In This Together

by Patti Berg

  Elena had taken Sarah into her heart, and it seemed as if Rafael was allowing her back into his. It had taken time for him to open his heart to her again, but it had happened. He might not yet be in love with her, but Elena had the feeling he was getting close.

  She knew that Sarah was already head over heels. A bona fide romantic reunion was bound to appear fairly soon. Maybe by Christmas.

  What a present that would be!

  Sarah busied herself chopping one of the jalapeño peppers Elena had roasted over the flames on one of the gas stove’s burners. “Should I dice this in smaller pieces?” she asked.

  Elena peeked around Sarah’s shoulder. “A little smaller might be better, but it all depends on how big a kick you want these corn bread muffins to have.”

  “I think we’ll start off on the mild to medium side when we make the first batch for Mexican food day in the cafeteria.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Can I help?” Izzy asked, putting on the frilly pink apron Elena had made for her and climbing onto a chair pulled up to the counter next to her mom.

  “Do you remember us talking about the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons and how we have to make sure we use just the amount that’s called for in the recipe?” Sarah asked her daughter.

  Izzy nodded. “I can read the recipe too, but I have to get my glasses first.” She ran from the kitchen and in less than a minute returned wearing the glasses she needed for reading. Climbing back on the chair, she picked up the From Elena’s Kitchen card Elena had printed out for Sarah, another family recipe to add to her collection, and starting somewhere in the middle read, “Four teaspoons baking powder.”

  She looked up, and from behind her glasses, her light gray eyes cast a questioning yet very-proud-of-her-reading-skills glance at her mom and grandmother. “That’s the stuff in the red can, not the stuff in the yellow box, right?”

  “That’s right, querida.” Elena used the Spanish word for dear as she slipped in close to her granddaughter, placing a big mixing bowl on the counter in front of her. “Can you measure out what we need and put it in the bowl?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, right now. We mix all the dry ingredients together first.” Just don’t ask me why, Elena thought. That was a step in cooking that she’d never understood, but her own mother, a chef extraordinaire, had always emphasized that point, and Elena never deviated.

  “Do you think you could teach me how to make your carnitas one of these days?” Sarah asked later, as she spooned batter into muffin cups. “And your enchilada sauce too? I know they’re family recipes, but when I told Rafael we were going to make your corn bread muffins tonight, he mentioned the carnitas and enchilada sauce and said he’d love it if I could learn how to make them the way you do.”

  Elena frowned. “He doesn’t like yours?”

  Sarah laughed. “You wouldn’t like mine, either. I think the recipe was concocted by someone in Scandinavia who doesn’t have a clue how to make Mexican food.”

  “Maybe after the Walk for a Cure I can write up the recipes and…” An idea hit. “I know. Instead of turkey for Thanksgiving this year, let’s do straight Mexican. We’re going to have a houseful of family here, and I’ll ask everyone to bring you their recipes.”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  Elena wrapped an arm around Sarah. “Of course. You’re family.”

  “Thank you,” Sarah said softly.

  Elena knew only a little about Sarah’s family. Sarah had never known her father, and her mom hadn’t been a big part of her life. Elena really didn’t care what Sarah’s past had been, not any longer. She was Izzy’s mom, and she loved her little girl. That meant everything to Elena; to Cesar too.

  After the muffins were baked and out of the oven, Sarah sat on the family room floor with Izzy, reading together from a book that had been a favorite of Rafael’s when he was little. Elena curled up in her favorite chair, looking over notes for the walk. There were still so many things to do; but just this week, both Anabelle and Candace had volunteered to help, telling her they wanted to take some of the burden off her hands.

  It really wasn’t a burden, it was just—

  Elena caught her breath and for what seemed to be the millionth time, she pressed her hands to her pelvis. She bit the inside of her lip, knowing the pain would be gone in a moment. She’d gotten to the point where she could almost time their length. This one, fortunately, was shorter than most.

