The whiskey goes down like a small sun, heat uncoiling through her ribs, and when it reaches her chest, the light keeps going—glass glare turns white, then wider, and the hush of the apartment widens into July air that tastes like salt and hot pennies.
Handlebar tape under palms, soft and tacky.
Chain purring in a rhythm that pretends to be a song.
Noon sits on Miami like a brass lid: sky bleached to hard enamel, clouds thin as scraped paint.
The road shimmers; mirage-lakes slide across asphalt and die under her front tire with tiny, invisible sighs.
She pedals the long way, past the things that teach you a neighborhood: pastel stucco houses with hurricane shutters half-open like lazy eyelids; a chain-link fence choked with bougainvillea throwing magenta like confetti; a mango tree dropping gifts the ants have already titled; a mailbox shaped like a marlin, its tail fin sun-chalked and proud.
Lizard skitters flash like punctuation across the sidewalk.
A stray dog naps under a Honda that forgot what color it used to be.
The canal runs parallel for a block—green glass with mullet dimpling it, egrets stalking like narrow, fussy old men.
Far off, downtown teeth glint; nearer, a bus exhales and kneels for no one.
Heat presses, but everything feels light.
Ankles circle, knees easy.
The cheap bell goes brring when she thumbs it, and a kid on a scooter answers with a grin and a heroic swerve.
A Cuban bakery leaks guava and butter; two old men argue chess under a palm; someone's radio agrees to salsa for the next three houses.
Tires hum over painted crosswalks, then hop the curb by the park with the sunburned slide and the basketball rim that leans, stubborn and forgiving.
Sofia's pink ballet bag would normally be swinging off Camila's wrist right now, little slippers nested like quiet birds.
Tuesdays are pliés and hairnets; mother and sister vanish into mirrors and counts. Today the house is his—at least that's how she's decided to think of it.
He'd said it on the phone, voice soft around the edges, a smile she could hear, a tiredness under it that didn't know where to sleep.
— "Took the day, mija. Just you and me."
She'd wanted to stay after lunch, let the park hold her a little longer, but the thought of his face when she came through the door pulled harder than the swing set.
Friends had called, shrieking — "Come on, Luz!" into the static; she'd waved them off with a promise shaped like tomorrow.
Sun lays a white stripe down the spine of the street.
She slips through it.
Front yard altars pass—plastic Marys behind hedge glass, votive jars sun-bleached to milk. A tire shop with stacked black halos fuming rubber heat; a tireless sedan propped like a patient; a guy with hands for gravel waving hello without stopping the story he's telling.
Sprinklers click in their small conspiracies and mist her calves; the shock is a good one. A cracked fire hydrant wears a ring of rust like an old medal.
Farther on, the good corner store—the one that will let her run a tab for an Orangina and a pack of gum because she always pays it back—winks in glass bottles.
She floats the last block, standing on the pedals to make the bike feel like a faster animal.
Driveways scroll: chalk galaxies, hopscotch bones, a tricycle tipped like a ship.
Their place arrives the way familiar things do—without ceremony and all at once. Painted numbers over the carport, flaking white; a garage door that keeps the handprints of every time it's been shoved when the opener sulked.
His secondhand toolbox sits where the concrete meets oil flowers, lid closed, a rag tucked like a flag. The potted aloe by the steps is fat and smug about it.
She noses the front wheel up the cracked path, swings off in a practiced, triumphant hop, and rolls the bicycle into the front garage, kickstand flicking down with a metal tunk that sounds like home.
The garage door sighs behind her, dust motes flipping over in the slant of noon like tiny coins someone tossed and forgot.
She crosses the cool concrete, palm sliding along the paint-chipped jamb toward the inside door.
The brass knob holds a little sun-warmth. A flick of dread brushes the nape—thin, irrational, a spiderline—and flicks away.
Meh, she decides, kid bravado sprinting ahead of thought.
She twists, pushes. The door gives with its usual knee-pop.
— "Papá?"
