The Book of Broken Hearts (30 page)

“But his family—”

“His family is lots of different people. Some of them made mistakes. Some of them are still making mistakes. But you can’t judge everyone by their relatives. Look where that would get you.” He tapped his head again and winked.

I laughed because he did, and because I was grateful for the momentary lightness, but laughing at his Alzheimer’s
jokes had the same effect on me as the disease did on him—it consumed a little piece of me every time, one I’d never get back.

Papi leaned over to scratch Pancake’s ears. “Look in your heart,
querida
. Give it a chance.”

When we got back to the house, Papi kissed me on the forehead and went inside, and I sat on the back porch with Pancake for the rest of the day. We watched the sun sink behind the Needles, and then it was gone, and Pancake put his head in my lap and we both sighed. Dogs knew the real deal.

Sometimes, a sigh was all the fight you had left.

“Have you kids seen my big shovel?” Papi barreled into the barn in dust-covered jeans, work gloves black with dirt. He’d insisted on gardening this morning to give me and Emilio a chance to talk, even though he’d interrupted us five times already, searching for potting soil and trowels and tools. “Your mother had it out a few weeks ago.”

I couldn’t remember Mom ever doing yard work, and I wasn’t even sure we
had
a big shovel, but Papi finally located it in the corner with the rakes. He dragged it back out into the yard, Pancake waddling behind him.

Emilio leaned against the workbench with his arms crossed over his chest. It was his first day back since the Santa Fe trip, and his eyes were dark and dim, red like he hadn’t slept. I’d been trying to say the words in my heart all morning—how much I hated fighting with him. How much I missed his arms around me. How sorry I was about Danny, how I understood why he had to leave, why he was always
chasing the next amazing thing. I even understood why he’d said those things about Papi and the kind of knife-edged guilt that never leaves you.

I knew why he didn’t want to see me go through it. I hated seeing him carry it too.

I’m sorry about your broken heart.

All of it sounded right in my head, but I couldn’t find my voice.

Emilio spoke instead. “I’m sorry for what I said. About your pops and the bike . . . I got pissed. I didn’t mean it.”

I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
My cousin died. I never got to say good-bye. I still feel guilty . . .

But that was all he had, and he gave me a long sigh and got back to work. As he rummaged through a mason jar full of screws, I pretended to dig into a box of old Halloween costumes, fairies and frogs and clowns and Darth Vader, but my eyes lingered on his arms. I’d come to know his scars as mysterious but permanent, as much a part of him as his wavy black hair and soft brown eyes. But through my father’s story, in an instant, they’d changed. Everything about Emilio had changed since I’d last seen him. It felt like years.

“Do you want a drink?” I chucked a yellow-blond Miss Piggy wig into the trash and headed toward the doors, but I nearly crashed into Papi. His face was twisted with panic, knuckles white around the shovel handle.

“I can’t find it, Juju. I looked all over and it’s not there.”

“Papi. It’s okay. You already found it. With the rakes, remember?”

He shook his head. “Someone stole it. They stole it, Juju. We should’ve been more careful!”

“You’re holding it. Look.” I reached for the shovel, but he snatched it away and ran back out to the yard.

It was obvious Papi was no longer talking about gardening. The familiar dread pooled in my stomach, and I counted to ten and waited for it to pass, to usher in the no-nonsense calm that would let me march outside and set things right, like I had at Uncle Fuzzy’s.

But this time my nerves stayed tangled. My arms and legs felt old, the bones weak and stiff. Instead of calm, my body filled with utter exhaustion.

All I’d wanted to do today was fix the mess with Emilio, find a way back to the moments before our argument. But out in the yard, Papi was ranting again, louder by the second, and finally Emilio set down his tools to go investigate.

“I got this.” He squeezed my shoulder as he passed, and a knot tightened my throat. I sagged against the barn’s warped wood, wished on Celi’s old fairy wand for all of it to stop.

“Jude,” Emilio called from the yard. Through the wall, his voice was distorted but urgent, edged with panic. “Get out here.”

“Papi, what . . . what did you do?” I stared openmouthed at the disaster formerly known as our yard. It was hacked apart,
cratered with a dozen holes and corresponding mounds of grass and dirt.

“Help me find it, Juju!” Papi gave up the shovel, but when I laid it in the grass at my feet, he snatched it up and started another hole. “The treasure,
querida
.”

Emilio tried to distract him with an update on Valentina, but Papi was undeterred. My so-called angelic singing voice bombed out too—“Thoroughly Modern Millie” fell on deaf ears. Mari was still in New York. Mom was at work. I was out of ideas.

“It’s buried next to the grave,” Papi said. “I know it is—he told me. But I can’t find it. Someone must’ve moved it.”

“Papi.” I kept my voice low and steady, but inside the panic rose, pushing high into my throat. “There’s no treasure. I promise.”

He shook his head, wouldn’t look at me as he jumped on the shovel head and speared the earth. “There are two kinds of people in this world.”

I watched him closely, desperate for that punch line, the joke that would explain everything. “What are they?”

“Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. I dig.”

“Papi, it’s not—”

“He said it was buried under the grave of Arch—no,
next
to the grave of Arch Stanton. That’s it. Help me find the headstone.”

Realization pierced my heart.
Arch Stanton. The treasure.
It was a scene out of
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
. He was looking
at me with frantic eyes, desperate for that treasure, convinced it existed in our yard, that the characters existed in his life.

He thought it was real.

