria DeMarchelle, any more than I expected to become Eron DeMarchelle.

What other choice was there? My father had been the man with the plans, the aspirations to move to America and start his own business. Mama had wanted to stay back home with her family.

“You get what you get,” I mutter under my breath, wringing out my one and only undershirt in a sink coated with dried toothpaste and pink mildew. Luckily, it is a warm night. I spread the material out, next to my undershorts and shirt, on an old towel in the window, hoping the night air will dry them by tomorrow.

Tomorrow, when I continue to make a fool of myself at the soda fountain.

I sigh, thinking of Julia. I’ve barely spent more than ten hours with her, and she’s already suspicious of me. I’d expected not to fit in right away, but I hadn’t anticipated that the truth would be exposed in mere days.

I pull the pair of shorts Harmon lent me over my hips; they’re much too big, but they’ll have to do for now. I’m thankful to have something to wear while my only outfit is laundered. At the very least, I’m grateful I can stay inside, as this attire certainly isn’t suitable for the street. I went a hundred years without laundering that suit; Sandmen don’t have to worry about such things, so I almost forgot how quickly the human world could wear on a piece of clothing. Though I’m still human only half the time, the suit is already dingy. The ice cream shop won’t pay me until Friday, and most of Harmon’s clothing is ill-fitting rags, so I have no other choice.

You get what you get.

I sink into the beaten couch, remembering my first days in the DeMarchelle home. In truth, Harmon’s home is heaven compared to where I once lived on earth. The couch is lumpy and old, yes, but it will be pleasant compared to wrestling on a stained mattress with the eight DeMarchelle demoniettos, as Mama called them. There were Alfred, the eldest, and Clementine, the youngest, who was nearly my age, and in between, a gaggle of others who hated Mama for moving in and replacing their dead mother. Since I was her only son, they hated me, and because I was younger than all of them, I was an easy target. Not a day would go by when I wasn’t nursing one bruise or another. I lean my head back on my arm, staring up at the ceiling fan. Paradise, no, but things could be worse.

I’m startled from my reverie when I hear glass crashing to the floor of the kitchen. It’s Mr. Harmon; from the little I know of him, I have been able to determine that he always leaves a trail of wreckage in his wake. He stumbles into the doorway and stands there, a disheveled heap, holding a beer bottle to his lips. “Look who it is. My guest.” The voice is dripping with sarcasm; “uninvited guest” is what he wanted to say.