Chapter 1
Janelle had to turn sideways to get through the front door, and she still caught a shopping bag on the handle.
“Wait. Don’t pull it. Zora, the little one. The little pink one.”
Zora shifted the iced coffee into her other hand and lifted the cord off the lever. Janelle came through in a rustle of tissue paper, stopped on the entry rug, and looked down at everything hanging from her wrists.
“I think something’s missing.”
“You put the shoes inside the other bag.”
“Which shoes?”
“The ones you said were practical.”
“Those are practical. I can wear them to three different things.”
Zora closed the door with her hip. Outside, a delivery cyclist was arguing with a driver who had stopped across the bike lane. She could still hear them through the glass, though she could no longer make out the words. The hallway felt pleasantly cool after the sticky walk from the car.
Janelle lowered her purchases onto the bench beneath the mirror and began separating the handles. A narrow gold box slid out of a bag and landed near Zora’s shoe.
“That’s yours,” Janelle said.
Zora picked it up. “You bought it.”
“For you.”
“You said you needed another purchase to get the little perfume.”
“And I chose something for my best friend. Why are you making it ugly?”
Zora opened the box. Two small gold hoops sat in white velvet. She had admired them for perhaps four seconds while Janelle was trying on a bracelet. Apparently that had constituted an order.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Put them on sometime. Let me see them in your ears before we’re both dead.”
“We could have gone to Egghead instead of the last store.”
“We could have, if you had said something before we got into the car.”
“I said something before we went into the last store.”
Janelle straightened, thought about it, and waved one hand. “You said, ‘There’s still Egghead.’ I thought you meant generally. As a concept.”
Zora looked at her.
“Fine. I was looking at the window. But I asked if you wanted to leave.”
“While you were wearing one shoe.”
“And you said no.”
That part was true. The saleswoman had already gone to find the other size, Janelle had been happy, and Zora had assumed there would be time. It had seemed easier to wait another few minutes than explain that the technology store closed earlier on Sundays. Then the few minutes had become forty.
She set the earrings back in their box. “I’m ordering the board online.”
“Good. Problem solved. Now please tell me there’s food.”
From farther inside the house, Shavonne called, “Who bought all that?”
“Me,” Janelle called back.
“Come show me.”
Janelle picked up two bags. Zora rescued the little pink one again and followed her toward the kitchen.
Simone occupied one end of the table with a laptop, a bowl of cherries, and three small cards in different shades of cream. Shavonne stood at the counter eating a piece of chicken directly from the serving dish. Her hair was clipped up, and one of the straps of her top had slipped down her arm.
“There are plates,” Simone said without looking up.
“I know. I live here.” Shavonne pulled out a chair with her foot. “Come here. Show me the yellow dress first.”
“How did you know about the yellow dress?” Zora asked.
Janelle was already removing the tissue. “I sent pictures.”
Of course she had. Zora had been standing right beside her while she sent them, probably looking at the development board on her phone.
“Hands,” Simone told Shavonne.
Shavonne put down the chicken and went to the sink. “One day you’re going to speak to me in a complete sentence.”
“When you stop reaching for silk with barbecue sauce on your fingers.”
Zora put her coffee beside an empty place, washed her own hands, and found a plate. The chicken was still warm. She added rice and a generous spoonful of the cucumber salad, then returned for a fork while her sisters debated whether the yellow dress required a different bra.
Janelle glanced over the fabric. “Did you eat lunch?”
“With you.”
“You ate half a sandwich.”
“Because you wanted the other half.”
“I offered you some of my salad.”
Zora sat down. “I didn’t want leaves with peach on them.”
“It was an excellent salad.”
“You ate my sandwich.”
Shavonne laughed and reached past Janelle to feel the dress. Simone finally closed her laptop enough to take an interest.
Zora had almost finished her chicken when her father came in through the rear hall, carrying his phone and wearing the expression he used when someone had made an expensive mistake he intended to discuss politely. He held up a finger as he passed the table.
“Then don’t ship it,” he said into the phone. “No, I understand what the label says. I want to know what’s in the crate. Those are two different conversations.”
He went to the refrigerator, opened it, and stood looking inside without taking anything out.
Zora got up and handed him a bottle of sparkling water. He mouthed his thanks.
“Send me the photographs. Both ends of the roll. We’ll deal with it in the morning.” He listened, unscrewed the cap, then added, “And tell them to keep the lot together. Please. I don’t want to find half of it in another warehouse by nine.”
He ended the call and looked at the dress spread across two chairs.
“That’s a nice color.”
“Thank you, Mr. de la Cruz.” Janelle held it up against herself.
“You’re staying for dinner?”
“If I’m invited.”
“You’ve already got half a shop in my kitchen. I think we’re past invitations.”
Janelle smiled. Darnell kissed the top of Shavonne’s head as he passed her, moved a shopping bag off the remaining chair, and sat beside Zora.
“Let me see yours.”
She pushed the earring box toward him.
“Very nice.” He opened it, nodded, and looked toward the hallway. “Where’s the rest?”
“That’s it.”
“You’ve been out all afternoon.”
“I know.”
