Forever Family (Forever #5) (13 page)

The money was terrible. A singer starting out was all expense and no profit. I would have to go to work soon unless we could really squeeze a lot out of the last of his signing bonus. If the album did well, there would be royalties. But creative accounting might eat that, and it would be months before a check would get cut.

Down the line, things would be good. But right now was the worst. You had to look good and live the life, but you weren’t paid yet. And here Chance was, getting dragged down by the wife and baby. He couldn’t live lean and party hard.

My phone buzzed and I jerked it up. It might be Tina!

But it wasn’t. Just my mother, saying she’d come over midafternoon.

I should be grateful. I had help. And Phoenix was alive and healthy. So much more than what Tina and Corabelle had known. I got that.

But I was saddled with this terrible need. It had been there as long as I could remember and hadn’t faded by meeting Chance or getting married or with the birth of the baby.

I needed people, bright lights, flashbulbs, attention. I wanted to rub shoulders with fame, to carry their torches, cozy up to their glamour. And now that all this had begun, I was stuck. Home. Alone. Shivering in a wet shirt in a disaster of an apartment. Smelling of sour milk and spit-up.

We were all a mess, all three of us.

But I was going to do something about it.

I got up, stripped off the clothes, and instead of dropping them where I stood, headed to the bedroom. Time for laundry. And to do my hair. And my nails. And get the baby out in the fresh air. And check in at my office. Make a time line for going back.

And find Tina. Help her.

We were all going to get our lives back.

Me first.

Chapter 15: Corabelle

I paced the sidewalk outside the outpatient surgical center. I couldn’t stand the waiting room one more minute. The girl at the desk assured me that they would call my cell phone if I wasn’t in the waiting area when Gavin got out of recovery.

The day had warmed up, so I stripped off my jacket. Birds were singing. The trees were already leafing out even though it was February. California was like that. Winter was a weekend, not a season.

I wasn’t sure if I should keep trying to text Tina. Her messages had to be stacking up. Where was she? Why exactly did she run?

But I knew. It didn’t matter the trigger, just that there had been one. The moment that set you off didn’t have anything to do with the big things, like someone dying or losing your job or crashing your car or a big argument. It was the last little thing, the feather that tipped the scale.

I didn’t get why that was true, but I knew it from experience. My worst nights after Finn died weren’t in the hospital when he took his last labored breath, or the funeral, or arriving home to an empty house.

It was coming across a blue ribbon the same color as the one from a favorite shower gift. Spotting a Baby’s First Christmas ornament in a store. Somebody asking you if you had kids.

Those were the things that did you in. They snuck up and nailed you like a snakebite in the grass.

Or a plastic bag to the face.

Heat rushed through me as I pictured myself as if I was someone else, lying on the floor of my dorm room, breathing against the plastic stuck to my cheeks. That girl felt disconnected from the person I was now. Had to be. I couldn’t be putting Gavin through this, trying to get his fertility back, if I wasn’t well enough to handle it. No way would I fall that far again.

I sat on a metal bench on the corner of the block. Unless it failed. How would I manage that? That sort of blow?

My breathing sped up in its old familiar way. Hyperventilating. I clutched the arm of the bench. No, I was not that girl anymore. I was steady. Calm. I could handle things.

I rolled the jacket in my hands, holding tight. This was no time to fall apart. Gavin and I had made a very difficult decision about how to use the money Albert left us. We could hire a lawyer to fight Rosa over Manuelito. Or we could reverse his vasectomy.

Gavin felt sure Rosa would do the right thing in the end. That she would tell Gavin where they were in Mexico, let him see his son. And two consultations with lawyers told us what we already knew — fighting in Mexico was a whole different battleground. The money might not even be enough to get it done.

So we had called a doctor instead.

My phone buzzed. I jerked it from my pocket. Gavin was out.

I leaped from the bench and hurried back to the surgical center door. The reversal would work. It had to. It just had to.

The woman in pink scrubs waited for me by the hall door. “For Gavin?” she said.

