Only Love (28 page)

Rissa whimpered, wanting me to hold her tighter, so I did. She’d ease up in a bit and would pull away a little once she got comfortable, but I wasn’t rushing her. I needed this hug as much as she did at the moment.

Near the front of the crowd, a table was set up to display pictures of Javi—some from back in the day that left me nostalgic, and more recent candid photos that’d been taken during his time in the military. One in particular I recognized. It was the one I had in my phone and showed Rissa on occasion so she’d maybe recognize him when he made it home.

When he made it home…

He was
never
going to make it home.

My eyes became wet and I blinked hard to push it away. My efforts were in vain as the wetness returned, this time overflowing my lower lids and running down my face. This was too much—saying goodbye to him like this while holding his daughter in my arms, a daughter who’d never really get to know him.

I had literally just made up my mind to leave when a gentle hand came to rest on my shoulder. “Told you we’d be here,” Cindy whispered in my ear, giving a warm smile that never reached her eyes. She stroked my back a few times while Joan dug in her purse for a package of tissues. Once found, she handed me a few.

Wiping my face, I leaned into Cindy’s embrace. She held on tight and didn’t let go right away. When she pulled back, she kissed Rissa’s hand while I continued to hold her.

“You doing okay, hon?” Joan asked.

I shrugged and tried to decide how to answer that question. “I’m hanging in there,” was the best I came up with.

 My eyes stayed trained straight ahead on Javi’s picture—one that I was pretty sure I took myself. In fact, I knew I had. It was the summer after we graduated from high school. We were at the beach and it was one of those rare moments when he wasn’t focused on anything other than having fun and enjoying life—wasn’t caught up in hustling or trying to make money, wasn’t focused on anything but me. Us. I stared at that particular photo for a long time. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of his Charger with the beach way off in the distance as the backdrop, and he was almost smiling—something he rarely did in pictures. I didn’t realize I’d zoned out on the memory until Joan repeated herself.

“Aubrey, honey? I said we can take Rissa off your hands if you’d like to go talk with the family.”

I managed a short smile when I met Joan’s gaze. The pair had been so sweet to show up at all, I didn’t want to tax them further. They’d driven from their home in Troy to be here to support me on this sad occasion.

I shook my head. “She’s fine. Besides, she gets fussy around strangers so I should probably hang on to her.”

I think Joan meant to conceal her expression, but I caught it. It was a look of confusion. “Strangers?” The question was a loaded one—one that begged the explanation as to why, while surrounded by almost nothing but family, Rissa didn’t know any of them.

I looked down. “I’ve never really been close to Javi’s family,” was all I responded with.

Joan had a look of understanding when she turned away, accepting a candle from a young Puerto Rican girl that I didn’t recognize, but assumed to be another of Javi’s relatives. I declined a candle only because I didn’t know how to manage it with Rissa in my arms, but accepted a copy of the obituary, sliding it into my purse for safekeeping. The young girl moved on, but glanced back at Rissa and me a few times while she did. She eventually disappeared into the crowd again.

A woman near the table with Javi’s pictures started a song in Spanish that the rest of the family joined in on. The words of course were a mystery to me, but it pulled at my heart all the same. A few cries arose from the gathering and set off a chain reaction and I had to look away. I’d cried so much already in the past several days that I felt drained. Weak. Now, with Javi’s family all around, publically trying to come to terms with such devastation, I couldn’t hold it in. Their hurt became my own. Being in the presence of others who were experiencing the same loss, the same sort of hurt that I was, I realized then that we were all bonded together whether they chose to accept me or not. Rissa was as much Javi’s flesh and blood as they were.

The little girl who’d given Joan and Cindy the candles was now near the house, and it caught me off guard to see her pointing a finger my way as a woman leaned down to hear whatever she was whispering into her ear. The woman’s eyes lifted to meet mine and her expression was blank, giving away nothing. She leaned to her right and touched the shoulder of the woman beside her, Javi’s mother. After a brief exchange of hushed words, Mrs. Ruiz’s eyes fell on me too and I froze in place. Her expression went hard.

Was she angry I’d showed up?

Maybe Carmen hadn’t told her I’d be here?

