Catching Preeya (Paradise South Book 3) (37 page)

CHAPTER 55

S
even days since
Ben had left. The junk mail pile on the kitchen table had become more of a tower. She tossed today’s bit on top, and the whole thing fell. Preeya sighed, dropped the groceries on the center island, then surrendered into one of the hard kitchen chairs.

From the top of her purse—no longer a pit of despair, but rather a giant organized billfold with handles—she grabbed the sonogram. The little
3-D
image of her baby. She beamed, then felt her heart free fall. “You were supposed to be with me.”
Holding my hand, Ben.

Shut it off, Pree.

Hard as hell to do toward the end of a long day. Especially after seeing the baby on the monitor. Moving, waving, kicking.
Heart
beating.

She could’ve called Gigi. Preeya had gone to
her
sono.

But, no. Ben, or no one. She chose
no one
. She needed to get used to it, anyway.

Because she
could
go this alone—without Ben.

She put the baby’s image to her chest, over her aching, wrenching heart.

The fact, the truth, the unchangeable reality? She wanted him.
Ben
. In her life.
Always.

She should have felt joy today as she watched her child in real time. Her out of sight but so in her heart little blessing. More than relieved and grateful for the baby’s good health, but the joy? The culminating depth of ecstatic, united joy? Without Ben there, it was missing. The journey felt more like a trip to the next room.

But he’s not in the next
room.

The raw ache that had simmered below the surface all week long—her fight to prove she could do this without him—it morphed in an instant to hot red spite.

Instead of being here with me, he’s in goddamn Texas.
Not returning her calls, or the voice mails she’d left, or the texts she’d broken down and sent. She planned no apology, just a plea to talk. To hear his voice, to gauge their future on his tone and mood and the length of conversation he was willing to hold with her. But so far, he’d been willing to do nothing. The silent treatment like a damn child.

And now, despite her anger, she was so tempted to shoot him the sono, to tell him all the doctor had said, that she and the baby were fine—fine, despite her sleepless,
high-stress
week from hell since he’d left.

While he’d been so
hell-bent
on relieving her stress?
What a crock of
shit.

But she resisted the temptation to reach out again, especially with the status of the baby. A
high-point
card she held. He must be dying to know how their little creation was doing, right?

If he even cares, goddamn
it.

Of course he cares, Preeya. You know him; you fell in love with him. He
cares.

Yes, and his need to know about this week’s checkup would be the impetus for a phone call from him. He’d probably reach out today.

But the day’s near over, Pree.

That son of a
bitch….

She should send the sono image. He accused her of being selfish—she should send it to show him how unselfish she was. Just like the search for her mother wasn’t for
her
—it was for the baby, damn it. The
uprooting
of Jenny’s poisonous roots was for the baby.

So yes, despite their rift, she should send Ben, the father, the image of their child.

She took a snapshot of the sono and got ready to hit Send. But her trembling fingers stopped her. She put the phone down and shut her eyes.
What-ifs
filled her head. Maybe—even as she prayed for a call or a text…snail mail, something—they really were…over? Sonogram or not. Baby or not.
What
if?

Her chest tightened and a sharp, stabbing pain in her right side made her wince.

A kick.

Preeya grunted, then giggled without meaning to. It was as if the baby wanted her to buck up, wake up—stop pouting, sulking, dwelling.

Another jab, same spot.

Let it go for now, Pree.
The baby says to let it
go.

She patted her belly. “Thank you, little one.” She let out a long, measured stream of air like a leaking, overinflated balloon. Her mouth dry, her eyes now, too, she got up for some water.

Yes, focus.
Do, move, be.

She finished the glass, conquered the four grocery bags of frozen and refrigerated items, then refilled and took her glass back to the table to sit, her feet already throbbing from the
four-minute
stint.

She propped her feet up on the opposite chair and sighed, ready to breathe and hydrate and distract herself with the coupon mags, brochures, and BS promos strewn across the kitchen table. She sipped her water while sifting and sorting. Putting her mind on diaper brands warmed her heart rather than constricted it. She smiled through the glossy pages of baby food and tush cream. Then she came to baby meds—and lodged in the crease were two, no three, letters. She flipped them over. Two credit card promos for Ben. And…a letter addressed to
Preeya
Patel
?

In the five months living at Ben’s rental on 17th , she’d received not a single stitch of mail. All her stuff went to her PO box close to Gigi’s place since she’d become a flight attendant two years ago.

But this letter—she held it up to her face—was definitely addressed to her.

With no return address.
Of
course.

*

A check fell out of the handwritten letter.

A check made out to her. From…DP LLC?

For eleven thousand dollars and change. Memo line: Gift.

What the hell is
this?

She pushed the paper and the check away from her
now-trembling
hands. Swallowing hard, she racked her brain. Because who knew what to expect? Had Gigi’s search for her mother gone farther than she knew?

She hadn’t spoken to Gigi since Ben left. In fact, Gigi didn’t know he’d left—Preeya knew,
stupid
. Maybe even unsafe, especially with Ben fifteen hundred miles away. But she didn’t want to think or talk about it or anything stemming from it. Not the godparent thing, not the hunt for Preeya’s mom—which she’d maybe subconsciously halted in its tracks—and not Gigi’s
situation
—pretending not to be alone and depressed even though Gigi no doubt was both. Just like Preeya was now alone and depressed, but not pretending otherwise.

So avoidance had been the name of the game. She even skipped out on prego yoga the other day for a “mandatory exams study group.” Gigi bought it. She’d texted Preeya later that day, saying she’d gone to class anyway and then had gone for ice cream with a bunch of the women from class, “the single ones.” Oh God,
single
. Preeya’s heart cringed at the thought. It almost seemed like Gigi had found friends, other friends, single friends, all with positive goddamn outlooks on being alone. Alone and pregnant.

