The Prodigal Valentine

“I, um, didn’t like the idea of you being by yourself on New Year’s?” he said as Mattie, swallowed up in a nearly identical outfit and crying, “Uncle Ben! Uncle Ben!” launched herself at his knees, adhering to him like plastic wrap. Then she leaned back, giving him her most adoring, gap-toothed smile.

“Aunt Mercy an’ me’re watching Finding Nemo but Jake doesn’t wanna, he says it’s a sissy movie.” The squirt latched onto his hand and dragged him across the threshold. “Wanna come watch with us?”

Ben’s gaze shifted to Mercy, who shrugged. The sweatshirt didn’t budge. “Welcome to Mercy’s Rockin’ NewYear’s Eve. I’m babysitting,” she said, standing aside to keep from getting trampled as Jacob yelled from the back of the house, “I’m not a baby!”

“Get a job and we’ll talk,” Mercy called back as they all returned to the living room.

No reply except for the muffled pings and zaps of some video game.

“Popcorn’s ready,” she yelled again, plopping a plastic bowl as large as a bathtub in the middle of that trunk with identity issues. Over in her corner, Annabelle shimmered red…blue…green…red as the color wheel did its thing, while a small fire crackled lazily in a kiva fireplace in the opposite corner, and Ben felt a chuckle of pure delight rumble up from his chest.

Mercy reached up to adjust her hair, her hands landing on her hips when she was done. Her nails were as red as her walls, with what looked like little rhinestones or something imbedded in each tip. Amazing. Ben’s gaze shifted to her face; she looked more befuddled than ticked, he decided. “We’ve already had the first course—brownies—but I think there’s still a few left in the kitchen.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. Um…” Ben slipped off his jacket, flinging it across the back of a chair. “Are you okay with this?”

One eyebrow hitched, just slightly. “That you crashed my party? Yeah, I should’ve had the dude at the door check the guest list more carefully. But hey, no problem, we’ve got chaperones and everything.”

“What’s a chaperone?” Mattie asked.

“Somebody who makes sure nobody does something they shouldn’t,” Mercy said, never taking her eyes off Ben’s, the eyebrow hiking another millimeter. Okay, definitely not ticked. Not that having the kids here meant a whole lot in the tempering-the-sexual-tension department. Apparently.

“What’s that?” the little girl said, latching on to the Baileys. “C’n I have some?”

“Not if you want your mother to ever, ever let you come here again,” Mercy said, taking the bottle from Ben and nodding in approval. “Later,” she said, holding it up, then setting it on top of the fashionably distressed armoire housing a regular old TV and DVD player. She walked the few steps to the hall, pushing up the sleeves of the sweatshirt. They fell right back down. “Jacob Manuel Vargas! If you don’t get out here right now and get yourself some popcorn, your uncle Ben’s gonna eat it all up!”

“Uncle Ben’s here? All right!” he heard from down the hall, followed by pounding footsteps and a grinning kid in a hoodie and jeans. He high-fived Ben; Mercy stuck another plastic bowl in his hands with the warning that if he got a single piece on her bed his butt was going to be in a major sling.

“Wanna play games with me later?” he asked Ben around a mouthful of popcorn, looking less than terrorized by his aunt’s threat. “I got this really cool racing game for Christmas, I’m already at the third level.”

“Sure thing,” Ben said, feeling a little like the new kid at school getting picked for the best team. “But in a sec, okay? So,” he said to Mercy, imbuing his words with as much meaning as he dared. “Tony and Anita went out?” He settled on the sofa, swiping the bowl of popcorn off the coffee table. Mattie wriggled into place beside him, grabbing a far-too-large handful that promptly exploded all over her, the sofa and the floor.

“Sorry, Aunt Mercy!”

“Don’t worry about it, cutie-pie, it happens.” Mercy bent over to pick up the scattered kernels, her hair and face glimmering red…blue…green…red. “Yeah,” she said. Deliberately avoiding his eyes? “They’d already made reservations at the Hilton, so it seemed a shame to give them up just because Tony broke his leg. But the real party’s here—right, munchkin?” she said to Mattie, lightly tapping her niece on the nose with a piece of popcorn. The child giggled, snuggling closer to Ben and swiping a piece of popcorn out of his hand.

“We get to stay up until midnight—” she yawned “—and watch the ball drop in Tom’s hair.”

“Times Square, stupid,” Jacob said, prompting an immediate “Don’t call your sister stupid,” from Mercy.

Apparently unfazed, the little girl twisted around to look up at Ben with big, solemn, slightly sleepy eyes. “It’s funner over here. Mama ’n’ Daddy’ve been fighting a lot. I don’t like it when they do that.”

