Forever Loved

The Forever Series - 2

by

Deanna Roy

For all the couples who declared their love to each other in the final pages of this book

(Go see!)

1: Corabelle

I could hear the beep of a heart monitor, and my first thought was — Finn is still alive.

I forced my eyes open, thinking maybe, somehow, I had moved backward into my past. Even if it might be a dream, I’d take it, anything to have another moment where my baby was still with me, still in this world.

But when my surroundings came into focus, I realized we were not in an NICU, nor was I waking in my own bed. The hospital room was gray-walled and sterile, and the rails by my shoulder could only mean that I was the patient.

Something creaked, and I turned my head. A thousand painful shards shot through my neck and up into my skull. Gavin slept slumped over in a chair, the footrest kicked out. He looked bedraggled, his black hair spiking up every direction, the scruff on his jaw even longer than usual. He was perfect. My eyes sparked with tears, pinpricks that magnified the pain in my temple. He was here. Finn was still gone, but Gavin was back.

I closed my eyes again, and the ache eased enough that I could sort through my last memories. The beach. Walking with my friend Jenny. Her crazy green coat that made her look like a frog.

And Gavin. He’d told me about getting a vasectomy after the baby’s funeral. How much he’d hurt.

We both hurt so much. That’s why I’d walked into the frigid sea, not caring anymore.

But he’d saved me. Pulled me from the water like I was meant to be reborn.

Footsteps approached. “Did she wake up?” a woman asked.

The chair creaked again. “I don’t know,” Gavin said.

I opened my eyes once more, trying to accept the pain. A nurse in blue scrubs leaned over my bed, her merry weathered face topped with a riot of gray curls. “Well, lookie there, Miss Corabelle has brown eyes.”

Gavin jumped from the chair, his face lining up beside hers. “You’re awake, baby. We’ve been so worried.”

I wanted to talk, but my throat was raspy and dry. The painful need to cough seared my chest, which felt heavy and stiff.

“Let me get you some water,” the nurse said and turned away.

Gavin grasped my hand and pulled it to his chest. “You got pneumonia. You had fluid in your lungs from—”

He fell silent when the nurse returned, and I washed over with relief. If he wouldn’t talk about it, then no one knew I had gone into the waves intentionally. I wouldn’t have to suffer through the attention, the concern, not until I was ready to admit I might have a problem. Maybe no one would ever have to know but Gavin.

The nurse pressed a button, and a motor hummed as my shoulders rose a few degrees. The blood drained from my head, and a lightness came over me, sending my vision to black and white. The feeling was comfortable, a dark place I went often when I needed escape and going unconscious was my way out. But today I didn’t want it and squeezed Gavin’s hand as though I could pull his strength into me.

“Stay with us, Corabelle,” the nurse said. “Don’t make me break out the smelling salts.” She lifted a straw to my mouth. “Crazy thing, going swimming when it’s forty degrees out. Young kids in love.” She smiled over at Gavin as I tried to suck and swallow. The water was cool and soothing and I wanted more of it, an endless amount, but she pulled the cup away. “Take it slow, honey. You’ve been getting it through your veins for two days.”

Two days!

I felt something strange against my thigh and realized I had a tube taped to my leg. A catheter! One hand was heavy and I lifted it to examine the IV running up to a bag on a silver stand. I turned to Gavin for confirmation, and he nodded, his lips tight. “We knew you’d pull through.”

I opened my mouth, but as soon as I tried to use my voice, a cough came over me, weak and pitiful but sending another shower of pain through my head. I sucked in air, trying to breathe normally. The nurse held my arm. When it all calmed again, I managed to squeak out, “Do my parents know?”

Gavin squeezed my hand. “They took a flight this morning. They’ll be here very soon.”

“Did you call them?” My voice sounded foreign, like it was passing over sandpaper. Each breath was painful, as though I had to wrench my chest wide to let in air.

Gavin nodded, his face heavy with concern. “That first night, when we realized you were staying. They couldn’t get out yesterday. No flights.”

The nurse pulled a thermometer from her pocket and sheathed it in plastic. “I actually get to take this the old-fashioned way now.” She stuck it between my lips.

My parents’ arrival worried me more than anything that had happened to me. How would my parents feel seeing Gavin again? He left the day of our baby’s funeral, and I had not told them that we were seeing each other again after a four-year separation. I didn’t know if they’d be supportive or cautious. They were not invasive parents, and we only talked a couple times a month. But they were protective. Gavin’s sudden departure had been hard on all of us.

“Excuse me a second, sweetheart.” The nurse stepped between us, and Gavin had to let go of my hand.

The thermometer beeped, and the nurse took it, squinted at the number, and jotted it on her iPad. “Still a little high, but nothing like what we had yesterday. We could have fried eggs on your belly button.”

I wanted to shake my head, but even the subtle shift of lowering my chin after she took my temperature sent pain spiking behind my eyes. “Am I taking pain meds?” I asked.

“Got some aches, do you?” she asked. “That would be expected.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get you something for that.” She inflated the blood pressure cuff, and I watched Gavin pace in a tight circle between the door and his chair.

The nurse tugged the cuff off. “I’ll be back in a minute with something for you.”

The minute she left, Gavin rushed to the bed and bent over me, holding my face with both hands. “Oh my God, Corabelle, you scared the shit out of me.”

“What happened?”

“Do you remember going into the water?”

“Yes.”

“And I got you out.”

“Yes, in the sand.”

“Jenny called an ambulance.”

“I remember that.” My head was exploding with pain, so I relaxed back against the pillow.

He settled on the edge of the bed. “You seemed fine at first, but they wanted to keep you overnight.”

I thought back. Yes, I could recall now being put in a room.

“You got very sick during the night and they had to suction one of your lungs.”

I had no recollection of that, thankfully. I closed my eyes, reveling in the relief from fighting against the pain of the light. I focused on taking several calming breaths. “Have they asked why I was in the water?”

“I wouldn’t tell them anything. I didn’t know what you wanted to say.”

“Does it matter?”

“A social worker was here. Tall woman with weird glasses.”

I swallowed, my throat a little more soothed after the drink, but achy and hot. Still, we had so much terrain to cover. His vasectomy. My guilt. I wasn’t sure how we could go back to that place where we’d drawn a line in the sand and stepped away from our tragic past. Or if we should.

“I don’t want them to admit me to psych,” I said.

“You think they’ll do that?”

I shrugged my shoulders, sending another shower of pain up my neck. I really needed to sleep again, but I fought it. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to go home, to my own apartment with the butterflies fluttering outside my window and the hula-girl lamp undulating with light.

Gavin’s phone beeped, so I opened my eyes. “Where’s my phone?” I asked.

He reached beside the bed to open a drawer, pulling out a plastic bag filled with rice. “We’re trying to salvage it.”

“Has Jenny called?” My best friend had been with us on the beach just before I walked into the waves. I could still picture her worried look as I was carried to the ambulance.

“Yes, she’s asked me for updates. She had my number first, remember?” He grinned, and the expression was so spontaneous and charming that I had to smile. We were going to be okay. Despite everything, we were going to get it all back.

Except Finn. I listened to the subtle beep of the monitor that seemed so loud upon waking. I concentrated on the sound, aligning it with my memory, and could see Finn’s Isolette, a clear bubble, his little face against the pillow inside. Sometimes his fingers would twitch, or his arm jerk, and that was the only way I could tell that he was real, and not a doll inside a case.

“Well, hell,” Gavin muttered. His happy smile was gone, lost to dismay and then a flash of anger.

“What is it?”

He sighed. “Your parents. They just landed and they don’t want me to pick them up.”

“Why not?” I tried to sit up a little straighter, but my body wouldn’t obey, and I sagged back into a slump.

“I can think of a lot of reasons.”

I held out my arm, the movement sending a shock wave though me. “Give me that.”

“You calling them?”

“I’ll try a text first. They might not answer a call from you.”

“Then let me type it.”

I sighed. “Okay. Say, ‘This is Corabelle. Remember when I told you I was pregnant, and I said to trust me, that I would be okay? Well, I’m saying it again. It will be okay. Gavin will meet you outside baggage claim.’” I no more got the sentence out when the coughs erupted. I couldn’t calm them down, turning to my side to manage the pain and the frightening wetness of each breath.

Gavin clutched me, fear all over his face. “Should I get the nurse?”

“It’s…stopping…” I managed to get out, gasping, forcing my body to relax.

“Your parents are going to kick me out.” He leaned in to rub my back. “I guess they’ll be sleeping here instead of me.”

I curled up tight, relieved the coughs had subsided. “I’m surprised they let you, but I’m glad.”

“I don’t take no for an answer. Not when it concerns you.” His face warmed over with that beautiful grin again, and even though I was exhausted and in pain, my heart sped up, and I felt that need for him that had ruled my youth.

“I never stopped loving you,” I said.

He lifted my hand to his lips. “I think I love you more now than I did before.”

His phone beeped again. He glanced at it and frowned.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I think your dad just told me to go to hell.”

2: Gavin

Corabelle was out again. One minute she was upset at her father, the next, asleep.

The nurse set the cup of water on the side table and said, “Buzz me when she wakes up.”

“I will,” I said. “Hey, is she supposed to cough like her guts are coming out? She hadn’t been doing that before.”

“It’s part of the process. At least she’s strong enough to cough now.” She hurried out of the room.

I leaned back in the chair. I was torn between blowing off her parents, who didn’t want to see me anyway, and doing what Corabelle asked. But, my motorcycle was here. I couldn’t pick them up on that. By the time I could get to her place, pick up her car, then jet to the airport, they’d be in a taxi.

I hadn’t planned this well. Corabelle had always been the organized one.

I turned over the phone and texted them the name of the hospital and the room number. They’d be here soon enough. I would smooth things over. We would get back to where we used to be.

I needed to call Bud, tell him I’d be taking off yet another day from the garage. And e-mail the professors, mine and Corabelle’s, to let them know how she was. God, this was a mess. They might not excuse me, but I didn’t care. I had no direction anyway. Not true. Corabelle was my destination. I’d do whatever I needed to do to make things right with her.

Her black hair was a harsh contrast to her pale fragile face. I could still see hints of the girl she once was, the one who sheltered me when I dashed across the alley from my house to hers as a child escaping a difficult father. The last four years without her had been such hell. I hadn’t seen it until I had her back. Nothing made sense without her. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

My stomach rumbled, so I shoved myself out of the chair. The cafeteria food was passable, and one of the staffers always had pity on me and gave me the staff discount. This was my new life, for a while. Eventually I had to get back to work, pay the bills, figure out our next step.

Another text message buzzed me as I stepped into the elevator. I suppressed a snorting laugh when I saw it. You’d never know that I’d once been a favored son, that the same hand that typed these words had once clapped me on the back in approval.

It said, “Don’t be there when we arrive. I mean it.”

* * *

I dumped my leftovers in the cafeteria trash and stacked my tray, wiping my hands on my jeans. My hair was all over the place. Corabelle’s parents would think I was a vagrant. Or a mooch. God, no telling. The way they were acting, you wouldn’t know that the first door I ever walked through that wasn’t my own was theirs. Of course, their daughter was the first thing I ever walked away from.

I stepped into the elevator, trying to figure out what to say, how to explain myself. A nurse got on with me, holding an apple, and nodded in my direction. “Which floor?” she asked.

“Four,” I said.

We lurched up from the basement to the first floor and stopped again. The doors slid open, and the time for me to figure out what to say was over, because Corabelle’s parents were standing right outside.

“Oh!” Mrs. Rotheford said, her vivid red lipsticked mouth open with shock.

“Hey,” I said with a wave. I tunneled my fingers through my hair one more time, not that it was going to help.

Mr. Rotheford glared at me from behind heavy-rimmed glasses, different from the ones I’d last seen him wear, now with a line across the centers. I’d thought of them as ageless, but the four years had not been especially kind to him.

“I’ll have you thrown out,” he said with a growl.

The nurse shifted next to me, her arm partially outstretched, as if trying to decide whether or not to push the button to close the doors. I glanced at her. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Should I?”

But Mrs. Rotheford grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him forward, pulling a petite roller bag. “Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur.”

He didn’t resist, and the nurse and I scooted to the corner. The elevator was deep to accommodate hospital beds, so we were not crowded together.

Mr. Rotheford’s shoulders were hunched, and his fingers on the handle of his rolling suitcase were tightened into fists. I couldn’t imagine him manhandling anyone. He had always been such a calm and gentle man, endlessly patient with Corabelle’s teddy-bear classrooms, sitting obediently in a little chair to be her student if she held her playschool on the weekends.

Her mother glanced back at me, her hair an intricate black sweep into a silver comb. She had always been elegant and kind, the sort of mother you might see on television. I knew they had their sorrows, a string of miscarriages after Corabelle, and in the days Finn was in the hospital, I knew her grief was magnified by the thought of all those children, and what tragic genetic code might have been passed on to her daughter. If I was going to make inroads with them, it would be through her.

“You’re all grown,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to that, but nodded. I could sense the fury growing in her husband. I hoped the elevator reached our destination before he blew.

We skipped two floors to land at the fourth. Corabelle’s parents stepped out first, since they were closer to the door, but paused, not sure where to go. I squeezed behind them and to the side, prepared to lead the way, but Mr. Rotheford’s jacketed arm snaked out and snared me, his fingers grasping my elbow in a vise. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I turned around to face him squarely, man to man in a way I’d never done as a teen. I was half a head taller than him, and he seemed small and sad rather than menacing. I inhaled slowly so I could choose my words. “I’m going to Corabelle’s room. She’s expecting me back. I know you don’t want me there, but she does, and right now, she matters most.”

He let go of me, and I was relieved to have found the right thing to say. I led them down a corridor, past the nurse station, and along another hall. When we stopped in front of Corabelle’s door, Mrs. Rotheford said, “Arthur, maybe you should go down and get some flowers for her.”

“She’s probably sleeping,” I said. “You want me to check?”

Mr. Rotheford pushed past me. “I can see that on my own.”

He opened the door too quickly, and I winced when it rattled. I followed him into the room, and Corabelle was indeed still out, her hair streaming across the pillow like a goddess.

“Baby!” Mrs. Rotheford dropped her suitcase handle and rushed forward, grabbing for Corabelle’s hand. Her husband hung back now, seeming to grasp for the first time that his daughter was actually ill.

He looked around, seeming unable to keep his gaze on his pale child, eyes resting on the flowers I’d brought, plus Jenny’s, and the blue butterfly that now had the word “Finn” written across the body. His shoulders relaxed. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I guessed he realized people did care, and that Corabelle was in good hands.

I sat down in the chair I’d come to think of as home and braced my elbows on my knees. I was bone-tired, I realized. But I’d been there before. I could keep going as well as the best of them.

Mrs. Rotheford perched on the edge of the bed, stroking Corabelle’s hand.

“I’ll go get those flowers now,” her father said. He moved their suitcases against the wall.

Her mother nodded absently, her eyes not leaving Corabelle’s face. I couldn’t imagine that fear, her only daughter in the hospital, but then I supposed I had lived it. We’d had so little time with our baby Finn. Nothing about being parents had ever felt normal for us.

When her husband was gone, she turned back to me. “So what happened?”

“She got caught in the Pacific Ocean and wound up with pneumonia.”

“You said that on the phone. I mean what really happened?”

My jaw clamped tight. I wanted Corabelle to have this conversation with them, not me. “She was awake earlier. I think she’ll be able to talk to you about it soon.”

The door opened, and one of the doctors came in. “I see we have new visitors,” he said. “I’m Dr. Snow.”

Mrs. Rotheford let go of Corabelle and turned to the doctor. “I’m her mother, Maybelle. How is she doing?”

“Well, we don’t recommend any more arctic swims.” He rounded the opposite side of the bed and leaned over to watch one of the monitors. “Now that she’s awakened, she’ll recover quickly. As long as she takes it easy, we’re through the worst of it.”

“Will she be okay?”

He consulted his iPad. “Pneumonia can be tricky. We have to watch for relapse and secondary complications. We did have to suction fluid from her lungs.”

“Oh my God.” She pressed a hand to her throat.

“She’s piped full of antibiotics. She’ll feel pretty bad for a day or two just from that. But she’s young and healthy. She’ll come out of this just fine.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Rotheford said. “She’s all we have.”

The doctor pulled out a stethoscope. “From what I understand, that young man is the one you should be thanking. He pulled her out of the water and got her breathing.”

I stared at the floor, but I could feel her gaze on me.

“I’m still not clear what happened,” she said.

“She came in with a low body temperature, fluid in her lungs. Apparently she almost drowned.”

I glanced back up. The doctor was listening to her chest. “We kept her overnight due to the fluid, and her temperature spiked, signaling an infection.”

He moved the stethoscope back to his neck. “Corabelle, I’m going to ask you to wake up now. Open up for me.” He leaned in close to her face. “Corabelle? Let me see those eyes.”

She shifted, blinking, but as soon as her eyes opened, her forehead creased with pain, and she closed them again.

“Light hurts, doesn’t it? We’ll get the pain meds in you.” He held her hand with his gloved one. “Can you squeeze?”

She tightened her grip on him.

“Good.” He let go. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Corabelle.”

“I’m Dr. Snow. I hear you decided to wake up earlier.”

She nodded.

“You have family here. Your mom.”

Corabelle opened her eyes again. “Mom?” she croaked.

Mrs. Rotheford leaned over on the bed. “I’m here, baby.”

“Where’s Dad?”

“He’s downstairs.”

“He was awful to Gavin.”

Her mother glanced over at me. “We’ll take care of that, darling. Don’t you worry about it.”

Corabelle turned her head. “Gavin?”

I stood up. “I’m still here.”

“Don’t let him chase you off.”

“No chance,” I said, but in the silence I felt we were all thinking the same thing — no one had to chase me four years ago.

Corabelle started another wheezing cough like she had when she woke up earlier. The doctor eased her on her side to listen to her back.

“She’s got a ways to go,” Dr. Snow said. “I’ll get the nurse down with something for the headache.” He helped her settle back on the bed. “If you can keep the bed up a bit, you’ll breathe a little easier.”

Corabelle nodded, her eyes watery from the coughing.

The doctor stepped away from the bed. “I’ll be checking on her again. Nice to meet you.”

When he was gone, Mrs. Rotheford sat next to Corabelle. “Thank God you’re all right.”

Corabelle took a couple deep breaths, then said, “I’ll be fine, Mom. Gavin’s back.”

“I see that.”

“He’s been good.”

“I’m sure he has.”

“Please don’t be mad at him.”

Her mother hesitated. “I won’t.”

“Talk to Dad.”

She pursed her red lips. “He can be stubborn.”

Corabelle glanced at the door. “Where did he go?”

“I made him go get flowers. He was being obstinate.”

Corabelle smiled. “We should keep him on errands.”

The nurse came in. “I know you want these now.” She held up a cup with two pills and another with water. “Let’s get you up a bit.”

Mrs. Rotheford moved out of the way as the nurse helped Corabelle take the meds. “So glad to see you up and around.” She glanced at the clock. “We’ll see how you’re doing tonight and maybe give you a little walk, see if we can take that catheter out.”

Corabelle’s face flushed red, and I knew that was for me, not her mom. Hell, I didn’t care what sort of tubes she had or where they went, as long as she was all right.

The nurse hustled out, passing Mr. Rotheford carrying the most absurdly large bouquet, one that dwarfed the ones Jenny and I had brought. I bit my lip to avoid laughing. Whatever made him feel better.

“Honey, you’re awake!” he said, setting the flowers on the table in front of the others.

“Hi, Dad.” Corabelle pushed her hair away from her face self-consciously. She always did care how she looked around her father. Her eyes darted nervously from him to me.

He’d apparently decided to go the pretend-the-jerk-isn’t-in-the-room route, keeping his back to me. “I heard you went for an ill-advised swim,” he said.

“Seemed a bit warm out,” she said. “Thought I’d take a little dip.” She sucked in a breath like she might cough again, and I almost jumped up, but she just cleared her throat.

I realized I was gripping the arms of the chair like I was about to be electrocuted. I forced myself to relax. I wouldn’t let Corabelle’s parents bully me into leaving. But I knew they had every right to be pissed off. I’d be more worried if they weren’t.

“We’ve been trying to call you, sweet pea,” Mr. Rotheford said. “I guess you don’t have your phone anymore?”

“It’s in rice,” Corabelle said. “We’re trying to save it.”

“I’ll get you another.” He settled on a stool, still with his back to me.

“Do you guys want to stay at my apartment?” she asked.

“Oh no, we’ll get a hotel close by,” her mother said. “Unless you need us to be there.”

“No, no. Gavin can check on it.” She looked around her father at me. “You have my keys?”

“I do,” I said, and I could see Mr. Rotheford’s back straighten in disapproval.

He turned around. “I can take those.”

“No, Dad, Gavin can handle it,” Corabelle said.

“I insist.”

Corabelle struggled to sit up. “No, I’m the one who is insisting.”

I wasn’t going to be pushed around. “I listen to Corabelle.”

He stood up, pointing a finger at my nose. “Listen here. I know what you did to my daughter. I was there to pick her up after you took off without any word to anybody. I don’t know how you insinuated yourself back into her life, but I’m watching you.”

He towered over me, but I didn’t challenge him, didn’t stand up. He needed this moment. I knew to let him have it. I tried to imagine having a daughter who got knocked up by some teenage lowlife and then all the things that played out for us, and I agreed that I deserved whatever they wanted to dish out. But I would not let Corabelle go, not now, not ever.

“Sir, I expect you to,” I said.

Corabelle searched for the bed button, which had slipped down the side of the mattress. I reached around her irate father and set it by her pillow. She moved the bed up a few notches, doing her Corabelle determination thing, aiming to not only do what the doctor said, but exceed his expectation on her recovery.

“We need to check in somewhere,” Mrs. Rotheford said.

“There’s a hotel on the next block,” I told them. “Easy walk.”

Mr. Rotheford still stood, stiff and angry, in the middle of the room.

“What’s it called, Gavin?” her mother asked.

“The Elms. Just go out the main entrance and turn right. I’d drive you, but I—” Maybe I shouldn’t bring up the motorcycle just now. “I would need to fetch Corabelle’s car.”

“We can walk it,” Mrs. Rotheford said. She turned back to the bed. “We’ll be back in the morning. Call us if you need us.”

Her father finally relaxed his shoulders. “I’ll pick up a new phone for you. We’ll be here.”

Corabelle nodded, then turned back to me, her eyes like a fawn’s, soft and dark. “Can you stay a minute?”

“Of course,” I said.

I stepped aside as her parents kissed her and left the room, their suitcases trailing behind them.

3: Corabelle

Gavin ran his finger across my palm, and I felt so much calmer. The rumble of the rolling suitcases faded down the hall as he pulled the stool up next to me by the bed. “That was tough, huh?” he said.

“Thankfully the pain meds are kicking in. I didn’t think I could take another minute of his beady glare.”

Gavin laughed. “He is pretty pissed at me.”

I pressed his hand to my cheek. “They’ll adjust. It’s all pretty new, even for us.” I kissed his fingers. We had to talk about what happened. I could play the sick card, but really, we should just dive in. Get through the hard stuff before it got too late to bring it up again.

“We haven’t really talked about that last conversation we had on the beach,” I said.

“You’ve been too busy trying to re-create the Pacific in your lungs.”

I tried to smile, even though my lips were cracked and dry. We had so much terrain to cover, I didn’t really know where to start. “Where did you find someone willing to give you a vasectomy so young?”

“Mexico. Cash-under-the-table thing.”

“Was it safe?”

He shrugged. “I went to a doc here and they tested it. Said it worked. Nothing seemed damaged. He was pretty pissed I had done it and wanted the name of the doctor.”

I let go of his hand. “Did you give it to them?” The heat rushing to my face made my head hurt again. I tried to slow my breathing, stay calm. A coughing fit would end the conversation fast.

“No.” He shifted over and braced his elbows on the bed rails, resting his scruffy cheek on his wrist. He was tired. He’d probably been in that chair for days.

“Have you gone home at all?”

He reached out and ran the back of his knuckles across my upper arm. “For clothes. Now that your parents have descended, this is all the time I get with you.”

“Maybe we can tell the hospital that you’re my husband.”

“Your dad won’t back us up like he did with Finn.”

I sighed. “They could kick you out, maybe.”

“They won’t.”

“Aren’t there visiting hours?”

“Probably. I don’t exactly play by the rules.”

“That’s true.” I laid my hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry I never told you about the marijuana.”

He exhaled with a long gush of air. “I never thought you’d keep a secret from me.”

“I was embarrassed. Katie got me started, and it helped me on the test, it really did.”

“But you never told the doctors. Not even when Finn was sick.”

Tears formed in the corners of my eyes, hot and painful. “I couldn’t bear everyone hating me.”

“We wouldn’t have.”

“Everyone would blame me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I did!” I grabbed fists full of the sheets, pain shooting through my head despite the meds. I could feel another cough coming on, deep in my chest. I didn’t think I could suppress it.

Gavin reached for my arm, holding it tight. “I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone would have. When you found out you were pregnant, did you keep doing it?”

“No!”

“Then you did what you were supposed to do.” He ran his fingers along my arm, gently, carefully. I relaxed back into the pillow, slowly bringing the upset down.

“I’m sure lots of women do it,” he said. “It probably didn’t do anything.”

I breathed in carefully, testing the cough. It had passed. “People always ask if you could change one thing, what would it be? I would change that.”

“Probably everything would have happened just the same.” He kept the pressure against my skin, feather light but comforting. He knew me. He knew what worked.

“At least then I would know it wasn’t something I did.”

He let go of my arm and stood up. I thought he was going to leave, and I could feel my chest tighten in distress, but instead he lowered the rail out of the way. “Scoot over. This bed is bigger than the one at your parents’ house, and we seemed to fit on it just fine.”

My cheeks burned to think of all the things that had happened on that narrow white bed. My parents had to have known, although the news of the baby still seemed to catch them by surprise. Of course, we all thought the shot would protect me.

I shifted over, feeling the heaviness of the tube on my leg and the pull of the tape. God, was there pee running through that into a bag somewhere? Could Gavin see it? “You’re never going to want to have sex with me again,” I said.

Gavin snorted. “I want to have sex with you now.”

“No way. I’ve got pee running down my leg.”

“Sexy.”

I wanted to punch him, but even that seemed to require too much strength. He settled in next to me, cradling my head against his shoulder.

“I’ve seen you with your feet in stirrups, pushing until you’re red in the face.” He trailed his fingers lightly along my arm, making me shiver. “I’ve seen you covered in puke with the flu.”

I groaned. “This conversation just keeps getting sexier.”

He turned my face to his. “I’ve seen you before you were out of diapers, if you recall. There is nothing that could happen that would change how I feel about you.”

I wanted to believe him, to feel that same blind faith I’d known as a girl who had never known any love but his. But he had left me. “Something did, once,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

He stilled, and I knew I had hit him close to the bone. “I was wrong,” he said. “I was foolish and stubborn and misguided and stupid.”

I snuggled into his neck, the warmth of his skin like a balm. “That was a terrible time.”

“We will never have another time as awful as that, not if it’s in my power.”

“I believe you.”

He squeezed me gently. “Things will be better now. We’re nearly there.”

“We have to finish school. I’m missing so much class.”

“The profs know.”

I looked up at him even though the movement created a searing pain in my temple. “Promise me you’ll go back to class tomorrow.”

He frowned. “I want to be here with you.”

“I’m fine. And my parents — they are going to be difficult. Bring me class notes, show them you’re responsible. Get your life back.”

Gavin sighed. “Okay. I guess that means I’ll have to pay attention.”

I squeezed his arm. “Yes. Even the boring parts.”

“They’re all boring parts.”

I relaxed into the rise and fall of his chest, feeling sleep descending on me again. I was home.

4: Corabelle

“All right, Corabelle, rise and shine.”

I turned away from the voice, but the screaming pain from a dozen places reminded me this wasn’t my mother getting me up for school. I shifted to my back again and peered up at the unfamiliar face looming over my bed. Another nurse, different from the gray-mop-headed one yesterday. She was younger, with a lion’s mane of flame-red hair that would have made Jenny’s pink ponytails look positively ordinary.

“Is it morning again?”

“It is indeed.”

Another day in the hospital. I pushed my hair out of my face, wishing for a ponytail holder. Something to ask Mom for.

“First, pain meds.” The nurse buzzed the bed upward, and I had to brace myself on the rails to avoid sliding down. She handed me a cup of water. “Take a sip first. You are probably still pretty crackly in there.”

The water was a cool relief. Hopefully I could drink more today. My stomach grumbled and I looked down at the belly of my blue hospital gown.

“That’s a good sign.” She passed over a small cup with two pills in it. “We’ll send up a soft breakfast. You’re going to have some company in about half an hour, so we need you up and about.”

She passed me a strange contraption with several cylinders that contained small plastic balls. “Blow into this.” She angled a tube at my mouth.

I puffed into it, but only two of the balls moved up, quickly settling back down.

“Try again, as hard as you can.”

I blew harder this time, as long and sustained as I could. All the balls went up, but not very far. When I stopped, my chest contracted, and another coughing fit came over me.

“Relax, relax, breathe in.” The nurse pressed me back against the upright pillow. “The cough is going to linger for a while.”

After a minute, I finally managed to get control again. “How long?”

“Depends on how well you take care of yourself.”

“I’m just lying in bed.”

“Sitting up is better.” She moved to the end of the bed and lifted a heavy plastic bag. “If you walk steady today, then this can come out.”

Thank God. I swallowed the pills. “You said someone is visiting?”

“She’ll introduce herself. Just part of the staff.”

The social worker. I just knew it. My heart started hammering. I had to be clearheaded when she came. Sound cool, competent, and most importantly, able to explain my entry into the ocean. If I could get through this one visit well, I probably wouldn’t be bothered by her again. My goals were as clear as they’d been in a while. Get better. Get out. Get back to school. And to Gavin.

I could get back to Gavin now.

The very idea that he was out there, reachable, and waiting for me was still so new. I hadn’t felt so hopeful in years. Everything had meaning again — why I was in school, where I was going, who I wanted to be. He had been the missing piece.

The nurse took my temperature. No, the missing piece would always be missing. Finn. But at least Gavin and I had each other again.

And we’d only ever have each other if we didn’t find a way to work around what he’d done. No more babies. No family.

The nurse removed the thermometer and picked up her iPad.

“So how easy is it to get a vasectomy reversed?” I asked her.

She picked up the blood pressure cuff. “Now that’s out of the blue.”

I shrugged. “Just wondering.”

She pushed a button to start the inflation. “I’ve never done a stint in urology. We don’t get those types of patients in the hospital anymore. It’s all outpatient. But it’s done all the time.”

“Successfully?”

The cuff began its ticking descent. “I don’t reckon it would be so popular to try if it never worked.”

True. I let out a long sigh. We’d figure this out. Later, after college, we’d find someone who could look at him. This didn’t have to be the end. Hopefully they hadn’t mangled him at whatever godforsaken clinic would take on an eighteen-year-old.

“I want to get you up a little before we take out the catheter. Make sure you’re steady enough for bathroom breaks.” The nurse pulled back the covers. I grimaced at the clear plastic tube. At least there was nothing in it at the moment.

Thankfully I didn’t feel woozy today. Maybe I could leave before the weekend was over, be back at school on Monday.

“All right, let your feet come down to the floor, slowly.” The nurse held the bag from the top, and I had to look away from the yellow fluid sloshing inside. Good grief. This was worse than having a baby. The gown rode up as I moved, and the long white bandage holding the tube in place on my thigh peeked out. I could not have been more glad I had asked Gavin to go to class.

The nurse offered her arm. “All right, pull yourself up carefully. Let’s see how steady you are.”

I definitely felt the weakness in my legs as I held on to the nurse’s meaty arm and braced myself with the bed rail. As soon as I was vertical, my head began throbbing.

“Excellent. A few steps.”

The first movement forward was a little tremulous, but once I had taken a couple steps, it got easier.

“Okay, that’s good,” she said. “I can pull this.” She led me back to the bed.

I sank onto the mattress with relief, my thighs still quivering.

“Once we get some food in you, you’ll be good as gold.” She helped me move my legs back up. “This will just be a little pinch.”

The ceiling tiles were much easier to stare at than her ministrations down below. I winced as the bandage came off, then sucked in a big gulp of air as something came free between my legs.

“All done,” she said.

She whisked the tubing and bag away. “Someone will come in with breakfast shortly.”

I released a long-held breath when she left. This part was almost over. I wanted to be home, back to my books. I would be so behind in classes. It was only Friday, so at least I hadn’t missed a star party for astronomy yet. But the literature, the reading. I would have to ask Gavin to bring my books so I could catch up.

The thought of him settled me. My parents would come around, even Dad. Everything would be fine.

Someone knocked at the door, and I scurried to drag the sheets back over my legs. “Come in!”

I expected someone with a food tray, but a youngish woman with funny cat’s-eye glasses came in. “Corabelle, you up?”

This was it. I sat as straight as I could, hoping to present a normal, and more importantly sane, appearance.

She moved across the room and extended a hand. “I’m Sabrina. I work with the patients here.”

I accepted the handshake, feeling suspicious of every word. Why not just say she was a social worker? Or was she some sort of therapist?

I realized I hadn’t answered. “Hello, Sabrina,” I said. Manners, Corabelle. Normal and sane.

She pulled a stool next to the bed, smoothing out her zebra-striped skirt that fluttered over her knees, another anachronism. “Your doctors asked me to stop by and chat with you.”

My face burned as my heart rate accelerated. At least I wasn’t on monitors anymore, so Sabrina couldn’t tell. “Did we get my insurance squared away?”

“Oh, I’m not with billing or anything. I came to talk to you a little about your history, and what happened the other day.”

I didn’t answer, not sure what to say, what could cause trouble for me.

She opened a folder. “I got your records from the UCSD health clinic.”

Now my heart really hammered. The doctor there had written me a mental health referral. God, I wished I’d never gone. If Gavin had just told me about the vasectomy before, I wouldn’t have been in there thinking I was pregnant.

I realized I was clenching the sheets and forced myself to let go. “Yes, I’ve been there just once,” I said.

“For a pregnancy test and an STD screening.”

This was so humiliating. “So what does that have to do with my pneumonia?”

Sabrina arranged her face into a clinical smile, and I immediately stiffened, on guard. “I just thought you might want to talk through some of the things that might have led to the event a few days ago.”

“Do you think they are related?” I had to be careful. Every question felt like a trap.

“Well, I just see some elements in your file that might indicate you’re under a lot of stress.”

I looked down at my hands, not able to keep my gaze as steady and calm as I wanted. Everyone told me I had the poker face of a kitten, so there was no keeping up the ruse that my life was normal. “My classes are going fine. I’m a little behind now, of course, but it should be all right.”

She leaned forward, her black glasses sliding forward on her nose. “Corabelle, I know about the baby. That must have been really hard.”

I knew I should look her in the eye, show how well adjusted I was, but I couldn’t. She had no idea how hard it was. The NICU, the monitors, the doctors saying they wouldn’t operate, the ventilator going silent. Holding Finn until his chest stopped moving.

My hands were pale against the white sheets. I would wait her out, say as little as possible. I wished I knew my rights, if they could keep me here.

“Corabelle?”

She was going to make me talk. I needed an interruption, a fire alarm, something to get me out of this. I wished for Gavin. He was so much better at this sort of thing, acting nonchalant, disarming people with his charm. “It was a long time ago. I’m fine now.”

“The doctor at the clinic seemed to think you could use some assistance working things out.”

“He didn’t seem too concerned. It was optional, just there if I needed it.” I moved my gaze to the window, the blinds tightly closed. I wanted them wide, to see something outside this oppressive room — open air, the sky, and maybe the sea.

“I’m just here to help you. Are you worried about talking to me?”

I forced myself to look at her, to smile. “You seem very nice. I’m just ready to go home and get back to classes.”

“You want to talk about New Mexico? I know you left there suddenly.”

My throat got so tight that I didn’t think I could talk if I wanted to. What did she know? What records had she accessed? I would kill to see what had been transferred in the files.

“You were arrested?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You want to tell me about that?”

I wanted to say “Not really,” but that didn’t seem sane or well adjusted. “It’s in the past.”

She touched a finger to her lips, tapping them with a long blue nail. “Seems like maybe it’s still troubling you. Did you ever talk to your professor after your altercation?”

God, she knew everything. “I was asked to apologize.”

“How did that go?”

I wanted to snap, “About as well as it goes when you’ve smacked a pregnant woman,” but I just shrugged. “She handled it okay.”

A man arrived with the breakfast tray, and I was so relieved I could have hugged him. When he saw Sabrina, he stopped. “Should I leave this over here?” He pointed to a rolling cart by the wall.

Sabrina stood up. “Oh no, I think this is her first meal. She should eat.”

He set the tray on the cart and rolled it over to fit across my bed.

