Six
1988
There are places where Christmas should never be spent. McDonalds, the laundromat, a gas station, or stranded on the side of the road, just to name a few. Mercedes was sure there were hundreds of terrible places, but the hospital ranked up there with the very worst.
Oscar had been sick for weeks. Every night his coughing kept her awake. It kept them all awake. Yet morning would come, and Oscar would get up and head out the door; he never missed a day of work. Alma grew quiet, Abuela prayed, but Mercedes assumed that if Papi was okay to go to work he must be okay. But he wasn’t.
He didn’t go to midnight mass on Nochebuena and on Christmas day—his only day off—he didn’t get out of bed. They opened presents sitting around him, trying to coax him to eat some of Abuela’s pazole, but he smiled and shooed them away, apologizing for his fatigue and his lack of spirit. By Christmas night, his fever had spiked, he couldn’t breathe, and when Alma tried to get him out to the car so she could take him to the hospital, he collapsed before he reached the door.
Alma made Mercedes call 911 because she spoke the best English, and when the ambulance came and took Oscar, Alma rode with him, leaving Abuela and Mercedes to watch helplessly as the ambulance sped away, leaving them behind. Mercedes scrambled up the stairs to Noah’s apartment, determined to find them a ride.
“Noah!” Mercedes pounded on his door with both hands. She knew he was home. Cora and her mother had gone south to Heather’s family for Christmas, but Noah and his mother didn’t have anywhere to go, and it wasn’t late enough for Shelly to leave for work.
Noah came to the door, but stepped out into the hallway, pulling it closed behind him.
“What’s wrong, Mer?”
“Papi’s sick. The ambulance came. The lights were flashing and everything, didn’t you see?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Mami went with Papi in the ambulance, but Abuela can’t drive, and we can’t wait here. Can your mother take us? They said they were taking him to U of U. That’s her hospital, right?”
“She can’t take you,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s not working tonight and she’s . . . asleep.”
Mercedes knew what that meant. Shelly was in a chemically induced sleep and wouldn’t be waking any time soon.
“But I can take you,” Noah said firmly.
“No, you can’t!” Mercedes said, trying not to cry. “You’re only fourteen, Noah!”
“I drive all the time, Mer. Don’t worry. Give me a minute to grab the keys.”
He was outside seconds later, wearing his puffy new coat and dangling a set of keys from his fingers, locking the apartment door behind him. That morning, Mercedes had delivered a plate of tamales and cinnamon sugar tortillas that Abuela made and made Noah open his present, a jacket she’d scrimped and saved for. He’d worn the same coat three years in a row, and the sleeves stopped two inches above his wrists and the zipper was broken. Noah had been thrilled with the gift, but the morning’s happiness felt like a lifetime ago.
Noah handled his mother’s rusty blue Impala with the confidence and care of a sixty-year-old man. He drove with both hands on the wheel, traveling at the speed limit, stopping at the lights, signaling when he turned, and eventually pulling into the hospital parking lot like he’d driven the route a hundred times. Maybe he had. Abuela hadn’t questioned Noah when he slid behind the wheel. She’d simply climbed in the backseat and folded her hands across her lap, waiting to be delivered to her destination. Mer sat in the front by Noah, heart in her throat, hands braced against the dashboard, prepared to die, and praying Papi wouldn’t be in heaven when she arrived.
Now they sat in the Emergency Room next to a crooked Christmas tree with cheap gold tinsel and red and green bows, waiting for news. They’d gotten word to Alma that they were in the waiting room, but hadn’t heard anything since arriving an hour before. Noah sat beside Mercedes wearing his new coat, his elbows on his knobby knees, his big feet in his worn, no-brand sneakers tapping a nervous rhythm on the industrial floor.
“I hate it here,” Mercedes whispered, resorting to anger instead of grief.
“I don’t,” Noah said.
“Why?” she gasped. How could anyone like a hospital waiting room?
He shrugged. “It makes me hopeful. If people are here, they’re getting help.”
“But people come here to die. People are sick. And scared.” Mercedes was sick and scared. She stood abruptly, unable to sit still a second longer.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Noah suggested, rising beside her. “Come on. I’ll show Abuela the chapel. She can pray while we get some fresh air.”
“What if Mami needs us?”
“We won’t be long. And I’ll tell Agnes to page us if there’s news.”
