Forever Family (Forever #5) (10 page)

The bed moved forward, and Layla and I were forced to the side as they pushed it out the door. We followed like a funeral parade, Darion stepping alongside us once we were in the hall.

No walk had ever seemed so long or so terrible. Not the one from the hospital after I lost Peanut. Not the one up to my apartment afterward, abandoned by my boyfriend now that I wasn’t pregnant and he wasn’t stuck with me.

Not the one home after the doctors patched up my sliced wrists.

Nothing was like this.

At the hub of the ICU, one orderly turned back to point us to the waiting room while they headed on through to the stations. I didn’t turn there, didn’t look for a chair. I just watched them roll Albert away. I couldn’t help but feel I would not see him again, and I had to burn this image in my mind, this last moment I might see him before he died.

When the doors slid closed behind them, Darion led me and Layla to the chairs. My legs didn’t seem to know what to do, how to sit, so Darion pulled me into his lap. “Hang in there, my love,” he said, cradling my head against his shoulder.

Layla probably sat somewhere, but I didn’t look up. The image was seared into my mind, and I tried to hold it. I wanted to paint it, make it permanent. Paint your pain, Albert had told me so many times. Get it out of your soul and onto the page. I would paint this pain. But I did not believe it would ever leave my soul.

Hours passed. Darion did not move me, did not let me go. I held the image of Albert in my brain until my head throbbed. Finally, I asked Darion to go fetch a sketchbook from the therapy room.

All through the night I drew, madly flipping through page after page with a soft pencil, trying with earnest to get my pain on the page and out of my heart. Sometime in the early morning hours, Layla left to check on her dogs and change clothes.

I sat in my black dress, Darion next to me. I couldn’t leave while she was gone. I couldn’t leave at all.

The shifts would change at 8 a.m. Doctors would start their rounds. Sometime after that someone would talk to us, tell us how he was. Tests were probably run during the night. We would have answers, and an idea of what to expect.

I began to hold on to that, waiting for that moment. It eased the pain of sitting there, the ends of my fingers black from smudging the pencil sketches.

A nurse I didn’t recognize came out and sat beside me. “Tina?” she said gently.

My head snapped up. I looked at her, trying to figure out what she was about to say. Nurses didn’t deliver news. They took you to conference rooms where people told you things. I braced myself for her words.

“He’s stirring a little,” she said. “If you want to see him, this is a good time.”

I jumped up, letting the sketchbook fall. “Text Layla,” I told Darion.

I followed the woman through the sliding doors. I had not been in ICU much, as my patients had to have a certain level of stability to come to therapy. But I knew the rough layout. We went down the hall and passed the first ICU bay, then turned into the second.

Several beds were separated by curtains. Albert was on our end, his mass of gray curls lit up by a small light near his head.

His eyes were open.

I lunged for him and grabbed his hand. “You scared us,” I said.

He nodded, just barely, but enough for me to see it. Then he tilted his head a little, as if to say, “I’m sorry.”

I glanced at the setup. Tubes going into his gown. An oxygen line into his nose. Nothing too crazy. His heartbeat slid across the screen.

Maybe this was just a hiccup.

“Cat still got your tongue?” I asked. Maybe he would say something else. I would not forget it. Not ever. Now I would know how important each moment was.

He opened his mouth, but I could see he couldn’t control his throat muscles. I knew this was one of the end stages of Parkinson’s. He hadn’t been able to eat solids for a long time, due to the choking hazard.

He enclosed my hand in his. He was struggling to stay awake now. I squeezed his fingers, a hand once so talented that the art world was at his command.

His finger slid along my palm. I thought his movements were involuntary until I recognized a letter.

I looked down. He was drawing a letter against my skin.

“
P
?” I asked him.

He gave one of the small nods.

Then an
A
.

Then
I
.

“Paint,” I said with a smile. “You’re still drilling that into me, right? Paint your pain?”

He shook his head for no.

“What should I paint, then?” I asked him.

The letters started up again.

H
.

O
.

P
.

E
.

Paint your hope.

Chapter 12: Corabelle

Tina and I sat in the front seat of my car long after Albert’s funeral was over. I wasn’t going to leave her side, not today.