  And, thank heaven, her doctor’s appointment was coming up soon. Next Tuesday. And so far, no one knew anything was wrong with her.

  “Are you okay, Buela?” Izzy’s eyes were filled with concern. So were Sarah’s. She didn’t want to frighten them. She saved that distress for herself.

  “I’m fine,” she said, desperate to change the subject. “Just a little muscle spasm. That’s all.”

  It was just after seven when Rafael came into the house, letting in a gust of wind. He grabbed Izzy up from the floor, swung her around, gave her a big kiss, and then dropped her gently to the floor. “Dad asked me to tell you he’ll be late,” he said, giving Elena a quick hug. “He’s working on some big case and, unfortunately, I couldn’t tag along, which is too bad. I’d like to see the big case side of the cop world, instead of the small case side.”

  Rafael draped his coat over the couch and sat on the floor, closer to Sarah than to Izzy, so close his arm brushed hers lightly.

  Elena tried not to smile too much. It was just an innocent touch, but it spoke volumes.

  Closing the notebook containing her walk notes, Elena focused her attention on her son and his comment about little cases. “You know, Rafael, a lot of cops handle more domestic cases than most anything else. It’s not all gangsters and shoot-’em-ups.”

  Rafael laughed. “Dad’s shown me report after report on statistics, so I’ll have a better idea what I’m in for. But I already knew catching bad guys, like the con who hit dad with the baseball bat last year, is the exception, not the rule. And even though I like the idea of chasing crooks—and I know cops get an adrenaline rush when something big’s going down—I kind of like the small stuff too.”

  “Anything in particular?” Sarah asked.

  Rafael shrugged. “Welfare checks, for one.”

  “What’s that?” Izzy asked, rolling onto her stomach and propping her head up on her fists.

  “It’s usually something as simple as dropping by an older person’s home to see if they’re okay. Just the other day, a woman called dispatch worried sick that something had happened to her mom. She said she lived in another state and she’d been trying to get in touch with her mother for days, but she kept getting the recorder.”

  “She didn’t stop to think that maybe her mom had gone to visit someone?” Sarah asked.

  Rafael shook his head. “Her mom’s ninety and frail, and she never leaves the house. She has a caregiver, but that person wasn’t answering either.”

  “No wonder she was so worried,” Elena said, “I can’t imagine your grandmother ever being ninety or frail; but if and when that time comes, I know I’ll worry if she’s living alone.”

  “Grandma will be living in a retirement community by then, holding cooking classes and teaching other senior citizens how to do the Jarabe Tapatío.”

  “That’s the Mexican Hat Dance, right?” Izzy asked, jumping up from the floor to show off a few of her dance moves, other than the ballet she usually performed about the house.

  “That’s right, mi bonita.” He smiled—they all did—and clapped their hands while Izzy swirled and swayed about the room, swishing the pink tutu she’d been wearing most of the evening, as if she were a member of the Ballet Folklórico.

  At long last Isabel flopped down on the floor again, and Sarah’s expression turned serious as she looked at Rafael. “So what happened with the elderly woman? Did you find her? Was she okay?”

  “I rode along with the officer who went by her house to check on her, but no one ans
wered the door.”

  “What did you do then?” Sarah asked, her face showing not only curiosity, but concern too.

  “We ended up walking around the house, looking through windows.” He laughed. “Try doing that if you’re not in uniform. Not a wise idea, I’m sure, but when you’re a cop, the neighbors come out and ask what’s going on and you have to calm them down.”

  “Did you find the woman?”

  He nodded. “She’d fallen in the kitchen and couldn’t get up. All the doors were locked, so we had to break a window to get inside. She was in pretty bad shape, but I held her hand and talked to her until the paramedics arrived. It felt kind of good feeling some warmth come back into her fingers when they’d been so cold when we arrived.”

  He went on talking, laughing about one incident, angry about another. His passion shouldn’t have surprised Elena, but it did. For so long he’d wanted to be a musician, but couldn’t make a go of it. She’d been worried that being a police officer might not make him happy.

