Forever Loved (The Forever Series) (26 page)

The boy tugged on Gavin’s sleeve. “
¿Ahora?
” he asked.

Gavin nodded.

He dug through the pockets of his coat, like he had when he produced the yellow
chicle
. This time, though, he pulled out a small blue box, proudly passing it up.

To Gavin.

To his father.

I found I was able to say the words in my mind. Gavin was a father. A father again. He’d never stopped being one. And even if I never got another chance to try it again, I would not stop being a mother.

The ring inside the box was not the one he gave me all those years ago, but a new one, silver with a clear diamond on top. He knelt on one knee, and without prompting, the boy, his son, Manuel, did it too.

Jenny nudged me with her elbow. “I think he asked you a question.”

The seagulls swooped and cawed overhead. The sun was warm on our faces. Everyone turned to me, waiting, expectant. Gavin watched me, patient, and, I could see, utterly unsure of what I might do or say. How could he not know? How could he think for a minute I would want to be without him?

“Yes,” I said, and everyone let out their breath at once. The man by Rosa suddenly remembered his camera and began snapping like crazy, flashes bouncing off the sand. Gavin took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger, the wrong one, and everyone laughed as I switched it to the other side. Manuel found the laughter infectious and threw himself backwards on the ground, giggling his head off and filling his hair with sand.

Gavin stood up and held me close. “We’re going to make this work. We will absolutely make this work.”

Manuel got up suddenly and crashed into us, one arm around each of our legs. I startled at the contact with this unfamiliar child.

“
¡Paleta!
” he said, and dug through his pockets again, coming up with a handful of suckers in a rainbow of colors.

“
¡Paleta!
” he said again, holding a yellow one up to Gavin, who took it from him.

“
¡Paleta!
” He thrust a pink one up at Jenny, to match her hair.

He gave a purple one to Tina, who took it, laughing. “You’re going to have your hands full with that one.”

Manuel stopped beside me. “
¿Paleta?
” he asked and held a green one out to me.

“But you like the green ones best,” Gavin said.

He tapped my leg with the lollipop. “You like?”

I knelt down next to him. “Okay.”

He pushed the sucker into my hand. “You like!” He got shy suddenly and ran back to his mother, burying his face in her coat.

I stayed down low a moment, looking at the sucker in my hand. I wasn’t sure how much of my love I could give over to a child that reminded me exactly of what I had lost.

“Picnic!” Jenny announced and set the basket on the ground. “I’ve got sushi! I’ve got tacos! And I’m going to let you all eat cake!”

Gavin reached for my arm and lifted me up to stand beside him once more. We turned back to the sea, impassive, ever-changing, and endlessly blue. If I once thought I wanted to get lost in it, to let it take me away from all the hardship, I knew now I wanted to be by its side. We were meant to be here, Gavin and I. Our memories would happen on its shore, the walks, the sand castles, the laughter, and growing up.

“Come eat, engaged people,” Jenny said, “or the kid will steal all the cake.”

None of us were alone anymore. Rosa had her son, and he had his father. I had Gavin, and Jenny, and now Tina. No matter how isolated any of us once felt, from this point on we would be together to catch one another, no matter when or how we tried to fall.

Epilogue

The door jingled as Gavin came into the bakery, pulling Manuelito along behind him. “Sorry about this.”

I glanced at the boy holding Gavin’s hand, my heart squeezing the same way it always did when I saw them together. Not a good squeeze or a bad squeeze, just bittersweet, wishing the child was ours, not his. In the two weeks since we’d found out he was Gavin’s son, we’d seen him almost every day. Gavin liked to take him to eat hot dogs or pizza after he got off work. Since he needed my car, I often went along. We were managing while Rosa came back and forth arranging paperwork.

Jenny hopped down from the counter where we were sampling wedding cakes, licking frosting off her fingers. “It’s cool. We’ll sugar him up and send him back.”

“Bud wouldn’t have called me in if it wasn’t a crisis.” He looked around the shop. “This looks fancy.”

“Wedding cakes should be fancy.” Jenny took Manuelito’s hand and led him to a stool. He happily transferred his trust to her, a trait that was endearing to most people but made me worry about who he might run off with if he wasn’t watched. She lifted him up on a sparkly pink cushion. “We’re making grumpy dad pay for it.”