“Thank you,” I said, glad to have somewhere to look.

“I’ll drop by again later,” Sabrina said. “We can talk some more about your last school.”

Great. “Okay.” I lifted the blue plastic lid that covered a plate with eggs and a piece of toast, concentrating on it as though it consumed all my attention.

She headed back out alongside the man, and when they were outside the door, I covered the eggs again and let my head fall back against the pillow. I wanted a computer, the internet, to look up my situation and see how to handle it, what would happen if I refused to cooperate. I wanted Gavin, and Jenny, allies, someone to talk this through.

A hospital phone sat on the side table, but it was useless. Like most people with cell phones and contact lists, I didn’t have any numbers memorized. Although maybe my phone was dried out enough to turn on. I could at least get the numbers.

In a minute. I pressed my hand against my chest, willing myself to calm down. I didn’t want to start another coughing fit. Sabrina wanted to talk about New Mexico. It seemed she already knew what had happened. So the records were out there. The university hadn’t suppressed it all.

That afternoon was still so clear in my memory. I had been fine for months, not even relying on the blackouts much anymore to keep me grounded. I was three years into school, finally gaining enough seniority to get a private dorm room. I had a great job in the main office and important references, including deans and the assistant president of the university, which would almost ensure an easy slide into grad school. With one year to go on my bachelor’s degree, I was already looking at my options for where to go and how to pay for it.

Then a simple walk through campus on a chilly spring day changed everything. I rounded the corner of a parking garage and bumped straight into my lit professor from the previous semester. I knew she was pregnant, but now she was enormous, her belly a mile in front of her as she leaned against the wall on the back side of the building.

Everything happened so fast. Her eyes went wide as her fingers tightened on the joint between her lips. I knew immediately what it was, and I just reacted, knocking her hand away from her mouth. How dare she smoke that thing while she was pregnant? What was she thinking?

My blow struck much harder than I expected, and she fell back into the wall, the rough bricks scraping her face.

Then she was bleeding. I realized I had hurt her, and now I was in big trouble.

She looked up at me, one hand against her cheek and the other on her belly. I backed away, turned, and ran.

The trees blurred around me. I could see Finn. Gavin. My parents. Katie. Her kitchen, the joints. The pregnancy stick. The doctors, telling me Finn’s heart could not be saved. I dodged cars and passed startled passersby. I kept going until my lungs were bursting and I couldn’t go any farther. I sat on the ground behind a maintenance building, far off the path of students trekking to classes. I gulped in air, then held my breath, then decided it was unwise, then did it anyway. I welcomed the black like I had never done before, wishing I could make it last, wanting it to be permanent.

I came back around with my nose pressed into the dirt, tears tracking down my face. I stood up, lost, wondering what to do, where to go. Resigned, I just headed home.

Two men in different uniforms waited for me in the hallway outside my room. One was campus police, the other from the city.

I sat in a chair while they asked me questions. Had I hit Dr. Tate? What had happened?

The campus police officer wanted to let the school handle it, but the city officer said no, the assault had been reported at a hospital, and only the professor herself could drop the charges. He did not put me in handcuffs or anything, just asked me to follow him. He loaded me into the back of his squad car, and we drove through town. I didn’t speak anymore.

I never went into a jail cell. By the time I got through the hours-long admitting process, fingerprints, photos, and waiting in line to make a phone call, not that I knew who to try, one of the university lawyers had already arrived. He was tall in his tan suit, his hair silvering on the sides. He talked to the woman who was processing my paperwork, and she gestured to me.

He smiled grimly. “Corabelle, I’m Sam. I work for the university. We’re going to talk in a quiet room for a minute. Is that okay?”

I nodded and stood up to follow him down a hall.

We entered a small room with a plain table and two folding chairs.

Sam sat in one and laid his briefcase flat between us. “Corabelle, you are very well liked in the main office. This is an unfortunate incident.”

I sat opposite him, not sure what to say to that.

“Dr. Tate doesn’t want this to end your academic career. We’ve decided it’s best to keep this at the university level. She will drop the charges if you are willing to accept our agreement.”

I still didn’t say anything. She was the one smoking a joint. She had more to hide than I did.

“Assault of a pregnant woman, a former professor of yours, doesn’t look good on any record. I’m not sure what happened, but if you’re willing to agree to our terms, we can put all this behind us.”

Apologize? She was the one endangering her baby! Rage blossomed inside me, but I had to stuff it down. I couldn’t do anything now. They had all the power.

He opened his briefcase. “I have an agreement drawn up. It says that in exchange for Dr. Tate dropping the charges, you will agree to not speak of the incident, to apologize to her, and to arrange for a transfer to another college. Naturally we’ll assist you with transferring your credits.”

I had to leave? “But my scholarships.”

He frowned. “I’m not familiar with those. Some may travel with you.”

I shook my head. “They were all from NMSU.”

“Would you rather take your chances with a judge then? I can release you back to the custody of the jail.”

I shook my head. I knew how that would go. Telling my parents. Hiring a lawyer. And no guarantees. This was a lose-lose.

He reviewed the segments of the agreement. I signed the bottom.

“Let’s get you discharged,” he said, standing.

I followed him numbly down the corridors, back through processing, and collected my backpack and the personal items they had confiscated when I arrived.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” he asked.

“I’ll take the bus,” I said.

“Good luck, Corabelle. I’m sorry this happened.”

I turned away from him to trudge down the sidewalk. The day had moved to evening. I wasn’t sure what to do next. Once again, I had to start all over.

When I got to my dorm room, I sat on the bed, feeling numb. What would I say to my parents about my move? And my coworkers. Would they clear out my desk? I wasn’t sure how big a secret it would be. I had no instructions.

I could go home to my parents’ house, but it was so full of memories — the sun room, my bedroom window, the gate in the back fence that led to Gavin’s. No, I couldn’t go there.

Finn’s framed picture sat on a small table and I picked it up. “Where do I go now?” I asked him.

He couldn’t look at me, his eyes covered with a protective mask, the tube and the blue tape preventing him from talking, or crying, or making any sound.

I slid to the floor, the picture in my lap. Why hadn’t I walked some other way? Why had she been so close to that wall? I’d never struck anyone in my life, not with anything other than a playful punch. She had no idea why I had done it. That I knew what it was like to forever second-guess yourself, to wonder if what you had done had harmed your child.

No one ever told you what to do when your world caved in. I had no one close enough to call about this, just coworkers and a few study partners. I wasn’t sure if I could even tell them anything, based on that agreement.

I had never been so utterly alone. When Finn died and Gavin left, I still had my parents and the sympathy of an entire town. Now I had nothing, no one. Not even a home or a school or a future that I could see. I lay flat on the rough carpeted floor, Finn’s picture on my chest, letting the heaviness of my grief and fear settle over me like a blanket.

What would I do?

Beneath my bed, light glinted off a plastic bag that held a few of my summer clothes. I reached for it, dumping the shorts and tank tops into a pile and crunching the crinkled bag in my fist.

Did I dare?

I propped the picture on my belly, admiring Finn’s cheeks, pink and fat beneath the gray mask. I could remember their pillowy softness. I had held him only once, watching his chest rise and fall with urgency until the movements slowed down, with long spaces in between, then stopped.

I quit thinking of anything at all and tugged the bag over my head. An ugly image, I was sure, the girl with the dead baby on her belly and the grocery sack on her face. I twisted it under my chin to seal it off. I wouldn’t die. I would pass out and let go, and air could get in.

Or not.

It didn’t matter.

The plastic settled over my skin, then gradually began to mold itself to my nose and cheeks, sucking in against my mouth. A tear trickled from my eye to my ear. I felt my lungs aching, the panic building in my chest. I began to writhe, my arms insisting on coming up to pull the bag away. I fought the urge, stuffed it down, raged against the survival instinct that tried to change my mind.

Then my body went quiet and still, and I could relax into the dark. The light began to fade and I sensed my hand hitting the floor.

But I didn’t go out. I heard crayons scraping across paper. In front of me was an image as wide as the wall, as tall as my imagination. I was coloring the blue sea, spreading color with broad swaths. Next to me, Gavin, boyish and short, his socks sagging, knelt and filled in the sand with a pale brown crayon, decorating the surface with starfish and clamshells.

I laughed and stepped back. The ocean was vast and beautiful. Gavin turned to look at me, and we smiled. This was our future, our goal, our home.

My belly heaved and suddenly I threw up into the bag. I yanked it away, panicked, disgusted, but in awe at my body, resisting me, making me do its will.

Finn’s picture clattered to the floor, but didn’t break. I snatched a shirt from the bed and wiped my face, sucking in air. I would survive this. I would make it home.

To the sea.

5: Gavin

I felt ridiculous sitting in class listening to Professor Blowhard yammer on about comets. Corabelle’s seat was too empty, like there was a hole in the room. Her friend Jenny watched me sympathetically from the end of the row, between flirty waves to the TA. They were so going to get busted for dating, or whatever it was they were doing.

The only salvageable thing about being there was taking notes to help Corabelle. I concentrated on the page, scribbling them the old-fashioned way because typing while I tried to listen made me crazy. I would still swear he was taking the entire class lecture out of a children’s book about space.

After an eternity, he shut down the projector and we were free. Jenny picked her way around knees and backpacks to stand by my seat. “How’s Cora?”

“Much better. Talking, awake. I think she’s through the worst of it.”

“I’m taking her shifts, so I haven’t had a minute free to go over there again. You going now?”

“Probably not until late. Her parents are there.”

She moved aside to let another student by. “I bet that’s going just grand.”

“They haven’t had me arrested. I’d say that’s a win.” I stood up, slinging my backpack over my shoulder. “You’ve talked to her boss, right?”

“Yeah, they’re supposedly sending her a care package. Probably leftover coffee and stale strudel.” Jenny fell into step beside me. “Why do you think she walked into the water? I mean, I knew she’d been upset, and this was big shit going down, but that’s huge. She’s no drama queen, and trust me, I know drama.”

I’m sure she did. But I had no answer for her. Corabelle was different now, parts of her as unreachable as the shadows on the moon. We headed for the stairs. “I’m betting the hospital is going to try and drag it out of her,” I said.

“You think they’ll say she’s crazy or something?”

“She’s putting on a pretty good act of being normal.”

Jenny rushed to keep up with me, her pink ponytail swinging. “Are we talking about the same person? Because the Corabelle I know couldn’t fool a kindergartner.”

Our footsteps echoed in the stairwell, and I had to resist the urge to pause on the spot where Corabelle and I talked for the first time after discovering we were on the same campus. “She’ll rise to the occasion.”

“Well, fooling the shrinks is all well and good, but both you and I know the real deal. She went into the ocean and wasn’t planning on coming back out.”

I stopped on the bottom step and turned to face Jenny. “Look, we don’t know what Corabelle was thinking, and we don’t know she has a problem. She’s working it out now, and she’ll either fool the social worker or she won’t. I don’t think she’s in any danger, and I would rather us be supportive than speculate.”

Jenny held her hands in the air. “Whoa, dish boy’s got a burr up his ass.”

I whirled back around at that. This conversation was pointless.

“Hey, Gavin, sorry.” She grabbed my arm. “You know I want what’s best for her. That was a tough scene out there.”

I yanked the door open. “Why the hell did you meet me there anyway? Why not any other place?”

Jenny halted. “That’s a very good question. It’s what she wanted.” She twirled a pink lock around her finger. “You think she planned it? That doesn’t seem like her.”

I shook my head. “No. She’s sentimental. We had some moments on the beach, that’s all.”

Jenny passed through the door. “I’m sure you’re right. But even if she does escape the sanity police, we should keep an eye on her.”

“I plan to,” I said. “Once she’s discharged, I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

* * *

I only managed to work a half-shift at the garage before Bud sent me home again. I was too distracted and sheared off a radiator hose on a routine maintenance job.

I stopped by Corabelle’s apartment to look around before heading to the hospital and facing her parents. They had probably been there all day, and I hoped they’d be ready to leave, if not already gone, before I arrived.

The butterflies I re-created from Finn’s crib mobile still hung in the trees outside her door, although a little more sparse than I had originally laid out. A few lay on the ground and I scooped them up.

Her apartment was stuffy and airless. I left the door open to let the cool inside and sat on her sofa, remembering how tense I’d been that first time I came over, when she’d asked for me.

Why had she texted me that night? There were so many things about her I didn’t know, places she’d been that I’d never go or understand.

I caught a whiff of something foul and moved to the kitchen, pulling the trash bag from the bin. I spotted a plate I remembered from our apartment, a ceramic fish painted by a neighbor. I set the bag down and picked up the plate. Corabelle wouldn’t serve fish on it, saying it was cannibalistic somehow, but I could picture cookies stacked on it, and orderly rows of crackers and squares of cheese from when someone came over to study.

I wondered what else she had, flipping open a few cabinets. I left every single thing behind, all my clothes, my toothbrush, everything I owned except my laptop and backpack, which had been in my car when I took off from the funeral. I had started over literally from scratch, but Corabelle had retained the detritus of our lives together.

I couldn’t find anything interesting, so I picked up the trash bag again, jumping back when a wet drop hit my shoe. A green liquid oozed from several holes in the bottom of the sack. Cheap bags. I opened her pantry and searched for a box of them to double bag it so I didn’t leave a trail through her apartment. I found a neatly folded stack of them, and tugged the first one off the top, snapping it open.

As the sack fitted over the other, I realized it, too, had holes. What was that all about? I examined them, realizing they were perfect punctures, done on purpose. I returned to the pantry and pulled another one from the stack. Also riddled with them. Every bag had been tampered with.

Attached to the door was one of those stick-on closet organizers designed to hold plastic grocery bags to be reused. It was stuffed full of sacks. I pulled one out and held it up to the overhead light.

Holes.

I pulled out bag after bag, and they were all the same. Careful punctures at the bottom of each one.

What was Corabelle doing? She didn’t have a cat to get tangled in one and suffocate. Obviously she didn’t have a child. And either way, it was an obsessive thing to do.

I stuffed the sacks back in the little bin and folded the trash bags as best I could. I wiped up the floor with paper towels and held the bag sideways to keep the worst of it from dripping.

As I walked around the building looking for the dumpster, I decided to put this from my mind for now. Corabelle could tell me about it later, when she was stronger, when we had some miles under our belt and could talk about hard stuff. Whatever was going on with her, and whatever quirks came out of it, probably led back to me. If I wanted us to be together again, I had to accept all the things about her. So I would.

6: Corabelle

My parents were going to drive me crazy. They’d sat around my bed all day, talking about the most inane things. Knitting. Football. Construction in my hometown.

“You guys are in one of the most beautiful cities in California,” I said. “Go out and see the sights.”

Mom shook her head. “While you are still recovering? Of course not.”

Every time the door opened, my anxiety rose that the social worker would return and my parents would want to stick around for the interrogation. They had no clue that I’d been kicked out of New Mexico State, only that I had decided to finish out my degree at the school I had originally applied to. They also didn’t know I had forfeited my scholarships and was going into debt.

But Miss Cat-Eye Glasses probably knew all of that.

I poked at the new phone Dad had brought, wishing my old one would turn on so that I could at least get a contact list. Neither Jenny nor Gavin had called or texted me, both thinking mine was still defunct. I vowed to memorize their numbers from now on, so I’d never be out of contact again. I felt cut off from the world.

“I’m surprised Gavin hasn’t tried to connive his way back to your room today,” Dad said. “I’m looking forward to kicking him out. I already talked to the staff and they said if he isn’t family, he can be asked to leave.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck start to hackle. “Dad, I’m over eighteen, and I want him here. You can’t turn him away on my behalf.”

“Don’t you remember those days after he left?”

Mom looked up from her knitting, her reading glasses low on her nose. “Arthur, let’s not go there.”

Dad paced the room. “You were devastated. I wanted to find that boy and pulverize him.”

I tugged at a loose string on the hospital gown. Dad had changed. He never would have said things like this before Finn.

“And now look at you. He no more comes back and here you are in the hospital.” He whirled around. “I am convinced he was responsible for this.”

“Now you know Gavin was the one who pulled her out,” Mom said.

“So obviously he was there when she went in!”

I set the phone down by my leg. “I’m right here, you know.”

Dad came forward and sat by my feet. “Tinker Bell, you were doing so well before. I can’t help but think all the upset is what got you in this situation.”

“What situation is that? I got a little wet, and I ended up sick. I’m better now, and I’ll be out of here soon. All this will be behind me.” Why wouldn’t he let this go?

Something moved in the doorway, and I looked to see Gavin standing there, his face red with fury.

“Do you have something you want to accuse me of…sir?”

Dad twisted on the bed. “Oh, good.” He reached across me to push the nurse call button.

“Don’t do that!” I shouted. “This is ridiculous!”

“No, him being here is ridiculous,” Dad said. “Baby, why won’t you listen to reason on this?”

Gavin moved through the room with coiled energy, like a panther. He took my hand. “How are you feeling?”

I hung on, watching my father glare at Gavin’s back. “I’m getting around today.”

He set my backpack on the floor. “I brought you the notes from class today and your books so you could catch up.”

I looked around him at my dad in an “I told you so look,” but he was heading for the door. I didn’t like this. “Dad, where are you going?”

He didn’t answer but kept moving. I turned to Mom. “What has gotten into him?”

She set her knitting in her lap. “I can’t calm him down. It’s like he’s built up too many years of being Mr. Nice Guy, and it’s all going to blow.”

“You have to stop him. I won’t let them kick Gavin out.”

She shoved her yarn in a bag. “I’ll go see what he’s up to.”

“Take him out to dinner or something. Get him away for a while.” I could feel the tension in my neck and back, and several of the aches blossomed into a burn. I’d ask for pain meds again, or maybe not. I really needed to be awake to study. But this was not to be borne.

When the room had emptied, Gavin leaned over for a kiss. He aimed for a light peck, but I brought my arms up to his neck, keeping him there, wanting to feel something other than anger, panic, and exhaustion.

He shifted closer to me, running his fingers across my cheek. As his lips crossed lightly over my mouth in a caress, I could feel everything downshift, settling back into a steady rhythm.

“I’ve missed holding you,” he whispered against my skin.

“So hold me now,” I said.

He leaned into me, pulling my head against his chest. He smelled of the garage, oil and machinery, a bit of sea air from the ride over. Masculine and good. After the antiseptic sterility of the hospital, he was bliss.

“Should we time the nurse rounds so we know when there’s a gap?” He released me just enough that I could turn my face up to see his evil grin.

“You are so bad,” I said. “They can’t exactly kick ME out.”

“See, we’re all covered.” He leaned down to kiss me again, and this time, despite the lingering weakness in my muscles, the heat from the contact began to spread through me. He gripped my chin and slid his tongue in my mouth, and now my fingers were tight around his biceps. I yearned for him, dying to get out of this gray room and someplace where I could be with him, explore all the things about him that were not yet familiar, to know him like I once did.

His arm wrapped around my back and pulled me close, crushing me against him. I let the walls and glaring industrial light fall away, closing my eyes to the rails and machines and clinical equipment. There was nothing but his body and his mouth, his hands and hard muscles, the nape of his neck beneath my fingers.

“Good God, get him out of here NOW,” my father barked.

Gavin didn’t even flinch, but withdrew slowly, on his own time frame, unwilling to be jolted away. He settled me carefully back against the pillow.

My mom had her fists pressed against her mouth, clearly upset but not willing to speak up. My dad was red-faced, more worked up than I think I’d ever seen him. Beside him, a short man in a blue hospital security uniform looked sheepish and uncertain.

“I understand you are unwanted here,” the guard said.

“I want him here,” I said. “Dad, you’re going too far.”

Gavin stood up to face them. “I understand you’re upset—”

“DO YOU?” Dad’s voice boomed through the walls and Mom jumped.

“I do,” Gavin said, his voice even.

“Escort him out!” Dad said to the guard.

“Why don’t we just take a little walk?” the guard said. “Let Dad here cool down.”

“Can’t Dad be the one to take the walk?” Gavin crossed his arms across his chest, staring down both the men.

“Gavin, please,” I said. “This is too much.”

Mom dropped her arms. “You know, maybe everybody should leave. Corabelle needs her rest.” She picked up her knitting bag. “Arthur, let’s go. Gavin, come down too. This is not good for her recovery.”

“Text me,” I told Gavin. “I have a new phone, same number.”

He turned around, his eyes searching mine.

I nodded encouragingly. “Text me.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” the guard said. “Let’s all head out.”

Mom took Dad’s arm and pulled him to the door. He walked stiffly, still angry. Gavin let the guard follow behind them, then pulled his phone out and held it in his fist. “Five minutes?” he asked.

“Sounds good,” I said.

When they were all out of the room, I felt the energy drain out of me. It had been such a good day, full of progress. I got to eat normal things, walk around, get the tubes out. Now if only I could get all the people I loved to get along. We’d once had such a happy harmony, when Finn was on the way. Nothing had been right since he died. Maybe I was just fooling myself that life could ever be as it once was.

7: Gavin

I had been expecting that scene with Corabelle’s parents since I was fifteen years old.

The world silenced as I cut the motor to my Harley a few blocks down from the hospital. The guard had watched me drive off, so I knew I had to get a little bit away. I’d just park it here at a convenience store and walk back.

When they figured out Corabelle and I were having sex, they didn’t flip. They had already gotten Corabelle on the shot anyway. They seemed to know what was about to happen. They were always involved and watchful, but not overly smothering.

When she got pregnant, I expected an explosion, maybe even a punch to the jaw, the sort of thing my own old man would have done, if I’d been around him at all anymore. But no, they maintained the same stalwart calm, just talking out the practicalities of living arrangements and college and supporting ourselves.

After that, I had no idea what they thought of me, since I was long gone. I could see why he’d hate me, but hell, if Corabelle was willing to move past it all, why wasn’t he?

I jerked my phone from my back pocket and typed out a message.

Ready for me?

A reply came instantly.

Born ready.

I smiled as I tucked away the phone. This was working. We were going to see this through. Already I could see the future laid out. Her, me, some little place while we finished school. Then I’d get some random job — hell, what WAS I going to do with a degree in geology? She’d go to grad school. Some time, way down the line, I’d see the docs and figure out how to undo this stupid mistake of getting snipped.

Instead of going in the main entrance, where I might run into the same security schmuck, I circled around to the back side where the ambulances unloaded for the ER. The doors slid open as I approached, and only a woman at admissions even noticed my arrival, returning to her paperwork when she saw I wasn’t bleeding or about to collapse.

A hall to the right promised a way to the elevators, so I rat-mazed through corridors until I found a set. I had to zigzag through a new addition to get to the main tower, but stopped dead when I came face to face with a broad expanse of glass and a row of baby beds lined up like a store candy display.

Some new dad in blue scrubs held up a little bundle in a striped blanket so a gray-haired couple could snap photos, their flashes bouncing off the windows.

Finn had never been in a room like this, whisked away from the labor suite into the NICU and covered in discs and tubes. This dad got to unwrap the baby as a nurse started the process of cleaning him off, the white stuff — vernix, Corabelle had called it — still on his neck and in the creases of his arms and legs.

My boots were rooted to the floor, and no matter how hard I wanted to turn away from the scene, I couldn’t move. The dad laughed behind his mask, and rage started to build in my chest, so hot and sudden that it shocked me. This guy deserved his moment. He was probably raised in some white-bread suburb with a super-dad who’d coached Little League and took him for pizza after, not flinging wrenches if his ten-year-old son’s fingers were too fumbling to get a corroded clamp off a battery.

Maybe the universe knew what it was doing, giving healthy kids to some people and sorrow to others.

Hell, now I was in no shape to see Corabelle, to soothe her. I had to bring it down. I managed to make my legs move and I circled back, heading to the elevator bank so I could cross over to her wing via some other floor, any other ward but this one.

I forced myself to forget what I’d seen as I approached her hallway. Straighten up. Be there for her. But I still felt sharp-edged as I entered the room. She sat on the bed, her knees balancing a notebook as she tried to type my scribblings from astronomy into her iPad.

“Your handwriting sucks, my dear,” she said.

“My fingers have better uses,” I said, pulling a stool up next to her bed.

“Is that as close as you’re getting?” She flattened her knees and set the iPad and notebook on the side table.

“Well, scoot over then, you bed hog.”

She shifted over and I crawled in next to her. “Did you time the nurses?” I asked.

“I asked them if it would be safe to study uninterrupted for a while.”

“And?”

“They promised to let me be until nighttime meds.”

I snaked my hand beneath the covers so I could run my hand along her belly. “Still have that sexy tube going into your parts?”

She cocked her head at me. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?”

“You feeling okay?”

“I’m all right. Pain meds. Food. Lazing around. Isn’t exercise good for speeding up recovery?”

I slid my fingers along the rough fabric of the hospital gown. “Does this thing ever come to an end?”

She watched my face as I moved my hand lower, almost to her knees, before finding the hem. I squeezed her leg, then slowly made my way up her skin, pausing when I hit a rough patch, slightly sticky. “Adhesive?”

“Used to be.” Her breathing had sped up, still rattling a little, and that got me worried. I didn’t want to hurt her.

“You sure you are all right?”

She reached for my hand through the sheets and abruptly moved it up until I cupped her between the legs, hot and moist. “I will be.”

Her boldness brought everything to life, and I wasted no time pressing her down into the bed, slipping two fingers inside her, reveling in the sudden arch of her back.

Her arms came around me to hang on. I watched her face as I thumbed the little bud, not sure if I should take it slow and easy or move her along so she didn’t tire out.

But she made her own decision, grinding against my hand. I worked her quickly, hard and tight, feeling her thighs quiver around my hand.

“God, Gavin,” she said, squeezing me against her, her breath hot against my neck. “Oh my God.”

She gripped me impossibly tight. I kept the pressure even and steady, paying attention to her responses. When her eyes squeezed shut, I moved faster, increasing the pressure, and I could feel her start to spasm against my hand. She kept it quiet, her cries silent. I brought her down carefully, in degrees, until she settled back against the bed.

Her face had bloomed pink, but now as she relaxed and I just held my palm against her overworked flesh, the color began to drain.

“That took a lot out of you, didn’t it?” I asked softly.

She didn’t want to admit it, just kept a steady pressure of her hand on my forearm.

I leaned in and kissed her hair, withdrawing gently and tugging the gown back over her legs. “We can do more later.” I shifted and the bed complained with a squeaky groan. “When I don’t have to worry about breaking something expensive.”

She smiled a little, her eyes fluttering closed. I tucked her head into my neck, that spot she always loved to nestle into, and waited for her breathing to settle. I tried not to picture the glassed room, the proud father, and the woman who was waiting for him somewhere in these same walls. He would close in next to her like this, and lay the baby on her chest. And their moment would be different from any I had ever known.

I reined in the emotion and shoved it down. No use thinking on things I couldn’t change. Corabelle had fallen asleep, and I edged away from her. The notebook sat open on the side table, so I took a pen and scrawled a quick note — I love you. See you tomorrow.

Then I slipped from her room, down the quieting halls, and back to my motorcycle and my own empty apartment.

8: Corabelle

My father sat on the sofa by the window, sullen as Mom planned their day. I had convinced her to visit the museums in Balboa Park, insisting she bring me a set of note cards from the gift store in the Museum of Art, one you couldn’t get anywhere else. I told her I had thank-you notes to send and only those cards would do.

A gift basket had arrived from Cool Beans, a bunch of coffees and chocolates and a couple magazines. Jason, who often worked with me at the coffee shop, was undoubtedly the one who inserted a packet of Hot Pumpkin Spice tea, his new nickname for me ever since I’d started dating again. Better that than the old one, Frozen Latte.

I was anxious for them to leave, as I knew the social worker was bound to return. I did not want them there — I didn’t even want them to know she had been coming by.

“Are you going to take a taxi?” I asked, hoping to hurry them along.

“I think that will be easier than the bus,” Mom said. “Arthur, are you ready?”

“I still think you’re just clearing me out,” he said.

“I am indeed,” I said. “I can’t study with you hovering.”

“I was hoping to catch the doctor, see if you would get discharged today,” Mom said.

I tried not to scream with frustration. “I can handle it. I am the patient, after all.”

They stood up finally and came over to hug me. “Should we go by your place for some real clothes, just in case?” Mom asked.

I almost said, “I can ask Gavin to do it,” but I just shook my head. “We’ll arrange it when they tell me it’s time to go.”

Dad still frowned as Mom led him out the door. When the room was clear, I settled back in relief. I was weaker than I was letting on, and sometimes, if I got tense, a panic came over me like I wouldn’t be able to breathe in at all. But that morning when I blew into the stupid ball and tube contraption, I kept all the balls up for several seconds. The nurse seemed pleased.

Now if only I could get this interview over with. I had a niggling feeling that the social worker was a problem, that she might hold me back.

I read one of my lit assignments for a while until someone knocked at the door.

I summoned my cheery voice and called out, “Come in!”

Sure enough, Sabrina came in looking frazzled, her dress splattered with paint on the shoulders and sleeves.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“Art therapy.” She smoothed the front of her blouse, grimacing at the blotches of color. “An apron wasn’t enough protection.”

“Little kids?”

She settled on a stool. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? No, a few patients who were frustrated with my incompetence at the paint spinner.”

I choked back a laugh. “Are you an artist too?”

“No, I am not. Stick figures are a stretch. But one of our major donors bequeathed a large sum for an art therapy program, and I got stuck trying to implement it. We’re trying to hire someone with an art background, but the therapy component means we need someone who is also well schooled in helping patients work through grief issues.”

I immediately thought of Tina, who traveled to various colleges to speak about loss, and who had also just finished her degree in art and hadn’t found a job. “Does the person have to be a licensed therapist?”

“Oh, I doubt we could attract one of those with this job and pay scale. I’ve been searching for someone for a couple weeks.”

I reached for my backpack. I was pretty sure I had stuck Tina’s card in there after I drove her to the airport last week. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago now. But she had helped me. Maybe I could do something for her. “I know a girl who might be perfect. She does speaking tours and just got her art degree.” I dug around and found the pale pink card.

Sabrina took it from me. “Interesting. I’ll give her a call.”

“She does suicide prevention.” As soon as I said it, I regretted it.

“So you went to a suicide talk?” Sabrina asked.

Damn. “Actually, no. I was asked to drive her to the airport after one. She was nice, and had some helpful things to say. She also lost a baby as a teenager.”

Sabrina nodded, her thick bangs falling onto the rims of her dramatic glasses. “What did she say that was so helpful?”

God, what to mention that wasn’t incriminating? “That I should give Gavin another chance. He was the father of the baby. He left me after the baby died and just recently came back into my life.”

“Has it worked out? Giving Gavin another chance?”

“Oh, definitely. We have a ways to go. I have to trust he won’t leave again. But we’re working through it.”

Sabrina smiled and stood up. “That all sounds very promising.” She fingered the card. “Do you think you’ll be ready to go when they discharge you?”

I flooded with relief. I had passed. “Definitely. I just need to catch up on school.”

“I’m sure you’ll do well. Good luck, Corabelle.” She shook my hand again, then left the room.

I flung back the covers, too antsy to stay in bed. I had done it. I would be free soon. I frowned at the strange heavy feeling in my chest when I stood up, but it didn’t matter. I could tell I was better. This was just some lingering issue. Soon I would be home.

Sunlight poured through the windows as I lifted the blinds and looked out over the city. I could text Gavin to come over and bring me some clothes. By Monday I’d be back at school like none of this ever happened.

I pressed my head against the glass, reveling in the coolness on my face. Everything was going to be perfect from now on.

9: Gavin

My phone buzzed for the third time in a half hour as I dropped the hood of a Tahoe into place and wiped my hands on a shop towel. I glanced at the screen to make sure it wasn’t Corabelle. She had written earlier asking me to bring her some clothes.

Nope, still Rosa, a prostitute I used to visit in Mexico.

I didn’t know what she wanted, but I quit seeing her completely once Corabelle came back. My little vice of only sleeping with paid women was over and done.

But three calls in a short period made me wonder what might be going on with her. The last time I left her apartment in Tijuana, I’d gotten into a fight with a man outside her building and taken his gun. She lived in a tough neighborhood, and “Sideburns” might be hanging around looking for me. I hoped that this hadn’t somehow come back to involve her.

I tossed the keys to Mario and said, “I think I need to answer this,” and headed out the back door. I punched the call button and braced myself for something tough.

“Hey, Rosa.”

I got silence at first, then finally she said, “Gavinito.”

“I’m not used to you calling me.”

“I — I must speak with you now.” Her voice was shaky, and I pictured that asshole from her street standing behind her with a knife at her throat.

“Are you okay? Is someone trying to hurt you?”

“No. No hurt. I have problem. Big problem. I must see you.”

I leaned against the bricks of the back wall of the garage. “Rosa, I can’t come anymore. I have a girlfriend now. She wouldn’t like it.”

The line went silent again.

“I’m sorry, Rosa. Are you all right? Do you need money?” I didn’t have much of anything to give her, but I guess I could try. She’d been there for me on the worst night of my life, right after my illegal vasectomy, lost and in pain.

“That is not it. I — I don’t know what to say. How to say it.”

“Are you in some sort of trouble?”

“I have a little boy. He is three.”

That was a surprise. “Okay…I guess you keep him hidden. I never saw him.”

Her voice wavered. “He lives with my cousin Letty.”

Why was she telling me this? “What did you need me to do, Rosa?”

“They have trouble. My cousin’s husband leave her.”

I waited her out, still not sure how this involved me.

“I need to get my boy.”

“Did you want me to take you there?”

I heard her intake a breath, as if she had not thought of it. “Yes, yes! That is good idea.”

“I don’t have a car, but I could borrow one.”

“My brother has a car.”

Why wasn’t her brother taking her then? “Rosa, what’s going on? Why are you asking me all this? Don’t you have family? Some friends there?”

The line went silent for a moment. I looked out over the street, tapping my boot. I should try to listen to her, to understand, but she was part of my past. I wanted to leave her behind.

“Gavin, the little boy is yours.”

The world went gray, and I couldn’t respond. This was impossible. I was snipped. She was confused. I squeezed the back of my neck in irritation as I realized something was really off.

“Rosa, I can’t have babies anymore. I got—” I wasn’t sure if she would know the word. “I got a vasectomy. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, you got it the day we met. I remember.”

“So, the boy can’t be mine.”

“But he is. He cannot be any other.”

“Rosa, you know I like you. But in your…your line of work, couldn’t he belong to anyone? Besides, he’s three years old. Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”

Bud stuck his head out the back door. “Think you can take one more belt job today?”

I froze, wondering if he’d heard anything. He stared at me with a question on his face, so I glanced at my watch and nodded. “Rosa, I have to get back to work. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you. Just be safe, okay?”

I hung up the call, anger rising up. What sort of idiot did she take me for? I’d seen her dozens of times in the last three years. She never mentioned any son. No kid was ever around, or any toys, or anything to indicate she’d been pregnant. Ha, I’d never even seen her pregnant. The whole thing was a lie!

I followed Bud into the garage, supremely pissed off now. All those years she’d seemed so sweet and good. Just to pull a stunt like this!

I strode through the bays. Bud stopped by a banged-up Corvette. “This one’s yours,” he said. “See how she looks.”

I yanked on the latch and jerked up the hood. When I tried to force the metal stand into the hole, it missed, and the heavy hood came crashing back down, startling everyone in the garage.

Bud cocked his head at me. “You okay?”

I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye, wishing the pressure would ease the ache in my temple. “Maybe not.”

Mario came up behind Bud, wiping his hands on a towel. “I finished up that radiator blowout. I’ll hang with Gavin.”

Bud backed away, nodding. “Keep him straight.”

When he disappeared back into the front office, Mario whirled around. “What the hell is up with you lately?”

“Nothing.” I yanked on the latch again and lifted the hood, this time making certain the stand was secure before letting go.

Mario tugged on the main belt. “This one’s shot. I’ll go hunt down a replacement.”

While I waited, I stared into the engine and wondered why Rosa had tried to pull a number on me.

My phone buzzed, and I wanted to just ignore it, but it wasn’t a call, just a text with a photo attached. From Rosa.

The picture loaded automatically, a boy, probably about three. I was going to delete it when something caught my attention. A cowlick split his hairline just to the right of the center of his forehead.

I touched my hair. I kept it short up top to avoid the whorl I couldn’t control, in almost precisely the same place.

I clicked on the picture and zoomed in. His eyes were Rosa’s, no doubt. But his ears — they laid just like mine, mostly flat but with a flare at the top.

Impossible.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket but pulled it out again five seconds later.

It couldn’t be.

The message said only “Manuelito. Feb. 15, 2010.”

I counted back. That time frame was right.

Shit.

Mario returned with the belt. “You look like you’ve eaten some bad chili.”

“How long after a vasectomy before you start shooting blanks?” I asked, my stomach turning.

He balanced the belt box on the frame of the ’Vette. “Hell if I know. You thinking of getting one?”

