“I heard you say she was fifteen, huh? I have a sister who would be that age.”

I don’t even breathe, hoping he’ll go on. And he does.

“I was eleven when they split us up.”

“The girl I’m looking for was adopted in 1982. What was your sister’s name, Hector?”

“Lisa.”

Something twists hard in my throat, then relief rushes in. Hope. “Can you tell me about it?”

He sits down heavily on the couch and reaches for a pack of Camels on the floor next to a blue glass ashtray, lighting up. “My folks probably knew social services was coming to take us, but they didn’t say a word. Isn’t that the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever heard?”

I take the chair across from him, and Cricket follows my cue, lying down while I register the tension in Hector’s face and hands. “What happened then?”

“I don’t know everything. My dad was mixed up in a lot of shit, I think. Drug stuff. The cops came a few times, and then one of the neighbors made an anonymous call about negligence.” He nearly spits the last part.

“Was that your father I talked to?”

“That piece of shit? That’s my uncle Carl. My dad went to San Quentin a long time ago. Still there, for all I know.”

“Why wouldn’t Carl talk to me?”

Air comes in a puff from Hector’s nose. What I’ve asked is ridiculous.

“But you’re talking to me,” I say.

“I got nothing to hide. Plus I just got a feeling that you were here for something important. You ever get those feelings?”

Yes, I want to say. Like right now, all of this. “Your mother, where is she?”

He shrugs, his forehead bunching. “She skipped town a while back with some other loser. I’d be surprised if she was still alive. She was working pretty hard to kill herself even then.”

“Why did you guys get split up?”

“I don’t even know, really. I came home from school one day and Lisa was gone. There were social workers here.” He scratches his shoulder hard as if the memory itself is right there at his fingertips, a sting or an ache. I know that instinct. The ongoing futility of it. How you can never quite reach the place that hurts.

“Did you get adopted, too, then?”

“No. I was too old, I guess. I got taken to a foster home, but I ran away.” He still has half a cigarette left, but reaches for the pack on the table and squeezes it for comfort. The cellophane whispers against his palm. “I ran away five or six different times, then went to a group home when no one else would take me. When I was eighteen I came back here, but my parents had left. Carl doesn’t like me much, but he hates everyone. You saw.”