Second Chance Sweethearts (Love Inspired) (7 page)

He raised his eyebrows. “I was a coward, Gloria. If the bravado sounded cheap, that’s because it was. It wasn’t me talking. It was a bottle. I was already hooked. I’d closed the door on God, on you, on baseball, on everything I’d been here in Port Provident. All for what I’d been told was going to be an endless good time. Life was supposed to be a party. But leaving you that message was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Gloria wanted to shake him. “Then why’d you do it? Why’d you stay down there and leave me here?”

“I don’t know, Gloria. I really don’t know.” His voice sounded worn out, as if he’d asked himself the same question before and came up with the same unsatisfactory answer.

She wanted to stop, but there was more she still needed to know. “But eventually you came back.”

“Sure.” Rigo laughed without mirth. “My dad stopped paying the bills and the
pesos
I was making at surf camp didn’t go that far. My dad thought the discipline would do me good, so he pulled a few strings and got me in the police academy. Just like Felipe always said he was going to do. I wasn’t too far behind him.”

He closed his eyes, looking as though he was caught in the trance of memory. “And away from the crowd in Mexico, I was able to stay away from all the drinking. I did pretty well for a few years. But then Felipe came to work one day and announced that you all were finally having a baby. He was overjoyed. And that was the night I fell off the wagon. Hard.”

Gloria looked around the little dirty nursery. The one event she’d longed and planned for, the single thing that had brought her the most joy, brought Rigo the exact opposite.

She broke into his story with memories of her own.

“I moved from being a regular L&D nurse to getting my Nurse-Midwife certification after my third miscarriage. My doctor told me I couldn’t have children. It was my way of coping and getting closer to something I could never have myself. And then one day, it just happened. We were thrilled. But you, well, I just thought you were being a jerk about it.”

“That sounds about right.” Rigo stood up. “But it wasn’t without good reason. I’d messed up. I’d let you go because I wanted to ‘find myself’ on some beach in Mexico. But all I found was that I was nothing without you. By the time I’d realized it, you’d moved on. With my best friend. The stand-up guy who never did anything wrong. Until the night he took a quick detour on his way to the hospital so he could help me take in a carful of kids who were transporting drugs off the island.”

Rigo paused, then took a fortifying breath and continued the story.

“When the doctor told me what had happened that day, the weight of my role in it dragged me all the way down to the bottom. Riggins was working off duty, watching the door at Molly McLeod’s bar downtown. He called my dad when I fell off a stool at the bar that night and passed out on the floor. Before coming to pick me up, my dad called a rehab center. And that was that. I agreed to go without putting up a fight, except that I made him promise not to tell you or anyone where I was. I’d skipped town before. No one would suspect anything out of the ordinary if I did it again.”

After he finished speaking, Rigo stood still as a statue. His arms were crossed in a posture that would commonly be called defensive. But after hearing everything he’d just laid bare, Gloria knew the only thing he was trying to defend was his heart.

She knew because she tried to put up her own defenses every single day.

“I didn’t know,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t want you to.”

“And yet, when I called you, you still came.”

“I owed you that much. And I needed to see for myself if I could be okay around you. If I was going to be back in Port Provident for good, I needed to be okay with the fact that I might run into you one day. I needed to make my peace with the past. And I needed to make any amends I could to you, no matter how small.” He ran his fingers through his hair, once on the left side, and once on the right. “I decided I was never going to find out if I was strong enough to see you and be okay if I didn’t just take the chance.”

Gloria reached out shyly and took his hand. She pressed his fingers with her own. They felt solid. “I’ve heard that we can’t have strength if we have a spirit of fear.” She remembered Inez’s words from early this morning.

“I’ve feared being honest with you for a long time, Glo. I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.” He didn’t move his hand. She could feel the connection between the two of them. The goose bumps on her arm faded.

Maybe last night had washed away the need for that fear and that space. Maybe, just as Port Provident was going to have to do, maybe they could start over, as well. They’d never be who they used to be—but Rigo was right. They shouldn’t have to fear running into each other on the street.

One corner of the protective board had detached from the outside of the window in Mateo’s room at some point during Hurricane Hope. A ray of light snuck in through the gap, hit the miniblinds and filtered into the small room.