I tried to swallow, but my throat was blocked. “Already did.”

“Damn. That’s one hell of a thing to do.” He leaned against the car. “That girl you’re seeing — she just find out or something?”

“No. I mean, yeah. But, shit.”

He stared at me a second, then turned back to the motor. “Maybe you should take a walk or something. I can handle this.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The air outside was cold and helped me think. What the hell was going on? I strode briskly down the sidewalk, punching on my phone for a Google search on vasectomy.

I hadn’t understood a single word anybody said to me at the clinic. I’d awakened on a lumpy cot, groggy, with jagged shards of pain shooting up from my groin. They seemed to want me off the premises right after. I’d only made it a few blocks before I knew I had to figure out something to help ease the misery. Walking was near impossible and I couldn’t spot a taxi anywhere midafternoon.

The farmacia where Rosa worked was blessedly close. Between her broken English and the help of the man behind the counter, they got me some cold packs to stuff in a jock strap, plus God knows what sort of drugs.

But I still didn’t have information on the procedure or when it worked. I hadn’t worried about it, as sticking some girl was about the last thing on my mind.

The doctor I’d seen stateside a couple months later had confirmed I was sterile. He’d asked too many questions about where I’d had it done, so we didn’t exactly chat.

The first link came up on my phone, and I scanned through the information, looking for how fast it worked.

I bumped into a bench and sat down, feeling dumbfounded. Weeks? It could take up to two months?

I backed up and chose a different link, hoping for another answer.

Ten ejaculations, this one said.

How long had it been? Rosa had spent that first night with me after surgery, but we hadn’t done anything. I’d been strung out from pain and full of regret. When had I gone back to her?

I closed my eyes to piece together those days.

* * *

After leaving the farmacia, I’d barely made it to the hotel across the street before collapsing. I took the first two pills Rosa had given me and crashed a little while.

But the pain woke me, and heeding her stern warning about not taking any more until bedtime, I wandered the room in a haze until I spotted her from my window. She stood on the street corner below, dressed very differently than she had been inside the shop.

I turned away from her curling black hair that reminded me of Corabelle and what I had done, this irrevocable act that meant I could never return to her. I stared at the ceiling, refusing to succumb to the heaving sobs that threatened to take me over, unable to erase the image of her standing in the aisle of the church, mute and shocked, Finn’s blue casket just behind her.

I had to get past it all. I had to force myself to think of something else. I pulled a chair up to the window and watched Rosa stand by a pole, awkward and too innocent for the job, finally getting approached by a man but pushing him away.

When she had had no luck for an hour, and I was in too much misery to sit there alone any longer, I went down to see if I could pay for her myself. Company, any company, was preferable to the blaring Spanish channels and peeling wallpaper that only exacerbated the despair that tried to drag me back into a pit.

Her presence kept my demons at bay that night. I held her close as if she were Corabelle, and took the pills when she said it was okay to do so. In the morning, she left after asking only a pittance, and the next night I waited for her to close up the shop before I approached her to come again.

Her frightened face made me hang back as the man behind the counter came out and took off down the street. I figured the score pretty fast — he had no idea she was hooking and might fire her if he knew.

When he was well away, she turned back to me. “Better today?”

“I will be if you come with me.”

She glanced down the street, her black curls blowing across her face like her hair was the wind itself. I suddenly understood the concept of transference. I couldn’t love Corabelle anymore; I had cut myself away from my old world. So I would love this girl instead, in some new and different way, one that got nowhere near any tender or vulnerable space.

“I need to go home first,” she said and glanced up at the hotel. “Room is same?”

I nodded.

She slung her heavy black bag on her shoulder, trapping a swath of the wild hair. “I will come.”

We turned from each other, and I trudged with my old-man walk across the street and up the stairs, then back down to a liquor store next door, buying a bottle of wine, and up again.

We hadn’t done anything that night either, as the wine on top of the pills knocked me out cold not long after she arrived. I had pulled her against my chest on the lumpy bed, both of us fully clothed. I didn’t want her in any other way, not then, not so soon, my groin still searing from the stitches and Corabelle still so close in my memory.

When had we gotten busy? Within the two months? The ten jacks?

I stood up from the bench, restless, angry. Surely I hadn’t made so stupid a mistake. I headed back to the garage, racking my brain for the memory. How long had it been?

I’d stayed a week in that hotel, then moved on. I didn’t see Rosa for a little while as I searched for someplace to live while I took the GED and got enrolled at UCSD. I got a job as a night stocker at a grocer.

Then I remembered. Graduation night, a couple weeks later. I’d been lonely and feeling pent up. I didn’t know a soul and hadn’t talked to anyone but the uptight night manager of the store, who kept all the employees on different aisles as we worked so we wouldn’t waste time.

I knew Corabelle was walking across the stage and that they wouldn’t be calling my name. I wondered if she’d think of where I should have been, the people I would have stood between.

I drove back to the border about the time my classmates would be tossing their caps in the air. I waited across the street as Rosa locked up the farmacia, and this time I followed her a block before calling out her name.

When she turned, I saw something about her was different. Instead of looking at me with concern and patronizing patience, she actually seemed happy.

She ran down the street to me, but stopped a few feet short. “Gavin! You are here!”

I took one step toward her, and she lost her shyness, throwing her arms around me. I didn’t understand it, but just having someone who knew my name and was excited to see me made everything better.

“No hotel now?” she asked, glancing back the way we’d come, to the shabby place I’d called home that first week.

I shook my head. “I got a job in San Diego. I live there now.”

She smiled and led me farther down the street. “I live close. We go there.”

“You sure that’s okay?”

“I live with my brother, but he is not home.”

Something about her joy at walking with me put a little lightness in my own step. I followed her into the gap between the buildings and through the foyer I would later come to know so well.

The first time we trudged up those dirty stairs, I remember wishing I could do something to help her, get her out of these terrible conditions. But when we were inside her apartment with the colorful wall hangings and paper flowers, I realized she was happy there, close to work and making her own way.

I walked around her place, looking at the pictures and statues of the Virgin Mary, candles, and trinkets. She got two beers from her fridge, and we clinked the bottles together like we were old friends.

When I sat on the sofa, she perched awkwardly at the other end. I remember thinking that was an odd way for a prostitute, but she’d always had that innocent quality, even on the street, and of course, the other times we’d been together, nothing had happened. Maybe she didn’t know quite what to make of me.

I drank the beer and smiled at her, wondering what you said to a hooker you were ready to make a move on. I had zero experience. I hadn’t been with a single girl other than Corabelle, and we always made things up as we went along.

“Come over here,” I said to her.

She shifted over and laid her head against me like we had before. I thought of Corabelle again, her big night, probably no longer really caring that she’d lost the top spot to Charles, maybe not even listening to his speech. I wondered if she would give one after all. When Finn died, nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Little things like a commencement speech held zero meaning.

My mood plummeted and that ache I’d felt in the hotel on that first night threatened to overtake everything else. I couldn’t go back, couldn’t change things. I just had to charge forward.

I set the beer on the floor and pulled Rosa harder against me, turning her around so her legs crossed over my thighs. Her waist was small, and I let my fingers wander across her ribs. She had more give than Corabelle did before she was pregnant. I caught myself comparing them and forced myself to shut off the flow of thoughts.

Rosa wore a simple sundress with a tie in the back. I reached around and tugged on the bow, letting the fabric go loose around her. She looked up at me with big round eyes, her lashes heavy and dark. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but that was just for the farmacia. She’d been colored up when I saw her that first night. I was just catching her early.

I wasn’t sure if kissing on the lips was all right, so I aimed for her neck. Her throat was soft and hot, and now I could move faster, pushing the dress over her knees and spreading my hands over her skin.

Rosa shivered a little, and I remember thinking — she can play the part. But when I had the dress up and over her head, I realized she couldn’t be that experienced, she couldn’t have been at the game long. She was too earnest, held my gaze too long, and the way she welcomed me to her, seeming to really want me with her, kept bringing back the same feelings I had for Corabelle rather than what I’d expected with someone paid to be there.

I almost couldn’t do it. There was too much past in the room, and not enough distance. I couldn’t separate the sex from the emotion any more than I had before.

But Rosa got it. She knew it was hard, and she took control then, stroking my face and kissing my hair. She touched me like a lover would, not a stranger, and when her mouth met mine, I just let everything fall away, eyes closed, like I could be anywhere, like I could be home.

When she straddled me, I sank right into the passion of it, relieved to connect with someone. Only later, too late, did I remember the condoms in my wallet and that with this woman I had to protect myself.

Afterward Rosa curled against me like a girl rather than someone jaded about sex. And so I held her and let the moment go. The sounds of night life heating up drifted in from the windows, and I wondered if she’d take on someone else that night, more than one. A wave of revulsion washed over me, wiping out the tenderness. I sat her up and reached for my clothes.

She snapped out of whatever had her so sensitive, jumping off the sofa and dragging her dress back over her head. I didn’t want to pay her only the few dollars she’d asked for the other times, and so I laid an amount on her table that I thought was hopefully enough.

As I headed down the stairs, my anger at the whole situation threatened to boil over. I’d done this thing, broken away from my past. It was time to stop thinking about Corabelle and the life I’d left behind. I’d figure out a new future and a new path. If I wanted to rut into street walkers, I would. If I wanted to bet on pool, or get in bar fights, or be the asshole my father showed me I could be, then it just didn’t matter.

I wasn’t going to let any of the bullshit matter.

When I first opened the door out into the night, a couple guys looked at me like I might be an easy mark. But I was scrappier than they figured, and after a couple punches and a bit of blood on all sides, I felt initiated. I would come back to Tijuana again and again, and each time I’d piss off somebody different and live to tell about it. I’d see Rosa, maybe another girl, maybe two at once.

Nobody would tell me what the hell I ought to do. I didn’t owe anybody anything.

* * *

As I walked back to Bud’s, the anger of that night threatened to take over the control I’d reestablished since Corabelle came back. How many stupid things could I do in one month? Walk out of my kid’s funeral, get sliced by who knows what sort of illegal doc, then screw a hooker without a condom.

I’d checked out fine after, no bonus diseases, and they’d certified me as properly snipped.

But that was weeks later. That one time with Rosa was definitely in the window. Damn it, why hadn’t she protected herself?

But then Corabelle had been on the shot. Maybe I had jiz of steel.

I pulled out my phone and stared at the picture again. Surely it couldn’t be. I’d seen Rosa pretty often for the next few weeks, between rounds of drinking and raising hell in various bars, until I cracked the radiator block on the Camaro. I spent pretty much every dime getting it running again so I could keep going to work, since the night shift meant the buses were shut down.

In fact, everything went south after that. I had to pay tuition, then books. I eventually sold the car and bought a junker to cover the next quarter. Eventually I dropped to fewer credits because I couldn’t afford full-time tuition. Then even the junker had to go, so I walked.

I hooked up with a lady or two stateside on the rare occasions I had any extra dough, but not in Tijuana, since I had no way to get there. I could have gotten normal girls for free, but I saw how clingy they got with Mario and some of the other guys. I didn’t want to feel obligated to them, for them to pin any of their hopes on me.

Actually, I knew when I finally got back to Rosa. Finn’s birthday almost a year later. I hadn’t told anybody I’d gotten to know about my history, hell no. But Rosa I could tell. I couldn’t call her up, as I’d always just showed up at her job or her place. We had no way to contact each other.

I’d just started at Bud’s and Mario loaned me his Yamaha. I didn’t have a license for it, but that sort of obstacle didn’t stop me in those days.

When I got to her farmacia well ahead of closing, she was still there behind the counter.

Seeing her again was like taking a step into my past. I wasn’t the boy I’d been when I first asked her to come up the stairs with me. But looking across those shelves at her, I could experience, for a minute, what it was like to be the old Gavin.

She’d changed. I remembered that now, puzzle pieces falling together. Softer around the middle. Sadder, too. When she looked up at me, she wasn’t joyful the way she’d been before, but shocked. She glanced anxiously behind her at the man, as if worried he would guess who I was. I didn’t say anything but bought a bottle of perfume, letting my hand linger when she handed me the change. Then I hung out at a bar down the street until the hour came for her to lock up.

Rosa was reluctant to see me then and wouldn’t go to her apartment. But when we got to the old hotel room, she forced a smile and put on the face that I would grow used to over the years that followed, a pretend sort of happy.

If she’d had a baby in that time I was gone, I wouldn’t have even known.

If it had been mine, she would have had no way to contact me about it until I showed back up again.

Damn it. Why hadn’t she told me when I came back? We could have sorted this out.

The phone felt cold in my hands. When I got back to Bud’s, I didn’t bother going inside. I knew exactly where I had to go.

I fired up the Harley and headed for Interstate 5 and the border.

10: Corabelle

My father never missed a thing.

“You were expecting him, weren’t you?” he said, stretched out in Gavin’s chair in the corner.

Mom sorted through their bags from the museum purchases. “Never mind that, dear. Look, I got you some things to set around the room.” She unpacked a handblown glass bowl swirled with blue and yellow and set it on the side table with the flowers. “That’s better.”

I gritted my teeth. “Thank you.”

Dad yawned. “Did the doctor say if you were leaving today?”

I glanced at the clock. Two in the afternoon. “He hasn’t been by. Another staff member came in and seemed to indicate I wouldn’t be here much longer.” I picked at the sheet across my lap. Gavin’s last two texts were cryptic and short, just “At work” and “I’ll get there when I can.”

“Was it a nurse?” Mom asked.

My hackles rose. “No, just somebody from the hospital.”

“Maybe we could page the doctor.” She arranged herself on a chair, tugging her knitting from a bag. Great, she was going to settle in. Maybe I could walk the halls a bit and try to place a call. Except I didn’t have anything but this breezy hospital gown. And Gavin had my keys. I was stuck.

“He’s probably got more pressing patients than me,” I said.

“Then they should give up your bed, send you home,” Dad said.

The gray-mop-headed nurse popped in. “Time for a temperature check.”

Mom stood up. “Do we know when Corabelle gets to go home?”

The woman clicked on her iPad. “The doctor should be by soon. He’ll decide.” She sheathed a thermometer and slid it into my mouth.

We all waited for it to beep, as if it would be anything but normal. I felt fine.

She peered at it. “Hmm. Up again a bit. You been out of bed a lot?”

I shook my head. “I feel fine. I was walking earlier. Maybe I just did too much.” It was a lie. My chest felt like it was being crushed. But I wanted to go home.

She tapped the temperature into her iPad. “Let’s take it a little bit easier, just to be sure.”

“I will.” God, I could not jeopardize going home. I was already going crazy.

Dad locked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “Sure you don’t want to come back with us? I don’t know why you couldn’t finish up in New Mexico like you planned.”

I had to keep all my stories straight about why I had transferred. “I have a better shot at grad school here.”

“Sure was nice having you closer to home.”

“It’s nice here. I can see why Corabelle would like it,” Mom said, diplomatic as always.

My phone beeped and I practically lunged for it. Surely Gavin would be off work soon, or at least have a moment to let me know when he could bring my clothes.

But the number was unfamiliar.

Hey — a hospital just called to schedule an interview. Said you gave them my name. Thanks. Tina.

I smiled. I hoped she got the job, if she wanted it. I pictured Sabrina in her paint-splattered dress and stifled a laugh.

“Good to see you happy,” Dad said. “You haven’t smiled enough lately.”

I would have said it was Gavin, and new friends, but I let it go. The last thing I wanted was to invite Dad to start bashing him again.

“You know, I ran into Alaina the other day,” Mom said.

I stiffened at the mention of Gavin’s mother. “Oh?”

“She got a little flustered. We haven’t really spoken for a while.”

Since the funeral, probably. Gavin’s departure had pretty much ended the friendship between his mother and mine. “Where was she?”

“At the grocery store. I think she must have started going to Wal-Mart since I never see her at Peppers.”

“You think she’s avoiding you?”

My dad snorted. “She ought to be.”

“Arthur,” my mom said. “She’s not responsible for how Gavin acted.”

“She’s responsible for how she raised him.” He sat up. “No-account fool.”

“Dad!”

“I’m not going to sit here and let that self-centered jackass jerk my daughter around again!”

I threw the sheets off and held the back of my gown closed as I snatched my phone from the side table. “I need to take a walk.” I stalked to the door.

“Corabelle! You heard the nurse!” My mother’s voice hit a rare fever pitch.

I turned back around and went into the bathroom instead, slamming the door shut. I sat on the floor by the toilet and dialed Gavin’s number. I knew he was working, but hoped he could get away for just a second. He’d been so available the last few days. I didn’t understand why suddenly I could barely get him to respond to a text. Maybe he was up to his elbows in a car motor.

The connection rang continuously until his voice-mail message came on. I leaned against the wall, closing my eyes as I listened to the recording, picturing him saying the words, his lips, the scruffy jaw. When it beeped, I said as quietly as I could, “Hey. Having a tough time up here with my parents. Hope you’re okay.”

The cold floor seeped through the cotton gown and I shivered. Crying was not an option. I had to get well. But I was frozen in time, waiting for Gavin, just like I’d waited four years ago.

I wanted to go home. I’d do whatever it took. But the cold and the need to cry triggered another moment of panic as I couldn’t take in a breath. I sucked in, triggering a coughing fit. I moved to my knees and snatched a towel from a rack, pressing it to my face to keep as quiet as possible. Terror flashed through me as my abdomen heaved and pushed, refusing to settle back down. I forced myself to breathe, to relax, to slow down. After what felt like forever, it settled again and I gulped in air. I spread the towel on the floor so I wouldn’t be up against the freezing tile. If only I could go home, sleep in my bed. Be warm. Be with Gavin.

He wasn’t going to leave me again. I knew that, believed it with all my heart. Today was just one day. There couldn’t be anything special about it.

11: Gavin

I’d traveled the road into Tijuana a hundred times, but today it felt different.

The air whipped my face as the Harley roared along a strip of highway with the US border fence to my right and a tight line of dilapidated buildings on the left. I hadn’t warned Rosa I was coming. She might not even be home.

A couple kids looked up from kicking a ball in the streets as I turned off the highway and into the city. I had to concentrate on the asphalt, the crumbling edges of the road, and not think that any of these boys could belong to Rosa.

Or to me.

My fingers tightened on the bars. Couldn’t be. I wouldn’t let it be. I just had to see him. I’d know. Surely I would know. You knew your own kid, right?

I had to force Corabelle out of my mind, what she would think or do. This might be the final blow. She’d leave me. I couldn’t blame her. Another boy, not hers. Shit.

I slowed down as we started approaching streets with traffic, banging my palm against the rubber grip. We could not catch a break anywhere.

Maybe it wasn’t true.

I had to cling to the hope that all this would turn out to be some trick, a way to bleed me for money. I knew Rosa was poor, and maybe all that fear she’d always shown that her boss would find out what she was doing on the side had come back to bite her in the ass. She thought I had something, and she could get it. Ha. I was lucky to pay rent every month.

If he was mine, hell, what would I do? Quit school for sure. I’d need that money for child support.

No. It wasn’t true. I was not going to let it be true. I’d see the kid, and he would clearly belong to somebody else. We could test him, I guess. Surely somebody did that here.

Stop. Stop thinking about it until you have more facts.

The red-light district was quiet midafternoon, dirty and ugly in the light of day. Not that it was pretty at night, but the colored neon and dark spaces kept the grit out of immediate view.

A woman sat against a crumbling wall, a blanket covering her legs. A little kid clung to her side and peeped out with big solemn eyes.

Jesus. I imagined Rosa there with her son. Maybe my son.

Hell. Even if it wasn’t mine, I couldn’t let that happen to her. I needed to know what sort of trouble she was in. Maybe I could bring her stateside. If the boy was mine, I could do that, right? Without marrying her?

Despite the chill, a bead of sweat slid from my temple. I cornered the last turn to her place. She wouldn’t have called from work. She had to be off today, but I’d go to the farmacia next if I couldn’t find her here.

I killed the bike next to the space that divided the two halves of her building. All the doors to the outside were locked and someone from inside always had to let you in. I had to call her and wait.

No one was around, but I felt wary. The spot where I shoved that dealer into a car and took his gun wasn’t twenty feet away. I hadn’t planned on ever coming back. Hopefully that asshole was still sleeping off whatever debauchery had occurred the night before.

I rolled the Harley into the covered walkway and jerked my phone from the pocket of my leather jacket. Be there, I ordered. Let’s finish this.

She picked up quickly. “Gavin?”

“Yeah. I’m downstairs.”

“Here?”

“By the door.”

Through the phone I could hear the squeal of hinges and the echo of steps, so I figured she must be coming down. I stuck the phone back in my pocket.

A voice from behind me snarled, “So lookit who’s back on my streets. Been waiting.”

Bloody hell.

I turned to see Sideburns, looking a little roughed up but as short, squat, and fiery as before, in white pants and a red jacket. He still had the brass knuckles on his left hand.

“That’s a pansy-ass outfit,” I said. Last time I’d been anxious and in a hurry. Today, I had nothing to lose.

“I want my gun.”

I held up my hands. “Sorry, not on me.”

He grinned beneath a heavy mustache. “That’s what I like to hear.”

And that’s when he pulled out a beat-up black Glock.

Rosa would come out any second. I had to shut this down. “You sure have a lot of those lying around.” I leaned against the wall as if I couldn’t give a shit about anything.

Sideburns passed the gun from hand to hand. “I ought to plug you, but I tell you what. Hand over that ride, and we’ll call it square.”

The fact that he hadn’t shot me already meant that either he wasn’t locked and loaded, or else he had a reason to believe he couldn’t get away with it at this moment. Maybe too many cops around, not that I had any faith in the law enforcement in Zona Norte.

“Let’s take a look at it, see if it meets your high standards.” I pushed away from the wall and backed up to the bike.

Sideburns narrowed his eyes, and I gave him reason to be very nervous as I ran my hand along the leather saddlebag. He was assuming the gun was in there, and now I was close to it.

Still, he didn’t pop me when he could. Something was holding him back.

“Built it myself,” I said.

He took only one step when I charged. How stupid could he be, when I shut him down so handily a couple weeks ago? I brought him to the ground, and a sharp crack of my elbow against his wrist forced him to drop the Glock.

Rosa stepped out right then and screamed.

This made Sideburns go manic, kicking and punching at me like a tornado. The boy definitely had something to hide.

I delivered a bone-crushing blow to his jaw to slow him down and pinned his chest with my knee. Rosa, to her credit, calmed down instantly and went for the gun. I could see she knew her way around a weapon, so I jumped off Sideburns and let him stand as she aimed the Glock at his head.

“Puta,” he spat at her.

“Su madre es puta,” she said.

“Ay yi yi.” Sideburns held out his hand to receive his gun back.

“Don’t give it to him,” I told Rosa. “It has your prints.”

She shook her head at me as she pushed the release and deftly snatched the magazine in her left hand. She tossed it my direction, and I caught it.

I was about to remind her of the round in the chamber when she jerked the slide and cupped the last bullet in her hand. She threw the gun at Sideburns’s face.

He backed up and trapped it against his chest before it could fall and hit the ground.

“Vamanos,” Rosa said and pushed me toward the Harley.

I swung my leg over and waited for her to settle behind me, shoving the magazine in my jacket. The engine noise was deafening in the covered space. I turned around and passed Sideburns. I’d had just about enough of Tijuana.

We only went a few blocks before Rosa leaned forward and shouted, “Turn aqui,” and pointed down another, larger street. We followed it for a long while, then she tapped my shoulder. “Stop.”

I pulled up beside a rundown pickup parked by a line of cinder-block buildings that looked occupied. My heart hammered since this might be where the boy lived, beating harder than it had during the fight. Rosa jumped off the back, came around, and punched me in the chest.

“What?” I asked.

“You cabron! You idiot!” She was hysterical now, crying and screaming.

I grabbed her and pulled her against my chest. “Hey, hey, we’re okay. We’re fine.”

Rosa kept hitting me, the blows getting less and less energetic, until she finally settled down.

“Do you know that guy?” I asked.

“¡Por supuesto! Of course! Everybody knows Antonio. Big jerk. Big asshole.”

I’d never heard Rosa curse or even be upset. I guess in the context of how we saw each other, it didn’t come up. “Will he bother you?”

“No. He will not admit a woman hold his gun.”

“I had a fight with him before.”

She pulled away and looked up at me. “Everybody fights with Antonio. It is his way. He thinks he owns our street.”

I let go of her. “Rosa, what is going on?”

She looked past me at the houses, and I felt certain he had to be in one of them.

“Is the boy here?”

Rosa looked at me questioningly, then shook her head. “No, Manuelito is with my cousin in Ensenada. This is where I used to live.”

I turned back to the crumbling facades. Gray blocks kept the dirt from cascading down the slopes that the structures seemed to spring from like caves. Scattered cars were parked half on the road, half in the dirt and debris. Rambling steps thrown together with wood scraps led to doors.

“Are we going to see your family?”

Rosa kicked at the dirt. “No. No family here. I just know what is safe here and what is not.”

I got off the bike and pulled her over to the pickup so we could sit on the edge of the rusted-out bed. “Let’s start at the beginning.”

Rosa ran her hands up and down the legs of her jeans. I had never seen her dressed so simply, a plain blue T-shirt and worn-out windbreaker. Her hair was pulled back in a long black ponytail. She seemed younger in this outfit than in the getups she usually wore for me — lacy skirts and cinched-up tops.

“Where I live is my brother’s,” she said.

“You mentioned that.”

“He not come there much now that he has wife, but he has the key. He watches me.”

“Does he know what you do?”

She twisted the corner of her jacket. “The farmacia — it is his.”

That’s not what I meant, but I let it go for the moment. “Is he the man who works there, in the back?”

She nodded.

“So does he know the other things you do?”

She shook her head. “He know nothing about you.”

“But the others. How do you keep it a secret?”

She stared at her hands, working the zipper up and down at the bottom of her jacket. “Gavin, I not say truth to you.”

There it was. Now she would tell me the boy wasn’t mine. I could already feel the relief relaxing my chest. “So what is the truth?”

Rosa inhaled deeply. She sat up and looked right at me. “I am not what you think. I do not do sex for money. I am not a bad woman.”

I couldn’t quite grasp what she was saying. “But you have sex with me. For money.”

She held my gaze, steady and certain. “You are the only one.”

“But I saw you, that first time, on the corner.”

She slumped down again. “I try it. I try every night for a week, but no one come for me. No one want to pay for me.”

Well, that explained how innocent and uncomfortable she was that first night. “Why wouldn’t anyone want to pay for you? You are beautiful and kind.”

“I am not.”

In any other circumstance I might have done more, hold her or kiss her or convince her she was wrong, but not now, not with Corabelle back. I just sat there numbly, waiting for her to explain why I had been her only customer.

“My family is not happy for me. I cause big problem. My brother was the only one to help me.” She had gone back to tugging at her zipper.

“If you had a job and help, why were you on that corner?”

“I needed money he did not know about.”

“What for?”

“For protection.”

“From what?”

“My cousin, another cousin. He — he wants me. He — has me. I do not want him.”

My anger flared. “Why didn’t your brother help?”

“My family does not believe me. I cannot keep him away.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“And you told your family?”

She looked down the street, her dark eyes so lost. I wanted to cream somebody, smash them into the ground.

“It is not easy. He is very smart. He talks very pretty.”

“Is he the father of the baby?”

Her head snapped around. “No!”

“How do you know?”

Her face blossomed red. “I bleed before you came. I not bleed after. He did not come then.”

I gripped the edge of the pickup, trying to stay in control. “Does he still come?”

“No, not after the baby.”

“Did he think it was his?”

“No, he could not say that. Then they would know.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“My brother would not let me work when I was fat. I had no job. My mother took Manuelito and gave him to my cousin Letty.”

“You just let her take him?”

“Letty is a nice person. They have a good house.”

“Did you tell them who was the father?”

“No.”

“And they just let it go?”

“They not ask questions.”

“But you see him?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know you are his mother?”

“He calls us all mama.”

“Is he happy?”

“Yes.”

Okay, so this could be fine. “So why not just let him grow up there?”

“Letty’s husband is gone. We don’t know where. He maybe has another woman.”

“Doesn’t Letty have family she can go to?”

“Yes, but not with my boy.”

I pressed the heel of my hand into my forehead. “They don’t consider the boy their family?”

Rosa gripped my arm. “No, no. That is not what I mean. They will take him. But she is from Guadalajara. I will never see my Manuelito again!” Her eyes brimmed over with tears. “I must have him!”

“But if he thinks Letty is his mother—”

“I am his mother!” Her voice broke and she began sobbing, a wrenching unyielding flow of tears. I pulled her into me, not knowing what to do. Not the slightest clue. I looked over the crumbling hill, the metal-roofed buildings that didn’t seem fit for anyone to live in. No matter how bad off I was, I could probably do better for the boy than this.

I had to try.

12: Corabelle

I couldn’t take one more minute.

The walls of the room were getting tighter. My father was getting smugger. My mother was increasingly silent, knitting on some purple monstrosity that was undoubtedly moving from scarf to blanket to wall covering. She could keep a freaking army warm with that thing, her needles clicking and her concentration focused so she didn’t have to listen and keep intervening.

Dad stood by the window, looking out on the city. “You know, maybe I’ll hire a locksmith and pay to get your place rekeyed. It’s worth it.”

“Dad…”

“Well, it’s silly. We can’t even get your clothes. Gavin is MIA — again — big surprise.”

“Stop it.”

Mom’s needles clicked faster. She had to be upset about Dad’s tirade. Her husband was becoming something he’d never been — a gloating pain in the ass.

I sure didn’t know what to do. Nobody could tell me when I was getting out. And even if they did, Dad had a point. Gavin had my keys.

I’d forced myself to slow down my texts to one per hour. He hadn’t answered any since early afternoon. Dinner was coming soon. Even if I did get out, the complex office was closed. Without their backup key, I wouldn’t be able to get in my own place.

Maybe I could stay with Jenny. I would not survive a night in a hotel room with my parents.

“Come on, Maybelle, let’s go. Where is your place?” He directed the question at me, but I refused to look up at him, staring at the phone, willing it to beep.

“Corabelle?” Dad’s voice was so unlike him, stern, edgy.

I heard Mom stand up, the bag rustling as she put her knitting away. “Arthur, let her have some peace, at least until tomorrow.”

“And what about after that?” Dad’s voice was rising. “And the day after that and the day after that?”

I would not lift my head. I knew what would come next. He would bring it down, try to appeal to me, play the daddy. We’d been through this cycle several times today already.

I dropped my feet to the floor, clutching the phone. I had to get out of the room, go somewhere. I didn’t even care about the gown. I passed through the door, searching for an escape, a place to be where everything was silent and at peace. My mom called after me but I kept going, stumbling past the nurse station, taking every possible turn, disappearing through the maze. My breathing was too rapid, and painful, but I made myself go faster, put more distance between myself and my parents.

The halls all looked the same, and when a nurse looked at me questioningly as I hurried down the corridor, I forced myself to slow down and look normal. The end of the ward was ahead, and even though I knew I was unwise to cut through another section of the hospital since I might attract attention, I pushed through the doors and entered the hub of the hospital that housed the elevators and the entrances to other sections.

I crossed to another set of doors. This hall was silent, no bustle, no people. A coughing fit came over me from the sudden movements, and I leaned against the wall, hacking and sucking in breaths. For a moment, spots flashed across my vision, as familiar as my intentional blackouts used to be, but I breathed through it, clutching my chest until it subsided.

There were no nurses, no station here, so no one noticed me. I just wanted a place to sit for a minute, to be alone. I continued walking along the corridor, thinking maybe these were offices, until I passed a partially opened door and stopped dead.

The room held a normal full-sized bed, a sofa, and a little table with two chairs. I pushed inside, my chest so tight I could barely breathe. I knew this room. I knew what it was for.

A family had just been there, I could tell. The covers were rumpled but not pulled back. The impressions of their bodies were still imprinted on the fabric. Had they held a baby? A child? Had he already died or did they stay here with him until he passed?

A pitcher of water sat untouched, the condensation beading on the glass. I walked around the bed, looking at the calming painting on the wall, abstract and soft. The wallpaper was sea green, and the bedspread a matching green with yellow. The room we had stayed in with baby Finn had been done in blues.

Something round and squishy collapsed beneath my nubby-bottomed hospital sock. I lifted my foot.

A pacifier, the hospital kind, with no cute characters or colorful plastic backs. Just the brownish nub firmly attached to a wide flexible ring.

I picked it up and clutched it tight. Finn had never gotten a pacifier. He’d always had tubes in his mouth. This baby must have been bigger, older, and at some point he must have seemed fine.

My legs gave out and I sank to the floor on my knees. Her husband wouldn’t leave her. He’d hold her hand during the funeral. They would cry together. They’d go home and look over the baby’s room. They’d fold up the little burp cloths and put away the tiny onesies. They would sit together in the living room and remember anticipating his arrival. Sometimes, even in their grief, they might smile.

He would not leave her to do all that alone, to never smile.

I couldn’t bear it.

The phone was still tight in my hand, silent and dark. He hadn’t called. He wasn’t calling. He might never call.

The garage had closed an hour ago. He wasn’t at work. No classes today.

Where was he?

He wouldn’t leave me again. He wouldn’t.

Fear rose up that something had happened to him. I pictured his Harley skidding on the freeway, cars coming at him on all sides, running over his chest—

I had to stop this.

But it wouldn’t go. I could see the ambulance coming for him, loading him up. A crew trying to stop the blood streaming out of him. A monitor strapped to him, his heartbeat going in and out on the screen.

The beeps, slowing down. The alarm, going off.

I curled my knees up to my chest and held on tightly. I couldn’t think this way. I had to stay straight. But what other explanation was there? He’d ignored all my calls. Even if his phone was dead, he could have called from work or just come over when he got off. He would know I was worried.

A keening cry tried to work its way up from my belly. I had been so strong for so long. Just a couple weeks with Gavin and I worried about everything. Why was I so weak?

But I knew. For the first time in so long, I had something to lose.

I knew when the hyperventilating started that I shouldn’t do it. It was past. I didn’t need it anymore.

But the darkness seemed so perfect, so easy. I held my breath. I wouldn’t take it all the way. Just flirt with it. Just a moment. I relaxed into the black, waiting for my chest to heave, to force me to breathe.

But it didn’t, instead it burned, and I couldn’t catch my breath at all, and then it was too late.

13: Gavin

The ocean stayed to our right the whole ride down to Ensenada. The waves were high, peaking in white froth as they curled against the beach not fifty yards away.

Bright painted lines flew beneath us on the straight, clean highway. The old road, crumbling and black, flowed alongside. Outside Rosarito, the resorts were beautiful and pristine, the English billboards making apparent who they expected to travel there. Normally I would have smiled at a sign boasting “Last Corona for 25 miles,” but I was too intent on our destination to appreciate the journey.

My mind whirred about this boy. What did his birth certificate say? He was a Mexican national. I couldn’t take him across the border if I wasn’t listed. Did Rosa even know my last name? I wasn’t sure.

Rosa wasn’t legal to cross either. I doubted she had a passport. The news always talked about illegal immigrants and dangerous border crossings. But it was so easy for me to get through. Could Rosa? Why would they stop her if I brought her? Surely it was okay for her to visit me. Mario’s family sometimes came over, laughing loud cousins from Mexico City. Yes, it would be fine.

Her head fitted against my back the same way Corabelle’s had when we rode out into the mountains. I didn’t have much cause to bring women places on the Harley. They were the only two.

I wasn’t sure I believed Rosa’s insistence that she wasn’t a prostitute. Her explanations were designed to elicit sympathy, but they were also convenient. Trust didn’t come easy to me, someone who had proven utterly untrustworthy.

I focused on the road, the stripes down the center and the smell of the ocean that reminded me of home. I would get back to Corabelle. I would make this right. We would work it all out, somehow. But I would not keep this from her. I meant it when I said there would be no secrets between us.

I needed to call her. Something. When we stopped, I would do that first thing. Who cared about the rates, or anything? Just do it. Hopefully she’d been busy studying all day. With her parents around, she probably didn’t expect me anyway, just to have her father pull another stunt like last night.

The sign hadn’t lied. The next 25 miles were desolate, just the ocean, random palm trees, and a never-ending stretch of road. But eventually civilization returned, houses and cantinas. Rosa lifted her head and pointed to an exit. We passed a university, beautiful and trim, like anything you would see stateside. I realized I didn’t know Mexico at all. I had judged a whole country by the poor border slums.

She directed me off the main road and into a neighborhood. The houses would have been perfectly suited in parts of California, with neat, even streets lined with cars, stucco walls, and Spanish-tiled roofs. If Manuelito were here, why would Rosa want to take him away?

She pointed to a white adobe house with brown shutters, built into the side of a hill. An enormous clay sun adorned the exterior wall. I parked the bike between an aging but still respectable Taurus and a red Chevy pickup.

