Page 75 of Dial F for Finance

“Oh God,” I say.

My father points at me. “You be quiet. This is one of my best stories.”

I look at Jenna. She’s already looking at me. “He does this on purpose to mortify me,” I warn her.

Jenna leans toward my mother. “I can’t wait.”

My father sets down his fork, all gravitas. “So. Dominic, eight years old. Already the sharpest shark in the pool. School assignment: ‘What I want to be when I grow up.’”

“Oh no,” Dustin says, clapping a hand over his face.

“Everyone else in the class writes, ‘I want to be a doctor, I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a baseball player,’” my father continues with a flourish. “But my son. My precious boy. He gets up there in front of thirty parents, the principal, the priest—all of them—and he says, what do I want to be? ‘A hostile takeover specialist.’ Eight years old, people! What child says this?”

The table howls.

Tía Marisol is in tears. My mother covers her face with both hands, but she’s laughing so hard she can’t even pretend to be embarrassed.

Jenna raises an eyebrow at me. “A hostile takeover specialist?”

“What I said was that I wanted to be a ‘hostile negotiator,’” I tell her. “No idea what that was at eight. But I thought it sounded cool.”

“It sounds like you wanted to be a negotiator who was also hostile,” Jenna says, her mouth twitching.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” I say. “In this country, we call that ambition.”

Dustin leans in. “He once got out of a parking ticket by debating the cop until the guy forgot why he even stopped us.”

“It was a bullshit ticket,” I say, and a chorus of yeses rolls in from my father, uncle, and at least one cousin in the next room.

Abuela Carmen raises her glass. “To our hostile negotiator.”

The table erupts into a toasting free-for-all, and I forget for a moment that every one of these people was a question mark in Jenna’s mind an hour ago. Even now, the room has folded her into itself like she was always meant to be here, nestled in between the other inside jokes and family legends.

The hours after dinner go the way they always do: more food, two games of dominoes, a halfhearted attempt to get the Netflix working in the den for the kids, and absolutely zero silence.

Jenna wanders with me through the rooms, and each time I introduce her to someone new, she shakes their hand with both of hers like every connection matters.

At some point the kid attached to her leg is replaced by a different, smaller kid that she carries on her hip, and I’m starting to think the extended family is offering her a trade-in program. Jenna looks surprised at first. But I catch her playing peek-a-boo with the baby, just to make her laugh. My heart squeezes so tight at the sight that I can barely breathe.

It’s on the way back from the kitchen, baby swapped out for a tray of unfinished flan while a swarm of cousins parts like the Red Sea, that her phone goes off. I try to get to her in time to take the tray, but she balances it on one side, glances at the screen, and freezes an instant too long. I don’t get close enough to catch the name, but I see the look—a flicker of alarm, enough to override the chaos of the room and put every circuit in me on high alert.

She hands the tray off to a teenage cousin and murmurs something to my mother before cutting through the crowd, phone already pressed to her ear. She steps onto the back porch and eases the door shut behind her.

“Did she mention who called her?” I ask, when I finally reach the spot she vacated.

Ma shakes her head. “Just said she needed to take a call. Seemed on edge, though.”

I give it two seconds, make an excuse about needing air, and follow. I open the door just as she says, “—no, of course I’m listening, Ma. I just can’t talk for long right now.”

Her mother?

Fuck.

I step outside.

CHAPTER 18

Jenna