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with the soft hands and the scared-bunny expression, though Bonita was definitely more inclined toward him than her children were. But there he was in a navy blue suit in his brand-new spruce green Sienna van, loaded down with four of Bonita’s five kids, ready to pick up Bonita and take her and her kids to six o’clock Mass.
    But first, we all had to stop everything, though I was the only one actually trying to accomplish anything anymore, and clean up Armando’s bloody arm.
    â€œHow did you cut it?” Bonita asked, pulling one of my crisp, clean linen towels from the kitchen drawer, and then pulling her son’s arm over my sink.
    Well, that was going to take some Clorox to clean up, I thought, watching blood flow into my sink and into my formerly fine linen towel.
    â€œOn a CD case,” Henry explained. “Is it deep? Does he need stitches?”
    Bonita peered at the cut. I peered at the mess in my sink and thought, A CD case? “How do you cut yourself on that?”
    â€œIt stuck, and he was . . . ah, he was . . . prying it open,” Henry bleated, then blushed, and I suspected a cover-up. Bonita’s children were not warming to the thought of Henry as a permanent figure in their lives, and though he kept plugging away at winning their affections, there were multiple acts of sabotage from the kids. I envisioned Armando trying to rip the upholstery in Henry’s new van with the jagged edge of something sharp. But whatever the real story, Henry would keep it between him and Armando, and I hoped Armando would appreciate that.
    â€œNo stitches,” Bonita said, and gathered Armando in her arms, looked him in the eyes, and smiled. “Just a big Band-Aid and we can still make Mass.” Armando struggled like a wild coyote to escape her arms.
    â€œHey, Armando,” I finally said, once he was free of his mom. “What’s happening?”
    â€œNothing,” he said, and shifted his stance to morose-early-teen mode. Javy, Armando’s twin brother, who looks and acts nothing like him, took a good look at his arm. “Cool,” he said, after examining the wound.
    â€œHey, Javy,” I said. “What’s happening?”
    â€œ Tia Lilly, I ran second in a track meet at the district,” he said, and beamed.
    â€œGood for you. That’s great,” I said, noticing the glower Armando directed first at Javy and then at me. Of course, Bonita had already told me Javy won second place, but it was still cool news. Javy was a thin, wiry boy with a runner’s body and sharp features, while Armando had flat cheeks and a flat nose and a squat wrestler’s body.
    After studying the contrast between the twins, I turned to the other two kids. “Hey, Carmen, hey, Felipe. You guys cool?”
    Carmen, the only girl and just six, hugged me and promptly launched into a story in half Spanish, half English that I couldn’t quite follow, but seemed to have a winged horse at its center. Felipe, named for his father, tried to get a few words in, and I just patted his head. At ten, he was still young enough to let me do this.
    While her youngest child entertained me, Bonita, who kept a virtual first-aid kit in her purse, got the requisite Band-Aid and fixed up Armando. Then, in a whisk and a wink, they were all out of my house.
    Silence. Blessed silence.
    Now I could really get some work done.
    Bearess pranced over to the still-unplugged phone and started barking.
    I had Cloroxed down my kitchen and bathroom and wiped down the front door and perfected the order of the piles of paper on my floor and ground more coffee beans by the time Bearess turned from barking at the phone and barked at the door.
    I opened it before the bell rang and there was Benny, apparently safe, though appearances can certainly lie. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.
    Uh-oh, I thought, watching as he walked inside, not even trying his casual-cool saunter or banter on