Deserves to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“He was a toddler,” Pescoli said at the same time Jeremy drawled, “Like I remember it.”

Bianca lifted a shoulder and had to adjust the wide neck of her sweater. “Maybe it would, you know, make it suck less, if we were there.”

“I’m not going to be blackmailed into this,” Pescoli said. “If I decide it’s the right thing to do, then we’ll work it out. As I said, we’ll all move in together once the new house is ready.” She thought of the construction. “It’ll be awhile yet. At least a month, maybe two, but probably three. It’s not as if you haven’t been expecting this. Haven’t I been telling you to go through your things and start thinking about moving? How far have we gotten with that?”

“I’m not moving there.” Jeremy finished off the juice and crushed the carton in one hand. “I’ll get my own place.”

“Good. I’ll live with you,” Bianca announced.

“Yeah, right,” Pescoli said dryly.

“I’m almost seventeen!”

“Precisely.”

“You just don’t care what I want,” Bianca huffed.

Refusing to be baited, Pescoli nodded. “That’s right. I’ve never put your needs before mine in the last sixteen years.”

“You don’t understand!”

“Probably not.”

“Do you know you’re like . . . impossible?” Bianca charged, so angry she was nearly spitting, “It really doesn’t matter because I’m moving in with Dad and Michelle. They want me.”

Pescoli just looked at her daughter. They’d had this argument before. Dozens of times, Bianca had angrily threatened to move out and live with Lucky and his second wife. Though the hot argument always ripped out Pescoli’s heart, she’d learned to play it cool and keep her reactions to a minimum. “I think you should give living with Santana and me a chance. You could love it.”

Bianca rolled her eyes. “Mom, I don’t like him and I never will, okay? So don’t get this super romantic idea that we’re going to live like some big loving, blended family.”

Pescoli slid a look at her son, who was leaning against the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the eating area. “I thought you might want to live in the apartment over the garage. Well, it’s not really an apartment with all the bells and whistles, but it’s big, kind of a bonus room with its own bath. If you wanted, you could take in a microwave and minifridge. It even has its own separate entrance.”

Jeremy asked, “That’s cool with Santana?”

“It will be.”

“I thought you said it was going to be his office.”

Pescoli lifted a shoulder because she wasn’t really certain. “We can move things around. Besides, it wouldn’t be forever.”

“If Jer doesn’t want it, I’ll take it,” Bianca said, seizing what she perceived as a prime opportunity to assert her independence.

“How would that work? You’d commute from Lucky and Michelle’s?” Pescoli asked.

Bianca glared at her mother. “I’d live there, as you well know. In the apartment over the garage.”

Pescoli shook her head. “But not for a few years.”

“That’s just not fair!” Bianca actually stomped a bare foot and marched back to her room, slamming her door behind her.

“Sixteen going on twelve,” Pescoli muttered.

“Give her a break,” Jeremy said, opening the refrigerator again and finding some deli meat. He sniffed it, deigned it good enough to eat, and slapped it on a slice of bread that he’d left on the counter. “It’s not easy, you know.”

“I know. It’s not easy for me, either, but it’s going to happen. I want it to happen.”

“Okay.” Jeremy dug deeper into the fridge and pulled out ajar of mayo. He quickly slathered one slice of bread, then squirted a thick dollop of some kind of hot sauce onto the meat. “It’ll be cool.”

She eyed her son as he grabbed a butcher knife from the block near the stove and sliced his sandwich into two thick halves. “Yeah?”