Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2

take me back to that shop and introduce me to your young man.” She tweaked my nose again, smiling through her tears. “Come on. My scalloped potatoes aren’t any good cold.”
Letting go of a weight I thought I’d been carrying since that afternoon with the Hazzard boys, I picked up my fork and ate my mother’s potatoes, dreaming tentative daydreams about making everything up to El in the morning.

chapter 27
    O

    n the night before the Fourth of July, Abuela called El over for an emergency meeting: Patti had found out they’d cleaned the attic.
    Though he went straight over, by the time he and MoJo arrived, the hysterics were in full swing and the entire Rozal family was on the front lawn carrying on like a bad episode of Cops. In the center of it all was Patti, eyes swollen and nose running as she keened for her father’s lost junk like someone mourning the dead.
    She looked, he realized, like he felt when he thought about losing Paul.
For the first time in his life, as their gazes met and El saw the sorrow in his mother’s face, as he felt it reflect the agony in his own heart, he understood the truth of his mother’s pain: that mourning the dead and the lost was exactly what she was doing.
“Emanuel.” She wiped her nose with her sleeve and pointed to his uncle. “Emanuel, they took his things. They took his things.”
Except this time he heard what she didn’t say as well as the things she did. They took him, Emanuel. They took my papi away.
El swallowed hard and came closer to his mother, letting MoJo down to run after the kids. “I know, Mami. I’m sorry.”
“They took his things,” she sobbed again.
They took him. They took my papi.
Rosa glared at El, waiting for him to be rational. Lorenzo and Miguel only looked tired.
El closed the distance between his mother and himself and enfolded her into his arms. “They took his things,” he whispered, “but they didn’t take him.”
Patricia Rozal shuddered, gripped El’s shoulders, then sank heavily against him with a new round of sobs.
El held her, swaying from side to side as he let his mother cry. “It’s just things. You don’t need them to remember, Mami. He’s bigger than that. And so are you.”
“But I miss him,” she sobbed.
“I know.” El shut his eyes and thought of Paul hovering over him in bed and smiling. Paul blinking cluelessly as El flirted with him. Paul, eyes falling closed as he gave himself over to the pleasure El made for him.
Paul. Paul, who wasn’t a thing at all, who El did need, who he missed very much. Paul, who was worth the risk of being disappointed, of being abandoned. Because even if it ended someday, if Paul left or they grew apart or something else, having him for a while would be better than not having him at all.
He crooned to his mother, smoothing her hair, promising himself as soon as this was settled that he’d drive across town to get Paul back.
Noah was there too, he realized as they finally convinced Patti she should sit down in her rocker (after Lorenzo cleaned out the crap from it and moved it into a space where it had room to rock) and drink some tea. When he asked Rosa about it, she shrugged.
“He was helping me set up and insisted he come over with me when I got the call from Abuela.”
El glanced over at Noah, who watched, hovering and ready to jump in and comfort Rosa in case she needed it, or to get her a glass of water or the moon or whatever it was she decided she wanted. And El decided it had all gone far enough.
He turned his sister to face Noah, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “What is it you see, Rosa?”
“What the fuck, El?” She glared at him, but when he wouldn’t budge, she sighed the sigh of the perpetually weary little sister. “I see Noah. So what?”
“Yes, Noah,” El said. “Noah who babysits your kids whenever you ask him. Noah who buys you grills and patio sets and sets them up in your yard for you. Noah who came over tonight with you. Noah, who I would jump in a hot minute except he’s straight and only, you might notice, has eyes for you.”
Rosa went still. “No.”
“Yes. I know you didn’t meet him in a bar and that his IQ is fifty times higher than the slugs you usually hook up with, but you might want to give this one a try.” She swatted at him, but only halfheartedly, too stunned and fixated on Noah, who was fixated right back and looking really, really hopeful. El kissed her on the cheek and patted her backside. “Go get him,