“Okay.”
Five can say okay and mean the subject is closed until it opens again at bath time. Diego parked. He sat a second after Lila unbuckled. Then he took her inside and made noodles and let Ana come home to a kitchen that was functioning. Functioning is a low form of love. It is still a form.
Weeks went like that. Not healed. Functioning. Ana slept. Diego slept less. They spoke about bills and about Lila’s shoes and once about whether to tell Mrs. Chen anything. They did not tell Mrs. Chen. Mrs. Chen already knew a Thursday had changed. She did not need a name.
Lila stopped drawing black cars. She drew dogs. Diego put a dog drawing on the fridge. Ana looked at it while the coffee ran and thought about the crayon stub in the backpack and did not fish it out.
Eric did not come to the driveway. Once a black sedan paused at the corner and Diego, who was taking trash out, felt his whole body prepare, and the sedan was a different make and turned. He laughed at himself in a way that was not laughter. He went inside and washed his hands.
Ana asked, in the third week, if he wanted her to leave.
Diego said, “I want the last six months back. I can’t have them. I want you not to lie if a key shows up again. There should not be a again.”
“There won’t be.”
He wanted to believe the sentence. Belief had been his habit. Habits die slower than smiles.
“I’m staying for now,” he said. “For now is all I have.”
Ana cried then, finally, at the island, not as a request. He did not hold her right away. When he did, it was a hand on her shoulder from the side, the way he would steady a ladder. A ladder is not a dance on a patio. It is what you use to reach a high thing without falling. They had high things now. They had a child. They had a townhouse. They had a night they would tell, if they told it, as the night Lila found a key.
Ana’s mother came down on a Saturday unannounced, which was her way, with a bag of fruit and a look that took inventory.
“You two look like you have been through a flu,” she said.
Diego said work. Ana said Lila’s been waking. Lila, who was on the floor with blocks, said, “I found a key.”
The room paused.
Diego said, “A toy.”
Lila frowned. “It was a real key.”
Ana’s mother looked from face to face and chose, for once, not to dig in front of the child. She sliced mango in the kitchen. She whispered to Ana at the sink, “If he is good to you, you stay. If he is not, you call me. That is the whole speech.”
Ana said, “It isn’t him.”