Chapter 23: Ember Confession
The fire in the living room’s stone fireplace had dwindled to a bed of pulsating coals, casting a deep, amber light that painted their faces in flickering relief. Mina, warm and drowsy, lay slumped against Dominic’s broad chest, her earlier tears a dried salt track on her cheek. The crayon drawing of their three stick-figure family was smoothed out on the low wooden coffee table, held flat at the corners by a bottle of beer and an empty glass. Catalina sat at the other end of the long leather sofa, legs tucked under her, watching the interplay of firelight on her daughter’s peaceful face and her brother’s pensive one.
Mina stirred, fingers twitching in her sleep. Dominic’s hand, large enough to cup her entire back, stroked up and down in a slow rhythm. His eyes weren’t on the drawing, but on a point in the flames, seeing something else entirely. The silence was complete except for the soft crackle of the burning wood and the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen.
Catalina’s foot shifted, a quiet rustle against the leather. Dominic’s gaze slid from the fire to her, the dark pools of his eyes catching the light, holding it. In them, she saw the echo of his statement in the garage, the unfathomable conviction of it. It wasn’t a proposal. It was a declaration of war against the quiet, creeping shame the world tried to impose.
He looked down at Mina, her head a perfect, fragile weight against him. His voice, when it came, was a low rumble she felt more than heard.
“Hey, little warrior,” he murmured into her hair.
Mina, half in a dream, mumbled a response that wasn’t a word, just a sleepy acknowledgment of his voice.
“You ever think about it?” Dominic asked, his words directed at the sleeping child, but his eyes held Catalina’s across the shadowy room. “About what you’d be like… as a big sister?”
Catalina’s breath stopped. Her hand, resting on her thigh, clenched. The casualness of the question, its intimacy in the dim firelight, was a live wire dropped into still water.
Mina’s eyes fluttered open. She didn’t fully wake, but swam up from the depths of sleep enough to process the familiar sound of her father’s question. “Big sister?” she repeated, her voice soft and slurred.
“Yeah.” Dominic’s thumb brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “What would you think about that? Having a brother or sister to boss around?”
A slow, sleepy smile spread across Mina’s face. She had a friend at the old daycare, Leo, who had a baby sister. Mina was endlessly fascinated by the tiny socks, the helplessness, the absolute focus it commanded. “I could teach them to draw,” she murmured, her eyes drifting closed again. “And not to eat sand.”
Catalina let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sigh, the tension in her shoulders breaking for a second. It was such a perfectly Mina answer. Practical.Proud.
Dominic’s gaze never left Catalina. He was watching for her reaction, reading the minute shifts in her posture, the widening of her eyes. The statement in the garage had been tactical, a brutal counter-offensive. This, here, was the quiet unveiling of the dream. He was inviting their daughter into it, making it a family aspiration instead of a defiant act.
“You’d be a good teacher,” Dominic whispered to Mina, his voice thick. He finally looked down at his daughter, his expression so tender it was almost painful to witness. “The best.”
Silence fell again, deeper this time, charged with the new idea now breathing in the room with them. Mina’s breathing evened out, her short journey into consciousness over. She was asleep.
The pop of a coal sent a small shower of sparks up the chimney. Catalina uncurled her legs, the leather sighing under her weight as she stood. She walked slowly to the fireplace, needing to move, to feel the heat on her skin. She stood facing the mantel, her back to Dom, looking at the framed photographs that chronicled their collision course of a life. There they were, gap-toothed and laughing on the bumper of their father’s old GTO. Teenagers, arms slung over each other’s shoulders after winning a race, the world still simple. A picture from just before everything changed, Dom and Mia, their faces younger, smoother, the schism not yet a canyon.
She felt him behind her before she saw his reflection in the glass of a picture frame. He had laid Mina down gently on the sofa, covering her with the soft wool throw, and now his presence was a solid warmth at her back. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, looking over her shoulder at the same images.
“You asked her,” Catalina said, her voice barely audible. It wasn't an accusation. It was a realization.
“I wanted to know,” he said, his breath stirring the hair by her ear. “Not for the plan. For us.”
She turned then, facing him. The firelight was behind her, throwing his face into shadow, but she could see the stark intensity in his eyes. This close, the sheer physical reality of him—the smell of engine grease and soap, the solid wall of his chest, the familiar scar above his eyebrow—was overwhelming.
