Page 7 of Que Será, Syrah

She’s been playing you, hombre, my inner voice taunts me. She clocked you from the start. That’s why she called you Romeo. Sonofabitch.

“I’ll need the keys to your car,” I tell her, interrupting whatever she’s saying and holding out a hand.

“Okay?” she mutters, reaching into the console and handing me her fob. “What happens now?”

“Now we wait for the tow truck to get here,” I tell her as I head back to my vehicle to call for one.

“The tow truck? Why?”

“I’m impounding your vehicle.”

“What? No. You can’t!” She slides from her seat and starts after me. “Please! I?—”

“You will stay with your car,” I order, as I stop and pivot to glare at her. “Or I will place you under arrest.”

“Bu-but what do I do now?” she asks as she sinks exhaustedly onto the seat. “You aren’t going to j-just l-leave me here, are you?”

I’m tempted to tell her that turn around is fair play, but I refuse to give her the satisfaction of knowing that I know that she knows that I…you know what? It doesn’t matter.

“I will give you a ride to the station,” I say instead. “You can call someone and have them pick you up there, after you—or they—pay the fees.”

“But I can’t— Th-there’s no one. I…”

But that’s definitely a lie. I know she has family, and that her family has money, so… “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Romeo, please,” she begs, rising out of her seat. “Can’t we just?—”

“Do not call me that!” I say as I level a finger in her direction. “And stay with your car—or else.”

Chapter 2

Allegra

“I don’t understand,” my sister Rosa says—not for the first time. “It’s not that we’re not happy to see you and all. I mean, of course we are! But how are you even here?”

“Well, see, there’re these things called airplanes,” I tell her wearily. “You may have heard of them.”

“Very funny,” Rosa glares at me from the rear-view mirror.

Bianca, sitting catty-corner in the passenger seat, like she’s afraid to completely turn her back on me, shakes her head. “Really, Legs. I think we deserve a better answer than that! You’ve been promising for months that you were coming home, and?—”

“Oh, stop exaggerating,” I groan. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“No, she’s right,” Rosa says. “It has been months. I remember because the first time was at the will reading—all the way back in April. We talked about holding Nonna’s memorial after the harvest and you said you’d be here.”

I hadn’t. But what’s the point in arguing? People remember what they want to remember. “Yeah well, there you go. It’s after harvest, and here I am.”

“Yes, except that every time we asked you since then about when you’d be back, you just said, soon,” Bianca reminds me. She’s a scientist. They’re relentless when it comes to facts.

“Well, I’m sorry,” I tell her. “But I had things to do.” Embarrassing things that I will never, ever divulge to either of my sisters. “I got here as soon as I could. And I’m here now, aren’t I? So, why are we still talking about this?”

“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell us you were coming,” Rosa says. “We could have gotten things ready for you.”

“Maybe I wanted to surprise you; you ever think of that?”

“Well, you did that,” Bianca says, smiling ironically. “When Rosa told me we had to go and bail you out of jail I was definitely surprised.”

Okay, so maybe that part was my fault. But bail is what the officer I first spoke to at the station called the money she said I’d need in order to get my car released. And I guess by the time I got Rosa on the phone, I had started freaking out and wasn’t as clear I might have been. My bad.

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