“I just wished,” Dad says, his voice sharper than I’ve heard in a while. “I thought you would keep trying to contact them. You know how important family is. Simone has my family, but I don’t want her to only see people who don’t look like her.”

“She doesn’t, and you know that,” Pops says. “She has me, her friends, that boy. It isn’t like we’re raising her in the middle of a cornfield. Besides, I don’t want her main exposure to black people to be with my family. They aren’t the type she should be learning from.”

I can guess what they’re talking about. I have an Uncle Omar and a pair of grandparents on Pops’s side, but I haven’t seen them since I was little. The only thing I really remember is sitting in a corner while other kids played and ran through fresh summer grass without any shoes on. The parents steered their kids away when they took pity on me and invited me to play.

I don’t miss any of that, but I do wish that Pops had his family around us like Dad. Dad has a son from a previous marriage, for crying out loud. It’s like he has all of these ties, strong as cement, while Pops has burned all his bridges to the ground.

“Guys?” I say, sticking my head in the doorway. “I think it’s time to eat.”

“Of course.” Dad blanches, turning to Pops. “It’s time for us to bring out the food, Paul.”

Pops turns to the counter in silence.

My parents are always a little weird when Dave is around, which I get, but that doesn’t make it any less awkward. We pass dishes around the table and start dinner in silence. Abuela, never one to accept quiet, launches into a story.

“These kids these days, they stand outside our house and they just make the loudest noise,” she says, shaking her head. “I saw these boys with a flip-and-go the other day, riding around on scooters.”

“Abuela, what?”

I can’t speak to her in Spanish, but understanding her English is almost as hard.

“You know what I mean. The camera that’s always flipping.” She waves a hand in my direction. “None of them had helmets. I was so sure that one of them would end up dead, and I’d have to clean up their brains on our driveway.”

“That’s not disgusting at all,” Dave mutters under his breath.

Abuelo makes a face, like he can hear him, but I’m not sure. He tries to fool us all into thinking he’s losing his hearing, but I think that’s his sharpest skill. He catches my eye, winking.