When the Harley went silent, I asked her, “Are they expecting you?”

“No.”

“Will she guess who I am?”

“No. She will think you are a boyfriend.”

Rosa stood from the bike and rubbed her thighs. It was a long ride for someone unaccustomed to it. For a second I remembered that I had pretty intimate knowledge of this woman, and yet I knew nothing important, not even her last name.

“I need to call someone,” I told her, intent on Corabelle. I hadn’t even looked at my phone since I left San Diego. A quick scan of the pile of messages made me realize she was upset. She needed her keys. Her clothes. Her parents were making her crazy. I thought of how easily she’d chosen the sea a few days ago and my panic began to rise.

Rosa tugged on my jacket but I shrugged her off. “I have to make a call. Have to.”

“Look, Gavinito.”

I intended to turn away, but behind her, a small boy stood on the porch of the house, dark haired and solemn in jeans and a button-down plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He held a truck in his hand and watched us with big, quiet eyes.

I had never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life.

14: Gavin

I approached the stairs, wondering if the boy would be afraid of me, or if he too would see something that would let him know that he belonged to me.

“That’s a cool truck,” I said, sitting on a stair so that we were about the same height.

He clutched the green plastic toy to his chest and said nothing, just continued to look at me beneath long curling lashes that actually made me think of Corabelle. We both had dark hair. It seemed possible, in that fleeting moment, that this could be Finn.

Rosa stayed down on the street. I swallowed a huge lump in my throat. Even in the fading light of early evening, I could see the whorl of the cowlick that had clued me in on the photograph. I fingered my ear, staring at his.

His eyes were pure Rosa, like almonds, coming to a little point in the corners. After a moment, he decided I was not a danger and sat down, running the truck along the wood slats of the porch.

I realized he probably did not speak any English. I searched for the few phrases I knew well enough to say competently. Most of my Spanish involved beer, pool, money, or insults. I didn’t know “truck” or “toy” or anything else that might interest a small child.

“¿Tu es Manuelito?” I asked.

He scowled suddenly and smacked his small hand against his chest. “Me llamo Manuel. No Manuelito. No no no no.”

I laughed. Made sense. I wouldn’t want to be called “little” either.

“Manuel, then.”

He pushed his truck around a bit more, glancing back up at me as if wondering why I was there. “¿Tienes chicle?”

Thankfully that was also one of the few words I knew, as children along the border were always selling boxes of gum, shouting, “¡Chicle! One dollar! ¡Chicle!”

I shook my head. “No.” I fumbled a minute, then was able to say, “¿Te gusta chicle?”

He nodded, then abruptly jumped up and ran inside the house, leaving his truck.

Rosa approached then, sitting on the top step. “What do you think, Gavinito?”

I shrugged. Yes, I thought it was possible. But I wasn’t giving any game away to her. My feelings had shifted upon seeing him. If he was mine, then I wasn’t sure who Rosa was to me anymore.

“You didn’t tell me about him before. All those years.”

Rosa pushed the truck back and forth on the porch, the plastic tires rumbling over the boards. “Too late. I not find you when I carry him. By the time you come again, he is gone.”

“I could have helped you then.”

The door pushed open wider and Manuel came back out, proudly holding out a clear plastic tub filled with little square gum packets. “¡Chicle!” he said. “¿Mama Rosa?”

Rosa shook her head, so he pushed the container at me. “¿Chicle?”

I took one of the little squares of packaged gum, four yellow pieces wrapped in clear plastic. “Gracias, Manuel. I like yellow.”

He set the tub on the porch and reached in, fishing around until he found a green one.

“You like the green?” I asked. At his quizzical look, I said, “Te gusta…” Crap. I didn’t know “green.”

“Verde,” Rosa said. “¿Verde es bueno, no?”

Manuel fumbled with the plastic wrapper, then shoved all four pieces in his mouth.

“¡Demasiado!” Rosa said, but she laughed. “Manuelito. Hijo loco.”

Manuel chomped on the gum, trying to make it a manageable size, and resumed pushing the truck.

“¿Donde esta Mama Letty?” Rosa asked.

Manuel pointed to the door. Rosa stood up, but I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I didn’t want to see this woman who had raised my boy, who would lay claim to him, take him deep into Mexico where I could not easily go.

I wanted to help Rosa.

“I come back,” Rosa said. “Get to know your boy. He not say much English words yet, he is little, but he understands. Letty speaks English to him.”

I watched Manuel to see if he would react to that.

After she had disappeared inside, I asked him, “Manuel, do you understand me?”

He ignored me, now making truck noises around the wad of gum. I wasn’t sure how to relate to him, what to do. I had the crazy urge to pick him up, to crush him against me, to know his weight, to feel how real and substantial a boy he was.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked.

He looked back at me, one hand on the truck, the other propping him up as he crawled along the porch. In that glance, I could see myself as a boy, the small face that had looked back from the mirror, one that was caught in photographs my mother tucked inside albums.

Rosa was right, he was mine, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

A beautiful woman in a velour sweat suit pushed through the door, holding two boxes that she could barely manage. I stood up as she brushed by.

“Can I help?” I asked, but she ignored me, dashing down and dumping the boxes in the back of the pickup. I realized now that there were several others already there. She was packing.

“Are you Letty?” I asked as she passed.

She halted, turning her face to me, the perfectly styled hair and heavy lashes out of sync with the panic in her eyes. “You cannot have the boy,” she said. “I love Rosa, but she tells many wild tales.”

I stood up. “I’m pretty sure he is mine.”

She straightened to her full height, and up on the porch, she towered over me. “That would be easy for her, no? Some American boy come in and save her? What, you plan to marry her and make more little babies?”

“I’m not sure what is going on here. She brought me here to see him.”

Letty whirled around and snatched up Manuel. He was too large to carry easily, and he fought her, but she pinned him against her hip with practiced ease. “He is all I have now, and I must keep him safe. So get out of here and let us be.”

She opened the door, then closed it behind her again. I could hear the twist of several locks.

Bloody hell.

The truck sat forlorn on the porch. I leaned over and picked it up, moving it next to the tub of gum. I knew I could knock on the door, or go around and find another way in. But hell, I didn’t know anything. Maybe you could line up a half-dozen dark-haired kids, and I would see something of myself in every single one.

I waited until the sun dipped low in the sky and the lights began to pop on in the houses. Rosa never came out. Finally I knocked on the door. No one came, but I could hear voices, shouting and crying. I wanted to smash in the door, get to them, but damn it, I had no clue what was going on. Rosa could be lying. I couldn’t just snatch the kid.

I didn’t have any choices here.

I had to walk away.

The thud of my boots on the hollow stairs echoed on the quiet street as I stomped back down to my Harley. The roar of the engine was tremendous, bouncing off the stucco facades and down the lane. I turned the bike around and headed back the way I came.

I would forget it all. Pretend it never happened.

15: Gavin

The hospital corridors were quiet, the visitors either gone for the day or settled in for the night. I hesitated at the end of Corabelle’s hall, bracing myself for another confrontation with her father. I’d texted her a dozen times on the way home from Ensenada, pulling over every few miles, but I hadn’t heard back. For all I knew, her father had taken her phone.

The door to 425 was ajar. I knocked and stepped inside, but the bed was stripped, the flowers gone. Had they sent her home?

I had her keys. Maybe she’d been able to get a set from her complex office. I rushed back down the hall to leave, but when I passed the nurse station, I decided to make sure she had been discharged rather than moved.

“Corabelle Rotheford in 425? She’s gone?”

An unfamiliar nurse looked up. “And who are you?”

I hesitated. “Her brother. I was supposed to bring her clothes when she got out, but I guess she already went home?”

The nurse clicked on a keyboard. “No, she was moved to ICU.” She glanced up at me. “But you won’t be able to visit her there. That floor has strict visiting hours.”

Panic coursed through me. “Did she relapse?”

She put on a sympathetic face. “Maybe you should talk to your parents about it.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s the second floor.”

I took off down the hall.

“You can’t get in there after hours!” she called out.

Like hell I couldn’t.

I lunged into a stairwell and raced down two floors. When I flung open the door, I was greeted with a long desk flanked by entrances that required badge access. A hallway opposite the desk went to the elevators and the hospital’s center atrium.

A lone staff member behind the counter held a phone between her cheek and shoulder, facing away from me. I backed into the stairwell and left the door open a crack. I could watch from here for a chance to go in. Maybe if someone came out, I could race in before it locked again.

A nurse came up behind me. “Lost?”

I jumped, then straightened, hoping I didn’t look like a stalker. “Is this the second floor?”

“Yes.”

“And visiting hours are over?”

She glanced at her watch. “Yes. You can visit again starting at ten tomorrow.”

“But I can visit.”

She smiled. “Of course. You just have to be buzzed in. It is limited to family and doctor approval.”

“She’s my sister.”

“You might want to check with the nurses. In ICU there are no private rooms. Did you talk with anyone?”

“No. I just got here.”

She pushed open the door. “Tamara?”

The nurse nodded on the phone and held up a finger.

“She’ll fix you up,” the nurse said and crossed over, flashing her card at the sensor. The door buzzed and popped open. I watched the light. It held for about five seconds and then the door closed again, latching tight.

If I asked the Tamara person for help, she’d just tell me to come back tomorrow. I didn’t want to come back. I wanted to find Corabelle now.

I headed to the elevators. An opening looked down on the hospital’s hub, and all the floors dumped into a central shaft with plants hanging from the various levels, bright and green. I backed up against the rail until the nurse at the desk couldn’t see me, and waited. Surely another nurse would come off the elevator and head to the ICU. Then I could wait for her to buzz in and I could — hell, do something. Get in somehow.

The elevator doors slid open, but the two men who came out went the opposite way. I waited another agonizing ten minutes, but the only other passenger was a maintenance man pushing a mop bucket on wheels.

He did, however, head for the right ward.

I followed him partway down the short hall, wondering if I could possibly pull this off. When the man got near the desk, Tamara waved at him, then turned back to her monitor. He went in the door at her back. Perfect. I waited for the buzz, let him push through, counted to three, then blazed across past the desk in a flash.

If the woman looked up, I didn’t know it. As soon as I got through, I halted.

A large room was curtained off into several sections, each holding a bed surrounded with monitors. A nurse was checking something on a machine near the one in the center, bent over. When the maintenance man caught her attention, I ducked behind a curtain on the end next to an elderly lady.

“Sorry,” I whispered, but the woman was unconscious.

My heart hammered as I waited to see where the nurse would go. From here, I couldn’t spot if any of the beds held Corabelle.

The maintenance man mopped around the equipment, passing in and out of my field of vision as he moved. I was going to get caught any second.

But the nurse paused beside him and asked him something quietly. He followed her through a center section that I guessed connected the two halves of the unit.

I stepped out of the curtain space quickly and walked along the semicircle, praying Corabelle was in one of them. A teenage boy. A middle-aged woman. A man in traction.

Then I saw her. She slept, her dark hair tied up in a knot high on her head.

I almost dropped to my knees.

She had a tube going into her mouth, a blue one just like Finn’s. Her heartbeat registered on a monitor, as well as her oxygen levels. I tried to shake the vision of the NICU, but the noises were too similar, the wheeze of a ventilator and periodic beeps.

I stumbled toward her like a dying man. What had happened? My stomach felt lined with rocks. I sat on the bed and brushed back a wisp of hair from her forehead. She slept really hard, not shifting at all with my touch. They must have given her something to knock her out. Even the first two nights when she was sick, she would still shift around, sometimes making little sounds. Now she was so flat to the bed.

Like Finn had been after I’d signed the papers to disconnect him.

Remorse crashed over me like a wave. I had screwed everything up. Walked out on her. Gone to Mexico. Possibly even fathered another child. And here she was, barely holding on.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered.

I shouldn’t be in her life at all. She’d been doing fine until I came along. Going to school, planning her future.

Now she was here.

The monitors continued their steady sounds.

I heard the nurse talking and panicked. I would not leave her now. The machines were to the left of the bed, so the nurse would probably approach there. I ducked to the opposite side and folded tight into a ball, tugging the curtain in front of me so that I sat between it and the concrete wall.

I couldn’t see anything, but the footsteps grew closer, paused, then faded away again. The maintenance cart began rolling, wheels clattering on the concrete floor.

When the room was quiet again, I peeked out. Corabelle had not moved. Her elbow was bent near the edge of the bed, and I shifted forward to lay my forehead against her cool skin.

I wished we could go back to that first night at the astronomy star party, when Corabelle stretched out beside me on the roof, and we realized the world had pushed us back together after four years. But I’d gotten angry, and taken off. If I could just do that night again, I wouldn’t have left then either. If we’d been better from the beginning, she wouldn’t have walked into that damn ocean.

I just kept leaving. I just kept walking away.

Until I figured all this out, I could not be the man who always stayed the course. I would continue to be the one who wasn’t there when things got tough.

I didn’t want to be that person. I had to figure out how to beat this urge, to kill it. But first I would have to admit where I’d gone wrong, four years ago, that first time I deserted her, on her worst day. The funeral. Those black, black days.

* * *

I was pretty sure the whole funeral business was a racket. Corabelle sat in the corner of a room full of coffins, staring blankly at the row of tiny ones in pink and blue and pewter. Who could give a shit about the color? Pointless decisions. All coffins should be black. Or white. Or something.

Her mother leaned over to hug her from behind. I hadn’t been able to touch her myself, not since last night in the room with Finn. She flinched like I’d struck her every time my hand grazed her skin. I didn’t understand it. I just had to wait. I could wait.

A bunch of our friends were sitting out in the waiting area and this pissed me off. They weren’t here to be supportive or helpful. They wanted to cry and be part of the drama. Just picturing them out there with their Kleenex and their mascara streaks made me want to punch something.

In fact, hitting something had become a preoccupation that bothered me quite a lot. It was almost a reflex, the urge to strike. I’d always felt it to some degree, and saw it in my father when his anger hit a certain level — time to get out of the way. I had a sixth sense about it in him, developed over eighteen years. Possibly the biggest relief in moving in with Corabelle the last few months was to relax. I knew he couldn’t show up suddenly to jerk me out of bed.

We couldn’t afford any of this. Six hundred dollars for a coffin. There were funeral fees. Graveside fees. Processional cars. Flowers. Headstones.

Corabelle’s dad had been working insurance angles. She was still on his health insurance — one of several reasons we’d waited to get married. He wanted the baby covered through him too, to spare us the problems of trying to get a policy retroactively since Finn hadn’t lived long enough for us to arrange it. That would get us a little money to cover the funeral.

The man in the suit held out a folder, asking Corabelle once again which coffin she would like to select. Her mother finally said, “The blue one is nice.”

No one looked to me for any opinions. I stood against the wall, feeling strangled in a shirt and tie. The funeral wasn’t for another two days. I wasn’t sure why I had to be dressed up now. But I did what was expected. I didn’t know anything else to do anyway.

I walked up to the blue coffin and looked inside. The metal walls were lined with white satin. The salesman nodded approvingly. I tried to picture Finn lying in it, but the image made me want to knock the little box off the stand. Babies shouldn’t be in boxes, but Finn was just moving from his enclosed crib to this. He’d never smelled anything but controlled spaces, never rolled around in open air.

I had to ball my hands into fists to keep myself from pushing over the whole row of coffins like dominoes falling. I backed up against the wall, arms at my sides. I wondered if this was how my dad always felt. And if, like me, it hadn’t started until he had a kid. Maybe I was the reason he was so angry. Maybe that responsibility — that obligation and demand — activated the chain.

I couldn’t take another minute and strode out of the showroom, through the empty chapel space, and past the girlfriends, who took up their sobbing when they saw me. I felt jaded, bitter, brimming with disgust at everyone around me. I didn’t know how to get past it, how long it would last, or if, now that I had come to this place, I could ever go back to caring about anything.

Corabelle’s father caught up with me in the parking lot, jerking me back by the arm. “Don’t you walk out of here right now,” he said. “She needs you.”

His face was hard, and I could see the change in him. He was being forced to be strong. His quiet kindness evaporated in the face of protecting his daughter.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I was just sick of coffins.”

He sighed. “I don’t think she’s up for any more decisions. Why don’t you sort through the pictures for the slide show?”

“She’ll want to do that.”

He laid his hand on my shoulder. “Right now, she needs you in her corner. I saw Maybelle through a lot of hardship. Four miscarriages. Her mother died two days after one of them. She acted like she didn’t want me, but I finally figured out that it was because she didn’t have any way to put into words what she needed me to do.”

“I don’t know what to do. I can’t fix this.”

He ran his hands through his thinning hair. “Neither could I. But walking away breaks it even more.”

I sank down on a concrete bench outside the door. “I don’t see how things could get any worse.”

His lips pinched together like Corabelle’s did when she was concentrating. “Nobody can walk these paths alone. Even if it seems she doesn’t need you, you have to stay by her side.”

“She doesn’t even want to talk to me.”

“The moment that she pushes you away is exactly the time when you should hold her even closer.” He stood up. “I’m going to get us out of here for a while. Why don’t you bring her over to the house? We’ll pretend to eat something.”

He opened the door to the funeral home, and I forced my body off the bench and back inside. His hand clapped against my back as we headed through the building. “My Corabelle doesn’t choose lightly. I know you can do this. For her. For all of us.”

When we got back to the coffin room, Corabelle was holding a silver urn. “Maybe we should cremate him. Then we can keep him with us always.” Her eyes had this shell-shocked look about them, both seeing and not seeing anything in front of her.

“You wanted a grave to visit,” I reminded her. “You were worried about having the ashes move from place to place.”

“You’re right. I did want that.” She set the urn back on a shelf. “There is no good way to do this, is there?”

“None.”

She turned to me, and finally, I was able to hold her in my arms for a moment. The salesman led her parents back into the chapel and we were alone, the empty boxes propped open around us, revealing their silky interiors. The air smelled of pine and fabric and a stale sort of newness, like a car that’s been closed up too long on the lot at a dealer. “Did you go with the blue one?” I asked.

She nodded against my chest.

“Like the ocean,” I told her, and her shoulders heaved.

I hung on to her, the only things upright in a room full of horizontals, the boxes for the living to lay their lost.

* * *

The morning of the funeral was stupidly beautiful. Birdsong, sunshine, a warm breeze off the desert. I wanted to pummel Mother Nature for thinking it was okay to celebrate spring on a day like today.

Corabelle sat on the end of our bed, holding a black dress in her hand. “It doesn’t fit,” she said.

I stood at the mirror working on my tie for the hundredth time. I hated these things. “It will be fine,” I told her.

In the mirror I saw her list forward, and I whipped around to catch her. “Are you okay?”

Her belly heaved with tears that were all dried out. “My boobs are leaking.”

I sat on the bed next to her. “What will make it stop?”

“I don’t know. They gave me a pill to dry them up but it’s not working.”

Her bra was soaked. I headed over to the dresser and pulled out a new one. “Didn’t you get some of those pad things?”

“In the nursery. But I can’t go in there.”

“I’ll do it.” I laid the bra next to her.

I didn’t really want to go into Finn’s room either, but I guessed this was what Corabelle’s father had talked about. Doing what needed to be done. Be there for her. Getting the pads would upset her. Not getting them would too. I just had to accept the no-win situation for what it was.

The door stuck, and I had to push to get it to open. The movement of air made the butterflies on the mobile over the crib start to dance.

The wall was lined with our drawings of the sea, carefully stored by Corabelle’s mom until a month ago. We’d tacked up the yellowing paper covered in crayon to remind us of where we’d been, where we were going. I didn’t know what we were doing now.

Most of the consumables we’d bought already were in a little changing table one of our neighbors had loaned us. A package of newborn Pampers. Wipes. Corabelle’s parents picked up things here and there, and we tried to keep it all organized, knowing that when Finn came our system would fall apart to late nights and exhaustion.

We’d had no idea how hard it could all fall apart.

I found the package of nursing pads and pulled out a pair, judged their thickness, and took two more. The milk refusing to dry up was another insult.

When I got back to the bedroom, Corabelle was curled on the bed in her underwear, the black dress on the floor. I sat next to her. “We have to get ready, baby. We’re supposed to meet your parents in twenty minutes.”

“The dress doesn’t fit,” she said.

“Is it an old dress?”

“I wore it to Uncle Ben’s funeral last year.”

“You’ve had a baby since then.”

She rolled on her belly, her face pressed into the pillow.

“Corabelle, you’re perfect.”

Her voice was muffled. “I’m pathetic, leaky, fat, and I have no baby.”

I tried touching her shoulder, but she jerked like I had burned her. “Can I go buy you something else to wear?”

“In twenty minutes?”

“Let me see it on you.” I pulled her back to sitting and retrieved the dress. She stuck the pads in her bra, this terrible dead look in her eyes, as I figured out which end was which and dropped it over her head.

She was right, though. The front was tight on her swollen chest. “Maybe a jacket could cover it?” I asked.

She flung herself back on the bed. “Make this day be over.”

“We’ll get through it.”

“I don’t want to go through it.”

Her phone buzzed but she ignored it. I picked it up. “Your parents are asking if we’ve left.”

“Screw them.”

“Corabelle, come on.”

My tone must have set something off in her as she jumped up, tugging the dress down. “I don’t want to come on! I don’t want to go! I want him to be fine! I don’t want to see him in that horrible blue coffin!”

Sobs overtook her then, and I did my best to hold on to her even as she stiffened when I pulled her in. I had no idea what I was doing. I needed a rule book, something to tell me what to do and when to do it.

“We’re going to make it through this,” I said.

I led her into the living room, hoping to get her out the door. She didn’t have shoes. “Hold on,” I said and raced back to the closet. She seemed to have forgotten the tightness of the dress, and I hoped I could at least get her to her parents. They were doing a better job of helping her than I was.

I found a pair of black pumps and took them out to her. I didn’t think I could get her in them at that moment, so I just led her out to the Camaro barefoot. We could put them on when we got there.

In a town as small as Deming, we didn’t have far to go. I felt conspicuous, driving along the streets, feeling like every passerby was staring at us, the parents of the dead baby.

They were judging us. They wondered what we had done to deserve this. I could feel them backing away, wanting to avoid the bad luck in case it was catching.

Corabelle’s parents were waiting in front of the doors of the funeral home. I was sick of that place, its brick walls and white columns, the smell of rotting flowers, and the employees’ fake sympathy. I imagined my car crashing through the front doors, glass shattering, walls splintering. I tamped down the rage and parked.

Mrs. Rotheford rushed to the car and opened the door. She leaned down to put the shoes on Corabelle’s feet. “Come on now, baby, let’s get inside.” She pulled her daughter from the car.

Her father stepped up to help, and Corabelle was flanked by her parents, leaving no room for me. I felt like I was the cause of all the misery but no part of the solution.

When we entered the foyer, my own parents stood up from the sofa. My mother dabbed her eyes with a tissue. My father looked positively jovial, like we were celebrating a holiday.

“I just saw Finn,” Mom said. “He looks so sweet in his little duck pajamas.”

Corabelle’s head snapped up. “It’s supposed to be the frog ones!” She shot out of the room and toward the chapel, her parents hurrying after her.

My father rolled his eyes. “Not like it matters, frogs or ducks.” He rocked back on his heels. “At least you don’t have to be stuck with her now.”

I took three steps toward him with the absolute intention of knocking him flat. I didn’t have anything to lose. Everything that mattered was already gone.

But my sister ran around the corner, a bunch of daisies in her hands, and I stopped. She still had to live with them.

“Gavin, Gavin!” she cried and crashed into me. “I’m not an auntie anymore. Daddy said so.”

I pressed her face into my belly, scowling at my father. “You’ll always be an aunt,” I said.

“But Daddy said—”

“Daddy’s a big fat asshole.”

She looked up at me with big wide eyes. My mother came forward and grasped her by the shoulders. “We’re going to look around,” she said.

My father tugged on the sleeves of his charcoal jacket, a size too small. “Lookit who’s deciding to be an asshole at his own kid’s funeral.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“You don’t get to pick your family.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t pick you.” My face threatened to explode from the pressure.

My father glared at me. “You want to take a potshot at me?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Go ahead. I’ll give you a freebie.”

My hands were fisted, so ready to break his jaw. “I’m not like you. I don’t pick on people more pathetic than me.”

He laughed. “Oh, Gavin. You act like you were some great son.”

I had to walk away from this. Had to. “I’d appreciate it if you would leave,” I said, and headed back toward the chapel.

“You’re just a chip off the old block,” he called after me. “No sense denying it.”

I kept walking.

When I entered the room, Corabelle looked up from the coffin. “He’s in the wrong pajamas!”

“It’s okay, baby,” her mother said. “The duck ones are just as lovely.”

I didn’t really want to approach the box that held Finn, the lid open and a spray of purple hyacinths covering the lower half.

But I did. He looked nothing like he had in the hospital. His cheeks were colored pink, his mouth stitched closed. They had rearranged his lips to sit more naturally together, even though they had been formed to the tube when we held him that last time.

The pajamas were slightly too big, tucked beneath him. I was sure if I could see his legs, the footed part would dangle off the end. But I said none of this. “I think there are more ducks than frogs in the ocean.”

Corabelle laid her head on my shoulder, and I relaxed. This was just a ritual. A bit of time to pass. Maybe when it was behind us, she would be better. Maybe I would figure out something to say.

The minister came in with his black suit and white collar, a pale face topped with scant wisps of blond hair. “Lovely boy,” he said, gazing down at the coffin, and I wondered how many babies he had seen in boxes.

“Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Rotheford said.

“Of course. I understand the other grandparents are here?” He looked around.

“Not if I have anything to do about it.” My voice was a growl, and Corabelle lifted her head to gaze at me.

“Family is the most important part at times like these,” the minister said.

“Not mine.”

“There’s Alaina and sweet June,” Mrs. Rotheford said, turning to the back of the room.

My sister ran forward and crashed into Corabelle’s mother. “Daddy says I’m not an auntie anymore.”

This seemed to make Corabelle waver, and I steadied her as her body swayed.

“Of course you’re an auntie,” Mrs. Rotheford said, looking at my mother questioningly.

Mom waved her handkerchief. “You know Robert.”

“Can you see Finn?” Mrs. Rotheford asked June. “Do you want to?”

June shook her head, still buried in the folds of the dress.

Mrs. Rotheford patted her back. “That’s okay.” She looked past me, then tensed. I knew before I turned around what she was seeing.

“Robert,” she said. “Good to see you.”

He didn’t answer, stopping at the end of the rows of chairs. If he said something nasty about Finn, he would be dead. I would kill him. I would not spare a single blow.

“Don’t you have a jacket, boy?” he said. “You’re running around such a solemn occasion looking like a bum.”

“Robert,” Mom said. “Don’t start.”

He took off his own jacket and tossed it at me. I would have let it hit the floor, but Corabelle watched with such wounded eyes that I caught it in one hand.

“Well, put it on,” he said.

I looked to Corabelle for what to do. She just stared up at me, worried, I knew, about my father’s explosive moods.

“It’ll be nice, Gavin,” Mrs. Rotheford said, her hand still on my sister’s dark head.

I shoved an arm into one of the sleeves, repulsed by the smell of my father’s cologne on the collar. He smirked at me as I shrugged it on. “Looks like you need to grow into it, son.”

The shoulders were too wide, making me look like a kid playing dress-up.

“Now, now,” the minister said. “Let’s go over the parts of the service.”

He droned on, but I didn’t pay the least bit of attention. Corabelle focused on his every word, concentrating, I knew, because it was easier than thinking.

The room had no windows, just partitions between sections to make the chapel bigger or smaller to match the crowd. We didn’t expect many people to be here for Finn, just a few neighbors and classmates maybe.

The minister closed his book with a snap. “And that’s when we’ll do the slide show,” he said. “The soundman will play the song you picked out, and the parents and grandparents will leave first.”

My father sat on one of the chairs, popping his knuckles.

“Let’s go find a cookie,” Mom said, tugging June along. “Robert, you could probably use something to drink.”

“I’ll say,” he said, jumping up out of the chair.

Mom flashed him a look that said, “Don’t start.”

At least he never knocked her or June around. If he did, I would have buried him before I was twelve or died trying. Mom always accepted his explanations for my discipline, as he called it. She preferred patching me up to trying to get in his way.

When they were gone, I sank onto one of the seats, not sure I was up for comforting anyone, deep in my own hole.

Mrs. Rotheford tried to lead Corabelle away from the casket, but she refused, saying, “When they close the lid, I will never see him again!”

The minister patted her back. Mr. Rotheford stepped forward from his spot by the podium and pulled his wife close. I knew I should go up there, do something, be there for her, but the familiar buzz was coursing through me, anger simmering, trying to spew out.

I was not meant to be a father. The world didn’t need another asshole hothead.

I realized that if I followed that line of thought, I was saying Finn would have been like me, another kid with a bad-tempered dad who fucked him up. And then he’d be one.

The world had broken the chain, chosen for us.

One of the black suits came down the aisle. “Guests are arriving,” he said. “Shall we begin seating them?”

Mrs. Rotheford nodded.

“If you’d like to follow me, I can take you to a family room,” he said, gesturing toward a side door.

“I am NOT leaving Finn.” Corabelle clutched the side of the coffin like she was never going to let go.

Time for me to help. I came up behind her and put my arms around her waist. “Let’s go wait.”

Her head fell forward, her back starting to shake as she sobbed. “Don’t let them close it until I’m ready. Promise you won’t let them close it.”

“I won’t,” I said. “You’ll get to be the last one to say good-bye.”

She turned around to me, her forehead resting on my collarbone. “Okay. I’ll go.”

Relief washed over me. I had envisioned her refusing to leave, standing by the casket the whole service. I led her out the door behind the funeral home employee.

Behind us, mournful music started playing over speakers. The organ dirge faded as we walked down the hall, and I thought we had escaped it, but when we arrived in the small room lined with sofas, I realized the same song was piped in.

Corabelle and I sat on a flowered loveseat.

“Should I locate the other family members?” the man asked.

“No,” I said. “No way.”

The man’s face didn’t register any change of expression. “I’ll come for you when it’s time.” He nodded solemnly and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Despite what I’d said about my family, I did wish for June, a happy distraction, as we sat there and stared at the floor.

Corabelle made whimpering noises, trying to hold in her sobs. I felt my heart was disintegrating, piece by piece.

After an eternity of silence, one organ song blending into the next, the black suit returned and said, “It is time.”

Corabelle seemed numb by then, standing as she was told, letting me hold her shoulders and direct her through the door, down the hall, and up the aisle. When we got to the front, she didn’t turn toward the chairs, walking as though she were going to go stand by the casket again.

I led her gently to the front row. I wished we had long benches like in churches rather than separate chairs, as I couldn’t keep her as close as I wanted.

My parents were seated on the other side of the aisle, my father with his arm on the back of Mom’s chair, casual, like they were at a concert. My anger bubbled up again at his smug expression. He clearly didn’t give a shit that we were burying my son, his grandson.

I tried to think back to his father, my grandfather, but I couldn’t pull up any memories. He’d died of cirrhosis of the liver when I was four. My grandfather on my mother’s side was more typical, kind and funny and always bringing me little gifts like the geode we’d split in half.

Maybe my father had a bad father, and maybe he thought he would do better, then didn’t. Mom didn’t talk much about their courtship, but there had to be something to him that made her marry him. And I guess he was different with her, and with June, more funny, lighthearted. Something about me was always what triggered him.

I tried to imagine what I’d do if Finn had done something bad, broken a window or stolen a pack of gum from the grocer. As much as I didn’t think I’d blow, clearly it was in me, that slow burn that just ignited.

The world knew what it was doing.

The minister droned on. Corabelle watched the coffin, probably not registering any more than I was. I tried to focus in. This was all Finn would get, his baptism, his funeral. I should pay attention.

“God’s will is a mystery to all of us.” The minister looked over the smattering of people in the chairs. “But we know Finn rests safely in the hands of the Almighty, and will know no pain or suffering in this world.”

He’d just said all the things I was thinking. Finn had been spared. Been saved from me. I glanced at Corabelle again, so pale and fragile, barely sitting up in her chair. Her dress was damp, I could see. I hadn’t even helped with that. I’d been useless. Pointless. And quite possibly, a threat to the well-being of her children.

“God speaks to us on the matter of death and sin in Romans 6, verse 23.” The minister laid his finger on the open book in his hand. “The wages of sin is death.”

His words crashed over me like the walls had collapsed. He went on, but I couldn’t hear any more of the verse. The wages of sin is death.

Finn’s death was the wages of sin.

Not Corabelle’s sin. She was his mother. She had done nothing wrong. She was innocent of everything.

But I was not. I had a family history. A black mark. And I’d tempted her, over and over again, until we’d hit disaster. It was right that I was the one to sign the papers taking him off life support. I was the one who would have ruined him, like my father clearly had ruined me.

The minister bowed his head to pray but I kept my head up and turned to my old man. He didn’t look down either and rolled his eyes when he caught my gaze. The burn began again. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to be in pain. This was no way to live around anyone I could harm, and certainly not for children. I would never have any. I would not do that.

Corabelle reached for my hand and clutched it. I bowed then with her, knowing she needed me to assimilate, to do what was expected.

The minister raised his hands. “And now for a final blessing for Finn Mays as he makes his way to Our Father.”

One of the black suits walked toward the casket. I thought at first he was just stepping up to escort us out as soon as the minister finished his rousing finale, but instead he moved toward the coffin. Before I realized his intention, he had lowered the rod holding up the lid of the coffin and dropped it down.

Corabelle gasped, turning to me, her face so white I could not imagine she still had blood in her veins. I jumped up, but the man was latching the sides down. The minister paused as he saw me.

Corabelle jerked her hand from me. I had failed her. She had only asked this one thing, and I hadn’t followed up, hadn’t spoken to the staff.

“Sit down, boy,” my father bellowed.

But the roar in my ears drowned out everything but the fact that I didn’t belong here, didn’t deserve that boy, or Corabelle. I had nothing to offer anyone but incompetence or rage. The minister tried to go on with his blessing, but I couldn’t listen to another word. I took off down the aisle, stripping off the foul jacket and leaving it on the floor. The tie was so tight on my neck that I jerked it off, discarding it by the door as I pushed through.

I needed to get away. I couldn’t bear Corabelle’s distress over the coffin, my father’s condescension.

The Camaro sat waiting for me, firing up with an easy twist of the ignition. I squealed out of the spot, no idea where I was going, but the clanging in my head didn’t start to ease until I was outside the city, the desert stretching in every direction. The blankness of the scenery and the long stretch of empty road suited me. Nobody to piss me off. Nobody to let down. Nobody anywhere near me at all.

* * *

I’d lost control that day. Control of my temper. My actions. My responsibilities.

The ICU was quiet except for the humming of machines, soft beeps, and the whir of Corabelle’s ventilator by my head. It didn’t sound like Finn’s, I remembered that now. His had been more metallic, like the choppy blades of a helicopter. Hers was a soft wheeze in and out.

The sheet beneath her arm was wet. I had been crying. Stupid.

No, not stupid. Normal. It was normal and fine, and I shouldn’t hear my father’s words, “Don’t be a damn sissy,” as he smacked me across the top of the head. I should forget his lessons, his ridicule, no longer let it penetrate.

He had rarely actually hurt me. I don’t think the town would have stood for beatings, black eyes, or real injuries. His form of discipline had been a hard shove or a hearty backhand, enough to knock me around but just light enough for witnesses to shrug it off as “family business” rather than “call the cops.”

Maybe it was the attitude that hurt more, the indication that I was a failure in everything, that even if something was going right, I’d eventually screw it up.

I had given him too much power. As a little kid, maybe it made sense. He was my father, big and important and in a position to tell me what to do and when to do it.

But now, he was nothing. I didn’t see him, talk to him. I had no reason to be like him at all. I didn’t even have to know him.

How much could we escape our past? Corabelle and I had been trying, ever since that first day on the beach when I drew that line in the sand and she stepped away from our history and into our future. Now here we were, and everything about this place we’d landed in was so much like where we’d been that I could scarcely bear it.

At least the business with Rosa was behind me. Her cousin was surely right. Rosa needed a champion, and I’d simply been the easiest target. I’d figure out a way to block her number. Tijuana was in my past, like my father. I’d spend the rest of my life trying to fix all the screwups I’d made in the first eighteen years. The disappearing act. The vasectomy. The father rage.

I had to believe I could do it.

The sheet had already begun to dry. I laid my head back down, shifting so that I leaned against the bed frame, still mostly hidden if someone just glanced over. Weariness began to take over everything else.

16: Corabelle

The second time to awaken in the hospital was far worse than the first. My mouth hurt, lips bruised, like I’d been struck in the face.

My lungs were cement blocks, heavy and stiff. Every breath was a struggle but the air was strange, sweet almost, and cold. Something tickled my nose and I lifted my hand, feeling the tube running inside my nostrils. I was on oxygen.