Weekday breath meets her: thin AC, the old fridge humming its secret, the TV not talking. Couch dent present, remote balanced on the arm like a dutiful soldier.
A coffee mug on the side table wearing a brown halo that says earlier. Ceiling fan, lazy.
No shoes by the door.
No rustle from the bedroom where he sometimes lies staring at a ceiling that won't stare back.
— "Papá, I'm home."
Kitchen—stove blank-eyed, pan on the back burner, lid still wearing a film. Two plates drying from last night; his chipped state-shaped mug; a spoon abandoned like it forgot purpose.
Bedroom—bedspread rumpled, shirts slung over the chair you're not supposed to use, work boots heel to heel as if whispering.
Silence swells, making the AC sound too loud.
Small houses keep one door for last.
She stops at the bathroom.
Fingers splay on painted wood near the knob, as if feeling for a pulse through the grain. A thin knife of light under the jamb.
The fan behind it turns in stutters.
What leaks out isn't clean.
Not one smell but a chord: sour-sweet like fruit left in a hot car; a chemical bite that crawls up the back of the nose and sits there, metallic and stale; skin-sweat that's been still too long; the faint, bitter ghost of a stomach emptied hours ago; underneath it all the flat, wet quiet of a room that ran out of air.
Knuckles pale around the handle.
She hears water only as a memory—plumbing mute, the house waiting, every small sound spent.
The knob turns.
Tile that has forgotten color.
Vanity bulbs buzz like wasps behind glass.
On the counter: paper packet torn and curling; lighter belly-up, soot-black; nested spoons filmed with what won't matter; a belt abandoned mid-story; a plastic cap flipped and not caught.
Needles scattered like punctuation, some capped, one not, a thread of silver gleaming the wrong way. Glass tumbler ringed to crust.
Washcloth stiff in the wrong shade.
He's in the tub, not like someone bathing.
Slumped into porcelain as if it wrote his name.
Head tilted to tile; mouth a little open, as if almost about to answer; one arm over the rim, a knuckle barked and bloodless.
The waterline a dull ring; no water.
Skin gone to gray wax, mouth edged in quiet blue.
Chest unmoving.
Eyes not truly open, not truly shut—stalled somewhere awful between.
Her knees forget the contract with standing.
Tile meets them with a flat, unfriendly hand.
The room lists a degree left; she rides it, palms biting grout, breath going thin and fluttery, ribs trying to hold something already fallen.
The thought-train doesn't arrive; it detonates. If only.
If she hadn't taken the long route.
If she'd skipped the bakery's guava breath, the chess-arguing abuelos, the bell for the scooter kid.
If she'd pedaled harder along the canal, stood the whole way, made the chain sing louder. If she hadn't stopped at the empty stop sign.
If she hadn't counted change for gummy ropes last night and slowed herself by coins.
If she'd noticed his smile not reaching its edges.
If she'd asked about the new tremor when he poured milk and missed the glass by an inch.
If she'd read the not-groceries receipts when they slipped from his pocket; learned the names of places that aren't places.
If she'd hugged tighter on the couch when the game didn't matter and he flinched at a commercial.
If someone had told her what signs look like.
If she'd believed the prickle.
If she'd opened this door an hour earlier.
If she'd traded the park forever for now.
If she'd broken the rule about snooping two nights ago and emptied the drawer that smelled wrong.
If she'd been the kind of daughter who knows everything instead of the one who arrives a minute after moments end.
If ballet had been canceled and Sofia had come home loud and ruinous.
If Camila's car had died and arguments had filled the rooms instead of this.
If the sun had been less bright so noon wasn't such a liar.
If someone had grabbed his wrist before the reach that unmakes.
If he'd reached for her instead.
If he'd waited.
If he'd called.
If he'd said anything besides the remembered softness that lives behind her ribs.
If only.
If only.
If only.
Sound goes cottony; the fan clicks like a metronome that lost its count.
Hands hover with nowhere safe to land—counter?
Needles?
Him?