  But it would. She knew that now.

  At twenty-eight, Rafael’s life was finally falling into place.

  She’d always known she and Cesar had raised a great son, and now that son was going to be a terrific cop. A mom couldn’t be more proud.

  Elena pulled the down comforter up under her chin to ward off the late-night chill as she waited for Cesar to come home. She knew she shouldn’t wait up. She also knew she shouldn’t worry. Of course, going to bed was one thing. Going to sleep was quite another. Not only was she exhausted from working hard all day, but also from fighting those occasional pains. She tried to pretend they were no big deal, that she’d simply pulled a muscle. In truth, however, she was frightened.

  Now she wanted Cesar to be home with her. Holding her; comforting her.

  When her worried sigh was joined by a yawn, Elena drew her knees up beneath the navy-blue comforter and thumbed through the pages of a tourism book on Andalusia, Spain, the home of her ancestors and her dream vacation. The pages were dog-eared from devouring the words and pictures so many times, contemplating all the places she wanted to visit, working up various itineraries that she kept in a notebook in the nightstand beside her bed.

  Outside, the wind kicked up, reminding her and everyone else in Deerford that winter was on its way. She loved the cold; but when she opened the guidebook to a place she’d bookmarked, she found herself daydreaming of the Costa Tropical, walking hand in hand with Cesar along the glittering ocean and maybe diving near Salobreña’s artificial reef. On another day they could take a small bus or, better yet, hike to the top of the hill, where they could explore the tenth-century Moorish castle and its sixteenth-century church, Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Rosario, built on top of an ancient mosque.

  Someday.

  Yawning again, she shut the tour guidebook, rested her head in her pillow, and thought about walking with Cesar through narrow, winding streets and eating seafood and exotic fruit in a charming, flower-filled square.

  Again the wind whipped and something—a tree branch, maybe—scratched against the bedroom window, sounding like a skeletal hand trying desperately to break inside the house. The truck that belonged to one of the kids down the street roared past the house, its lack of a muffler making it loud enough to wake the dead. She found herself looking at the clock, noting that it was after midnight, and wondering why the boy wasn’t at home and in bed.

  When her mind wasn’t occupied with pleasant thoughts, like a vacation in Andalusia, it wandered to places it shouldn’t. Had Cesar and the other detectives caught the bad guys? Had he drawn his gun or his Taser? Was he sitting in an interrogation room right now, grilling a suspect and getting little to no respect?

  Once more, she stared at the clock at her bedside. It was 12:49 AM. She had to get up for work in another four hours; and at the rate things were going, she’d be dead to the world. She’d have to drink a lot of extra coffee. No, she couldn’t do that, not if there was a chance she’d feel bloated again.

  Closing her eyes for a moment, she tried to picture the Alhambra, which Moorish poets had once called “a pearl set in emeralds,” alluding to the sun-soaked fortress and the woods surrounding them. She let her mind drift off, imagining herself walking past fountains and standing amidst the glorious Christian and Moorish architecture, and then…her eyes popped open.

  At this rate, she’d never get to sleep.

  Pushing the pile of documentation on the Walk for a Cure off to one side of the bed, not wanting to pick it up again tonight, and putting the tour guide back in the night-table drawer, she lifted her Bible, loving the feel of its leather cover and the delicate paper, loving too the words that always gave her comfort. She let the Bible fall open to one of her favorite places, the book of Jeremiah, chapter 17, and read verses 7 and 8, a passage she’d highlighted and read on so many other worry-filled nights.

  “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

  Down the hallway, in the kitchen, she heard the back door open and close.

  Cesar was home.

  Thank You, Lord.

  A few moments later, her husband leaned over the bed and kissed her. “Didn’t think I’d be this late,” he said, peeling off a black knit watch cap that had been pulled all the way down to his eyebrows, making him look dark and mysterious. He tossed it on a 1950ish midcentury modern chair, its upholstery a pumpkin-pie orange that Cesar deplored. He shrugged off his black jacket and tossed it over the back.

