“Was Lupe ever homeless?” What motivated a girl to work down here two times a week? She could have spent time with her friends. Posted on social media. Taken up a sport. “Was it personal for her?”
Father Anthony opened his mouth, then closed it.
Brigid started walking again, giving the man time to formulate his thoughts.
“It was personal for her.” The priest caught up in a few minutes. “Lupe and her mother were never homeless—their extended family is very close—but she knew what it was like not to fit in. She knew what it meant to be out of your element.”
“Why?” Brigid spotted a furtive drug deal taking place behind a tent, but she ignored it. There were no weapons, no vulnerables in the area. Who was she to judge how a mortal survived a cold night on the LA streets? “Why did she feel out of place?”
“We don’t have documents.”
Carwyn met Lupe’s mother at the church. He worked to put the woman at ease, immediately telling her he was a private investigator, a former priest, and married to a security specialist. María Estrada was eager to speak to anyone who could help find her daughter.
“You didn’t come here legally?” Carwyn asked.
The woman spoke near-perfect English and was obviously educated, but Carwyn knew that migration happened for unexpected and unpredictable reasons sometimes. He and Brigid had helped more than one woman escaping domestic violence who hadn’t stopped to fill out paperwork.
María Estrada sighed. “When we first came, I thought it would only be for a visit. A few months. Maybe less. Getting a visa can take years, and all I wanted was to see my sister, spend time with her and my brother-in-law after Luis died.”
“That’s your husband? Lupe’s father?”
María nodded. “I was wrecked. A mess. My sister is my best friend. And I didn’t have any interest living in the United States, so I thought, I’m not going to go through all the paperwork for a visit. That’s ridiculous. But I came here and… a few months turned into a year.” María looked to the side. “I helped my sister at her business cleaning houses, so I kept busy and was making money. Lupe… she was like a flower that finally bloomed—she loved her cousins so much. She adored my brother-in-law; Emilio was like a second father to her, and he treated her just like one of his own kids.”
Carwyn said, “That must have been comforting after losing her own father, to have an uncle close. It would be hard to take a little girl away from that.”
“Yes, exactly. So about a year and a half after we came—Lupe was already in school here and doing so well in her classes—I went back to Mexico, sold our house to the people who’d been renting it, and found a place on the same street as my sister and brother-in-law. Just a room to rent. At that point getting papers seemed impossible, and I think…” María looked away and sighed. “I think in the back of my mind, I thought that when Lupe was older, we’d go back. We had a good life in Mexico before her father passed. Our family there is wonderful. I thought when she was ready for college, we’d move back and go to Mexico City or Guadalajara or one of the big cities. I would have enough savings by then to buy another house—a nicer house in the city—and Lupe could go to university there. The best of both countries, you know? So papers didn’t really matter.”
“Did Lupe know she was undocumented?”
“Not right away. It’s not something we talked about, so until it was time to start thinking about college…”
Carwyn nodded in understanding. “Undocumented students can’t apply for financial aid or most scholarships.”
María’s expression was devastated. “We had the most horrible fight when Lupe realized what that meant for her future. All the schools her peers were talking about? We could never afford them on our own. She changed. She was angry. Stopped speaking to me. She started spending more time on her phone.”
“Was she meeting any new people? Making friends you didn’t know?”
María crossed her arms. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t talk to me, and she even cut her aunt and uncle out. She resented her cousins who were legal and making plans for college. She refused to even talk about going to community college—which we could afford—or moving back to Mexico and applying to university there.”
“Would you say she started to rebel? Act out in other ways?”
María blinked hard. “Nothing like that. She was just… distant. Quiet. She’d always had a heart for homeless people—always helped out at the church in youth group—but after our fight, she found every excuse to be down there at the mission or at the church. To be away from me, I think. She didn’t want anything to do with me.”
María lifted her chin and wiped tears from her cheeks. “She’s a good girl. The police? They told me that she probably ran off with friends or this boy the father says that she knew from the mission.” María shook her head. “She would never. Even if she was angry with me, she wouldn’t have disappeared without telling her cousins or her uncle. That’s how I know something is very wrong.”
“Why didn’t you press the police more?” Carwyn asked. “If she doesn’t have a pattern of acting out—”
“Why do you think?” María said. “She’s just another illegal girl to them. I hear how they talk. They don’t know her. They don’t care about her. That’s why I asked Father Anthony if he knew any private detectives.” The woman looked stricken. “We don’t have a lot of money, but you can have all my savings, and if it is more than that, I will work for the rest of my life to pay you and your wife—”
“No.” Carwyn put a comforting hand on her arm. “That’s not how we work. Not for friends like Father Anthony. We’ll find Lupe for you. You don’t need to pay us.”
María swallowed hard, clearly afraid to be too optimistic. “How?”
Carwyn smiled. “Trust me. My wife is very good at what she does.”
Father Anthony was probably confused by how long and how far Brigid wanted to walk through the streets, but she had her reasons. If this were Dublin, she’d know where to go and who to talk to. But this wasn’t Dublin, and she didn’t have territorial rights here. They’d cleared their presence through the vampire authorities in the area, but Brigid wasn’t about to go around bashing heads and making demands. She wouldn’t get any information that way.
The park, the mission, and the surrounding streets, she was learning, were a community. Maybe not a traditional one—and certainly not one without dangers—but there was a structure. As they walked through the streets, Brigid took it all in, absorbing the scents, sounds, and rhythm of the neighborhood into her blood.
There were dealers who had staked out territory. There were sex workers who had regular routes. There were gathering places and voices that rose a little louder than the others. Shouts and quieter voices that calmed the shouting.
Brigid paused and narrowed her attention on a van that had passed them three or four times. “Who is that?”