“Hello,” she said warmly, a voice that was generic frenzied nurse rushing around from room to room.
“We wanted to speak with someone about services.”
Courtney leaned in over the desk, desperate for hope. “We got your name from a friend, the family of a woman whose death you handled not too long ago.”
“Who was that?”
“Debbie Abercrombie,” Courtney said.
“Oh, I loved Debbie.” Jocelyn smiled fondly, as if everyone who’d died with her was a friend, which made them friends of a friend. “I didn’t know she had family.”
“A great-uncle who isn’t able to travel. He’s in the same nursing home as our grandmother, and his nurse was the one who gave us your name. We’re considering handling our grandmother’s passing ourselves. Our mom is having a tough time dealing with all this—she won’t even discuss the subject, let alone make prior arrangements.”
Marc was impressed. Courtney lied so easily it was disturbing. “We hadn’t known you could handle deaths anywhere else until the nurse mentioned Debbie and what you do here,” he added. “We’re hoping it might be something our mom can wrap her brain around before this gets ugly.”
“Your mother’s is a common reaction, I’m afraid.” Jocelyn circled the reception desk, sounding sympathetic.
She fished through some brochures about preparing for death and caring for a loved one at home. “Take these. They might help if you can get your mom to read them. Maybe ask her if she would rather your grandmother pass away alone with strangers or surrounded and cared for by the people who love her. She might feel reassured enough to at least listen.”
“Good idea,” Courtney said. “She’s in total avoidance mode. It’s difficult.”
Jocelyn smiled thoughtfully. “So many people don’t want to think about death. But babies are welcomed into life surrounded by love. We should send our loved ones from this life the same way. It’s natural and beautiful that way.”
Home death seemed a lot less crazy.
“Sounds like Debbie thought that,” Marc said.
“Absolutely. She knew the end was near, so she oversaw every aspect of the process. I think she felt more in control.”
“We understood she’d been sick a long time.”
Jocelyn nodded. “I provided hospice care at the end. She died here, very peacefully. Exactly what she had wanted right down to the green funeral service. She chose a wicker urn because it’s better for the environment. A caring lady.”
“So it was just you and Debbie?” Marc glanced at Courtney, tried to look worried. “I’m not sure Mom would want that for Grandma. She’d want us all there.”
“You could be with your grandmother. Having people around is actually more the norm.” Jocelyn pulled open a drawer and riffled through the contents until she found a color booklet, which she flipped open to reveal photographs of rooms filled with people and decorations. “We provide individual services. Some people hold court while everyone they know visits to say goodbye. Sometimes the closest people stay around the clock. Our suites are set up to comfortably accommodate guests.”
Courtney glanced at the booklet and said softly, “Mr. Abercrombie can’t travel, so Debbie didn’t have anyone to be with her when she died.”
“She had me and her neighbor. A lovely girl. They were dear friends. She stayed with Debbie right until the end. Whenever I walked through the door, they were together, chatting, laughing, crying. Debbie passed surrounded by love.”
“Her neighbor?” Courtney glanced up at him, feigning surprise. “That must be the girl Mr. Abercrombie was telling us about. Do you even remember her name?”
“I think you listen to him more closely than I do,” Marc admitted. “He likes to talk.”
Jocelyn smiled knowingly. “That would be Beatriz, and she’s a lovely girl. In fact, see that painting on the wall behind you? She did that herself as a thank-you gift.”
Marc’s pulse kicked into gear as he and Courtney turned in unison. And there, showcased on the wall, was a sizable canvas in an elaborate frame, a field of wildflowers beneath a blue sky. He and Courtney shared a beat of stunned silence before she moved forward as if drawn by the painting itself.
“Omigosh, it’s amazing,” she whispered reverently.
Even if Marc hadn’t known anything about art, he would have known the landscape had been well executed.
“I finally had it framed,” Jocelyn said. “Just got it back maybe six weeks ago. Took me a while to decide what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to complement but not detract.”
“Mission accomplished,” was all Courtney said.
The perspective was what made the scene so unique. Wildflowers dotted a green field in wild confusion. The result of vibrant colors and skilled brushstrokes with the perspective created a sense that the wildflowers were reaching toward the blue sky with puffy clouds, eagerly trying to get up there.
The painting was unsigned.
* * *
COURTNEY UNDERSTOOD MARC’S PLAN. She understood they were going undercover, so they could interact with the buskers and try to get information about Araceli. Marc couldn’t walk the streets, so he would stake out a street corner.
She could walk the streets. The actual area that comprised the District was manageable. Her vintage purchases were in the backseat. She would park the car in a lot off the main drag, easy to get out of sight. She had a purse large enough to carry a costume change, and had pinpointed places where she could use the public restrooms to change.
The soda shop.
The tearoom.
The park.
She would stroll through the streets, marking every busker she could find, checking in with Marc after every costume change that would—hopefully—keep her from drawing notice.