“And if she’d said no?” Catalina asked, searching his face. “If she was scared, or thought it was weird?”
“Then we’d know.” He shrugged a shoulder, a small, decisive movement. “She’s part of this. All of it. She doesn’t get a vote, not really, but she gets a voice. We listen.”
He reached out then, his hand not going to her face, but mirroring his earlier gesture in the kitchen. It hovered for a moment before coming to rest, flat and warm, on the soft cotton of her t-shirt, right over her lower abdomen. The contact was electric. It was a claim, but also a question. His palm was searing through the fabric.
“She said she could teach them to draw,” he whispered, his voice gravelly with an emotion too large to name.
Catalina covered his hand with her own, pressing it more firmly against her. The decision, made hours ago in a haze of anger and resolve, crystallized into a physical ache. It was no longer about proving a point to a playground full of strangers. The feeling that rose up in her was fiercer, purer, more selfish. It was about the three of them, and the possibility of a fourth. It was about seeing him hold another newborn with that look of terrified wonder. It was about completing the circle Mina had drawn.
“Yeah,” she breathed, leaning into him until her forehead touched his collarbone. “She did.”
They stood like that for a long time, connected at the hand and the brow, while the fire burned down and the shadows grew long. The tension wasn't gone, but it had transformed from a brittle, defensive thing into a low, humming current of intent.
Later, with Mina safely transferred to her bed, the house settled into its nighttime quiet. Dominic was in the small, cluttered workshop annex off the living room, disassembling a carburetor with methodical precision, the pieces laid out on a clean rag like a surgeon’s tools. Catalina leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, watching the play of muscles in his back as he worked.
“The family tree,” she said into the quiet.
He didn't look up, his focus on a tiny spring. “What about it?”
“We can’t give them the circle. The school needs a form. A chart. With lines.”
He set the spring down with a faint tink. “So we give them lines.”
“But not the right ones,” she said, pushing off the doorframe and walking into the room. The air smelled of metal and solvent. “We lie on the form. We say… I don’t know. We say you’re not her father. Officially. We pick a name, some guy who’s long gone. It’ll be a piece of paper in a filing cabinet.”
He finally turned, wiping his hands on the rag. His expression was unreadable.
His expression was unreadable. He stood slowly, the chair legs scraping on the concrete floor. He tossed the greasy rag onto the workbench, where it landed without a sound.
"For a filing cabinet," he said, his voice flat. He walked toward her, stopping close enough that she could see the faint lines of exhaustion and fury at the corners of his eyes. "You want to put a lie in an official record for people we'll never meet. People who don't matter."
"It's to protect Mina from—"
"From what?" The question cut through the air, sharp. He shook his head, a single, slow movement of disbelief. "Protect her by telling her, on paper, that I am not her father? That you and I are not her parents? We're going to build our own cage now, with our own hands?For their comfort?"
Catalina felt the logic of it, so cold and pragmatic a moment before, begin to curdle inside her. She saw it for what it was: a retreat. A concession masked as strategy.
"The playground mommies already know," Dom said, his voice dropping, becoming more intense. He jabbed a finger toward the main house, toward Mina's room. "Those women at the swings, they see it. They whisper it. They made a five-year-old cry with it. They know we're brother and sister."
He took a half-step closer, his gaze pinning her. "So why can't the rest of them know, too?"
The question hung there, brutal in its simplicity. Catalina's argument about bureaucratic shields evaporated. He was talking about living in the truth, fully and publicly, no matter the cost.
"You think the form is the problem?" he asked, his voice softer now, almost weary. "It's not the form, Cat. It's us trying to fit into their little boxes." He gestured vaguely at the air, at the invisible judgment beyond their walls. "Kids are already talking. You heard her. They talk about 'uncles' and 'confusion.' That's in the air. At school."
He reached out, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders, his grip firm, grounding. "And you know our daughter. You know her."
Catalina nodded, a slow, reluctant acknowledgment. Mina's transparency was a force of nature.
"You know she would look at that form," Dominic continued, his eyes searching hers, "and she would ask why we were lying. She'd ask me, point blank. And I would have to tell her, 'Because the truth is too much for them, mija.'"
He shook his head again, his jaw tightening. "Or, she would just tell them herself. When the teacher asks about her family tree, she will point to you and me and her drawing. She will say, with her whole little heart, 'This is my daddy.'"
