Return to Sender (13 page)

Actually, Tyler can't remember. It's some Greek myth. He'll have to look it up in his star book.

“I know,” Mari proposes. “She's crossing the sky to get back to her six sisters. But when she gets to the Milky Way, there's no bridge. So she asks that constellation that's the charioteer.”

“So does she get across or what?” Tyler is now the one intrigued. Maybe astronomers should hire Mari to make up
new stories about the constellations. Hers would probably be a lot better than all those dumb Greek gods falling in love with mere mortals. Suddenly, Tyler is aware that Mari is not looking up anymore, but looking straight at him.

“Can I tell you something, Tyler?” When he nods, Mari goes on. “You know how I said my mother might be calling us?”

Of course he remembers. He and Sara both thought it was weird that the girls’ mother wouldn't know where they are.

“My mother, she went to Mexico last December,” Mari begins. “And then when my
abuelita
died, my mother left Mexico to come back, but she never showed up, and my fa-ther, he tried to find her, but no one could tell him where she was.” Mari pauses to catch her breath, as if she might drown in the torrent of words tumbling out of her mouth.

“We've waited and waited. A whole year now. My fa-ther, I can tell, doesn't think she's going to come back. And my sisters, too. But how can somebody just disappear?”

“You think maybe something … happened to your mom?” Tyler hates bringing it up, but it's clear Mari really wants to talk about it.

Instead of going ballistic like she usually does when Tyler has suggested her mother might be dead, Mari begins to cry. Tyler has no idea what to do when a girl cries— except get her to stop. “But maybe it's like the seventh sister, Mari. Maybe your mom is just lost and trying to find her way back to you.” Just saying the words, Tyler has himself half believing it could be so.

And Mari is believing it, too. The sobs turn into sniffles. “You think so? Oh, I think so, too. But sometimes … some-times, I just worry. And I can't talk to my father or my sisters and worry them more.”

Tyler knows all about how hard it is to talk to adults. “Gramps is the only one I can really talk to. I mean, when he was alive,” he corrects himself. “Gramps used to tell me to look up when I felt down.”

“Fell down?” Mari doesn't quite understand.

“
Feel
down, like when you're really, really sad.”

“Look up when you feel down,” Mari repeats, looking up.

Looking up with her is what gives Tyler the idea. Tomorrow night, he's going to bring the telescope over to Grandma's. He can't give Mari her mother, but he can at least show her the seventh star reunited with her sisters.

His mom and dad and grandma are determined that the girls will have a nice Christmas. Especially now that the whole story is unraveling that their mother has actually been missing for a full year and probably died on the dangerous border crossing. There is a small chance, a chance Tyler is really hoping for, that the mother is alive and trying to reach the family. But the calls have stopped. That's what comes of an older sister with a big mouth threatening the caller with the police.

“How was I supposed to know?” Sara defends herself
when the whole Cruz situation comes up. Everybody in the family is feeling the tug of guilt: Mom and Dad for hiring them and enabling a sad situation, Ben for getting Felipe into the mess he's in, Sara for possibly scaring the mom away from ever calling again, Tyler for shunning them when they first came to the farm.

“What do you think we should get them for Christmas?” Mom wonders. Tomorrow she has a trip planned to the bigbox stores across the lake. Since the Christmas tree farm is closed down this year, Tyler doesn't have the cut that Gramps always gave him for helping run the operation. So a group present would be great, especially with three girls and three men to shop for. Actually, two men. The third isn't even allowed a phone card.

“Have the girls mentioned anything they might want?” Mom asks Tyler. You'd think he was the resident expert on the three Marías.

Tyler shrugs. The one time he asked the girls what all they were getting for Christmas, they explained that there'd be no gifts this year. Money is tight now that there are only two sons working to send the same amount home. Besides, their father can't risk going off the farm to shop. Tyler's mom used to take them all once a week to the Wal- Mart across the lake. Now they just make a list and Mom gets them whatever they need.

But that same morning in the milk barn, Mr. Cruz pulls Tyler over. He unfolds some pages torn out of a flyer and points to a stuffed dog that could be the rich, glossy cousin of the scrappy puppy Luby carts around, a cardboard dollhouse
with a sack of teensy furniture, and a very pretty purple backpack with pink butterflies. He counts out five twenty-dollar bills from the zippered pocket in his jacket. “María, Ofelia, Lubyneida,” he says. “Santa.”

Tyler understands. The backpack is probably for Mari, since she's too old for a stuffed animal or dollhouse. But what will his own family get her and her sisters? Tyler drops by the trailer, hoping to tease out something else the girls might want.

No problem getting Ofie and Luby to rattle off a list a mile long. But Mari shakes her head like she's too proud to ask for what she knows she can't get. Tyler says nothing about the money in his pocket. Although Mr. Cruz didn't say so, Tyler assumes that the gifts are meant to be a surprise. “Santa might just want to leave you presents at our house. Come on, Mari,” he coaxes. “There must be
something
you want?”

Mari gives him a fierce look, tempered by the tears glinting in her eyes. “Okay, I'll tell you what I want. I want my mother to come back. I want my uncle Felipe to come back.”