  Her heart began to race when she saw he was wearing his TAC vest, the bulletproof vest with Police written in bold white letters on the back. He wore it when going out on a search warrant or warrant arrest, when there could be a chance of resistance—bad guys with guns who refused to be taken without a fight.

  “Did you get your man…or woman?” Elena asked, chuckling lightly, not wanting Cesar to know how worried she’d been.

  “Yeah. Without resistance for a change.” He smiled. “We got lucky.”

  “Something here in Deerford?”

  “No. About five miles out of town, an old farmhouse that everyone thought was abandoned.”

  She frowned. Stuff that happened outside the town limits wasn’t usually handled by the Deerford Police Department. “What kind of case?”

  “What started out to be a string of burglaries turned into a counterfeiting ring.” He pulled the thick and heavy TAC vest covered with at least half a dozen pockets over his head. “I wish we could have busted them a week ago, but I was working with the sheriff’s office, and we had to get all our ducks in a row before the bust. The last thing anyone wants is for a bunch of creeps to get off on a technicality.”

  “Did you interrogate them already?”

  “Two of the sheriff’s detectives are handling it. The FBI’s coming in too.”

  Cesar sat on the chair he despised, and Elena plumped his pillow as he took off his shoes. Standing again, he tugged his black turtleneck over his head and threw it on top of the hamper in their bathroom, and then came back into the bedroom and sank down on the bed next to her. He stretched out on the bed, crossing his arms beneath his head, and when she rested her head on his chest, she could feel the nervous energy radiating through his body and knew that he’d get up again soon to go out to the living room to watch TV until he wound down.

  At least she’d know he was close and safe, and she could shut her eyes and sleep.

  “How was your day?” he asked, as he did every evening. It wasn’t merely a routine. He wanted to know. He cared. That was just one of the little things she loved about him.

  “Crazy busy,” she said. “One of our patients is having a really tough time.”

  “The diabetic? The one whose leg was amputated?”

  Elena nodded as she folded a pil
low in half and rested her tired head in its softness. “His kids have been in town since Tuesday, and they’re worried sick.”

  Another sharp pain hit deep in her abdomen. She tried to hide it, but instead she grabbed Cesar’s arm and squeezed, hoping against hope that the pain would subside quickly. But it lasted longer than normal. She broke out in a sweat.

  Breathe deeply, she told herself. Don’t hyperventilate.

  “Elena?”

  She heard the fear in Cesar’s voice, a trembling which seemed to echo all around her. He clutched her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

  She took yet another deep breath and allowed herself to pant a few times, as some form of normalcy returned. “I’m okay. Just a bit of a stomachache.”

  She rolled over onto her back, dragging Cesar’s pillow with her, clutching it against her stomach.

  “Should I call 911?”

  Elena shook her head. “No. Really. I’m fine.” She took a deep breath. “It’s over now. I’ll be okay.”

  “You’re cold.” He placed a warm, comforting hand on her brow. “You’re clammy too. I may not be a nurse or a doctor, but I’d say you’ve got something more than a little stomachache.”

  “It’s nothing serious.”

  Cesar’s brow rose. “Is that your own self-diagnosis?”

  Elena frowned at her husband and sat up straight as the pain and its aftermath finally subsided. “You know as well as I do that I’ve got enough background in diseases and major ailments to know that whatever caused this pain isn’t going to land me in the hospital. I just need an antacid or something.”

  “This isn’t the first time this has happened, is it? It happened last weekend at the ball game too. Right?”

  She hadn’t wanted him to know. She’d wanted to go to the doctor alone, to get a checkup and find out she had nothing to worry about, nothing that a little pill couldn’t cure. But, she nodded. Yes. With Cesar’s concern so palpable, she knew she couldn’t hide this from him any longer.

  “How many other times?”

  “I don’t know. I lost count. But it doesn’t last long.”