I strode through the bays. Bud stopped by a banged-up Corvette. “This one’s yours,” he said. “See how she looks.”

I yanked on the latch and jerked up the hood. When I tried to force the metal stand into the hole, it missed, and the heavy hood came crashing back down, startling everyone in the garage.

Bud cocked his head at me. “You okay?”

I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye, wishing the pressure would ease the ache in my temple. “Maybe not.”

Mario came up behind Bud, wiping his hands on a towel. “I finished up that radiator blowout. I’ll hang with Gavin.”

Bud backed away, nodding. “Keep him straight.”

When he disappeared back into the front office, Mario whirled around. “What the hell is up with you lately?”

“Nothing.” I yanked on the latch again and lifted the hood, this time making certain the stand was secure before letting go.

Mario tugged on the main belt. “This one’s shot. I’ll go hunt down a replacement.”

While I waited, I stared into the engine and wondered why Rosa had tried to pull a number on me.

My phone buzzed, and I wanted to just ignore it, but it wasn’t a call, just a text with a photo attached. From Rosa.

The picture loaded automatically, a boy, probably about three. I was going to delete it when something caught my attention. A cowlick split his hairline just to the right of the center of his forehead.

I touched my hair. I kept it short up top to avoid the whorl I couldn’t control, in almost precisely the same place.

I clicked on the picture and zoomed in. His eyes were Rosa’s, no doubt. But his ears — they laid just like mine, mostly flat but with a flare at the top.

Impossible.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket but pulled it out again five seconds later.

It couldn’t be.

The message said only “Manuelito. Feb. 15, 2010.”

I counted back. That time frame was right.

Shit.

Mario returned with the belt. “You look like you’ve eaten some bad chili.”

“How long after a vasectomy before you start shooting blanks?” I asked, my stomach turning.

He balanced the belt box on the frame of the ’Vette. “Hell if I know. You thinking of getting one?”

I tried to swallow, but my throat was blocked. “Already did.”

“Damn. That’s one hell of a thing to do.” He leaned against the car. “That girl you’re seeing — she just find out or something?”

“No. I mean, yeah. But, shit.”

He stared at me a second, then turned back to the motor. “Maybe you should take a walk or something. I can handle this.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The air outside was cold and helped me think. What the hell was going on? I strode briskly down the sidewalk, punching on my phone for a Google search on vasectomy.

I hadn’t understood a single word anybody said to me at the clinic. I’d awakened on a lumpy cot, groggy, with jagged shards of pain shooting up from my groin. They seemed to want me off the premises right after. I’d only made it a few blocks before I knew I had to figure out something to help ease the misery. Walking was near impossible and I couldn’t spot a taxi anywhere midafternoon.

The farmacia where Rosa worked was blessedly close. Between her broken English and the help of the man behind the counter, they got me some cold packs to stuff in a jock strap, plus God knows what sort of drugs.

 But I still didn’t have information on the procedure or when it worked. I hadn’t worried about it, as sticking some girl was about the last thing on my mind.

The doctor I’d seen stateside a couple months later had confirmed I was sterile. He’d asked too many questions about where I’d had it done, so we didn’t exactly chat.

The first link came up on my phone, and I scanned through the information, looking for how fast it worked.

I bumped into a bench and sat down, feeling dumbfounded. Weeks? It could take up to two months?

I backed up and chose a different link, hoping for another answer.

Ten ejaculations, this one said.

How long had it been? Rosa had spent that first night with me after surgery, but we hadn’t done anything. I’d been strung out from pain and full of regret. When had I gone back to her?

I closed my eyes to piece together those days.

After leaving the farmacia, I’d barely made it to the hotel across the street before collapsing. I took the first two pills Rosa had given me and crashed a little while.

But the pain woke me, and heeding her stern warning about not taking any more until bedtime, I wandered the room in a haze until I spotted her from my window. She stood on the street corner below, dressed very differently than she had been inside the shop.

I turned away from her curling black hair that reminded me of Corabelle and what I had done, this irrevocable act that meant I could never return to her. I stared at the ceiling, refusing to succumb to the heaving sobs that threatened to take me over, unable to erase the image of her standing in the aisle of the church, mute and shocked, Finn’s blue casket just behind her.

I had to get past it all. I had to force myself to think of something else. I pulled a chair up to the window and watched Rosa stand by a pole, awkward and too innocent for the job, finally getting approached by a man but pushing him away.

When she had had no luck for an hour, and I was in too much misery to sit there alone any longer, I went down to see if I could pay for her myself. Company, any company, was preferable to the blaring Spanish channels and peeling wallpaper that only exacerbated the despair that tried to drag me back into a pit.

Her presence kept my demons at bay that night. I held her close as if she were Corabelle, and took the pills when she said it was okay to do so. In the morning, she left after asking only a pittance, and the next night I waited for her to close up the shop before I approached her to come again.

Her frightened face made me hang back as the man behind the counter came out and took off down the street. I figured the score pretty fast — he had no idea she was hooking and might fire her if he knew.

When he was well away, she turned back to me. “Better today?”

“I will be if you come with me.”

She glanced down the street, her black curls blowing across her face like her hair was the wind itself. I suddenly understood the concept of transference. I couldn’t love Corabelle anymore; I had cut myself away from my old world. So I would love this girl instead, in some new and different way, one that got nowhere near any tender or vulnerable space.

“I need to go home first,” she said and glanced up at the hotel. “Room is same?”

I nodded.

She slung her heavy black bag on her shoulder, trapping a swath of the wild hair. “I will come.”

We turned from each other, and I trudged with my old-man walk across the street and up the stairs, then back down to a liquor store next door, buying a bottle of wine, and up again.

We hadn’t done anything that night either, as the wine on top of the pills knocked me out cold not long after she arrived. I had pulled her against my chest on the lumpy bed, both of us fully clothed. I didn’t want her in any other way, not then, not so soon, my groin still searing from the stitches and Corabelle still so close in my memory.

When had we gotten busy? Within the two months? The ten jacks?

I stood up from the bench, restless, angry. Surely I hadn’t made so stupid a mistake. I headed back to the garage, racking my brain for the memory. How long had it been?

I’d stayed a week in that hotel, then moved on. I didn’t see Rosa for a little while as I searched for someplace to live while I took the GED and got enrolled at UCSD. I got a job as a night stocker at a grocer.

Then I remembered. Graduation night, a couple weeks later. I’d been lonely and feeling pent up. I didn’t know a soul and hadn’t talked to anyone but the uptight night manager of the store, who kept all the employees on different aisles as we worked so we wouldn’t waste time.