Her eyes snag on small stupid things: his toothbrush with splayed bristles; a razor rusting at the edge; the chip in the enamel where he once dropped shampoo and swore, then laughed; the bath mat folded indecisively; his wedding ring on the soap dish, a circle that forgot a finger.
A darkened drip-map on tile where an elbow once touched.
Her mouth finally works, and the voice that climbs out is small and broken.
— "Papá…"
She crawls, knees squeaking over cold squares, palms flat on chill. The tub lip rises into reach.
Fingers spread, trembling, toward porcelain and the weight inside it, tears blurring the room into soft, useless watercolor.
She reaches for him—shock rushing every narrow hallway in her chest, the word please flaring and flaring with nowhere to land.
She stares until the room blurs and hardens again, like her eyes are a bad camera. The smell has settled into her throat; the fan keeps clicking, an idiot metronome. She needs out of this, out of this frame, out of this picture.
The brain offers a trapdoor: dream.
She grabs it with both hands.
Her palm flashes up and cracks her own cheek.
A hot sting blooms, bright and immediate. Sound jumps in her skull; her ear rings thinly.
Again—harder—the other side, a backhand that leaves a sweaty print. Heat radiates to the jaw hinge.
The mirror—if there were a mirror—would show a girl who is punishing a ghost.
Third time, open-handed, square across both cheeks, a clap that makes the vanity bulb vibrate in its socket. The fan hiccups.
The tile does not change its temperature.
The color doesn't come back to his mouth.
The silence doesn't remember how to be a different thing.
She laughs because her body has too much electricity and needs to put it somewhere. It comes out high and wrong, snagging on tears she didn't plan, bubbles in her throat.
She kneels there with her face on fire and the rest of her cold and tries to stare the world into lagging.
— "Okay. Okay, very funny."
The words fall out fast and thin.
— "You got me. I'm— I'm home, see? You can—"
Her gaze catches on the soap dish.
The ring.
The shallow line it left on his finger, paler than the rest.
Her breath shudders and splits.
— "Papá, stop. Come on. Come on, wake up, you're scaring me, this is— it's a joke, right? You— you always do the—"
She laughs again, brittle, tacked onto the end like tape.
— "You always do the faces, the— the zombie face—"
His face obliges her by not moving at all.
She reaches for his shoulder, stops a centimeter short, fingers curled like talons that forgot what to tear.
Her hand trembles in the nothing-gap over skin that will not warm.
— "Please."
It comes out smaller the second time.
— "Please, Papá. I'll— I'll be good, I won't— I'll do the dishes, I won't sneak to the park after dinner, I'll—"
The promises start multiplying, animal and useless, filling the room with thin, frantic ropes.
— "I'll get straight A's, I'll help you with the boxes, I'll— I'll stay home today, I stayed home, see? I came straight home, I didn't— I didn't. I came home."
She scrubs tears off her face with the heel of her hand, then laughs at herself for crying, then cries harder because of the laugh.
The sound ricochets off tile and comes back sounding like someone else.
— "Papá, get up. Stop it. Cut it out. It's— it's not funny."
Her voice like a tire losing air.
— "You're supposed to say 'boo,' okay? And then I scream and throw the sponge and you catch it and— and we make sandwiches, and— and—"
The word catches like a fishbone.
She coughs on it, swallows wrong, wipes her nose on her wrist, doesn't care.
The needles on the counter glint like insect legs; the belt lies there like a dead snake; the spoon's hollow stares right through her.
— "Say something. Say 'mija.' Say—"
She can't finish. She fills the gap with a giggle that hurts.
— "You got me, okay? I'm got. You win. You can stop."
She presses her fingertips to the inside of her own wrist, finds the rabbit-thud there, fast and afraid, and imagines pushing it through skin into his.
She slaps her own cheek again, lighter, ceremonial, as if she's knocking on a door.
Nothing opens.
She studies his chest and tries to bully it into a rise.
She stares until her eyes water and the rise she thinks she sees is her own wish bending the light. She stares more. The line does not move.
