CHAPTER ONE

      “IS DADDY DOWN THERE?”

      Sofia Gallardo knelt beside her five-year-old son, Javi, on frozen grass and snuggled him close. All around them, poinsettia and pinecone Christmas wreaths bedecked the surrounding gravesites. She pulled in a ragged breath of balsam-scented air and blinked stinging eyes.

      How to explain the afterlife to a child? An animated film they’d watched at a public library came to mind. “No, honey. Daddy went ‘up.’”

      Javi traced the plaque’s engraved letters with a fingertip poking through his faded red glove. The white tops of Carbondale, Colorado’s nearby Rocky Mountain range breathed chill late-November air down at them. It rustled through the Douglas firs dotting Rosebud Cemetery and jingled bell-shaped ornaments looped around a wintergreen boxwood. “Like in the movie?”

      “Just like that.”

      “With balloons?”

      “Maybe.”

      Brown eyes slanted up at her beneath a drooping toque a size too big for his head. He looked thinner, she assessed, gnawing on her lip. Pale. When was the last time he’d had milk? Fruit? Two days ago?

      No. Three.

      Four.

      “He can’t go up without balloons.” Javi pulled a creased picture from his backpack and peered at it. “And he wasn’t old like Mr. Fredisson.”

      “Fredricksen,” she corrected automatically, then closed her eyes for a moment and gathered her thoughts. How to make sense of something she hadn’t yet fully processed? Outside the cemetery’s gates, the swish-hiss of a sander slipped past, ahead of this afternoon’s predicted storm.

      She shivered in her sweater and wished for a winter coat, gloves and a better set for Javi, too, than his mismatched pair.

      Wishes.

      At least they didn’t cost a thing.

      “You don’t have to be old to go up.”

      Her ex, Jesse Cade, was dead at only twenty-six, gone from her life before Javi’s first birthday when Jesse relapsed into heroin addiction. Gone from this world two years ago without her knowing until a stranger, Jesse’s mother, Joy Cade, tracked her down last week and phoned with the news. Sofia had promised to meet her here during her Portland-bound bus’s layover from Albuquerque.

      Her stomach knotted. When Joy had pleaded for the chance to meet her grandson, Sofia heard a mother’s pain and found it hard to refuse. After wrestling with the decision, she’d finally called Joy this morning and accepted the invite.

      Not that she’d made peace with the plan.

      Sofia avoided people who associated her with her own addiction history. What if Joy divulged Sofia’s shameful past to Javi?

      She wouldn’t be able to bear it.

      Javi sprawled forward and pressed his cheek to the stone. His Batman hoodie—a dingy black thing he’d plucked from the shelter’s discard pile—rose above his waist. “I don’t want to go up. Ever.”

      “You won’t, sweetie. Promise.” She brushed back his dark hair and clamped her chattering teeth. Growing up in the inner city and forced at times to live in shelters, Javi had already endured a harsher life than some adults. She’d do everything in her power to keep him safe.

      Even from herself.

      “But what if they don’t have free lunches in—in— Where are we going?”

      “Portland.” She gathered him close and the familiar fear of not knowing where their next meal would come from curdled inside her. “No more being hungry.”

      Hopefully her friend’s job lead panned out. Finding steady, decent-paying employment wasn’t easy for former felons without high school degrees. She’d run out of options in Albuquerque.

      But maybe in Portland she had a chance at a position that’d last more than a few months, a career, maybe even a real home for Javi. One she’d decorate for the holidays in every inch of its space to make up for all the Christmases he’d had to do without.

      It might be a pie-in-the-sky idea, but when you had nothing, you had nothing to lose by dreaming big.

      She had two bus tickets and three hundred and forty-two dollars in her wallet. Since being laid off from her latest job and evicted from another apartment, it was all she had in the world besides her little guy. Her grip tightened on Javi.

      She’d made a lot of mistakes. Failing to provide for her son, making him ashamed of who he was or where he came from, would not be part of them.

      This had to work.

      “Never ever?”

      “Never ever,” she vowed, fierce.

      She would not, could not, break this promise.

      Society had judged her a disgrace, as had her father when he’d tossed her out at age sixteen. What her deceased mother thought...she’d never know.

      Didn’t want to know.

      Most important of all, though, was how Javi would judge her someday. If he knew she was a former junkie, he might stop believing in her. Which was one reason she needed to keep Joy’s visit short—to prevent any damaging revelations.

      Her “respectable mom” persona had been crashing around her ears recently. A former addict “friend” had tracked Sofia down and begged to crash at her apartment. Feeling bad for the woman, Sofia agreed to let her stay, just for a couple of nights. But then their houseguest spiraled into a drug-induced manic state where she’d threatened Javi with a gun and hollered about Sofia being a hypocrite. The woman created such a ruckus that it had caused Sofia’s eviction. It also confirmed that the only way to truly erase who she’d once been was to start over in a place where no one knew her.

      No more reminders of her old ways.

      Javi wriggled away and pulled a toy Batmobile from his pocket. He clicked on the red headlights. “Did Daddy love me?”

      She pictured Jesse, the easygoing cowboy she’d met in court-ordered rehab and once believed she might marry. Stupid, foolish girl. “He did.”

      “How come he left?”

      “He was sick.” A shiver trailed an icy fingertip down her spine as the afternoon sun finally succumbed to cloud cover. Addiction was a sickness, she justified, so it wasn’t a lie.

      “Did he get sick and die?”

      She started to shake her head, then nodded instead. There were no easy answers when drugs and violence mixed. According to Joy, drug dealers murdered Jesse for unpaid funds.

      Javi propped himself on his elbows, and his sneaker-clad feet, crossed at the ankles, swung. He pointed at the lettering again. “Is Grandma coming?”

      “She said so...” Though Joy should have arrived by now.