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problem?’ ” Ana could see him, avenging angel, resplendent with copper-brown hair and blazing green eyes.
    “Nice!” Cara’s eyes were wide with appreciation.
    “Yeah.”
    “Was he hot?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Tall, big”—she indicated the expanse of his shoulders—“like a very professional, clean-shaven Viking.”
    Cara eyed her suspiciously. “White.” Her sister was all too familiar with her yanqui fetish.
    Ana sighed. “Of course.”
    “Girl, you are such a troublemaker. Why can’t you just quit it with the border crossing?”
    “I’m not going to do anything about it. He’s just”—she couldn’t think of what she wanted to say in Spanish, so she temporarily lapsed into English—“aesthetically pleasing. Nocrime in looking.”
    “You should have learned your lesson from what happened with Walt.” Her sister’s voice was flat.
    “I did learn my lesson.”
    “I sure hope so. Because I don’t want to scrape you off the floor again.”
    Ana felt the old ache, the wound Walt had inflicted when he disappeared overnight from her life. When he refused to even take her calls. “Believe me, I am never going to make that mistake again.”
    She’d planned to tell Cara the whole truth, that she’d accepted a tutoring job with Ethan, but now she hesitated. She knew exactly what Cara would say to that. Plus, it would put Cara in the awkward position of having to keep the information from Ricky, who would flip out if he knew that she was working in an all-male household. He barely tolerated her tutoring in Beacon.
    Cara’s eyes stayed narrow, fixed on Ana. “Why do I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me?”
    This was the problem. It was usually a lost cause, keeping secrets from Cara. Her sister knew her too well.
    “Spit it out !”
    “I’m going to tutor his son in Spanish.”
    “No! No way! Ana!”
    “We need the money.”
    Cara sighed. “It’s not worth it. Stay away from him. Find another tutoring job.”
    “That might not be so easy. Ed says if I don’t sign the CORI he’ll drop me from the Recommended Tutors list. I get all my jobs off that list. I have to take this.”
    “I don’t care. You can’t work for him. You’re going to end up sleeping with him, and it’s going to be Walt all over again.”
    “Not all guys are assholes like Walt.”
    Cara groaned. “You’re going to sleep with him.”
    “I’m not! Jesus, give me a little credit!”
    Ana clamped her mouth shut as she heard one of the bedroom doors open. Her nephew Marco appeared in the doorway of the living room. He was taller than either his mother or hisaunt, built like a tank. He leaned his scruffy head against the door frame. “Mamá. I need a check for five hundred bucks. For driver’s ed.”
    They’d all been waiting, saving, for this moment for months. Driver’s ed was the holy grail. When Marco could drive—legally, all aboveboard—their transportation problems would be over. No more cabs. No more expensive three-transfer bus rides.
    Cara frowned. “I thought you said four-fifty.”
    “They had to raise the price this year.” There was apology in Marco’s voice.
    Ana got up from the couch. She ruffled Marco’s hair as she went by, and he didn’t even duck out of reach. He was such a teddy bear—her favorite. “We need the money,” she said over her shoulder to her sister as she walked toward the girls’ bedroom. “And I can take care of myself.”
    “Like hell you can,” Cara called after her.

Chapter 4
    Monday afternoon, Ana rode the Beacon shuttle to the Hansen house. The shuttle was one of the luxuries of her life, a free, by-appointment ride the denizens of Beacon had arranged for the convenience of its teenagers and its senior population. It struck her as one of the more vivid illustrations of the difference between life in Hawthorne, where public transportation was as impersonal as the city’s high-rise apartments, and life in Beacon, where most of