Drive

by Stephanie Fournet

  “It might be,” she said, looking away in thought before bringing her eyes back to him. “Holi’s mother is Cuban-American, and my father’s family has European roots. If Ray Charles Reeves shares a similar genetic background, we could get lucky.”

  “Let’s hope your father has a type.” He flinched as soon as the words were out, fearing his joke would offend her.

  Rainey rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth tipped up. “Oh, my father has a type,” she said sourly. “Women who aren’t married to him.”

  He laughed, and shaking her head in exasperation, she laughed too. So, Jacques took the opportunity.

  “So, what do you say? I’ll help you track them down. It’s too late to start searching for long-lost brothers tonight,” he said, talking fast so she couldn’t argue. “We’ll start tomorrow. I’ll come pick you up, and we’ll go to Dwyer’s. I’ll bring my laptop. We’ll find all the Gloria Lopezes we can, and I’ll help you contact them.”

  She pressed her lips together and studied him. “You really want to do that?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I do.”

  “And we’d have breakfast and work on this together…” Her eyes narrowed on him slightly. “… as friends? You want that?”

  Again, he wanted to reach for her, but he kept his hands on the countertop, a posture of even composer that didn’t match the tumult that hid behind his chest wall.

  I can do this. I can just be her friend. For as long as it takes, he lied to himself.

  And then he lied to her. “Sure. That’d be great.”

  Chapter 16

  True to his word, Jacques picked her up at nine on Saturday morning, and they headed to Dwyer’s downtown for breakfast. They had to wait outside for about five minutes for a table, but then one of the servers with a nametag reading Sonya led them to a two-seater booth near the back and pushed menus toward them.

  “So, what are you going to get today?” Jacques asked, giving her his lopsided grin.

  For about the sixth time that morning, she questioned the wisdom of agreeing to see him again. Even as friends. Jacques seemed more than capable of handling the newly established boundaries in their relationship, but the playfulness of his smile and the masculine purr of his voice made her throat dry and her palms sweat.

  Still, both when he’d told her goodnight the evening before and when he’d picked her up that morning, he hadn’t even touched her. In fact, since last night when their hands had danced the most intimate dance of her life, he hadn’t laid a finger on her.

  And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to be with him. When he’d left last night, she’d almost felt bereft. His company was Technicolor in her black and white world.

  “Waffles,” she said, feigning composure.

  “Oh, man,” Jacques said with unmistakable longing. “I haven’t had waffles in years.”

  Rainey’s brows shot up. “Years? I don’t think I could go a month without waffles,” she said, shaking her head.

  This confession made Jacques laugh, but then his face settled on a wistful smile. “Grandma Lucille used to make waffles for me and Pal.” A faraway look came into his eyes, and his smile lost a little of its sadness. “Pal wanted his with Steen’s syrup, but she always made mine with powdered sugar. Even when I got older.”

  “I eat mine with powdered sugar, too,” Rainey hoarse whispered as though confessing a crime, and Jacques’s surprised gaze shot to hers.

  “Seriously?”

  Rainey shook her head. “That’s how I was going to order them,” she said.

  His smile grew, and his eyes met hers. “I know what I want.”

  “But you have to get it with hash browns,” she insisted.

  “Why’s that?” he asked, looking no less amused.

  “Because you should always get the hash browns.” Didn’t everyone know this? “I mean, why even go out for breakfast if you aren’t going to order hash browns?”

  His deep laugh broke from him and rolled over her. He had such a great laugh. And for whatever reason, he found her funny. Rainey decided not to question it, but she loved the way it felt to make him laugh.

  “Is that a rule?” he asked, still chuckling.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s a rule.”

  Sonya returned to their table. “Y’all ready to order?” she asked, pulling a pencil from behind her ear and snagging a notepad from the front of her apron.

  “Yeah,” Jacques said, swallowing his mirth and sitting up straight. “We’ll have two orders of the Belgian waffles — with powdered sugar, please.”