The image was devastatingly clear. Mina, proud, defiant, holding up her circle drawing to a room of confused children and a horrified teacher. There would be no discreet lie in a filing cabinet. There would only be their daughter, speaking the truth they’d taught her to value above all else.
"Our honor is not in the lies we tell for them," he whispered, his thumbs stroking the hollows of her collarbones. "It's in the truth we live for her. For us. Let them see it all."
He released her shoulders, his hands falling to his sides. The decision was made. It had been made the moment he asked Mina about being a sister. This was just the final bolt being torqued down. "No more hiding in the paperwork. We give them the truth. We give them the damn circle. And then we live with it. Out here. In the light."
He turned back to the carburetor, his broad back a wall of finality. The conversation was over. He picked up a small screwdriver, his movements precise and unwavering.
He picked up a small screwdriver, his movements precise and unwavering.
Catalina stood behind him for another minute, watching the solid concentration of his shoulders. The noise of the playground, the crumpled drawing, the medical weight of the word “sick”—it all settled into a cold, hard ball in her stomach, tempered now by the heat of his resolve. He was right. A lie on paper was a betrayal, and Mina would find it. She walked out of the workshop, leaving him to his ordered world of bolts and torque specs, and went to check on their daughter.
Mina slept deeply, her stuffed rabbit smushed under her chin. The faint glow of a nightlight caught the dried tear tracks. Catalina sat on the edge of the bed, brushing the hair from the child’s damp temple. This was the frontline. Not a garage, not a principal’s office. This small, warm room.
The digital clock on the dresser clicked to 12:47 AM. The house was a vault of quiet. She lay down on top of the covers beside Mina, listening to the steady, innocent rhythm of her breath, trying to match it. The day’s anger was a dull throb now, replaced by a deeper, more frightening anxiety about tomorrow. About the family tree. About simply walking through the kindergarten gate together in the harsh light of a Tuesday morning.
She must have dozed off, because the touch was sudden—a warm, heavy hand on her ankle. She opened her eyes. Dominic stood in the doorway of Mina’s room, a silhouette against the hall light. He’d cleaned up. The grease was gone. He just looked tired. He nodded toward their own bedroom down the hall.
She untangled herself carefully from Mina’s side and followed him. Their room was spartan, dominated by a large bed and the scent of him—clean cotton, faint sweat, that indefinable metal-and-skin smell that was just Dom. He sat on the edge of the mattress, the springs groaning softly under his weight, and started untying his boots.
“So we go in tomorrow,” he said, not looking up as he worked the laces.“Together. We see the teacher. We give her the drawing. We say this is the tree. Any questions?”
He said it like he was outlining a race strategy. Point A to point B.
“It won’t be that simple, Dom.” Catalina leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “It’s not a mechanic you’re talking to. It’s a woman with a rulebook and a direct line to child services.”
“Let her call.” He dropped the first boot on the floor with a thud. “What’s she gonna say? That the parents are present? That they’re providing a stable home? That the kid is loved?” He looked up, his eyes catching the light from the hall. “We answer the questions. We don’t apologize.”
He pulled off the other boot. The silence stretched. The unspoken part of the plan hung between them—the part about the other parents, the staring, the new wave of whispers that would start tomorrow at pickup and ripple out through their small, closed world.
“And what do we tell Mina when the kids say things again? Worse things?” Catalina’s voice was quiet in the dark room.
Dominic stood, stripped off his shirt, and tossed it into a hamper. His torso was a map of old scars and hard-earned muscle in the dim light. “We tell her the truth we should’ve been telling her all along.” He walked to her, stopping close. “We tell her that sometimes people are scared of things they don’t understand. That their words are about their fear, not about us. That this family, right here, is the strongest thing she will ever know.” He placed his hands on her shoulders again, his thumbs finding the knots of tension at the base of her neck. “We tell her we chose this. We choose it every day.”
His touch, the simple heat and weight of his hands, began to melt the cold anxiety in her core. It wasn’t a magic fix. It was an anchor. She leaned forward, her forehead pressing against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him fully, and she felt the steady, strong drum of his heart against her ear.
They stood like that for a long time, not speaking, just breathing each other in. The decision was a stone in their pockets now, a weight they would carry together tomorrow. There was no more debate. Just the quiet, terrifying resolve.
