Gloria looked around her. She knew most of the residents of these homes. They’d had block parties together, watched homes for each other when people went on vacation, hunted for lost dogs through the lawns and the tight alleyways. It was a small neighborhood, with streets named in tribute to the heroes of the Texas Revolution. There was a spirit of community here that Gloria had always felt.
Today, though, she felt nothing but wind and the remaining light rain. The soul of the neighborhood seemed gone, washed out the open doors and broken windows that hadn’t been boarded up, flung helter-skelter with the mess of thousands of pieces that had once made up people’s lives and now littered yards, streets and alleyways.
But in spite of the overwhelming evidence that confronted her at every glance, Gloria couldn’t focus on what she was seeing. Not right now, at least. She kept putting one foot in front of the other and hoping that Rigo would think the wetness on her face was from the weather.
Gloria knew better, though.
The one thing she didn’t know was what would be left when she turned the corner and saw 909 Travis Place.
It didn’t take long to walk the remaining half a street until the intersection with her street. Gloria closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Rigo came up behind her and squeezed her right shoulder tightly. “It’s going to be okay, Gloria. Whatever happens, you’re not alone.”
She’d never thought she’d feel this way again, but she was grateful for Rigo’s presence. Since she’d dialed his number in an act of last-resort desperation, he’d been nothing but a rock for her. He’d been the Rigo she’d once thought he was, until he left and changed everything she thought about him. The years had taught her who the true Rigo actually was, but just for a moment, it was nice to have the untarnished Rigo back.
Gloria opened her eyes and looked up. Her front door stood open, pushed by the pressure of the storm surge. In her yard was a tangled mess of fencing, couch cushions that didn’t match anything in her own home, paper dropped in wet clumps and even someone else’s cherry-red forty-gallon ice chest. Just as on all the other streets they’d recently passed, pieces of board and roof shingles were everywhere. Neither of them could look up and take in the full landscape around them because they had to watch their feet. Rigo had his work boots back on, but Gloria only had her athletic shoes. Nails and debris were everywhere and they’d poke through an unsuspecting tennis shoe easily. And with no likely way to get a tetanus shot on the island right now, the outcome wouldn’t be good.
“I’ve seen this before.” She felt as flat as the crushed palm fronds submerged beneath her feet.
“What do you mean?” Rigo stepped into the intersection. There was no chance a car was going to come by, so he was completely safe.
She gestured broadly with her arms. “All of this. It looks like something out of the history books. I feel like I’m looking at pictures of the Great Storm of 1910.”
“I can’t fault you there. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it in my life. Unreal. If you live here long enough, you’ve seen a hurricane or two. But never like this.” Rigo turned around and faced Gloria. “Well, are you ready?”
“No. But we’re here. Let’s just go.”
She nodded without hesitation and plowed as best she could across the spongy grass that had once been her perfectly manicured front lawn. Since the front door stood wide-open, Gloria walked right through without pause.
Just dive in and you’ll figure it out, Gracie was fond of saying when she didn’t quite know how to do something. Gloria wished her sister was here right now, instead of taking refuge more than two hundred miles away in San Antonio.
But Gloria wasn’t alone. Rigo stood right behind her. If she leaned just slightly back, she’d find her shoulder blades resting on his chest. He was so close that at any other time, she’d accuse him of invading her personal space.
Instead, once again, she was grateful for a glimpse of the old Rigo. Maybe she could turn his solid physical strength into emotional strength.
There it was again. Ever since she’d uttered that short, plodding plea of a prayer at Tía Inez’s house, she kept being reminded of displays of strength.
Maybe God had been there since Felipe and Mateo died. Maybe she just hadn’t been listening.
No, that wasn’t it—she’d been in church every week. God knew where to find her. She’d done what she was supposed to do. So, clearly that wasn’t really it. She just didn’t know what made today different from any other day, with all these mental coincidences.
The water had receded out of the front room. The couch was at an angle in the center, lying on its back. It looked like a sponge. There was no discernible waterline on it, just cushions of sodden foam and fabric. Tables had toppled, and she saw her washing machine on its side in the dining room, leaning against the overturned table. There used to be four chairs, but she could only count two right now. She figured she’d find the others later. Or not.
“Look up here, Glo.” Rigo stood against the wall near the front door. A brownish line wiggled across the wall about a foot above him, not far from the ceiling. It looked like a child’s bad watercolor painting. “This is your waterline. I’m six-two. It had to have been almost seven-and-a-half feet in here.”
Gloria’s jaw fell open, stunned. If she’d stayed here with Tanna like she’d once thought about doing...she couldn’t even process it.
“Wow.” Rigo let out a low whistle from where he’d tiptoed over to the doorway to the kitchen.
“What?” Gloria crawled over a set of golf clubs that hadn’t ever belonged to any member of the Rodriguez family.
She got to the doorway and saw what Rigo meant. There were just no words.
“Your kitchen.”
Or rather, what was left of her kitchen.