He glanced at Janelle’s bags, then back at the tiny box. Zora recognized the beginning of the conversation and wished she had waited to sit down.
“Did the card work?” he asked.
“Yes, Dad.” She took it from the zipped compartment of her purse and gave it back. “I bought lunch.”
“And?”
“Coffee.”
“Zora.”
“And parking.”
Shavonne covered her mouth. Simone said, “Don’t encourage her.”
Darnell laid the card on the table. “I gave you that so you could get yourself something.”
“I was going to. We didn’t get to Egghead.”
“We ran out of time,” Janelle said. “That was mostly me.”
“There were no other shops?”
“There were lots of shops. They didn’t have anything I wanted.”
He looked genuinely troubled by that. Her father could reject an entire shipment because the weave was wrong and never feel obliged to buy a consolation roll. Put her in front of a rack of dresses, however, and leaving empty-handed became a problem that required the family’s attention.
“You don’t have to buy the first thing you see,” he said. “But you can find something. A bag. A pair of shoes.”
“I have shoes.”
“You’re wearing the same ones you wore to help move those machines at school.”
Zora looked down. There was a faint gray mark beside the left sole. It was from a caster, not anything that had made the shoes unusable.
“They’re comfortable.”
“That isn’t all shoes can be,” Shavonne said, examining one of Janelle’s new sandals.
“They can also give you the blister you showed me in the car last week.”
“That was a breaking-in period.”
Darnell leaned back, his attention still on Zora. “I don’t want people thinking you have to do without. You go out with your friends, everybody gets something, and you come home with coffee.”
Janelle lowered the dress.
“I don’t think that,” she said.
“I know you don’t, sweetheart. I’m talking about people.”
“What people?” Zora asked.
“People notice.”
“They can notice that I don’t want a handbag.”
“It doesn’t have to be a handbag.”
She put down her fork. She hadn’t been upset when they came home. Mildly annoyed about Egghead, yes, but she had spent the afternoon with Janelle, eaten a sandwich she mostly liked, and watched a woman explain why a bag that couldn’t hold a phone was worth more than her laptop. It had been a reasonably good day.
“Dad, I wasn’t standing outside while she bought things. I was with her. I tried on those earrings. We had fun. I just didn’t want most of what was there.”
He took a drink of water.
“And she helped me,” Janelle said. “I was going to get the other dress, which photographs beautifully and makes me look like somebody wrapped me for shipping. Your daughter prevented that.”
“I’d like to see this dress,” Shavonne said.
Janelle reached for her phone. “You will not be sharing it.”
Darnell rubbed a fingertip along the edge of his card. “What did you want from Egghead?”
“A controller board. And I wanted to look at the little manipulator they have on display.”
“For your test?”
“The board, sort of. I’ve been running the control model on my laptop, but the timing’s too forgiving. I want it on something with actual limits. If I can make it behave there, I’ll know—”
She stopped. He was listening, but Simone had opened the photograph and made a startled noise. Janelle tried to take the phone back. Shavonne caught her wrist.
“You’ll know what?” Darnell asked.
Zora turned back to him. “Whether I’ve solved the problem or just given it enough processing power that it doesn’t look like a problem.”
“All right.” He slid the card toward her. “Order it.”
“I can pay for it.”
“I know you can. You can also accept a present.”
She hesitated, then took the card.
“Thank you.”
“And eat some more chicken. You’ve been moving that piece of cucumber around for ten minutes.”
He got up to answer another call, first pointing at Shavonne’s hand as she reached into the serving dish again. She picked up the tongs with an exaggerated sigh.
Janelle leaned against Zora’s chair once he was gone.
“You could have told me Egghead was closing.”
“I should have.”
“Yes. I would have taken the shoe off.”
“Eventually.”
“Almost immediately.” She nudged Zora’s shoulder with her hip. “We’ll go this week. A whole trip for screws and whatever. I won’t even complain until the second hour.”
“You complained after eighteen minutes last time.”
“Because you left me beside a printer that kept making a frog.”
“It was demonstrating repeatability.”
“It was the same frog, Zora.”
“That was the point.”
Janelle stared at her for a moment, then laughed and dragged over another chair. She began showing Zora the pictures from the afternoon, including three Zora hadn’t known she was in.
In the first she was holding Janelle’s purse. In the second she was examining the clasp. In the third the purse was open and a saleswoman was leaning toward her with a worried expression.
“I didn’t break it,” Zora said.
“I told her that.”
“You were laughing.”
“I can do two things.”
Zora took the phone and enlarged the last photograph. The clasp had been magnetically indexed. She had thought so in the store, but the angle here made it obvious.
“Send me this one.”
Janelle looked at the screen. “You look cute in the first one.”
“Send that too.”
Before Janelle could answer, Simone pushed one of the cream cards across the table.
“While you’re looking at things, which of these reads better?”
Zora studied the tiny gold lettering. “Neither. Who’s supposed to read this?”
“People with eyes,” Shavonne said.
“People with a magnifier.”
Simone turned the laptop around. “Fine. Sit here. Show me how large you think it should be.”
Zora moved her plate, pulled the laptop closer, and asked what program she was using.