With one abrupt gesture, my heart sank. Mrs. Ruiz lifted her hand in the air and motioned me in her direction with one quick swipe of her hand. I wasn’t sure what to do. Never once in the past had Javi’s mother had even a single kind word for me. Now, with everyone’s emotions running so high, I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t make a target out of me, using me to unleash all of her misplaced frustration. I didn’t want any drama—not in front of Rissa. So for that reason, I made up my mind that I’d leave at the first sign of confrontation.

I turned to Cindy. “I’ll be right back. I just need to go speak to someone.”

She nodded and gave the same smile of consolation that she’d given when walking up a moment ago. Nervous, I made my way closer to Javi’s childhood home, trying not to let it show on my face that I was on the defense. Only a few feet separated me from Mrs. Ruiz and I felt sick to my stomach, more so when I finally came to stand nearly toe to toe with the woman. She still said not one word. Her eyes roamed over my face, fresh tears still very present in her eyes
and
mine.

Once she was done looking me
over, her gaze drifted to Rissa and I instinctively held her tighter in my arms. Rissa stared back at the woman she’d seen a total of five times in her entire life—and I was being generous with that number.

There was a long stretch of time where no words were spoken between us as the crowd continued to sing behind me. The woman and girl standing to Mrs. Ruiz’s left were watching us intently, both moving in to console her when she broke down again, sobbing hard into one hand while the other went to Rissa’s back and then to her hair. Quite a few of those attending had their attention focused on us now, while I stood there unsure of what to do or say. Rissa clutched me tight, but didn’t otherwise seem to be alarmed by the woman who had a hand on her.

Mrs. Ruiz shook her head as if in disbelief of something, and then she spoke her thoughts aloud. “I’ve been so stupid not getting to know this beautiful little girl better, Aubrey. I… I don’t even know what to say for myself. There’s no excuse,” she managed to get out before breaking down again.

I froze there, watching an already broken woman break even further. The woman to her left, whom I assumed to be either her sister or maybe a cousin, latched onto her shoulders and held her close. I felt like I should walk away, give her space. However, when I took a step back, Mrs. Ruiz protested.

“No… please don’t go,” she pled, her eyes reflecting her desperation.

I pulled my feet together and stopped trying to flee.

A bystander offered her a few tissues that she used to dry her eyes while I stood there quietly. Once she composed herself, Mrs. Ruiz made a request that I wasn’t expecting.

“Would you come inside? So we can talk? Please?” she asked. Here we were a whole decade after Javi and I’d gotten together and she was inviting me inside her home for the first time. Granted, I’d been inside when she wasn’t home on many occasions, but never once had she herself asked me to come in.

When I gave a nod, her spirits seemed to lift a little. The heavy, wrought-iron door slammed behind us as we took to the living room couch. Not much had changed in here other than a new sofa being purchased. Also a few new pictures had been added to the walls, mostly of school-aged children who I assumed were nieces and nephews. Luckily, there were enough of these photos to give my eyes somewhere to look other than Javi’s mom.

“He encouraged me to call you on almost a weekly basis, you know that?” she asked, her accent hanging on every syllable. “He wanted nothing more than for the two women he loved most in the world to get along. Not just for him, though.” She lifted her hand and gestured toward Rissa. “For that baby girl in your arms.”

I lowered my gaze to Rissa who was starting to get sleepy, rubbing her fists against her eyes. Watching her, I couldn’t understand how a grandmother could stand not being there to soak up every minute that she could of her grandchild’s life, witnessing her grow, seeing her change. It baffled me, but I tried to be understanding when Mrs. Ruiz started explaining.

“Six months ago, I promised Javi I’d make that call.” She paused to shake her head. “Never got up the nerve to dial your number, though. I thought that, after all this time, you wouldn’t want to hear from me—wouldn’t let me see my grandchild.”

I frowned. “I’d never keep her from you, Mrs. Ruiz. If you’d gotten to know me, you would’ve never even thought that. From day one all I’ve wanted was for us to get along—for you to like me. When you closed that door, I dealt with it, but it never sat right with me. Never.”