“Agnes?”
“Agnes always works the ER desk at night. She’s nice,” Noah explained.
Noah knew his way around, and Abuela seemed grateful for the opportunity to light a candle and say a prayer for her son-in-law, so Noah and Mer left her alone in the shadowy room with the stained-glass windows and made their way outside, seeking space and a quiet not interspersed with swishing doors and canned Christmas music. The red emergency room sign above their heads gave the pale fog a pink cast, like cotton candy at a winter carnival.
“Look!” Noah said.
A fat flake, furry with ice, meandered through the air and landed in Noah’s dark hair. Another one chased it down, and he caught it in his hand. He raised his face in anticipation of more.
“We might get a white Christmas after all,” he said, trying to lift her spirits. “People wish on the first stars in the sky. Maybe we can wish on the first snowflakes of the season.”
Mercedes closed her eyes and wished with all her might, a wish that was part prayer, part pleading, part angry ultimatum. But her dread continued to mushroom.
“I have a very bad feeling, Noah,” Mercedes whispered, her chest so tight she could hardly draw breath.
Noah reached out and took her hand, threading his icy fingers through her much smaller ones.
“It’s going to be okay, Mer. It has to be. It’s Christmas.”
* * *
When your father dies on Christmas day, it tends to ruin the holiday, and Mercedes always breathed a sigh of relief when the new year rolled around, grateful another anniversary had passed. But with Cora’s passing, the memory of Papi’s death took a backseat to fresher pain. Alma, who usually struggled with the holiday as much as Mercedes, set out the nacimiento she’d had for longer than Mercedes had been alive and decorated the duplex with poinsettias inside and twinkle lights around the windows. She even bought a little tree and put it on the table in front of the windows, declaring that they needed to make a special effort this year.
“Noah and the bebé should spend Christmas here,” Alma insisted. “We’ll go to Mass and have dinner on Nochebuena, and open presents Christmas morning with Gia. This will be a hard year for Noah. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Noah isn’t Catholic, and I don’t think Gia will make it through Mass, Mami,” Mercedes protested, although she was relieved her mother had suggested it. When she broached the subject with Noah, he seemed equally relieved.
“I’ll invite Heather too. She can have the guest room, you and Gia can have my bed, I’ll sleep with Mami, and we’ll all get through Christmas together,” Mercedes promised.
Mercedes liked to make the distinction that at almost thirty years old, she didn’t live with her mother, her mother lived with her. For a while after Papi died, Mercedes had worried that she, Abuela, and Mami would have to go back to Mexico. Abuela had a sister in Mexico City, and Papi had brothers in Veracruz who Mercedes had never met. But Mami had insisted there was nothing to go back to, and they would find a way to make ends meet without Papi’s income. They downsized to a two-bedroom apartment at The Three Amigos, and Alma took on full-time housekeeping work at the same hospital where her husband died and Shelly Andelin’s fourteen-year-old son practically ran the records department. Abuela continued making homemade tamales for the restaurants she and her daughter had been servicing for years, and Mercedes got a job cleaning a salon called Maven on Union Boulevard after school. It took her two hours every night, six nights a week, and the owner—Gloria Maven—paid her $200 a month, not terrible wages for a fourteen-year-old girl in 1989, but Mercedes made sure Mrs. Maven got more than she paid for.
At sixteen, Mercedes began doing pedicures too, bringing home another $400 on top of her cleaning job, making enough to cover the rent and a little extra all by herself. Gloria Maven liked her passion and her work ethic, and promised Mercedes a stylist position when she finished hair school, which Mercedes did—attending classes on nights and weekends—before she’d even graduated from high school.
Mercedes left the Three Amigos Apartments behind when Noah and Cora got married, but Abuela and Alma had still needed her income, so she took them with her, saving the expense of two households. She’d chafed a little at her lack of privacy and independence, but when Abuela had died five years later, she’d been grateful for the time they’d had together.
She and her mother had remained in the duplex, conveniently located a mile from the salon, three miles from the hospital, and two miles from Noah and Cora’s townhome. And though she could have afforded something newer and much nicer, Mercedes still drove the Toyota Corolla she’d driven for ten years, and she still bought her clothes at the Goodwill. She might pride herself on looking like she shopped at Dillard’s, but the money she saved on clothes and cars was put away for a bigger dream. She had single-handedly turned Maven into a high-end spa and boutique, and when Gloria Maven was ready to sell, Mercedes had every intention of buying. Gloria had been hinting that 2005 might be the year, and Mercedes was ready. In her opinion, the sooner Christmas was wrapped up, the better.