“She’s coming around,” a voice said, female but low, and I pictured Large Marge from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. My eyes seemed glued together. I blinked, trying to clear them.

“Here, honey, let me get a cloth,” another female voice said, this one lighter and higher, and I envisioned a perky young nurse in a white cap and starched uniform.

The sounds weren’t right for my room. Too many machines, too many beeps. “Where am I?” I asked, my voice horrid and croaky.

“You’re in ICU,” the deeper voice said. My gown shifted at the neck, exposing skin to the air. “I’m going to take another listen, then we’re going to roll you to X-ray to check on your progress.”

“How long have I been here?”

“About 24 hours.”

Something cool touched the skin of my chest. I wanted to rub my eyes, get the gunk away so I could open them, but only one hand was free. On the other I could feel the weight of an IV and the length of a tube across my shoulder. “What happened?”

“You had a complication called pleural effusion, where fluid gets trapped in the lining of your lungs. You went into respiratory arrest.”

She moved what I assumed was the disc of a stethoscope to another part of my chest. “Can you breathe deeply for me?”

I tried to focus on drawing in a breath, but the sharp pain was so acute that I gasped and let the air out too quickly.

She placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “That’s okay. Relax.”

The hand and the disc withdrew and now a warm cloth covered my eyes. The lighter voice said, “We’ll get this cleared up.”

I was a mess. Another day gone. Definitely not going to class tomorrow. I wondered if Gavin had tried to come back. Tears pricked my eyes.

The cloth withdrew. “Try to open now.”

I blinked, still feeling the stickiness, but now my lashes were willing to part. The room was dim, and two women stood over me, one in a white coat, the other in sea-green scrubs.

“We want to see where we are with the effusion,” the doctor said, and I was able now to match her voice to her body. No Large Marge, but she was definitely tall, stately, and older than I expected, her gray hair tight in a French twist. “I’m Dr. Adams. I’ve been with you since you came to ICU. Apparently you went on a little expedition and collapsed?”

That’s right. The bereavement room. The pacifier. I nodded. “Is Gavin here?”

The doctor looked over at the nurse.

“She must mean the young man we found sleeping by your bed last night,” the nurse said. “Dark hair, brutally handsome?”

He’d been here! “Yes.”

“He’s in the waiting room. So are your parents. We haven’t let them back.”

“Are they — fighting?”

The nurse patted my arm. “They are worried about you.”

The doctor picked up an iPad and tapped a few things in. “You’re going to X-ray. I’ll come by later today and we’ll see how you look. Hopefully we can get you back to a regular room again soon.”

“Thank you,” I said.

The doctor moved beyond the curtain.

“Will we go by the waiting room?” I asked the nurse.

“No, we have a back way.”

My face must have fallen, because she said, “If it looks good, you’ll be able to see him.”

“Is my phone here?”

She shook her head. “All your things are with your parents.”

Great. Thankfully I had a pass code on the phone or they might have deleted anything Gavin wrote.

“I’m going to load up a few items,” she said, clamping my IV to the side of the bed, “and we’ll be on our way.”

I closed my eyes, still fighting the heaviness of my chest, wishing I would just get better. But Gavin was here, had been with me. He wasn’t gone. I didn’t care where he’d been, just that he was back.

17: Gavin

We’d been sitting in those chairs all day, but nobody had spoken a word.

Corabelle’s parents sat in the far corner of the ICU waiting area, her mom knitting and her dad reading the newspaper for what had to be the tenth time.

I had given up on contacting her when I sent a message and heard her phone chirp from her mother’s bag. Rosa had messaged me three times too, but I’d found a way to make her ringtone silent and the messages automatically move to a buried folder, so I didn’t notice her anymore.

The nurse who’d found me sleeping on the floor by Corabelle’s bed had been nice about it. She led me out into the waiting room and said the staff would let me know if she could be visited.

The doctors never spoke directly to me, but the waiting room was small enough that when they stopped by to update Corabelle’s parents, I could hear. I knew she’d been put on the ventilator only as a precaution, to help her lungs, and that it was coming out sometime today.

I felt utterly helpless.

Jenny breezed through the door, pausing to look around, then hurried toward me. “Oh my God, how is she?”

Corabelle’s parents looked up, watching us, eyes on Jenny’s vivid pink mop, wild and unrestrained above her green coat. She looked like a Pez dispenser.

“Still in ICU.”

“You said that in your text. But really. What happened?”

I shrugged, but didn’t miss the way Corabelle’s mom stiffened, her knitting needles still. She knew something about what had led to the relapse, or complication, or whatever the hell it was. “Ask her parents. They had me thrown out.”

Jenny followed my line of sight to the Rothefords. “Huh,” she said, her voice low now. “I can see where she gets her looks, but what is with the geektastic dad?”

I stifled a laugh. “He’s very teacherly, isn’t he?”

“Is he?”

“Nah. Banking or accounting or something like that.”

“I can see it.” She turned back to me. “I thought she was getting better.”

“She was. Sitting up. Walking.” And responding, I thought, remembering the night after I snuck back in. Damn. Hopefully that hadn’t put her over the edge.

Jenny propped her black fuzzy boots on a chair across the aisle. “She was pretty upset at you yesterday. You weren’t responding to her texts. She seemed to think she was getting out, but you had her keys.”

“She was in ICU when I got here.”

“What happened to you yesterday?”

I looked beyond her to the wide desk of the ICU, flanked by doors. No way was I telling Jenny about my jaunt to Mexico. “Work, stuff. I came when I could.”

She unzipped her puffy green coat. “So what’s the story with you and the parents?”

“Not too friendly.”

“They still mad about your exit strategy?”

“Probably from now till the end of time.”

Jenny tugged a turtle-shaped backpack onto her lap. “Can’t blame them.” She unzipped a pocket and withdrew a shiny packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “For Corabelle. She goes nuts for these.”

I took the gift, tied in a bright ribbon that Jenny had decorated with the words “Cora Pumpkin Spice Frozen Latte Dish Room Wallbanger.”

I had to laugh. “Nice.”

“Kiss her for me.” She leaned over and mussed my hair. “But probably not until you’ve had a shower. Dude, you would scare small children.”

Her words made me think of Manuelito on the porch, holding his green truck. I had to swallow before I forced a light answer. “Scaring small children is my specialty.”

Jenny jumped up. “Let me know if she gets back in a room. She was out cold the first time I came. I missed her whole lucid period.” She took a few bouncy steps away, then turned back around. “You all—” she said loudly, getting the attention of the whole room, “should help those people,” she pointed to Corabelle’s parents, “and this guy,” she aimed a finger at me, “remember that they have something in common. A girl in there.” She thrust her hands over her head to gesture to the ICU.

With a fierce nod, she loped out of the room.

Corabelle’s dad looked ready to pop, his face was so red. “Who was that?” he asked.

“Don’t shout so,” Mrs. Rotheford said. “Gavin, come over here.”

I unfolded myself from the chair and moved down the row to sit opposite them. This was unexpected. “That’s Jenny. She works with Corabelle at the coffee shop. They also take astronomy together. We all do. The three of us.”

“She seems very…original,” Mrs. Rotheford said.

“Loud,” Mr. Rotheford added.

“Both. She’s good for Corabelle. Keeps her from getting too serious.”

Mrs. Rotheford set down her knitting. “I’ve been wondering something.” She glanced over at her husband, who was staring at his newspaper as if I didn’t exist. “Why is it that Corabelle is working at a place like that? She had such a good job in New Mexico.”

Hell. More questions that I shouldn’t be fielding. I was a Class A bullshitter, though. “She needed a break from all that pressure. Slinging beans is easy work.”

“At least she has scholarships,” Mr. Rotheford said, surprising us. “Hate to think how much debt she’d be in if she didn’t.”

So they didn’t know any of it. Why Corabelle had left, that she’d lost everything. I didn’t blame her. For a girl like her, the pride her family felt was everything. I was lucky I had no such constraints.

Time to make good on the promises I’d made on the floor of the ICU. I leaned over and fished Corabelle’s keys out of my back pocket. “You guys might want these. I went over there and took out her trash and checked on things. But at work I can’t get to my phone, grease and all.” I held them out. “You are up here all day.”

Her father took the keys greedily, clutching them in his fist. I felt the power shift again, like I had when I’d let him stand over me. I recognized that he needed to feel some control, since so much had been taken away from us.

A nurse wound her way through the chairs. “Are you all the Rothefords?”

“We are.” Corabelle’s father gestured to himself and his wife.

“I’m Gavin,” I told her.

“Ah, so you’re the young man she keeps asking about.” The nurse smiled. “She’s doing fine. I think the doctor updated you?” At their nod, she went on. “We should see her moved back to a regular room tomorrow if tonight goes well.”

Mrs. Rotheford let out a relieved sigh. “Can we see her?”

“I have the doctor’s okay to let you in for just a few minutes.”

All three of us stood up, but Corabelle’s father shot daggers at me. “He’s not—”

Mrs. Rotheford squeezed his arm to cut him off. “He’s like family.”

The nurse nodded. “It will be fine.”

We followed her out of the waiting room and through the pass-code door. The curtains were still as I remembered, and Corabelle lay with her head just slightly elevated near the center.

Mrs. Rotheford stumbled when she saw all the monitors, and I knew exactly how she was feeling after last night. At least they had been spared the big blue tube snaking into her mouth and the wheeze of the machines.

“Hi, Mom,” Corabelle said, her voice cracked and weak. “You guys look terrible.”

“Not half as bad as you,” her dad said.

Her eyes rested on me, then back to her father. “You call a truce?”

I came around the opposite side and knelt next to her. “Don’t worry about us. You doing better?”

“I’d rather be in astronomy.”

“Now I know you’re delirious,” I said. “I better call a nurse.”

She lifted her hand to smooth back my hair. “You look like you slept on the floor.”

I glanced up at her parents, who stared at her like she was going to disappear any minute. “You heard about that?”

“It was quite the talk of the nurses.” Her eyes grew wide and she sucked in a breath, then coughed weakly. Her next breath was wet and rattling, and seemed to take all her strength to pull in.

I took her hand, and she squeezed it.

Her mother held on to her other arm above the IV. “You shouldn’t talk,” she said. “You still have a long way to go.”

Corabelle nodded and closed her eyes. “No more taking off down hallways.”

I frowned. What was she talking about?

Her parents looked shaken and guilty. Something had happened. I lifted her hand to my lips. “I’ll be right here. I’m not leaving for a minute.”

She opened her eyes again. “I know.” She turned her head to her dad. “Be nice to him, please?”

Mr. Rotheford nodded, his eyes glistening. “Of course, baby.”

“You used to be close.” Her voice began to trail off.

The nurse came up behind us. “Let’s let her rest. You all should take a little break and go home. There won’t be any more visiting her until tomorrow.”

I laid her hand back on the bed, clenching my jaw to keep from getting too emotional.

Her parents, ever obedient, followed the nurse right out, but I lingered as long as I could get away with, until she stood in the doorway and said, “It’s time.”

Mr. and Mrs. Rotheford waited out by the desk. When I came out, he passed me Corabelle’s keys. “Seems like you’ve been taking care of things.”

I held the heavy ring in my palm. “I have tried, sir.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow, I trust?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right then.” He turned to the door and walked with his wife over to the elevators.

I stared at the keys and the silver butterfly on a chain that held them together. I wasn’t sure what had made him change his mind. It felt like that moment in the parking lot of the funeral home, when I was screwing up, walking out, and he had told me I could do it, I could help his daughter.

I would not let him down.

18: Corabelle

The lights recessed into the ceiling changed in style and brightness as we moved from the ICU through the hallways and back to one of the main floors. Two guys in blue scrubs controlled the bed, and I forced myself to keep my eyes on the panels above to avoid feeling embarrassed as we rolled down hallways where normal healthy people could walk past. My face was half covered with a surgical mask. No one would know if they were being protected from me, or me from them.

The nurse assured me she would let Gavin know that I had moved. Even though it was six a.m. and way before normal visiting hours, he was out there, she said. To cheer me up, they had put the words “Gavin Report” on a whiteboard by my head, crossing out “On the floor” and “Behind the curtain” to say “In the chairs.”

We trundled down a long hallway, different from the one I had been on before, and one of the orderlies opened a wide door. This room was similar in layout to the last one, but instead of gray walls, it was painted a soothing slate blue.

The team worked to set up the IV stands and blood pressure cuff and oxygen monitor. I wished I could get the oxygen line out of my nose, but the doctor told me as they discharged me from ICU that it would probably stay another day. They had been giving me suction treatments, a horrifying vacuum through a tube they stuck down my nose. I was not going to let a single soul in the room during those and hoped they would be done with them soon.

“Can we get you anything?” one of the men asked.

I shook my head.

“Your nurse will check in with you soon.” He glanced at the whiteboard. “Looks like you’re getting Suzie. She’s a good one.”

After they left, the room was quiet and still. I didn’t have any books. No one to talk to. Not even my phone to check. Solitude I was familiar with, but having no type of diversion was going to kill me.

A bouncy young nurse in scrubs emblazoned with ducks breezed in. “Hello, Corabelle,” she said as she checked all the tubes and wires. “I’m Suzie. I’ll be with you until evening.”

I stared at her ducks, my throat thick. The cartoon images were either the same brand as the ones I had put on Finn that last time, or remarkably similar. I had avoided prints like that ever since, but here they were, leaning over my hospital bed. Maybe they were a sign that he was watching, like the butterfly by the ambulance door.

“Is Gavin coming?” I asked.

Suzie’s face puckered. “I’m not sure. Is that your…husband?” She hesitated, I knew, because I didn’t seem old enough to be married.

“Yes,” I said. Why not? “He was in the ICU waiting room.”

“I can buzz over there and make sure they tell him you’ve moved.”

“Thank you.”

But all that was unnecessary, as after a quick knock, his dark head peered through the doorway.

“We’re here,” Suzie said. “You must be the husband.”

His eyebrows shot up and a mischievous grin crossed his face. My heart caught, and I caught a brief flash of what it had been like to be in high school, without any doubts about him at all, just reveling in the harmony we always found when we were together.

“I am indeed.” He strode into the room and dragged a chair next to the bed. “You’re looking better,” he said to me. The back of his hand brushed my cheek. “You’re pink again.”

The nurse picked up her iPad. “You’re allowed water, so I’ll get you some. And a soft breakfast will come in a few hours.” She flicked through several screens. “Pain meds are in your IV for now.” She looked up. “I think you’re all set. Is the bed in a good position?”

“Can I go a little higher?”

She nodded and reached for the button. “Just don’t tire yourself out.”

My head came up a few inches, and breathing was a lot easier again.

“Thank you,” Gavin said.

She headed for the door. “Buzz me if you need anything.”

He waited for her to disappear, then said, “Alone at last.”

“Next time I try to be all dramatic, just tie me to something until I calm down.” I felt a cough coming on and gripped the sides of the beds. The gurgle in my chest was something I could not get used to, and as the tickle grew into a full-on expulsion, I could tell goo was going to come out.

I pointed at the sink area of the room. “Paper towel,” I wheezed, trying not to suck the gunk back into my throat.

Gavin jumped up and snatched several sheets, hurtling back to me with a spryness I remembered seeing on the track field, back when he’d been forced to do a sport by his father. He’d been great, except that doing it for his dad was a huge demotivator.

“Turn around,” I told him, and when he was looking the other way, spat the gunk into the paper towel. This had been going on since midnight, when I woke up with the urge to expel the contents of my chest. I balled up the towel and shoved it under the sheets. “Okay.”

When he settled back in the chair, his face was distressed. “You all right?”

“It’s got to come out.” I shrugged. “Hospitals are not sexy.”

He grabbed my hand. “You’ll get out.”

“I was hoping to be in class this morning. It’s Monday. Astronomy.”

“No chance of that.”

I sank back against the pillow, watching him. I couldn’t get enough of that black mop, those sideburns, his jaw. Sometimes I felt I was seeing him for the first time.

He played with my fingers, working up to something. “So, what happened? Why were you out of your room?”

I figured he’d get to that. “Parents. Dad.”

He nodded. “He’s definitely holding a grudge.” He shifted to one side and tugged a key ring from his pocket. My keys. “I gave him these back, but then he returned them, saying I was doing a good job watching your place.”

“That’s progress.” I had planned to let his disappearance go, but the keys had been a big factor in everything that happened. “So, Friday? Where did you go?”

His expression never wavered. He had always been better at holding in his feelings than I was, but normally he didn’t keep things from me. This time, though, I could see he had something to hide.

“Elbows in a grease pit.”

“All day?”

His jaw tensed. “One of the women — the paid ones — tried to take advantage of me. I had to deal with it.”

Bitterness that he’d ever been with women like that burned in my belly. “How?”

“Just got me tangled up in her family business. I got out of it. It’s fine now.”

I noticed now a nick on his chin, a cut surrounded by a bruise. “Come here,” I said.

He leaned in, expecting I might want to kiss him, but I ran my fingers across the injury. “Were you in a fight?”

“I get in a few scrapes here and there.”

“Since when?”

“It’s in the past, Corabelle. I play pool. I place bets. Sometimes drunk people get pissy.” He sounded exasperated with me.

“This is not the past. This is now.” The extra volume in my voice caused another coughing fit to begin and I sucked in air, pointing back to the paper towels.

This time he pulled the whole metal container off the wall and set it on the rolling table by the bed. Typical Gavin.

I snatched a couple from the bottom and scraped my tongue with the rough paper to extract the goo. God, this was too much.

He sat in the chair, looking at the floor, waiting for the spell to pass. I balled up yet another round and shoved it in my stash.

Gavin must have seen that movement, as he hopped up and snagged a trash can from the corner.

“Thanks.” I dumped the balled-up paper into the bin.

He stared at the plastic container for a moment as if he wanted to comment on it, then set it back down. As much as I wanted to ask him what was on his mind, if the whole towel thing was too disgusting for him, I didn’t want to know. Probably the same as he didn’t want to know how I felt about what happened Friday.

Before I could prompt him again about the bruise, he changed the subject. “Jenny came to see you.” He reached around for his jacket on the back of his chair. “She brought you this.” He passed over a packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans. “I didn’t even know you liked them.”

“I do.” I held the packet on my belly and lay back. I was so tired. Maybe it was best to just let it go for now. “Remember how you came over that night, the first night, and just talked to me?”

He leaned forward on the bed, running his fingers up and down my arm. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget anything about that night.”

“Can you do it again?” I closed my eyes. “Elementary school. That would be good.” The past was easier. Simple times.

His voice was smooth and exactly the tonic it had always been. “So remember Mrs. Grady?”

I smiled. “Yes.”

“She had a bottle of cough syrup in her drawer, and back then we thought that’s what it really was. One time, Michael Rollins decided to steal it and take it on the playground.”

His words rolled over me like the sea sounds on the white-noise machine we once had. I didn’t think I was tired, but his story kept skipping parts, and I realized that it wasn’t him, but me, and that sleep was going to snatch me away.

* * *

Gavin was still on the chair, looking at his phone, when I woke up.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

“No word from my parents?” I tried to prop myself up, but it was too much effort.

“It’s only eight a.m.”

“Oh, so I didn’t sleep long.”

“Nope.”

“I’m used to waking up and having days pass.”

He laughed. “I wish I could do that.”

“I guess they have my phone still.”

“They have all your things. But I would expect to see them anytime now.”

I fumbled for the button to the bed and buzzed the head up a little so it was easier to breathe. “I did get loose of the social worker, at least.”

“Really?” A dark expression crossed his face.

“You think I should talk to her?”

“No, no. I mean, not unless you want to.” He stuffed his phone back in his pocket.

“I just want to get out of here.”

“Me too.”

A knock at the door made us both tense up. “Playtime’s over,” I said.

But the face that peeked in wasn’t my mother or father, but surrounded by tiny sprigged-out pigtails.

“Tina?” I pushed the button to sit up even more. “You’re here already?”

“They flew me in for a thirty-day contract. If it works out, they’ll keep me on.”

“Really?”

“Yup. I set up the art room yesterday, but you were in ICU, so I couldn’t see you.” She stood at the end of the bed, all respectable looking in a blue ribbed sweater and long black skirt. Only when I saw her legs did I see her personality in her outfit — black-and-blue-striped leggings.

She turned to Gavin. “You must be the boy.”

“Tina, this is Gavin.”

She extended a hand and they shook. “Nice to meet you.” She turned back to me. “So what’s all this?” She swirled her hand in the air.

I glanced over at Gavin as he shifted in his chair.

Tina missed nothing. “Something happened.”

“I had a mishap,” I said.

She glanced down at my wrists, a movement neither Gavin nor I missed.

“No, not like that. I mean, I ended up in the ocean, and I caught pneumonia.”

Tina looked back and forth between us. “Interesting timing.”

I didn’t know what else to say. I had only met Tina once. She was the one who had convinced me to come clean to Gavin.

“We’re good,” I said. “I told him everything.”

“And he’s still here. That’s a promising sign.”

We stared awkwardly at each other for another minute.

“Well,” Tina said, “I have to go set up for my first art therapy. I just wanted to come by and say, ‘Thank you.’ It’s a career move I didn’t see coming.”

“I think you’ll be great,” I said. “Who knows, I might end up in your class.”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That might not be a bad thing, you know. Sometimes we have to admit that we can’t do everything on our own.”

Gavin stiffened, and I could see he was taking this all wrong. “I’m here now,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

Tina turned to him. “I believe you. Just — just don’t take anything for granted. It’s a slippery slope.”

“You don’t have to tell me that.”

She held his gaze for a moment, challenging him. I could see she knew all the ways men could fail and expected him to do the same. “I’ll drop by again later.” She waved and slipped through the door.

“What’s the story with her?” Gavin asked.

“I met her a week ago, after she did a suicide talk.”

Gavin snapped his fingers. “I remember her. She’s come before. I’ve seen posters.”

“Yeah.”

His forehead creased. “So you went to a suicide talk?”

“No, I just drove her to the airport after.” I realized I was giving him the same runaround I’d done with the social worker. It shouldn’t be that way. “The doctor thought it would be a good idea. She lost a baby too. He lived three hours.”

Gavin looked at the door as if he could see the pain in her wake. “She had a tragic air about her.”

“She’s been some bad places.”

“Suicide, obviously, if she does talks.”

“Yeah.”

The muscle in his jaw started to twitch, and I braced myself for what he might say next. After a lengthy pause, he asked, “Do you — do you think about that?”

“No,” I said reflexively. “I mean, not really. I guess I do things that are probably…not…typical.” He didn’t know about the black, my escape. It was in my past, and I had planned to leave it there. But then I had just done it two days ago.

“Corabelle, when I was at your apartment,” he paused, trying to find the words.

My brain raced. What might he have found? I didn’t keep a journal. I never left any clues about what I did.

“I took out your trash.”

I knew where this was going. “You found the bags.”

“With holes in them.”

I pictured my moment in the dorm, the sack on my head, throwing up into the plastic. “It’s a quirk I have.”

“Why do you do it?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“I had a rough time, a year ago, after the professor.” I stopped, squeezing my eyes shut.

He reached for my hand. “You can tell me anything.”

No secrets. We’d agreed. “I had been doing this thing when I got distressed, where I hyperventilate until I sort of…black out.”

“Like pass out? All the way? Unconscious?”

I nodded.

He expelled his breath in a rush. “Okay.”

“And one night, that night, I guess I thought I would take it a step further, with the bag.”

“Corabelle…”

I turned to him, seeing the distress all over his face. “It was okay. My body saved itself. But since then, I just didn’t want the temptation. The risk.”

He brought my fingers to his lips, warm against the chill of my skin. “I’m going to be here from now on.”

“I know. I’ll be fine.”

“When was the last time you did it?”

“The bags? Not since that one time.”

“The blacking out.”

My chest hurt so much more with his question. To lie? Or tell the truth? “Friday.”

“Here? In the hospital?”

“Yes.”

He held my hand in both of his now, his head bowed as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“I’m sorry if I seem too crazy. I get it if it’s too much for you.”

His grip on me was so tight, like he was hanging on to the last rope before being cast out to sea. “You’re not too crazy. Whatever there is about you, I accept it. We’ll work it out. We’ll figure it out.”

My belly heaved with the release of all the emotion I’d held so tightly inside. “I love you, Gavin. I don’t know how I got through those years without you. I should have looked for you. I should have known where you’d be.”

“You did find me.” He lowered our hands and pressed them to his chest so he could look at me again. His eyes were so blue against the slate walls, bright below the dark mop of hair. I could picture him in every stage of his life, from little boy, to lanky adolescent, to the man I’d surrendered to so many times since we rediscovered each other. “You came right to my door.”

Another knock surely meant my parents were arriving. Gavin took his last private moment with me to lean across the bed and kiss me lightly on the lips. “I’ll love you all your life,” he whispered.

Then the room overflowed with people and flowers and chatter, and once more, life moved forward.

19: Gavin

After Corabelle suggested I head on to class to alleviate the tension in the hospital room with all of us filling the little space, I decided to go ahead and put in a shift at work. And I didn’t care how much grease I had on me, if she called or texted, I was going to answer.

I felt like we’d gotten past some horrible part of our lives, not as awful as with Finn, but just as hard. The past couldn’t get to us anymore. Corabelle would get well and continue class and figure out where she wanted to go to grad school. I’d pluck away at a few more credit hours and transfer to wherever she got in.

The urge to whistle as I stepped off the bike and headed into the garage was surprising and a relief. I hadn’t felt so light, like things were going my way, since high school.

Bud looked up from his desk as I entered the front office. “How is she?”

“Out of ICU. Not great, but better.”

“That’s a relief.”

I sensed he had something else to say, so I hung back a moment, waiting for a mother and her little girl to pass by and head out the door. No one else was in the waiting area.

Bud leaned back in his oversized office chair, which tilted perilously under his ponderous weight. He wasn’t wearing overalls today, but a beige snap shirt and khakis. He must not have intended to pitch in with the grunt work today.

He rubbed his chin, bristly with a five o’clock shadow that seemed to spring up by ten a.m., a source of jokes among the crew. “So, how long did you say you’ve known this girl?”

“We grew up together.”

“Ah. Makes sense. But when did you find her again?”

I dropped my backpack off my shoulder and let it slide to the floor. “A few weeks ago.”

“She the one who’s got you all distracted and out of sorts?”

“Probably.”

“Well, she’s the one then. You know it when you feel it.” He pushed away from the desk. “Rob turned in his notice.”

“Really?” Rob had been the lead mechanic for over a decade.

“His wife’s a nurse and she got a chance to move up at a hospital in LA.”

“Rob in LA.” Rob was a redneck from his John Deere cap to his cowboy boots.

“Yeah, hard to picture.” Bud chuckled. “But that means I’m doing some shuffling. Cade is moving up. So is Mario. I’ve had you doing mechanical already, so I’m officially putting you on the team. Pay goes up three dollars an hour, but you might end up here later than usual if a job goes long.” He reached into a drawer by his knee and tugged out a couple shirts wrapped in plastic. They were navy shirts the mechanics wore, and these had “Gavin” stitched on a patch on the pocket. The maintenance schmoes like I had been didn’t have personalized uniforms, only the crew.

My mind whirred with what this meant. An extra $500 a month meant I could get a bigger place, move Corabelle in, and she could cut back her work hours if she wanted, or else avoid taking out as many loans. I realized I hadn’t said anything. “Thank you.”

Bud handed me an envelope. “There’s papers with insurance stuff if you want to opt in. Just let me know if that hometown girl decides to traipse you off across the country.”

“Will do.”

I shoved the shirts and the forms under my arm and headed to the garage to change and stash my gear.

When I came out, Mario whistled. “Look who’s got some real duds.” He clapped me on the back. “About time you got the chance to screw up something bigger than air filters.”

“I hear the shit floated to the top yourself,” I said.

Mario laughed. “It did indeed.” He unpacked a radiator hose from a box. “Now I get to tell you what the hell to do.”

“And I’ll tell you where to go.” I moved down the row of bays. “Seems quiet for a Monday.”

“Give it time. The cold this morning means everyone was too lazy to come in early. Every clunk from the weekend will be showing up here by lunch.” Mario stepped up to a Pathfinder and leaned over the radiator. “Someone brought in a Suzuki that cuts out at low RPMs. Why don’t you go take a look at it?”

Huh, diagnostic. That was a first. In the few weeks I’d been doing more than tire rotations and oil changes, Bud had mostly handed me jobs that were already set. Motor mounts. Belts. Hoses. Radiator flush. Having to actually figure out a problem was a welcome change to sitting uselessly in those hospital chairs.

I fired up the bike, noticing the difference in vibration and power from my Harley. Sure enough, no more than a few seconds in, it started missing. I revved it up and it smoothed out, but as it eased down, the motor hitched again.

Rob came over, tugging on his cap. “You got a theory?”

I killed the bike and stepped away to shake his hand. “I hear you’re heading out soon.”

Rob shifted a meaty wad of tobacco along his gum. “Yup. The lady is moving up, and I’m going along for the ride.”

“Good for her.” I turned back to the Suzuki. “Well, first I’d increase the idle. Maybe it got bumped. Then I’d say either the carb has crud, the petcock is clogged, or maybe the choke is stuck.”

Rob sniffed. “All good ideas, but extra work. Start easy. Drain the gas and put in a gallon of fresh. I’ll come back around after you do that.”

I shrugged and went to the wall to find a siphon.

The garage was quiet after the roar of the Suzuki. The fuel decanted into a jug, and I searched around for the gas container we kept on hand. It was pretty hilarious how often a car got towed in for repair when all it had was an empty tank, and sometimes, a faulty gas gauge.

I dropped in enough to test it. Sure enough, the idle held for a full thirty seconds. I revved it up and let it fall, still good.

Rob sauntered back up. “Take it for a ride around the block, but I’m betting there was water in the gas tank or some sort of crap additive that impacted performance. When he comes in, ask him if he had the gas cap open for an extended period or if he got gas someplace different than usual.”

I jumped on the bike and took off through the parking lot. The air was cool, the sun completely stifled by cloud cover. I pulled up at the exit and the idle held perfect. A job like this might be blue-collar, but it taught me something every day. Honest work. I was happy to do it for a while, and this promotion meant I could easily find something in a year in some other town if we moved.

The road cleared and I jetted across the lanes, taking the corner hard, then throttling high as I ripped down the straightaway. The motor handled perfectly, and I shook my head that the solution had been so simple. This guy was getting off easy, a cheap diagnostic fee and a little gas. He’d be happy.

I cut through an alley, the vibrations rumbling in my hands from the rough terrain. If anything was in the carb or petcock, I’d force it to move and show itself. But I came out the other side with the same power and precision, and the idling at the end of it was as clean as before.

As I approached the garage from the other side, a pair standing by the street made me slam on the brakes. A woman and a small boy.

It couldn’t be.

I eased forward, staring. Shit. It was.

Rosa. And Manuelito.

How the hell did she find me?

Panic ripped through my chest. If she talked to the crew, if they believed her…

This was way beyond a phone call and texting a picture. She had obviously taken the boy from Letty. Cops might be involved.

My vision flashed black for a moment. Everything that seemed so easy just moments before was suddenly crashing in.

As I approached the entrance to the lot, Rosa spotted me and waved. I had to keep her away from the garage. I pulled up next to her and killed the bike, hoping no one would look out at this moment.

Rosa smiled, her hand gripping Manuelito’s tightly. He had on a heavy brown jacket that made him look small and stout. He held a green sucker in his hand, one of the big round kind that takes hours to eat. His lips were discolored from it.

“What are you doing here?”

She passed me a piece of paper. “I took this. I am sorry. But I knew you might leave. I needed to find you.”

It was a pay stub, probably from my saddlebag. It had the name of the garage and the address right on it.

“You went through my stuff?”

“I am sorry, Gavinito. But I do this for Manuelito.”

I tossed the pay stub on the ground. “He’s not mine.” I began to push the bike toward the garage.

“I prove it. We will do test.”

I halted. “What?”

“I told Letty I will take him to California for test. She cried and is mad, but she cannot stop me. I have my name on his birth certificate.” She pulled a plastic Ziploc from her purse holding a blue document in Spanish and waved it.

I took it from her. The words “Acta de Nacimiento” were large across the top. Below it, “Madre” was listed as “Rosa Jalindo.” Under “Padre” was only “Juan Juan.”

“I can fix,” Rosa said. “After test. Your name.”

I passed the certificate back. “Isn’t Letty going through enough? Her husband’s gone, and you took her son away.”

Rosa’s eyes filled with tears. “I know. But I will not let him go.”

“He lived in a perfectly nice neighborhood.” I gripped the handlebars of the bike. “I don’t get why they couldn’t stay there.”

“Let us go and test. You know a place where they do tests?” Her face was pleading and desperate.

Cars were starting to pull up at the garage as the lunch hour approached. I needed to get back. “Rosa, I have to get to work. I can’t do this right now.”

“You not answer me on phone. You cannot ignore.” Rosa’s face became fierce. “I will go in there. I tell your boss.”

Shit. “Rosa, you can’t blackmail me. I won’t put up with it.”

“You walk away from us.” She pulled Manuelito against her. “In Ensenada, you just drive away.”

Her words pierced me, but the rage was faster than the remorse. “I stayed there for hours, waiting. What the hell was I supposed to do?”

Manuelito turned his face into Rosa’s skirt, the sucker forgotten. Damn it. Damn it to hell.

“I can’t just leave work. And I have a girlfriend. What do you want from me?”

The wind kicked up, blowing her hair all around. “I want to show you your son,” she said calmly. “I want you to know him.”

I looked down at the boy, his expression hidden in the folds of denim. His dark hair blended into the shadows, but his grubby hand clutched the stick of the sucker.

I couldn’t ignore this. Whether or not the boy was mine, I’d engaged with Rosa too many times to ignore my responsibility to her. “Can you meet me in four hours, when I get off work? I’ll figure something out.”

“Yes, Gavin.”

“Don’t come here.” I looked down the street. “There’s a restaurant down the block. Tony’s. You see it?”

She turned her face in the direction I pointed. “Yes.”

“Meet me there. Four o’clock.”

“Yes, Gavin.”

Manuelito peeked out then as if he knew the conflict was over. I remembered Rosa saying he understood English, and I wondered how much he could figure out. The boy had to be traumatized, his father disappearing, getting snatched from his home. How much damage would that cause?

But he looked at me with sober eyes. After a few seconds, he put the sucker back in his mouth. As Rosa turned away, he glanced back at me, curious, serious.

Mario waited by the door of one of the bays. “That did not look good.”

I parked the bike behind him. “It wasn’t.”

He shot around, as if just realizing something. “Is she one of your hookers?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I don’t know.” Rosa said she wasn’t, but I didn’t know the truth anymore.

“That sounds ominous.”

“Yeah. It’s trouble.” I tugged the keys out of the Suzuki and pulled the clipboard down with the paperwork on it to make note of the problem.

He wouldn’t let things go. “What’s the deal with the kid?”

I was tempted to slam the clipboard against the wall, but I reined it in. “For fuck’s sake, Mario, it’s just a situation. I’ll deal with it.”

But Mario just laughed. “Gavin, you get in the most ridiculous predicaments.”

I glanced around the garage. Rob was in the pit. Two other mechanics were way down in the other bays. The service guys were rapidly changing filters and oil. “One question. If you cross over from Mexico, how long can you stay? Like when your cousins come.”

His eyebrows shot up. “She’s a national?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if she has a border crossing card, she can come and go as she likes, but she has to go back within 72 hours. Otherwise she has to get a tourist visa, which is expensive, and if her income is, well, undocumented, then they’ll turn her down. You have to prove you’re coming back.”

“She has an apartment.”

“That will help.”

“It’s owned by her brother, though.”

He shrugged. “Depends on who looks at her papers then.”

“It was sort of last minute, I think.”

“Then she probably had a card.” He gripped my shoulder. “She won’t trouble you long, my friend.”

“Thanks.” I scrawled a couple words on the work order and headed to the office to turn it in to Bud. I wasn’t sure which I wanted more, for the hours to speed by or for the end of the day to never come.

20: Corabelle

Tina came back by later that afternoon. I was doing better, despite using up half the box of paper towels. Breakfast had gone down okay. I was hoping to get the catheter out again, but hadn’t asked about it due to my parents’ cloying presence in the room.

“You look better,” Tina said. “These your parents?”

“Yes. Mom, Dad, this is Tina. She runs the art therapy program here. I met her at school.” That was enough background. No need to bring up the suicide part.

“It’s so nice to meet some of Corabelle’s friends,” Mom said, her eyes resting on the striped stockings. “What do you do in your art therapy?”

“I just started today. We’re drawing.” Tina sat in Gavin’s empty chair. “I’m actually here on official business.” She rummaged through a satchel and pulled out a clipboard. “Do your parents maybe want to grab a cup of coffee downstairs?”

