Chapter 67

1:30 a.m. Sunday

The creaking of a floorboard brought Lupe from sleep to full alertness. She's learned to be a light sleeper when she was tasked with caring for her siblings so any little sound tended to awaken her.

She sat up in bed. Her door was locked – the first time she'd ever lived in a house with locks that worked – but she knew that locks wouldn't stop a determined intruder. She had been expecting a late-night visit since Chuck had returned from the dance. He'd pulled his mother aside for a few moments and then headed off to bed. Mariel had called Elizabeth – moving to the other room before dialing – so Lupe wasn't certain what had transpired. But she'd seen that Chuck was bummed about something and she figured his slutty girlfriend had tossed him aside.

That meant he was horny and horny guys wouldn't let a lock deter them – or so the stories Lupe had overheard had led her to believe. She waited for the doorknob to rattle but it didn't. She got out of bed and put her ear to the door but she heard nothing. She knew Elizabeth wasn't coming home that night – not when she had the chance to screw her boyfriend.

Lupe was still a little irked at Andy for calling her out in front of everyone. She knew why he'd done it that way. He didn't want her to be able to tell Rico that he'd said something that he hadn't but it still pissed her off. What pissed her off more was that he'd played it off like no big deal afterward.

The most disconcerting part of the day was Regan Riley. She had treated Lupe like an old friend at the dinner and then asked her opinion about her gown and her shoes and anything else. Elizabeth had been the same way but she'd expected that. It was obvious that everyone had been ordered to be nice to the poor little waif the Penas had taken in.

Even Regan's white bread parents had been pleasant. Robert and Rita had spent half an hour with Lupe, telling her about Clairborne Benedict Preparatory School for Girls. Lupe had to admit that she was impressed – and she was impressed that the Rileys had seemed impressed with her (or at least pretended to be interested in Lupe's academic accomplishments).

Now she was standing at her door waiting for Chuck Pena to break in and attack her. She wasn't certain how long she stood there before deciding nothing was going to happen. Instead of going back to bed, she put on a pair of slippers and headed downstairs. There was food in the refrigerator and Lupe was hungry again.

She made it to the bottom of the stairs before she saw the light on in the kitchen. She thought it was stupid of her to come to her potential attacker instead of staying in her safe bedroom but a face poked out of the kitchen when she turned to head back.

Miguel Pena saw her standing there and waved her to come on in to where he was stationed.

"OK, make you a deal," Miguel whispered when Lupe walked through the door. "If you don't tell Mariel, I won't tell her."

A whole host of scenarios popped into Lupe's head at once – all of them wrong. It took her a second to see that Miguel was gesturing to the table where the makings of banana splits were set out.

Lupe's angry reply stuck in her throat and she laughed.

"OK, deal," she said. Miguel gestured for her to take a chair while he fixed them a late-night ice cream treat.

"Mariel will skin us both if she finds out we've had ice cream in the middle of the night," Miguel said conspiratorially. "She seems to think it's only desserts and birthday parties. Silly woman."

Lupe found herself smiling in spite of herself.

"OK, now here's the hard part," Miguel said as he shook the can of aerosol whipped topping. "This makes noise and I'm pretty sure Mariel has trained herself to listen for it. So head to bottom of the stairs and wait. If she comes out, save yourself. Don't come back for me."

Lupe covered her mouth to keep from laughing at his antics. Miguel reminded her a lot of an older version of her mother's most recent boyfriend. He'd also made certain to include Lupe in any fun that was done outside of the bedrooms.

Miguel offered a wink when Lupe didn't move from her seat.

"Brave," he said. "That's a good trait."

"If she comes in, I'll just give her my sad face and tell her I had a nightmare or something," Lupe whispered.

"Hey, you're quick with your brain, too," Miguel replied. "You're going to go far, I think."

He took a glance at the doorway and then coated both bowls with the white fluffy cream. Just before he plopped a maraschino cherry on top, he swiped his finger through one of the toppings and touched Lupe's nose.

"Lupe the white-nosed Chica," he sang to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as he tossed her a paper napkin for clean up.

They both dug into their treats before Miguel spoke again.

"Are you adjusting to everything OK?" he asked in what Lupe suspected was a fatherly tone. It was different from his normal voice but she had no real frame of reference. No one had ever treated as a father treats a daughter before.

"It's great," she told him. "You guys are like what I always pictured a normal family would be. Elizabeth has been really nice – and so has Chuck. Is he OK?"

"He's a little disappointed right now," Miguel offered.

"His girlfriend dump him?" Lupe wanted to know.

"Well, that's some of it but that's not why he's upset," Miguel said. "Some bad things happened at the school this evening. I think he finally saw where his life was headed and it bothered him a great deal."

Lupe was surprised that Miguel was so forthcoming to a relative stranger.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to butt in to family matters."

"Oh," Miguel said with a wave of his hand. "It already seems like you've been here forever. The kids both think the world of you and Mariel and I do, too. In fact, we were going to talk to you tomorrow about this but now seems just as good a time. We want you to know that you're always welcome here. We want you to consider this your home as long as you want to – forever, in fact."

Lupe blinked and looked away before a tear escaped. She used her shoulder to wipe it away and felt the soft silk of the pajamas that Elizabeth had bought for her just that morning. They were off-white and the blouse buttoned up the front. The set came with a pair of long silk pants and a pair of silk shorts. Just as she'd done a few minutes after Elizabeth had handed them to her, Lupe started to cry in earnest.