It was only a small flicker of sun after a huge storm, but it made its presence known. Just like the strength she’d felt earlier after praying, this tiny streak of yellow-white came into her life at just the right time. She didn’t feel quite as lonely as she had in months. Years, actually.

“I’m glad, too, Rigo.”

Chapter Six

R
igo brought Gloria back to her temporary lodgings at Inez’s house, then went outside and peeled off the boards from as many of his aunt’s windows as he could before he went out to meet his lifeguards to work search and rescue. Alone with her thoughts, Gloria noticed Inez’s downstairs wasn’t in any better shape than her own house, but the upstairs had at least been untouched and would give her a safe place to stay while she worked out a plan.

Kicking a path through pots and pans released from Inez’s kitchen cabinets, Gloria walked around, opening windows in all four directions in order to catch whatever cross breezes might come that way. Victorian homes had to be retrofitted to have any kind of modern conveniences, but the one thing they all came equipped with was large windows designed to maximize airflow. Some of the windows stuck, the wooden frames warped mildly from their recent hours under water. With a little elbow grease, Gloria was able to get them all opened fully.

“Oh, good. I tried that earlier and couldn’t get any of them to budge.” A voice behind Gloria made her jump. She pressed her hand to her heart.

“Inez! What are you doing here? You scared me to death.”

Inez looked at Gloria as if she’d gone crazy. “This is my home. Where did you think I was going?”

“I thought the doctors from the clinic were taking you off the island for observation and treatment.” Gloria’s gaze wandered upstairs. “Tanna isn’t here, is she?”

Inez waved her hand in front of her face, shooing away Gloria’s crazy idea. “Of course not. About an hour ago, the winds died down enough that a helicopter could land on the pad behind the Grand Provident Hotel. They took her out on one of those medi-copters. They wanted me to go, too, but,
ay yi yi
...there’s nothing wrong with me. So I flagged down an officer friend of Rigo’s to drop me off.”

The older woman had even changed into different clothing and had somehow managed to fix her hair. She must have superpowers. Gloria knew that she herself looked as if she’d been narrowly pulled out of a floating Dumpster.

“Did you get a shower?” If so, Gloria was pretty sure she’d never been more jealous in her life.

“I got a bucket of water out of the tub and tried to clean up a little. Now I just have to figure out what to do down here.”

Gloria had known Inez casually for most of her life but had never spent much one-on-one time with her. Clearly, though, Gloria was finding out why much of the neighborhood depended on her. She was a force of nature.

“Have you seen your house?”

Gloria tucked a wayward strand of her still-hurricane-styled hair behind her ear. She nodded soberly. “Yes. There’s not much left.”

Inez nodded. “
Lo siento
, Gloria. I’m very sorry. But you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to. It’ll probably be a mess all over the city for a while. Usually is with these things.”

Inez leaned over and picked up a spindly wooden chair from the ground and turned it upright, then sat down.

“How many hurricanes did you say you’ve been here for, Inez?” Gloria leaned up against a wall. It still felt faintly damp.

“Oh, well, let’s see... I’m eighty-three now. My parents were young when the Great Storm of 1910 came through, so I’ve heard lots of stories about that. Last night reminded me of some of those.” Inez started naming off names. “There was Carrie, Elise, Linnie, Elaine, Carlene and Jovie. And then several strong tropical storms, too. So I’ve probably seen ten or so good storms in my day. It’s just part of living on the coast. I love it here, though. You just have to take the bad with the good.”

Gloria laughed without mirth. “Boy, isn’t that the truth?”

“It is.” Inez’s tone left no room for disagreement. “And I know you’ve had a run of bad the last few years, Gloria. Rigo has had a lot to do with that. But rarely is anything all bad or all good. This hurricane is the same way. It seems bad now, but watch and see. Port Provident will come out and be better than before. And so will you. And Rigo.”

“I just wish I knew what to do next.” Hot air blew through the windows in a huff, bringing the smell of stagnation into the room from outside. In a way, it reminded Gloria of her own life. Stagnant. Without a whole lot of direction. “No husband, no child, no home, presumably no job for the near future, since I’m sure the birth center will have to be rebuilt. What do I have to call my own?”

“Maybe you’re asking the wrong questions,
mi querida
. Maybe it’s not about you.”