Mercy’s eyes flashed to Ben’s as Jacob, instantly turning beet red, muttered, “Shut up, Mattie.”

“Well, they have. An’you’re not supposed to say ‘shut up,’ Mama says it’s rude.”

“Guys!” Mercy said. “Enough. But you know what? Your mama and I used to fight like crazy when we were kids, and it didn’t mean anything.”

“Really?” Mattie said.

Mercy laughed. “Oh, yeah. Yelling, screaming…ask your grandma, she used to swear it sounded like we were killing each other. And then it would blow over and we’d be best buddies again—”

“C’n I have a Coke?” the boy said, bouncing up out of the chair.

“Sure, sweetie,” Mercy said. “You know where they are. And by the way,” she said to his back as he walked away, “what happens here, stays here, got it?”

That got a fleeting grin and a nod. Only Ben wasn’t sure if Mercy was talking about the questionable menu or the even more questionable conversation. He stuffed another handful of popcorn into his mouth, staring at the slightly trembling image of a red-and-white fish on the screen in front of him. As Jake traipsed back to Mercy’s bedroom with his popcorn and soda, Mattie dug the remote out from under Ben’s hip, punched the Play button and the red fish started talking to a blue fish that sounded oddly like Ellen de Generes.

“So you really think that’s all this is?” he said softly over Mattie’s giggles as Mercy sank into the cushion on the other side of her niece, tucking her feet up under her.

Her silence spoke volumes as she reached across their niece to pluck several kernels from the bowl. “No,” she said, her eyes on the screen. “Unfortunately.”

“You think somebody should go talk to Jake?”

“I’ve tried, but…” She shrugged, her forehead puckered.

“Guys, shh,” Mattie said, poking Ben with her elbow. “This is the best part, when Dory pretends she’s a whale.”

Out of deference to Mattie, they stopped talking. But Ben wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the movie, and he somehow doubted Mercy—whose mouth was still pulled down at the corners—was, either. Under other circumstances, he would have been perfectly fine with staying right where he was, with this goofy little girl cuddled next to him and her goofy aunt not much farther away, munching popcorn and watching a kid flick.

But sometimes, life has other ideas.

So he gently extricated himself from the soft, trusting warmth curled into his side, shifting the child to lean against her aunt instead, then followed the sound of engines roaring and tires screeching until he reached Mercy’s bedroom. Sitting cross-legged on the end of Mercy’s double bed, Jake was intently focused on the game flashing across the smaller TV sitting on the dresser in front of him, his thumbs a blur on the controller as he leaned from side to side.

Ben leaned against the door frame, his thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets. “Hey,” he said softly, acutely aware that, as far as Jake was concerned, Ben was a stranger. Not to mention he was venturing into potentially explosive-ridden territory. No doubt Tony would see Ben’s attempt to help as blatant, and extremely unwelcome, interference.

Attention riveted to the car zooming and swerving wildly on the screen, Jake bumped one shoulder in acknowledgment. “Soon as I’m done—” he hunched forward, pounded one button a dozen times in rapid succession, then whispered “Yes! I can set it up…for two players…”

“No hurry.”

The room was dark except for a single bedside lamp, but he could see she’d gone with the orange in here, Ben noted with a wry smile. Sort of the same color as that clownfish, actually. But for a woman as unabashedly female as Mercedes Zamora, her bedroom was almost eerily frou-frou free. Even more than he remembered. No lace, no filmy stuff at the windows, no mounds of pillows or—God bless her—stuffed animals on the unadorned platform bed, covered with a plain white comforter. Nothing but clean lines as far as the eye could see.

And all that color, drenching the room in a perpetual sunset.

Ben turned his attention to his nephew, then eased over to sit next to him. The cat, who’d been God knew where up to that point, jumped up and butted his arm, then tramped across his lap to sniff Jake’s hand.

“Go away, Homer,” he said, giggling. “Your whiskers tickle.”

Yeah, that’s how kids are supposed to sound. “Wow,” Ben said, sincerely impressed. “You really rock at this.”

A quick grin bloomed across the kid’s face. “Thanks. Okay,” he said a minute later, his fingers again flying over the buttons as the image changed to a split screen. “The other controller’s in my backpack, if you want to get it?”

“Sure.” Ben dug through a wad of rumpled, detergent-scented clothes, pulled it out, plugged it into the console. “You have to promise to go easy on me, though,” he said. “I think the last video game I played was Mario on Nintendo.”

“You mean, like Game Cube?”

“No, I mean the original Nintendo. Way before your time.”

“Oh, yeah…my dad still drags that out every once in a while. But mostly he likes my PlayStation, ’cause it’s way cooler.”