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than a hen at roost time when she spoke again. “Didn’t know you had a daughter, Toots.”
    Known him five years. No birth announcements, no school pictures on his screen saver, no kid dropping by to visit daddy at work. Not that she’d seen.
    Wasn’t like Janice spent all day trailing round behind Miguel like a motherless calf desperate for milk. He could be interacting with this Sophie any time that Janice was in the offices, or visiting with a vendor, or having lunch with friends. Janice wasn’t Miguel’s keeper.
    She leaned back against his window. His bedroom window, not to be too specific about it. She was a few feet further along the porch than him, and between the light spilling out from the house and the glow of the grill, Janice had a decent enough view of Miguel, just perched there on his deck rail like a man who’d never kept a secret in his life.
    “Well,” he said.
    “Well?” she asked when he failed to go on with informative details.
    “I have a daughter. We all do, my brothers and me. Have daughters, I mean. No boy cousins in the lot; Mami says it’s our payback and her reward for raising up five sons.”
    “Right, you said about Anna Lucia before.” Anna Lucia, now, Janice knew all about her. Knew about Miguel missing happy hour because he had to go to her first-grade play. Knew she’d had the part of a cricket, and even though her entire class was crickets, she wanted to be a ladybug like the kids in one of the other classes. So Miguel’s whole family went and had to brag on how Anna Lucia was the best cricket they’d ever seen. Janice had thought it was sweet, Miguel loving on his little niece so much, and being so involved in her life.
    But she had no idea what part his own daughter had in the school play.
    Or, oh yeah, that he had a daughter at all.
    He was kicking his heel against the deck rails, his lips pursed up in a line that took away any of that fullness she’d been damnably guilty of staring at earlier. When she wasn’t staring at the green striped p.j.s on his bed. Or wondering if he had any in red, which was her favorite color on Miguel.
    “Okay, look, come inside, I’ll show you.” And without, this time, holding her hand against the possibility of her getting lost in a house with one long hallway going from front to back, Miguel ushered Janice to the only room she hadn’t seen. It was opposite his kitchen, between the bedroom and living room, and had a closet like it was meant to be a second bedroom. But the sliding closet doors were missing, and Miguel had a desk and bookshelves set up in that space. There was a futon under the window, but most of the room was taken up with a dining table, already set with two placemats and forks and knives and all that. And flowers. Not tulips, but a wildflower mix of mostly yellows and greens.
    Miguel turned a couple of the dining chairs to face his computer desk. A little bit of button pressing and his laptop was awake and Miguel was double-clicking on a jpeg.
    “That’s Sophie at graduation last year.”
    It sure was. The girl wore a grin three times as wide as any she’d ever seen on Miguel, but otherwise they were pure reflections of each other. Her red cap and gown, of course, looked lovely on her. Red was clearly their color.
    “She’s how old?” Janice asked, then remembered those manners her mama once tried to teach her. “She’s real pretty, Miguel.”
    “Yeah.” And there was that tender thing in his voice again. He cleared his throat. “She’s eighteen now. She’s almost done with her first year at UNT. Studying romance languages, if you can believe it.”
    “Why wouldn’t I believe that?”
    “No, no, you would. It’s just I never know what to expect of her.”
    Janice wasn’t sure where exactly the train was headed, but suspected they were getting off track. “Toots. How do you have an eighteen year old kid?”
    “Are you complimenting my boyish good looks?”
    She rolled her eyes. Janice knew good