Miguel was a bit unsure of how to react. His first instinct was to comfort Lupe as he would Elizabeth. Then he considered the sort of attention that Lupe had received from males in the past few weeks and wondered if it would be welcome.

"Hey, it's OK," he said softly as he moved around to crouch beside her chair. He made certain he left her plenty of room for her to flee if she wanted and he made no move to touch her. It turned out that he didn't need to. Lupe wrapped her arms around his neck as soon as he was close enough and cried against his shoulder.

"It's OK," Miguel said again, patting her softly on the back. "I didn't mean to make you cry. We just wanted you to know that we really enjoy having you here. That's all."

"Thank you," Lupe said through her tears. It was the first time she'd ever had someone tell her they wanted her to stay. Her mother was always telling Lupe she needed to leave – either to take the other children somewhere or to perform some chore that needed to be done.

Mariel appeared in the doorway and took in the scene with her hand covering her mouth. She stood there until her husband noticed and gestured with his eyes that he needed help.

"I've told you about hugging pretty girls while I'm trying to sleep," Mariel said with a laugh as she came into the kitchen. She spotted the ice cream on the table and shook her head. "And I've told you about eating ice cream this late at night. I swear, Lupe, he never listens."

Lupe broke her embrace and sat up quickly when Mariel spoke. She wasn't certain the woman wasn't upset to find her hugging Miguel. Her mother had always gotten angry if her boyfriend paid attention to Lupe. She saw Mariel smiling warmly at her though.

"He told me I had to have one, too," Lupe said, picking up a napkin to wipe her nose. "I told him that I knew you would be mad but he said, 'Papi rules this house.'"

Mariel couldn't stifle her laughter this time and it escaped in a snort.

"Yeah, I sort of thought he was full of it but I got ice cream out of the deal," Lupe related.

Mariel had no trouble wrapping Lupe in a hug – just as Lupe had no trouble returning it.

"Thank you for saying 'it' instead of what you really meant to say," Miguel deadpanned.

He shook his head sadly.

"I was just telling Lupe about some of what we've talked about," Miguel told his wife. "She started to cry so I'm not sure if she liked the idea or hated the idea of living here full-time when she's not in school."

"I like the idea," Lupe said. "I've ... I've wished for it for the last couple of days. I just ... I just worried that I'm betraying everyone."

"Like whom?" Miguel asked.

"Like Rico and the people in the building and even my mom and little sisters and brother," Lupe answered. "I feel like I'm running away."

"Oh, honey," Mariel said, "you're not running away. You're escaping. There is a huge difference."

"Maybe you should tell her how you know the difference," Miguel prompted.

"We haven't told you much about our childhoods, have we?" Mariel asked.

"I know that Miguel was born in Puerto Rico and you were born in Cuba," Lupe replied, relating the brief information that Anita Lopez had provided.

Miguel noticed that she pronounced their birthplaces with a Spanish inflection – Poo-ehr-TOE and coo-BA instead of POR-toe and Q-bah – that wasn't evident in her everyday speech. He smiled at her involuntarily when he thought that she'd once received a B in Spanish.

"I was five years old when I left Cuba," Mariel said. "My birth name is different than the one I was given when we landed here. Have you heard of the Mariel Boatlift?"

Lupe shook her head and Mariel provided her a history lesson on life in Cuba and her exodus.

"We were among the last people to leave," she said. "My father was in the army and he and mother were forbidden to go. So they gave me to a family so I could have a better life in the United States than they could offer me in Cuba. Do you know much about Cuba at all?"

"Only that it is one of the last Socialist countries in the world and that it's really backward," Lupe said.

"Both true," Mariel told her. "Even 35 years after I escaped, it hasn't changed much. For a while, I thought like you did. I thought that I had abandoned my parents. My brother is two years old than me. You'll meet his family next month when they come in for Elizabeth's graduation. He's the one that sat me down when I was a little younger than you and explained to me the difference between 'running away' and 'escaping.'

"My life would have been a lot like the one you've led. We would have lived in poverty. I learned 20 years ago that my father died just after we escaped. He cut himself on something rusty, contracted tetanus and died – because the country didn't have enough medication to treat him. My mother remarried a man the government didn't like and they simply disappeared. I've tried dozens of times to find her and she is nowhere that I can locate. We have a large Cuban community but no one has any idea what happened to her after my father died. That would have been my brother and me. We simply would have disappeared, too.

"Instead, the family that raised me provided for a roof over my head and food in my stomach. They renamed me Mariel after the way we escaped so no one from the Cuban government could locate me and make me come home. I met a handsome dentist and had two pretty good children. It's a life that never could have occurred if I hadn't escaped. Perhaps I'd have died of a curable disease like my father before I reached age 10. I certainly wouldn't have a college degree. You were facing the same sort of life I was. I thought I had an idea of what your life was like but I really didn't.

"Andy and Rico opened my eyes to how you were living. No one should grow up like that, Lupe. Everyone should be given a chance to escape that sort of life. You saw your chance and you took it. I promise you: No one you've left behind is upset that you've gotten out. I can tell you that because if they had the chance, they would do the same thing for you that my real parents did for me. Look at Rico, for heaven's sake. There is nothing that man wouldn't do to protect you – to give you the chance to flourish. You haven't run away from anything, Lupe. I give you my word."