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into the cart and I stared at a crack in the floor, wishing it would expand and swallow me down into the deep red earth with the dinosaur bones. But it didn’t, and people kept passing by and jostling me, and Papi was loading up the cart and—
    “It’s my favorite Hernandezes.” Emilio clomped down the aisle, arms loaded with enough candy and chips to feed the whole garage. When he noticed the disheveled pyramid of boxes in our cart, his eyes went wide.
    I didn’t have time to worry about my own mortification. Papi was three minutes from a full-scale nuclear meltdown. We needed to vacate. Rápido .
    “We’re leaving,” I said. “Just had to get some things . . . for my mother. And my aunts. And all my cousins.” Even though they live in Argentina, where they grow their own tampons. “Ready, Papi?”
    Papi turned to Emilio, his fingers closing on another pregnancy test. “Do you have kids, júnior ?”
    Emilio looked at me with raised eyebrows, but I didn’t have answers. Was there a right one? A wrong one? Anything could snap him back to reality or send him into the abyss.
    “No, sir,” Emilio said. “No wife yet either.”
    Papi clucked his tongue. “Good-looking guy like you? I don’t believe it.”
    “I know, right?” Emilio loosened up, his smile genuine. “Glad I ran into you guys. I found this vintage Harley blog and—”
    “Harley? I used to ride. Sixty-one Duo-Glide,” Papi said.
    Emilio’s eyebrows drew together, but I shook my head, like, Don’t ask, just play along, and he pressed on. “Yeah, I heard.”
    “Life throws different things at you though. Can’t hold on to the past.” He held up the pregnancy test and tossed it into the cart. “Do you kids know if they have the . . . What are they called?” Papi made a balling-up gesture with his hands.
    “What are you looking for?” I asked.
    “You know. The . . . thingies. For the . . .” He closed his eyes, face contorted with concentration and frustration. “Damnit! God damnit!”
    Emilio met my eyes across the cart. My skin crawled with panic, but his gaze didn’t waver. “Sing, Jude.”
    Papi made a fist and slammed it against the cart handle, pounding and pounding, cursing with every blow. The stock boy finally got up from the floor.
    “Miss?” he said. “Do you need me to call someone?”
    Emilio held up a finger, put the stock boy on pause. “Jude, does he have a favorite song?”
    “I don’t—I have no idea.”
    Does he?
    Papi kept on hammering the cart, and I scanned my memories as far back as they would go, searching for a note, a lyric, a verse. My mind served up happy birthdays, television themesongs, Mom’s tango CDs, but nothing I could remember him singing, nothing he cranked up the car radio for.
    Everyone has a favorite song. . . . Why don’t I know his?
    “I should get the manager,” the stock boy said.
    “We’re fine,” Emilio told him. “Jude, sing something. We need to distract him, get him calmed down.”
    I cleared my throat and started singing “Many a New Day” from Oklahoma! , which I hoped Papi would appreciate, since he’d been on that western kick. My voice was shaky at first, but Papi stopped pounding, smiled even, and I kept on.
    Never have I wept into my tea over the deal someone doled me.  . . .
    At the end of my Grant’s Pharmacy concert debut, Papi abandoned the cart that only moments earlier had been his entire world. “You’re an angel, Juju. How come you don’t sing anymore?”
    I shrugged, but inside, shame clawed my stomach. I’d manipulated him. Tricked him like you would a little kid throwing a tantrum, offering up a shiny new toy to get him to stop.
    “Well, you should.” Papi put his arm over my shoulder. “You hungry, queridita ? Can we get some lunch?”
    Just like that, the rage and confusion lifted, and everyone in the store returned to their prescriptions and greeting cards and sunburn-relief gel as if nothing had happened.
    Calm followed