Read Heart of the World for Free Online

once wept when I asked the color of his son's eyes.
    The light changed and I hit the gas. Pity didn’t help a damn thing; sympathy didn’t help. Fear didn’t help. I had skills and I needed to use them, dispassionately, coolly.
    For all intents and purposes I presented a professional appearance when I rang the bell of Marta Fuentes's small white house in Watertown. No one could hear the refrain humming through my mind: Should have come at once, should have come earlier . I tamped down the admonition. How could I have known that two whole days after Marta's phone call I’d be back at the starting gate, searching for a trail, sniffing the frigid air? I’d done it by the book, tracked down the leads one at a time. What else could I have done? What else could I do?
    The house looked sad and weathered, a tiny single-family in a two-family neighborhood, the servants’ dwelling for a grand Victorian that had burned years ago. Not a great location, but miles better than the old apartment in the East Cambridge projects. Even Marta admitted it was better for the kids, a pocket yard, a basketball hoop with a real net instead of hanging chain, a swing set that wasn’t routinely vandalized.
    I rang the bell. I knocked. I waited. I was contemplating a little breaking and entering by the time Marta finally opened the door, her dark hair tousled and her eyes swollen. She wore tight gray sweatpants and a matching tank top. She didn’t say a word, just stared at me and crossed her arms protectively over her chest.
    â€œMarta, sorry if I woke you.”
    â€œYou don’ wake me,” she said. “But I don’ got no time.”
    â€œMarta, I need to look at her room.”
    â€œI’m goin’ out, soon as I fix my face.” She was a small, curvy woman, still attractive, I supposed, still sexy, provided you liked your women predatory. I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’d seen her without heavy-duty makeup. “You know as well as I know, she goes with some boy,” she went on. “Always the same thing, some boy.
    She don’ care about me, about her family. She don’ care about you, neither. We can die from worry, she don’ care.”
    It didn’t look like Marta was going to die from worry any time soon.
    â€œI’ll just take a look.” I pushed the screen door open a little harder than I needed to and stepped inside. “You go ahead with whatever you have to do.” I didn’t want her company, didn’t want her hovering over me, detailing Paolina's failures as a daughter. If she insisted, I’d be tempted to detail her failings as a mother and then I’d get kicked out of the house.
    She stared up at me, taking a moment to decide that this was a fight she couldn’t win. “Go on, then. Go ahead,” she muttered.
    I didn’t need directions. I’d been there often enough, picking up Paolina for Saturday volleyball followed by our continuing search for the perfect ice cream cone, a quest that took us out to Kendall's in Littleton in summer, to Toscanini's in Cambridge, and Herrell's in Brighton. The hunt was less fervent in winter, but we soldiered on, my little sister in search of the ideal strawberry; me, mocha, sometimes mocha chip.
    The house was small and Paolina's room tiny. The family that lived there previously had used it as a laundry room, and the washer-dryer hookup remained, enclosed now by a pair of slatted wooden blinds that hung from the ceiling. My sister's bed was a couch, and Marta referred to the place as the den, declaring she did so only so the boys wouldn’t be jealous that Paolina had a room of her own.
    Room of her own, Paolina scoffed. Sure, and every time she wanted to be alone her mother decided to do the laundry.
    The blinds were up, the washer and dryer covered with dirty clothes that hadn’t made it into any laundry hamper.
    How does a teenager organize life