The water had floated the refrigerator, then apparently, as it receded, had dumped the fridge on its side, tearing off the door. Glass jars were broken and their contents spilled everywhere. Food that had been neatly stacked on shelves when she’d left for Inez’s house only yesterday was now a virtually unrecognizable, disorderly mess. She could clearly pick up the scent of backed-up sewage with a strong overlay of mustard and pickle brine. She knew her nose would never forget it.
Leaning over, Gloria pulled open the knob on one of her lower kitchen cabinets. Brown water felt gritty as the small wave poured out onto her feet. Pots and pans were upturned and the shelf that held her lids had fallen down, the wood glue holding the cheap particle board eaten away by the time submerged in the pungent water and the exposure to whatever had been floating in it.
“I don’t know what I was expecting, Glo. It wasn’t this. I watched the force of the water all night long. I saw it move cars on the streets. I sat at the top of the stairs, watching Tía’s furniture swirl in the haze below. But this...” Rigo’s words trailed off. His eyes took in the whole scene, wide with disbelief. “I don’t know why, but I just didn’t expect this.”
Gloria laughed, a small noise that sounded distant to her own ears. “You know, Rigo. I think I did, in a way. I expected to walk out the door when we left here yesterday and never see my life look normal again.”
She stepped carefully toward the hallway. The floor of her house lay buried under a thick, gray silt. It spread across tile, hardwood and carpet, making everything not only incomprehensibly dirty, but slick and dangerous. The soles of her shoes had no more traction on these mud-smeared floors than if she were walking on the bottom of a pond covered with sludge and seaweed.
“Come on, we’re not through.” She waved him back toward the bedrooms.
Her bedroom appeared just as decimated as the rest of the house. The bed was no longer on its frame and her dresser had dumped over, spilling out nightgowns and shorts and socks all over the floor. A brackish brown stained deeply into every piece of fabric.
&nbs
p; “There’s not enough bleach in the world to make this right. Guess I’d better get used to this Beach Patrol shirt. Seems like it’s all I have left, except the few things I took to Inez’s house.”
“Let me check the closet, Glo.” Rigo stepped on top of the mattress. It squished and spit water up as his shoes smashed across. “Wow. The waterline was above all the hangers in here. I don’t think anything is salvageable.”
She bit her lip so hard it stung and choked on the cotton rising in her throat.
“It is what it is,” she bit out. The matter-of-factness in her voice surprised her. Gloria knew she didn’t feel as confident as her tone implied. “The worst part is I hate shopping. How many women would do anything to be able to go on a shopping spree and replace their whole closet? I’m probably the one woman in America who is just ill thinking about it.”
“Most of my things were in the little storage unit in Tía’s backyard. When I moved back, she said I could have a place to stay with no questions asked until I found something of my own. The only catch is the room that’s temporarily mine has a pretty small closet, so I had to store a lot outside. We’ll probably be shopping together.” Rigo gave her a smile, and she knew he was doing his best to let her know she wasn’t alone.
One more room to check.
She’d strode purposefully through the front door earlier, but now all of her confidence was eroding quickly. Gloria forced her feet down the hall, and Rigo dogged each step. She could feel the light touch of his fingers grazing the rougher skin of her elbow. The soft tickle mixed with the adrenaline already swirling through her and made her pause for a millisecond. She couldn’t tell if the touch from Rigo set something off or if all of her senses were on heightened alert.
The plain white door had been parted from the bottom hinge. It hung limply askew like a flag on a windless day. She walked across the sludge on the floor and stopped in the doorway.
The stripes were still there. But like everything else in her life, they’d changed for the worse.
“This isn’t Mateo’s room.” A sob caught in her throat. It scraped as it rose from the depths of her soul. “This is just as dead as he is. Gone. All gone.”
As limp as her body had become, Rigo turned her easily and held her as the minutes and the cries passed by. Time seemed to stop. She didn’t know if she was eighteen again or if she’d instantly aged to eighty.
She’d lost her husband and her baby two years ago, but today was the day when her heart was mortally wounded. Her memories, the only things that had held her heart together for the past two years, were wiped out and torn away.
Gloria walked inside the room, her path marked indelibly by footprints in the muck atop the carpet. She opened the door and reached for a box on the top shelf. “I put this up here yesterday. It was as high as I could reach. I thought it would be safe.”
The cardboard box ripped as Gloria tried to tug it off the shelf.
“Let me.” Rigo reached and pulled the small cube upward. The box and the paint had soaked together and didn’t want to part easily. “Here you go.”
Gloria took it between her hands and the once-rigid cardboard lost shape at her touch. Without thinking, she sat on the floor. The silt and the sludge seeped into the fabric. She knew it was turning the bottom seam of the Beach Patrol shirt the same withered brown as the rest of her clothes, and she didn’t care. Everything was a sea of brown and she didn’t think the world would ever hold color again.
She reached inside the box and pulled out a small stack of photos. Rigo squatted down in front of her to look.
The photos were no longer individual, but stuck together in a messy clump as hardened as glue. She tried to peel the top one off the pile, but the colored ink of the image on the photo below stuck to the back of the print above and peeled, ruining them both.