Get used to it, Pree.

She laughed to herself. In a subconscious way, she had been…getting used to it.
Single and alone.
No calls or texts or social media. She’d boycotted it all, except for her
one-sided
Ben
text string. Why? No, not only because she didn’t want to say what she knew had to be said: that she and Ben…they were, well, for all intents and purposes, over.

No, the reason she’d chosen to wall up and cut off and hide away was because, damn it, Ben was the only person she wanted to speak to, see, hear, touch, breathe in or wake up to.

While he was the only one in the world who wouldn’t speak to her.

She reached for the water glass to her left—an inch from the letter and the check. She watched the note as she drank, like it might flit up and bite her. But it lay still, silent, keeping its contents secret.

She put the glass down away from the letter.

Look at
it.

What if it was from her? Her mother.
Jenny.

Ben’s warnings crept in and scurried around her head like venomous fire ants, furious and mean and biting.

Look at it or don’t, but Jesus, do
something.

Decide
something.

Her right hand slapped the letter and grabbed it between her thumb and fingers.

She inhaled then blew out.

Preeya. Preeya
Patel
.

The handwriting was horrendous.

You are a hard woman to find…if this letter actually did find you. I messaged you a bunch of times on a bunch of your social media channels for the past few months, but no luck
there.

Huh.
Thinking back, Preeya guessed she’d been ignoring her social media for far longer than the past week. With the baby and Ben and everything, it made sense.

So I used my pull, or my prior pull, that is, having since parted ways with the band
…

The band? She shot down to the very bottom of the page. A signature, hardly legible, like the rest of the scribble. A large
D
—not an
M
for Mom or a
J
for Jenny.

She sighed.

But…
the
band
.

Dawn.

Preeya shook her head and laughed, a
belly-bouncing
laugh that both hurt and delighted…until her bladder leaked. Then she laughed harder. Dawn—Josh’s helpful little lesbian band manager, Dawn.

She ignored the spot of pee in her panties and kept on reading.

…to find this address (the airline led to the UW campus.) Congrats if you did go back to school to heal the world. LOL. Anyway, here we are, Pretty Preeya with the “
near-violet
” eyes. Yes, you intrigued and captivated me that day. The day of vomit puddles and memory lane. Whether you’re single and still searching…or not, you seemed like a sensitive soul, and if you are in Seattle, which is where I’ve parked myself since leaving Carnal Knowledge, I do hope to see you again. Coffee at
minimum.

Anyway, the
sensitive-soul
subject leads me to the point of this note and the explanation of the enclosed
check.

As soon as I put out the metaphorical fires inside the house that morning (Josh did wake up, only to snort a few more lines before proceeding toward Otto’s room for a shower, where he subsequently passed out, ripping the shower curtain and its pole from the tile surround, flooding the damn master bath) I went back out to see if the cab had scooped you up. It had. I almost wished it hadn’t. Selfish, I know, but we are…all of us humans are…selfish,
self-preserving
assholes.

Okay…where the hell was this going? She snagged a sip of water before returning to the note, or rather, the damn
novel
. The handwriting wasn’t only bad, it was tiny. She rubbed her eyes and got back into the thing.

Anyway, stranger than strange, I stood on that porch with only one thought in my head: Sandpoint Way. Weird, I know. But the stupid road name wouldn’t leave my head. I walked to the end of the driveway thinking maybe I’d find your cab broken down a ways? Shit like that, thoughts or dreams leading to reality, have happened to me before, as freaky as that
sounds…

Preeya chuckled. Not so freaky. Not so freaky at all.

…but anyway, no, there were no cars in sight. Nothing. I looked straight ahead of me, across the street toward the lake, which, to follow the strangeness of the happening, had been glimmering in the sunlight through a break in the cloud blanket above. Still, the road name scrolled across my brain like a ticker tape. I looked at the roadway (at the ruts and random potholes, at the yellow double line) and there, six feet from me, was a flattened piece of paper embedded into the road. Why I had to go out and get a piece of goddamn garbage from the middle of a 50 mph road, I don’t know. But I just had
to.

Preeya lifted her eyes from the note.
Trash in the road?
She licked her lips, chapped to hell as they were, and bit down on her bottom pout before resuming the read, her curiosity piqued. She had a strong feeling she knew exactly where this was heading, though.

Wouldn’t you know, as I peeled the paper up from the blacktop, a car nearly hit me…yeah, that’s how totally stupid but compelled I was. Anyway, I leaped back to the safety of the driveway, unsmashed the wad of paper, and opened
it.

Preeya took a breath.
The
letter.

The original handwritten love letter (and yes, lyrics to the number one top hit of my now former band, Carnal Knowledge) from and by Josh Bolte to you. To Preeya Patel, the inspiration of it
all.

I intelligently brought it to show Josh a few hours later (you know, once he’d come down.) I was thinking I needed certification that it was really written by him. All I had to do was insinuate that he’d plagiarized the words to his
awe-inspired
“Sun and Moon in the Guest Room,” and it worked like a charm. He snagged the page from me, held it to his face, pointed at it (all while my phone’s video record function had mysteriously turned itself on, ahem, so strange) and went on to state for the record that the words, the handwriting, the letter to his very first love (on that paper) were indeed penned by
him.

Yeah, so, for once, just to see how it felt to do something for no reason but to see justice done for someone else, I popped the video up on the Carnal Knowledge fan site and put the letter up for auction. I sold it to the highest bidder for the net amount which you see in the enclosed
check.