Forever Family (Forever #5) (16 page)

“It’s almost spring break,” I said. “I have a week off.”

“So, go,” Gavin said. “Mario and I can be bachelors.”

I knocked my head against his collarbone. “I remember those days. Fistfights in bars?” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “And prostitutes.”

He laughed. “I might have had a little more clouded judgment then.”

“I’ll say.”

“How about if I just lie here among my pizza boxes and pine for you?” He kissed the top of my head. “You could use a little getaway, anyway. No books or papers to grade. Just pack a few things and go.”

I stared across the room at the images of Finn, and me and Gavin, and Manuelito. Tina was like family to me now. Yes, I would go fetch her.
 

Someone had to bring her home.

Chapter 19: Tina
 

It didn’t matter that people knew where I was now. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Both Jenny and Corabelle had been relentlessly messaging me the past couple days. Jenny had somehow figured out I was in Houston. Corabelle had already booked a flight here. Not that I had told her where my mother lived. She wouldn’t know where to go if I wanted to blow her off. Houston wasn’t exactly small.

The tenor of Darion’s messages had also changed. He asked if I had gone home, but I hadn’t told him. I did occasionally respond to his messages, though, so he wouldn’t worry. Or come after me. I had asked for space. Darion was good like that, willing to give it.

Not so much the girls. They seemed to need a resolution to this, now.

But I wasn’t running from them. Or Darion. I was waiting. I needed to get this done for Peanut, but the permit hadn’t come through yet. My mother was driving me crazy.

Stella had helped. She told me that just down the road from her jewelry shop, an elderly lady had set up an artist studio. She rented out space for people to paint or sculpt or do whatever it was they wanted to do.

The place had been a small nursery for exotic plants, so there was a small front building with an office, kitchen, and bathrooms. Then a fair amount of land with a couple still-functional waterfalls where plants had been displayed, and two greenhouses. She’d outfitted the greenhouses with easels and space heaters. The light was incredible.

Rent was super cheap. I’d paid for a whole month in advance. I could arrive as early as I wanted, as the woman had given me a key to my greenhouse. I generally stayed all day. Stella often stopped by at lunch. I didn’t mind her company. Anybody but Mother.

I sat back on my stool, massaging my back. I should probably set up something more ergonomic since I was putting in so many hours. But then, the pain was comforting. It was something to feel.

The canvas was glossy with wet underpaint. I was working on an image of the cemetery where Peanut waited for me to rescue him. The angel statue, the ball shrubbery, and the flat graves were all present. The bottom of the image was photo-realistic, each dead blade of grass represented as stark and clear.

But as the image rose, it became softer and indistinct, losing its sharp edges.

I knew I wanted to paint Peanut in that haze, but I wasn’t sure as what. In my drawing pads, I had sketched him as everything from a baby to a boy to a ghost, but nothing felt right yet.

It would come.

Sometimes I sat in the clear sunlight, the warmth of the space heater wafting up from my feet, and tried to feel Albert’s presence. All good artists’ journeys involved a spirit guide, and I knew he must be mine. I’d never had one before, other than Stella, whose plain talk and no-nonsense advice was very real and raw. It got me through. But Albert made me soar.

I let my gaze drift over the painting, unfocused, like I was under its spell. Albert told me that the image would tell me what it wanted to be, if I would just listen. This could not be rushed. The mistake was to force my hand to do the work that wasn’t yet ready to be formed.

I turned to a rustling sound. Outside the greenhouse, Sarah, the woman who ran the studio, walked among the rocks. Her form was fuzzy through the glass, but I knew her gaunt figure and the wide-brimmed straw hat she always wore, even in the cold.

I fiddled with the oils, arranging them on a tray. I was annoyed at the break in my concentration, but I had to trust the image would come. Maybe I would sketch some more, keep my mind open.

The door creaked open behind me. One other painter sometimes occupied the space, but when I turned, it wasn’t him. It was Stella.

“Thought I’d pop by and see if you were up for some vittles,” she said. She wore a bright yellow dress that made me want to squint. There had to be something about old ladies and summer wear in the winter. Not that Stella was really old. Fifties. But she dressed old.

