When Neil strode out of his grandmother’s bedroom one morning at the house in Galveston, looking for all the world like a matinee idol, Ryan felt as though she were seeing him for the very first time. His sure-footed swagger was strangely soothing, so that she stopped fretting and missing home, if but for a moment.
He breezed past without a word and went and sat on the small front porch of the little yellow house. Some instinct told her to hang back and let him alone, the way her mother sometimes vacated the living room when her father took over to shout at football players through the TV.
Novia. She recalled only a few words or phrases from Spanish class, preferring to doodle short phrases such as Ryan & Neil Forever in bubble letters than give serious attention to the lesson at hand, b
