“Bye, Mom.” She hung up before her mothersaid anything else. Fighting tears, she looked out the window, breathing through the pain.
“I always forget how awful she really is,” Pepper said softly. “Or has she gotten worse?”
“She’s gotten worse.” Lisa couldn’t keep the tears out of her voice. “Since everything with David, she’s even more mad at me. Plus, I didn’t let her take over the wedding. She’s lost control, and she doesn’t like it. I can tell she’s going to make everyone miserable for the next four days.”
“Not us,” Pepper said. “We’re going to have the most magical weekend ever.”
“We have everything planned,” Stone said. “Down to the last detail. My fiancée did an amazing job.”
Pepper beamed up at him. “We did it together.”
“We’re grateful for all your hard work,” Rafael said. “And I for one am excited for every moment.”
Pepper’s face appeared between the seats once more. “I cannot wait to see my best friend walk down the aisle. Rafael, when you see Lisa coming toward you in that dress, just hang on to Stone when your knees buckle.”
“He’s a former Navy SEAL,” Lisa said, laughing. “I don’t think the sight of me in my dress is going to take him down.”
“Trust me, Stardust,” Rafael said as he brought Lisa’s hand to his mouth. “You already took me down the moment I met you. Seeing you in that dress might be the end of me.”
3
ROSA
Mama Soto had a name before Mama, but the memory of the girl she’d once been was like that of a friend she’d outgrown. She remembered her fondly yet felt sorry for the insipid, trusting little twit.
She’d been baptized Rosa Marie Soto by Father Paul as an infant and raised by her single mother into a good Catholic girl. At nineteen, she’d married Javier Rojas, her heart overflowing with love and hope for the boy and their imagined future together as husband and wife. Tragically, their union had been as doomed as her mother’s and grandmother’s marriages. Days after she told Javier of the blessing growing inside her, he left with his clothes, the money she’d stashed in her jewelry box for a rainy day, and her best friend, Regina Luna, tucked under his cheating arm. Herex-best friend Regina.
Heartbroken, she’d changed her name back to Soto and moved in with her mother. There were many nights she cried herself to sleep, praying to God to please take her to heaven. She stumbled through her days as the youngest lunch lady at the local elementary school. The children’s smiles and innocent round eyes staring up at her as she tapped their trays with thelunch of the day distracted her, reminded her that better days were surely to come her way. She gained her second name there—Rosa the Lunch Lady. Still, even with her three-feet-tall adoring fans, she ached in places she didn’t know existed, as if there were crevices and holes inside her that opened to absorb the pain of loss. Her skin became thin and sensitive. It took only a whisper of a breeze or muted morning light to sting her bare cheeks and the hollow of her neck.
As her stomach grew rounder, her only comforts came from the gentle touch of her mother and sitting in the front-row pew of Father Paul’s church on Sunday mornings. When Rafael finally came and they placed him in her arms, he looked up at her with the eyes of an old soul. Like magic, she no longer ached for the boy with the shiny shoes who’d wooed her on the scuffed bleachers of their high school gymnasium. She became Mama. Rosa Marie and her vulnerable, lovesick heart no longer existed. Her son was her life now. His presence made her strong, like a warrior queen. Nothing would keep her from giving him everything he needed to grow up to be a fine man. A man who would stay. A man who would fight for those he loved.
Little had she known that he would grow up to be a warrior. A Navy SEAL who served his country and fought a war against evil. He’d exceeded her every expectation. She loved him as fiercely as she ever had but with a pride that bordered on sin. He was a great man, her son. She’d done her job.
Her mother had taken care of baby Rafael while she was at work. However, she was growing frail and without the energy to raise a little boy. One day, she’d come home from work to find her mother weeping. She’d dropped the baby. He was so strong and physical that he’d suddenly jerked and fallen from her arms. She knew then that for all their sakes she must move out of her mother’s house. By the time Rafael was a year old, she’d saved enough to move to an apartment of her own. Nextdoor, Ria was also a single mother with a young son. They became a team. Ria worked a night shift, so between the two of them, they were able to raise both babies into young men.
A dull pain throbbed at the back of her throat at the thought of Paulo. Ria’s dear little boy had loved baseball and mint chocolate chip ice cream. His favorite pastime was to stare at the vintage baseball cards displayed at their local pawnshop. He was a dreamer, living in his fantasies rather than in the world. Who could blame him? The neighborhood she and Ria were able to afford was no place for an innocent.
He and Rafael had been like brothers until fate drew them apart. Paulo hadn’t made it long after high school graduation. Rafael had joined the military, but Paulo was color-blind and unable to enlist. There was no money for college, so Paulo went the way of so many young men in their neighborhood. One of the local gangs recruited him. For those who weren’t from that world, it was easy to judge, to say, why didn’t he just keep out of trouble, keep his nose clean? Most people couldn’t understand what it was like to live in a neighborhood where hopelessness was sold on every street corner and in any flavor of ice cream.
Several years after graduation, Paulo was dead.
Often, she imagined Paulo up in heaven, playing baseball with the men featured on the vintage baseball cards. In heaven he would be strong, and his eyes would see in every vivid color.
Ria had turned inside out and disappeared for a while. Only faith in God and her belief that he was in a better place and that one day she would see him again kept her from going mad with grief. Over ten years had passed since that awful day. Ria had come back to life, slowly. And now Rosa’s son had made it possible for Ria to have a new start. She would no longer have to walk past the corner where Paulo took his last breath.
“Are you ladies all right back there? Are the curves making you queasy?” Nico Bentley asked from the front passenger seat. Poor Nico and Trey. They’d been stuck withthe old ladies. Rafael had asked them to escort her and Ria to the airport as well as sit with them on the flight, then drive them from Denver to Emerson Pass. During the drive to San Francisco, Ria had felt sick from all the curves in the road. They’d had to stop several times for her to take in some fresh air.
That airport—so busy with rude people pushing and shoving and acting important—had made her stomach flutter with nerves. They’d had to take their shoes off at security. She hadn’t minded terribly, although she’d been worried about slipping in her stocking feet. Ria, however, had minded quite a bit, mumbling about the barbaric nature of airports these days while looking down her long, thin nose at the security staff. Rosa had smiled to herself. Ria seemed to have momentarily forgotten that neither of them had been on a plane more than two times in their entire life, including the one today.
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” Ria, sitting directly behind Nico, folded her hands primly on her lap and gave a weak smile. “A little tired. I’ll need a nap when we get there.”
“I love naps.” Nico’s broad shoulders settled against the back of his seat. “I’m going to need one too.”
“Mama Soto? How about you?” Trey asked, catching her eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I’m fit as a fiddle.”Mama Soto. This was her latest name. Her third-act name, according to Lisa and Pepper. Being actresses, they would think of life in this way. She and Ria loved every story and bit of gossip the girls threw their way. In a million years, she would have never imagined Rafael would marry a famous actress. She and Ria had to pretend to be cool when Lisa casually talked about the famous Genevieve Banks and the movie she and Pepper were going to film with her. She’d almost fainted when Lisa and Pepper had promised to take them to the premiere when it opened. Genevieve Banks was their favorite actress. They’d followed her for years and had sighed with relief when Lisa told themshe was just as sweet in real life as she appeared in interviews.
“I’m starving,” Nico said. “I wish I had one of your chicken salad sandwiches, Mama Soto.”
