Her low heels sunk into the wet grass as she left the pavement to wend her way around gravestones of all sizes. Unlike newer cemeteries where the majority of grave markers were level with the grass, this one was full of upright markers in all shapes and sizes.
As she stepped around a dripping Douglas fir tree, Louisa saw the beautiful rhododendron that marked the spot where Joey lay. She stopped about twenty yards from it to wipe away a tear. The bush had been so small at the funeral, but it had grown and thrived over the years, just as Joey would have, had he survived that crash. This year’s blossoms had long since faded with the death of spring, but the rhododendron was full and green and healthy.
It was so unfair.
Louisa paused in front of a life-size statue of the Virgin Mary. Mary’s hands clasped in prayer as she looked upward, the heavens unleashing rain onto the upturned marble face, mimicking tears. Closing her eyes, Louisa touched Mary’s hands, feeling the cold, wet stone beneath her fingers as she said a prayer for Joey.
When her tear-moistened lashes lifted, a movement caught the corner of her eye. Someone walked slowly between the markers in the same direction she was headed. A strong feeling of territoriality swept through her. She didn’t want to run into anyone now. This was her time. Hers and Joey’s. She didn’t want some stranger intruding on her grief.
Hoping she would soon be alone again, she started forward. She’d taken only a few steps when she stopped. The figure had also stopped. Right in front of Joey’s grave.
Gabe.
Louisa gasped and pressed her hand to her throat. She shouldn’t be so surprised. Joey was his son, too.
She quickly retreated behind the statue, peeking around the marble folds of Mary’s gown as Gabe knelt in front of the grave, obviously not noticing or caring that his expensive-looking trousers soaked up water from the grass. He swept his hand across the ground-level stone, brushing aside the pooling water. Louisa knew what he read:
Joseph Gabriel D’Angelo
Our sweet, beautiful angel now flies
with other angels for eternity.
The date inscribed below was today’s date. Exactly two weeks short of Joey’s first birthday and exactly six years ago. Louisa placed the bouquet of carnations and daisies she’d brought onto a nearby headstone so she could wipe her eyes. Rainwater wept over the edges of her umbrella in scraggy waterfalls, further blurring the image in front of her.
Gabe leaned forward, his hands flat on Joey’s grave, his arms supporting his upper body. He stayed in that position a long time. Louisa could tell he was speaking. His lips moved, but she couldn’t hear the words through the rain.
She turned away, careful to remain hidden behind Mary, not wanting to intrude on Gabe’s moment with their son. Like her, he probably wanted to be alone. The raindrops on her umbrella echoed in her ears, penetrating the deathly silence, so she released the catch and lowered the umbrella to her side, unmindful of the torrent of rain that deluged her.
A sound cut through the weather and caused her to peek past Mary in Gabe’s direction. She gasped.
Gabe was crying.
Her eyes blurred as his shoulders shook. He buried his face in his hands against the wet stone beneath him.
She had never seen him cry before. Not when he came into her room at the hospital and had broken the news that Joey was dead. He’d had tears in his eyes, but he hadn’t cried. And at the memorial, when she was numb to feeling and drugged up on painkillers, he had stood beside her stoically, again with tears in his eyes, but he hadn’t cried.
But he cried now, and Louisa watched with tears streaming down her own face. She wished she could go to him—wrap her arms around him, comfort him, and let their tears mingle. But she knew he’d resist her, just as he had when this whole tragedy was fresh and new. Gabe wasn’t a person who liked or needed people around him in times of adversity.
Finally he moved, rising slowly and awkwardly to his feet as if he were a crippled old man. He stared down at Joey’s grave for an eternal moment, unmoving, before turning and shuffling away.
Louisa leaned against the statue of Mary, the praying stone hands indenting her back, and the wet marble soaking through her lightweight coat. She lifted her face to the sky and let the rain beat down on her. And she cried.
Chapter Three
Instead of sipping margaritas and lounging on the white sand in her new bikini before rushing back to the hotel room to have honeymoon sex with her hunk of a husband, the newly titled Mrs. Arty Rhodes bought her third candy bar from the honor bar and flopped her pajama-clad body onto the king-size bed. Alone.