Later, tangled in the sheets, the distant glow of the city painting stripes on the ceiling, Catalina lay awake. Dominic slept on his back beside her, a deep, untroubled sleep that seemed to be his reward for absolute conviction. She watched the rise and fall of his chest, thinking about circles and torque wrenches and sick, angry scrawls on yellow paper. Her hand drifted to her own stomach, flat and familiar under her palm. The idea of a new life there, conceived in this defiant truth, was no longer abstract. It felt like fate. It felt like the only logical next step on a road they’d paved themselves years ago.
A thin blade of dawn was starting to cut through the blinds when the bedroom door creaked open.
Small, bare feet padded across the wooden floor. Catalina turned her head. Mina stood by the side of the bed, her hair a wild cloud, clutching her rabbit. Her face was soft with sleep but her eyes were wide, suddenly awake with the urgency of a forgotten mission.
“Mommy? Daddy?” she whispered, her voice raspy.
Dominic’s eyes snapped open instantly. He turned his head on the pillow. “What’s wrong, mija?”
Mina climbed onto the bed, kneeling between them. The sheets rustled. She looked from her father’s sleep-creased face to her mother’s. A deep, dramatic sigh heaved from her little chest.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said, her tone serious, imparting crucial news. “Tomorrow… no, today. When I wake up again. Today is Bring Your Parents Day for kindergarten.”
She nodded, as if confirming this vital piece of intelligence to herself. “We have to go. In the morning. All the parents come. Miss Albright said.”
Catalina’s stomach dropped. She felt Dominic go perfectly still beside her.
The universe, it seemed, had decided to skip the meeting with the teacher and go straight to the main event. No private conference. No discreet handing over of a drawing. Just a room full of children, every single one of their parents, and the three of them, standing in the center of it.
Dominic slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows. The sheet pooled around his waist. He looked at Mina, her earnest, hopeful face illuminated by the creeping dawn. He looked at Catalina, seeing the same stunned realization in her eyes.
A slow, sharp grin spread across his face. It wasn’t a happy smile. It was the grin of a racer seeing the finish line materialize through a wall of smoke, the challenge suddenly crystallized into perfect, undeniable clarity.
“Bring Your Parents Day,” he repeated, his voice a low rumble of pure, unadulterated focus. He looked back at Mina. “Okay then.”
He reached out and pulled her into the space between them, tucking her under his arm. “We’ll be there. Right on time.”
He met Catalina’s gaze over the top of their daughter’s head. His eyes were alight, not with fear, but with a fierce, blazing readiness. The battlefield was chosen. The time was set.
All they had to do was show up.
Chapter 23 (Continuation)
All they had to do was show up.
Bring Your Parents Day dawned with a brittle, blue sky that felt like a taunt. Catalina dressed Mina in a bright yellow sundress, as if color could be armor. She brushed her daughter’s hair into two tight braids, her fingers trembling slightly. “Remember what we talked about, mi amor? About our family being a circle?”
Mina nodded, her small face solemn. “Like the drawing. It’s strong.”
“It is.” Catalina’s voice sounded thick. She kissed the top of her head, inhaling the scent of strawberry shampoo and childhood.
Dominic was already in the garage. She found him not working, just standing by the Charger, one hand resting on its roof as if drawing strength from the cold metal. He wore dark jeans and a simple grey Henley, the sleeves pushed up. He looked like a man waiting for a starting light. He glanced at her, his gaze a silent check-in. She gave a short, tight nod.
The drive to Carson Elementary was silent. Mina hummed to herself in the backseat. Dominic’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Catalina watched the suburbs blur past, each identical house feeling like a watching eye.
They parked at the far end of the lot, away from the clustered minivans and crossovers. As they walked toward the kindergarten gate, a familiar dread tightened Catalina’s throat. The gate’s rusty shriek was absent today, propped wide open like a mouth.
The classroom was a sensory overload of primary colors, dried paste, and the high, piercing buzz of twenty excited children. Paper leaves and hand-turkeys from a past holiday still clung to the windows. Small chairs were arranged in a wobbly semicircle on a brightly patterned rug. Parents, mostly mothers, stood clustered near the cubbies, holding travel mugs and wearing polite, practiced smiles.
The air left the room when they walked in. Not all at once, but in a slow, suffocating leak. Conversations didn’t stop, they dropped to a lower register. Eyes flicked toward them, then away, then back with naked curiosity. Catalina felt the heat of their collective gaze like a physical pressure on her skin. Sarah, the realtor, was there, her smile freezing into something rigid. Lynn stood beside her, one hand drifting unconsciously to her own daughter’s shoulder. Albright, in another floral dress, fluttered forward, her professional cheer brittle at the edges.“Mr. and Mrs. Toretto! Mina! So glad you could join us.” The ‘Mrs.’ landed awkwardly, a forced label that made Dominic’s jaw flex.
