Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series

by Christa Allan

  Luke, carrying Manny in his crate, and Aretha were walking toward the front door when Nina met them. “Thanks for taking Manny. I’ve . . . there’s something I have to do. Won’t be long.”

  “Nina, what’s wrong? Something, for sure. You won’t even go through a drive-through without being dressed.” She turned to Luke. “Maybe I should go with her . . .”

  “No. I appreciate the thought, but no. I need to do this on my own, and I’ll tell you later. Just trust me.”

  Nina pressed the doorbell, which wasn’t a bell at all. It sounded like a cattle prod. She pressed it again. And again. And again. Her parents were probably sitting within two feet of one another, each one waiting for the other to open the door.

  “Hold ya horses out there.”

  “Dad, it’s Nina. Open the door, please.”

  “Why, Nina, what brought you—”

  “Is mom home? I need to talk to you both.” She edged past her dad into the house. “Mom. Where are you?”

  Sheila walked out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a frayed dishtowel. Nina recognized concern on her face, one she found at a fire sale.

  “It’s not Sunday. And where would you be going dressed that way?”

  “I think, mother, you might want to pay more attention to my emotional cues, not my yoga pants. Should it matter how I dress to go to my parents’ house? Were you expecting company?”

  Her father patted his shirt pocket to check if he had his cigarettes. He quit smoking ten years ago, but the habit stayed. Especially when he felt uncomfortable or anxious. “Honey, what’s going on?”

  “Let’s sit at the table,” said Nina. “I have something I want to show you.”

  They sat, neither one of them taking their eyes off of her.

  “I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth. The real truth. Not the truth with a spin on it. Or the one you want.”

  “Nina, you’re being—”

  “Actually, Dad, I’m being Nina. The one that’s been showing up at your house on Sundays? She’s the lie. It’s time for all of us to stop lying to one another.” The way their eyes darted back and forth between themselves and Nina, the perplexed expressions? Nina considered they may not know the truth themselves. But she was about to find out.

  “What really killed Thomas?” Each word held its own weight and landed on the platform of Nina’s conviction.

  “I can’t believe my own daughter . . .” her mother pushed her chair back from the table.

  Nina would have tackled her if she tried to leave the conversation. “You’re not running away from this. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Honey, why should she? You already know the answer,” said her father, pleading like a child.

  “I know what you told me. But there’s more that you’re not.” She opened her iPad, found her notes, and handed the tablet to her parents. “Recognize those?”

  Her dad reached in his empty shirt pocket. Her mother pushed the tablet back to Nina. “Do you know how much that hurts your father and me? Why are you making us look at all this? You know Thomas got sick, pneumonia, and died.”

  “You’re not going to let go of that are you? Guess you’ve said it for so long, you believe it yourself.” Nina closed the iPad. “For the past two months, I’ve been writing a series for the twenty-fifth anniversary of The AIDS Memorial Quilt. I need to research HIV and AIDS because of the families I interviewed. And there they were. It’s not a coincidence that these symptoms were Thomas’s symptoms. Or that you wouldn’t let me go to the hospital. Or that you buried him without waiting for his friends or even some of your own relatives. Thomas died from AIDS.”

  She watched her parents’ faces pale and shift until they bore almost the same expression Kelley’s did when she said, “What kind of mother lies about why her child died?”

  “We wanted to protect you,” said her father. “Things were different then. Your mother and I didn’t really understand or know what AIDS was until the doctor explained it to us. Even then, we were in shock.”

  “What did you think you were protecting me from? For all you knew, I could have used his toothbrush or shaved my legs with one of his razors . . . How was that keeping me safe?”

  “Thomas made sure that didn’t happen, Nina,” said her mother, the exasperation evident in her voice. “We wanted to protect you from other people who might say things to you. What do you think would have happened to you at school if people knew your brother died from AIDS? Especially all those years ago, before people with HIV lived for decades. Even today, some people think you get AIDS from hugging or swimming or sharing food. What do you think people said then?”

  “I don’t know. But Thomas was my only sibling, and I never had a chance to tell him good-bye.” Nina didn’t try to stop herself from crying. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  Her parents looked at each other. Her father clasped his hands on the table. “I don’t think so. We didn’t want it to change the way you saw your brother.”

  “Why because of the AIDS or that he was gay or both?”

  Nina’s father leaned back in his chair and stared at his daughter. For the first time in years, Nina witnessed the man inside the shell he’d become.” If you don’t believe us, I guess I would understand. But your brother wasn’t gay. His first year in college, his friends made fun of him because he was a virgin. They all went out drinking one night, and the next morning he wasn’t alone in his room. She called him three months later to tell him she’d tested positive for AIDS.

  “Guess you can understand how easy it is to make assumptions about people with HIV and AIDS. Even with all your research and interviews, you thought your brother was gay. That’s exactly what we were trying to protect you from . . . people like you.”

  31

  Paloma, that bow is almost as large as my daughter’s head. Are you sure about that? I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep the butterflies out of it.”

  She laughed so much that even he and Jazarah joined in. “She will be very chic. This is a gift from your sister, so I am certain she would never select anything to make your daughter look like a bumpkin.”