Sarah had been married for less than 48 hours and already Arty wasn’t speaking to her. Not that she could blame him. She hadn’t exactly been acting the loving new wife. Just the opposite. She’d been in such a bad mood, he’d gone snorkeling for the morning without her.
She never should have married him. She should have listened to that doom and gloom voice in her head telling her to call off the wedding. Everyone had attributed her moodiness to nerves and the fact she was marrying into the oh-so-intimidating Rhodes family.
Staring up at the ceiling through tear-blurred vision, she shoved a big bite of the Baby Ruth into her mouth while rubbing her stomach with her other hand. Smooth, taut skin lay under her fingers and that’s how it would remain. The only swelling this belly would ever see would be the result of too much food.
Tears fell onto Sarah’s cheeks and she finished off the rest of the candy, her jaw quivering as she chewed the tasteless mix of nuts, caramel, and chocolate.
Her womb was a small, dark and lonely place that would be forever vacant. Forever barren.
It was only a matter of time before she’d have to confess her inadequacy to Arty. And when she did, she feared the honeymoon would be over, both figuratively and literally.
****
“Hello, there, missie,” came the scratchy voice over the phone. “Working hard or hardly working?”
Louisa smiled. “Hey, Gram. Working hard, actually. How are you doing?” Her elderly grandmother often called her at work in the middle of the day, claiming boredom. She lived with Louisa’s parents and was forever complaining about how they pampered and fussed over her like an invalid.
“Nurse Ratched is driving me buggy, but what else is new?”
Louisa chuckled, squinting her eyes back and forth between two sketches on her drafting table, finally choosing one to expand into more detail. “Mother will never change, so you should probably get used to it.”
Gram muttered something under her breath then asked, “What are you working on?”
“I’m designing an annual report for the Appleton Corporation—they’re a company in Bellevue that manufactures computer chips. If they’re happy with it, it could lead to a big account for me.”
“Which will help your chances for that promotion, eh?”
“Certainly couldn’t hurt.” Glancing around to make sure nobody was within hearing range, Louisa said, “I’ve worked so hard for this, Gram. It would mean…
everything
to me.” She’d poured her life into this job these past couple of years. Landing the art director position would be a fantastic reward.
“If it’s what you really want, it’ll happen, missie,” Gram said. “But you work too hard. If you’re not slaving away
there
all hours of the evening, you’re holed up in your apartment working on some project or another.”
“So it’s a good thing I love my job, isn’t it, Gram?”
Gram was silent a moment, then asked, “Are you working late tonight, missie? I need a ride somewhere if you’re free.”
“What’s tonight? Thursday…?” Louisa checked the calendar on her smart phone and saw it was blank. “Free as a bird. Where do you want to go?”
“I want to go to Jamaica. I hear the boys down there are major hunks. Oh! You mean where do I want to go
tonight
?”
Louisa shook her head and grinned. Gram was such a kick. She hoped she was that feisty when she was 85.
“There is an art opening I’d like to see. Haven’t been to a gallery in years.”
Warning sirens blasted through Louisa’s mind. “
Whose
opening, Gram?”
“Oh, just some photographer whose work I admire.”
“Gra-am. It’s Gabriel, isn’t it?”
“Gabriel. Gabriel…Oh! You mean
Gabe
. That’s right, you know him, don’t you? Silly me. Must be Alzheimer’s kicking in. Always forgetting things. Just last night, I forgot where I left my dentures. Wasn’t five minutes later your mom starts in about—”
“Gram! I’m not going to Gabriel’s opening.”
“Didn’t you receive an invitation? No matter. You can come along as my guest.”
“As a matter of fact, I did get an invitation, and do you know where that invitation is right now? It’s crumpled in the trashcan under my kitchen sink. I’m sorry, but I’m not going. I don’t want to see Gabriel.”