“We’re here,” Dominic said, his voice flat and calm, cutting through the ambient noise. He didn’t smile. He simply scanned the room, a slow, assessing look that made several fathers suddenly find their shoes fascinating.
The event was a carefully orchestrated parade of normalcy. Children showed off their cubbies, their favorite books, the class hamster in its cage. Mina held Dominic’s hand tightly, leading him to her little desk with her name spelled in wobbly letters on a card. She showed him a clay pot she’d made, her voice a proud whisper only he could hear. Catalina stood a half-step behind them, a sentinel, feeling the whispers bleed from the walls.Then Ms. Albright clapped her hands, the sound too sharp. “Now, for our special sharing project! This month, we’ve been learning about our roots. Who would like to present their family tree first?”
A confident boy named Oliver went up, holding a large, store-bought poster with neat branches. “This is my daddy, and my mommy, and my grandma and grandpa in Michigan…” His voice was clear. The parents nodded, smiled. It was safe. It was a diagram.
Several others followed. Charts with photos, names in careful print, lines spreading outward like respectable, predictable vines. The room was a gallery of conventional genealogy.
Then it was Mina’s turn.
She walked to the front, clutching her paper. Not a poster. Her single sheet of construction paper, now pressed flat and mounted on a slightly larger piece of blue backing paper at Catalina’s insistence that morning. From a distance, it looked like all the others.
Dominic’s posture changed. He shifted his weight forward onto the balls of his feet. Catalina stopped breathing.
Mina held up her picture. The three stick figures. The lopsided sun. The title, MY FAMLY, in the teacher’s neat print.
“This is my family tree,” Mina announced, her small voice ringing with absolute certainty in the quiet room. She pointed with a stubby finger. “This is my daddy, Dominic. This is my mommy, Catalina. They’re my roots. And the tree is a circle.”
She turned the paper around, showing everyone. She didn’t point out the scarred, angry letters she’d gouged at the bottom after the playground. That phrase—FAMLY = SIK—was not visible. Catalina had carefully covered it with a fresh, smiling sun sticker before they left the house, a tiny act of censorship that now felt like a betrayal of Dom’s ‘no lies’ mandate.
But the circle was enough. The simple, closed loop of three names. The silence this time was different. It wasn’t curious. It was dense, thick with unspoken judgment. A mother near the back coughed. Another shifted, her keys jingling loudly in the void. Albright’s smile was a fragile crack in plaster. “A… circle. How unique, Mina. Thank you for sharing your… interpretation.”
“It’s not a in-ter-pret-ay-shun,” Mina corrected, carefully sounding out the big word. “It’s just true. My daddy and mommy are twins. So the tree can’t have branches. It’s a circle. That’s stronger.”
The words, spoken with such pure, five-year-old logic, landed like a hammer. A sharp, collective inhalation swept through the parent cluster.Eyes widened. Sarah from the playground actually took a half-step back, bumping into the cubbies.
Catalina’s vision tunneled. She saw only Mina, standing alone on the rug, proudly holding up their truth. She saw the teacher’s panic. She saw Dominic, standing statue-still, his entire being focused on his daughter. His pride was a palpable heat radiating from him, but his eyes were tracking the room, watching the reactions click into place: confusion, dawning understanding, then revulsion.
A boy in the front row, Leo, Mina’s friend with the baby sister, wrinkled his nose. “My daddy says only plants grow in circles. Families are lines.”
A few children giggled, a nervous, mimicking sound.
Mina’s lower lip trembled, just once. The unshakeable confidence faltered, replaced by a flicker of confusion. She looked from Leo toward her parents, seeking confirmation.
That was the moment the whispers began. Not from the children, but from the wall of adults.
“My God, she actually said it out loud…”
“Twins? I thought it was just a rumor, like a step-situation…”
“That’s not a family tree, that’s a family knot.”
The last one, from a father in a polo shirt, was just audible enough. Dominic’s head turned toward the sound with the slow, lethal precision of a turret. The man visibly flinched, taking a sip from his coffee cup to hide his face. Albright clapped her hands again, a frantic sound. “Okay! Thank you, Mina! Let’s give her a nice round of applause for her… creative project!” The applause was a few ragged, pitying claps, mostly from the teacher herself.
