The light in the kitchen came up slow, the kind that made the tile look damp even when it was clean. The window over the sink held a gray slice of morning. A bus coughed somewhere two blocks over. The air smelled like bleach and coffee and the last of last night’s dinner that no one had complained about because it meant they ate.
They sat across from each other at the small table that had seen too many mornings. Caine’s graduation cap sat between them, the purple-and-gold tassel pooled in a neat coil. Sara held the tassel at the end, rubbing the wrapped threads with her thumb the way you might test fabric in a store and decide you couldn’t afford it anyway.
Her eyes were wet, but she wasn’t crying. She kept her chin up.
“You know you the first one,” she said, voice low, like the walls might try to take the words back. “Primero de la familia to finish high school.”
Caine nodded once. He didn’t reach for the cap. He watched her instead, the set of her mouth, the way her shoulders carried work even when she sat. The city was already awake beyond the window, tires on wet street, a distant siren that rose and fell.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” she said, looking at the tassel. “I thought I was never gonna see you out here again.” She lifted her eyes to him. “Not like this. Not free. Not sitting in my kitchen talking about regular things.”
He let a breath out slow. “I got lucky,” he said. No bravado in it. No defense.
Sara shook her head. The smallest, stubborn motion. She set the tassel down like it might bruise. Then she stood, the chair legs scraping soft, and dragged the little step stool across the tile with the careful sounds of morning—quiet, respectful of sleeping rooms.
The stool clicked against a cracked grout line. She climbed and reached over the cabinets to where grease turned dust into film and took down the Virgin Mary who watched the house from up high.
On the way back down, she held the statue in both hands. At the table, she flipped it, worked the plastic stopper free with a nail, and pulled a tight fold of bills from the hollow. The rubber band sighed when she slid it off. She dind’t count it.
La Virgen went back to her place above them. Sara sat again and set the money in front of Caine with the soft care she used for him since he was a child. The bills rested there between the cap and his hands.
“I know you been putting in with ours,” she said. “Con la familia.” Her mouth tugged, something between pride and worry.
“I could guess where it came from.” She drew a breath. “I don’t want those specifics.”
Caine’s hand stayed flat on the table. He didn’t touch the money. The siren had faded. In its place came the wobble of a neighbor’s window unit kicking and a pigeon’s dumb coo from the sill.
“For college,” she said, pushing the stack closer with two fingers. “Llévalo. I want you to take it.”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “Y’all need it.”
“We always need it,” she said, almost smiling. “We never not gonna need it.” She reached and nudged the money again until it touched the heel of his palm. “Please take it, mijo.”
The word softened something in him that nothing else could. He pulled the stack toward him and slid it under his hand, not hiding it, just claiming it. The cap’s tassel brushed his knuckle. He looked at the cap for a heartbeat and then back at her.
“I’m gonna try to get to Georgia for your games,” she said, voice brightening at the edges like she was trying it on to see if it fit. “Todos. All of them.”
A short laugh climbed out of him, easy. “I might not even start.”
Sara leaned across the table, closing the space. Her palm came to his cheek, warm and steady, thumb light against the stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave before dawn. He didn’t flinch. He leaned into it.
“You been beating the odds since you were born,” she said.
The fridge motor kicked on and held a low hum. Somewhere in the building a shower pipe knocked. The city moved through the walls like it always did, asking for more. He kept his face in her hand a second longer, the money under his palm, the cap between them, the morning still small enough to believe in.
~~~
Elena’s closet mirror had a nick along one side that bent things just a little. Mireya stood square to it in the green gown, chin tilted, the cap’s elastic tight under her hair. She pinched the zipper tab and tugged it up until it lay flat at her collarbone. The fabric made a dry whisper when she shifted. Heat pressed at the back of her neck. A box fan hummed in the window, a rattle at the end of each turn.
Outside, a car groaned to life and moved on. On the bed, the spread was thin and smooth. Plastic blocks scraped across wood in small bright clicks.
“You look good, girl,” Angela said, tilting her own cap and peering close into the mirror next to Mireya. She tugged the front of her gown and made a face that was half a grin. “Not as good as me, though.”
Paz stood in the doorway with her gown draped over her forearm. She let it fall and stepped into it, careful not to drag the hem. “If I trip, I’m telling y’all now I meant to.”