Gram sighed loudly on her end of the line. “Okay, fine. I guess I’ll have to ask your mother to take me. She’ll make a big fuss, but she’ll do it because she knows how cantankerous I can be when I don’t get my way. Of course, it’ll make Gabe uncomfortable having her there, seeing as they’ve never gotten along. So…Beverly probably isn’t the best companion I could choose, but—”
“Okay, okay,” Louisa said wearily. “I’ll take you.”
After hanging up, she rifled through her satchel purse and retrieved the crumpled invitation. She smoothed it out on the drafting table, her designer’s eye absently admiring the simple but elegant graphics. She’d thrown this away after receiving it two days ago, shocked Gabe had the nerve to invite her. As if she wanted to see him again. Hadn’t she made her feelings perfectly clear at the reception?
She really didn’t need to see the man who had walked out on her as she was trying to recover from the death of her son.
Louisa had never imagined her marriage would wind up as a statistic, but that’s exactly what happened. According to the therapist she’d seen after the accident, of all marriages in which a child has died, a very high percentage end in divorce. She’d heard that years ago, long before Joey’s death—she remembered thinking how sad it was. How one tragedy was compounded by another. Those couples obviously hadn’t loved each other enough.
Then it happened to her.
Her eyes focused on her sketchpad which was now a mess of squiggly doodles. She sighed.
Never judge a man till you walk a mile in his shoes,
she mused wryly. Wasn’t that the truth?
In the year after Joey’s death, Gabe had retreated into himself, refusing her comfort, refusing to talk about his feelings, drinking more and more. Knowing he had a hard time opening up, she’d tried to be patient, but he pushed her further and further away. When the chasm between them became too great, he’d left. She could never forgive him for that.
But…she couldn’t erase the image of him crying over Joey’s grave yesterday. It was a hand around her heart that wouldn’t let go. When she’d come home from the cemetery, the first thing she’d done was scrounge through the can under her sink to retrieve the invitation. She didn’t know why she’d put it into her purse. She’d had no intention of attending.
She glanced to where it now lay on her drafting table and closed her eyes. Did Gram realize what she was asking? Louisa didn’t need to reopen wounds that had been so long in healing and that were better left in the past.
Nope. She’d just call Gram and tell her she couldn’t go. Her grandmother would understand.
That settled, she let out a deep breath and reached for her markers.
****
Two hours later as Louisa rode the elevator to the lobby, she questioned her self-discipline, or lack thereof. This was nuts. She was only going because of Gram’s insistence. Of course, Louisa admired Gabe’s work, and this was the first time it had been on display in Seattle, but that was beside the point.
The elevator doors opened, and she stepped into the lobby. She spotted her grandmother sitting on one of the sofas and headed toward her, glancing at her watch. “You’re early.”
“The cab driver who brought me here was a speed demon. My life flashed before my eyes several times. My Lord, he was a crazy man.”
“Fun, eh?”
“It was great,” Gram cackled. She gave Louisa a complete once-over with her shrewd eyes. “Funny, but I don’t remember you wearing dangly earrings and high heels at breakfast this morning.”
Louisa’s face grew hot. “I, um, keep dressier accessories at the office just in case Evan, um, drops in unexpectedly to take me out to dinner.”
Gram said nothing more, but a grin curved her wrinkled lips.
Louisa had planned to take a cab to the U District, but Gram insisted on riding the bus. Better for people watching, she’d said. Halfway through the short ride, Gram said, “Unbutton that top button on your blouse.”
Louisa frowned at her grandmother. “Why?”
“Because it’ll look nicer.”
“
Nicer
is the image you’re after? Don’t you mean
sexier
or
less uptight
?”
“Since you brought it up, you might unclip your hair, too. He’s never seen it long, has he?”
Louisa shook her head. “Gra-am, I’m not going to gussie myself up for Gabe. That’s not why we’re going to his opening. I have a fiancé, remember?”
Gram shrugged and stared out the window. “Fine. Suit yourself. Doesn’t matter to me one way or another.”
Louisa stared straight ahead, her lips pressed together. She didn’t know what her grandmother was trying to do but—well, yes, she did know. But it wasn’t going to work. She didn’t want to impress Gabe or attract him. She didn’t really care one way or another what he thought of her.