  Greg arrived at Nina’s house, unbuckled Jazarah, lifted her out of her car seat, and onto the sidewalk. He smoothed her pink smocked sundress and adjusted her pink bow just slightly off-center as Paloma showed him. “Okay, hold daddy’s hand and let’s go meet Nina and Manny.”

  Hearing Manny bark, Jazarah pushed in a bit closer to Greg. Nina opened the door, and Greg realized he hadn’t checked the affection protocol for child of single dad meeting . . . what was Nina? Surely not girlfriend and boyfriend. That might have worked ten years ago. Or longer. More than a friend, less than a fiancé? The complications were exhausting, which was why many single parents stayed home, popped popcorn, and rented DVDs. Just gave up dating until the kids hit high school or older.

  Lately, though, with Nina in his life, Greg considered himself one of the fortunates. Since Nina continued to say yes, Greg assumed she enjoyed his company as well. He prayed she continued to want to be with him, but he trusted that God had a path. He just needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  For now, all he had to do was walk forward to Nina and feel the curve of her cheek in his hand as he kissed her on the forehead. His daughter, still held his hand, but leaned as far as she could without letting go to peek at Manny, resting in his crate.

  Nina crouched down to eye-level with Jazarah, introduced herself as a friend of her daddy’s, and offered her hand for a handshake. Which she promptly took and pulled Nina closer and hugged her neck. Greg felt as concerned as he did comforted. Though Greg told Paloma she had to stay until she was ninety, he knew the day would come when his daughter’s nanny might want to have a life somewhere else with someone else. He tried not to think about it because the separation for all of them, but especially for Jazarah, would be brutal. Yet, his relationship with Nina, while he wanted it to be more, was st
ill, what did Elise call it, marinating. “Sooner or later, you have to get cooking,” she said.

  When Greg and Jazarah moved closer, Manny thumped his tail, and stayed perfectly still while Jazarah’s little hand wiggled through the sides to pet him. She smiled at her father. “I yike him,” she announced.

  “I yike him, too,” said Nina.

  “Thanks, Manny,” Greg whispered as they started to leave. “Tell the puppy good-bye,” he said to his daughter. She turned and smiled sweetly and waved at the dog. “Bye-Bye, Ne Na.”

  Nina smiled. “The kid’s got my number already.”

  “Definitely not just a kid’s place,” Greg said, awed by the simulated tropical rainforest that was the Cockrell Butterfly Center. A fifty-foot waterfall fell from the top of the three-story glass building that housed a lush pathway lined with exotic plants and flowers from top to bottom. Butterflies were everywhere, hundreds of them . . . like finely drawn artwork dripping with color flying around and through and over and under foliage and people and sprays from the waterfall.

  Nina asked Jazarah if she could remove her bow. Greg waited to see if there would be a standoff. “Your bow is so beautiful, a butterfly might think it was a flower and not be able to get out. And that would be sad.” Nina summoned a woeful expression as she spoke, and the performance paid off. Off came the bow, which she held as they walked along the path, and waved away a few curious butterflies.

  Three floors of butterflies was Jazarah’s limit, especially when one landing on her hand sent her into ambulance siren mode. When Greg suggested lunch, she applauded. He told Nina, “Guess that means it’s time to eat.”

  They walked to a nearby deli for sandwiches, Jazarah between them, holding her hands and swinging her over cracks in the sidewalk. Greg appreciated how relaxed Nina was with his daughter. Sometimes people without children tended to get crazed about things that didn’t matter. Things that, once you became a parent, you realized were insignificant. Like it wasn’t important to wake a sleeping child to put her jammies on. Sleeping in play clothes was not going to lower IQ points or permanently damage their self-esteem.

  Jazarah invited Nina to help her color the maze on her placemat. Filling in the lines with her green crayon, Nina asked Greg questions about his relief work, and when he planned to start working full time at Dr. Maxwell’s clinic. Greg answered, but Nina seemed distracted. Entirely too focused on staying inside the lines, and not focused enough on the conversation.

  After his daughter lined up her chicken fingers with the “just right” squirt of catsup, Greg asked Nina if she wanted to join them next weekend at the Children’s Museum.

  Nina chewed, sipped her tea, cleared her throat, and fluffed her napkin. There weren’t many other distractions available unless she aligned Jazarah’s French Fries with her chicken strips.

  Greg swirled a fry in his daughter’s mountain of catsup and received a stern warning to not eat her food, “Mine,” she warned him, shaking a fry in his direction. She eyed him for a few more bites, then rearranged her pickle slices.

  “Nina, did you hear me, about the Children’s Museum? Would you want to go? I thought we could ask Luke and Aretha to join us. For some reason, those places are just as much fun for adults who don’t have legitimate play time anymore.”

  “I heard. I’m sorry,” said Nina. “I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to do that . . .”

  “No need to apologize. It’s wrong of me to assume you might not have other plans,” he said. Greg didn’t consider that she might be seeing someone else. Someone whose idea of an event didn’t include shopping in the make-believe grocery store and arguing over who ran the cash register.

