As soon as the car was out of sight, tears sprang from Gabriella’s eyes as she squealed, “Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any worse.”
Chapter 23
Gabriella and I got real tipsy together that night. Slurred speech and all. Empty wineglasses and an open bottle sat between us, the cork rolled somewhere out of reach. Between sobs for Elijah, I told Gabriella all about what happened with Eric. “He’s got some nerve, driving all the way here without so much as calling me first. Who does that?”
“Someone who thinks you’re just going to open the door and let him in,” Gabriella said.
“Hmmm,” I thought out loud. “Well. I did let him in.”
She nodded and swallowed hard. “Of course you did. You’re not rude like him. He knows you’re always going to show up in kindness and love. That’s who you are, Joyce. Don’t let him make you something else.”
“Rrrrright,” I agreed.
“But me? I wouldn’t have let him in,” she said. “He’s lucky I wasn’t here. We could have had one of those—what do you call them?—standoffs. We could have held Elijah hostage!”
“Sounds violent.”
She shrugged. “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”
We both decided Eric was quite a piece of work, to put it mildly. Then Gabriella told me what was on her mind. Turns out, she and Lorenzo broke up. To which I replied, “Good riddance!” because my filter was off.
My ex-husband had basically kidnapped my grandson at my daughter’s command, I was dipping into my nest egg early, and Celestia was gone. What did I have to lose by holding my tongue?
“I know, I know,” Gabriella agreed. “I just don’t want to be lonely. You know?”
I did know. When I was a young woman, being lonely—read, not tied to a man—was almost a sin. Some women enrolled in college just to find an upwardly bound man, not to actually get a degree. A woman unbound to a man was problematic. Even though laws had changed, depending on where you lived you could still run into trouble renting an apartment on your own, financing a car, or getting certain jobs. Employers couldn’t discriminate blatantly anymore, but they still worried that a single woman would mean scandal in the office. And it went without saying that a woman would be paid less than a man to perform the exact same job.
That’s how the system worked. A woman without a man faced an uphill battle. Being lonely was only one of her worries.
Gabriella was too young to remember days like that. I didn’t want to invalidate her thoughts by reminiscing on the days before she was born, so I said, “You learn a lot about yourself and about life when you’re lonely.”
“I know mysssselffff,” Gabriella insisted. “Gabriella Santos! And I’m a boss in the kitchen!”
“That, you are!”
The chirping insects agreed loudly as she poured us both another glass of wine. She’d added a small table and two lawnchairs on her side of the back porch, giving us our own private outdoor living space. We’d doused ourselves heavily with anti-mosquito spray, so we could stay out all night if we’d wanted to.
“And I’m Joyce Hicks. Retired teacher. I taught hundreds—thousands—of kids to read! And I left my non-loving husband, and now I just love on myself. And I’m gonna fix up this house before that APS woman comes back, if it’s the last thing I do!”
“I wish I could help,” Gabriella said. Then, without warning, she burst into tears, the kind of deep, guttural sobbing that shakes the whole body. Her shoulders heaved violently, as though the weight of the world had just been dropped on her.
My heart clenched in empathy. “Oh no. No, no, no, no. You’re going to be all right, Gabriella,” I comforted her, though my own voice was shaking at that point. It hit me then that this child had carved a deep place in my heart already. She loved hard. Cared for people with a fierce loyalty that was rare and beautiful. This was one of the reasons Elijah was so drawn to her.
The last time I’d been this close to a slobbering young lady was when Mrs. Rivers, one of the kindergarten teachers, had found out she was pregnant with her third child while her second child was only four months old and her first one was barely potty-trained. Now, why she decided to take a pregnancy test during her teacher-conference period, I’ll never understand. But there she was, coming out of the restroom in the teachers’ lounge looking like God had just texted her and told her she wasn’t gonna make it in.
“I can’t do this!” she wailed and fell onto me, much the same as Gabriella now. By the time we’d finished our talk, I’d convinced Mrs. Rivers that her children would be close—best friends. And they’d have one another for all their lives, practically. I figured this because families used to have stair-step kids all the time back inthe day; it was expected. Encouraged. What started off as hectic could later yield a beautiful harvest.
So I amplified my empathetic skills. “Gabriella, sweetheart, I know it might not seem like it now, but you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. There will be lot more opportunities to fall in love.”
“No, it’s not just that. When we broke up today, Lorenzo fired me. That’s why I’m home so early.”
“He fired you?” I screeched.
“Mm-hmm. And now Lisa, who’s, like, the last family member I really talk to, is mad at me, since she’s married to Lorenzo’s cousin. It’s wild. Mmm, mmm, mmm.”
Her mumble traveled through me. Made me want to fight somebody, like a mother would for her child. “We’re gonna make it through this, Gabriella. Together.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she cried. “Can we get Elijah back?”