Mireya smoothed the front again, the heel of her hand making a faint line in the fabric that disappeared as soon as she lifted it. The cap sat heavy. In her head there was a table under a red light. Alejandra’s quick hands. Hayley’s stacks. Even all ones, it had to be hundreds. The number lived in her chest.
Angela adjusted her cap and checked her profile. “My abuelo slid me a few hundred for graduation. So I’m back on it. End of next month, we out for a couple days after we walk. I’m serious this time.”
Paz nodded, eyes on the way her sleeves sat at her wrists. “School’s winding down. I been working more at the boutique. I can probably make it work.”
“I’m still broke,” Mireya said, eyes on her own mouth in the glass, the way it tried to be a smile and didn’t make it.
Angela waved a hand, the tassel flipping. “I got you. Stop playing.”
On the bed, Elena sat cross-legged with the tub of blocks between her knees. Camila leaned against her thigh, baby body warm and heavy, curls loose from the morning brush. Elena set two blocks one on top of the other and tapped them to stick. “Mira, mami. Así,” she told Camila, voice soft like a song.
Camila copied, tongue tucked between her lips, and the little tower fell. She laughed at the sound it made on the floor.
Elena looked up at Mireya. “Reya, is Tía Maria going to be at the graduation?”
The room tightened. Mireya’s eyes met Elena’s in the mirror. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Elena nodded once and turned back to Camila, steady hands, a new block offered like a piece of fruit. Angela’s eyes slid away. Paz watched the hem of her own gown. The fan kept humming, air moving but not enough.
Camila looked up. She had caught the piece of quiet the question left behind. Her small face studied Mireya’s. “Pretty,” she said, round and sure.
Mireya let a breath out she didn’t know she was holding. The cap tilted. “Come here,” she said, and her voice came gentle without thinking. She turned from the mirror and opened her arms.
Camila came with the quick little steps. Mireya bent, the gown rustling, and lifted her. Camila’s weight settled perfect against her. The cap slipped from Mireya’s fingers and landed soft on the bed. The tassel brushed the sheet and stayed there.
She held Camila close and pressed her face into her hair. The scent of coconut from last night’s braids and warm sleep. The damp at the nape of Camila’s neck. The tiny sound she made when she sighed and let herself be held. The room could have been anyone’s room, but this part was only theirs, a quiet spot cut from the morning.
Camila said it into Mireya’s neck without looking. “Gween.”
Mireya shifted Camila higher on her hip and the gown bunched, then fell straight again. She felt the press of the day waiting on the other side of the door. The thought of the trip slid across her mind and didn’t stick. The picture in her head stayed small and far like something across a street you could not cross yet.
Outside, a gull made that ugly choke of a call. A siren wound up somewhere and unwound again. Heat worked its way into the room no matter how the fan complained. The candle’s sweetness thinned and left the clean bite of bleach.
Camila pulled back enough to see her face. Her hands were warm on Mireya’s cheeks. “Pretty,” she said again, like she was putting the word where it belonged.
Mireya smiled. It reached her eyes and stayed. She closed them and pressed her face into Camila’s hair.
~~~
The elevator numbers ticked down slow above the chrome doors, a red bead walking from six to five to four. Morning noise bent around the marble—footsteps, a bailiff’s voice calling a name down the hall, paper sliding inside manila. Fluorescent light hummed. The air tasted like dust and cold coffee.
Roussel came up from the corridor with that steady, unhurried gait. He stopped a step off the elevator line, set himself where he could see the atrium and the stairwell both. His tie sat too tight against his throat. His eyes tracked the numbers once and then slid to the woman at the call button.
“Babin.” His mouth barely moved when he said it.
She didn’t turn her head. The file in her hand was squared to her palm, edges flush. The elevator sighed somewhere above them. A clerk hustled past carrying a stack of notices that bowed in the middle. The smell of printer toner followed.
“You know he was dirty whole time,” Roussel said, almost easy. “You don’t have any sense for what they do on the outside. Just what you get when they get here. That’s why I’ve sent more men back than you ever will.”
Jill’s jaw shifted once \. The red bead dropped to three. Behind them, the metal detector chirped twice, then went quiet again. A deputy laughed once at something and then bit it down.