It was Gia who made the season bearable. She made everyone try a little harder when it would have been so easy to just ignore the holiday altogether. She had begun babbling in recognizable words—mimicking sounds and syllables, scolding her father and reading stories in enthusiastic gibberish—and making them laugh at her antics. Nothing was safe from her busy hands or mouth, and Noah was stringing lights and hanging ornaments starting halfway up his Christmas tree to keep her from stripping it bare and biting the bulbs.
“If you squint your eyes, your tree looks like it’s wearing an ugly Christmas sweater,” Mercedes said, looking at the half-dressed tree through her eyelashes.
“It looks like the Grinch in his Santa suit, with his green belly sticking out below it,” Noah mused, standing beside her, a star in his hands, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“It does!” Mercedes chortled. She pulled the drooping Santa hat from her head and waved it excitedly. “Let’s put this Santa hat on the top, instead of that star. Then it’ll really look like the Grinch. Give me a boost.”
Noah lifted her up, his arms bracketed around her thighs, so she could reach the top of the tree, and Gia chose that moment to wrap herself around his leg, tripping him up and sending them all crashing into the branches. Fortunately, nobody was injured. Gia cried but Noah and Mercedes couldn’t stop laughing.
Noah didn’t even bother putting gifts beneath his tree. Gia unwrapped everything immediately, and he ended up turning everything he purchased over to Mercedes for safekeeping. Christmas morning at Mercedes’s house was a free-for-all, trying to keep Gia focused on one gift at a time. Mercedes bought Gia too many presents; they all did. Gia had more clothes and toys under the tiny tree than any little girl could ever want. And she didn’t really want them. She pulled the paper from every box and then retrieved her old red ball from Mercedes’s bin of toys, leaving the adults to exchange their gifts.
Noah bought Mercedes some heated seat covers for the Corolla and magnetized window coverings, so Mer wouldn’t have to scrape her windshield when it snowed. He also bought her a vintage record player and a stack of vinyls he knew she liked—Nina Simone, Al Green, Donny Hathaway, and The Jackson 5. She squealed like a little girl and insisted on playing the latter immediately so she could dance to “I Want You Back.” Noah refused to dance but laid on the floor, his hands folded beneath his head, laughing as she shimmied and shook and mouthed every word. Gia loved it too and joined in, her stance wide, her head bobbing, hips and arms swinging. Alma and Heather clapped and laughed at the baby and egged Mercedes on.
Mercedes presented Noah with three new shirts, two new pairs of slacks, a deep purple tie with tiny white polka dots that on closer inspection were basketballs, and a navy blue coat that was similar to the coat she’d bought him the year Papi died. The eighties style had come back in fashion, and she’d noticed Noah had a dress coat, but nothing casual to wear in the cold. She’d seen the coat in the Orvis store window, and it had immediately taken her back to the night he’d driven her and Abuela to the hospital, cruising down the dark streets with all the confidence of an old soul.
She’d thought a great deal about that night in recent days—his concern, his companionship, and his endearing belief that nothing would go wrong because it was Christmas. Mercedes had known, even then, that fate had a fatalistic sense of timing, and that Christmas miracles only happened in Hallmark movies. He should have known it too; Noah was not a stranger to disappointment. But he had still believed. Or maybe he’d believed because she’d needed him to.
He’d driven them all back home—Mercedes, Mami and Abuela—without Papi in the early hours before dawn, three distraught women who had no idea how they would go on. For years, Mercedes had been unable to reflect on those hours. Now, sixteen years later, sitting by his side with memories of her father in her head, she marveled at the boy who’d taken care of them all that day and in the days to come too. Noah was already the man of his own house, and he temporarily became the man of theirs.
“You look very handsome, Noah,” Heather said. “That coat fits you perfectly.”
Noah ran his hand down the quilted sleeves. “It does. It looks like the coat you gave me when we were kids, Mer.”
“I know. It reminded me how you took care of us that year, and I thought it was time I said thank you.” Noah’s eyes rose and caught hers, and grief shimmered in the air, tempered by the knowledge that they’d all made it through heartache before.
