My mom told me that, two weeks ago, Aunt Maria was placed in a nursing home just outside of Chicago, because that’s where Mom and Grandma are. Maria’s got pretty severe Alzheimer’s. I guess her place was really run-down and filthy. One of her neighbors called the city, who put her in the hospital until they found family. They’ve cleaned the place out and are putting everything up for sale to pay for her care. She’s got practically no money left, I guess. My grandmother and mother were named her guardians by a judge in an emergency hearing.
When they cleaned her place out, my mom found some stuff, pictures and things, of your parents, and even some of you. She asked me to ask you if you want them. If you do, she said she’d be happy to ship everything to you, or to hold on to it if you wanted to come visit us and pick it up from her then.
Please, please don’t be mad at me. I know you hate Maria. I’m no fan of hers, either. I just wanted to pass all the news along to you.
In case you want the information, she’s in Willow Acres, room 424, bed B…
Gabe’s finger hovered over the touch pad to delete the message, then she paused.
The old bat’s in an ALF, huh?
Maybe that wasn’t the most charitable thought in the world, but it was the best Gabe could come up with under the circumstances.
She closed her eyes. It doesn’t hurt to think for a moment.
She thought.
Then she tapped out a reply.
((HUGS)) I’m not mad, I swear. Thank you for writing me. Yes, please tell your mom to send me the stuff. I appreciate it. Let me know the shipping costs and I’ll be happy to reimburse her for it.
She sat back in her chair after sending the reply. Then she glanced at the time. It was a little after 9:00 p.m. She brought up another browser tab and typed into it, searching for flights from MIA to O’Hare and Midway.
She could be on one leaving Miami at 7:05 the next morning and arrive in O’Hare before lunchtime.
By the time she went to bed an hour later, she had already packed an overnight bag, laid out a set of clothes appropriate for cold Chicago March weather, and arranged for a rental car.
* * * *
While sitting at the gate the next morning, she texted Bill.
Last-minute trip out of town, just overnight.
He texted back a few minutes later.
Work?
She let out a silent snort. No, I wish.
A few moments later, Stay safe, sweetheart. Let me know when you get there and get home.
Melancholy washed over her. It’d be so easy to just ask. To open up and admit it. She wanted him.
Hell, she thought maybe she might need him a little.
I need to bury a few demons for good if I ever want my life to truly belong to me, she texted.
They’d just called her flight when he replied. Hope it goes well, sweetie.
Her eyes blurred and she had to blink the tears away. Okay, dammit, he had to be all warm and fuzzy.
Thanks, I’ll keep you posted, she texted back.
Then she shut off her phone. The last thing she wanted to be doing was standing there crying her eyes out.
* * * *
Cold didn’t describe the weather. Brutal, biting, insane was more like it.
At least it’s not a fricking blizzard.
It brought back her childhood.
And not in a good way. She remembered plenty of cold mornings having to get dressed in the kitchen in front of the stove because Maria wouldn’t turn on the heat unless the house was under sixty degrees.
After getting her rental car, she sent Bill a quick text that she was safely in Chicago. Fortunately, there wasn’t any ice on the roads despite the bitter cold and overcast skies.
Yep. Florida rocks.
She followed the printed directions she’d prepared the night before from the airport to the nursing home. The young man at the front desk inside the front doors was very helpful with directions and instructions on how to access the locked ward where Maria now lived.
Inside, she stifled a snort.
Maria’s on the chain.
She knew that wasn’t a very charitable thought either, but it was the nicest one she could muster.
What she didn’t expect was the way her stomach tightened, painfully so, her gut clenching as she watched the floor numbers light up on the elevator’s control panel.
She’d walked out of Maria’s house with several suitcases full of clothes, her books, photo albums, and the checkbook to the account that became hers when she turned eighteen. She had thirty-five thousand in the bank, give or take, and signed papers to report for basic training.
She’d never set eyes on Maria since then. In all honesty, she’d never expected to see the woman again.
Ever.
When the elevator opened into the floor’s reception area, she stepped out and walked over to another manned desk. The nurse there was dressed in a scrub shirt adorned with cheerful cartoon cats in rainbow colors.
“I’m here to see Maria Villalobos, room 424.”
The nurse tapped into her computer and smiled. “Yes, she should be in there. If not, staff can direct you to the social room.”
“Thank you.” When Gabe stepped over to the door the nurse pointed to, one of three leading from the reception area, the lock buzzed.
Gabe stifled another totally inappropriate and unpreventable snort of amusement.
Irony is a bitch, right up there with karma, apparently.
She had no trouble following the room numbers down and around the hallway. The facility was clean and smelled of disinfectant and oranges, but it certainly wasn’t the newest or best. The linoleum tile floors were scrubbed, but the pattern worn and faded. The halls had been painted a light blue that might have been cheery at one time, but seemed fairly depressing now. The white chair rail running just under the handrail on the wall was dented and scuffed in several areas.