My stomach quavered a little. “That’s a good idea. I’ll see you guys in a bit, okay?”

Mom rolled up her knitting and stuck it in a bag. “Come on, Arthur. Nice to meet you.” She led Dad out of the room. He looked back like I was about to be taken away or something. Poor Dad.

“I didn’t expect for you to be one of my first referrals,” Tina said. “But given our shared history, the social worker — shoot, I forgot her name, the one with the vintage glasses—”

“Sabrina,” I said.

She snapped her fingers. “Yes, Sabrina. I’ve learned too many names today. She thought I might get more out of you than she did.”

“I didn’t want to be sent to psych.”

“I don’t think they’d do that. The ward rarely has an empty bed, from what I gather.”

“But they might keep me here.”

“Maybe. Here’s the thing. Your case is open for possible mental health issues. And you and I both know they are there. They asked me to just chat with you, only because we are friends, but I can decide what to tell them. I’m not a therapist and they know that. All I’m supposed to do is say whether or not to enroll you in my therapy once you are up and about.”

I felt wary. I liked Tina, but now she was here officially. And she already knew more than I would have liked. I had assumed I would be out by the time she started.

I fingered the white sheet on my lap. “I told Gavin about the marijuana. And the professor.”

“So what did he do?”

“He had a secret of his own.” My chest tightened, and I had to grip the rails to breathe, sucking in air.

Tina leaned forward and squeezed my arm. “Maybe we should do this another time. I can put a note in that you aren’t medically well enough.”

I shook my head. “I’ll be okay. It’s just like the upset goes straight to my lungs right now.”

She nodded. “I hope I get the hang of how the therapy part affects the physical. I feel so unqualified for this job.”

I breathed in and out slowly until I had a handle on my airflow. “You’ll be fine. It’s just the art stuff, right?”

“Sorta. I still have to, you know, talk to the patients. I’m afraid they will tell me things I can’t handle.”

“Probably some of them will be lying.”

“What did Gavin say?”

“He had a vasectomy.”

“What? He’s like — twenty!”

“He found a place in Mexico that would do it.”

“Holy shit.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Probably not an officially sanctioned response.”

I managed a small laugh. “Probably not.”

“Well, hell. That’s got to be tough. You think he can get it reversed? You still want kids, right?”

“Maybe. We’ll have to see. We’re both in school. We can’t exactly do anything about it right now.”

Tina tugged on one of her pigtails. “So, how did you go from confessions to swim time?”

My breath was fine now, but I placed my hand on my chest anyway to give me a second to decide on my answer. “I overreacted.”

“What was your goal? To get him to save you?”

I thought back. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think I thought about it. I just went.”

Tina sat back in the chair. “Well, the real therapists might not buy that, but I do. When I cut my wrists, it had nothing to do with dying.” She pushed at the sleeve of her sweater, revealing the scars, white and pale pink but still visible. “I felt like I should be marked. Damaged. Scarred. So I did it.”

“Did you ever get therapy?”

“Are you kidding? Once my parents decided to step in, I spent half my life in shrink-quack offices.” She clapped her hand over her mouth again. “Probably not an officially sanctioned description of mental health professionals either.”

Tina made me laugh. She would be a good fit for Jenny. The two of them were so quirky and colorful. Between Tina’s stockings and Jenny’s hair, they could command the attention of any room.

“Will you be happy here?” I asked. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“I’m at some extended-stay hotel for the moment. It’s hard to find an apartment for such a short time. I might be able to find a sublet.”

“You should stay at my place.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

“No, I’m serious. I’m going to be here for who knows how long, and then I may just stay with Gavin. He’ll want to watch me every minute.”

“As he should.”

“Come by later. Gavin has my keys. He can show you around. I don’t have anything valuable. Not even a TV. I’m not worried. Someone should be there anyway.”

Tina stood up. “That’s very generous of you. I’ll give it some thought.” She lifted the clipboard. “So what do you think? Art therapy or no art therapy? We could heckle the other patients.”

“Tina, you are so bad.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t wager on my being here longer than two weeks.”

“Yes, put me down. Hopefully I’ll get loose of the bed today or tomorrow.”

“Still peeing in a tube, eh?” She glanced at the end of the bed.

“I’ve given up on being embarrassed about it.”

“I’ll come by later.”

“Okay.”

“You want me to go down and find your parents in the cafe?”

“No way. Let me have some peace.”

She laughed. “Will do.”

I lowered the bed as soon as she left, feeling more exhausted than I cared to admit. But my spirits did rise having her around. I needed allies. Tina seemed like a good one.

21: Gavin

I stripped off the new mechanic’s shirt and pulled my own sweatshirt over my head. I was stalling. I absolutely did not want to walk down the street to Tony’s.

Mario poked his head around the corner of the breakroom. “Bud cleared me to leave for a bit. I’m good to go.”

Having Mario go along was a good call. It would help me keep the emotion out of it. Until I knew for sure who Manuelito belonged to, I didn’t want to be manipulated. I realized how little I knew Rosa.

I stashed the shirt in my backpack. “Not sure I’m ready for this.”

“This is any man’s worst nightmare.” Mario grinned as he said it but forced a serious face when I glared at him. “You’ve got to see the irony of this. You stick with hookers for years to avoid entanglements, and you end up with the biggest sand trap of them all.”

We walked through the bays and out into the weak afternoon sun. Fall had come full force, and the wind on our faces was a cool relief to the inner turmoil.

Mario’s relaxed stride slowed us down, which was fine with me. He wanted to greet everyone who passed, mothers with strollers and teenagers walking home from school. I’d never been one to randomly chat with strangers. Corabelle had been all I’d known growing up, and after her, I sought out relationships I could control. Or thought I could.

“Let me start,” Mario said as we arrived at the hole-in-the-wall pizza joint. “You look like you’re going to jump somebody.”

“I feel like it.”

“Precisely.” He jerked on the glass door.

Rosa and Manuelito sat in a booth along one side. She had bought him a slice of pizza but not one for herself, and suddenly I worried she was here without much money or ability to take care of the boy. God, how was I going to manage this?

Mario headed straight for her and slid into the seat opposite them. Rosa seemed startled by this and looked to me with a question.

He said something rapid in Spanish to her, part an introduction but who knew what else. I disliked this a lot. I felt completely out of control now and wished I hadn’t brought him.

Rosa’s face bloomed red and she argued with him for a moment, pulling a card from her purse. Mario looked at it and gave it back, then turned to me. “So, she’s here on a borrowed border pass. We have her over a barrel if you need that leverage.”

“Jesus, Mario. I don’t want that.”

He shrugged. “Just saying it’s an option if it turns out the kid isn’t yours.”

Rosa clutched at Manuelito, who chewed the pizza slowly. “Who is this friend?” she asked me. “Some sort of policia?”

“No. He works with me.”

“Why you bring him?”

“He’s just a friend helping me out.” I glanced over at him. “And being a jerk about it.”

Mario laughed. “I’m not nearly the jerk you are. And Rosa here can handle it. She spits fire.”

“You should see her with a Glock.”

Mario whipped his head around to stare at Rosa again. “Damn.”

Rosa released Manuelito, seeming to understand the situation now. “So you are not policia?”

“Hell no,” Mario said. “I just wanted to know how you managed to get over here to disrupt my friend Gavin’s life.”

“You are a tricky man,” she said.

He chuckled. “I am indeed.”

I wanted to know what was next. “So I guess we need to find a place that can test him.”

Rosa nodded. “Yes, that is good. How long it take?”

I shrugged. “I can ask.”

“I don’t know either,” Mario said. “You may have to go back across and return. Not sure they can do it in 72 hours.”

“I take the risk,” Rosa said. “I stay. When they see my boy is his, we can stay.”

“Still have to do paperwork,” Mario said. “Unless lover boy here marries you.” He elbowed me.

“He has girlfriend now,” Rosa said. “Too busy for marriage.”

Mario’s expression changed. “So why are you here then, if not to try and snag him?”

Rosa looked thoughtful. “Snag. What is snag?”

Mario said something in Spanish that sounded like “tramp.”

Rosa pushed back on her hair, smoothing the wild tresses away from her face. “Dios mio.”

“You come here. You force the boy on him.” Mario waved a waitress away. “What else should we think?”

Rosa pushed Manuelito out the end of the booth. “You are a bad man,” she said to Mario. Then to me, “You have my number. Tell me where to go to test. I will be there.”

She shoved the boy’s arms into his jacket and snatched up hers. I sat there, stewing, not sure what I was more angry about, Mario’s heavy-handed behavior or the situation itself. When the door jangled, I jumped up and ran after them.

“Wait, Rosa,” I said, catching up with them on the sidewalk. “Halto or alta or whatever.”

She stopped and turned around with eyes that were wet and glistening. “You never learn Spanish well at all, Gavinito.”

“I’m sorry Mario was so harsh. He’s looking out for me.”

Manuelito tugged on her hand. “¡Paleta! ¡Paleta!”

Rosa reached into her bag and produced another round lollipop. Manuelito grabbed it and struggled with the wrapper.

“I do not like him. He act like he would send me back.”

“It’s not an easy situation to explain to people.”

She took the lollipop back from Manuelito and tugged off the plastic. He stuck it in his mouth and laid his head against her leg.

“You must see him a lot for him to be so close to you.”

“He is a very happy boy. He trusts people.”

“Are you okay for money? Where are you staying?”

“I have a cousin.”

“Is it near here?”

“I can take bus.”

All I had was my bike, and I couldn’t exactly put both of them on it. “Okay. I will call you later, when I find a place to do the test.”

“Okay, Gavin.” She hesitated. “I do not wish to…snag you.”

“I know.”

“I just want the boy to have a father. His father. Letty’s man was no good.”

“I get it.”

“I know you have girlfriend.” She stared at the ground, and I remembered her telling me she was not a prostitute for anyone but me.

“What about you? No boyfriend? No one?”

“I have not. This—” she patted Manuelito’s head. “This is hard enough.”

“What about that cousin guy? Has he bothered you?”

She shook her head. “I leave my place. My family is to be outraged when they hear Letty say what happened.”

“Rosa, I wish I could do more.”

She caught her billowing hair with her hand. “Do the test, Gavin. Then we know what to do next.”

I nodded. She turned and headed up the street toward a bus stop. I’d done all I could do for now.

When she was well away, Mario came up from behind. “So what’s the plan?”

“Damn it, Mario, you scared the crap out of her.”

“Nah. She was up for it. But she’s going to be a problem if that kid is yours.”

We headed toward the garage. “Well, yeah. I have no idea what we’ll do.”

“I mean, that girl is totally over her head in love with you.”

I halted, turning back around to stare at the distant shapes of Rosa and the boy standing near the bench. “She was paid to like me.”

“I call bullshit on that. It’s all over her face.” He kicked at an acorn on the sidewalk. “So what’s the likelihood this kid is yours? Did you do this chick balls out?”

I sighed. “Apparently. The first time. It just happened.”

“You are one crazy idiot,” Mario said. We crossed the street to the garage. “You tell your girl yet?”

“I’m heading there now.”

“Better do it before this blows up in your face.”

“I’m on it.”

He stopped several yards from the open bays and clapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck, man. You’re going to need it.”

Rather than cutting through the garage, I walked along the front to where my bike was parked on the other side. Time to head to the hospital, wait out the parents, and try to get Corabelle alone. I hoped she was doing better, or I didn’t know if I could shock her with this news. But it was definitely time to confess.

22: Corabelle

Gavin looked like hell when he poked his head in the door. He faked a smile, but I could still spot his moods, the real ones, not the facade he put on.

Mom had given up on knitting the galaxy-sized blanket and taken up a book instead. Dad was watching the TV on silent, an old Western he probably knew by heart anyway. They looked up when Gavin came in, and Dad may have tensed up, but they greeted him congenially.

“How did today go?” Gavin dragged his chair closer to the bed.

“Good. I walked to the bathroom and back, so I got free of the pee pipe again.”

“That’s good.”

“I won’t go wandering this time.”

“Also good.”

I bit my lip, wondering what else I could say with my parents so close. I squinted at my father’s watch. Just after five. They could be here for hours still.

“Can you eat regular things yet? Could I get you something?” Gavin enclosed one of my hands in his.

“I got a lovely colorless broth for lunch. So yeah, bring me an entire pepperoni pizza, extra cheese, a burger from Dan’s, and a hot-fudge sundae.”

His grin this time seemed genuine. “I’d totally do that, for you.”

“And hold my hair back when I puked it all back up?” I touched my head where the tangled knot still sat, squat and frizzy. It hadn’t been washed in days. I was beyond feeling humiliated at this point.

“Just like when you were pregnant.”

My dad’s eyes flitted over to us at that, and I sensed my mom’s attention on her book had been diverted. I wondered what they would think if they knew about Gavin’s vasectomy. Maybe we could avoid ever telling them. If it couldn’t be reversed, we could just let them assume the infertility was my problem.

I picked up my cell phone from the side table and tapped out, “How do we lose the ’rents?”

He looked panicked when his phone beeped, a reaction that seemed totally out of proportion to the situation. When he ignored it, I held mine up. He still didn’t get it, so I tapped out, in front of him, “HELLO!” and pressed “send” with exaggerated motion.

He nodded and took his phone out, smiling when he saw the message. “Fire alarm?” he typed.

“Too many casualties.”

He looked thoughtful, then frantically tapped in, “Dress in drag and do the hula?”

I laughed out loud, snaring my parents’ attention. We had seen The Lion King in kindergarten together, and I had been traumatized by Scar. But later we reenacted the “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” scene, starting a long tradition of reliving favorite movie moments. Even when we were teenagers, I would still randomly knock him over and pin him like the two cubs had.

This was a safe enough topic. “I would love to see that movie right now,” I said aloud.

“We could put it in your laptop,” Gavin said.

“The TVs have DVD players.” I pointed at the screen.

“What movie is that?” Mom asked.

Bingo.

“Lion King.”

“Oh yes, that always was one of your favorites. Once you got over Scar.” Mom looked over the reading glasses perched on her nose.

“You think you guys could run down to the hospital rental room and see if they have it?”

“They have such a thing here?” my dad asked.

“Yes, the volunteers who came by with the book cart told us.” Mom held up her copy of Smart Mouth Waitress. “Very nice ladies.”

“Please?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing what else they had,” my dad said.

They were going to do it.

Mom set her book down. “Any second choices in case no Lion King?”

“Oh, just pick something.” I glanced over at Gavin to see if he was pleased our ploy had worked, but his jaw was ticking. Something big was going on. I immediately felt my chest tighten and the cough come on. I needed to hold it in until my parents left, or they might not go. I breathed in and out with care, trying to relax.

Mom stood up from the sofa and straightened her skirt. “We’ll be right back.”

I wanted to say, “No hurry,” but I was afraid to talk, or the coughing might start. I just nodded.

As soon as they were out the door, I exhaled in a big rush, scrambling for the box of heavy tissues that the nurses had placed there after reattaching the paper towel dispenser. Each expulsion brought up more goo. I so wanted this to stop, especially the suction treatments.

The cough was deep and rattly, making my breathing sound like a car with a loose muffler. Gavin stood up, rubbing my back until it all calmed.

“What did the doctor say?”

“I’ll get another X-ray tomorrow, but he was pleased.”

“Are you blowing balls again?” His eyes crinkled at the corners.

I smacked his knee. “You wish.” A stray black hair fell over my eye, and I blew it out of the way, almost regretting it, as the cough threatened again. “I don’t think I’ve graduated to the ball test again yet.”

“But you seem better.” He seemed stuck on this point.

“You looking to resume our little activity the other night?” I had to admit, I did miss that. If I didn’t think I’d end up flinging phlegm, I’d get him started in a heartbeat. But right now, I had to get better.

He sat back in the chair, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. I knew that pose too. He had something to say, something hard. I swallowed, refusing to let my chest tense up. “What is it, Gavin? What’s getting to you?”

He sighed, a long low breath that made tears spring to my eyes. This was bad, really bad.

“I got a call a couple days ago. Friday.”

“Right. The day you disappeared. The…prostitute.”

“I met with her today.”

Panic zinged through me, my heart thudding against the cotton gown. “You said she was dragging you into her family business. It’s still going on?”

“Yes. I’m going to have to deal with it.” He still wouldn’t look up.

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“I’m afraid to. You’re still so fragile. I don’t want to upset you.”

“I’m already upset. Let’s just get through it.”

He tried to hold my eyes, but eventually dropped his gaze to my hands. “It’s a girl I used to see in Mexico. She — she was there from the beginning. She worked in a little store I went to after my surgery when I was in pain and didn’t know what to do.”

“In a store? I thought she was a prostitute.”

“I saw her again, on a street corner, later. She needed the money.”

“That was a long time ago.”

He looked up again. “Yes. Yes it was.” His voice caught. “But she’s here right now.”

“In San Diego?”

“Yes. She wants me to do a test, and I’m going to have to do it.”

“A test? For what?” The fear reached a zenith, and I didn’t think my chest could contain the intense thrumming of my heart anymore.

“For her son.”

I washed cold. If she wanted a test with her son and with Gavin, then she — I couldn’t even let my mind think it. I had to shut it off.

“See, this is too much. Let me kill the lights. You need rest.”

“No. Let’s get this out. Is he yours?”

“I don’t think so. Her family asked me to go away, said she was using me to save her, get her to the US. I don’t know. I just want to do the test and get it over.”

I wanted to throw up, to cry. And I really, really wanted to hold my breath, to disappear into the black. But that had been a disaster last time. I had to stop it. I had to face things without escaping. The held-back tears flowed into my throat, making it sticky and thick. I barely got out my next question. “How old is he?”

His eyes went back to the floor. “He’s three. Coming up on four. In February.”

Oh, God. I counted back the months. He would have to have been conceived in May, within weeks of Finn’s funeral.

I couldn’t take it. I threw back the covers and turned my legs to the side to stand up.

“No, don’t get up. Please, go back to bed. You’re not ready.” Gavin stood over me, hands on my shoulders.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.” I didn’t intend to say it, or to growl, but it just came, like an involuntary response.

“I know it looks bad. It was bad. Shit.” He dropped back in his chair. “If you want me to leave right now, I will. But if it turns out okay—”

I leaned over the side rail, hanging on, grateful for the support. Of all the things that I could have imagined, Gavin having a child with another woman was the biggest nightmare. The worst. Irrevocable. Unfixable. Life-altering.

How could he make such a mistake? How could he have a son with some other woman and take away the chance to ever have one with me?

I pressed a hand against my throat, willing the cough away, trying to breathe. I wanted to scream, and if we had been anywhere else, I might have. Instead I clutched the rail as though I were back out at sea, and this was the lifeline that would take me to some other shore.

Gavin didn’t move near me, didn’t try to touch me again. He just waited, head down. I tried to put myself in his position. Angry. Confused. He had to have so many questions. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, I had them too. I sat back on the bed, still holding the rail. “I thought you said you had the surgery checked. That it worked.”

“Nobody told me how long it took. It’s not immediate.” His skin was ashen, and his eyes so haunted. My heart broke for him then. He thought I would walk away. And I wanted to, but I wouldn’t. I’d be here. I’d see him through this.

I shifted back on the bed and tucked my legs beneath the sheets again. This was it. I had to get well. I needed out of this hospital, back in the real world. I wanted to help him through this.

“How trustworthy is this woman?” My voice came out stronger than I thought it would.

His hands were clasped together so tight that his knuckles were white. “I have no idea. I don’t really know her much at all.”

That was good. I began to breathe easier. So he had done the surgery, felt indebted to this woman for helping him. They’d ended up together. I just had to accept these things. She meant nothing to him. He only wanted to clear his name. “Well, then let’s get the test done and send her packing.”

“I just need to figure out where to go. There’s drugstore tests but I don’t trust them.”

“We’re right here in a hospital.”

He glanced at the call button. “You want to ask one of the nurses?”

“No, I have a better idea. We’ll talk to Tina, let her ask.”

“You mean that girl with the stockings?”

“Yes. She came by earlier.”

His face relaxed into relief. “Okay, ask her. Then we can get this done.”

Gavin needed someone to push him through this. I might feel blindsided, but he had to be completely knocked backwards. Everyone else seemed to be telling him this woman was manipulating him, but he couldn’t see it. We’d have to show him the way.

“You need to get your life back to normal,” I said. “Go home. Shower. Study. Go to work. Talk to your friends.”

He shook his head. “My life is right here.”

“No, this is a strange place, these small rooms, this caustic atmosphere with my parents. You need to be out, to think clearly, to assess what’s going on.” I hesitated. “Is she trying to see you? Is she pushing this boy on you?”

He shook his head. “No. My friend Mario scared the crap out of her. I’m just supposed to call her when we have a place to do the test.”

I breathed a little easier. “Good.” I held out my hand to him, and when he took it, I pulled him forward to sit on the bed. “It’s going to be okay,” I told him. “Just another bump in the road.”

He gathered me against him, and as my head lay against his chest, his body shuddered. I knew exactly how hard this moment had been for him. I had felt the same walking down to the beach when I knew I had to tell him about my past, what I had done when I was pregnant.

We would clear this up, together, and move forward. I wouldn’t think of any other possibility. This boy was not his. She was an opportunist and a liar. I pictured her in a hot-pink halter and slinky miniskirt, used up, pathetic, and looking for a chump who would believe her story. I would not let her use Gavin. When this test was done, I’d boot her out of his life, whether I was sick or not.

23: Gavin

When I rolled up to my apartment later that night, Corabelle tucked away at the hospital watching The Lion King with her parents, I was surprised to see Mario sitting on the hood of his ’72 Mustang.

He waited for me to kill the Harley, still in his shirt from Bud’s. “So, how’d she take it?”

“Corabelle?”

“You got another honey to break the news to?”

He was making me crabby already. I turned up the sidewalk.

“Dude, chill. I’m just asking how she took it.”

I stopped. He’d proved a better friend than I expected with everything going on. “Not great at first, but she came around.”

The wind howled around us, and he stuck his hands in his pockets. “That’s good.”

“So you came here to ask me that? I’m working tomorrow.”

“No, I’m here to get you out, stop moping, drink a beer.”

“No way. Corabelle’s in the hospital. Rosa’s out there somewhere with that kid.”

Mario turned me around on the sidewalk. “All the more reason to get out.”

“I should study. I’m behind.”

“Later. You’re due a night out. You’re just going to sit in that apartment and stew.”

He was right about that.

“I’ll cover the first round. Unless you order some bullshit highbrow import.”

I laughed. “Right. I’m all highbrow.” Hell, it felt good to laugh about something, to blow everything off. Corabelle had been right. I needed some normal life.

He opened his door. “Get your ass in here. We’ll toast to your fancy-ass new job title. Then tell me more about this firebrand hooker you dragged stateside.”

I sank into the half-collapsing springs of the passenger seat. “I’m hoping I never have to see her again after this test.”

He turned the ignition and the Mustang rumbled. Damn, I missed having a car. I could have used the extra money from my promotion for that, but it was fine to use it on helping Corabelle.

Or else it would go to child support.

Mario cranked up Nine Inch Nails at ear-splitting decibels, which went a long way to redirecting my attention. He rolled down the windows despite the chill, laughing when mine got stuck halfway and wouldn’t budge.

“It’s always the mechanics who have shit for cars,” I shouted over the music.

Mario banged the steering wheel in time with the cymbal smash. “We’re going to get fucked up!”

He pulled into a space in front of our usual pool hall. My anxiety ratcheted up. All the hookers I used to frequent knew this place, and I’d run into one or the other more than a few times. One in particular, Lorali, had made quite a show of stripping half-naked in the corner, and at this point in my life, I lived in fear of her repeating the performance.

“Maybe we should pick another place,” I said.

“Don’t be a pussy,” Mario said. “I know what you’re thinking, but I can handle all the women.”

“You haven’t had a piece in months, Romeo.” I flung my door open.

He came around the car and snared me with an elbow around my neck. “It’s no good to be wingman to a hooker lover. I’m too poor.”

I shoved him aside to get loose, laughing. “You can’t even pay to get laid.”

“I’m promoted. I’ve got money now.”

We crossed through a cloud of smokers and entered the half-empty hall. “Probably not going to be too many chicks on a Monday,” he said, heading for the bar.

I was happy to see it so empty. Fewer people meant fewer chances for a disaster.

I headed for the cue racks to find a stick that wasn’t too thrashed. A number of the serious players were sitting around, league teams and gamblers alike. There weren’t a lot of women, another good sign that the night would go easy for me.

Mario returned with the beer as I shoved quarters in the machine to release the balls. The crack of a cue was familiar and calming. Even the smell of chalk and beer helped settle out the day.

I racked up for the first play and took a long pull on the bottle as Mario started working the table. He’d clear a good number before his first fail, if he was having a decent night. I half watched him, half listened to the room, when a laugh made the hackles on my neck stand up.

I wasn’t especially good at picking out voices, but that particular little-girl giggle was pretty damn familiar. I circled the table. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I told Mario.

“What are you talking about? I’m going to kick your ass here. I’ve nearly cleared the stripes.”

“Fine. Kick it. Candy’s here and I’m not dealing with her tonight.”

“Was that the one who got nekkid?”

“No, that was Lorali.”

“I can’t keep up with your hookers.” He leaned back over to take a shot.

I nudged his shoulder. “Seriously, Mario. I’m not up for it.”

“I’ll handle her.” He braced his fingers on the table and sent the cue ball into no-man’s-land, barely grazing the thirteen. “Well, shit.” He stood up. “Now I’m off.”

Candy weaved through the tables but didn’t look our way. I turned my back to her. “Mario, I really don’t need this shit. She wrote me a week ago. Corabelle found her texts. It was a brutal scene.”

He downed a swig of beer. “So block her.” He reached for his wallet and dropped it on the ledge of the table. “Or give her to me. She’ll get hot for my dollars.”

“That’s messed up,” I said. I didn’t have a claim on any of those women, but imagining Mario with the same girls I’d been with was a damn freak show.

“Yeah. It is, actually.” He stuck the wallet back in his pocket. “But she’s coming over here anyway.”

“Shit.”

“Gavin? Is that you?” She came up beside the table, dressed in a vivid orange tank that hugged her breasts like a wet T-shirt. A short frayed denim skirt barely skimmed her thighs. She looked a lot like a sexed-up college girl, her hair curled away from her face, other than the lines around her eyes.

“Forget him,” Mario said. “Come over here and talk to me.”

Great. Now she’d never leave.

“You’re cute and all,” Candy said. “But Gavin owes me some texts.”

“You into sexting?” Mario leaned on the pool table, separating Candy from me.

She stepped around him. “How come you never wrote me back? I thought you cared a little.”

I didn’t even want to look at her, the mega-lashes, bright lips, and nipples poking out a mile. “I think it’s great you’re out on your own,” I said. “I’m just seeing somebody now.”

“Oh, that girl isn’t going to be enough for you,” Candy said, pushing up against me. “You’ll want a little something on the side.”

I glanced over at Mario, who shrugged.

I grasped Candy’s arms as gently as I could and set her aside. “You’ve been great, but I’m done.”

Her face took on a tragic expression. “You can’t leave me now! I have to find my own jobs, and half the men didn’t care if it was me or some other bimbo that Jerry set them up with. I’m way, way down.” She tried to come close. “I even offered you a freebie.”

“I’ll take it,” Mario said.

Candy flashed into rage. “You’re a little putz,” she said.

He backed away, hands in the air. “Sorry!”

“I’m sure there are lots of prospects here,” I said. “I’m going to have to go.” From the corner of my eye, I could see a couple dudes watching our little exchange with their cue sticks standing on end like swords. “See, those guys over there seem awfully interested.”

She turned to look. “Uggh. Whatever. They think I’m an easy sorority girl.”

“Really?” Mario choked on a laugh.

Candy scowled at him. “You can just shut up now.”

I stuck my cue back in the rack. “I’m done here.” I took off across the bar, planning to just walk home if I had to. A few miles in the cold would chill me out.

Candy raced up to me, hanging on to my arm. I’d really had it. I couldn’t do anything for her. I tried to shake her off.

She tottered on her spike heels and fell back on her ass. The pair who’d been watching decided now was the time to get involved, and I saw trouble racing toward me like a monsoon.

Mario must have seen it too because he came up beside me and clapped me on the back. “Time to go, buddy. Right now.”

I turned to help Candy back up, but one of the men smacked my hand away and did it himself. Normally I would have jumped his ass immediately, but I had enough trouble for the moment and just headed for the door.

“I don’t think so,” one of the men said, laying his meaty hand on my shoulder to whip me around.

I predicted the blow and ducked below it, coming around his back. “I’m not interested in a fight,” I said. “So walk away.”

“If I have anything to do with it, you won’t be walking anywhere.” He charged at me, but he was clumsy and large, and I dodged him easily.

“Bartender’s on the line,” Mario warned. “Three-minute warning.”

I really did not want to get arrested today. The man circled around, embarrassment probably fueling him as much as his misplaced chivalry. His friend held on to Candy, who squirmed against him. I hope he kept holding her, as I didn’t need her tangled up in this. I flashed briefly to Rosa, aiming the Glock at Sideburns. Who knew? Maybe she was just as scrappy.

“Whatcha think, you need to run away from me?” the man asked, doing a poor imitation of a boxer, thrusting his fists in front of him.

“Seriously, bro, did you learn that from a video?” Mario asked.

“They’ve already called the cops,” I told the guy. “Unless you want to post bail tomorrow, bring it down.”

He charged again, but this time he got lucky, and when I dodged to the side, he picked the right direction and moved with me. He tackled me like a linebacker, knocking over a bar table as we went down.

I didn’t want to strike even a single blow, but I had to shut this guy down. He was trying to pin me from on top, which was about his only advantage due to his size, but a hard elbow to his groin sent him reeling to one side.

I jumped up, expecting the other guy to take his place, but he held on to Candy, his hand on her ass, and I guess she decided something was better than nothing, as she quit trying to get away.

“We done here?” I asked the guy. “Because we’re about to have an official visitor.”

He grimaced and refused to acknowledge me, getting up painfully from the floor.

“Time’s a’wasting.” Mario pushed me to the door.

We were pulling out of the lot when we saw the lights flashing down the street.

“Hell, you could have fucked with him a whole extra minute,” Mario said. “You’re losing your edge.”

I stared out the window. If I was going to make any of this work with Corabelle, or with a kid, I had to do a major life overhaul.

24: Corabelle

The doctor leaned over me the next day, pressing the stethoscope in various positions on my chest. I’d cleared my parents out of the room, tired of their omnipresence, and snatching any excuse to get a little privacy.

He stood up. “I’ll wait on the X-rays to be sure, but you’re sounding pretty good.”

“So going home today?”

“Let’s look at those images first.”

“So not today.”

He patted my shoulder. “Probably not today.”

I flung myself back against the raised bed. “I haven’t even coughed in hours. The last suction came up pretty empty.”

“All good signs. But relapse is common when you’ve been as far down as you were. Let’s take some precautions.”

“I am never going swimming again.”

He laughed. “I hear you want to go to art therapy.”

“You going to let me out of the room?”

He tucked the tablet under his arm. “I’ll clear it. But if you do start expelling phlegm again, don’t go. For everyone’s safety. Deal?”

“Deal.”

The moment he left, my parents filed back in, resuming their positions.

“So,” Dad said. “Any ‘get out of jail free’ cards?”

“Not yet. They’re going to look at the X-ray.”

Mom pulled out her knitting again, something new, probably another endless throw.

“You know, you guys don’t have to stay here. I’m going to be fine. Dad, don’t you have to get back to work?”

“I’m allowed to take sick time for family.” He snapped open a newspaper. “This is better than work any day.”

I reached for my backpack even though I was caught up on all my reading. Gavin had brought the astronomy work home, but I had no idea what the assignments were for my lit classes. My e-mails to the profs had just gotten kind replies of “Get well.” I didn’t want to lose those credit hours, and I couldn’t even imagine the work that was piling up. I’d write them again today, tell them I was up for writing the papers, at least.

Yet another new nurse came in and introduced herself as Helen. “The good news is, you can take a shower today.”

I threw back the covers. “Really?”

She opened the bathroom door. “Don’t get chilled. Make sure the water is good and hot, and dry your hair immediately.”

I was already turning on the faucets. I didn’t even care about the industrial shampoos. I could do it again later with nicer stuff.

“Remember there’s a help cord if you need someone.”

I nodded and waited impatiently for her to leave.

I closed the door and stripped off the infernal cotton gown I was so sick of. The spray was delicious, pounding and hot. I washed my hair, then washed it again, finally starting to feel like the sand grit was really gone.

I wished for Gavin to be with me, pressing against my back, his arms around me. We’d only showered together once in this brief time we’d been back together, but it was seared into my memory. The water had gleamed on his arms, running in rivulets along the indentations of his biceps. I’d been mesmerized by their trailing paths, and turned in to him, to see all the other places the water would go.

He’d had droplets on his eyelashes, little diamonds that flew off when he shook his head. He’d taken my heavy wet hair in his hands and twisted it up, turning me around again so he could run a washcloth across my back.

His lips followed the path, skimming across my shoulders and coming up to my neck. He released my hair over the opposite shoulder so his hands could come around, kneading my breasts, slippery with soap.

I could feel him hot and hard against my back and pressed into his body. We had never gotten far in a shower when we were young, either afraid of being caught when I lived at home, or later, in our own apartment, refraining due to my girth from the baby, and my clumsiness. But this, I could see how it could work.

One of his hands slid along my belly and down below, toying with the folds. My knees started to waver, but his other arm came around my waist, holding me solidly against him. He found the little nub he was searching for, and began to work it in lazy circles. I reached out to steady myself against the tile wall as the world tilted.

The water splattered against my skin, heightening everything. He spread me wider, probing more deeply, and a mewling sound squeezed out of my throat. The steam rose off my body, and he moved faster, pressing his hips into my back with every stroke of his fingers. I felt a dam threatening to burst and leaned forward, wanting more of him, all of him.

I wasn’t sure what to do about the height difference when he lifted my thigh to prop one foot on the side of the tub. I understood now, bending over. He braced my other foot with his so I wouldn’t slip, then guided himself into me. He was shockingly hot, waiting on the edge as I wasn’t as slippery as he was used to, but then he was in, thick and throbbing.

I had to keep my eyes open or I lost all sense of space, up and down, just skin, water, steam, and the pressure of his body both behind and inside me. His rhythm was steady, easy, and languorous as he moved with strength and power, holding me up, keeping us balanced, and still, easing his fingers against the bud.

I wanted it harder, faster, not sure I could take it without collapsing but needing to try. I pressed my palm into the tile, bracing myself so I could push into him, two opposite forces, crashing together, again and again.

My thigh was starting to quiver, so he picked up the rhythm, his fingers fluttering with practiced intent. His breath sped up, puffing against my ear, and that confirmation that he was feeling it too charged through me in a flash. The muscles tightened around his fingers and the pleasure began to spread, first in small ripples, then blasting out. I let out a small cry, and Gavin worked faster, easing his fingers away, holding my hips, and then he was over the top, groaning into my hair, and the shattering of reality began to fall in sparkles, like the water glittering in the spray.

We breathed together for a moment, unwilling to break apart. He wrapped both arms around my waist, his cheek on my back. I remembered feeling in that moment that we had gotten everything back, all of it, all of us, and because of that, baby Finn was not really lost. As long as Gavin and I were together, the pieces of Finn we carried were able to connect, and even the passage of time would not diminish the strength of those memories.

In the hospital shower, I felt like I was on fire, and that the steam came not from the spray, but the heat of my body. I wanted to be well, to be with Gavin, hold on to him, hold him tightly to me as he went through this mess with that woman. She would not trick him, or take him, or cause him guilt or pain or grief.

I would not let him fall.

* * *

A volunteer in a bright white dress came for me a few hours later. “I hear you’re going to do some art!” she said, rolling a wheelchair up beside my bed.

I’d traded the hospital gown for my mother’s velour sweatpants and flowered T-shirt, wishing I’d told Gavin to get me some clothes during one of his rides over. She had tiny feet, so I still had the nubby socks, but I was getting out of the room, and that was good enough for me.

“I didn’t know I was getting chauffeured,” I said.

“This is a high-class operation,” the woman said. “I understand you need this, though.” She passed me a blue surgical mask.

“Really?”

“You can’t run around collecting everyone’s germs.”

I tucked the elastic behind my ears, already wanting to stay back. But I had to ask Tina about the test, and this was the best way to make sure my parents weren’t around.

They waved as we rolled out. “Go shopping!” I called back. “Have some fun!” And give me some time to myself again, I thought, as we trundled down the hallway. They were definitely a devoted pair. I tried to imagine sitting in a hospital all day for my child, then remembered, I had. For seven terrible days.

The very idea that I’d forgotten this brought my exuberance of being out of the room to a crash. It probably felt the same as the times someone would ask my mom how many children she had. When she popped out “Just the one,” too quickly, she often cried afterward, as if neglecting to mention all the babies she had lost was some great failure, a disloyalty that struck her heart.