I nodded. She gestured for me to follow. We walked past a couple closed rooms, then the hall opened into a large area sectioned with curtains. She pulled one aside.

Gavin lay back on the bed, his hand covering his eyes.

I leaned over him, ruffling his hair. “How are you feeling, tough guy?” I asked.

“Like I’ve been run over by a truck,” he said.

The girl laughed. “He’s coming out of it. I’ll bring him some juice and crackers.”

Gavin moved his hand, squinted in the light, then covered his eyes again. “You’re going to change my ice packs for me, right?”

I glanced down at his groin. He was extra bulgy. “And here I thought you were just happy to see me.”

He groaned. “Don’t even talk like that. We don’t want to encourage it —” He groaned again. “Maybe I should have had Mario pick me up.”

This made me laugh. “Sorry. I’ll try to avoid disturbing the equipment until it’s fully functional.”

The girl popped back in and set a package of graham crackers and a little container of orange juice on the tray by the bed. “We’ll give him about ten minutes, then I’ll come by with a wheelchair. He can sit up if he wants.” She hurried out again.

“Slam, bam,” Gavin said. “Snip, wake up, out the door.”

“That’s the way they do it now. Saves costs.” I pressed a button on the bed to lift the top section. “Let’s get you up and at ’em.”

Gavin dropped his hand, reconciled to having to face the rest of the day.

I opened the top of the juice. “Some calories will help,” I said. “I swear fasting is half the problem coming out of anesthesia.”

He drank it down. “Is the doc not even going to stop by? Tell us how it went?”

I wondered that too. Having procedures done at these facilities was very different from a hospital. But this urologist was supposedly the best at reversing vasectomies. He had not given any guarantees, but given Gavin’s age, said we could be hopeful.

The girl nudged the curtain aside with a wheelchair. “Time to fly!” she said. She turned to me. “You want to bring your car around while we discharge him?”

“The doctor isn’t going to let us know how it went?” I asked.

She picked up a folder and tugged out several pages. “I have your discharge papers here. Says you will make a follow-up appointment with him and they’ll do an analysis.” She handed the stack to me.

I glanced at Gavin. I guessed there was no way of really knowing until he had healed.

“Thank you,” I told her.

“Pull around through the circle drive,” she said merrily. “We’ll be there.”

I headed back down the hall and out to the front. My old car waited for us. We could have used the money for that. But we hadn’t. We had rolled the dice.

I unlocked the door, not that anyone would steal this old heap. Thankfully Gavin was a mechanic and could keep it running.

I couldn’t think about how we would feel if it turned out that we spent Albert’s legacy for nothing. If the vasectomy was not reversible.

But then, what if it worked? What if I got pregnant?

And another baby was premature. Another NICU stay.

Another baby in the ground.

I clutched at the steering wheel. How would I manage that? Where would I bury this one? Where would I put his grave? Here in California? Or back in New Mexico with Finn?

He was so far away.

I remembered talking to Tina about how there was no good way to let go of a baby. How she had held on to that necklace with Albert’s ashes as if it were her only lifeline.

Then I knew.

I knew where Tina had gone.

The cemetery back home.

She had gone to get her baby.

Chapter 16: Tina

The wind whipped my hair as I walked frantically along the path, desperately trying to remember which way to go.

I hadn’t been here often. Three times, maybe four.

Guilt stabbed me. I crossed my arms over my belly, wishing I had something warmer to wear. But the bitter cold would keep me alert. It had been a long, hard three-day drive alone with my raging emotions, vacillating between bitterness and despair.

The trees shivered, dropping the few fragile leaves still clinging to their branches. I was back in Texas, where winter was really a perpetual fall. Houston, my home, my nemesis. I had never hated a place more.

And this cemetery was about the worst of all.

Surrounded by huge walls to keep out road noise.

Attached to some seedy pathetic little funeral home that overcharged for their shoddy services.

Poorly kept up. Depressing and dead.