Just another tourist....
Marc was going undercover as a busker. He had taken her to a pawnshop this morning to purchase a saxophone. She hadn’t known he could play, but he’d found a half-decent one by his estimation for a reasonable price.
He took her to a corner on Broadway. “Drop me off here.”
Courtney turned onto the side street and pulled along the curb to let him out. He reached into the backseat to grab his gear, slid on a jacket and placed a fedora on his head.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Do I look the part?”
Courtney dragged her gaze over him, considering. The man was a heartbreaker is what he was, with his whiskey eyes and handsome face, those broad, broad shoulders and strong arms that could envelop her until the rest of the world didn’t matter.
Until nothing mattered but the feel of him against her.
The way she had come back to life.
But such an admission had no place between them, so she said, “You’re going to make a fortune.”
If people paid him for the way he looked, he’d probably score enough to quit his day job. She had no clue if he was any good as a musician.
“We’ll see. Haven’t picked up one of these in forever.” He grabbed the saxophone case and winked, shutting the door.
She smiled as he headed toward the corner of a brick building, a spot clearly chosen for visibility. Propping the cane against the wall, he opened the sax case.
Courtney pulled away from the curb, her own need to take action overwhelming. She needed to move, to do something, otherwise her thoughts looped through everything that could go wrong with a sixteen-year-old working on the streets.
A visit to the crematory revealed that Debbie had arranged for her own final disposition.
Ashes to ashes...
Courtney made her career evaluating people who cared for children who weren’t their own. Debbie had crossed every t and dotted every i so a lovely young woman who went by the name Beatriz wouldn’t have to risk herself
by claiming remains. Those actions told Courtney everything she needed to know about the kind of caregiver Debbie had been.
So, too, with the young girl who had painted an exquisite thank-you for the end-of-life consultant who had made a peaceful death for a loved one.
Not a horror story, but a love story.
So along with her plunging mood swings, Courtney felt a relief so profound it stole her breath. Because along with the relief that luck of the good kind had been with Araceli came a fear that the girl had vanished in the six months since Debbie’s death.
Fear they wouldn’t find her.
Courtney hit the streets and noticed every street performer she passed, from the juggler who drew a crowd in front of a record shop to the violinist dressed like Elvis walking down the street, playing a popular Mendelssohn concerto. Courtney startled every time she turned a corner, thinking she might catch sight of a dark-haired young girl sitting in front of an easel...
She came across Marc instead.
She heard him long before she recognized him. Heard the music, the twisting, intricate sound of clarity on a noisy city street. For a stunned moment, she could only hear the music.
He was “killing jazz” as it was known in their hometown, improvising with a skill that someone born and reared in the Crescent City would understand. He’d said he hadn’t played in forever, but she didn’t think that was possible. Not when he played as if that sax wasn’t an instrument but an addiction.
She saw the man on the street corner in a fedora, the man she had only glimpsed in the dark, the man who played her body with such tender skill, evoked so much more than a physical response, made her yearn in so many ways. Just seeing him now made her heart ache, glimpsing this exquisite ability. Courtney suddenly understood that the brooding, dissatisfied exterior she saw wasn’t the same man his family knew, or Harley.
They remembered a different man.
She didn’t understand why he had become a man who distanced himself from everyone who cared, a man who risked himself with his work, who could be so brutal one moment yet so kind the next.
But she understood why everyone put up with him.
Loved him.
Because he had sucked her in, too, the way he sucked in the people who were crowding around to abandon themselves in his music, and he just stood there, braced against the wall for support, his body liquid with the sound, so absorbed that nothing else mattered.
She had no idea why this man was such a mystery, but she knew then that Marc’s secrets went far beyond his accident, far behind the limitations of his injuries. And she wanted to know why more than she had ever wanted before.
The moment was so surreal she hadn’t realized she was still walking. But she didn’t stop. Her heart would break right there if she stopped, the soulful sounds of his song and her wild mood overwhelming. Slipping cash from her pocket, she leaned over to drop the folded bills into his case. He caught her gaze and winked, so cavalier, so charmed by it all, but she kept going.
By the time she’d passed, tears blurred her vision.
How could she have known?
She had seen through this man, seen what he let so few saw about him, his kindness, his marshmallow center, but not at first. At first she hadn’t understood. How could she have known the distance wasn’t about protecting himself but those he loved?
From what?
She didn’t know but knew she was right, knew it on some soul-deep level. He had appeared so callous, as if he didn’t care about anyone or anything.
But he cared too much.
He was the DiLeo son who had taken off for a career that made big money. Courtney knew this part of the story. After Marc’s father had died, Mama had worked around the clock to make ends meet. They’d all banded together, working, caring for the younger kids, but Nic’s and Anthony’s careers had taken time to establish. A police chief and successful business owner had once been a beat cop and an auto mechanic.