She sat across from me on the couch, speechless.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about how much of Rissa’s life you all are missing. Seems like she’s doing something new every day that she wasn’t doing the day before. Yeah, she’ll always have me, but I’m not her only family, Mrs. Ruiz.”

“Josephine. Call me Josephine.”

I nodded and then looked down at Rissa, at her features that were basically all Javi with only a touch of me. “And as much as she needs
you
in her life, you need her too. Especially now.”

Josephine broke down again, but managed to nod her head in agreement. “You’re absolutely, right. I do.”

She studied Rissa’s face again, no doubt seeing her son through her granddaughter. “May I hold her?”

I handed Rissa over without hesitation, which seemed to surprise Josephine. It was like I said; it was never my intention to keep Rissa from Javi’s side of the family in the first place. Josephine clutched my daughter tight in her arms and I was glad Rissa didn’t protest. This was good for them both.

Josephine wiped a tear from her eye. “I hate that it took this occasion for us to talk, but I’m glad we did. I am.”

Nodding, I smiled a little. “Me too. Life’s too short not to keep your family close.”

Josephine nodded and then I looked at her hand when she placed it on my arm. “And that includes you. You’re family too, Aubrey.”

Hearing her say the words I’d wanted to hear her say for so long warmed my heart. I wiped my eyes with a tissue I’d been clutching for a while. “Thank you. That means a lot.” And it did, more than Josephine would probably understand.

I found Adam’s moms outside where I’d left them standing a while ago. Rissa was asleep on my shoulder at this point.

“This memorial is simply beautiful,” Cindy commented, tipping her chin toward the flower arrangement someone was walking toward the table near the front where the enlarged photos of Javi sat. “It seems like he was loved by quite a few people.”

I thought about that. She was right. Looking around at all the faces—some that I knew, some that I didn’t—it was clear that all of these people had been touched by Javi in one way or another. While he was about as imperfect as the rest of us, he was a good person at the core. He was.

I’d just laid eyes on a group of old friends from high school that I intended to go talk to when Cindy’s phone rang. I didn’t know why, but that stopped me—dead in my tracks. There was just this feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Wait, Caroline. Slow down, sweetheart. You’re—” Cindy cut off, holding the phone to one ear and her finger plugging the other when she couldn’t hear the person on the other end—

Caroline.

Joan perked up, too.

 “Now hold on, what was the last thing he said to you?” Cindy asked now.

My heart began to race in my chest as I put together the pieces of the puzzle, jumping to my own conclusions as to what this call was about. I was at least positive it had to do with Adam. It sounded as if Caroline was searching for him. Based solely on the look of sheer panic on Cindy’s face, I too started to worry. She always seemed to be so in control, but not right now.

 “It’s Adam,” she said, filling Joan and me in on the details Caroline had shared over the phone. “He had a rough day, called her sounding a bit frantic, but the call dropped. She can’t get in touch with him now. He won’t pick up. She stopped by the apartment, but he’s not there.” She went back to her conversation.

Joan’s expression reflected her concern as she shook her head. “That’s not like him,” she said to me while Cindy and Caroline continued. Suddenly, her hand went to her mouth. “It must have been the letter.”

I didn’t understand her reference, but stayed silent as I went back to listening to Cindy. “What did he say when he called you, sweetheart?” she asked, listening again, and when she closed her eyes slowly, a tremor of panic hit my heart. My hand went to my chest and Cindy continued.

“I was afraid of that,” she said, nodding. “Where do you think he’s gone?” she asked.

“Hang on one second, Caroline.” Placing her hand over the receiver of the phone, Cindy turned to me. Her eyes were filled with so much emotion. My heart went out to her.

“Aubrey… honey? I hate to ask you to do this right now, but—”

“Tell me what you need me to do,” I interjected, letting her know I’d do whatever it took to find Adam, to make sure he was safe.

She touched my arm. “There are some things Adam is going through right now. Things that… I think it’s best that you be the one to go to him. Caroline can only do so much as his sponsor, and he won’t listen to Joan and me. We’ve tried, but you… He needs you right now. Needs you more than you know.”

It was then that I realized what the connection was between Caroline and Adam. Cindy said Caroline was his sponsor. Now Adam going missing became something completely different.
Had he gone back to drinking?