“Me too,” says little Luby. “That's what I want, too.”

Ofie looks torn. She doesn't want to give up the dollhouse or the Strawberry Shortcake Fruity Beauty Salon or the new Barbie in a skating outfit. “I know,” she pipes up, her face brightening. “We can ask Santa for presents and then we can ask the Three Kings to bring both Mamá and Tío Felipe back.” She looks hopefully at her sisters.

“We're not going to get anything from anybody,” Mari reminds her in a scolding voice.

“You are too!” Tyler puts in.

For a moment, a look of yearning comes on Mari's face, like a break of sunshine on a cloudy day. She hesitates. “Maybe … maybe if we could just know my mother is okay, my uncle is okay…” Her voice fades away. She bows her head, trying to keep her tears to herself.

If only those were things Tyler could give her! Instead, that afternoon in the crowded store, Tyler helps his mom pick out a little boxed set of stationery, as Mari is always writing letters, and for Ofie and Luby, a puzzle with puppies and coloring books and crayons. He finds the gifts Mr. Cruz asked for, and from himself, he decides on a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars Mari can paste to the ceiling in the trailer. That'll bring a smile to her face. Christmas tears are just the worst unless they're the kind that spring to your eyes when you are so touched, your happiness has to borrow from your sadness. As he stands in the checkout line with his mom and Sara, Tyler is amazed how thinking of making Mari happy has lifted the dark cloud that was hanging over his own holiday.

Early Christmas Eve morning Mari comes over with a letter for Tyler's mom to deliver to her uncle. Mom glances at it a long moment, sighs, then hands it back. “I'm sorry, honey,
but we're not allowed to bring anything in. They're no-contact visits. But tell you what,” Mom adds, because Mari is looking just like Mary and Joseph every time the door bangs shut in their faces on those
posada
nights. “What I can do is tell him whatever you want, okay?”

“Tell him we miss him,” Mari says in a quivering voice. “Tell him we love him.”

“I will, I promise. Please, don't be sad.” Mom puts her arms around the young girl. “We're going to do all we can to get your uncle home as soon as possible, either to Mexico or here.”

Mari manages a small smile that Tyler can tell costs her a big effort to muster. It makes him feel even sadder than if she'd burst into tears. When she heads outside, he follows. “Give me the letter.” Tyler doesn't know how he's going to do it. But it's one thing he knows Mari really wants for Christmas. “I'll get it to your uncle, promise.”

Mari hesitates. “But your mother said …”, she begins. Then that hopeful look comes on her face again as she hands over the folded- up pieces of notebook paper. It goes through Tyler's mind that it's too bad that Mari didn't have the box of stationery the Paquettes are giving her tomorrow for writing her uncle a letter today.

“Tyler,” she calls after him. “Thank you.”

Don't thank me yet, he feels like saying. But then, he has until tomorrow to make good on his Christmas promise.

Tyler must have inherited his grandmother's storytelling genes, because he tells his mom a pretty good tale about why he has to visit Felipe in prison this morning.

“I promised Mari to bring her back a personal report.”

“I can do that,” Mom says, eyeing him closely. “Besides, I'm not sure they let in kids.”

“I'm not a kid,” Tyler declares.

“I know you're not.” Mom smiles fondly. The thin edge of the wedge is in the door. “But they're going to take one look at my little man in his boy disguise and say no.”

“Please, Mom.” Tyler can see that his mother is struggling to find reasons why he can't visit. Before she can begin numbering them, he goes on. “Remember how you asked me to find out what the Cruzes wanted for Christmas? This is what Mari told me she wants.”

His mother considers, then sighs, giving in. “I guess there's no harm in trying. Worst comes to worst, you can wait in the car.”

Ms. Ramírez arrives with the lawyer. At first, Tyler thinks the redheaded man in jeans with a teensy earring in one ear must be his Spanish teacher's boyfriend. But no, it's Caleb Calhoun, the free lawyer from Burlington. When Mom asks him if it's going to be okay to bring Tyler along, Mr. Calhoun just shrugs. “It'll depend on the deputy, if he's having a good day.” What kind of a lawyer answer is that? No wonder he's free!

But at the county jail, they're in luck. The deputy in charge today is Uncle Larry's friend. What's more, he's in a holiday mood. He doesn't say a thing about Tyler being a
kid. As for the rule about each prisoner being allowed only three visitors at a time, the deputy can't see any harm in this foursome, as one's a lawyer and another's the translator. “That makes two visitors by my count.”

He leads them up some stairs and down a long hallway to the visitation room. “Anything on your person you got to leave behind in one of them,” he says, pointing to a row of tiny lockers lining one side of the hallway. On the other side are small high windows with bars. It's the first real sign that this is a jail instead of a hallway at the high school or the boys’ locker room at the gym. To enter the room, they have to walk through a metal detector. Mom has to leave her car keys in a little basket, but Mr. Calhoun is allowed a pen and pad. Thank goodness letters don't set off any alarms, Tyler thinks as he goes through the doorway with Mari's folded- up letter in his pants pocket.