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Theo slipped past her, drew a key from his pocket, and began to unlock the front door.
    “Theo.”
    He ignored her.
    She ran up the walk and stood on the bottom step, grabbing his arm. “Theo. Did you tell him I was your stepmom ?”
    He kept his face averted, but she could see that it was flaming red. He nodded, obviously miserable. She began to feel ever so slightly sorry for him. It helped that he was as pretty as Frodo in The Lord of the Rings movies. Kind of the opposite of Ethan, with his almost-warrior manly looks.
    But she wasn’t going to think about that now. “What possessed you to do that?”
    He shrugged. He lifted his pointy chin and faced her and said, “I’ve seen you at school sometimes in the library. Tutoring. So I recognized you, and, I don’t know, I saw you sitting there, and I thought maybe you wouldn’t yell as loud as my dad.”
    She had to fight back the urge to laugh. “I probably won’t.” She felt a peculiar surge of tenderness for him, this prickly little troublemaker. As if it meant something that he’d chosen to make her his impromptu stepmother. Of course, it didn’t. He’d never met her, didn’t know her. What he’d said meant nothing more than a possible way out of trouble for him.
    He reached for the key again. The skateboard still lay on the lawn halfway up the path.
    “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ana asked him.
    He turned back. “Thank you. For getting me out of trouble.”
    She laughed, because that wasn’t what she meant, but at least the kid could learn. “The skateboard. I’m sure your dad doesn’t want you to leave it on the grass.”
    “He doesn’t care.” He shrugged.
    “Really?”
    He glared at her, a man’s heavy eyebrows in a boy’s angular face. He had a few angry-looking blackheads where his nostrils flared and a hint of shadow on his upper lip, but otherwise his skin was milk fair, porcelain smooth, and still slightly blotchy with embarrassment.
    “Don’t you think you’ve gotten yourself into enough trouble for one day?”
    He trudged back and retrieved the skateboard. “Are you going to tell my dad?”
    She snorted. “No.”
    He looked surprised.
    “ Vas a decircelo. You’re going to tell him. Including the part about how you lied to the cop about me being your stepmom. Now let’s get inside before we waste your whole hour of tutoring time.”
    “He’s going to kill me!” His eyes were huge now.
    “You knew that when you decided to ride your skateboard on that wall.”
    “I didn’t think I’d get caught.” He came past her up the steps.
    “Boche.”
    He spun. “What does that mean?”
    It was a Dominican Spanish corruption of the English “bullshit,” but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “It means I think you knew perfectly well that you’d get caught.”
    That silenced him and sent his gaze skittering, anywhere but to her.
    He pushed the front door open and she followed him into the entryway, which was bigger than the bedroom she shared with her sister and her niece. There was a plush Oriental rug underfoot, and wide, richly stained floorboards beneath that. She bet Ethan and Theo Hansen never got splinters in their feet from walking on their hardwood floors, or felt uneasy about what might be growing in their carpeting.
    A banister curved up a long set of steps littered with books and papers and what looked like clean laundry waiting to go upstairs. The laundry was neatly folded. More button-downs and khakis, a few T-shirts and pairs of jeans—Theo’s? Father and son suburban uniforms. On top of the pile, small tighty whiteys and larger gray boxer briefs, white tube socks and brown dress socks.
    Dammit, now she knew what kind of underwear Ethan wore. She liked boxer briefs. They were the only dignified form of male underwear.
    Theo leaned his skateboard against the wall.
    “I’m Ana, by the way. I should have said that earlier.”
    “I’m Theo.” Color rose in his face. That awkward teenage misery. It