“Sure,” I said. I was stuck anyway. I closed up my box of paints and pushed it under my stool.

“You keep your little corner nice and tidy,” she said. “This person, not so much.” She pointed at my greenhouse mate’s easel. Paint oozed from open squeeze tubes and murky water filled several clear glass jars. A haphazard stack of canvases covered the floor.

“He’s in the middle of some grand inspiration.”

She paused in front of the canvas, two gray blocks spattered with red and pink globs that slid down the surface. They had pooled in the tray below.

“Sure,” she said. “It looks pretty inspired.”

I shrugged. For all I knew, the guy was some huge name. I hadn’t asked. The art world was mysterious. I could only comment on my own work.

“I was thinking of the little Thai place up the block,” Stella said, “if that works for you. Dane hates Thai, so I go when I can.”

I picked up the canvas sack I used as a purse and shrugged. Eating hadn’t appealed to me in a long time. “Sounds fine,” I said.

“Good.” Stella put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “I have enjoyed getting to spend time with you this week.”

“Just don’t ask me to go to your meeting,” I said. “I know it’s tonight.”

Stella opened the door. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Although, you were on that talk circuit. I could use someone like you as a guest speaker!”

We circled the front building to the sidewalk.

“I think those days are behind me,” I said. “I’m trying to look forward, not back.”

She fell in step beside me as we navigated the cracked cement of this forlorn part of town. “That’s a good policy,” she said. “I endorse it wholeheartedly.”

We passed her little shop. A sign on the door had a cardboard clock showing when she’d be back. “Do you actually make money on your store?” I asked.

“It pays for itself,” she said. “I do better with my online shop, but I want somewhere to go. Makes me feel like I’m actually doing something.”

That made sense to me. I felt I had little purpose at the moment. Adrift. Of course, I’d left my job behind. Sometimes I felt a twinge of regret for the patients who had been doing therapy with me, but if I were honest, I knew that all I was doing was getting them through a rough hospital stay. The faces switched out constantly. I was just a blip in their lives, a job to be taken over by real therapists once they were home.

“You’re deep in thought,” Stella said. We had arrived at the Thai restaurant and she held open the door.

“Sorry.” I went inside. The interior was dark and lit with wall lamps. The front windows were blacked out with heavy red drapes.

“For two?” a young girl asked, holding menus.

“Yes, thank you,” Stella said.

We walked past a smattering of customers. She sat us near the kitchen door, which was warm and smelled of sweet sauces and bean curd.

I slid into a booth and glanced at the menu. Nothing appealed to me, but maybe some soup would be good.

“So, did you get back to your friends?” Stella asked.

“They’re not exactly giving me the space I asked for,” I told her.

“Did you tell them you were cremating the baby?”

I closed my menu. “I’m not up for explaining myself right now.”

The girl came back with water, and we gave her our order. I was starting to feel overwarm near the kitchen door, and held the cool glass with both hands.

“So, who is in your group now?” I asked. If I could get Stella talking, she would hold up both ends of the conversation.

“We’re big right now, ten or so,” Stella said. “It goes up and down. I used to think it was seasonal or phases of the moon. Then I realized it had more to do with when the nurses remembered to hand out the fliers.”

I nodded absently. My face was flaming. I regretted my sweater and the tights and the knit layers. I was perpetually cold, so the hot feeling was new. Maybe I was sick. Great. Just what I needed.

“Tina, are you okay?” Stella leaned forward on the table. “You look a little flushed.”

A waitress passed with a tray of steaming plates. The sickening-sweet smell of peanut sauce hit me like a wave.

God, I was going to throw up.

I pressed my cool glass to my forehead. “I think I need some air,” I said.

“Let’s walk outside a second,” she said.

I stood up. “No, no, let me splash some water on my face. You wait on the food.”

Stella’s face was tight with concern as I threaded my way through the tables to the bathroom. Moving away from the heat and the smells definitely helped. I went inside the dank little room and stared at myself in the oval mirror. My face was washed out. I didn’t feel hot anymore, but clammy.