Because of our town’s size, this rarely happened near home. Everyone knew her history. But I particularly remembered a trip to the Grand Canyon, standing on the edge of a flat rock and looking over the massive crater in the earth. Another family had come up, four unruly boys, and the father had asked my dad to take a picture of his brood.

The woman had been friendly enough, thanking us. “What I’d give to only have one again!” she exclaimed, snatching at the littlest son, who seemed determined to slide off the rock to a ledge a few feet below. “Take my advice and don’t have any more!”

My mom managed a weak “I won’t,” but after they were gone, she’d sat on a bench and cried for ten minutes, which seemed like forever when I was just six. I didn’t know then what had set her off, and my dad waited beside her, an arm over her shoulder, looking out over the canyon like the gash in the earth was minuscule compared to the hole in their lives.

But I got it now, the wheelchair whirring along the waxed floor, passing people in various stages of distress, nurses, families, patients on beds moving through the corridors for MRIs or brain scans or EKGs. The full force of Gavin’s surgery hit me again. I might never be given the chance to express my number of children, including or excluding Finn based on the situation. My belly might stay empty for the rest of my days.

We passed through the hub, and I knew that on my old floor, the bereavement rooms were above me. On this hall, however, we were clearly in some pediatric ward. The walls were colorful, and the art framed on the wall was bright with happy images of circuses, animals, and girls in sequined costumes performing tricks on a trapeze.

The doors were all closed, however, so I didn’t see any of the small patients. We turned toward an atrium and then into a wide room lined with windows. Tina stood at a table, coaxing a couple smooth-headed children to wash their brushes. She’d apparently given up on the nice clothes like the sweater and skirt from before. Now she wore splattered jeans and a black cotton shirt.

“You can come back for these when they are dry,” she said. She hung a wet image of the sun crying red tears on a line with several other paintings. “If you forget, I’ll bring them by your room tonight.”

One of the children had an oxygen mask and moved a rolling cart around the room with ease. I tried to imagine being the parent of one of these small patients with long-term illnesses and lost childhoods, and found that maybe in the hierarchy of parental grief, I had actually been spared.

“We’re just finishing up with the short-stack set,” Tina said. “Come on in.”

A couple nurses in monkey scrubs appeared in the door. “Ready?” one of them asked the girl with the mask.

“I want to stay here with Tina,” she whined.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tina said. “And maybe we can use some clay.”

The girl clutched Tina’s leg, and I witnessed, just for a split second, how this affected her. I saw the same mental image, the figure of her own child, who would never perform such a simple act of attachment.

The volunteer rolled me up to the table. “Someone will be back for you,” she said. “Have a good time.”

“Thank you.”

Tina extricated herself from the girl, who was led away by the nurse. She began to pick up the various cups of gray water.

“They love you already,” I said.

She dumped the water in a little silver sink and rinsed out the cups. “The kid classes are okay. The grown-up ones are…interesting.”

“I didn’t realize you’d be doing kids too.”

“I knew. That’s where the art room is, anyway. Nothing like this on the other floors.” She pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and began drying off the table.

The room had emptied. “Am I your only patient?”

“I doubt it. Yesterday I had Albert and Clementine. I’m pretty sure they aren’t getting out anytime soon.” She glanced at the clock. “They were about five minutes late yesterday too. I think it’s meds time, so they have to wait.”

I wanted to ask more about them, but figured she had some confidentiality clause anyway. “Are you liking it here?”

She tweaked her two pigtails, tightening them against her head. “The kids are fun, though messy. Their program is new. Sabrina hadn’t had time for them. There are lots of kids. They could easily fill my day.”

“Is it hard?”

She tugged an antibacterial wipe from a container and sat in a chair opposite me to scrub down the table. “A little. I swear I see Peanut in every one. I mean, I know he couldn’t have lived. He was way too small. But he would have had a lot of problems. He could have ended up someplace like this.”

“Finn too. Even if he had the heart surgery, it would have been an uphill battle. They have to do three increasingly difficult repairs as they grow.”

“Makes me realize how hard some parents have it.” She closed up the paint palettes and stacked them in the center of the table. “I’m not sure which is harder. Having them die right away, or having them for months or years and then having to let them go.”

“It’s all hard.”

I didn’t know how much more time we’d have alone, or if we’d get any time after, so I decided to plunge right in with my question. “So, have you learned your way around yet?”

She shrugged. “Somewhat. I get the overall lay of the land. There’s too many people to meet to know them all.”

“What department would handle doing a paternity test?”

Her hands stilled on the plastic paint boxes. “Who’s asking?”

“I am. For Gavin.”

Her pale eyebrows shot up. “What’s going on?”

I stood up from the wheelchair so I could walk over to the windows. “He says there’s this girl who claims her kid is his.” I turned back around and leaned on the counter that lined the wall. “He just wants to clear his name.”

“You don’t have to go to a hospital. I think there are outfits that do it anywhere.”

“But I’m here. And I can’t get out right now to be with him.”

“You mean, to see her. And the kid.”

I fingered a stack of art paper, straightening the corners. “I want to see her, yes.”

“And the kid. To torture yourself.”

“Maybe.”

She walked over next to me and picked up a piece of the paper. “Your first assignment in art therapy is to draw a picture of how you think this meeting will go.”

I frowned at the paper. “You realize I can’t draw.”

“Do what you can.”

“Will you find a way to do the test?”

“I will ask around. I’m sure someone here does it.”

I accepted the sheet of manila stock, heavy and textured. “Thank you.”

A man in pale blue scrubs, beefy and no-nonsense, led an elderly man and a middle-aged, slightly hunched woman into the room.

“Hello, Albert and Clementine,” Tina said. “Come in.”

Albert looked over the room, tall and lean, almost skeletal in gray flannel pants and a soft blue checked shirt. His face was grizzled, dotted with patchy bits of gray beard, and his eyes were sunken, pale, and bewildered, as if he had no idea how he had come to this place.

Albert moved to sit in one of the chairs, but Clementine punched him in the arm. “That’s mine.” She plunked into the chair, bending tight over the surface of the table. Her hair was long and wild, solid gray from her scalp to the line that marked her last dye job, a deep brown. I wondered what had happened to them both. They both seemed shadows of some other person, the brighter, healthier self they once were.

Albert moved on to one of the other seats. The chairs weren’t child-sized, but they were small, so when he folded his tall frame into one, his knees bumped against the table.

“This is Corabelle,” Tina said. “She’s joining us today.”

Clementine didn’t look up, snatching at the stack of paper and grabbing two colored pencils, orange and purple. She immediately began scrawling fervently across the page. When I tried to look at her work, she covered it with her arm, eyeing me with suspicion. I looked away.

“What are we doing today, teach?” Albert asked.

Tina passed him a piece of paper. “Yesterday we drew an image of something from our childhood. Today I’d like you to show me a place you’ve been that struck you as interesting. You can use the colored pencils again like yesterday,” she cast a quick glance at Clementine, “or you can use watercolors.”

Albert considered his choices. When he reached for the palette of paints, Tina hurried to the sink to fill a cup with water. As she shut off the faucet, Albert was already poking the still-damp colors with his brush. “Don’t work worth a damn,” he said, making a brown trail across the page.

“Get it wet,” Tina said. “Here you go.” She set the cup in front of him.

I didn’t realize how much his hands were shaking until he aimed his brush for the cup, missed it completely, then knocked it over. I quickly lifted my page as the water trailed across the table.

“I’ll get it!” Tina hopped up again, snatching a handful of paper towels. She sopped up the water, and Albert covered his eyes with his trembling fingers. “I’m sorry, miss. So sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Tina said. “You should have seen the disaster after the little tykes came through.”

He stared at his hands, quivering like flags in the wind. “I once had powerful hands,” he said.

“You still do,” Tina said. “Remember what I told you. Work within your limitation, and set your expectation outside of it.”

Albert stared at the page and the wavering line dissecting it. He stabbed at the water cup again, now holding only a fraction at the bottom, and dipped it in the blue. He closed his eyes a moment, as if willing his hand to still, and then the most remarkable thing happened. His hand still shook, but even so, the brush moved across the page with rapid skill, quickly sketching out an incredibly detailed and realistic ruin of a medieval castle.

I was just wondering why it was blue when he mixed the brush into the gray and began to add shadows and texture. I realized the color was a reflection of the time of day. I looked up at Tina, flabbergasted at the haunting image springing from his page. She watched him too, a small smile crossing her lips, and I knew, really knew, that she was doing the right thing being here. This man needed her. Maybe he was already an artist, maybe he had Parkinson’s or some other illness, and this led him to being here. She was going to show him the way.

She tapped the table above my blank paper. “You haven’t started your assignment,” she whispered.

Next to the amazing painting that was already filling Albert’s page, I felt horribly self-conscious sketching out an image of Gavin, myself, then another woman and a small boy standing by a counter. I sheepishly wrote the words “Testing Clinic” in a rectangle over our heads to signify the location.

As Tina folded her arms to show I wasn’t through yet, assuming a teacher pose that must come naturally to those who were meant for it, I began filling in details. A receptionist, folders on the desk. A little picture showing a happy family like most people had in their workspaces.

Clementine slammed her pencils to the table. “Done,” she said, pushing her paper at Tina, a series of alternating color blocks, like a chessboard. “Can I go back now?”

“You know we have to talk about our work,” Tina said. “Would you like to sculpt while Albert and Corabelle finish theirs?”

Clementine scowled at the table. Tina turned to the long line of counters and pulled out a tub of clay. I focused back on my paper. I didn’t know what else to do to it. I colored in the other woman’s pink skirt, making it a bit longer since I’d spitefully made it so short. I ignored the small figure on the end and focused on turning my dress into one I had worn to the homecoming dance our senior year, before we knew Finn was coming, when our future still spread before us as something simple and easy.

I began to sketch in Gavin’s outfit from that night, gray pants and a blue shirt. I knew it well, as that was one of our last images together before I got pregnant, posed in front of an arch of balloons. We’d missed prom and hadn’t gotten a wedding. That year was such a blur of SATs and studying, then the pregnancy, and moving to our little place. As I filled in the color, I refused to let my memory touch on the harder days, after Finn’s birth. I switched instead to an image of this other woman, pushing alone in a hospital, having a baby with no father. At least for that part, I was surrounded by love and support.

The boy was three, Gavin had said. How had she gone so long without designating someone as the dad? So many questions. I pushed too hard on the pencil and the tip snapped off, leaving a tiny hole in the page. I set it down. “I think I’m done,” I told Tina.

Albert had also finished, dabbing the brush in the gray water, trying to rinse it out.

“I’ll take that,” Tina said, moving the cup to the sink.

Clementine punched at her clay, flattening it out on the table. Her banging fists sent vibrations through the surface. The three of us watched her a moment, intent on her work, until she realized she had our attention and frowned, covering the pink oval with her arms. “What?” she asked.

“We’ll start with Albert.” Tina pointed to his painting of the castle, waves now frothing up against the walls. The blue-gray ruins were cast in shadow on one side, and the blackness spread out in dissipating swirls, like dark spirits escaping. “What is this castle to you?” Tina asked.

“My heart,” he answered promptly.

“The empty ruins?” Tina asked.

“Full of ghosts.”

“I think most of our hearts feel like that at times.” Tina looked down at the image. “Is it how you feel now or most of the time?”

“I will feel this way until I die,” Albert said, his thumb tapping erratically against his leg.

“Was this castle once filled with laughter?” Tina asked.

Albert cleared his throat. “A long time ago.”

“Do you think you can find one small room in it to hold some joy? Just a tiny space?” Tina pushed the paper back at him.

Albert stared at the image, shaking his head, but Tina picked up a new brush, dipped it in the damp red paint, and passed it to him. “I think it’s already there. I think you refused to color it in.”

Even Clementine sat up to look as Albert held the quivering brush over the painting. I stifled a little gasp behind my mask. Tina had been right. In one small window, the shape of an empty hurricane lamp just barely registered in the deeper grays of the shadows.

“Light it,” Tina said, but I couldn’t see how Albert could paint something so small, so fine, due to the intense shaking of his hand.

He didn’t seem to think so either, but then he aimed, and the brush fell true, filling the space inside the lamp with a warm glow, the red blending into the gray. With another gentle swish, the color spread in a halo above the shadow, diminishing the dark in a rosy haze.

It was just one small window in a giant castle, but the effect of the small bit of red in a gray-and-blue image was to draw your eye and focus your attention. The painting changed completely in tone and meaning with that one addition. Instead of leaving you feeling desolate and alone, it gave you hope.

25: Gavin

We couldn’t pull this day off without Jenny. I waited downstairs in the lobby for her to appear in her Kermit coat. She would head up first and take Corabelle’s parents to the apartment, ostensibly to pack some things up for when Corabelle got discharged.

Then Corabelle and I would come down. We’d meet up with Tina and all go to the lab on the first floor, just outside emergency, to have the test done.

I didn’t know what Corabelle might say to Rosa, or what point there was to seeing the boy if he would prove not to be mine. But I wasn’t going to deny her, not now, now that she knew. And truth be told, I was glad to have her.

Rosa would be going back to Tijuana after this, although I didn’t know how she was going to manage the boy if her brother kicked her out of the apartment.

God, it was so screwed up.

I saw the pink hair bobbing before she even got to the doors. No green coat today, but a gray wool number that looked like something my mother would wear over black tights and boots. “What happened to you?” I asked. “You look like someone forgot to color you in.”

She spun around. “My grown-up-girl coat. My mother got it for me, thinking she could convince me to look normal.”

“It’s working.”

“Yeah, I figured I’d tone it down for Cora’s family. When in Boringsville, act boring.”

We threaded through the hallways to the elevators.

“You ready for your baby-daddy test?”

I shrugged. “I’m ready for this to be over.”

“Cora seems to be rallying. Her texts are all about the skanky ho and sending her packing.”

I smacked the elevator button. “I think that’s your spin on her position.”

Jenny pulled out a little mirror and poked her fingers at the corners of her lashes, where she had enough eyeliner to write the Constitution. “Too much?” she asked.

“It’s you.”

She snapped it closed. “True. And sure, skanky ho might have been my reinterpretation. But she’s definitely got your back on this.”

The doors slid open and a tall doctor poking at an iPad glanced up.

“Holy hospital beds!” Jenny said. “Can we get a room?”

The man’s face filled with confusion. “I’m sorry?”

I pulled on Jenny’s elbow to drag her to the back corner of the elevator.

“But I’m feeling sort of weak!” Jenny said.

I actually wanted to laugh, but I felt sorry for the flummoxed doctor. I couldn’t unleash the full force of Jenny on some unsuspecting stranger. “Remember the TA,” I said, nudging her.

“I’m into polyamory,” Jenny said, staring at the man’s shoulders. “We should ALL be into polyamory.”

The elevator lurched up, and I leaned forward to tap the correct floor.

“I’m going wherever HE’S going,” Jenny said, peering at the illuminated numbers.

“Not today,” I said, holding on to her arm when the doors opened and the doctor stepped out.

Jenny sighed. “All right, all right. I’m taking this one for the team. But I’ll be on the lookout for Dr. Malachi Patinsky.” She pulled out her compact to check her eyes again. “This isn’t the right look for the future Mrs. Dr. Malachi Patinsky.” She softened the hard edge into a lighter smudge. “There.”

I shook my head. “You’re something else.”

She snapped the mirror shut. “That I am. I’m going to have to start visiting Corabelle more often. Daily, in fact.” She stuck the silver case in her pocket. “You going to the star party tonight?”

“Not sure. Corabelle insists I go to class like normal.”

“You skipped this morning.”

“I know. I couldn’t make myself drive over there with this hanging over my head.”

“Makes sense to me. They didn’t talk about anything I couldn’t understand. So you know it was pointless.”

The elevator opened on our floor. “I think you don’t give yourself enough credit.”

She stepped out ahead of me. “I know. I just like playing the dingbat and lowering everyone’s expectations.”

“Somebody’s going to see right through that ruse.” We turned down the hall. “But probably not that TA.”

“Nah. He likes me dumb. But not Dr. Malachi. I would be smart for him.”

Corabelle’s door stood wide open. She was alone for the moment, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, dressed in the jeans and sweater I’d brought early that morning to spare her having to wear her mother’s clothes. She looked practically normal, other than her surroundings. This might be her last day. We were hoping.

“Where are the parental units?” Jenny asked, flopping on the end of the bed.

“Coffee,” Corabelle said. “They’ll be back in a sec.”

“Game plan?” Jenny asked. “Because there’s a doctor in the house I want to convince to come out and play.”

“I bet,” Corabelle said. “But he might not have enough time for you.”

“That’s why I’ll pick three. A man for every shift.” She twirled her pink hair thoughtfully. “Maybe a heart surgeon, a respiratory therapist, and…hmmm. An anesthesiologist.”

“That’s just weird,” Corabelle said.

“I like diversity.” Jenny jumped up and paced the room. “Okay, so I snatch the Rotheford clan and take them to your place. Let them pack.” She whirled around. “Anything I need to steer them away from? Porn? Lube stash?” She glanced at me. “Manly unmentionables?”

“Nope,” Corabelle said. “Just have them pack things in case I have to stay a lot longer. Be your usual Jenny self. Deliberate over outfits. Be annoying.”

“Hey!” Jenny plopped back on the bed. “I’m a curiosity. Never an annoyance.”

I grunted, and Jenny shot daggers at me. “You people do not appreciate originality.”

“I’m about to appreciate it a whole lot,” Corabelle said, passing her the keys to her apartment. “We need at least an hour. So no rush.”

“Got it.” Jenny stuck the keys in her pocket. “So you going to be all right? Facing the beast?” She looked back and forth between us.

Corabelle uncurled her legs and stood next to me. “We’re a fortress.” She tucked her hand inside the crook of my arm, and I held on to it. “Impenetrable.”

Her parents came back, and the room erupted into a chorus of introductions, air kisses, and over-the-top Jennyisms. I checked my phone. Five minutes until our appointment in the lab.

Jenny caught my eye. “Well, let’s get this show on the bandwagon!” She headed for the door. “I have to take my new favorite mom and dad to hit the town.”

When they were gone, Corabelle squeezed my hand. “Now we just have to make sure the nurses don’t try and stop me.” She moved into the bathroom to run a brush through her hair, frowning at the reflection. “I wanted to put on makeup, but that seemed too suspicious.”

I leaned in the doorway. “You don’t need it.”

She faced me, and in her expression I saw all the anxiety that I felt. “But she—”

I pulled her in to me. “She’s just someone I once knew. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect.”

Her arms came around me, and I hung on to her. In the mirror, her black hair fell down her shoulders, covering my arm. I examined my reflection to be sure no trace of uncertainty would betray me. This was just something to get through. It would go our way.

26: Corabelle

As soon as we had successfully passed the nurse station and gotten to the elevator bank, I pulled the blue surgical mask off my face.

“You sure that’s safe?” Gavin asked.

“I don’t care. I can’t handle it right now.”

He nodded, his fingers gripping mine. His face was unreadable. I wasn’t sure what the moment meant for him, how certain he might be that the boy wasn’t his. I imagined having his past meeting his present like this had to be difficult.

Tina waited for us outside the entrance to the lab. “Paperwork,” she said, holding out a clipboard. “I assume you want the accredited legally admissible test or you would have just bought an over-the-counter one at a drugstore,” she said.

“Yeah. I looked at those,” Gavin said.

“They take too long,” I said. “This is next day, right?”

Tina nodded. “And it will hold up in court if you need it. It’s $200. You have that?”

“Yeah.” Gavin took the clipboard. “Should we go in?” He took a step toward the gray door. Through a narrow window I could see a counter with a woman sorting through a stack of papers.

Tina stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Rosa’s already here. That’s why I waited outside. You ready for this?” She was looking at me.

I refused to let my chest get tight or for my breathing to be labored. “I am.”

“Okay, here we go.” She pulled on the handle and walked in first.

Gavin followed her, but I found my shoes were rooted to the floor. I had all these images of this woman in my mind. Spangly shirt, tight skirts, stripper shoes. I wasn’t sure how to manage the real thing, an actual flesh-and-blood woman who knew Gavin as intimately as I did.

Gavin sensed my hesitation and held open the door. “I love you,” he said, loud enough for anyone to hear it, and this was enough to force my legs to move again.

There was no mistaking who she was, because the line of chairs was empty save for one woman and a little boy. My throat tightened as my gaze moved between them. She had on a simple flowered dress covered in a teal coat that clashed with the print. Her shoes were worn and flat. Her hair, though, was lustrous, long, and black. I couldn’t miss the similarity of it to mine, and somehow this comforted me rather than make my indignation rise up.

She wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t plain either. Just a girl, a little soft in the middle, like I had been at first after Finn, extra weight quickly lost in the pain and misery that followed.

My eyes went to the boy, but this was so much harder that pain shot through my chest. He was small with such big eyes. He held a truck in one hand, bulky and plastic. The other clutched his mother. His hair was unruly and dark, covering the tops of his ears and touching the upturned collar of his puffy brown coat, a couple sizes too large for him.

I knew Tina and Gavin were at the counter, and my art therapy image was playing out. But it was all so different, Gavin at the desk and me facing this woman and her child.

She had not greeted Gavin but just sat in her chair. “It’s just a cotton swab,” I said, not even sure why I was saying it. “It won’t hurt.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I thought it would be a blood test,” I went on, knowing I was rambling. “And I knew that would be hard, watching him cry. But it’s not. It won’t be.”

Tina turned to us and squeezed my arm. “You okay?”

“Yes.” I turned to her. “I’m fine.”

“Rosa?” Tina said. “You want to bring Manuel back for the swab?” She moved toward the corridor past the desk.

When Rosa stood, the boy seemed to panic. “No no no no!” he cried. She leaned down and picked him up, letting his knees settle on either side of her hips, a movement so natural for other mothers that it made my stomach quiver. I’d only held my son once. Just once. Long enough to watch him breathe a few last times. She had been holding her boy his whole life.

I felt my control falling away. I wasn’t going to be able to keep my emotions reined in. The tears behind my eyes triggered all the other sinuses to leak. My throat was gooey. I needed to cough. There might be gunk. I felt overwhelmed.

Gavin turned from the counter. “Hey, little buddy. Remember me? You’re going to be fine.”

Manual quieted, his head buried in Rosa’s hair. If Gavin went up to him, if he touched him, I knew I would pass out. I shouldn’t have come. I could not witness this.

Tina saw me and hurried back over. She glanced at the woman behind the desk. “Kelly, go ahead and take them back,” she said. “I’m going to sit out here.”

“Don’t you have a class?” I asked. “Won’t Clementine and Albert be waiting?” I felt like I was in a daze, and I just needed to keep talking.

“You’re not looking good,” Tina said. “Rosa, you go on back with Kelly.”

Manuel began to whimper, but Gavin stepped away without touching him.

“Let’s sit,” Tina said again, and this time she pulled me down on the chair. “I don’t want to wreck your recovery.”

“The nurses don’t know I’m out,” I said absently.

“Okay,” Tina said. “That’s fine. We’ll get you back up.”

Rosa and the boy disappeared down the hall. Only when they were gone did Gavin turn around.

“Shit, Corabelle, you okay?” He rushed over.

“I think it’s a lot for her,” Tina said.

I shook her hand away. “I’m FINE. This is HARD. I’ll be fine.”

Gavin sat back in the chair and expelled a rush of air. “Yeah. This is tough.”

“This will end,” Tina said. “Waiting will not be easy either. You two should be together.”

I leaned my head back against the wall. “If I could get out of this hospital.”

“They didn’t put you on my roster for tomorrow,” Tina said. “So it’s looking good that this is your last day, or tomorrow morning. Did the doctor say?”

“The last X-ray was fine. Nobody’s signed off on anything, though.”

“You still taking antibiotics?” she asked.

“Nasty oral ones. I think they are what make me dizzy.”

“Well, hopefully soon.” She stood up as Kelly reappeared in the waiting room.

The boy came out next, a lollipop in his mouth. Then Rosa, holding the truck, looking relieved. “It not so hard,” she said to Gavin.

He stood up, and then it happened. Rosa glanced up at him, shyly, with a small smile. I knew the look, the emotion behind it. For a moment I was her, and I could feel all the things she felt, relief that the hard part was behind her, pleasure that he stood up out of respect for her, and yes, there it was, that rush of unmitigated love.

God, she was in love with him.

I turned back to Gavin, my heart smashing against my chest. He didn’t see it, or wouldn’t see it. How long had she felt this way? He said they had been together three years ago, but it must have gone on. She couldn’t have felt this way without seeing him since then.

Suddenly I doubted everything. His story. The truth. The child not being his. This was not a woman who was making something up for gain. She was following her heart. She had options. She was choosing this one.

The boy pushed on his mother until she looked down. He passed her the lollipop and dug through his pockets.

“¿Que necessitas, Manuelito?” she asked.

We all watched him as he clumsily shoved his hands into the fat pockets, finally extracting a small square package of gum. “¡Chicle!” he said, holding it up to Gavin.

The expression on Gavin’s face changed into something I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen. Surprise and amusement and disbelief and a very tender sort of pride.

“You remembered?” he asked.

The boy pressed the package into Gavin’s hand. “Yellow! You like!”

Gavin’s jaw clenched in a way I was used to seeing only when he was angry, and I realized he was holding in another sort of emotion now, raw and hard for him to manage. He was in love with this boy, it was so plain. And here this woman looked from the man to her son with such joy, like everything was clicking into perfect place.

I did not get up. I did not make a scene. I did not cry. And outwardly, I just held myself together, like I had years ago, watching another drama unfold, one that would not end happily, but in grief. And I prepared myself to lose everything all over again.

27: Gavin

Even if Rosa had put the boy up to it, I knew this moment had changed me. I had this taste, this very small understanding, of what it was like to be a father.

No matter what happened with the test, I would have to help them. For all I knew, Rosa would be out on the streets after taking her son back. The image of the woman sitting on the curb with the child clutching her was still very much on my mind. Tijuana was not kind to its poor.

Rosa seemed to be in some sort of a trance, and I figured it was what Mario had said — she had some sort of attachment to me I would have to deal with. That didn’t matter. I had Corabelle and that was that. But I could help them. I had to do that much.

I turned to Corabelle, who looked even more frail and sick than she had coming down. “We have to get her back to the room,” I said.

Tina stepped up, missing nothing. “I’m going to take her up. You still have to do your swab.”

She shook Corabelle’s arm. “Let’s get you back up.” Corabelle just sort of obeyed, not really looking at anyone directly.

I didn’t want to leave her, but Tina squeezed by me, and I stepped out of her way. As Corabelle came through, I pulled her to me, her head against my chest. “I’ll be right there,” I said. “I promise.”

She nodded against my shirt, and I let her go. Something wasn’t right with her, but I’d be there in just a minute, away from all this drama. We’d fix whatever it was. This meeting couldn’t have been easy for her.

Rosa looked at me uncertainly. “Gavin? We come here tomorrow? For answer?”

“Yes, back here. I think we have to wait for afternoon.”

“So, three? Three o’clock?”

The door behind us whooshed open. “Gavin?” It was the lab woman, Kelly. “You need to come back for your swab.”

Rosa moved away. “See you tomorrow, Gavin.”

I turned back to the lab. I needed to get this swab done and be back upstairs. Corabelle was more important. Rosa had already proven she could handle herself.

I turned back to get my first, and surely my only, paternity test.

28: Corabelle

The elevator trundled up, but when the doors opened to my floor, I didn’t want to go. “Can we go to the art room instead? Don’t you have class?”

“Not right now. I arranged all this around my schedule.” Tina held the doors. “I really think you should rest a bit. That wasn’t an easy scene.”

I backed farther into the corner. “I’ll go to the cafeteria then. I don’t want to see my parents.” I hesitated. “Or Gavin right now.”

Tina pulled her hand in and let the doors close. “All right.” She pressed another button.

“I like what you said to Albert yesterday, about the light in the window.”

Tina tucked a loose bit of hair into her pigtail. “I was blowing smoke, mainly.”

“No, it was exactly right. No matter how hard things get, we have to find some tiny space for happiness. We have to light a lamp.”

Tina leaned against the rail, holding on to the bar. “Well, that’s the only way it worked for me. The one time I let it all get snuffed, I wound up in the hospital with Frankenstein arms.”

“That woman is in love with Gavin.”

“I saw that.”

“So clearly whatever’s been going on has been going on for a long time.”

The doors opened again, and Tina led us out into the hall. “Let me tell you what I saw. A woman in a very dire situation, desperately hoping that she can be saved. Maybe she loves him. Maybe it’s just that he’s the only thing in her life that gives her hope.”

This stopped me cold. “So Gavin is her light.”

I could tell Tina hadn’t intended that conclusion. Her tiny pale eyebrows shot up her forehead. “No, no. The boy is that. She just has to find a way to keep him. Gavin is her way.”

“What if it’s his?”

“Then she’ll get help.”

I kept walking. Tina opened her classroom, and I breathed in the lingering scent of clay, paint, and cleaners. I had gotten so accustomed to the antiseptic medicinal smell of my room that only when I went somewhere else did I remember that the rest of the world was still out there with its variety of sights, sounds, and smells.

I sat in a small chair, bracing my elbows on the table. I felt fine, actually, no cough, just the lingering heaviness in my chest and the pressure in my head. Nothing I couldn’t manage. I should probably go back to the room just to make sure I wasn’t being told to go home.

Maybe in a minute. I needed to figure this out.

“Tina, what was your worst moment? Rock bottom? I keep thinking that it was when Finn died, or when Gavin left, or when I got kicked out of school, but then these things keep happening. And I think there is still something worse. I don’t want things to keep getting worse.”

She unlocked a drawer and began pulling out boxes of markers. “Peanut dying actually wasn’t the worst. That was peaceful. And the hospital after I cut my wrists was bad, but the crap was all spread out then. No one part stood out. I had some bad times going back to the high school.” She held the boxes against her chest. “I got called ‘Baby Killer’ because no one knew what had happened.”

“Oh my God, Tina!”

She spread the boxes across the surface of the table. “Not a fab time of my life, for sure.” She sat in the chair opposite me. “I guess if I had to pick a moment, it was when I got home from the hospital, after they stitched me up, and I realized I had no one. My boyfriend had ditched me. My parents were totally freaked and couldn’t even look at me. I’d had to leave the school for pregnant teens since, you know, my baby was dead.”

She drew lazy circles across the table with her fingers. “So yeah, it was walking into my place and realizing I was completely on my own.”

“I’ve had that moment,” I said. “Twice.” My head felt heavy and I rested it in my palm. “After the funeral, when I realized Gavin was gone. Then when I had to pack up my dorm room and get in my car with no idea where I’d settle down again. When I got to San Diego, I didn’t even have a reservation at a hotel.”

“Starting over is hard. But it’s sort of freeing too, isn’t it? No ties. No history. You can be whoever you want to be.”

“But you’re still the same old you, underneath.”

“True.” Tina reached to one end of the table for a stack of construction-paper packages. She dragged the top one in front of her and tore open the plastic wrap. “I never could manage to get away from myself.”

“Whatever happened to that boy, the baby’s father?”

“Beats me. He got some other girlfriend before I had the bandages off.”

“So you didn’t feel any connection to him?”

Tina laid out pieces of paper in front of each chair. “Sure. I actually tried to get him back. Didn’t realize he was poking some other hole.”

“And now?”

“None. It’s like Peanut was an immaculate conception. Mine and only mine.”

“Maybe that would be easier.”

“Maybe. It’s hard to let go of that feeling that you were the only two who ever really knew the baby. I guess when it comes right down to it, maybe only the mother really gets it. We carried them all that time, after all.”

I idly turned the page in front of me in circles. “Gavin was connected. He was always very into the pregnancy, and feeling Finn kick, and decorating the room. I took it for granted.”

“You were lucky then.”

“Really? Because when he left, it all felt like a lie.”

“I think the people who feel the most also blow the hardest.”

“Well, he feels something toward that boy.”

Tina reached across the table to still my paper. “Let’s see how tomorrow goes. If he’s not the father, I really think Rosa is going to disappear completely, looking for another way out.”

I hoped she was right.

The door swung open, startling us both. A head popped in, dark haired, immaculate, and masculine in a way you normally see on a movie screen. “Oh, sorry, I was looking for—” he consulted a piece of paper. “Tina? The art teacher?”

Tina stood up. “That’s me.”

The rest of him came through the door, traditional in a white coat, striding in with a confident air. He definitely noticed Tina. She stood a little on the defiant side, arms crossed, pigtails straight out on either side of her head. She couldn’t have been more different from him in striped stockings, a little knit skirt, and a knotted-up sweater adorned with splatters of paint.

He paused a moment, taking her in, and the spark that flew out of him couldn’t have been more obvious if it had lit up the room. Tina saw it, one eyebrow going up, her mouth quirked in amusement. She was going to chew him up and spit him out.

“I — uh, well, hello.” He extended a hand. I had a feeling he wasn’t often at a loss for words. “I’m Dr. Marks — uh, Darion. Call me Darion.”

“Okay, Dr. Darion. Nice to meet you.” Tina shook his hand exceedingly briefly, dropping it like it was foul. “Can I help you with something?”

This seemed to snap him out of his confusion. “Yes, I have a patient, a girl, Cynthia.” He passed a paper to her. “She’ll be coming in to see you. She’s, well, maybe we should talk about her.” He glanced at me. “When you have a chance.”

I stood up. “Don’t mind me. Just was getting my own friendly therapy chat.”

“No, no, I have rounds. I’ll stop by later.” Darion moved to the door. “You’ll see her at the end of the day. Review the notes. Then we can talk.” He paused, as if sensing he was not extending all the courtesy he should. “What time is convenient for you?”

Tina glanced at the page. “She’s coming in at four, so maybe three-thirty?”

Darion nodded. “Yes. Great. I’ll come by again then.” He seemed to have an inspiration. “Unless you’d like to go down for some coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” Tina said. “And you probably shouldn’t either.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “My doctor said it’s bad for me.”

“Yes, of course.” He straightened his tie. “Here, then. Three-thirty.”

“Sharp,” Tina said. “My time is valuable.”

I hid a smile behind my hand. Tina was a real piece of work.

Darion nodded again. “Yes. Will do. Thank you.” He opened the door and disappeared.

When it was closed, I burst out, “Tina! Did that hot doctor just ask you to coffee?”

She shrugged. “Doctors. Lawyers. Musicians. Day workers. People are people.”

“You’re not interested?”

She folded up the note he’d given her and stuck it in her skirt pocket. “I might do him. Once. Twice if he is worth it.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s about as far as it goes with me.”

“Since the baby.” I got that. I hadn’t dated either until Gavin returned.

“Since forever. I was screwed up before, and I’m more screwed up now.” She picked up the stacks of paper and moved them to the counter. “Some therapist, eh? Or ‘art teacher,’ I guess.”

“He insulted you.”

“He called it like he saw it. I’m not exactly more than a glorified babysitter.”

“You seriously think so? I saw you with Albert. You were brilliant.”

“So I have a few moments. I’m not going to interest Dr. Darion any longer than anyone else.” She came around the table. “Anyway, time to get you back. You ready? Gavin’s probably already tearing the hospital apart looking for you.”

“You don’t have to take me up.”

Tina came up and threaded her arm through mine. “Of course I do. Because if Gavin isn’t behaving, I’m the only one scrappy enough to actually make a dent in that pretty face.”

We headed back down the halls, past the cheerful paintings and rooms full of critically ill children, and once again I remembered that we all had our difficulties, our challenges, our heartaches, and our tragedies. The most important thing was letting people in, allowing others to be there for you, and no matter how dark things got, to harbor that one last light.

29: Corabelle

“There she is!” My mom’s voice carried over the general hubbub in my room as Tina dropped me off at the door.

Inside, my parents, Jenny, Gavin, and a nurse waited.

“Go on another jaunt?” the nurse asked, leading me back to the bed to sit down so she could strap the blood pressure cuff on my arm.

“I’m feeling fine,” I said.

“Your last X-ray looked very good,” the nurse said. “I think we’re going to send you home with the last round of antibiotics. We’ll want you to follow up with your regular doctor in three days.”

“Okay.” The cuff swelled against my arm. I felt surrounded by people. I looked over the nurse at Gavin, standing in the corner, his face unreadable, his arms crossed.

Jenny bounced around the room, picking up books, gathering the trinkets and gifts that had accumulated. “I guess we didn’t have to do much packing after all!”

“I loved your little apartment,” Mom said. “So cozy.”

The nurse released the cuff.

“Can I go back to class tomorrow?” I asked.

“I’d hold off a couple more days. We can get a letter for you.”

“She’s not going to obey you,” Jenny said. “That girl’s got a hard-on for school.” She clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes like saucers as she stared at my parents. “I mean, she loves class.”