“You couldn’t prove anything,” she said. Her eyes stayed on the doors. “That’s the problem. There’s no proof anyone he’s been seen with is affiliated. He spends his time with his kid and her mother. I’m not taking that loss twice. I have bigger aspirations than this shit hole.”
Roussel’s mouth curled, not a smile. The shoes on his feet sat solid on the polished floor, toes pointed square at the seam where the doors would part. “They’re all criminals. You just have to prove it.” He let the space hang a breath. “I wouldn’t expect anything less from someone who likes what you like.”
A pair of public defenders came off the stairwell, chatter falling off when they clocked the two of them standing tight by the doors. Jill blinked once, slow. The red bead hit two, then one. A stale draft pushed from the shaft like breath from a throat.
The elevator car settled with a little shudder. The doors peeled back.
Jill stepped forward without looking at him. Her voice didn’t lift or slant. It was a line drawn with a ruler.
“Go fuck yourself, you fucking troglodyte.”
The words fell flat and clean and stayed where they landed. She crossed the threshold of the elevator, pressed a button with the side of her knuckle, and turned to face the doors. The fluorescent light caught in the glass behind her like frost.
Roussel’s shoulders loosened. He breathed through his nose and it came out almost a laugh. He didn’t step closer. The hall kept moving around them—heels clicking, a cart’s wheels bumping over a seam, a voice telling someone “next docket’s upstairs.”
His eyes flicked once to her and went past her to the mirrored wall. The doors began to close. Jill’s face didn’t change. Her hand hung easy by her side, file still squared to her palm. The steel met itself with a soft kiss.
Roussel turned on his heel, the slap of his soles spaced even. Behind him the elevator carriage rose, the red bead climbing back up into the building like heat.
He didn’t look back. The hallway’s cold air folded over the space where they had stood, and the courthouse went on speaking in its paper voices.
~~~
The car rattled as Caine eased it beneath the overpass. A train horn moaned somewhere deeper in the city and the echo crawled along the concrete ribs overhead. The lot smelled like wet dust and old oil. A grocery cart with a bent wheel lay on its side near a broken pallet. Ahead, a line of pigeons paced the shadow edge, waiting for the sun to slip around the pillar.
He cut the engine and let the silence settle in layers. Heat crept up through the floorboard. He pulled a crumpled pack of wipes from his hoodie pocket, thumbed one free, and set to work. Steering wheel first, slow circles until the gray came up clean on the cloth. He pinched the seam of the interior handle, dragged the damp edge along it, then leaned out and did the exterior handle too. He closed the door with his forearm and did the outside handle again. He took his time.
The wind under the bridge carried a trace of fry grease and bleach from somewhere blocks away. A siren unspooled and then faded. Caine tucked the used wipe into a sandwich bag in his pocket and looked out across the lot. He adjusted his cap, rolled his shoulders once, and walked toward the bus stop with the car dead and his breath unhurried.
…
Ramon had both hands on the wheel, fingers tapping a flat rhythm against cracked leather. Tyree sat behind him, magazines open across his knees, bullets clicking as he pushed them down. E.J. checked the slide on his piece, racked and eased, lips pressed thin. The three of them smelled like gun oil and laundry soap gone sour. They didn’t talk. Street rolled by in a blur of chain link and weeds, then warehouses with their windows blacked by grime.
Ramon braked at the mouth of a block. A second car eased up alongside, low and slow. Deon drove. Sosa rode shotgun, a paper cup pressed into his knee leaving a wet ring. Lalo leaned forward between the seats, eyes moving quick. Deon cut his gaze at Ramon.
Ramon lifted his chin toward the slab of a building ahead, roll-up door already open to the warm night. “That’s it.”
The street belonged to the heat and the sound of small stones turning under tires. Somewhere a dog barked. The second car drifted forward a car length and stopped. The six men sat still for one breath, two. Then they moved.
…
The warehouse held the flavor of old wood and men who stayed too long inside. Tito sat back into the cratered couch like it remembered him, glass of Hennessy planted heavy on his thigh. He wore the day like it bored him.
Tee Tito and the crew circled loose in the middle of the open floor, words flung back and forth, a laugh snapping out, then the low talk returning. They said nothing anyone needed to remember. A fan in the corner clicked at the same spot every turn.
