Forever Family (Forever #5) (17 page)

But I did have the pregnancy loss group too. The woman in charge was named Stella, and I had left her a message. I was almost positive I’d heard her name before, so this had to be the one. If the principal didn’t pan out for at least a parent name, I would try her again in hopes that Tina might have contacted her since she was back. Or might have records from back then where Tina’s parents lived.

I’d never been on a goose chase quite this wild.

Of course, now that I was here, maybe Tina would relent and meet me. She had responded with a simple “What!” when I told her I had bought a plane ticket to Houston.

The airport was bustling with travelers. I followed the signs to the ground transportation. If I didn’t see the bus I needed within fifteen minutes, then I’d just hop in a taxi. I wasn’t broke or anything, not after Albert’s gift, but the frugal college student in me wouldn’t let me waste money when it wasn’t necessary.

The doors slid open to the bright, chilly afternoon. The sidewalk was crazy with people, suitcases, taxis, and shuttles.

I struggled with my duffel and my purse, trying to find the piece of paper where I’d written the number of the bus that got me within taxi distance of the high school. People flowed around me, already knowing where they were going and heading to their destinations.

The duffel slipped off my shoulder. I bent over, trying to catch it, groaning as my purse tipped and dumped the contents. I kneeled on the sidewalk, capturing a rolling tube of Chap Stick and a pen. Honestly, I wanted to sit on my butt and cry. What crazy idea had this been? I missed Gavin already. I wanted my apartment and my books and my schedule.

“Normally you think all this through,” a voice said.

I looked up.

It was Tina.

She bent down and collected my things. “Purses that zip are a lot more practical for travel,” she said.

I wanted to hug her. “You’re here!”

“Yeah. Gavin sent me your flight information. I never say no to a hot guy.” She stood up and handed me the purse, all put together again.

“Thank you for coming. I didn’t exactly honor your request for space.” Now that she was here, I felt a twinge of guilt for invading her getaway. She didn’t seem to be dying or falling apart.

“You guys worry too much,” she said. “Come on, I’m parked in the garage.”

I hefted my bag on my shoulder. Tina wore a dark gray sweater with a short black skirt. Her legs were vivid in red and black tights. Her hair was in pigtails. She was as pale and thin as she’d been when she left, but something about her seemed stronger, more determined. Being away had been a good thing, it seemed.

The dim parking structure was colder than outside, and I shivered. We passed a couple rows of cars, then Tina hit the button for her silver Jeep. She opened the back for me to toss in my duffel.

When we settled in the front and she was backing out of the spot, I asked, “So, where are we going?”

“I have an appointment this afternoon,” she said. “A grim one. You probably want to hang out at my parents’ house or something.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

We exited the garage back into the sunshine. Tina’s hair was flaxen in the light. As she turned the wheel, I realized she’d painted her fingernails black. Very unlike her.

“Today’s the day I spring Peanut from his hellhole,” she said. “They open the grave, pull out the casket, then we ride with it over to a crematorium.”

My throat constricted. Despite all this, she had come to pick me up.

“Would you like me to be there?” I asked.

She shrugged. “My mother has insisted on coming along. So is my friend Stella.”

“The pregnancy loss group leader.”

She glanced over at me. “Yes. You did some homework.”

“I was ready to try to find you.”

We pulled up to the exit plaza, and she handed a couple dollars to an attendant.

Tina drove out of the airport. I waited until we were back in the flow of normal traffic before I said, “I’d like to be there, if that’s okay with you.”

She nodded. “I figured when you were arriving in time that fate was getting you here. Just wanted you to know what you were in for.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Tina looked over at me. “Not every day you dig up a grave.”

“You didn’t want Darion here?”

At that, she pinched her lips together.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I can stay out of that.” But inside I felt a thrum of panic that maybe they were splitting up. How could we not have known that? They seemed fine.

But couples often did.

“This is separate from him,” Tina said. “It’s my thing.”

I couldn’t imagine doing anything this emotionally traumatic without Gavin, but then, he had been my baby’s father. Tina had gone through all this alone the first time. Maybe that was how she had to do this too.