“And now you are taking care of him,” Heather said, her voice soft, her eyes bright.
“We are all taking care of each other, Heather,” Mercedes said as Noah leaned over and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
Heather nodded, and Alma patted her hand. Alma pointed at the last gift beneath the tree.
“For you, Heather,” she said in accented English.
“That one is from me and Gia, Heather,” Noah said, and Mercedes heard the nerves in his voice.
Heather pulled the wrapping off a large canvas painting and stared, transfixed. Cora was captured in swirls of color—vivid reds and bold blues, blushing pinks and shades of gold and bits of shadow glowing from the page. It was magnificent.
“I thought you should have it,” Noah said, his eyes on his mother-in-law. Her red hair was faded and her eyes worn, but the resemblance was unmistakable between mother and daughter, and when she covered her mouth on a sob, they all cried with her.
“Gia should have it,” she choked.
“I had a color copy made for Gia, to hang in her room. That’s the original, and it’s yours. Someday, if you want Gia to have it, then you can give it to her.”
“Who did this?” Heather cried.
“There’s a patient at Montlake. An artist. I asked him—commissioned him—to paint her.”
“He captured her—all the best parts—how did he do that?” Heather marveled, tears running down her cheeks.
“He has an amazing gift,” Noah said, and Mercedes knew there was more, but didn’t press.
Later, when breakfast was cleaned up, Heather was napping, and Alma had left for Christmas Mass, Mercedes handed Noah a cup of coffee, sank down beside him on the sofa, and urged the full story behind the painting.
“Tell me about the picture, Noah. Tell me about the artist.”
“The police brought him in a month ago. He found his grandmother dead in the kitchen. Instead of going for help, he had a psychotic break of sorts. They found him covered with paint, drawing murals on her living room walls. Brilliant kid. He’s a genius. A . . . savant. His art is unbelievably realistic and . . . beautiful . . . and terrifying. He got hold of a can of pencil nubs and covered the walls of his room in the oddest things,” Noah said.
“Like what?” Mercedes asked.
“He claims that . . . dead people . . . show him things. And if he paints what they show him, they leave him alone.”
“He’s delusional?”
“No. I don’t think he is. He knows things that nobody could possibly know. Dr. June’s twin sister died when she was just a little kid. Moses brought it up in a counseling session. None of the staff even knew about it; I didn’t know. We have an orderly—great big guy named Chaz—Moses told him his grandfather wanted him to find something. Gave him instructions. It all checked out.”
Mercedes was silent, considering. Abuela had always believed in things she couldn’t see, in gifts and special abilities. Maybe it was her influence, but Mercedes had no trouble believing there was a whole host of things she didn’t understand about life and death. She’d always had good instincts and she trusted them. Noah was no pushover either. If he said the artist saw dead people, the artist saw dead people. End of subject.
“He saw Cora. He said sometimes . . . she follows me around. He told me . . . he told me she’s fine. She’s good. But she worries about me,” Noah murmured.
“He said she follows you around?” Mercedes didn’t like the sound of that.
“He listed all her favorite things. Umbrellas. Harry Connick, stuff like that. No one would know that, Mer. He drew her face without ever seeing a picture of her.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah. Unbelievable. But . . . I do believe him. I think Moses sees the dead.”
“And he said she was all right? She’s . . . okay?”
“Yeah.” Noah smiled, the grin quivering on his lips for a moment before he ducked his head and took a deep breath.
“Do you think . . . he would talk to me?” Mercedes whispered.
“Why?”
“He made you feel better.” It was obvious. Noah had a peace about him he hadn’t had even a month before.
“He did.”
“I want to feel better too.”
Noah took her hand. “I’ll ask him, Mer. I can’t start running a side operation from Montlake, but I’ll ask him if he wouldn’t mind talking to you.”
Gia, playing at their feet, toddled toward the tree and placed her red ball on a branch as though she wanted it to hang there with the rest of the ornaments. The ball rolled off and she growled.
“No, bah,” she ordered, and placed the ball back on the branch. It rolled off again.
“No, bah!” Gia was getting frustrated with the uncooperative ball.
Mercedes set her coffee aside and crawled to Gia, taking the ball from her hands.
“Here. I’ll help.” She wedged it near the trunk, so the branches embraced it, keeping it from falling.
“There,” Mercedes said.
