Island Affair (Keys to Love #1) - Priscilla Oliveras Page 0,53
footsteps. Asking questions, serving as an extra pair of hands for whatever his papi needed. Learning everything about boating and fishing and living a life on the ocean from the man who’d always been his hero. On the job and off.
Papi had been quiet over breakfast. But Luis knew, if asked for advice, his old man wouldn’t sugar coat his thoughts. At the same time, he’d let Luis, all the Navarro kids, make their own decisions.
Pushing one of the old wooden chairs closer to the table, Luis answered his mami’s question. Carefully sticking to the truth as much as possible. “I’m not going to fight the time off because the more I dig in, arguing that there’s nothing wrong with my state of mind since we responded to that car accident last month, the more Captain Turner pushes back. If I have to go along with this to convince him I’m fit to pull my weight on the team, so be it.”
“And are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Fit, mentally, with everything.”
His knee jerk reaction was to answer in the affirmative.
Since Carlos’s kick-in-the-ass pep talk yesterday, then meeting Sara and getting swept up in something he had to admit had become bigger than simply helping someone, Luis wasn’t as sure anymore.
Through the window, he watched his papi rotating a spark plug wrench with his left hand. He paused to wipe a dirty rag over the engine part, then rotated the wrench again. A normal task Luis had watched and participated in countless times over the years. Only, today, he didn’t feel like his normal self. He felt both off-kilter and energized, uncertain if that was good or not. Unwilling to question it.
Behind him, the kitchen faucet shut off. A cabinet door creaked open, then clattered closed. That would be his mami putting her rubber gloves in the plastic basket under the sink.
A quick check of his sports watch told him he should be leaving in less than five if he planned to make the twenty-minute drive to Sara’s place and arrive by nine thirty. Last night her family had decided to ride the Conch Tour Train today. The seventy-five-minute loop winding through the island streets treated patrons to the highlights of Key West history and lore courtesy of the drivers running monologue. Even though he’d grown up on the island, Luis had actually never ridden the tourist train or the trolley. He was actually looking forward to the activity.
Who was he kidding? The chance to spend the day with Sara was what had him jumping out of bed like his nephews on Christmas morning. Not some historical ride around the three-by-five-mile island in a yellow and black open-air train on wheels.
His mami’s Kino sandals slapped against the mottled cream tile, signaling her approach.
“I worry about you, mijo.” She covered his hand with hers on the chair’s curved backrest. “Anamaría and your papi walked me through that call. How you tried to calm the poor girl’s fears while she was trapped inside her car. Talking with her as the others struggled with the Jaws of Life.”
Her hand tightened over his and a stinging, sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach warned him what was coming.
“Having her die in your arms must have been horrible. I know you, mijo. I see the way you’ve always taken on another’s pain.”
Luis closed his eyes, trying in vain to erase the image of the college student’s mangled car. The front windshield shattered by the aluminum ladder that had poked out of the truck bed and wound up inside her front seat after she rear-ended the other vehicle. Her straight, black hair sticky with blood. The trickle oozing from her left nostril, dark red against her pale skin. Her hazel eyes pleading with him for help. Her wheezy gasps of breath as she brokenly begged him to call her parents.
“Every single one of us who answered that call was affected by her death,” he rasped. “It was senseless and stupid. Avoidable.”
“Just like Mirna’s.”
“Don’t!” Pulling his hand from under his mother’s, Luis reared back, bumping into the windowsill behind him. The cream curtains with their smattering of brown and green palm trees flapped around him. “Don’t even bring that up. It’s in the past. It’s done.”
“It will not be done until you make peace with your hermano,” his mom warned, her face pinched with maternal worry and caution.
Co?o, her refrain was a recording stuck on a never-ending loop, repeating her insistence that he clear the air with his brother.