The placard next to room 424’s door listed bed A’s resident as one Arlene Smith. When Gabe stepped into the room, she didn’t see anyone in bed A, which was closest to the door. The bedside table and shelves around bed A were filled with family pictures, cards, and a few knickknacks. Gabe could hear a TV playing on the other side of the room, apparently turned to the Weather Channel.
She walked through the room, past the white curtain with faded green paisley prints on it that separated the two areas. Her stomach rolled, her lungs didn’t want to suck in air, and her feet threatened rebellion, to run out without facing the demon for good.
I am stronger than I know.
She took a deep breath and rounded the curtain. Maria lay on her back and looked tiny and dwarfed by the hospital bed. She had her head turned toward the small color TV that hung from a moveable arm attached to the wall.
Jim Cantore talked about how frigid it was in the Chicago area.
No shit, Sherlock.
Maria’s rheumy blue eyes bore a glassy sheen.
Thinking maybe Maria hadn’t noticed her entrance, Gabe cleared her throat.
Maria didn’t blink.
When she started to step around the end of the bed, Gabe’s feet finally overrode her brain’s commands to keep moving.
In fact, her entire body froze.
The bedside table and shelves around Maria’s area were full of stuffed animals. Some of them bore “Get Well Soon” messages, but as Gabe looked more closely, she could see there was nothing personal about the collection, as there was over on bed A’s side of the room.
It slammed home exactly what it reminded her of, a child’s hospital room, one who either had no family or whose family was poor, or who’d been through a horrifically newsworthy experience and had been inundated with presents, mostly from strangers who felt moved to offer something, anything, to assuage their own need to give, usually after seeing the child’s story on TV.
The snort broke free from Gabe’s throat.
Maria blinked.
Gabe walked around the bed and sat in the
chair next to the TV. “Hello, Maria.”
The woman blinked again and slowly swiveled her head on her pillow to stare at Gabe. “Hello.”
Even her voice sounded different, faint.
Weak.
Not even remotely like the voice that had haunted and taunted her throughout the years.
Gabe swallowed, but pressed on. “Do you know who I am?”
Maria nodded.
“Who am I?”
Maria blinked and didn’t answer at first. “You’re that girl from the office. The one who checked me in. My sister said you might be back.”
Her voice sounded strained, faded.
The voice of an old woman nearing the end of her life, who’d lost everything, including her mind.
A door lay before Gabe. One she knew she could kick closed and forever remain imprisoned within her own mind, or one she could walk through and nail shut behind her.
She stared at Maria. After a moment, she nodded. “That’s right. How are you?”
“Okay.”
Nothing else.
“So how is Gabriella doing?” Gabe asked.
“Who?”
“Your granddaughter, Gabriella. Peter’s daughter.”
Maria looked a little confused. “I think she’s at school today. Do you know when she’ll be home?”
Her teeth clacked shut, hard, against the scream forming in her throat. After a minute, she asked, “Who brought you all the stuffed animals?”
Maria’s eyes, but not her head, looked up, as if trying to see the wall behind her through the top of her skull. “A girl brings them on a cart. She lets me pick one out when she comes.”
Gabe nodded. “That’s good.”
Maria’s eyes swiveled again, pausing on the TV before making it to Gabe once more. “Are you the girl from the office?”
She nodded. “That’s right. I’m the girl from the office.” She stood and shouldered her purse. “Anything you want me to tell anyone?”
The old woman let out a soft sigh. “Can you ask Paul to walk the dog?”
“Sure thing.” That would be difficult, since her grandfather, Paul, had been dead for over forty years, and the dog longer than that.
On shaky legs Gabe wasn’t sure would support her, she quickly headed out and forced herself not to punch the button by the exit more than once for the nurse to buzz her through.
“Where’s the bathroom?” Gabe asked.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
The nurse pointed her to another door, this one unlocked, off the reception area. It opened onto a short hallway, leading to three unisex bathrooms.
Gabe locked herself into the last one and held on to the sink as she fought the urge to vomit.
* * * *
Back in her rental car, Gabe didn’t feel anywhere close to ready to being able to safely drive quite yet. She needed a few minutes to calm down and let her nerves settle. Instead, she pulled her laptop out of her overnight bag and opened it. Lil Lobo and Max stared at her from inside their compartment on the side of the bag.
As she rooted around for her mobile hotspot, she realized she’d forgotten to pack her laptop charger.
Dammit.
Her original flight plans were to fly home tomorrow afternoon. Now she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to get back to Miami tonight. There was no reason to stay here. She’d considered possibly coming back here again, but not now. There was no reason. Maria didn’t know her, and Gabe didn’t want to see her again. But if she were stuck there in Chicago overnight after all, her laptop didn’t have that much of a charge left after having used it on the flight up.
She found the hotspot. First order of business, getting the flight changed. After logging in she found she could change flights, for a premium change fee, of course.