“Meh,” Gia said happily, pointing at the ball and clapping. She then tried to reach the ball, but the branches poked at her, and she pointed again, imperious, looking from the ball to Mercedes like Mercedes had tricked her by pushing the ball back so far.
“Meh!” Gia repeated.
“What is she saying? She kept saying that last Monday—meh, meh, meh. She sounds like a little goat, and I don’t know what she wants.”
“Meh,” Gia bleated again and pointed a small finger toward Mercedes, clearly irritated by her lack of understanding.
Noah started to laugh. “She’s saying Mer.”
“Meh,” Gia said, nodding.
“Oh,” Mercedes cried.
“She just can’t say her r’s,” Noah said.
“Meh? Doesn’t it just figure. She calls me Meh, the word everyone uses when they feel ambivalent about something. Meh.” Mercedes laughed.
“I’ve never heard that,” Noah said.
“Yeah, you know. How was that movie?” She shrugged her shoulders. “It was just . . . meh. Do you like this shirt? Meh.”
“Gia doesn’t feel ambivalent about you.”
“No. She doesn’t. And I love it.” Mercedes grabbed Gia and nuzzled her, kissing her fat cheeks and nibbling on her neck.
“Meh.” Gia giggled.
“Gia,” Mercedes crooned. “Can you say Gia? Say Gia.”
Gia scrunched up her entire face and said, “DEE-UH.” All vowels, wrong consonant.
“Gee-uh,” Mercedes repeated.
Gia clapped for her, and Mercedes and Noah both laughed.
“Meh.” Gia patted Mer’s cheek.
“Yep. That’s me. Meh,” Mercedes agreed.
“Noah,” Gia called, turning toward her father. Mercedes hooted. Noah had forgotten to mention Gia’s new word.
“She’s not even two years old, and she’s already calling me by my first name. I want to be Daddy,” Noah grumbled.
“Well . . . she’s calling you Noah because everyone else does. Maybe I’ll start calling you Big Papa,” she quipped, enjoying the flirtation.
“Yeah . . . I’m thinking you better not.”
* * *
Noah and Mercedes agreed to accompany each other to their obligatory New Year’s Eve work parties, first to Noah’s, then Mercedes’s, with plans to be home shortly after midnight. Heather had taken Gia home for the evening and would keep her through the next day, but New Year’s fell on a Saturday, which was Noah’s longest shift, and he had no desire to party late into the night and work all the next day. He had no desire to party at all, but pulled on a pair of grey slacks and a black dress shirt, trimmed his beard and slicked back his hair, and did his best to put on a happy face for a few hours.
Mercedes wore a red dress with little capped sleeves, a sweetheart neckline, and a full skirt, and she fixed her hair in Veronica Lake waves. With glossy, red lips and high, red heels, the whole look screamed, “Look at me,” but Mercedes had always considered herself a walking advertisement of her profession. If she looked good, people would come to her to make them look good. She had business cards in her clutch.
Noah just smiled and shook his head when he picked her up. “How will I explain you, Mer?”
“No one will think we’re together, Noah.” She patted his cheek. “Don’t worry.”
“Why won’t they think we’re together if we arrive together?”
She shrugged. “No one ever has. How long have we been friends? Everyone knows we aren’t a couple. From the very beginning, I’ve always been the sidekick.”
Noah didn’t argue with her, and when they arrived, he introduced her as his oldest friend, just like he always had. Everyone nodded and smiled kindly—if a little curiously—and made stilted small talk until Noah whisked her away to someone new. He kept her hand in his and moved through the clustered couples and hospital administrators with purpose, stopping, greeting, and engaging in one minute of conversation before moving along and repeating the same steps.
“You can drink, Mer. Don’t abstain on my behalf,” he said, when he noticed she hadn’t eaten or sipped a single thing.
“I don’t think I have time.”
“Why?”
“Because when you’ve given every person here exactly sixty seconds, we’re going to leave.”
“Am I that obvious?” He winced.
“Yes. Are you timing yourself every time you stop to talk?”
“There’s a ticking time bomb in my head, if that’s what you mean. Everyone is making those mournful eyes at me, wondering how I’m really doing, or speculating if I’ve already moved on. It feels . . . weird. Cora’s been gone for almost nine months, and this is the first time anyone has seen me with someone else. And for your information . . . you don’t look like a sidekick.”
