In bed, Jeanette wakes, gasps, holds her breath. A sharp pain in her chest. Almost like loving Mario, wanting to run to Mario. She holds the feeling like a single bullet. No, she’s gotten too far to break. Outside, a thunderstorm clicks raindrops over dying, sick banana leaves. Some nights like this—she isn’t even aware of it, how her fingers find their way to her nightstand, how they search for the bottle, a healing rattle. She curls an empty fist beside her and tucks it beneath her head. Ana sleeps in the small room next to her own. Jeanette strains to listen but hears nothing.

Mario. His beard never grew in right, but he insisted on letting it grow. Red highlights streaked through his chin even though his hair had no red at all. Mario. A scar on his abdomen from a bout with appendicitis she liked to trace with her fingers. He was more organized than she but had annoying habits like forgetting wet clothes in the washing machine. He was afraid of heights.

When his parents split up, his dad went back to Argentina, started a new family in Argentina. Mario had adored him, but his dad had never called. His mother remarried, and Mario hated his stepfather, said his stepfather constantly disrespected him, and once, they’d come to blows. Mario always worried about “disrespect.” He spent so much time angry over perceived “disrespect.” After a fight, they liked to drive in silence to the beach, way up north, way past the tourists, to the quietest stretches of sand. Just to sit, sometimes hold hands. Mario most feared everyone in his life leaving him.

Jeanette curls on her side and places a hand to the wall as if it will pulse with an answer: what to do tomorrow, what to do every day from here on out. What color paint is this? Wonders if Ana also can’t sleep.

“But how could you do that?” Jeanette’s mother whispers across the kitchen table. The sun illuminates her face through the window, illuminates the particles of powder at her hairline. Ana watches the Disney Channel in the next room. Old Miley Cyrus bossing around a band of preteens. Laugh track. “How could you just keep someone’s child overnight? Someone who you don’t even know!”

Ana has been with Jeanette all morning, watching TV shows, following her around, doodling in a notebook on her belly in the spare room where she slept. Jeanette’s mother got here an hour ago. She visits on Saturdays. Since leaving Mario, since detox, since rehab. She has never missed a weekend.

Jeanette’s mother runs a finger over the containers before her. One holds rice and beans, the other Jeanette’s favorite dessert, arroz con leche. Her mother never shows up without food she has made the night before, claiming she has made too much, that she doesn’t want a refrigerator full of leftovers.