Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan Read Free

honest—everything it touched was sharply focused, outlined in
heat. The sun kept its eye on the city until its very last moment on
the horizon, looking at you as if to say: "Tomorrow PM going to
kick your ass."
    Vandiver Street hadn’t changed. Sprinklers cut
circles across the huge lawns, and wraithlike retirees stared
aimlessly out the picture windows of their white, post-WW II houses.
The only difference was that Mother had reincarnated her house again.
If I hadn’t recognized the huge oak tree in front, the dirt yard
covered with acorns and patches of wild strawberry, I would have let
the cabby drive right past it.
    Once I saw it, I was tempted to drive past anyway. It
was stucco now—olive-colored walls with a bright red clay tile
roof. The last time I’d seen the house it looked more like a log
cabin. Before that it had been pseudo-Frank Lloyd Wright. Over the
years Mother had become close with several contractors who depended
on her for steady income.
    "Tres, honey," she said at the door,
pulling my face forward with both hands for a kiss.
    She hadn’t changed. At fifty-six she could still
pass for thirty. She wore a loose Guatemalan dress, fuchsia with blue
stitching, and her black hair was tied back with a festive knot of
colored ribbons. The smell of vanilla incense wafted out the door
with her.
    "You look great, Mother." I meant it.
    She smiled, dragging me inside by the arm and
steering me toward the pool table at the far end of her huge living
room.
    The decor had shifted from late Bohemian to early
Santa Fe, but the general theme was still the same: "put stuff
everywhere." Shelves and tables were overloaded with antique
knives, papier-maché dolls, carved wooden boxes, replica coyotes howling at replica moons,
a neon cactus, anything to attract the eye.
    Around the pool table were three old acquaintances
from high school. I shook hands with Barry Williams and Tom
Cavagnaro. Both had played varsity with me. They were here because my
mom loved entertaining guests with pool and free beer. Then I nodded
to Jess Makar, who had graduated when I was a freshman. jess was here
because he was dating my mother.
    They asked the standard polite questions and I
answered them, then they resumed their game and Mother took me into
the kitchen.
    "Jess is aging gracefully," I told her.
    She pursed her lips and glared as she turned around
from the refrigerator. She handed me a Shiner Bock.
    "Now don’t you start, Jackson," she said.
    When she called me that, the name I took from my
father and grandfather, I never could tell whether she was scolding
me or the whole line of Navarre men. Probably both.
    "You could at least give the man a chance,"
she said, sitting down at the table. "After the years I had to
put up with your father, and then years of getting you through
school, I think I’m entitled to my own choices for once."
    Since her divorce my mother had made a lot of
choices. In fifteen years she’d gone from the pecan pie baking
champion of the Wives of the Texas Cavaliers to a freelance artist
who preferred big canvases, younger men, and New Age.
    She smiled again. "Now tell me about Lillian."
    “ I don’t know," I said.
    Expectant pause, waiting for an admission of guilt.
    "You knew enough to come back," Mother
prompted.
    What she wanted me to say: I’d marry Lillian
tomorrow, at the drop of a hat, just based on the letters and calls
we’d exchanged since she’d phoned me out of the blue two months
ago. Mother wanted to hear that, and it would’ve been true.
Instead, I drank my Shiner Bock.
    Mother nodded as if I’d answered.
    “ I always knew. Such a creative young woman. I
always knew you couldn’t stay away forever."
    "Yeah."
    "And your father’s death?"
    I looked up. The air of frenetic energy that usually
swirled around her like a strong perfume had dropped away totally.
She was serious now.
    “ What do you mean?" I asked.
    Of course I knew what she meant. Had I come back to
deal with that too, or