Gloria had no response, despite the loving endearment Inez had used to address her. What a terribly odd thing for the older woman to say. It felt like being in school all over again, being chastised for not following directions. All she needed was a chalkboard to write her name on.

“You don’t like that I said that, do you?” Rigo’s aunt balanced her elbow on the chair’s narrow armrest and tapped her chin with her fingers.

The silence fell with weight around the room as Gloria started and stopped ten different responses in her head. The challenge made her prickle with a bit of anger. She’d just lost everything. Why
couldn’t
it be about her, just for a minute?

“Do I really need to answer that?”

Inez tapped her chin again. “Well, no. But you ought to at least think about it. Rigo’s made mistakes, Gloria. But he’s also had to pay a price for them. He lost his best friend, and he does blame himself. But since he’s come back, he’s been a different man. He’s been commended by the city for his work on the Beach Patrol. He hasn’t even missed a week of church. And he comes home and earns his keep around here with me.”

Gloria didn’t really want to hear about all the changes in Rigo. It was easier for her to believe he was the same impulsive, self-centered man she had believed him to be since the day she listened to that message on her answering machine. It made it easier to be around him now if she knew she was getting ready to close the door on him again. She’d only called him because she was panicked and out of numbers in her phone to call. And like he said, he’d only answered because it gave him a chance to make amends.

He’d come clean about the past, and he’d helped her during the hurricane, but now that the storm had passed and they’d cleared some of the heated air between them, Gloria didn’t really want anything to do with him in the future. She’d gotten the answers she needed and she’d survived the storm.

And she knew Rigo didn’t want much of anything to do with her, either. He said it himself. His goal was for them to be okay with coexisting in the same relatively small city.

But Inez wasn’t finished. She caught Gloria’s gaze and locked on to it with her own dark eyes. “And something else—he lost the woman that he loved. Truth be told, I saw how he looked at that woman last night. I think he still loves her. And I think she’s the last piece in the puzzle of putting back together his life. You know, Gloria, forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself along with the other person. It means you can both move on without living in the past.”

Gloria shook her head. She could feel pinpricks of anger under her skin. “I understand that Rigo’s your nephew and you want to help him. But my son is in the past. My heart is in the past.”

Inez stood with purpose and without acknowledging Gloria’s words. “I’m going down to La Iglesia. Do you want to come with me?”

No.
Gloria didn’t want any opportunity to continue this pointless conversation. “To the church? How are you going to get there?”

Inez raised one foot and then the other, clad in white leather tennis shoes that clearly hadn’t seen the light of day more than once or twice. Low-heeled leather pumps were more in line with Inez’s fastidious style. “Well, I’m going to walk, of course. It’s less than six blocks.”

Six blocks of boards, nails, shingles, palm fronds, household goods and who knew what else. She couldn’t let an eighty-three-year-old woman make that walk alone. She’d just have to do her best to change the conversation.

But to what? As much as she didn’t want to talk about Rigo or forgiveness or the past, Gloria definitely didn’t want to talk about the weather, either.

“Okay, I’ll come with you.” Gloria felt almost as reluctant about this as she had about placing that prehurricane phone call to Rigo.

“Bien!”
A smile lit Inez’s face, making her cheeks stand out like small apples. “You’re probably too young to remember Hurricane Jovie too much. That was the last big storm to make landfall here. But those of us who stay always go check in at the church and start seeing what we can do to help.”

“Yeah, I was about ten when Jovie came through. I just remember cleaning up a big mess at Mamí and Papí’s restaurant. They opened back up the next day, cooking fajitas on a charcoal grill.” She’d almost forgotten those days after Hurricane Jovie. Thinking about it reminded her of how proud she was to be Mamí and Papí’s daughter.

They’d put a bunch of food in coolers loaded with dry ice before the storm. Then the next day, as crews worked to restore the power, they’d showed love for their community in the best way they knew how—a hot meal. They’d only settled in Port Provident a few years earlier and wanted to support the rebuilding of the place that had allowed them to rebuild their own lives after coming from Mexico.

“I remember when they did that. Your mother has a heart as big as the sky. And your
papí
has never met a stranger.” Inez opened the door. “Now, come on. It’s going to take the strength of everyone working together to bring back Port Provident.”