Screw it. It’s just money.
She made the change, but she wouldn’t be flying out until nearly seven that evening, leaving her several hours to wait with a laptop that was nearly dead.
I need a spare charger anyway.
Before she shut off her computer, she did a quick search. There was an Apple store at a mall not far from the nursing home. On her way back toward O’Hare, as a matter of fact.
Okay, that solves the problem.
She sent the map link to her phone, verified she had the directions, and then shut down the computer. Fortunately, the mall had a parking garage so it wasn’t quite so miserable getting from her car inside. She quickly found the Apple store up on the second level and, fortunately, they had her charger in stock. She was standing just outside the doorway, trying to arrange how she was carrying everything, when she looked up.
Directly across the way was a Build-A-Bear store. And, looking down through the break in the walkways ringing the second level, she spotted a Sanrio store on the lower floor.
She’d had every intention of returning to the parking garage. In fact, that was the command she’d given her feet. So it surprised her when she walked around and across to the other side to stand inside the Build-A-Bear doorway.
One of the sales clerks welcomed her and gave her a smile but Gabe didn’t answer, just smiled back. She walked around the edges of the store, looking at the doll clothes for sale. Five minutes later, she had three outfits for Max in hand, as well as two outfits designed for one of the mini animals they sold, which she thought would fit Lil Lobo.
Her next stop was the Sanrio store on the lower level, where she bought three different Hello Kitty iPhone cases.
She stopped for a late lunch and wandered the mall before returning to her car and heading for the airport. When she made it through security with over an hour left before her flight, she found herself a seat near an electric outlet and plugged her laptop in to charge. Then she dressed Max and Lil Lobo each in one of their new outfits before carefully tucking them back into her overnight bag.
Just below the surface she felt the constant prickle of tears threatening.
I won’t give in. Not here.
Not until she was safely locked behind her own front door and could ignore the world for a while.
She damn sure wouldn’t draw TSA’s attention by bawling like a fucking baby in the middle of the airport. At least all the other voices, the recriminations, were gone. Silent.
Only one phrase softly drummed through her brain, and it felt more right than anything she’d ever felt in her life.
And there was only one person she wanted to say it to.
* * * *
She’d gassed up her car before leaving it parked in the long-term parking area at the airport. When she got in and locked the doors behind her, she pulled Lil Lobo and Max out and set them on the passenger seat. She’d held them all the way home, in her lap, on the plane.
But instead of heading south, toward Kendall and home, she pointed her car north. It was after one in the morning by the time she hit Alligator Alley. Part of her brain screamed at her to stop and think, to process, to let it out, but her self-control clamped down tightly and kept her calm, focused.
Driving.
A little before three thirty in the morning, she pulled into Bill’s driveway and shut her car off. She shouldered her overnight bag and purse, grabbed her phone and the stuffed animals, and took a deep breath before marching up his front walk and ringing the doorbell.
Her pulse pounded in her throat as she stood there, waiting. She was just about to turn and bolt for the car when the front light flicked on. There was a momentary pause she knew was him checking the peephole before he quickly snapped the deadbolt open and threw the door wide.
He wore a T-shirt and shorts and a worried look. She instinctively knew the motion he made was him setting the gun down on the side table as he realized it was her and reached for her. “Gabe? What’s wrong, sweetie?”
She had the stuffed animals clutched together in her left hand, the phone in her right. She held the phone up and turned it around, showing him the back. A cheerful, pink Hello Kitty pattern sta
red back at him.
“I’m your good girl,” she whispered.
Then there were two, three of him standing in the doorway as her vision blurred from the tears and she broke down sobbing.
A moment later, she was inside, safely in his arms, enfolded in his embrace on the couch. He’d taken her bags and her phone from her and set them down somewhere, but she kept the stuffed animals tightly clutched against her as she finally let it all out.
The rage.
The anger.
The grief.
She screamed and cried until she lay hoarse and broken and empty in his arms and his shirt was sodden from her snot and tears and dawn was starting to cast a glow through the blinds covering the sliding glass doors.
He didn’t speak. He kept his arms wrapped tightly around her, his face buried in her hair and his breath warm against her scalp.
When he sensed she’d finally cried herself out, he gently coaxed her to stand and led her to the bedroom. There, he had her sit on the edge of the bed.
“Stay here,” he softly said.
She numbly nodded, beyond the ability to think right then.
He left the bedroom. She heard him briefly speak to someone on the phone, then the sound of him popping the magazine and ejecting the chambered round out of his gun before he walked back into the bedroom. He returned the gun to its place in the bedside table. Then he pulled off his shirt and shorts and dropped them to the floor.
Coaxing her to stand up again, he leaned over, patting first her right leg, then her left, so he could remove her shoes and socks. He unfastened her jeans and worked them and her panties off her. Next, her shirt, waiting while she transferred the stuffed animals from one hand to the other when he needed to get her arms out of the shirt. Her bra last.