Page 70 of Dial F for Finance

I pull up behind my father’s Mercedes and cut the engine, and then I don’t move, because there’s one more thing, and I want to do it right, and I have rehearsed it multiple times in my head since the bridge and hated every version.

Her brow furrows. “What?”

“My brother,” I say. “Dustin. Before we go in, there’s something you need to know.”

“OK.”

“Dustin has Down syndrome. He’s three years older than me. He lives at Round Hill House about ten minutes from here—his own apartment, his own job, his own extremely full social calendar. He will almost certainly be the best-dressed man at dinner.”

“OK,” she says. Level. Waiting.

“I’m overprotective. Dustin will tell you that himself, probably within five minutes. Logan’s the only one of the guys who’s spent real time with him, mostly because Dusty claimed him as family years ago and Logan never stood a chance. But the important part is: don’t be careful with him. That’s the whole speech. Everybody meets Dustin and goes soft and slow and gentle, like he’s a kid, and he hates it. He has trouble with plenty of things—money, directions, my mother’s lasagna timeline. People aren’t one of them. He reads people faster than I do, and if you talk to him in a kindergarten voice, he’ll tell everyone. With impressions. It happened to one of my cousin Mateo’s girlfriends a few years back, and she is no longer with us. But the impression is still in the rotation at Christmas.”

Jenna blinks. Something moves through her face that I can’t read all the way, and then the corner of her mouth comes up, slow.

“So treat him like I treat you.”

“God, no. Meaner than that. The guy’s a total asshole.”

“You must get along great then,” she says, and gets out of the car.

The front door is unlocked, because it hasn’t been locked on a Sunday in living memory, and the moment we push inside, the noise hits all at once.

Marc Anthony fighting the Yankees game for airspace. Dominoes going down on the sunroom table like small-arms fire. Some tía shouting a question from the kitchen and three people answering wrong. The smell of my mother’s garlic and my father’s pork and forty years of Sundays soaked into the plaster.

Both sides of the family have turned up in force—my father’s Cuban relatives, my mother’s Puerto Rican ones, plus enough spouses and honorary cousins that trying to sort the room by island would cause a diplomatic incident.

Jenna stops dead beside me. Her hand tightens on mine. Spine straightening, shoulders squared—preparing for impact.

I lean down, mouth close to her ear. “You’re safe here, sweetheart.”

She gives me a look that says she’s fighting the urge to bolt, but she doesn’t let go of my hand, not even as we’re nearly trampled in the entryway by small cousins in various states of stickiness and noise. My mother appears immediately from the side hallway, lips pressed into a determined line, and in one swift, practiced motion, she wipes a chocolate streak off a small child’s face, then zeroes in on us.

Correction: on Jenna.

“Nicky,” she says, looking up at me, expectant.

“Ma, this is Jenna,” I say, and her eyes narrow to an evaluative squint that is both surgical and entirely my mother. I watch Jenna, the most composed woman I’ve ever met, steel herself for the onslaught.

“Hija,” my mother says, drawing her into an embrace that is, by every available metric, an abduction. “You are so much prettier in person. Pictures do nothing.” She releases Jenna just as abruptly, hands on her upper arms, inspecting her like produce. “So tall too. You make such a beautiful couple.”

Jenna smiles warmly. “Thank you, ma’am. I see where Dom gets his atmospheric pressure.”

My mother laughs loudly, the sound as abrupt and unfiltered as everything else about her. “Dominic, you finally found a woman who will put you in your place.”

Tía Marisol appears from the sunroom in a turquoise sweater, gold bangles, and an excited bustle.

“There you are.” She smacks my arm, kisses both my cheeks, then turns to Jenna and lights up. “Ay, Dios mío. Look at you.”

Jenna blinks.

Which is the only warning before my aunt has both her hands.

“You must be Jenna. Nicky told us you were tall, but he didn’t say elegant. Typical man. No useful details.”

“I—thank you.”

“She speaks nicely too,” Tía Marisol calls over her shoulder. “Helena! She speaks so nicely!”