He did not ask whose again. He had asked. He had been answered by a driveway and a man and a shift.
“Lila. Come here.”
She came, slower, because his voice had dropped into the register he used when a glass was at the edge of the table. She let him take the fob. She kept the cap. She was negotiating. One treasure for the other.
The plastic was warm from her hand. Heavy. Diego turned it and saw the button layout and knew the make without needing the grille. He had parked beside enough of them at St. Mary’s. Doctors. Administrators. A surgeon who left his open in the rain. This one had been in Diego Vargas’s driveway while Diego Vargas replaced a tile in a corridor.
Ana’s slippers had not moved closer. Her hand, which had been out for the key, hung at her side now as if the air had weight.
Lila climbed onto the sofa beside her father, the brim knocking his ear, and picked up the truck.
“You didn’t finish the wheel.”
“Not yet.”
“Finish it.”
He could not finish it. His hands were a key and a child and a marriage.
“In a minute.”
Ana said, “Lila, take the cap off.”
“The man said I could wear it.”
“Lila.”
She took it off and held it in her lap like a cat. The cap had a sweat stain in the band that did not belong to rain and did not belong to Diego. Diego saw the stain. Ana saw him see it.
She opened her mouth again.
He shook his head once, small, a motion Lila might miss.
Not in front of her.
That was not forgiveness. That was sequencing. Sequencing is what fathers do when the truth is too large for a five-year-old’s bedtime and still too large to wait until morning.
Ana closed her mouth.