  She looked around like she’d dropped an answer on the floor somewhere. Clearly, she had something to tell him. “I didn’t plan to talk about this here.”

  “Unless it’s something unfit for my daughter’s ears, it’s going to be here. You can’t look as if you just left a horror movie and expect me not to wonder what you saw there.”

  “Then please don’t ask me any questions until I’m finished, okay?”

  He nodded, and she began.

  As Nina explained the offer she and Elise discussed, Greg felt like someone about to be pushed off a ledge. He couldn’t stop it, and he had no idea if there would be anything to hold on to on the way down. He controlled his voice so as not to alarm his daughter, but he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to maintain it for the entire conversation. “You’re moving to New York? As in the next week or so? I . . . I had no idea that was even on the menu.”

  “Neither did I. I thought it was off the menu, then it came back on.”

  Now he colored with Jazarah, not bothering at all with lines and making ever animal purple. He listened to Nina detail the Janie, Brady, Daisy show that was now becoming a one-woman show, featuring his woman. Or at least the one he had hoped would be.

  A herd of what looked like high school kids sat at the next table. Greg almost paid them to stay, so he didn’t have to be the loudest voice in what was quite a small restaurant. “Is this position one you have to fill?”

  She narrowed her eyes, and he knew that was a precursor to the defensive position, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “So, you’re absolutely choosing to go.” The crayon tip snapped off as he spoke. After Jazarah’s “Uh oh,” he took the one she handed him. “Say what, Daddy?”

  He’d forgotten the very manners he wanted her to learn. “Thank you, princess.”

  She smiled and continued giving all the people green faces. Greg wanted a distraction while Nina spoke, especially one that meant he didn’t have to have eye contact. His animals became red.

  “No one’s forcing me. No one needs to. Managing editor of the New York office is something I’ve dreamed about for years. How could I pass up this opportunity?” She creased her napkin edges with her thumb as she spoke, so he knew he wasn’t the only person feeling like a balloon about to explode. “Elise told me to take my time, but the reality is, I’ve been thinking about this for years. And don’t ask me if I’ve prayed about it because I don’t do prayer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Thomas died anyway. If praying isn’t going to fix anything, what’s the point?”

  “I hafta potty,” said Jazarah, who, between coloring, had arranged most of the food on her plate in straight lines without eating hardly any of it.

  “Would you like to come with me?” Nina held out her hand.

  “Peas,” his daughter answered. “I be back, daddy.” She flashed him a smile that pinched something in his chest that he knew must be reserved for daughters.

  Greg called Paloma to ask her if she’d be able to keep J. a few hours. For better or for worse, this conversation with Nina had to happen tonight.

  Nina was grateful Jazarah knew the words to Bob Marley’s songs because she provided the entertainment on their way back to Greg’s house. He’d already talked to her about dropping J. off and going somewhere else. She suggested the park near her house.

  When they arrived at Greg’s, Paloma walked outside to retrieve Jazarah. She and Greg discussed something about dinner and medicines, then he kissed his daughter good-bye. Nina had been checking her cell phone messages while they spoke, so the knock on the car window startled her.

  “Kiss. Bye-Bye to Ne Na?”

  “Of course,” she said. How did this kid wheedle her way in so quickly?

  Greg pulled out of the driveway and turned to Nina. “You see the problem already, don’t you?”

  She saw it, and she felt it. Am I supposed to allow a three-year-old to determine my decisions? One who isn’t even mine? But she didn’t know what to do about it. “I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not sure what you want me to do. Jazarah is a precious child. How could I not adore her?”

  “Exactly. You can adore her. But you can’t adore her then leave her. She’s been through that already. And, fortunately for her, she’s too young to remember her birth mother being the first woman
to do that.”

  Nina talked to the window and the blurs of billboards and shops and offices that stretched between their homes. “Greg, I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing this for myself.”

  At the red light, he reached across the seat and covered her hand with his. “I get it, Nina, I really do. But, and maybe this is selfish on my part, I thought we were working toward something here between the two of us. The three of us.”

  She wished her hand didn’t like the way his felt. It made this conversation all the more difficult. “Well, I thought so too . . .”

  Greg let go to take the exit off the freeway. “Then why are you leaving? Could you consider, maybe, that all the things that have happened in your life and mine have brought us to this point for a reason? That your wanting to be a part of something important that can affect the world doesn’t have to happen in New York? God is showering you with so many blessings, and you’re running around looking for an umbrella.”

  “Well, it can rain in New York too, right?”

  In the driveway, Greg shifted into park, but he didn’t turn the engine off.

  “I thought we were walking to the park,” Nina said.

  Greg leaned back against the headrest, closed his eyes for a moment, and turned to her. “Here’s the thing. I care about you, I enjoy being with you, and I thought we could spend more time together . . . figure out where this might take us. But, if you decide that you want to stay there, I’m not moving to New York to start a veterinary practice to see if we can make things work. Elise, Peyton, Paloma, and Jazarah. My family is here.”

  “Maybe it won’t work out, and I’ll just be right back where I was before at Trends. And then we could . . .” She pushed the button to let the window down. Even the muggy air outside helped balance the sharpness of what she felt sitting next to Greg.