Strength. There was that word again.

Gloria was beginning to think maybe it wasn’t just a verbal coincidence anymore.

But why? Why now?

* * *

A small crowd of about twenty people stood on the lawn of La Iglesia de la Luz del Mundo. In English, the name meant The Light of the World Church, and it had been a staple in Gloria’s community for several generations. Gloria could make out Pastor Marco Ruiz at the center of the small group. He was waving his hands animatedly, just as he did every Sunday in the pulpit.

What would he do now? It looked like the church had been hit pretty hard. The landscape had been ripped up and a patchwork of holes showed where shingles on the roof used to be. Based on her observations at Inez’s house and inside her own home, if it was this beat up on the outside, Gloria knew the church had to have taken a knockout punch on the inside.

“Inez, Gloria! Praise God. You’re safe.” Pastor Ruiz navigated around a few of his parishioners and came to give both women a tight hug.

“Pastor. It’s so good to see you. I knew the church members who’d stayed would be gathering here, so Gloria and I came to join you.” Inez patted him on the shoulder, then walked over to the group. Gloria recognized several faces from the Bible study group Inez shared with her mother.

Thinking of her mother made Gloria’s heart ache a little bit. Although she was thankful the rest of her family had evacuated safely to San Antonio, the Garcias were rarely apart. Not knowing when her parents and Gracie and Jake and their new baby, Gabriela, would be able to return to Port Provident only increased the sense of loneliness Gloria had felt since she’d stepped in her home earlier today.

Her memories were gone, and for the time being, her family was, too.

“Gloria, come on over. We have drinks and crackers.” Monica Hernandez reached into a cooler and pulled out a plastic bottle filled with purple liquid. Normally, Gloria tried to drink only water and the occasional iced tea, but this second sports drink of the day seemed as good to her as a ritzy sparkling water poured over ice with a fancy lemon twist. It looked divine, and she took it gratefully, gulping it down in just a few swallows after she ate a handful of trail mix and saltine crackers.

It wasn’t quite the steak she’d shared with the lifeguards earlier, but it settled her mildly rumbling tummy, and it was nice to be surrounded by familiar faces.

“Have you heard from your sister?” Monica asked.

Gloria picked up another small bag of trail mix from the table nearby. “She and the baby and Jake were headed to San Antonio with Mamí and Papí when I last talked to them.”

Pastor Ruiz turned and joined the conversation. “That Gabriela is
muy bella
! Such a beautiful girl. I’m glad they’re all safe. Jake’s family will be busy once the rebuilding starts. There are a lot of houses and buildings that will need to be brought back to life. I’m sure the Peoples Family Foundation, where Jake works, will be active with grants and other programs, too. Maybe I can talk to him about helping us here. From what I saw around the neighborhood, the residents of the La Misión area are going to need a lot of help. And La Iglesia...”

The pastor waved his hand in the direction of the mud-splattered building as his words trailed off. He didn’t need to say anything. If a picture was worth a thousand words, seeing this kind of destruction for herself had to be worth a million.

“Is there anything left, Pastor?” Gloria asked, almost certain of the answer.

He shook his head. “No. Not much. All of our seats were completely soaked. All of the electronics were standing in water, so they have to be ruined. The cross is still standing on the back wall, though. I guess that’s all we really need, right? As long as we have Jesus, we can rebuild the buildings and the lives of the people in them.”

Gloria nodded in casual agreement.

There were going to be long days ahead for Port Provident. Who knew when the electricity would come back on or when they could do something as simple as take a shower again? Rebuilding seemed like a distant idea. Kind of like kids always waiting for Christmas. They knew it was coming eventually, but it was so far out on the horizon.

“I’m hoping that everyone can return to the island soon,” Pastor Ruiz continued. “We’re stronger when we’re all together.”

Gloria’s head snapped up toward the sky. “Really? Again?” She spit the words out under her breath.

“Did you say something, Gloria?” Monica asked.

“Sort of. The strangest things keep happening to me the last few days. Everywhere I go, it seems like someone is talking about strength.” She hesitated even saying it. They probably all thought she was crazy. But she figured she couldn’t look much crazier, since she’d just been caught red-handed talking to the clouds above.