  Rainey bit down on her smile when he met her eyes over the menu. “And two orders of hash browns,” he added.

  “Anything to drink ‘sides water?” Sonya asked, jotting down notes.

  Jacques raised a brow in question at Rainey.

  “Coffee.”

  He nodded. “Two coffees, please.”

  Sonya swept up their menus and promised that their plates would be out “in a jiffy.”

  In her absence, Rainey and Jacques grinned at each other for a long moment that didn’t grow awkward before Jacques seemed to remember himself. He reached down to the computer bag at his feet.

  “I stayed up a while after I left your house last night,” he said, setting the laptop on the table between them. “And I put some notes together about the Gloria Lopezes I found in Kentucky.”

  “Oh, wow,” she said, his efforts surprising her. He opened the screen, tapped a few keys, and turned the laptop around to face her.

  “Out of the six, three are on Facebook. I debated whether or not you’d think it was creepy that I copied their profile pictures,” he said, raising a brow at her. “But then I figured this may be my one and only chance to pretend to be a private investigator.”

  Rainey giggled even as her eyes fell on the images, but as she studied the women, her mood sobered. One of them might have had an affair with her father all those years ago. One of them might have given birth to her brother.

  “Based on their pictures, I don’t think we can rule any of these out. They don’t look too old or too young to have a ten-year-old son.”

  Rainey stared at them. “I know this sounds terrible, but if I had to bet, I don’t think your number two picture is our Gloria.”

  Jacques spun the computer back, zeroed in on the picture, and frowned. “Why not?”

  Rainey turned the laptop back ninety degrees so they could both see it. The woman, who looked to be around forty, sported a bowl haircut with a prominent cowlick over her left eye. She wore old-style horn-rimmed glasses and a broad smile that suited her broad face. Rainey didn’t want to say anything unkind about the stranger, but she knew her father. All too well. “I’m sure she’s a lovely person, but my dad doesn’t chase women for their personalities.”

  His eyebrows lifted in understanding, and he squinted back at the picture. “Aww. She’s not so bad,” he said lightly. “You don’t know. Ten years ago, she might have stopped traffic.”

  Rainey shook her head. “Believe me, I’m not suggesting that she isn’t a beautiful person. I just know my dad, and he wouldn’t take the time to see her inner beauty.” She knew her voice carried more than a little resentment, so she shouldn’t have been surprised when Jacques’s eyes lingered on hers. But she wasn’t ready for the way they softened on her.

  Or the way that felt.

  She pressed on, stammering. “Th-the two other women have more glam potential,” she said, pointing to the pictures. “Look. Long hair. Not afraid of makeup. Can we look at the stats on their pages?”

  “Sure.” Jacques angled the keyboard toward him and pulled up Facebook. “Okay… This one lives in Lexington. She works at Kepler Accounting Associates… Graduated from University of Louisville—”

  “My dad hooked up with his Gloria in Louisville,” Rainey interjected, a rush of adrenaline spiking in her veins.

  Jacques scrolled down. “Okay, it doesn’t list a spouse. Let’s see what photos she has.”
He nudged the screen so she could see better, and Rainey’s eyes ran over a series of photos. Most of them featured two dark-eyed, bronzy-skinned little girls. The oldest couldn’t have been eight.

  No boy.

  “If she had a son, she’d post his picture, right?” Rainey mused aloud.

  “You’d think,” Jacques muttered, scrolling through more photos. Some pics featured this Gloria arm in arm with friends, all female. There were no pictures of men or boys. If the Gloria Lopez in Lexington had gotten married seven years ago or had a son at all, her social media presence bore no sign of either.

  Sonya returned with their coffees, and they took turns with the sugar canister. Rainey plucked two creamers from the little saucer on their table and set them by Jacques’s mug, remembering how he took his coffee.

  “Thanks,” he muttered softly, wearing a smile she could feel as well as see. The feeling settled in her middle. Rainey focused on stirring her coffee instead of the penetrating sensation.

  “I don’t think it’s her,” she said finally.

  “Should we message her just in case?” Jacques asked.

