The Year Everything Changed Read Online Free PDF Page A

why—that you’d be in rehearsal?”
    Randy was missing the point. A father rising from the dead took precedence over a petulant mother. “She said it’s only community theater and that I had no business taking on the assistant director job when I knew it would interfere with my promise to her.”
    “Maybe if you told her you’d be there if she sent money to pay the rent?”
    “Like that’s even a possibility.” Christina had Enrique to thank for paying her way through school in the States, even though it was more self-serving than philanthropy. Separating mother and daughter brought him the peaceful household he longed for. To her mother money was like a cold, something you shared accidentally.
    “There’s got to be someone else you could ask about your father.”
    He’d been a forbidden topic when she was growing up. What little she knew came from a cousin. “My Uncle Mario was in business with him. That’s how he met my mother.”
    “Yeah? What kind of business?”
    “Strawberries.”
    Randy laughed. “Your uncle was a farmer? I thought he was some big wheeler-dealer in the import-export business.”
    “He found the growers in Mexico and my dad found the buyers in the States. They were the first ones to figure out the demand and made a killing until the market became glutted and collapsed.”
    “And that’s why your mother dumped him?”
    “I think it was more that she hated living in San Diego. When he refused to move back to Mexico, she went without him.” Now Christina questioned even that family lore. “At least that was what I was told.”
    “More likely she left when the money did.”
    She glared at him. “Why do you do that?”
    “What?”
    “Slam my mother. You don’t even know her.”
    “I know how she treats you.”
    “Maybe she has her reasons.”
    “Like she needs a reason to be a bitch where you’re concerned.”
    “Too far,” she warned.
    Randy put the can and pot on the table, grabbed one of the mismatched chairs from the table, and straddled it. “So, what are you going to do?”
    “I don’t know.” Her father was alive. She should be happy, ecstatic. When she was a child, this was the man she’d gone to in her dreams when she needed to feel loved, worthy. Why wasn’t she excited? Why wasn’t she eager to see him again?
    Because, if he was alive, it meant that he’d abandoned her on purpose. The man she’d loved and missed all these years would never do that to her.
    “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she answered.
    “What do you want to do?” he tried again.
    “Direct a Steven Spielberg film,” she shot back. She put her feet on the floor and leaned forward. “How the hell do I know what I want to do about something like this when I can’t make up my mind whether to junk my car or get the transmission fixed?”
    “Junk it.”
    She’d have more confidence in his answer if he weren’t balancing the money she’d use on the car against money they could use on the film. The tighter their finances, the more protective Randy became of Illegal Alien .
    Christina examined the airline ticket that had come with the letter. “Whoever this guy is”—she couldn’t accept he was really her father—“he must be serious about wanting to see me. The ticket’s first-class.”
    “Ticket?” Randy crossed the room and sat next to her, plucking the paper from her hand and studying it. “Holy shit. Is that really what it costs to fly first-class from Tucson to Sacramento?”
    “Apparently.”
    “He has to be nuts to put out that kind of money when you could drive up there for a couple hundred dollars.” He stared at the ticket for several more seconds, then looked at Christina, a sly smile in place. “Nuts—or rich.”
    “Or desperate. The attorney said he’s dying. He probably thinks this is his last chance to see me.”
    “You gonna go?”
    Her stomach did a slow roll. What if she got there and it turned out this man was her father and she did