police as a missing person, just to get sneered at. Every single day or night, after I finished my shift—sometimes before and after—I walked that town for hours, looking for him. I went to all the places I knew he and his friends hung out. I checked the post office box at least three times a week. This went on until mid-July. It felt like forever, but it was probably a month and a half. I didn’t dare move away. I kept expecting Alejo to turn up, and I didn’t want him to find strangers at that crappy boarding house. You remember, no internet in those days, no cell phones. Once you lost touch with someone, they were pretty much gone.”
“So he vanished?” Bird clasped her hands tightly.
“Well, yes and no. There came a day when I finally found a post card in the box. Posted from somewhere in the Dakotas. He’d found his dad—how, I will never know. No return address, since it was a post card. But the handwriting was definitely his. The message just said he was fine, and everything was groovy. Said he’d write again. And he did. I got a post card every few days, always from different places heading west, always saying he was having a great time traveling with his dad. The last one was from San Francisco.”
“Was he all right?” Bird asked, her eyes huge.
“He said he was having a blast. You know teenage boys. Not exactly forthcoming. That last post card was about watching guys painting the Golden Gate bridge, and wasn’t it a kick how once they get done they have to start all over again. And that was the last one.”
Godiva tipped her head toward her study. “I still have the post cards. Then nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. A year passed. He turned eighteen, and legally he could do what he wanted. But I still wanted to find him.”
Godiva shook her head. “After his birthday came and went and no message, I paid up on the box for ten years, and came out west to look for him. Since the last place I’d heard from him was San Francisco, that’s where I headed. Never found him, and I was broke. So I settled on the west coast to start over. Eventually made my way down here. But I kept writing to him at that post box, and every year I traveled back to check the box myself. After I got an agent, she checked it for me, as it was a short drive for her. Nothing. Ever again.”
Doris and Bird had exchanged glances a couple times. Doris said slowly, “Sounds like you were living hand to mouth there for quite a while.”
“That I was.”
“But somewhere in there you became a successful writer, about a private investigator. Did you ever think of hiring a real one to find your boy?”
“You betcher booty I did! My very first royalty check, before I even moved out of Cockroach Central, the dump of an apartment I was living in at the time. Nada. I tried again when computers became a thing, and I thought surely it would be easier—how many Alejandro Cordovas can there be in the country? Thousands, I guess, because that try, too, was a bust. I even tried to find Rigo, except that I never had learned his last name, and ‘Rigo El Caballero’ didn’t get any traction whatsoever. So I just continued to write to Alejo every year, birthday and Christmas, always with my address and phone. So if he wants to find me, he can.” Godiva sighed. “And that’s my story. Or was, until Rigo turned up this morning.”
Bird said softly, “You didn’t ask him this morning about your son?”
“No. I took one look at Rigo’s handsome face—oh yes, he’s still hotter than a bonfire, damn him—and lost it.”
Bird said, “I know you haven’t asked what I think, but I’m going to say it anyway, speaking as one mother to another. Even if Rigo’s a total asshat, you ought to ask him, before you do anything else. Or you will always wonder.”
Godiva sighed sharply, not wanting to explain that she’d always known she would. But would he refuse to tell her? What if he didn’t know either? The thought of talking to Rigo hurt so much. All those old emotions had come rushing back, as if he’d dumped her yesterday. How could she explain that to Doris and Bird?
But she knew she had to face him, even if