“Then you make sure she wears one of these,” the nurse said, tugging another hideous blue surgical mask from a box under the sink. “I leave it to you to make sure it happens.”

Jenny accepted the mask by the string, holding it like it was a dead rat. “Whatever you say, nurse-lady.” She turned it around. “Maybe I could break out my BeDazzler. It could use a few accessories.”

My father harrumphed and even the nurse barely held in her laugh. “We’ll be back with some papers and discharge instructions.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

The room felt more manageable when she left. My father clapped his hands. “So, a celebratory dinner?”

My mom hopped up from the sofa. “Arthur, she can’t be out in public. The germs!”

“So, celebratory takeout at your apartment?” Dad amended.

“You want me to go get your car?” Gavin asked.

“I have mine!” Jenny said. “And Gavin has his Harley.”

“His what?” My dad’s voice echoed off the walls.

“Uh-oh,” Jenny said. “Sorry.”

Mom passed Dad a duffel bag. “Arthur, leave it be. Hold this while I pack Corabelle’s things.” She began taking the items Jenny had collected and stuffing them in the bag.

I stood up and walked over to Gavin, both wanting him alone and not wanting the bustle to end, an easy distraction from the difficult morning. I felt better than I had walking out of the lab waiting room. Between Tina and Dr. Darion, and Jenny’s flubs, I could see life was moving on, going forward. It never did completely stop, no matter what was happening, what life drama was unfolding.

He held on to me as we watched my parents and Jenny pack, his arms tight on my waist, my head tucked under his chin. I was surrounded by people who cared. We created this web, interweaving, and somehow I had to trust that it would not let me fall.

30: Gavin

Corabelle paused on the last few steps of the stairwell, holding her chest. I stood behind her, pretty pissed at myself for letting her talk me into this.

“There will be about ten people lined up to kill me if anyone knows I let you come here,” I told her, my hand pressed against her back. “And I’m not sure who would make it more painful — your dad or Jenny.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just get winded sort of easily.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “It makes me happy just knowing we get to go up here.”

“If it’s cold and windy up there, we’re not staying,” I said. “Deal?”

“Deal.” She pulled on the lever to the door to the roof.

Amy, the TA, stood over a shop light, handing out assignments to the other students. When she saw us, she waved. “You’re back!”

The roof was littered with students staring at the sky. The city twinkled beyond the ledge until the light ended in the Pacific, roiling like a black menace in the pale glow of the moon. I thought of how easily it could have swallowed Corabelle up and shuddered.

“What have you got for us?” Corabelle asked, taking a sheet from Amy.

“Pretty easy. Find the Cepheus constellation, locate the Delta star, and estimate its brightness based on the known magnitude of Zeta and Epsilon.”

Corabelle turned to me. “I hope you’ve been paying attention.”

Amy laughed. “I wouldn’t bet on that. But it’s all on the sheet. Let me know if you need help.”

“Kiddie astronomy,” I said. “Magnitude is just how bright the star is.” I took the page from her. “Easy stuff.”

“Good. I need easy.” Corabelle took my hand and we wound our way through the sprawled legs and discarded backpacks of other students to find our spot on the back side.

“You cold?” I asked her.

“Not yet,” she said, sitting down on the concrete.

“I should have brought a blanket.” I knelt beside her. “Should I spread my coat down?”

“I’ve got you.” She peered at the page. “Let’s get this done.”

I pulled out a little flashlight to shine on the assignment. It seemed pretty easy. Locate the star. Find companion stars. Compare brightness and estimate the magnitude.

Corabelle looked up. “You see Cepheus?”

I stared at the stars. “Says here it’s only the size of a fist. Five stars in the shape of a house.”

“There’s the North Star,” Corabelle said. “Is it close to that?”

“Between it and Cassiopeia.”

She held up her arms. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. Do you see?”

I couldn’t take my eyes off her, the coal-black hair streaming down her back, her pale face turned up to the sky. Just seeing her someplace other than a hospital bed was a miracle.

Corabelle turned to me. “Hey, you’re not even looking.”

“I already see what I want to see.”

She dropped her arms. “It’s different tonight, isn’t it?”

I glanced up at the sky, finally. “Colder, certainly.”

She punched my arm. “You know what I mean. We’re actually together.”

I lay back on the roof, dragging a backpack under my head. “Well, the first time we were in shock at seeing each other, and the second time we were fighting. So yeah, this is new.”

She eased down and curled up next to me, her head on my shoulder. I pulled her in tight, the way I’d wanted to that first night. I wasn’t going to take for granted that I could do it now.

“We’re a team this time. Life is just as hard as it was at the other two star parties, but this time we’re in it together.”

I squeezed her shoulders. “We are.”

Her breath puffed against my cheek. “It’s the last night before everything could change.”

“Nothing’s going to change.”

“If that boy belongs to you.”

“He doesn’t.”

She hesitated, then said, “I saw how much you cared about him.”

“I worry about what will happen to them. Her family was not kind about her situation. Tijuana isn’t an easy place to survive.”

She fell silent again, and the weight of her unasked questions pressed down on us like the stars.

“I think I see Delta,” I said.

Corabelle turned her head to look up. “I don’t remember which stars to compare it to.”

“Zeta, Epsilon, and Delta form a triangle off Cepheus,” I said. “Zeta is the corner of the house.”

“Hey! You have been paying attention!”

“Delta is the one farthest away.”

“It’s in between the other two in brightness.”

“3.9 then.”

“You know this?” Corabelle turned her face back to me.

“Hey, I wasn’t that bad a student in high school.” I smiled at her.

She nestled into my neck, her nose cold. “Classic underachiever.”

I borrowed a line from Jenny. “I have to keep everyone’s expectations low.”

“Mine are sky high.”

I took one of her hands in mine. “You’re the only one I aim to please.”

Her body tensed, but before I could ask her what was wrong, she asked, “How many times did you see her?”

“Rosa?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not really sure.”

“A lot then.”

“For a while.”

“When was the last time you were…with her?”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean talking.”

She didn’t answer.

I sighed. “Are you sure you want to go into this?”

“I want to know what I’m up against.”

I drew her in even closer, each curve of her body pressed against mine. “I don’t keep track of these things. All I know is that once I saw you again, nothing else mattered. I don’t want to see her again. I don’t plan to see her again. I’m anxious for all this to be behind us so I don’t have to even think about it.”

“She loves you, Gavin.”

“She thinks she does. I’m just a meal ticket.”

“That boy doesn’t see you that way.”

I lifted her chin so she could look at me. “I totally understand why you would be worried. But nothing, and I mean nothing, is going to come between us again.”

She watched me with quiet eyes, fearful and deep. I felt overcome with the need to keep her as close to me as possible, to never let anything hurt her again. I bent in close to kiss her. I always communicated to her best this way, able to pour into her all the things I felt without having to fumble with words.

Her arms came around my head, and she responded in earnest. I realized I had not gotten a chance to kiss her those other nights on the roof, when I wanted to, and now the chance had come, and I let it unfurl, holding her as tight as I dared, delving into her soft, warm mouth like a dying man.

She gasped, and I pulled away, afraid I had pushed her too hard, that breathing was still too much, but she whispered, “Please take me to your place.” And so I stood up, helping her rise to standing, and we raced away from the stars and the students and the TA and the cold uncaring sea.

31: Corabelle

Gavin was so careful with me, so good.

I’d never been more happy to see his weight benches, his listing bookcases, and the scattered possessions that were all uniquely his.

He made a show of carrying me through the living room, as though I were frail, but I let him. The sensation of floating through his apartment, carried in the cradle of his arms, helped the world fall away. I could forget Rosa and her little boy, the lab room, the test results we expected tomorrow. My parents disappeared, and the hospital, the suction tubes, and the unending stream of nurses.

He laid me carefully across the bed, removing my shoes and wrapping me in a blanket. He reached inside the bundle of cloth for the snap to my jeans, easing them down without letting the chill touch my skin.

“You’re going to keep those socks on,” he whispered. “Not going to let you get cold.”

“That’s sexy.”

“But it is.”

His hands moved to the hem of my sweater, pushing it up. When my belly recoiled from the chill of his fingers, he withdrew, rubbing his palms on his jeans, then returning. “Better?” he asked.

I nodded, inhaling sharply when his hands grazed the cups of my bra as he lifted the soft wool over my chest. I wanted him to move swiftly, but he kept things slow, intent on his purpose. He tugged my elbow down and out of the first sleeve, then the second, and pulled the sweater over my head.

The blanket loosened on my shoulders, and he tucked it back in. I no longer felt cold at all, heat spreading through me as he stood at the end of the bed and pulled his sweatshirt over his head. I still had not gotten used to the changes in him from when he was a teen. His chest was broad and hard, his arms thick with muscle. When he bent to untie his boots, the corded expanse of his back shifted with every movement. I couldn’t take it any longer and twisted around so that I knelt on the bed, extracting a hand from the blankets to run it along his spine, feeling each indentation of sinew and bone.

He grinned up at me, that wicked expression that I’d known since I was small and had haunted my nights during the years we were apart. When he kicked off the boots and started to unbutton his jeans, I pushed him aside, grasping the waistband myself and jerking it open one-handed. The zipper came down with a quiet hiss.

I couldn’t stand it anymore and let the blanket fall, tugging on his jeans and peeling them down. He was erect inside the thin fabric of his boxers, and I ran my hand along it, feeling the pulsing throb.

He kicked the jeans off and pressed me down again, insisting on keeping the blanket in place. I pulled one end open and drew him inside it, creating a cocoon around us, soft and dark. He rolled farther onto the bed, lying over me, his lips covering mine. His hips pressed into me and I thrust upward to meet him, reaching between us to get rid of the boxers.

He was hot in my hands, and I wanted to make him crazy, to feel as desperate as I did. I worked the shaft with my fingers, pressing into the tip, reveling in the slippery wetness that meant he was as needy as me.

He reached beneath me to unhook my bra and shoved it out of his way, taking a breast into his mouth with a hunger that shocked me into another level of urgency. I did not want to wait. I could not bear another minute without him inside me. I let go of him and pressed against his back, driving my hips into him.

Gavin grasped the edge of my panties and eased them down. I reached for him, wanting to thrust us together, but he shifted away, driving first one, then two fingers inside me. I arched up, crying out, and he braced my back with one hand, helping me hold position without strain. His mouth left my nipple and it puckered in the cold until he folded me close against him.

I didn’t think I could take any more, his fingers fluttering against me, the pleasure spreading out but intensifying my need. He kissed me again, and my tongue lashed into him, frenzied, aching. His mouth trailed along my jaw, my collarbone, along the curve of a breast again, and heading down. I clutched his shoulders, unable to wait, wanting him now, stopping his descent. He understood and shifted over me.

I wanted to weep with relief as he slid inside, spreading everything open like a flower blooming. Emotion crashed over me. I did not want to let him go. I could not bear any space between us, any distance at all.

He braced himself on his elbows and cradled my head in his hands. His strokes slowed down, deep and drawn out. His lips caressed my forehead. The light from a streetlamp outside cast a feeble glow across his shoulders as the muscles shifted. I felt a round of weeping coming on and tried to stop it, not wanting to trigger any coughing or difficulty breathing. But something was changing between us, and I was so afraid of tomorrow, the test, what would happen if the boy was his. How I would manage, knowing Gavin’s son was alive and well but there might be no others, the only child of ours turning to dust in a powder-blue coffin in the ground.

“Shhh, shhhh,” he said, rubbing his thumbs along my cheeks where I had failed to stanch the tears.

The harder I tried to hold in the sobs, the more determined they were to come out.

“Hey,” Gavin said. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.”

I wanted to believe him. I tried to imagine every scenario and work through it. The disappointed Rosa, turning away after the test was negative. The exuberant version, if she was right. Gavin’s expression, relief or shock. My own reaction, stalwart or embarrassingly overwrought.

“You’re thinking,” Gavin said, his body moving more steadily now, with more purpose. “No thinking. Let it go.”

He released my head and propped higher on his arms, biceps bulging as he worked faster. I gasped with the change of pressure and intensity, and seeing I was engaged again, he reached for my knee, lifting it up and giving himself the leverage to work even harder and faster.

I clutched his ribs, the pleasure radiating out from where we were joined. He took it another step, resting my ankle on his shoulder, and his freed hand returned to the folds between us, pressing into the already hot nub.

He knew exactly where to take it, and I spiraled straight into oblivion, the tightness blasting through me like a wave. My voice and my fear and my grief and my release all mixed together as he worked straight through the orgasm. When I began to come down, he let my leg fall back to the bed, but didn’t pause even a moment, moving his hands beneath me and flipping me over.

He gathered me against him from behind, still refusing to let me get cold. I propped up on my elbows and he slammed inside, each thrust sending a flash through my body. I wanted to scream with it, get lost, obliterate every other sensation that tried to crowd its way into my thoughts.

He reached around and pressed his fingers against me yet again. I thought I would be exhausted, spent, but instead I was exhilarated, frantic, pressing backwards into him, moving against his strokes to take it in harder and faster, until nothing existed but the crash of his skin into mine.

I felt it building again, tighter this time, more focused and intense. But I refused to let it unfurl, keeping it wound up. I was in control, and as Gavin moved, I met him with more force, until his body tensed. Only then did I release the pent-up tension, my cries mixing with his, the hot flow pulsing into me.

I collapsed down against the bed, Gavin crashing over my back. He withdrew and pulled me in close. Shivers ran along my body, and he jerked the blanket around us, tucking it in tight. “I got you cold,” he said. “I shouldn’t have started this.”

I rolled over into him. “I needed it. We needed it.”

He stroked my hair. “It’s not worth it if you get sick again.”

“It is. And I won’t. I feel fine.” I pressed my lips against the hard muscle of his chest, reveling in the heat of his skin. “I don’t want tomorrow to come.”

His arms tightened around me. “We’re going to be fine either way.” But his voice caught at the end, and I knew he was seeing the scene too, the one that proved the boy was his, and his fear at what I would do.

I couldn’t comfort him in this. I didn’t know myself.

32: Gavin

Waking next to Corabelle felt like the last good thing that could happen that day. I slid away from her, making sure the blanket was tight against her. Her breathing still wasn’t as deep as before, and I worried about this, hoping I had something hot I could make her to take with the antibiotics.

The floor creaked as I pulled on some sweatpants and headed to the kitchen. We’d dropped her bag by the door, so I fetched it, digging around for the bottle of pills her father had picked up at the hospital pharmacy. I read the label, the words blurring. We had hours to go until the meeting for the test results. I wasn’t sure how to spend a day like this any more than I had the day of the funeral, just waiting, unable to think about anything else.

I dug through my cabinets, pretty sure that somewhere along the way I’d been given herbal tea at some holiday thing — probably back when I worked at the grocery store. I shoved aside all the other stuff I never opened, some jams Mom had sent, a box of stoned wheat crackers that came from who knows where. Sure enough, in a little cheap basket, I found a selection of tea packets tied together with a red bow.

Peppermint. Orange Spice. Blackberry. I snatched up the peppermint and filled a pot with water. Mom had a kettle or something, but I figured hot water was hot water.

As I waited for it to warm up, I stared out the window at the empty trees, bare limbed and bleak. I tried to picture Rosa and the boy, getting up in some other house somewhere in the city. She seemed so sure that her son was mine. Probably this was a happy morning for her.

I still didn’t know anything. If Manuel belonged to me, the test wouldn’t make a difference at first. There was a birth certificate to change. Legal stuff. Child support. She was from another country. That would make it complicated. We’d probably need a lawyer.

My head started clanging and I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye. Maybe I would just drop out of school for a while, get things to some sort of equilibrium. Get Rosa set up somewhere, get Corabelle with me. If she still wanted me.

Damn.

I shook the bottle of pills, pulling one out. I didn’t even have health insurance for myself, much less the kid. I’d have to fix that.

Fix a lot of things.

I walked through the living room. I could sell the weights, maybe a few other things. Scrape enough together to get us started. The raise was going to help, once I got back to work. I had to do that, pronto. Bud had given me those insurance papers. I think he had some group policy I was eligible for now.

Time to fucking grow up.

I could hear the water bubbling in the kitchen, so I went back and dumped it in a mug with the tea bag. I didn’t even know the simplest thing, like if Corabelle would want sugar in it. I carried it back to the bedroom along with the pill, setting them on a rickety table beside the bed.

She was still asleep, her brows drawn together like she was dreaming fitfully, or in some pain. The tea needed to cool a bit, so I could let her sleep.

If there was ever a day that could change your life, this one was it.

33: Corabelle

Tina waited for us by the doors to the lab. “We’re actually going to move to one of the meeting rooms,” she said. “There’s some legal stuff involved here, so I asked one of the social workers to come along.”

I glanced at Gavin, to see if he also registered that this meant Tina knew what the results were.

Tina caught the look. “I haven’t peeked. I don’t know anything. So don’t try and read the results in my expression. Besides, I’ve got the poker face of a hard-core gambler.”

“I bet you do,” Gavin said.

“I could lie about your mother and you’d buy it,” she said.

“I believe that too,” he said.

Tina leaned against the wall. “Rosa’s not here yet. We’ll just wait.” She’d skipped the pigtails today, her blond hair sleek on her head. She looked like one of those waif models you might find in a magazine, tiny and strangely dressed, her yellow eye shadow almost otherworldly.

Today her striped stockings were green and blue, two shades so matched in tone that they almost blended together. I decided staring at them was easier than looking anywhere else.

Gavin took my hand. He’d been attentive all day, fussing over tea and then breakfast. We’d met my parents for lunch and then driven them to the airport. I could not have been more relieved to see them go, but the meal had gone easily enough. No arguments. No awkward talk. Gavin and my father hadn’t exactly come to any understandings, but at least they could tolerate being in the same room.

“She’s here,” Tina said, looking behind us.

Gavin turned around first, and I watched his face to see if it revealed anything about what he was feeling. He put on a grim smile and said, “Glad you made it.”

I forced myself to face her as well. She was alone today, wearing the same teal coat, this time with a gray sweater and jeans, much less dressy than yesterday. She seemed calmer too, far more than I felt myself.

“Manuelito is with my cousin,” she said. “I decide he should not come.”

Tina pushed away from the wall. “Probably a good choice. Let the adults work this out.” She pulled out her phone and tapped out a message. “Just letting the social worker know we’re heading her direction.”

We all walked together, Tina leading, Gavin and I behind her, and Rosa alone at the end. I lost track of the corridors we snaked through, through an administrative office, then into a small room tucked away from the bustle of the medical side of the hospital.

Another woman waited there, thankfully not Sabrina and her cat’s-eye glasses, but a grandmotherly one, an official-looking folder on the oval conference table in front of her. I could not take my eyes off it, knowing my future rested in those pages. All of ours did.

Gavin, Rosa, and I took the three vacant seats, and Tina stood against the wall near the door.

“Hello, I’m Abigail Jennings. I work in family services here,” the woman said. She reached for a pair of reading glasses hanging on a gold chain and put them on. Her silver hair was coiffed and elegant, much like my own mother’s, and this helped me calm down a little. She had undoubtedly seen pretty much everything that could happen. We were not going to be anything outside her norm.

She opened the folder, and all our eyes went to it, hoping for our first glance at the answer, the big question coming to a close. But the print was small and light, numbers cascading down the page in a table.

“We are an AABB-accredited lab that provides results with an accuracy level that meets requirements for the courts as well as immigration agencies.” She tugged out the top sheet of paper. “When we have a case that includes a child whose parentage might involve issues of custody across international borders, we have to dot a few more i’s and cross a few more t’s.”

She turned the page around. “Our test looks for sixteen genetic matches. In this column,” she pointed to the first segment of the table, “we have the child’s genetic markers.” She tapped the next column. “Here are the alleged father’s.” Her fingers trailed down the numbers in the rows.

I could already see the tally at the bottom: 99.9%. But I wasn’t sure which way it went. It talked about exclusions.

“Sometimes our combined index falls into a gray area, depending on the mutations in the markers, but in this case, the conclusion was sufficient to satisfy both a court and the embassies.” She looked up. “It proves without a doubt that the child and the father are related.”

Rosa let out a breath, her hands flat on the table. Gavin’s jaw was tight, the muscle twitching, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to swallow.

I couldn’t think, the words still hanging in the air like laundry on a line. I blinked, working to believe it, trying to let them penetrate.

Gavin reached for the page and moved it toward him, staring at the numbers. I felt Tina’s presence behind me, her hands on my shoulders like she had done the day before, in the lab.

Then everything came at me at once, like I’d just broken the surface of the ocean, gasping for breath, my chest heaving. I wasn’t crying or making any sound, just sucking in air.

“Breathe, Corabelle, breathe in,” Tina said.

Gavin turned to me, his hand on my back. “It’s okay, baby. We’re going to be all right. We’ll figure this out.”

“She just got discharged yesterday,” Tina said to the social worker. “She’s had pneumonia.”

“Should I call someone in?” Abigail asked.

“She’ll be okay,” Tina said. “Let’s give her a moment.”

I listened to all this impassively, as if they were talking about someone else. All I could see was Gavin as a child, his expressions, his impish grin, the swirl of his hair over his ears. I realized I had seen it all along in Rosa’s son, and I had known, but was unwilling to acknowledge it.

“That’s better,” Tina said. “Keep breathing. Take it slow.”

The room came back to me, Gavin, leaning in, pulling me to him. He shouldn’t do that, not in front of Rosa. She loved him, she was the mother of his child, his living child, not the dead one, not the one that was not meant to be his.

I pushed away from him, standing up, suddenly wishing I was still in the hospital, a room to go to, a place to shut the door and not have to rely on anyone to take me home. “I need a moment,” I said. “Tina?”

“I’m right here.” She wrapped her arm along my shoulders and I realized what a friend she had become, someone I had scarcely known only a few days ago. I did not know how I would have gotten through this without her.

“Corabelle, please don’t walk away,” Gavin said. “I’m not going anywhere. I love you.”

Rosa stood up too. “I am not here to take Gavin. That is not what I want.”

“Later,” I said. “Later. Let me think about this.”

But Gavin was unrelenting. “If you’re leaving, I’m leaving too.”

“We can work out the papers some other time,” Abigail said. “There is no rush here.”

I walked toward the door, Tina beside me. “Let’s go to the art room,” she said. “We’ll clear your head.”

Gavin tried to follow, jerking the door wide. “I am not letting you go, Corabelle.”

I whirled around. “I may not give you that choice.”

“Okay, let’s go,” Tina said. “Gavin, go figure out your forms. You have some obligations now. Straighten all that out. Give Corabelle some time.”

I turned away, trying not to look at Gavin’s face but seeing it anyway, his stricken expression, his clenched fists, his despair. I felt it too. I felt it all. I’d always felt it. It seemed like I always would.

34: Gavin

The social worker came to the door. “Gavin, I would suggest you give her a little time to absorb this. It’s a big blow, and even without your history, this would be hard for her.”

“What history?” Rosa asked.

I turned around, realizing Rosa knew nothing about Finn, only that I’d chosen to cut off my chances at fatherhood long ago. Bitterness coursed through me. “It must have been real rich for you to realize you were pregnant when you knew damn well I was only in Tijuana because I never wanted to have a kid.”

Rosa dropped back into a chair. “Rich? I do not understand.”

My head was exploding with pressure. “When I met you, you knew I didn’t want kids. That’s why I was in Mexico. To get cut, remember?”

She folded her hands in her lap. “I remember, Gavinito.”

“Don’t CALL ME THAT.” My voice echoed through the room and out into the hall.

Abigail closed the door. “Gavin, try to stay calm.”

“Calm? You’ve obviously never met my father. He’s the one who was never calm. And I’m just like him.” I pointed a finger at Rosa. “And thanks to you, now we’ll have another little fucked-up kid to fuck up more kids.”

Tears slid down Rosa’s face, and I turned away, pissed as hell. Damn it. What the hell was this life trying to do to me? I shouldn’t be around anyone. I shouldn’t be with a fucking soul. Send me to some fucking island.

“Let’s talk about this rationally,” Abigail said. “Gavin, sit down.”

I moved to the far end of the table and dropped into Corabelle’s chair.

“Nothing has to change right this moment.” She tucked the paper inside the folder. “Rosa, are you in the US legally right now?”

Rosa stared at the table, tears dripping onto the surface.

“I’m guessing that’s a no. I’m not here to report you. I just need to know your legal status.”

“She borrowed a border crossing card,” I said.

“Okay.” Abigail pulled a pen from inside the folder and jotted some notes. “Are you planning to get Manuel’s immigration status changed so he can be here in the United States with his father?”

Rosa still didn’t answer.

Abigail reached across the table to rest her hand on Rosa’s wrist. “You have many options here, but if you get deported after we change Manuel’s legal status, you can get sent back without him. We need you to think this through so that we do what is best for everybody.”

“The boy needs his father,” Rosa said.

Abigail glanced at me. “You realize that Gavin’s only obligation will be for child support, and even that can be challenged if you keep the boy in Mexico and do not allow visitation.”

Jesus, they were acting like I wasn’t even there. “I’m not a total asshole,” I said.

“Really?” Abigail shot at me. “Because you were putting on a pretty good imitation of one.”

She was right. God. I had forgotten everything, the promise I made in ICU, the plans in my head just that morning. “I need help,” I said. “I can’t do this by myself.”

Abigail’s free hand reached for mine, creating a bridge between the three of us. “You aren’t by yourself. There’s going to be a lot of people involved. We can get you counseling. We can get you legal aid. But you two are going to need some patience. You have to realize this isn’t going to happen overnight. And you do have to decide what you mean to each other, what you want from this new family that has been formed.”

“I plan to marry Corabelle,” I said. “If she’ll have me after this.”

Abigail nodded. “So you can work on that.” She turned to Rosa. “Do you want to try and immigrate with your son, or return to Mexico?”

“I do not want to be in Gavin’s way,” she said. “I just cannot keep the boy on my own.”

“Are you able to help her financially, Gavin?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what she needs.”

“See, those are the easy answers.” Abigail let go of both of us and returned to her folder. “I’m going to hold on to these papers for now. Rosa, let’s get you and your son safely in Mexico.” She turned to me. “You can plan to visit, help her get settled. I’ll get you appointments with the embassy, some legal aid, and we’ll start the paperwork. In the meantime, get to know your son. I think you’ll find as this settles out, the answers will become simpler.”

“Do you have anywhere to go?” I asked Rosa. “Will your brother kick you out?”

“I don’t know,” Rosa said. “He always helped me before, but the family is angry.”

“Why don’t we call him?” Abigail said. “That sounds like a place to start. You and I can go to my office. Is your boy all right? Do you need to get him?”

“He is with my cousin,” Rosa said. “He is okay.”

Abigail stood up and pulled an envelope from her folder. “Here is your copy of the DNA testing.” She handed it to me. “We’ll be in touch with you. Stay in touch with Rosa.”

I nodded and got up from the chair.

Rosa wiped her eyes and turned to me. “I am sorry I was not careful. But I am not sad about Manuelito. He is the best thing. A joyful boy.”

“I should have known better. I just wished I had known before.”

“This is my fault. I think he live okay with Letty.”

“He was meant to be with you.” I shoved the envelope in the pocket of my jacket. “We’ll figure this out.”

“Ask her, Gavin,” Rosa said. “Do not wait.”

“Ask what?”

“To marry. Ask her today. Very soon. She will not wait. I know a woman’s heart. You must do it now.”

I glanced at Abigail, but her expression was unreadable.

Maybe Rosa was right. I knew exactly what I had to do.

35: Corabelle

I sulked in the back of Jenny’s car. Tina sat in the passenger’s seat, and the two of them were already talking about restaurants and music like they were old friends.

“I don’t see why anybody would want to go to the beach on a day like this,” I said. Out the window the sky was bright and the wind was actually sort of gentle, but the air was still cold.

“I’m your therapist, and I say you have to face the beast,” Tina said. “Back to where your troubles began.”

We pulled into a parking lot near La Jolla. We weren’t anywhere near the spot I’d gone into the water a week ago, but the ocean was the same, blustery and whitecapped. All my life, I had felt connected to it, as though it was leading me to my future, my happiness. But now, it was the enemy.

“I’m pretty sure no licensed psychiatrist would think this is a good idea,” I said.

Jenny killed the engine and turned around, her pink hair vivid against the backdrop of sand and sea. “I’m full of bad ideas.” She opened her door. “Come on.”

Jenny jerked a picnic basket from the trunk and led the way along a path that angled toward the beach. A few lone gulls circled the shore. Otherwise, the oceanfront was deserted.

“I can’t believe I haven’t been here before,” Tina said. “All work and no play.”

“You find a place yet?” Jenny asked.

“Nah. I’ll wait and see if they bring me on full-time. Besides, I’m kind of digging the room service and daily cleaning ladies at the hotel.”

“That’s got to be killing your earnings,” Jenny said.

“Not as bad as you think. It’s pretty seedy.”

“So did Dr. Hunk convince you to go out?” Jenny asked.

I had forgotten all about the doctor interested in Tina. Too much trouble of my own.

Tina glanced at me, realizing I had talked about her with Jenny. She shrugged. “He didn’t show up. Neither did his patient. Whatever.”

I trudged along behind them, realizing that it wasn’t nearly as cold as I had thought. In fact, after a couple minutes, I stripped my gloves and scarf away and stuffed them in the pocket of my coat.

Two days had passed since the test. Last night I had actually talked to Gavin on the phone a while. He told me Rosa was leaving for Mexico this afternoon to meet her brother, but Manuelito would remain behind for the time being, with her cousin.

Her brother had actually been sort of worried about her disappearance, so she still had a job and a place to live.

I didn’t understand how any of this would work. How much could a three-year-old understand about the changes his life had undergone in so short a time? The man he thought was his father was gone, replaced by this man he had never seen. One mother had let him go and another was now taking care of him.

Children were resilient. But I worried for him, if he would carry long-term insecurities from the upheaval. I didn’t know who I would be to him, if anyone at all. It seemed best if I just let them work things out before Gavin and I made any move toward a future together.

A cluster of people were standing together ahead. The glare on the water and the sand made it hard to see more than a shadow. Tina and Jenny glanced at each other, and I knew something was up.

“What have you planned?” I asked, catching up to them, squinting down the stretch of shore.

They surrounded me on either side.

“Well, as your unlicensed, untrained mental health professional,” Tina said, “I made the call that the place that once tried to take you out of this life is the very spot to bring you back in.”

“What are you talking about?” But I didn’t listen for an answer, as I could make out Gavin in the group of people ahead of us. I halted. “What’s he doing here?” And a woman. And a boy. Rosa and Manuel? And another man, holding a camera. A photographer?

I panicked. Were they getting married, here on the beach? And were they dragging me to it? The girls tried to move me forward, but I was rooted to the ground. “What is this?” My voice was strangled.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jenny said. “I know that sound. This is not a bad thing. We promise. It’s a good thing. A very very very good thing.”

“Then why is she here? And — and the boy?”

“Well, that wasn’t our call,” Tina said. “But we went with it.”

“You have to tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to take off running.” And I meant it.

“Can you just trust us?” Jenny asked. “Just this once?” She stood in front of me. “Oh, and let’s fix your ’do.” She spread my hair out along my shoulders.

“Stop it.” I pushed her hands away. “Tell Gavin to come here and explain it.”

“Fair enough.” Jenny whirled around and wolf-whistled. “Yo, Gavin! Your woman needs you for a second.”

He began striding toward us. The others waited a moment, seeming uncertain, and followed at a slower pace.

When he got close enough, I asked him, “What is this about, Gavin? Why is everyone acting like I can’t handle the truth?” It didn’t make sense, any of it. Gavin would have told me if he was going to marry Rosa, for a green card or legal stuff or for real.

He took both my hands in his and brought them to his lips. “I’ve been convinced that I need to act, and act now. We should finish something we started a long time ago.”

“So here?” Jenny asked. “You’re off script.”

“This is as good a place as any,” Gavin said.

My frustration grew. They had all planned something, talked about me without my knowing.

Jenny set the basket on the ground and dug around a minute, finally handing him a little scroll, a paper tied with silver ribbons. I knew it instantly. The proposal he had written me four years ago, after we had gotten pregnant with Finn.

“I had to revise it a little,” he said, and unfurled the page.

Now I understood.

Rosa, her boy, and the other man had approached but stayed a few feet away.

Gavin cleared his throat. “I know now that our lives have changed you may no longer want to get married, but I do. I have wanted to marry you since we went to your Aunt Georgia’s wedding and hid beneath the cake table when we were five, fingers sticky from sneaking frosting, always together, even when we were in trouble.”

Tears squeezed from my eyes as I remembered the first time he’d read from the scroll, seventeen years old, his voice shaking. He wasn’t a whole lot steadier this time.

“We’ve had a lot happen since the first time I asked you this, but it’s shown me how important you are, and how empty my life has been without you. I know I have a lot to prove, not just to you,” he glanced down at Rosa’s boy, who had come up beside him, “but to everybody.”

He took another breath. “I can’t do this without you. I know you don’t have to stay. I can only hope you’ll want to. That you’ll have me. And we all can be together for always. Will you marry me?”

Gavin eyes were impossibly blue, brighter than the ocean behind him, more intense than the sky overhead. I’d grown up looking into them, and they had witnessed almost every tragedy my life had endured. I had promised myself that no matter what happened with this boy, I would see him through it. He was telling me he would do the same, right in front of the people who would be impacted most by what happened today.

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

* * *

While this is the end of Gavin and Corabelle’s story, you will see them again (and witness their wedding!) in Tina’s book — Forever Sheltered.

Tina may think she will never trust another man enough to fall in love, but she didn’t count on Dr. Darion Marks, a pediatric oncologist whose emotionally demanding job and personal tragedies have forced him to avoid romantic entanglements. Their relationship turns explosive when Tina learns the secret Darion is keeping from the hospital staff, proving that love can heal even the most shattered hearts.

To be there when they discover each other, and to know when Forever Sheltered will be released, join my mailing list for book announcements and excerpts as I write their story.

Meet other Forever Series book fans on the Facebook page.

I have promised my daughter Elizabeth that I will write Elektra Chaos next, so I will get it out this spring. It’s the final segment of my series for 8-12 year olds featuring children facing challenges. Elizabeth has epilepsy caused by brain damage when her twin sister died while I was pregnant. This will be the story that she wants me to tell. She is on the cover.

Love to all of you,

Deanna

Acknowledgements

A huge thanks to the nurses and patients I talked to who dealt with pneumonia in all its varied states. You kept me straight on how this illness can go — especially Audrey Coulthurst., Andrea Felsinger, Lynn Kennedy, and my family nurse Aunt Kay.

A huge shout out to my friends Valerie Garcia and Irma Kramer for helping me figure out what a three-year-old from Tijuana would call a lollipop, among other informal Spanish phrases (notably *not* the curse words — the help on that asked to be anonymous!) Google failed me on those things, and my college Spanish textbooks weren’t exactly helpful.

I wish I could travel around the world to kiss the people of NAS Photography for digging up all the outtakes from their shoot with the models who were on the cover of Forever Innocent. Your work is unbelievable. It was a joy to find a never-before-seen image (SHHHH that I bought a third one — no one can know what it is for!)

I want to give a very special thanks to my little beta group who could have hired an assassin and taken me out before I ever got a chance to write such a controversial story line for a pair of characters that readers insisted should get their star-spangled happily ever after. They knew back in October what I was planning to do with Rosa’s son, and after the initial shock wore off, they were supportive and helpful as I tried to make sure the story was as tight as possible — Chrissie Room, Meagan Henning, Kristin Hinshaw, Kayla Ann Yow, and Kristin Warner-Longoria.

Last-minute beta readers Jammie Cook and Kristin Hinshaw saved the book from having another cliffhanger. I apparently don’t get the concept! You can thank them for the epilogue, as well as Mimi Strong, who literally talked me down FROM the cliff after I realized I had done it again and didn’t know what to do to make the book end more neatly.

Several people were instrumental in the phenomenal success of Forever Innocent: Mimi Strong, HM Ward, Kelly Walker, and Aestas. Early mentions of the book to YOUR fans made all the difference. I am grateful.

Content

Forever Loved
The Forever Series - 2
by
Deanna Roy

1: Corabelle

2: Gavin

3: Corabelle

4: Corabelle

5: Gavin

6: Corabelle

7: Gavin

8: Corabelle

9: Gavin

10: Corabelle

11: Gavin

12: Corabelle

13: Gavin

14: Gavin

15: Gavin

16: Corabelle

17: Gavin

18: Corabelle

19: Gavin

20: Corabelle

21: Gavin

22: Corabelle

23: Gavin

24: Corabelle

25: Gavin

26: Corabelle

27: Gavin

28: Corabelle

29: Corabelle

30: Gavin

31: Corabelle

32: Gavin

33: Corabelle

34: Gavin

35: Corabelle

Epilogue

Acknowledgements