They drove for a long time without really talking to each other. Anna looked nervously out the window when the landscape turned into desert. She counted down the miles to California by watching the green signs on the side of the road that announced

217 MILES TO LAS VEGAS

395 MILES TO LOS ANGELES

Eva didn’t stop at any more motel rooms. She got coffee every time they stopped for gas.

“Do you know how to drive?” Eva asked while half asleep at a gas pump in Utah.

“No.”

Anna slept in the passenger’s seat for most of the trip after that. Eva woke her up once they reached LA. Rain was falling from the sky so hard that it made it almost impossible to talk to each other.

“We’re going over to Aunt Maria’s to pick up Eli, then we’ll go to my house.” she told her still groggy little sister.

Anna stretched and looked out the window. It was dark out, the clock on the radio read 9:03. “Who is Aunt Maria?” Anna said after clearing her throat. She lit a cigarette.

“God, at least roll down the window if you’re going to smoke in here!” Anna did what she was told, letting the rain come into the car.. “You know who Aunt Maria is. Mom’s younger sister.”

“No, our parents don’t have brothers or sisters. Neither of them.”

“Umm, yeah they do. We’re going to one of their houses right now. Mom has, like, six brothers and a sister, Maria. She never told you about them?”

“No.” Anna was angry and nervous.

“Well, she is very excited to meet you.”

They parked in the driveway of a two-story house packed in close to the ones around it. Anna wondered how people know where to go with so many houses around. In such a big place you could no longer say ‘it’s the green one at the end of the road,’ no, here is the reason numbering houses had to happen.

Light shone through the rain from a window in the front of the house. “Are you ready?” Eva asked her little sister. She knew Anna was probably nervous, she was herself the first time she met her aunt.