I couldn’t remember where they kept the babies. I knew Peanut was in some special area. My parents were too young to have a family plot already. We didn’t have a lot of money, and insurance on the kid of a kid isn’t a lot. We had something like two grand to work with.

Regardless, my mother wouldn’t hear of her grandbaby getting cremated. I hadn’t had much say in any of it because I was back in the hospital getting my wrists stitched back together. Due to that, Mom had arranged everything herself, putting together some sappy dirge-filled funeral-home grief show that I didn’t want to be at myself.

Pretty much no one came. Nobody at my school for pregnant girls knew what happened. I think maybe an administrator popped in for a couple minutes. My grandparents were dead. The baby’s father was already poking some other hole. Well, probably not yet. But he was on the lookout. His vacating our garage apartment was what sent me over the edge.

Nothing was good here. Nothing. I had been right to leave.

But here I was.

Leaves crunched beneath my chunky boots. I felt adrift, wandering lost among the dead.

Then I stopped. Everything aligned, like a camera lens coming into focus.

This was it.

All the graves spread out in front of me were low. Toward the back was a large angel statue.

There were more graves than I remembered, but of course, it had been five years, six, really. Many more babies to bury.

I paused, hair in my face, wishing I’d thought to bring my hat. My eyes watered in the cold wind as I stepped between the rows, peering at names. So many of the little stones bore only a single date. Babies who left on the day they arrived.

Like mine had.

Where was he?

I spotted a bush that seemed familiar. It was cut into the shape of a ball, sitting by a bench, like an oversized beach toy nobody would ever play with. Horrible idea, but they’d kept it up all these years. If I was right, Peanut’s grave was angled off from it.

I stepped carefully through the dead smashed grass, avoiding the headstones, wincing at the thought of the tiny skeletons in their small boxes below my feet. I hated that part of walking in cemeteries. You couldn’t help but tromp over people’s bones.

My heart beat faster as I recognized some of the names on the carved stones set into the ground. I’d read them before on walks like this years ago. The consonants and syllables had left impressions, a signature burned directly onto my memory.

I had arrived.

The stone was small and gray and printed with simple text.

Peanut Schwartz.

February 3, 2009.

Uncut grass had encroached on the corners and then died, brown and wispy, fluttering with each gust of wind. I pushed it all aside so the edges of the grave were clear. No one had been here in a long time.

“Sorry, Peanut,” I said. “I just couldn’t come home for a while.”

I should never have let them bury him. I could still picture the tiny powder-blue coffin. I was probably sitting on it right now.

And inside it would be the baby, threadbare bits of his sleeper spread over whatever was left of him.

I couldn’t bear it.

If I had a shovel, I’d take it to the ground right now. Slam the point into this cold hard earth and get my baby out. Take him to be cremated. Keep him with me.

I never should have left him.

During a pit stop yesterday in Arizona, I called the caretaker to ask how to have the grave exhumed. I was forced to leave a voice mail, and I hadn’t heard back.

But I had money now. I would make this happen.

Another sharp gust of wind sent leaves dancing. This one didn’t bring me down, though. A wave of exhilaration surged through me. I felt powerful and in control. I would right this wrong.

I held on to my necklace, the shell with Albert’s ashes. I would mix some together. Carry them always. No one would tell me I couldn’t. My life was my own. I would bear my grief however I chose.

Something crunched behind me, and I jumped to my feet, my heart thumping.

I almost fell backward in my haste to turn around. My heel caught on the grave, and I stumbled, horrified that I was stepping on Peanut’s grave. I lunged away, finally finding my balance again.

That’s when I saw her.

My stomach turned. I hadn’t looked at that face in five years.

My mother.

She held out her hand. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I took a step back, carefully avoiding the grave.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

She retracted her arm and tugged her worn sweater more tightly around her middle. She looked older than I remembered, her thick hair almost completely gray. She must have stopped dyeing it.

“The man who runs the place called with a quote to get the grave exhumed,” she said. She looked uncertain now. “He had my number on file. I hadn’t contacted him, so I figured it must have been you.”

“Have you been waiting here?”