She smiled and winked at him. “Always have been, always will be. So . . . are you ready for round two?” she suggested.
“Yes, please. Your coworkers don’t know me as well.”
“True. And my party is eighties themed.”
Noah groaned. “Please, no.”
But at the Maven staff and client bash, no one looked twice at Noah, except to say hello, before turning to Mercedes and talking shop. Noah relaxed as the evening wore on, his fear and discomfort falling away into the easy warmth of being with Mercedes and a group of people who hadn’t known Cora and who didn’t especially care to know him. It was nice. Mercedes even got him to dance. It was like being thirteen again, 1987, listening to the boombox while shooting hoops, Mercedes dancing while she dribbled. Every song reminded him of The Three Amigos, and for a little while he set aside the weight on his shoulders and just was.
Keegan Tate cut in once, whisking Mer away and holding her too close as Night Ranger moaned about Sister Christian, but Mer whirled back to Noah on the next song, laughing and leaving Keegan to find another partner. Noah made sure it didn’t happen twice, shooting a warning look at anyone who approached and dancing to every song, just so Mer wouldn’t leave him again.
When the countdown to midnight began, the DJ warning the crowd and pausing the music, Noah realized suddenly that he’d made it. He’d survived the worst year of his life, and considering his life, that was saying something. There were days when he hadn’t been able to do anything but exist in the moment, where the thought of the future almost shut him down. He still wasn’t whole, and life wasn’t easy. Thinking of Cora still made his heart ache and his stomach clench, but he’d made it. Gia was growing. Gia was happy. And it was going to be okay. Eventually.
“. . . Three, Two, One. Happy New Year!” the DJ blared. Balloons fell, and noisemakers blasted.
“Happy New Year, Noah!” Mercedes cried, catching a balloon and tossing it up again. Noah looked down into her laughing eyes and around at the kissing couples crowding the floor, finding himself in the same situation he’d been in months before when he was pinned by the kissing cam.
“There’s no jumbotron, Noah,” Mercedes protested, standing on her toes so she could speak into his ear, clearly wanting him to hear her amid the noise and the merriment, but he didn’t pull away. He knew Mer had no expectations of a kiss at midnight. In fact, she probably expected a hug and a high five. The knowledge freed him, and he turned his face and brushed his lips across her cheek.
“Happy New Year, Mer.” Then his lips captured hers, a gentle acknowledgement, a nod to the new year, and her hands rose to his chest in surprise. For a moment it was simply the quiet kiss of true affection, the soft exchange of warm thoughts and well wishes. But someone shoved past them, and Mercedes teetered, losing her balance. Noah’s arms tightened to steady her, bringing her body more fully against his, and suddenly their mouths weren’t pressed together in cautious greeting but in growing wonder. Their lips lingered, tasting and teasing, shifting and re-shaping, a kaleidoscope kiss that formed only to fall away and reconfigure.
It wasn’t until the lights flickered and the eighties tunes resumed—“Auld Lang Syne” becoming UB40’s “Red Red Wine”—that Noah lifted his head and Mer lowered her eyes, catching her breath and letting him go.
“I hate this song,” he said.
“I know you do.”
“It’s going to be stuck in my head for a week.”
“We better go before you start singing along then.”
“Good idea.”
It was so easy to slide back into the old banter, into the comfortable give and take of camaraderie, but when Noah turned off the car in Mer’s driveway and sat staring at the steering wheel for a heartbeat too long, Mer reached out and pinched his arm, hard.
“Don’t overthink it, Boozer,” she warned.
“Huh?”
“Step away from the ledge,” she demanded, monotone.
“Mer . . .”
“Turn off the fart factory,” she droned.
“The fart factory?”
“I can hear your brain farting all the way over here, and it stinks.”
“Oh. Gotcha,” he said, a smile making the word lift at the end. “I adore you,” he confessed.
“And I adore you, Boozer.”
“Red, red wine, I love you right from the start,” Noah clipped in reggae rhythm.
“Right from the start, with all of my heart.” Mercedes answered, mimicking the cadence.
“Goodnight, Mer.”
“Goodnight, Noah.” She climbed out and shut the door, and he could hear her singing all the way up the walk, waving as she went.
“I really hate that song,” Noah sighed to himself, but he was smiling as he pulled away, the fart factory extinguished.