Gavin looked a little out of place in his mechanic’s shirt, jeans, and heavy boots, surrounded by the shop’s delicate filigree decorations, spun sugar, and lace curtains. Normally this was his afternoon off, and he’d planned to take Manuelito to a park while Jenny and I checked out the bakery. We’d decided not to put off the wedding. By combining incomes and expenses, we could do a better job of helping Rosa with the boy.

He came up behind us and leaned over my shoulder. I lifted a lump of pink icing to his lips.

He took in far more of my finger than was necessary, sliding his mouth along the full length. I widened my eyes at him and glanced down at Manuelito, who was staring bug-eyed at all the miniature cakes lined up on the counter.

“He’ll have to get used to us being all gross and kissy,” Gavin said, grinning.

“Have you talked to Rosa about his first overnight yet?”

“Not sure I’m ready.” He frowned as he actually tasted the frosting I’d given him. “That’s a weird one.”

“Yeah, it has cayenne. No thanks.”

Gavin shuddered. “Oh, yeah, that’s really bad.”

I handed him my glass of water. “Here. Wash it down.”

He gulped for a second, his eyes traveling back to Manuelito, who was about to snatch up one of the cakes. “He’s going for it.”

Jenny pushed it away. “That one’s got spearmint,” she said. “And I don’t mean the flavoring. I mean actual leaves.” She pointed to a piece of green caught in a spongy cross section of cake.

Manuelito looked up at her, confusion creasing his brow.

“Vegetables,” Jenny said.

The boy made a face and pushed it farther along the counter.

“Yeah, he understood that,” Jenny said. She shoved at Gavin. “Go, Daddy dearest, off to work. We’ve got this.”

“You girls picked a crazy place.” He ruffled Manuelito’s hair. “You be good for Corabelle, okay?”

The boy nodded, now looking with suspicion at all the other cakes.

Gavin leaned back toward me and kissed my hair. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I know this still isn’t easy.”

I squeezed his hand. “We’ll be fine. Jenny is total aunt material.”

The woman who managed the weddings reappeared from the back, holding another small tray of cakes in front of her pink apron. She looked like a housewife from a 1950s ad.

“I brought some more traditional selections out.” She glanced at Gavin’s retreating figure. “Was that the groom?”

“Oh yeah,” Jenny said. “But don’t let him in your dish room. Things get pretty sticky.” She elbowed me.

The woman smiled as though she were used to customers saying completely random things. “Oh, and I see we have a new little addition.”

Manuelito was just pulling his finger out of a tiny tub of chocolate frosting. His eyes got wide as saucers, realizing he was caught.

“I have just the thing for you,” she said, bending over to retrieve a plain oversized cookie from the bottom rack of the display case. “Come with me.”

She lifted a section of the counter to step out into the room. “What’s his name?”

“Manuel,” I said.

“Come here, Manuel.” She walked over to a tiny table meant for children and tugged a long piece of wax paper from a roll on one end, setting the cookie on it. “Would you like to decorate a cookie?”

I had no idea if Manuel understood what she was saying, but he seemed to recognize the tiny chair was meant for him and sat in it.

The woman looked up at us. “We often have little guests while we’re sampling. This will keep him busy for a while.”

She opened a cabinet in the wall behind her and withdrew three more tiny frosting tubs and a brush. “You can paint a picture on it with frosting,” she said, handing him the brush.

He looked at it, confused, until she dipped the end in the frosting and spread a line across the face of the cookie. Then he snatched the brush and stuck it in the pot, dumping yellow across its surface.

“There we go,” she said, returning to the counter. “Why don’t you try the traditional white cake now?”

“I think that’s going to be a whole lot better than the ginger-oregano one,” Jenny said.

The woman’s face remained impassive. “Our signature flavors aren’t for everyone.”

We each took a forkful of the white cake, soft and nuanced with a hint of almond extract.

“Now this is good,” Jenny said.

“Yes, we’ll go with the simple one,” I said, glad to have a decision made. I wanted everything to be as easy as possible, but Jenny was too gung ho about the festivities to let me just pick up a ready-made cake. Or snag a dress off a department store rack. We were still trying to keep it all inexpensive, even though Mom was sending money and gift cards constantly for us to use as we put everything together.