  “Not yet. I can’t imagine anyone would enjoy a message like that,” Rainey said, shaking her head. “I think it would freak me out a little if someone reached out to me asking about my child and my past — even if I knew they had the wrong person.”

  Jacques seemed to consider this before nodding. “Fair enough. We’ll sort them from most to least likely before reaching out.” But he held her gaze to be sure. “Sound good to you?”

  “Sounds great.” What she didn’t tell him was how much easier and more manageable this whole prospect seemed with his help. The emotions alone would have daunted her without him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s take a look at candidate number three…” He clicked onto the page belonging to Gloria Lopez-Craine. This Gloria lived in Bowling Green, and she owned a salon called “Glorious Locks.” The first several images in her photo cue were all clients. Women sporting new looks, fresh highlights, and fabulous manicures. All with the same backdrop — what could only be the inside of a salon.

  But when Jacques scrolled to the third row of pictures, Rainey sucked in a breath.

  A boy with skin the color of whiskey and hazel eyes she met every day in the mirror stared back at her.

  “Oh, my God…”

  “Oh, my God,” Jacques echoed.

  They both took in the image in silence. In the picture, Gloria Lopez-Craine had her arm wrapped tightly around the boy’s shoulders as they both laughed at the camera, their dark hair windswept and sun on their faces. The image captured an affectionate moment between mother and son, that fleeting time in a boy’s life when he still welcomed the loving claim of his mother’s embrace.

  “He looks just like you and Holi,” Jacques murmured. Holi and Ash had come downstairs the night before just as Jacques was leaving, but it was enough time for Jacques to see the resemblance between Rainey and her sister, which even Holi’s surgical mask could not hide.

  And if Jacques saw the family traits here in this boy’s picture, then Rainey couldn’t have been imagining it. The smiling child with eyes that matched hers had to be her brother. Rainey put a hand to her chest and wheezed in a breath. Her heart pounded, and her eyes stung.

  She had a brother. A brother who smiled and laughed and loved his mom. A brother who was alive and — by all appearances — happy and well.

  Rainey’s throat closed completely, and her eyes welled. Her gaze darted around the restaurant. What had she been thinking coming here to begin this search? And with Jacques, no less? And why did she think she could do this at all? How could she look at pictures of a little brother who wasn’t John Lee? She wouldn’t be able to hold it together. She’d start weeping, and everyone in the restaurant would stare at her and whisper. Jacques would think she was certifiable. When had she ever been around him when she wasn’t an absolute mess?

  Why did he want to be with her anyway?

  “I-I’m sorry. Please excuse me.” She forced the words past the ball bearing in her throat and made to scoot out of the booth when he grabbed her hand.

  “Rainey.” He spoke her name gently, but his tone was assertive, calm. “It’s alright.”

  “It’s not,” she rasped. As if to prove herself right, Rainey looked down at the fingers of her free hand to find them shaking. He followed the line of her sight and then took that hand too.

  “Talk to me,” he whispered.

  Rainey just shook her head. A lone tear broke free and streaked down her cheek. She ducked her chin to hide her face, and another travelled down the bridge of her nose. Jacques stacked her hands on top of each other and covered them with his broad left palm. Then he brought the corner of his napkin up to her face and trapped the third tear before it could escape.

  “This is a lot,” Jacques said, low enough so that only she could hear. “This is a lot to handle.”

  She swallowed hard and sniffled. “There isn’t much I handle well.” Rainey kept her eyes trained on the front of his shirt. AWOLNATION stared back at her. “Maybe I should cry for help. Maybe I should kill myself. Blame it on my ADD, baby.” The lyrics popped into her head, and for some insane reason, they made it possible to take a deep breath.

  “You’re doing better than you think.”

  A mirthless laugh bubbled up from the vise that was her chest. “Then I must think I’m doing a pretty shit job of it.”

  Jacques chuckled. “Well, if you think that, you’re wrong.” He dabbed his napkin gently under each of her eyes. “You want to tell me what’s going on inside that head so I can help?”

