“Nothing.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Flashbacking, eh?”
“I guess so.”
The only person who biked up to the house was Oscar himself, trundling home for lunch. He stared up at them for a while, then went inside and made lunch for everyone. After they ate he questioned them about the day’s work, ascended a creaking ladder to take a look at it. Then he biked away, and they went back to work.
And still no Ramona. Well, perhaps she didn’t know he was at Oscar’s. No, she knew. It was odd. Then again didn’t she have to teach today? Of course. So she couldn’t come by till after three or four. And what time was it now?
And so the afternoon ticked along, inching through a dull haze of anxiety. What had Ramona and Alfredo said to each other? If… It must have been a shock to Alfredo, to find Kevin there. He couldn’t have had any warning. Unless someone who had been up at the hot springs had mentioned something and news had spread, the way it tended to in El Modena. Still, there wouldn’t have been any warning about last night, or this morning. But why had he come by to say happy birthday so damned early?
“You sure you’re okay?” Hank asked as they put their tools in Oscar’s garden shed.
“Yeah, yeah.”
He biked home, ate a dinner he didn’t notice. Afterwards he stood in the atrium for ten minutes fidgeting, then walked over to Ramona’s house. He couldn’t help it.
Hesitantly he knocked at the kitchen door, looked in. Pedro, Ramona’s father, was in there washing dishes. “Come on in,” Pedro said.
“Thanks. Is Ramona home?”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t eat here.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Nope. Actually I thought she was at your place. I haven’t seen her today.”
“Oh.” Kevin shifted uncomfortably. Part of him wondered how much Pedro knew, but mostly he was thinking where is she? He found he couldn’t talk very well. Pedro was shorter than Ramona but he had the same coloring, his black hair now sprinkled with white. A handsome man. The way he spoke reminded Kevin of Ramona, obviously the daughter had imitated him in years past. Now there was just the same crease between his eyebrows, a mild frown of concern as he chatted.
“I guess I’ll try back tomorrow,” Kevin said. “Will you tell her I dropped by?”
“Sure. Do you want me to have her call you when she gets in?”
“Yeah,” he said gratefully, “do that.”
But that was a mistake, because he spent the evening waiting for the phone to ring. Well into the night, in fact. And it never rang.
The next day he worked in the morning, and then spent the afternoon up at Tom’s, working on the pump, which had broken. While he was there Tom got a call, and spent half an hour inside.
When Tom came back down to the pump he said, “My friends think there may be an outside connection in the Heartech-Avending deal.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means Avending or Heartech might have an illegal source of capital. It might be here or it might be in Hong Kong, they’re getting signs of both.”
“Hong Kong?”
“The Chinese are using Hong Kong to generate money—they overlook all kinds of black conglomerates there, even though they’ve agreed to the international protocols that should make the conglomerates illegal. Then the Chinese zap them for a good bit of whatever profit they make.”
“So we might have something. That would be nice.”
“Nice? If my friends can pin it down, that would do your job for you! What’s bugging you, boy?”
“Nothing. I’m just wondering how it will all turn out, that’s all. Say, where’s Nadezhda?”
“She’s down at her ship. They’ll be leaving before too long—I guess they’ve got a delay. Waiting for some stuff from Minnesota.”
Kevin listened to Tom talk about it for a while, but there was grit in his thinking, and he kept losing track of the conversation. Finally Tom said, “Go home, boy, you must be tired. Get some rest.”
Then when he got home he found Ramona sitting in the kitchen, helping Denise and Jay with their homework. She looked up at him and smiled, and he felt a rush of relief so powerful that he had to sit. Until that moment he hadn’t known how anxious he was.
Ramona set the kids to work on their own, led Kevin into the atrium. He caught her up in the dark and gave her a hug. She hugged back, but there was a stiffness in her spine, and she avoided his kiss. He pulled back frowning, the knot back in his stomach.
She laughed at his expression. “Don’t worry!” she said, and leaned up to kiss him briefly.
“What happened? Where have you been? What did he want? Why didn’t you call?”
Ramona laughed again, led him by the hand to poolside. They sat on the low chairs.
“Well, I’ve been talking to Alfredo,” she said. “I guess that answers all your questions at once. He came over yesterday morning to talk about things, apparently. Then when he found you there and realized we had spent the night together, he—well, he fell apart. He needed to talk anyway, and the more that sank in, the more he needed to.”
“About what?”
“About him and me. You know. What happened, what went wrong.”
“Does he want you two to get back together?” Kevin asked, hearing the strain in his voice.
“Well.” She looked away. “Maybe so. I’m not sure why, though, even after all the talking we did. I don’t know.”
“And you?” Kevin asked, pressing right to the point, too nervous to avoid it.
Ramona reach over, took his hand. “I… I don’t know what I want, Kev.”
He felt his diaphragm seizing up, getting tighter with every breath, every absence of breath. Oh my God, he thought. Oh my God.
“I mean,” she said, “Alfredo and I were together for a long time. We went through a lot together. But a lot of it was bad. Really bad. And you and I—well, you know how I feel about you, Kev. I love you. And I love the way we are together. I haven’t felt the way I have the last week in a long time.”
I’ve never felt like I have in the last week! Kevin wanted to say, and he only just bit back the words, suddenly frightened of speech.
“Anyway,” Ramona said, still squeezing his hand, “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what I feel about things with Alfredo. He says he wants to get back together, but I don’t know….”
“Seeing us together,” Kevin suggested.
“Yeah, I know. Believe me.” And suddenly she was blinking rapidly, about to cry. What was this? Kevin’s fright grew. “I don’t know what to do,” she exclaimed painfully. “I can’t be sure about Alfredo, and I hate having anything happen between you and me, to get in the way when we were just beginning!”
Exactly, Kevin thought, squeezing her hand in turn. Don’t let it! Should he say that, or would it just be more pressure? He shifted his chair closer to hers, tried to put an arm around her.
“But,” she said, pulling herself together, putting a hand to his arm and forestalling him. “The fact is, it’s happened. I can’t just ignore it. I mean that’s fifteen years of my life, there. I can’t just tell him to leave me alone, not after all that—especially—well, especially”—losing it again, voice getting desperate—“especially when I don’t know what I feel!” She turned to him beseechingly, said, “Don’t you see?”