Marc had been the one to leave town for a career raking in the big bucks—and she knew just how big—to send home to his family.
Not so different from the way Araceli’s father had left Colombia with his pregnant wife, taking unimaginable risks as an illegal alien to provide for his loved ones here and back home.
Courtney had glimpsed Marc’s caring in his determination to find Araceli, his stubborn pride in the way he’d been throwing money around so she wouldn’t pay, his resurrection as their lovemaking coaxed him from that dark place he’d been because of the accident, because of his physical limitations.
And it was while she walked along, her head crowded with thoughts that tumbled in on her worries and fears about what might happen to this man if he didn’t recover completely, that she absently noticed a poster that had been nailed to a tree.
There were others along the streets, but this one caught her eye because it wasn’t the usual printed reproduction.
Courtney stopped.
Sure enough, it was a pencil sketch of a young man with dark hair. His profile had been depicted with bold detail, the hollows in his chiseled cheeks, the full curve of his lips. He was a handsome boy. His head bowed low, his expression both thoughtful and intense, and Courtney knew he was slouched over a guitar even though the only other image was a hand curled around a stretch of strings, the finely drawn fingers pressing a chord.
An interesting perspective.
The detail was skilled, the sketch so exquisite it seemed a tragedy this fragile paper should be exposed to the elements for a short-lived life on the streets. She searched for a signature, a hint to who had drawn the poster, but it was unsigned. All she learned was that Kyle Perez would be playing at the Venue on Friday night.
Suddenly all her tumultuous thoughts of Marc vanished beneath an urgency as wild as her feelings had been all day. Keying the address into her phone, Courtney waited impatiently for the map to pop up on the display.
The Venue was only a few blocks off the main drag of the District. She headed that way with brisk steps, barely noticing anything along the way. There were no dark-haired young girls sitting in front of an easel, and nothing else mattered.
The Venue was a large complex that spanned more than a city block. There was a skate park, the musical venue, a used-book store, a coffee shop.
Crossing the street, she approached the front doors, where she found another hand-drawn sketch promoting Kyle Perez. This one was behind plastic in a marquee by the door. He stood in this rendering, drawn from the waist up, playing his guitar on a street corner, much like the man she had just left behind.
Courtney knew the artist was the same. There was no question in her mind, especially when she scanned the sketch to find this one was also unsigned.
Pulling open the front door, she was greeted by a man walking past the foyer.
“Where’s the coffee shop?” she asked.
“Straight through there.” He inclined his head, smiled a friendly smile. “Can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.” She hiked the purse over her shoulder, scanned the notice board as she passed, noted some featured events—a Bible study, a prayer ministry, a service organization. The Venue appeared to be a youth complex belonging to a church.
Courtney passed from the foyer into a courtyard-type area not unlike a mall food court. There were tables, sofas, chairs and benches set up in conversation areas. On one wall was a stage, on another a coffee bar, and on yet another, the entrances to the small bookstore and a larger auditorium with a sign above the door that simply stated The Venue. No sign of the skate park. That must be a separate building.
But that was all Courtney noticed before she saw the art displayed over the walls and an easel that announced that the gallery featured Art by ARO.
Her heart throbbed hard as she stood and stared, tried to take in everything at once. Sketches
. Acrylics. Watercolors. Mixed media. Glass. Caricatures. All displayed on the walls. All unsigned but for the easel that read Art by ARO.
A-R-O. Araceli Ruiz-Ortiz.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
FOR AS LONG as I could remember, I had been preparing for the day I might need to run away. Debbie and I always had a backup plan. Always. Not only after she got sick, but for most of the time we had been together.
Since I had told her the truth, anyway.
We had been living in South Carolina for a long time. I think she had really liked being around her uncle. He was getting old, she said. He looked ancient to me. I wasn’t sure how he was even still alive. But I understood how leaving her uncle made her sad.
He was her only family, and I knew how that felt.
I loved her so much that I didn’t want to see her sad—especially since her being alone was my fault. I hadn’t understood until then the sacrifices she made for me, but I did know enough about feeling alone to feel horribly guilty.
At first I was too scared to say anything because I was afraid she would send me back to foster care. I loved our life so much. If I couldn’t have Mama and Paolo, I wanted Debbie with her silvery laughter and big hugs.
But I could remember Mama being disappointed with me when I had lied to Papa. He had his portable gallery all packed to go to Jackson Square, but I told him I was too sick to work because I wanted to go to the river with my friends.
Mama had told me sternly, “We don’t treat people we love that way, Araceli.”
And I loved Debbie with my whole heart.
I told her everything. How the police took me away from Mama’s friend and said I couldn’t live where I wanted. How they had put me in a prison for bad kids then sent me to strangers’ houses until the judge gave me a new home where the kids were mean. I told her how they ruined Papa’s sketches—the only thing I had left of him—and made fun of me for crying.
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