“No, the treasure was from your movie, remember?” I said. “With Tuco? Two kinds of people in this world?”

“Tuco wants the money for himself!” Papi wagged a finger in my face. “You better not be on his side. Are you working for Angel Eyes?” He squinted at me, scrutinized my face. Even Pancake was spooked, barking and barking despite Emilio trying to calm him, probably wondering how Papi could get away with this kind of property destruction when he always got sent to his doggy bed.

“I’m not working for anyone, Papi,” I said. “I’m on your side. But maybe we should take a break, eat some lunch first?”

“I don’t want to waste time.” Papi leaned on the shovel and wiped his forehead, a yawn escaping his throat. “It’s a lot of money,
queridita.
We could use it for Lourdes’s college.”

“You look tired,
viejito
.”

He tried to wave me off, but he yawned again, and I seized the opportunity.

“Why don’t you let us look for the treasure. Emilio’s really strong—he can dig deeper.”

“But—”

“Let’s go inside,” I said. “Emilio will find it. I promise.”

Emilio rose when I returned to the barn, came out from behind the bike to meet me. Close. Super, crazy close. Warm breath
brushed my lips, and a swirling vortex tugged behind my belly button, like falling, like delirium.

“Is
el jefe
okay alone in there?” he asked.

“I put him to bed.” I closed my eyes and steadied my heart, forced out the words before anything else interrupted them, before Papi woke up wanting that treasure, before Emilio returned to Valentina, before I lost the nerve. “My father told me about Danny. The other day, after Samuel came for the lift.”

He pulled back immediately.

I felt the cold between us and opened my eyes. “I’m sorry. I know why you said that stuff about Papi, why you’re worried about us. And I’m so sorry Danny died, and I wish I could—”

“I don’t wanna talk about it right now. Please, Jude. I can’t.”

I clamped my mouth shut. Of course he didn’t want to talk—I’d blurted out the most insensitive thing ever, the thing I dreaded hearing whenever someone found out about Papi’s diagnosis.
Sorry, so sorry
.

“I should probably . . .” Emilio nodded toward the bike. “I’m really close. Almost done.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. I just—I’m not up for it today.”

“But—”

“Why won’t you let it go?” Emilio yanked a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands. “You’re, like,
obsessed
with the past. News flash, Jude: Not all of us wanna go back in time.”

His harshness stung, but I pressed on. “I know you’re—”

“You actually don’t.” He got in my face again, only this time the dimples were gone, the warmth in his eyes replaced with red-hot anger. “You don’t know anything about it. And you never will. Know why? You can’t handle it. You’re the most scared person I know.”

Tears pricked my eyes. I folded my arms across my chest and focused on Pancake, who’d wandered in from outside with a faded rawhide bone, probably unearthed by one of Papi’s treasure holes.

“There’s so much inside you,” Emilio said. “But you won’t let it out. It’s like you need permission just to be
you
.” He paced the dirt floor, running his hands through his hair. “You wait for your old friends to call you up out of nowhere, even though they bailed on your whole family. You wait for your sister to tell you what to do and how to do it—and I ain’t talkin’ about Valentina. I mean
your
stuff. I wish I could . . .
God
!”

He stammered and trailed his fingers over my heart, but then he pulled away and resumed pacing. “You sit there taking pictures and daydreaming about the way things used to be, like if you wish hard enough it’ll all come back. The most alive and real I ever saw you was that day on the bike with me. It was like the bad news about the genetic thing woke you up for just long enough to realize that life is so short . . . but then you let it go again. It’s like you’re waitin’ around for someone to invent a time machine instead of just livin’ your life.”

The words rang in my ears. Everything he said was right. True.

“Guess what?” His voice was quiet again, but heat radiated from his heart, out through his skin, rushing over me in waves. “The past ain’t comin’ back. It’s done. No do-overs. You got what you got. We all do.”

Dust floated in the light between us, and the breeze stilled outside, and Pancake quit chomping on his bone. It was like someone had hit the pause button.

“I get it,” Emilio whispered. “Ever since Danny died, I been tryin’ to leave too. ’Cause he left, and my pops left, and then my brothers. And it was like, when’s my turn? Like, if I could just go fast enough, far enough, everything would be okay. But I’m tellin’ you, things changed for me this summer. Everything changed. You . . .” He narrowed his eyes in the dusty air, his gaze sending white-hot sparks through my stomach. “You don’t even know what I’m sayin’, right?”

The sparks inside me collided and faded, fell like the July Fourth ashes at the Bowl. I shook my head, closed my eyes against the truth. The enormity of it was too heavy, too impossible.

“Open your eyes, Jude. Look at me. Say something.”

I opened them. Looked at him. Said something. “Scared. You’re right. I’m totally scared of everything.”

Pancake yawned and laid his head against my foot, and just like that, this odd sense of peace floated over me. It was as if, all along, I’d only needed to say those words, to admit it
out loud, and everything would turn out okay. I blinked away tears, and Emilio smiled. Real, whole, gentle.

We sat on the bench together. He put his arm around me and rubbed my back, and for a long time we stayed like that. Just breathing, just being okay.

“Danny Vargas,” Emilio finally said. His voice was soft and low, full of reverence. “He was nineteen—same as I am now. He was a vegetarian, okay? Very unpopular in a Puerto Rican household. Couldn’t spell for shit. Wore the same cologne since seventh grade. Loved comics. Never watched TV. He was always outside, any chance he got, smellin’ trees or chasin’ animals.”