“If you’re hungry or anything, tell me now,” Tina said. “We can stop on the way. After this process starts, though, I think we’re in it for the day. Although I guess we could have the hearse stop at McD’s.”

I smiled. She still had her wry humor. “It might be interesting to see how many unexpected things we can do in 24 hours.”

“Challenge accepted,” Tina said, but her face was still tight. “I get the impression Stella was a wild child, so she’ll be on board. As for Mother, well, traumatizing her is apparently something I do well.”

We got on an expressway and continued in silence. I tried to imagine what it would be like to dig up a grave. This certainly wasn’t what I’d expected to happen within the first few hours of arriving.

“I should tell Gavin I made it,” I said, pulling out my phone.

“Don’t let on what we’re doing just yet,” Tina said. “I’ll tell Darion in my own time. The guys might talk.”

“Of course.” I couldn’t imagine Gavin calling up Darion to gossip, but I would keep this to myself. I texted a quick note to say Tina had met me at the airport and not to worry. Then I sat back to look out at the city.

Houston was industrial and gray. We drove up high on the expressway. Below were endless buildings and strip malls. I could see downtown in the distance, the skyscrapers stark and cold against the white sky.

Tina had not liked it here, this I knew. We drove and drove, only the signs changing. The view was remarkably similar no matter how much time passed. It reminded me of LA. Perhaps all big cities seemed the same from above. Only when you got down at the people level could you see the beauty and uniqueness of it.

We exited finally and took a huge four-lane street across town. There were trees at least, and some green here and there. Then I spotted a cemetery and figured this was it. Sure enough, Tina turned into the gate and we parked in front of a large building.

A woman in a black dress got out of her car when we opened our doors. She came up to Tina and gave her a huge hug. I assumed this was her mother.

“My lamb,” she said. “Are you ready for this?”

Tina pulled away. “As ready as I can be.” She turned to me. “This is my friend Corabelle. She flew in from San Diego. Corabelle, this is Stella.”

I hid my surprise. “Nice to meet you. You run the loss group, right?”

Stella nodded. “I do.” She reached for my hand and clasped it. “You’re the one whose baby lived a few days, yes?”

I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat. So, Tina had mentioned me. “Yes, Finn lived for seven days.”

“Sweet little love. What a beautiful baby he must have been,” Stella said. I could see why people turned to her. She said only the comforting things. No platitudes or I’m sorry. Just affection and concern.

“He was,” I said.

Another car door closed, and we turned to another woman, gray-haired and clearly Tina’s mother. They carried themselves the same. She also wore all black, including a funny little pillbox hat that made her seem from another era.

“This is my mother, Marcella,” Tina said. “Mom, this is Corabelle, from San Diego. A friend of mine.”

“So good of you to come,” Marcella said. “It’s important for Tina to have friends here on a day like today.”

Tina turned toward the door of the funeral home. “I guess this is it,” she said. “We’re a little late due to my side trip to the airport, but it’ll be all right.”

I felt another twinge of guilt.

“Close enough,” Stella said.

We headed into the building, four serious women set on a very hard task. I wished I wasn’t in jeans. Sometimes in life you had to meet a situation as you were. And I was glad I could be here for Tina.

Chapter 21: Tina

The caretaker led us out to the baby graves. Another woman in a black suit followed our little group out.

I was tempted to ask the man about the beach-ball shrub, but recognized that this was just my mind trying to avoid the hard stuff in front of me. So, I didn’t.

The air was completely still, as if the world itself was holding its breath. A couple men in overalls were out among the headstones, waiting. As we grew closer, I could see they had covered the surrounding graves with green Astroturf carpets. A little mound of dirt protected by a tarp sat nearby.

The videos I’d watched didn’t really apply to this situation, as far as I could tell. There were always huge cranes that had to lift the casket out. But Peanut’s was so tiny. As we got closer, I could see the depth of the hole. Babies weren’t buried six feet down like adults, at least not here. As we approached the perfectly cut rectangle of dirt, I remembered now that my father and a friend of his had lowered the casket down.