Mina walked back to them, the paper hanging at her side now. The proud light in her eyes was gone, replaced by a wet, bewildered shine. She didn’t understand the mechanics of the rejection, only its weight. Dominic knelt as she reached them, blocking her from the room’s view. He took the drawing from her limp hand.
“You did perfect,” he told her, his voice low and rough, for her ears alone. “You told the truth. That’s all that matters.”
“Leo said it’s wrong,” Mina whispered, a tear escaping.
“Leo is five,” Dom said, wiping the tear with his thumb. “He doesn’t know. Yet.”
The rest of the event was a formality endured in a bubble of hostile quiet that surrounded them. Parents ushered their children subtly away from Mina during the juice box social. Conversations died when Catalina approached the snack table. They were a stone in a stream, the flow of normalcy parting around them with averted eyes and tightened lips.
Finally, it was over. They filed out with the others, the bright sunshine outside feeling grotesque after the gloom of the classroom. As they reached the walkway, Ms. Albright scurried after them, her heels tapping a rapid, anxious rhythm on the concrete.
“Mr. Toretto? Mrs.—Catalina? A moment, please?”
They stopped. Dominic turned, placing himself slightly between the teacher and his family. Mina hid behind Catalina’s legs.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a question. Albright wrung her hands. “I… that is, the school… we feel it might be beneficial to have a meeting.With the counselor. To discuss Mina’s… home environment. To ensure her social development is on track, given the… unconventional presentation.”
Catalina felt a cold fury, cleaner than the messy heat of the playground. This was the bureaucracy Dom had predicted. The gentle, paperwork-wrapped version of the word ‘sick’.
Dominic took a single step forward. The teacher took an instinctive step back, hitting the chain-link fence.
“You want to discuss her environment,” he repeated, his voice dangerously quiet. He looked past her, back toward the classroom window where a few parents still lingered, watching. “Her environment is us. You saw it today. You heard her. She knows who she is. Where she comes from.”
He leaned in, just slightly. “You have a question about her development?Look at her. She’s brave. She’s honest. She stood in front of your whole room and told a truth she knew would make people whisper. That’s more social courage than any of your juice-box diplomats have.”
Ms. Albright’s mouth opened and closed. “The school has a duty of care…”
“Your duty,” Dom interrupted, his finger coming up to point, not at her, but at the ground between them, marking a line, “is to teach her how to read and write and add. Not how to draw her family. That’s our duty. We’re doing it. You don’t get a vote.”
He straightened up, his shadow falling over her. “Schedule your meeting. We’ll be there. We’ll answer every one of your questions. With the truth. And then you’re going to leave our daughter alone.”
He turned, putting his hand on the small of Catalina’s back, a firm guide. “Let’s go home.”
They walked to the car, Mina sniffling softly between them. The judgmental stares followed them all the way across the parking lot. Dominic didn’t hurry. He walked with a slow, deliberate pace, his head high, making them watch his retreating back.
Inside the Charger, the engine roared to life, a powerful, familiar sound that drowned out the school. Mina cried quietly in her booster seat. Catalina stared out the window, the neat houses and trimmed lawns now looking like a staged set for a life they were permanently locked out of. The ‘family tree’ had been a trial. They had been found guilty.
Dominic drove, his profile hard. After a few minutes, he spoke, his eyes on the road.
“We’re not going back.” It was a statement.
Catalina looked at him. “What?”
“To that school.” He glanced at her, then in the rearview at Mina. “They’ve made their judgment. They’ll make her pay for it every day. In little ways. In whispers. In kids not inviting her to birthdays. In teachers ‘being concerned’.”
“We can’t just pull her out, Dom. It’s the public school district. They’ll send truant officers. It’ll make everything worse, it’ll look like we’re running—”
“We’re not running.” He took a hard left, away from their neighborhood, heading toward the industrial zone near the docks. “We’re changing the battlefield. We homeschool her.”
The idea was so vast, so drastic, it stole Catalina’s breath. “We… what? We’re not teachers. We work in a garage.”
“She needs to learn math? I’ll teach her torque ratios and engine displacement. Fractions with a socket set. She needs to read? She can read shop manuals and Steinbeck.History? I’ll teach her the history of this city, the real history, not the crap in their books.” His voice was heating up, fueled by a vision.