  “Not particularly,” she croaked, pulling a face.

  Sweetly, and with eyes full of warmth, he laughed again. “You’re so funny,” he murmured. “It amazes me how your sense of humor never abandons you, no matter how hard things get.”

  Rainey blinked at him. Her tears had enough mercy to dry up, but she knew they’d return if she wasn’t careful. His words made her feel stronger than she really was. They tempted her, and even though she knew how dangerous it was, she reached for her phone and opened her photo album.

  “I had a little brother.” Rainey clicked on the photo of her and John Lee on their last family vacation. They’d gone to Aspen. All five of them. John Lee had never skied before, but he was a natural, and his first time down the bunny slopes, Rainey had skied beside him, cheering him on. Their mother had snapped the picture at the bottom of the run. Their cheeks pressed together, faces red from the cold. Hair sticking out of knitted ski caps. Smiles as big as the blinding blue sky behind them.

  Rainey turned the screen to Jacques. “His name was John Lee,” she said. Her voice shook, but she still managed to speak his name.

  She watched Jacques’s eyes take in the image, and a little frown — a knowing frown — marked his brow.

  “The bad car accident you told me about…” he said, watching her closely.

  Rainey nodded and swallowed. “I was driving.” His eyes on her never flickered, but his hand plucked hers off the table and held it tight. Somehow, she found the words to tell him the story. “It was a freak accident. The woman who hit us was having a stroke. She ran a red light…”

  She stopped, lost in the memory that often kidnapped her. The grill of the Escalade like a charging bull… John Lee’s gasp… her scream…

  “How old were you?” Jacques asked, rescuing her.

  She refocused her eyes on his. “I was seventeen. John Lee was twelve. That was six years ago.”

  Jacques eyes narrowed in what looked like pain. “I’m so sorry, Rainey,” he said softly.

  For a moment, she could only nod. Then she looked up at the image of Gloria Lopez-Craine’s son still on Jacques’s laptop screen.

  “I can’t help it,” she confessed, tipping her head to the image. “Seeing this picture makes it more real than just hearing about him. But seeing him…”

  Her voice tapered to a strained whisper, a
nd Jacques’s frown deepened, but he waited for her to finish.

  “…seeing him makes me so excited.” She gave a sad little laugh as the joy and pain pierced her again. “And I feel guilty for that.”

  Jacques was shaking his head before her words were out. “Feeling excited to find a new brother isn’t a bad thing,” he told her.

  She gave him a false smile to keep her face from falling, and she looked up at the ceiling to hold the new tears in check.

  “And yet this rock in the pit of my stomach says otherwise.” She blinked fast to trick her eyes into drying again. “And that’s not all. I want to meet this kid. I want to find out if he’s like me or Holi or John Lee or any of us. But the reason I’m reaching out to him at all is for some stem cells. And now that I’m looking into eyes that look just like mine—” she said, flicking her wrist at the Facebook image. “I feel guilty about that too.”

  Jacques gave her his gentle smile again. He leaned forward in his seat bringing his face closer to hers and giving her hands a squeeze. “Rainey, just for a minute, picture it the other way around.”

  She frowned. “What?” She had no idea what he meant, but even the timbre of his voice and the warmth of his hand made her feel a little better. His nearness seemed to dilute the concentration of emotions that roiled through her.

  “Imagine that Ray Charles’s mother called you today because he was the one who needed stem cells. How would you feel?”

  Her head became a giant bell and his words a hammer.

  “I’d do anything,” she said in a rush.

  Jacques just nodded. “And Holi would, too, right?”

  “Of course.”

  He kept nodding. She watched his mouth work as if he were debating what he’d say next.

  “What?”

  He eyed her a minute longer. “I’m thinking John Lee would too if he could,” he said softly.

  This truth didn’t strike like a hammer. It settled over her shoulders like a blanket, and she closed her eyes to absorb its comfort.

  “Okay,” she muttered, closing her eyes with a nod. “That helps.”