after my parents died.” She stared out the window, and Evan reached over and squeezed her hand.
“I don’t want to make you sad, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“No, don’t worry about it. I just sometimes wonder what would have happened if they hadn’t died, if they hadn’t been deported. Or, you know, if they’d actually been born in the U.S.”
“I think we all wonder things like that. I mean, my parents were both born in Eureka, but I wonder what it would have been like if they weren’t born dipshits.”
Riel laughed, then squinted at him. “You’ve never really told me about your parents.”
Evan shrugged. “Not much worth telling. My dad worked in the logging industry when he was younger, but he lost that job when people suddenly realized that cutting down all the trees and replacing them with Wal-Marts wasn’t a sustainable practice. He was really fucking pissed about it too.” Evan screwed his face up in a grimace, making his voice gruff. “If I could crush every spotted-goddamn-fucking-owl with my bare hands, I would.” Riel laughed. “He ended up getting a job for some security company,” Evan continued. “He worked there most of my childhood, but he started taking meth because they had him working graveyard and he said he needed it to keep his energy up. By the time I left home when I was 14, he was into it pretty bad. Lost his job not long after that. I don’t even want to know what he’s doing now.”
Riel gazed at him, a crease in her brow. “What about your mom?”
“She worked as a supermarket checkout clerk, long hours, not much pay, plus she had me and my three sisters to take care of. Dad wasn’t that nice to her, and didn’t help her much. She ended up getting into meth also. Sometimes she calls me for bail money if Angela can’t scrape it up.”
“Angela is one of your sisters?”
“Yeah, the one who has it sorta together. Kara and Lindsey are both in and out of jail too.”
“I’m sorry,” Riel said, but Evan just shrugged.
“We all’ve got shit to deal with, right? Life’s never perfect. We just do the best we can. Our upbringings could have been better, but we’re doing okay, Rielita. It may not be the best right now, but we’re going to keep up the struggle and we’re gonna make it, right?”
“Right,” she said. They grinned at each other.
“And speaking of keeping up the struggle…” They stopped at a stoplight, and he felt around under the seat, coming up with a pair of little Sig Sauer handguns. He gave one to her, and stuck the other in the waistband of his jeans. Riel stashed the gun over her hip, between her skirt and her skin, pulling her loose blouse over to hide it. It had been more than a year since she’d carried a gun, but the feeling of it against her skin was still familiar.
They met their guy on the outskirts of Tijuana, a neighborhood with little, rectangular houses packed into patches of bare dirt. Riel started to sweat as soon as she got out of the car, the sun pounding down on her. The air smelled like garbage and wood smoke, and the sound of televisions and blaring radios drifted out of the open windows of the houses.
The back of her neck prickled; it had been too long since she’d done this, and she was paranoid. She glanced around, spotting a couple kids playing in a yard and some old men sitting on a porch a couple of houses down. They were glancing at her, but they didn’t look suspicious. Riel took a deep breath and checked the position of the pistol in her waistband.
A man came out of the house as they walked up, young and skinny and clean-shaven. A mottle-coated pit bull trotted at his heels.
“Hey, Theodore,” he said, shaking Evan’s hand. “How’s it going?” Then he turned to Riel, grinning wide. “You going to introduce me to this one, Theodore?”
“Luis, this is Nora,” he said.
“Mucho gusto,” Luis said, taking her hand.
“Mucho gusto,” Riel responded.
“She’s my girlfriend,” Evan added when Luis didn’t relinquish her hand.
This information didn’t seem to faze Luis, who just grinned wider, though it came as a bit of a surprise to Riel. She raised her eyebrows at Evan, but he didn’t notice. His eyes were on Luis, who finally dropped her hand.
“Come on inside,” he said.
They went into the house, which was dim and