Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

note to get rid of Paul’s things before someone dangerous wandered into the shop, like Denver or Jase. “Something like that. What’s up, sis? If you’re in here looking for a babysitter, I sold the last one ten minutes ago.”
She gave her patented yes, you’re funny, but not very much smile. “No. I need you to come by the house tonight for dinner, though.”
“You’re making me dinner?” El smirked. “Your latest left you already, did he?”
If she’d had a knife in her hand, she’d no doubt have held it up against his throat. As it was, she made do with a glare that cut about as well. “Noah’s coming over after he gets off work. I already warned him he might meet my idiot brother who married a pawnshop.”
So the boyfriend was still in the picture. Well, give him a few more minutes. “He’s getting domestic, is he? Hot man doing an evening at home with the mama and her babies? Smart play.”
She rolled her eyes. “Noah isn’t my boyfriend. He’s this guy from work.”
This was new. “A guy who’s coming over to your house?”
Rosa flicked her finger hard in the center of El’s forehead, making him yelp. “He is the babysitter. Do you think you could let go of my love life for ten seconds so I could explain about Mom?”
That made El pause. “What about Mom?”
“When she found out I’d given Dante’s clothes to Goodwill when he outgrew them, she lost it and started inventorying the house. The kids woke up this morning freaked out because they heard something downstairs. It was Mom going through the cupboards in the garage. I pitched a fit, and she started crying.”
El reached for his cigarettes, suddenly tired. “You invited her to dinner too, didn’t you. You want me to talk to her.”
“Hell, yes, I want you to talk to her. She’s not turning my house into Abuela’s. I don’t give a damn what Uncle Mariano says.”
“You think she’s going to listen to me? She’s going to cry again, and then Uncle Mariano will yell at me, and it’ll be the same damn thing as always.”
Rosa’s jaw was rigid. “It has to stop, El. If Mariano wants to baby her, I’ll send all my trash to his house and she can sort through it in his garage. I need you there because she upsets the kids, and then I’m trying to yell at her and calm them down at the same time, and it’s shit.”
She was right. It was nothing but shit. “All right. I’ll be there at seven.”
“Six. I want her back home before Noah shows up. It’s too early for him to see our freaky side.” She turned to walk out, shaking her head at the row of appliances as she left. “You really fell for that grandma.”
She wasn’t kidding.

    Dinner was spaghetti, meatballs, and baby spinach salad, the latter of which Rosa’s kids protested loudly, all but Gabi who happily painted her highchair tray with marinara using the leaves. Patti talked nonstop about pretty much everything under the sun, from who she’d seen at the bank that morning to what Abuela was having for supper, and of course, she told everyone about recent things she had found or bought.
    “I found the cutest baby blanket. Absolutely precious, handmade. It has a green border and yellow cross-stitched flowers.”
    Rosa gave El a hard look, and he had to suppress a sigh. Here we go.
“Who’s having a baby?” he asked.
Patti, unsurprisingly, only shrugged and dug into her spaghetti. “Somebody will have a baby, and then I’ll have a present.”
“No, you won’t, because it’ll get buried under your pile of crap,” Rosa muttered.
Had she been closer, El would have kicked her under the table. “Mami, we’ve talked about this.”
She was very fixated on her plate now, swirling the noodles in a circle. “It’s a blanket. Don’t make such a big deal out of it.”
“It’s a blanket, and a picnic set, and a croquet mallet, and a set of dishes, and that’s just the stuff you’ve told us about. I bet I could go out to your car right now and find all kinds of bags with receipts from today.”
Her eyes filled with angry tears. “You shouldn’t treat your mother like this.”
“And you shouldn’t treat your family like this, making us deal with all your trash.” Rosa flung her napkin onto the table, ignoring her children’s worried glances at each other, except for the baby who was still spinach-painting. “Five-thirty in the morning, Mami. My neighbors saw you going through my stuff.”
“Way to let me handle it,” El murmured.
Patti was rigid now.