promised to pray for him. Others doled out advice. Se?ora Gomez even offered to set him up with a niece from Tampa who was “perfect” for him. Like a blind date would solve the problems he’d been running from for the last few weeks. For the past six years if he was honest with himself.
By the time Luis made it back to the foldable gray picnic table where his parents, Carlos, Gina, and the boys sat, his jaw ached from the tight grip he kept on the mind-your-own-business response ready to spring from his mouth. His smile had grown forced. His usual patience with the nosiness of island life worn thin.
Feeling like a caged shark, he dragged a metal folding chair away from the table, noting that Enrique had already managed to give the place the slip. Smart move.
“Mijo, you haven’t been by the house since yesterday morning,” his mother complained. “?Estás bien?”
She sipped her café con leche, her dark brown eyes assessing him over the rim of her Styrofoam cup. Everyone at the table understood the prying subtext in her question. Luis should have been on shift today, like Anamaría. This type of departmental reprimand, a step shy of going on his record, had never been handed down to a Navarro. Not in all the decades one of them had served on the KWFD. Not even to Enrique, who craved the adrenaline high of pushing himself, along with his captain’s patience, to the limit.
“I’m good,” he grumbled, chafing at the question he’d fielded multiple times already this morning.
“How are you planning to fill your free time? You know there’s always help needed around St. Mary’s,” she noted.
“I told him to make himself useful and take the Fired Up out on the Atlantic. Catch us all some fresh mahi,” Carlos chimed in from the other end of the table. “Pero he hasn’t listened to me yet.”
Because he’d taken Carlos’s other advice. The one his older brother was smart enough not to mention in front of their conservative, worry-prone mother. No way she would approve her firstborn son’s “shake things up” mantra.
“Ohh! I wanna go fishing! Can we go today, Tío Luis?” José clambered off his chair, running to throw himself at Luis’s side. “?Por favor!”
Luis ruffled the seven-year-old’s hair. “I’m sorry, papito. Not today. I’m busy.”
“?Haciendo qué?”
Everyone at the table zeroed in on his answer to his mami’s sharp question. Luis shifted uncomfortably on the cold metal seat.
“I’m helping a friend who’s in town. Showing their family around a bit,” he hedged, anxious to punch his time card here, then clock out, like Enrique.
“That’s very nice of you,” his mami said, layering the word nice with enough innuendo it became a synonym for interesting. “Is she someone we know?”
Ha! He hadn’t said the friend was female.
Luis caught Carlos’s sly grin. They both knew their mami’s parental radar must be pinging. Alerting her that something was up with one of her kids. If only Carlos knew.
It was ironic. The one brother Luis normally confided in had no idea about Sara. Yet, the one he had lost faith in, had already met her.
Luis’s skin itched with unease. He didn’t want to talk about the station or the accident. He was tired of unsolicited advice about his supposed lack of healthy coping skills, and no way was he interested in answering pointed questions about whomever he chose to spend time with.
What he needed was an excuse to split. If not, his mami’s probing questions would continue.
“Bueno, mijo, who is she?” His mami’s intuitive gaze still glued on Luis, she absently slid a glass of watered-down fruit punch out of the way before one of his nephews knocked it with his elbow.
“It’s not anyone you know—”
His cell phone vibrated in his pants pocket, interrupting him. Luis slid the device out to find a text from Enrique lighting up the screen: Warning, Blondie’s hanging out by your truck.
Surprised, Luis reread the message. After their squabble earlier, he wouldn’t have expected Enrique to give him a heads-up about what he probably thought might be potential female trouble.
Decent move on his brother’s part.
After sending a cryptic gracias in reply—a little more personal than the plain thumbs-up emoji; two could play the let’s-be-nice game—Luis pushed away from the table. The hard rubber grip on the bottom of the chair legs screeched against the linoleum floor.
“Perdóname, Mami, I need to get going.”
“Sorry? Pero you just sat down,” she complained, her round face crumpled with dismay. Under her dark floral