“So, white cake.” The woman jotted a note. “Just one tier.”

“It’s going to be very small,” I said.

She nodded. “Very sensible.” She flipped through a book of images of cakes. “And this design, right, just some white-on-white decorative swirls?”

“That’s fine,” I said. I didn’t really have any opinions about the cake.

“No, not fine,” Jenny said. “We want those fancy flowers on them, the ones that look real.”

The woman turned a few more pages, showing images of flower cakes. “Lilies? Roses?”

“Hyacinths,” I said before I could even think of why.

“That’s a lovely choice. Are your wedding colors going to be purple?”

“I guess so.” I suddenly second-guessed my choice. I had chosen hyacinths for Finn’s funeral because Gavin’s mother had always grown them in front of their house. I often tended them, pulling weeds, watering, and staying close so that Gavin’s father would behave as they worked on his old car. They were the flowers I knew best. It was the right thing. It meant Finn would be there with us.

“Any other adornments in the design?” the woman asked. “Oh, look, he’s made his cookie.”

Manuelito stood between me and Jenny, his dark head barely reaching the stools.

“Whatcha got there, little man?” Jenny asked. But when she reached for the cookie, he pulled it back.

“Corbell,” he said.

He’d never actually said my name before. I looked down at him, holding up the cookie, and my throat closed so tight I couldn’t have answered him if I wanted to. In a shaky, messy spread of frosting, Manuelito had painted an unmistakable image of a butterfly with a green body and little dots of blue on four yellow wings.

The butterflies that matched Finn’s mobile still hung in the trees outside my apartment, where Tina was staying now that I had moved in with Gavin. And despite the trauma of that moment when I was loaded into the ambulance, I still could see the tiny monarch braving the wind to flap against Gavin’s jacket.

Finn was here.

I reached for the cookie with trembling fingers. “Thank you, Manuel.”

He grinned at me, his expression so totally Gavin’s that my heart caught. For a moment I was four years old again, playing with my best friend, darting along the alley, or hiding on the other side of the fence.

Gavin would peek at me and say, “Found ya!” and his face would look exactly like Manuelito’s, joyful, eager, and pleased with himself. If this boy was anything like his father, then he and I would have everything in common.

Manuelito turned his face up high to look at the bakery woman. “More?”

We all laughed and the woman, probably mollified that Jenny had managed to talk me into a design upsell, bent down to get him another cookie.

“Is this one going to be for me?” Jenny asked him.

Manuel accepted the cookie and headed back to his table without answering.

“Little turkey, playing favorites,” Jenny said. She turned back to the book. “So what else? I want more doodads on this cake.”

I looked at Manuelito’s cookie. “Are there any butterflies?”

“Oh yes.” The woman flipped the page and revealed a beautiful cake covered in pastel wings and golden bodies, all intertwined with pale green stems like ribbons.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s the one.”

“No hyacinths?” she asked.

“No. This is it.” Wedding, not funeral. Future, not past.

I spun around on the stool, watching Manuelito spread frosting across a cookie. Gavin and his son were a package deal. No matter how this little boy got here, and no matter whether or not we were ever given a sibling for him, he was ours.

“Hey, Manuel?”

He glanced up and rubbed his hand across his nose, leaving a smear of blue frosting.

“Shall we take some cookies home to Papa Gavin?”

His dark eyes lit up, his little chin nodding up and down. “Yes!” he said. “More!” He returned to his cookie, spreading the frosting in earnest, as intense as Albert with his painting of the castle and its one lone light.

If fate had to give me something, if it already knew whether or not my future would ever include a baby of my own, then I knew I had to accept this gift, to nurture it, and to never hold myself apart.

Life wasn’t easy. We all had our hardships, our setbacks. But if Manuelito could come through everything that had happened to him, still wanting to share, still smiling at us with shining eyes, then surely I could let myself believe that everything that had happened — Finn, his death, Gavin’s run to Mexico, my forced move to San Diego — was necessary for us to arrive at this moment, this boy, and the new family we had formed.

THE END

~*´♥`*~