here was business.
And then there was what was right.
Sometimes, you had to choose the latter.
Like it or not.
We would be able to rest easy knowing that these women would get the help they needed.
And then we would handle the assholes who did this to them.
Before the feds got through all their bureaucratic tape enough to ferret them out themselves.
And we could do that while simultaneously looking for Romy's sister.
Speaking of Romy, I was never so glad as to finally be able to make my way home to her.
The day had gone longer than we'd anticipated. It was a quarter after five before I could finally get in my car and head back.
I rode the elevator up, trying to remember the appropriate ways to comfort an upset woman.
Only to walk into Romy in the kitchen, blues on my record player while she steadily chopped something on the cutting board.
"Oh, finally," she said, offering me a warm smile, and it was then I could see the evidence of the tears. The puffy lids, the red-rimmed eyes.
But she was smiling.
And cooking.
"I'm sorry I'm so late," I told her, moving into the kitchen, not exactly sure what my move was here now that she wasn't sobbing and needing me to hold her.
"It's alright. It gave me time to think about what I can make out of what we have in the fridge," she told me, shrugging.
"What are you making?"
"Arepa. Well, sort of. We don't have corn flour."
"What is Arepa?" I asked, watching as she chopped up an avocado.
"It's sort of like a pita sandwich, I guess. Everyone makes it different. But you can have beans, cheese, rice, pork, eggs, and veggies in it. The sky is the limit. The cooks in the family get creative with what they have leftover."
"And what kind are we having?"
"Well, we had the avocado, of course. And that shredded cheese. And there was that leftover chicken I took off that sandwich we ordered for lunch yesterday. And lettuce. And a little tomato. The pita is just a normal pita that someone had thrown in your freezer."
"I don't even know who would have done that," I admitted. "I don't think I've ever seen my aunt cook with pita bread before."
"It's a mystery. Maybe your cleaning lady brought some and then forgot to bring it home?" she asked, knowing about her because we'd discussed her a few nights ago over dinner. Mostly, I think, because it was a job that her mother had done, and she wanted to make sure I was paying Tina fairly and treating her right.
"That's possible. Tina leaves her lunch here all the time. I can see that happening."
"We will have to replace it and tell her it is in there then," she decided, taking a second to write it down on the grocery list we had been keeping on the counter when new ideas popped up.
I decided I liked her eagerness to use the word "we" a lot more than I could have realized.
We would do this.
And we would do that.