My footsteps slowed, and even though I was behind him, the caretaker also dropped his pace. Sixth sense, I guessed. My mother clutched my hand. Stella and Corabelle walked next to us.

Despite my reluctance, we still arrived. We were quite close to the open grave before I could see the top of the bluish metal casket. It was slightly discolored, but the men had cleaned the top, so it gleamed in the sun.

I could picture myself, the last time I saw it, my arms screaming from the stitches in my wrists because I refused to take any pain medicine. I had wanted to feel it all, each line up my arm. My greatest fear then was to be numb to everything.

There was this huge black void then, and it loomed all around me. I was petrified of falling in.

Albert had taught me I was supposed to dance around the edges, laugh in its face. I still was afraid.
I’ll try harder
, I promised.

The caretaker motioned to the men. They both kneeled down and grasped the handles on either side of the casket.

Bits of mud dropped off the bottom as they lifted it and laid it on the green carpet next to the grave. The headstone had also been removed, resting on another carpet a few feet away.

As we had previously agreed, the men picked up the small headstone and laid it in the empty grave. It would be filled in and left. I hadn’t told my mother this, so she let out a little cry as she realized they meant to leave it there. But she did not protest. I couldn’t imagine what else to do with it.

My father was away on business, and I had asked Mother not to tell him, as he would have disrupted his work to come. Having the four women there made it feel more sacred, the way tombs were once cared for in antiquity. The power of what we were doing felt timeless.

The male and female caretakers moved forward to lift the box. They were supposed to carry it to the hearse waiting on the narrow road that wound through the cemetery. But when they bent to reach for it, Stella said, “I wouldn’t mind taking one of those handles, if it’s okay with Tina.”

I nodded. As she walked over, Corabelle followed her and took the other side. And so, it turned out that the two women who knew best where I had been, my old friend and my new, carried my baby across the lawn to the black car that waited.

My mother and I followed. This was the easy part.

The caretaker held open the back door for me in the town car that would follow the hearse. The crematorium was a few miles away. Mother slid in next to me, and after a moment, Stella sat in the front and Corabelle joined us in the back.

No one spoke. Mother pulled a handkerchief from her purse and handed it to me. I spread it out on my lap. Along one corner, in pale blue letters, she had embroidered the word
Peanut
. The outline of an angel blowing a horn was below it in gold.

“Thank you,” I said. I had precious few keepsakes for the baby, just the blanket he had been wrapped in and a hospital bracelet. Each thing was something to hold on to. I found that I wanted to remember things now. I wanted to feel them again. My scars were healed over, but the wounds in my heart were open wide.

I longed, stupidly, ridiculously, to see the baby’s father, jerk that he was. At least he was connected to all this, even if only by DNA. At one point, he had been interested in the baby. But now, my life had moved far from here.

Suddenly I was so grateful for my mother. She had been there. She had seen him. She knew what he looked like, how heavy he felt to hold.

A picture. I should have brought a picture.

My stomach heaved and a sob escaped me. It seemed silly now, just riding in the car, to start getting emotional. But it happened anyway. Mother took my arm and held it tight. I hadn’t intended to actually use the handkerchief, but now I pressed it to my eyes.

My mother had known.

Corabelle leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder. I was surrounded with love and support. So different from the first time, when I felt utterly alone. I had refused to let anybody in.

We pulled up to another funeral home and stopped beneath the canopy by a side entrance. This place was vast, with wings stretching out on either side.

A funeral director in a somber suit came out and shook hands with the ones from the other home. Two more men in suits rolled out a small velvet-covered trolley and headed out of our view. The woman opened our door.

“This way,” she said.

By the time we all got out of the car, Peanut’s casket was waiting atop the trolley. When we were all assembled, the two men rolled it into the building and the director gestured for us to follow.

They had cleaned the casket during the journey. It caught the lights as it moved down the whisper-quiet halls. We passed two empty viewing rooms, then a set of closed doors. Behind them, I could hear a man speaking.