Words disintegrate into syllables, then into breath. She smiles like a cracked plate because the other choice is slamming everything on the floor.
— "Okay," she says to the tub lip, to the chipped enamel, to the fan that forgot how many clicks make a minute.
— "Okay, okay, okay."
The laugh leaves her last, in shreds.
Her shoulders drop.
The red handprints on her cheeks cool.
The room stops being a trick.
She looks straight at him—at the gray, at the blue, at the slackness that no person wears on purpose—and the last thin thread of maybe lets go.
Her hand reaches, finally, all the way to porcelain.
Fingers hook the tub rim like she needs to keep the house from floating off, tears streaming hot into the seam where tile meets lip.
She leans in, shaking, shock shoulder to shoulder with her in the small, bright room, and stops trying to call this a joke.
She stays folded at the tub lip, breath hitching in shallow, useless sips, then forces it into words because words are the only tools left.
— "Okay, Papá. Listen."
Her voice sounds like it borrowed someone else's shoes.
— "I'm… I'm gonna cover you up, okay? I'm gonna make you decent. Then I'll call Mom. I'll say you're—"
She swallows, the rest of the sentence crumbling in her mouth.
— "I'll handle it. I'll handle it, I swear."
Standing happens in segments.
Hands on porcelain, knees creaking, back uncoiling like a bad tape measure.
She gets up the way a shadow stands—thin, detached, more outline than person. The bright noon that rode in with her is gone; something turned down the dimmer behind her eyes.
A piece of the room has been removed and the hole is exactly her shape.
She reaches for him.
Skin cool, not yet stiff, the weight wrong in that special way—dead weight isn't a phrase until it is.
She wedges her forearms under his, cheek against tile for leverage, and hauls.
The tub lip bites her ribs; her feet skid; her socks squeal on wet.
He budges an inch, then another, shoulders catching on the rim, elbow barking a dull thunk. She breathes through her teeth, resets grip, tries again.
Slither.
A wet shirt peels off porcelain; a knee clunks, toe drags.
He is a sack of sand with a face she knows too well.
She apologizes to him under her breath for every bump, every angle, every stupid tile edge that kisses bone.
— "Sorry, sorry, sorry— almost—"
They spill to the floor together—her on a hip, him half across her shins—tangle of limbs and apologies.
She wriggles free, gets her hands under his shoulders again, and crab-walks backward inch by inch. The hallway is a tunnel and the living room is a cliff she keeps failing to reach.
She bangs a shoulder on the doorjamb; his head lolls and knocks the frame with a hollow sound that will never be anything but that sound. She flinches like she can take it back, then drags harder.
Carpet at last—cheap beige that burns her knees through denim.
She lays him where the room is widest, the TV a dark rectangle eyeing them, the couch dent watching like a witness.
His arm lands outflung, fingers open, palm up, asking a question the room can't answer.
She sprints—two rooms, ten lifetimes—to her bedroom.
The blanket is the soft one, the one she hoards: pilly blue, smelling like laundry soap and the lemon lotion she pretends makes her older.
She yanks it off the bed and it brings the sheet with it for a stunned, tangled second; she claws it free and runs back.
She covers him like he's cold.
Tucks the edge under his shoulder the way he used to burrito her after baths when she was little and giggling and easy.
Smooths the blanket over his chest, careful with the face, the mouth that will never rehearse another joke.
The blue makes him look more not-here, not less.
She presses the excess under his feet because doing it neatly feels like respect and because her hands need a job that isn't shaking.
Home phone on the side table—a plastic relic with numbers that click.
Her fingers hover, then land.
Dial tone is too bright, too cheery, like a clown at a funeral.
She punches the seven digits she knows better than birthdays.
It rings.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Her heart tries to crawl into her mouth; she swallows it back down.
The fourth ring slices in half; the line opens; Camila's breath is already annoyed.
She watches her father under the blanket while she makes her voice into a knife with no shine.
— "Mom, he's dead."