Rain turned the front windows of the Vargas townhouse into a sheet of moving glass.
Diego sat on the dark blue sectional with a screwdriver and a small plastic truck that had lost a wheel. He was forty-one, medium tan skin, a sturdy build, short black hair going gray at the temples, brown eyes, clean-shaven, a gold wedding band that still surprised him when it caught the lamp. Faded navy sweatshirt. Jeans. Socks. He liked this hour. Dinner was done. The hospital was ten miles behind him. The house was only the three of them and the weather.
Ana stood at the coat rack by the front door sorting jackets and two umbrellas that never dried all the way through. She was thirty-eight, warm olive skin, slim, long dark-brown hair in a low ponytail, brown eyes, almost no makeup left from the office. Cream knit sweater. Black leggings. House slippers. She hung Diego’s work jacket. She hung her own. She shook water from Lila’s small raincoat. She did not hang a third adult coat. There was no third hook that belonged to this family.
From the hallway that ran back toward the bedrooms, their daughter came running.
Lila was five. Warm olive skin, dark wavy hair, brown eyes too large for her face, a tiny build that still made both adults reach out when she took the stairs too fast. She looked delighted in the particular way children look when they have found something that belongs to the grown-up world. On her head sat an oversized men’s baseball cap, worn backward so the brim would not cover her eyes. In her right hand she waved a large black luxury-car key fob, the kind with a heavy remote and a logo Diego could read from the sofa.
She stopped in the open space between the coffee table and the kitchen doorway, where the townhouse let you see everything at once.
“Dad! Look what I found!”
Diego looked up. The screwdriver stopped turning.
He knew their keys the way he knew which screw belonged in the truck. The Honda in the driveway took a gray fob with a nick on the corner. Ana’s Toyota at the curb took a smaller black one with a grocery-store loyalty tag still looped through. This thing in Lila’s hand was neither. It was heavier. It belonged to a car they did not own and would not own.
“That’s not Mommy’s car key.”
Ana turned from the rack too fast. The hangers clicked.
“Sweetheart, give that to me.”
Lila pulled the fob back against her chest, laughing, proud of the game.
“No, I found it!”
Diego looked at his wife over the child’s head.
“Whose is it?”
Ana came forward with her palm open, the light voice she used for spilled juice and bedtime delays.
“It’s just a key, baby. Come here.”
Lila stepped behind the wooden coffee table so the game could last another circle.
“I found it in the driveway. Next to the black car.”