Nooo, I could not get sick right now. My mother would be even worse than she already was, doting on me. I wouldn’t get a moment’s peace.

I turned on the water and let it flow over my fingers. But this brought on a chill, making my stomach quake. I was going to have to go home at this rate. Damn it.

I pulled a wad of paper towels out of the dispenser and dried my hands. I’d have to bug out on Stella.

The smells assaulted me when I went back out into the restaurant. I could identify everything I passed. Pad Thai. Green curry. Lemongrass.

Stella was ahead of the game, dumping our orders into takeout containers. She saw me and waved me to the front door. I gratefully obeyed, pushing through and leaning against the crumbling bricks of the outside wall.

The day was bright and cold. The crisp air made me feel one hundred percent better. It cleared up so fast and so completely that I felt silly for having abandoned the meal. Maybe it was just something strong smelling that got to me. Maybe incense or somebody’s perfume. That had happened to me before.

I turned to head back in, but right then, Stella came out, holding the bag of containers. “Tina!” she exclaimed. “Poor lamb. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Something in there just got to me.”

She tilted her head, assessing me. “Fine?”

“Absolutely.” I gave her a bright smile. “We can eat this in the greenhouse, I bet. Or at your shop. You have a back room, right?” I started walking that direction.

She fell in step beside me. Her lips were twisted to one side, like she was thinking. “Have you talked to Darion?”

That was out of the blue. “Sure,” I said. “I text him once or twice a day. He’s been willing to give me some time to figure things out.”

She nodded. “How do you think he’ll take the news?”

I had no clue what she was getting at. “What news? That I’m having Peanut cremated? I don’t think it matters to him.”

She stopped walking. I halted too and turned around. “Stella, what is it?”

“Are you trying to hide it from me or do you just not know?” she asked.

I was getting annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

Her kind eyes stayed on me. “Tina, maybe it’s just obvious to me because I’ve seen so many mothers who have suffered a loss avoid acknowledging their condition until they are able to handle it. But it is clear as day.”

She stepped closer and shifted her purse and the food bag to one hand so she could use the other to close around my fingers.

I had a feeling I knew what she was about to say. The awareness of it had been just under the surface. I had purposefully turned it aside, pretended it wasn’t true. But her words were going to confirm it.

Her face was kind, as if she knew everything I was thinking. “It’s all right to be afraid, Tina. But you will have to face it. You’re pregnant.”

Chapter 20: Corabelle

A lady with a toddler stood six inches from me, her baby boy on her shoulder. He had sandy blond hair and big blue eyes. His mouth right now was a huge toothy smile, unlike for most of the flight, where he wailed his heart out.

Now that we were on the ground and standing to get off the plane, he had decided to be adorable. I squashed my anxiety about what I would have to do to find Tina and tried to enjoy the moment, the cute little thing now making crazy faces at me. I wondered what Finn would have been like at his age, and my heart staggered again.

Focus on your mission, Corabelle.

We moved forward finally, and I struggled to keep from banging the man behind me with my overstuffed duffel bag. I had traveled as light as I could and checked nothing, unsure of where I’d be going or how I would be getting there.

The only thing I knew for sure was that the school for pregnant teens Tina had attended, one of my few clues, had closed years ago. But the principal back then was Emmalou Banks, and she was now the principal at a private high school. I had the address, and I could either spring for a taxi or attempt to follow the labyrinthine bus schedule to get me there.

Probably I would take a bus partway, then hop in a taxi when it would be half the cost. Otherwise, I risked not making it before school let out. It would be close anyway, since it was already after noon.

We arrived at the front of the plane and the pilot waved as we passed. He gave the toddler a high five. Once free of the tight confines, I moved quickly. I could only hope the principal was there today. Thankfully my California college spring break had not aligned with the week off students got in Texas, or this would never have worked. I would have had to follow some other clue.

Searching for Tina’s parents hadn’t worked. I didn’t know their first names and Schwartz was pretty common. Tina wasn’t big on social media, and even studying her few Facebook friends yielded no family members or even friends from the Houston area. Her past was a blank.