…
Ramon pulled first along the right side of the building, Tyree and E.J. falling in behind him, their steps paced and quiet. The concrete wall held a chill in the shade even as the air grew thick. Across the open mouth of the yard, Deon slipped to the opposite corner and flattened, Sosa and Lalo ghosting behind him. Ramon peeked, saw Deon peeking back. A single nod passed between them like a lit fuse.
They ran out as one, hard into the light, guns up. The sound turned the air into glass. Tee Tito’s chest jumped under the first spray and he folded, knees banging the floor. A card table flipped and clattered. Two of Tee Tito’s guy reached for what was not yet in their hands and that hesitation wrote their obituaries. Deon kept stepping, kept shooting. Tyree pivoted, stitched the far wall with rounds and then corrected. E.J. drove forward on the left, mouth open but making no sound, focus narrowed down to the line of his arms.
Sosa saw the old man push up from the couch, the glass rolling off his thigh and tapping once, twice before it fell. Tito’s eyes had gone empty and hot at the same time, the way a stove looks when the fire is thin and blue. He reached for nothing that could help him. He took one step toward the boy he had named after himself.
Sosa tracked him, brought the sight to center, and let the decision be a simple thing. The shot took Tito in the head and put him down like the couch had snagged his ankle and yanked. The whole room breathed out.
Shells tinked and spun and went silent. Smell of powder soaked into everything. Someone’s phone buzzed in a pocket no one would answer. A fly coasted in through the rectangle and changed its mind.
They left as fast as they arrived, running back to their cars and leaving behind a scene of chaos and gore.
…
Under the overpass, Caine eased the second car into place, nose in, windows up. He killed the engine and let the tick of cooling metal count the seconds for him. He reached for the wipes again. Steering wheel. Interior handle. Exterior handle. He bent and scrubbed the lower edge of the door where his jeans might have brushed. He worked the cloth into the seam of the window switch. He looked at his knuckles, dark and nicked, then finished and rolled the dirty wipe into itself and slid it into the bag with the first one.
He stepped back and looked at the car like it was already someone else’s problem. The pigeons had moved. A drip fell slow from a joint in the concrete above and marked a chalk ring where earlier drips had found the same spot over and over. Caine checked the empty edge of the lot, the vacant mouth of the underpass, the bright triangle at the street.
He had made it five steps from the car when tires screamed across the gravel. The sedan fishtailed and recovered, nose punching toward a pillar before it jerked straight. Ramon poured out of the driver seat before the engine settled. Tyree and E.J. spilled out after him with their movement too quick and too sharp. They didn’t look behind them.
Ramon slid into the driver seat and twisted the. The engine caught and settled into a rough hum. Tyree came around the hood, jumping in the back, gun on his lap. E.J. jerked the passenger door closed with a gloved palm. Ramon glanced up because he could not help it.
Caine stood ten feet off the bumper, hands loose at his sides. His face gave nothing but calm. He didn’t wave. He didn’t nod. He just held Ramon’s eyes, then Tyree’s, then E.J.’s in quick sequence. The look said the things there was no time to speak.
Ramon set his jaw and hit the gas. The second car lurched and then gripped, slinging gravel into a little storm that stung Caine’s shins. The sedan shot out from under the overpass, taillights snatching light from the gloom before they melted into the streetlights.
The car they left sat there humming to itself, driver door still gapped. A man who had been nothing but a shape against a pillar shuffled forward, his clothes a winter of layers in weather that wasn’t asking for it. His beard held crumbs and the memory of yesterday. He leaned into the empty driver seat like he was easing into warm water and pulled the door soft until it clicked. His hands rested at ten and two, delicate, like the wheel might bruise. He looked at Caine for half a second. Caine kept his eyes on the street. The man turned the wheel with ceremony, found drive, and rolled out with the patience of a Sunday.
Caine slid his hands into his pockets. The baggie in his hoodie rustled. He walked along the edge of the lot toward the bus stop he knew sat just past the chain-link break. He didn’t hurry. The city moved around him in old rhythms. A siren bled again in the distance. A man shouted three blocks away and someone laughed him quiet.
The air hung heavy with the things that would not ever get cleaned up all the way.
Each update since the state championship chapter jumps 4-6 weeks forward. TEEEEEECHNICALLY Mardi Gras 2026 is in February and his transfer was approved after it. The chapter above your comment occurs in late April. Also, they weren't going to switch over his probation before he graduated from high school. That would've made him temporarily a free man 
