Next, Lina proclaims that she will never attend a Sunday dinner again. She is done with them, she says, done with those people. You can go, she tells Antonia. Go, if you want. Antonia feels she has been cut in half. Aunt Rosa makes Sunday dinner at her own house now, and it is right next door, and the food is good. Eventually, Antonia starts slipping out of the apartment on Sunday afternoons, spending those evenings in the presence of a real family, the cocoon of familiar Sofia and the warmth of a house actually presided over by adults. When she returns after dinner, laden with leftovers Rosa insists on piling into her arms, she often finds her mamma sleeping on the couch.

During the week, their house is quiet. They read. There are days they do not speak at all.

Lina realizes sometime in the spring that she hasn’t paid rent all winter. She imagines herself and Antonia, thrown out, sitting in the black slushy puddles that guard each street corner. She opens her mouth and begins to wail and takes to her bed.

Antonia listens patiently, and when Lina has howled out enough of her predicament, Antonia calls Sofia’s house and says, “My mamma needs a job.”

The next week like magic, Joey calls and says he has a contact at an industrial laundry that washes the linens from restaurants and the sheets from hotels. “It’s not glamorous,” he says. “And I’m happy to keep helping—to help you out.” Of course, Joey had been paying for their apartment all winter. Lina is trapped. She depends upon her captor to release her, and of course, he will not, because she cannot take care of herself without him. The Family will not free Lina; it will not abandon her. We’ll always keep you safe, Joey almost says.

“I don’t want your fucking blood money,” she screams at Joey. “I never want anything to do with it again.” Joey lies: he tells her that the laundry has nothing to do with the Family. He promises she can support herself from now on. Lina hangs up the phone and tells Antonia, “We’re finally done with them.”

But later that week Antonia slips next door for Sunday dinner, where Joey resists the urge to put a hand over her arm and apologize for being alive. And when she leaves, Rosa slips a foil-covered dish of leftovers into her hands.

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