“My sister is dead!” she wailed into the receiver.
It took Javier a moment to absorb what she was telling him. Then he let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. This certainly wasn’t good news, and it was very unexpected, but his mother was okay. At least physically. It was a horrible thought, because emotionally, she sounded wrecked. He hated being across the country while she was alone in Florida. Well, technically, his father’s side of the family was in Florida, too, but they were down in Miami. His mother was a little over ten hours away in Pensacola. She had a few friends there, but not as many as she’d had when they’d lived in Miami, so she was essentially on her own.
He’d tried to get her to move to Arizona with him, but she’d refused. She only had a couple of years left at the grocery store where she worked before she could leave with a hefty retirement. She’d been with the Florida-based company since shortly after she'd arrived in the US, and the chain had even arranged a transfer to a Pensacola store when Javi had been drafted to play Double-A ball there. She loved her job as a bakery manager, and he had to admit that her company had been great to them.
“Oh,mamá, I am so sorry.” He wasn’t sure what else to say or how he could be of help to her. His Aunt Isla was dead. He’d never met her in person. Occasionally, his mother would get a call from her, but he’d rarely spoken more than a few words to his Aunt Isla or to her daughter.
Poor Lola. He hadn’t even thought about her. His cousin was just a kid, somewhere in her early teens, he thought.
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“She’d been sick, and she hadn’t told me. I wouldn’t even know she had died except the Mother Superior of the orphanage reached out. Lola is with them and has nowhere to go. So they’ll probably take her on as an orphan. Oh, Javi!” his mother wailed as she began to cry again.
Lola was just a young girl. His mom and Isla didn’t have any other family. And no one knew who Lola’s dad was, not even his Aunt Isla. Lola was the result of a sexual assault that Aunt Isla had never truly recovered from. Even Lola’s name meant “sorrows,” a name his aunt had picked because of her own sorrow. He’d never liked that reasoning.
With no options and an illegitimate baby to care for, his Aunt Isla had wanted to turn her life over to the church and join as a nun, but the discernment had been that she could not join the sisters until Lola was grown, and that his aunt’s priority must be the upbringing of her child before she could commit. However, the priest had taken mercy on Isla, and she’d been hired to work at an orphanage outside Havana that was run mostly by a convent of nuns. A kind of half-in, half-out measure to allow for the upbringing of Lola while committing herself to the Good Lord’s work. It had certainly been a nontraditional life, but far better than if Isla had remained a struggling single mom without support. It had also given his aunt a purpose.
He couldn’t imagine what his poor young cousin was feeling, and apparently, his mother was thinking the same thing. “Javi, you have to help me. We need to get guardianship of Lola and bring her here to live with us. I hate for her to truly be a child of the orphanage.”
He hated the idea of that, too. It was bad enough she’d had to live and grow up in one while not actually being an orphan…until now.
Javi hated that he was not in a position to rush home to be with his mother. Trying to comfort her over the phone feltpointless and ineffective. “Mamá, I am so sorry that I cannot leave and come to you right now, but I will find a lawyer and find out what we need to do to get Lola.”
That seemed to calm his mother down. “Gracias, mi hijo.” She sniffled.
Bringing Lola to live with his mother was actually a great idea. It would make him feel better to know his mother wasn’t alone. She needed companionship, and Lola could give her that, and an additional purpose for at least a few years. After more attempts to comfort his mother, he assured her that he would call her back later that evening and ended the call.
He sat on the bench heavily and dropped his head into his hands. The phone call with his mother had felt like hours to him, but it couldn’t have been more than five or six minutes. He sat like that until Cal, fresh from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, approached and asked, “Bro, you need anything? You okay?”
Javi dropped his head back to look up at his friend. “My aunt died.”
“Oh, dang. I’m sorry. Do you need to catch a flight to Florida?”
“No, she lived in Cuba. My mom is not taking it well. But there is also my little cousin who has no one to care for her. She’s in an orphanage in Havana. I need to see if I can find a lawyer and find some way for my mother to have guardianship of her.”
Cal perked up, and Javi remembered then that Cal had once told him that he came from a family of lawyers.
“Let me call my sister. She may be able to help you. She specializes in family and immigration law. Maybe she could meet with you this afternoon or tomorrow. Go ahead and hit the shower. I’ll call her now,” promised Cal.
CHAPTER 5
You’ve got to be a battler. If you don’t, they’ll walk all over you.
– Jesse Burkett, Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, 1946
This is it. Less than a month and I will be done with this place, thought Camdyn as she adjusted her favorite work bag on her shoulder. She stared up at the tall building that contained the Anderson Law Firm. It was all sleek glass and steel. Her firm operated out of the top three floors, but the building itself was huge. Thirty-five floors. Making it the second tallest building in Phoenix. A variety of enterprises and corporations filled the other floors. It struck her as odd that she’d never been to any of the other floors. Only the top three and the bottom.
The ground floor was home to a large lobby, a coffee shop, and a busy service center that handled postal, printing, and other business-type needs. Normally, she visited the coffee shop before going into the office, but today she bypassed it and headed straight to the elevators. She was early, as usual, but still, several familiar faces and colleagues greeted her as she made her way through the building and up to her office.
No one mentioned her resignation. So, word hadn’t spread yet. It probably wouldn’t until Richard spoke with her. She was surprised he hadn’t reached out to her, but she knew he was probably waiting to see her face-to-face. Richard was always professional.
However, Ricky had messaged her and tried to call multiple times over the weekend. She’d ignored him though it had irritated her. Nothing he could say would change anything, so why was he even bothering her.
No more thoughts of that, she told herself. She’d already moved on. Friday had initially seemed like a horrible day, but somewhere along the drive to California, she’d recognized it for the turning point in her life that it was. From that moment on, everything had been brighter. She’d made it to the game, watched her brother’s team win, uncharacteristically went to a club, danced her heart out, and then had a steamy romp with Javi.
She’d slipped away to her own room early Saturday morning before he’d awoken. Then she’d slept ’til that afternoon, dined on room service, and lounged around reading a book she’d bought months ago. Sunday morning, she’d visited the hotel spa before checking out and driving home to prepare for today.
She’d love to relive the weekend again. It had been restorative and invigorating, especially the wild night with Javi. Monday had arrived too fast.
