PART 2 The party went completely silent. Twenty people stared at my brother. “We had a memorial,” the woman said. Her name was Lupe Medina. She’d lived across the street from my parents for thirty years. “At St. Timothy’s. You cried. You said he went peacefully in his sleep.”

On the fourth day, he finally asked me the question I’d been dreading.

“Why didn’t you come sooner, mija?”

I told him the truth. That Ray said he was napping. That Ray said he was confused. That I believed it because it was easier than flying home.

He was quiet for a long time.

Then he squeezed my hand.

“You came,” he said. “That’s what I’ll remember.”

I didn’t take another travel contract.

I took a job at a hospital twenty minutes from Dad’s house. We put in a new AC unit. We painted the garage door bright blue, so he’d never have to look at it the same way again.

Lupe from across the street brings him the crossword every morning.

Last week, Dad finished one in pen and slid it across the kitchen table to me.

Eight letters. “Someone who comes back for you.”