Chapter Three:

Dom and Maya heard Letty and Mia coming up the stairs before they saw them.

"Letty, don't do this! Don't you think Maya's been traumatized enough for one week?"

"This doesn't concern my daughter."

"Oh, so you want her to have to watch you walk out that door a second time; only this time, she'll be able to remember it." Mia said, her voice almost as angry as it was when Brian told her he was a cop.

"Excuse me?"

"She was in the house that afternoon; upstairs in the nursery with me. She took her first steps—only it was more of a run—to the top of the stairs. She got there just as you walked out." Mia's voice started to crack. "You walk out on her again and I won't be the one to pick up the pieces again. I see enough of it in the psych ward in the hospital. She had nightmares for three years, until she was five; then they became more and more sporadic. I don't remember the last time she woke up screaming." Mia shoved past Letty and into her room, slamming the door behind her with a resounding thud.

"She's right, you know." Letty turned her head to see Dom standing in the doorway behind her.

"Did you bring me here to help you win race wars?" Dom could tell from the look in Letty's eyes that she wasn't in the mood for his games.

"Yes, but…"

"I cannot believe I ever considered marrying you!"

"We usually take Edwin or Hector but neither could go this year…what the hell was I supposed to do, Letty?"

"You should have told me why you really came to see me. I glanced through the door jam and saw her standing toe to toe with Dad.

"I would have driven the open slot, but I'm not allowed to race." I said, leaning against the door frame.

"I can't believe you won't let her race!"

"We lost her brother to this life style and we almost lost her! Hell we almost lost all three of you and I wasn't gonna take that chance on her!" okay, now they'd lost me.

"Brother?! What brother?!" Dom looked at Letty.

"This one's yours. Leon, Vince, Mia and I have covered your ass more times than you deserve; enough to last a lifetime." He said, closing the door behind him as he left the room.

"I had a brother?" I asked so quietly I wasn't sure she'd heard me. "Older, younger, what?"

"You….had a twin. I was about two months in…didn't even know I was pregnant at the time. I had just won a quarter-mile race. I'd already stopped my car when I got sideswiped.

"When we got to the hospital, I'd fractured my arm and was bruised all over the place. They started talking about surgery and one of the nurses was trying to get your dad to sign a consent form for pre-natal surgery when they realized we didn't know that I was pregnant. By then I'd already lost your brother; so I just signed the forms for them to do whatever they could to save you.

"If you nearly lost me, why the hell did you leave me?!"

"I can't answer that. But I will tell you that I'm working on coming back to Los Angeles." I stood up, my hands going straight to the dog tags as I started pacing.

"You're gonna have to work your ass off; you know, and not just to build up a relationship with me, but to fix things with the boys and Mia."

After a sleepless night, Letty woke in a room she realized had once been hers but now belonged to her fifteen year old daughter, who was nowhere to be found.

"What are you doing?"

"Couldn't sleep so I'm working on fixing this godforsaken engine from Dad's Charger."

"That was your grandfather's car…I thought Dom totaled it before he got to Mexico City."

"He did, but I've been working on fixing it for like five months. The wreck's still out in the shed; I think he's kinda given up on fixing it, but I'm not sure why."
"What exactly are you trying to do with that thing?"

"Not sure yet. It seems like every time I get past the baked on metal, I run into more solid grease and oil…which as you can see, gets everywhere."

"I would have thought you'd be gone by now."

"You'll want to move aside for a minute, Ma." I said, picking up a hose before spraying Vince and Leon with motor oil. "There, now it'll take you twice as long to get as filthy as you usually do at race wars." Leon left with Vince grumbling something about a 'bad influence'.

"I did that once; to Dom…he didn't talk to me for a week cause I did it with gasoline and not motor oil."

"He hasn't lost his temper since the last time Johnny Tran came around when I was twelve….said somethin' about me and then something I didn't understand about you when dad hit him."
I said, wiping the grease from my hands on the faded bottoms of the jumpsuit. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dad coming out of the house and towards the driveway.

"Maya, go make sure the SRX is ready for the desert." I rolled my eyes and shoved the wrench I held into my pocket and left the garage.

"Why are you making her recheck what you already did before we left Santa Rosa?"
"You don't see it, do you?" Letty gave him a look. "She looks exactly like you did at fifteen!"

"Bullshit! Like you even remember what I looked like at fifteen; you didn't even know I existed before I had a decent rack and an ass to go with it!"

"Oh, trust me; fifteen was a long year."

"Please! You had every skank with a pulse drooling over you! Every day it was a different girl!"

"What, and Johnny wasn't drooling over you from the day he laid eyes on you?!" She slapped him. I might not have seen it, but I know she slapped him.

"Like you'd have noticed if I had gotten with Johnny." She seethed, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "But if he had, he wouldn't have beaten Jesse and cost him that goddamn Jetta because he would have already been dead!" I could tell she had more to say when Leon and Vince pulled them apart.

"That's enough outta Antony and Cleopatra," Vince snarled from where he stood between my parents. I walked back up the lawn and stood beside Mia on the veranda.

"I think V might have actually learned something when I made him help out with that Shakespeare garbage last year." She joked, trying to distract me.

"Alright, everybody to their cars…kid, you're with me." I heard Vince say and I shrugged it off; everything was so distorted I felt like I was in a bad dream that I couldn't wake up from.

"This week's been shit for you." I snorted in response

"Really, I hadn't noticed. I thought it had been a goddamn pleasure cruise, Vincent."

"I'm just tryin' to help, Maya."

"I know, I just wish I'd listened to Mia and not guilted Leon into taking me up to Santa Rosa."

"Forget about it. At least you know both your folks. Besides, we all land face first in the shit sometimes….I did a few dozen times with Mia…"

I laughed at him, like really laughed at him, like I hadn't done in a really long time.

"You been after about as long as my parents have known each other." I laughed, "But remember to slap me if I ever fall for a racer, yeah?"

"You'll be eatin' your words when ya reel the boy in."

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

"What's goin' through your mind, Dom?" Leon asked. Dom had been silent since they left the house and now it was getting annoying. He was tense, the radios had been silent among the cars and their drivers, evidence that the tension was felt on all sides.

"Deciding if I should beat the shit out of you or if I'm supposed to thank you for turning my life upside down; if I'm angrier at you for ignoring the fact that I told you not to take her there or at myself for thinking that I could keep her in Los Angeles."

"For the record, if it hadn't been me it would have been Vince." Dom stayed focused on the road. "If this is gonna be something else for you and Letty to fight about three years from now, tell me now so I can get the hell outta dodge with Vince and the girl."

"Quarter mile at a time, Leon. I won't make the same mistake twice."

"You've said that before, brother."

"She seemed fine; for years, she was fine with Mia as her mother."

"The way I see it, you're lucky she took to Letty the way she has."
"She's more like her mom than she'll ever know."

"Only thing worse than one Letty is a mother daughter team of them."

The silence between Mia and Letty was slowly grating on Mia's nerves. She'd lashed out at Letty before but she'd never gotten this reaction; never withdrawn and fallen completely silent before.

"Pull over." This pulled Letty out of her thoughts.

"What?"