“Why? Why?” The words ripped her throat with the harsh pull of barbed wire and tears flowed anew. They seemed stronger than even yesterday’s downpours from Mother Nature. “These were the pictures I had the hospital photographer take of Mateo right after he was born. My son is gone, Rigo. He’s gone and he’s never coming back. Why did God have to take my memories, too? Couldn’t I have at least kept those?”
Rigo gently lifted her fingers from the photos and placed them back in the box, then returned the box to the shelf.
Gloria stood up and tried to reach for the bear she’d cuddled yesterday before escaping to Tía Inez’s house. Her hands brushed the uppermost curve of the bear’s ear, touching wet fur.
“Oh, Teddy,” she said, not even caring that Rigo heard her directing a conversation to a stuffed bear. “Oh, Teddy. You’re ruined, too. Everything’s gone.” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
Rigo gently placed a kiss on the top of Gloria’s head. It felt so simple, so unexpected. And instead of being angry, she felt a small grain of comfort where he’d touched her. She could feel a warmth right there, where they’d connected. It contrasted with the chill running just under her skin, causing goose bumps to ripple up and down her arms.
He took a step back. “Glo, I’m sorry. I just...I don’t want to upset you even more.”
She wiped her forearm across her nose. “You didn’t.”
“I wish I could do something. Even saying that sounds inadequate.”
Gloria brought her gaze up and looked at him straight on. The color in his eyes almost matched the pupil. She knew this look. A long time had passed since she’d last seen it, but she’d never forgotten how his eyes deepened in color when he was truly moved or serious about something.
“You have. You made me get out. If I’d stayed here, Rigo, I’d be dead. That waterline—look at it. I’d have drowned, along with Tanna and the baby. You saved my life and theirs, too.”
“I finally got my head on straight, Gloria. When I came back to town to take the Beach Patrol job, I told myself that I was going to stay out of your way. But if I ever had the chance to see you again, I wasn’t going to let you down one more time. And then you called out of the blue and gave me the chance to make good on that promise to myself. We’ll get everything sorted out here, and then I won’t bother you anymore. But at least I got to do right by you once.”
It probably wasn’t the time. And standing in the middle of her ruined house amidst her shattered dreams definitely wasn’t the place, but maybe...if those reminders the past few days had come from God, maybe He would give her just a little more strength. She needed to ask a question.
“Where were you instead of at Felipe’s funeral? What could have possibly been more important than paying your last respects to the man you called your best friend, the man who felt the same way about you?” She stared hard, looking for a change of color in his eyes, but one didn’t come. They stayed steadily dark and soulful. “I deserve to know. Where have you been the last two years?”
There. She had said it. And she was able to master the weakness in her knees as she asked. Her pounding heart didn’t fail her. She had found the strength to say what needed to be said.
Or maybe, more accurately, she’d been given the strength to say what needed to be said. She wasn’t sure.
He didn’t turn away or hesitate. It was as though he knew it was coming.
“I’ve thought about telling you a few times since you called me yesterday, but obviously a hurricane makes things even more complicated than they already are.” He paused and her eyes followed the twitch of his throat as he swallowed while he gathered his thoughts. Gloria didn’t know if she was more nervous anticipating what he would say next, or if Rigo was, summoning up the courage to say whatever he’d been hiding. “But I can’t put this off anymore. You deserve to know. The morning of Felipe’s funeral, my father drove me to Houston and checked me into a substance-abuse rehabilitation treatment center, where I lived for four months.”
Asking hadn’t made he
r weak in the knees, but hearing the answer sure had.
“You went where?” Her mind drew a blank, as though she were unable to take it in.
She’d known this man for years. She’d once been in love with him, even. She thought she knew him pretty well. But apparently he’d been keeping a big secret from her for a long time.
“Rehab.” Rigo’s voice sounded crisp, matter-of-fact. “It’s not something I’m proud of. In fact, it’s been something I don’t talk about. A few people high up at Port Provident PD knew when I went on leave, and later resigned. Then I had to answer some questions from a few key folks when I came back for the Beach Patrol job. Other than that, no one knows. But you’re right. You deserve to know.”
“Rehab?” The taste of the word was bitter in her mouth. Gloria’s voice sputtered like a stalled car until she found the right words. “For what?”
“Alcohol. Lots of it.” He sat down on an overturned bookshelf. It wobbled a bit unsteadily under his weight. “I’d been drinking for years. Since I left town the first time and went to Baja, actually. You remember the North American Lifeguard Championships, right?”
More than a decade had passed since that time in her life, but she wasn’t surprised to realize it still seemed like yesterday.
It still hurt like yesterday.
“You mean when you told me you were going to be gone for a week and just never came back? Your first disappearing trick? Yeah, I remember the North American Lifeguard Championships.”
“Well, it was in Mexico, right? Kids from all over the US, Canada, and folks from Mexico. We were all there surfing and swimming and showing off. The drinking age there is eighteen, and the locals wanted to show the rest of us a good time. I’d never had a drink before in my life.”
Gloria nodded. “You’d been totally dedicated to working out and living clean so you could be in the best possible shape to lifeguard and go play baseball.”
Second Chance Sweethearts (Love Inspired) Page 7