I shrugged and rolled onto my side, my back to the door. A few seconds later, her footsteps scuffed across the tile floor and the door closed behind her.

Softly, she said, “I know today must have been hard for you. It was even hard for me.” She laughed half-heartedly. “And it got me thinking.” The mattress shifted beneath her weight as she sat at the foot of the bed. She placed a warm hand on my ankle. “You know, not everybody copes with things the same way, or at the same rate. Maybe I was bitter, but I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. I shouldn’t have tried to control your feelings just because I thought I knew my own.”

I turned slightly to look at her over my shoulder. Her eyes were red-rimmed like she’d been crying, but she smiled at me. “I’m sorry, mijo. You have a right to process things your own way. And if this is going to help you…” She gestured to an object that she’d set on the chest at the foot of my bed—the dirt-encrusted lunch box. “It’s not my place to take that away.”

“Mom, I—” The words caught in my throat. I tried to swallow the lump down, but my voice still did not return.

“It’s okay,” she said. She stood up and moved to the head of the bed, brushing my hair off my forehead like she used to when I was little. “We’ll get through this, I promise.” She squeezed my hand and left the room.

After a minute, I sat up and pulled the lunch box over to myself. My fingers ran across the grungy lid, but I didn’t move to unlatch the clasp. A few weeks ago, I would have been thrilled to have it, but now I was too scared to open it, terrified I’d find something else inside that would bring Emil back knocking on my door.

But then again, the key that he kept going on about might be inside. If I could find it and give it to him, maybe he’d finally leave me and my family alone.

Before I could open the lid, my palmtop buzzed in my pocket. I froze in horror. Emil?

Reluctantly I slid the palmtop out and looked at it. A text from Tamara. How r u feeling? she wrote. Everything ok?

Yeah. It wasn’t dad, I texted back.

A buzz again, almost immediately. Good. I need to show u something. Can u come over?

My eyebrows furrowed. It was kind of a weird request; usually if we needed to talk “in person,” we would just go on Speculus and save each other the trip across town. Before I could react, a second text came in. Plz. It’s important. We can’t talk online.