A long, heavy silence followed his father’s question.

“We’re having company over tonight, Manuel,” Veronica finally replied, and her voice was cold, and flat, and entirely without warmth.

“It’s better if you two eat in your room.” “It would only take twenty minutes,” Manuel said, and the smallness of it, his father reduced to bargaining for twenty minutes at his own kitchen table, made something in Alvin’s chest turn to ice.

“Manuel,” Veronica snapped.