Darion moved his hospital shift to attend the service, but he hadn’t anticipated that Tina would refuse to leave the cemetery. So, I took over when he had to go. I could still see the black Mercedes in my rearview mirror, inching along the narrow road through the gravestones.

Everyone else was gone. The turnout had been small. Albert’s girlfriend, Layla. A random uncle, clearly angling for information about the will. A couple other artists who had worked with Albert decades ago and managed to find out where the private ceremony would be.

Tina stared out the window at the semicircle of pillars that housed the ashes of those who had been cremated and stored. The flower stands were still all around, the ribbons fluttering. They wouldn’t last long in this weather. A crew would come along later to attend to that, I assumed.

The chairs were scattered on the turf mat beneath a small tent. Even though the service had been brief, just a few words by a funeral home attendant, the blustery cold had been hard to manage. When we hit the hour mark after the others had left, Darion and I convinced Tina to at least sit inside the car. I knew Darion had not wanted to leave her, but it would take him a while to arrange for his shift to be covered. He assured me he would be back.

I was fine just sitting here, looking out on the peace of the rolling hills. The cemetery was beautiful and well kept. I had nowhere to be and nothing pressing to do. Emotionally, I was barely holding it together myself. Between Jenny’s baby and Manuelito’s mother refusing to bring Gavin’s son back from Mexico, life had been difficult and strained.

Gavin was in Mexico City at the moment, trying to figure out if there was a way to force Rosa to give him visitation. When she hadn’t returned after Christmas, he had gone crazy trying to find her.

Eventually we learned that her missing family had turned back up, the cousins who had raised Manuelito from birth, and she wanted to stay with them. Gavin had been shut out.

I mostly felt numb about everything. I focused on grad school, classes, grading papers.

Except now. I reached over to grasp Tina’s wrist. She took a deep breath at my touch. “I’m so sorry, Tina,” I said. “I thought you were doing better.”

She shrugged. “I thought so too. It’s been a month. Maybe delaying the service was a bad idea.” She fingered the glass shell at her neck. Inside it was a small portion of Albert’s ashes. The rest had gone inside the pillar for Layla to visit. She had wanted someplace to go. Tina had wanted him with her. This had been their compromise.

Albert had no descendants, since his only daughter had died when his wife drove her car into the ocean with the young girl strapped in with her. As far as we could tell, the wayward uncle was the only family, and Albert had not had any contact with him since he was a child.

“Did that uncle get mentioned in the will?” I asked. Darion had kept the man away from Tina when he pestered her. Tina was the executor of Albert’s estate, and she spent the past month working with a lawyer to get everything straight and protect his copyrights.

“Yes, we’re throwing him a bone,” Tina said. “Ten thousand or something if he signs to stay away. The lawyer will handle it.”

She hadn’t talked much about the situation. She raised her hand to adjust the crocheted black cap on her head, and I let go of her wrist. She was so pale, so thin. I didn’t know how she kept going. The charcoal sweater and long wispy skirt made her look tragic and lost.

I didn’t know how to help her.

“We can go,” she said. “I’m ready to go.”

I turned the key in the ignition, wincing when the car sputtered a little to start. “It’s cranky when it’s cold,” I said, trying to laugh. It sounded hollow.

But Tina relaxed a little. “It’s a California car,” she said. “It thinks you’re going back on your word about the balmy winters.”

We backed out of the spot and headed down the lane. She turned her head for a moment to look at the flowers one more time, then faced front. “Well, that part’s done.”

“You did a great job,” I said. “It was lovely.”

“I kept the press away,” she said. “That was the least I could do.” She fingered a loose string at the hem of her sweater. “I’ll tell Darion he doesn’t have to take off his shift for me. I’m sorry I held him up.”

“I’m happy to hang out with you,” I said. “Gavin won’t be back for several days.”

“I can’t believe he rode his motorcycle all the way to Mexico City,” she said.

“It’s expensive to fly, and he wanted to be able to get around in case he was able to visit Manuelito.” We passed through the big open gates.

Tina took one more glance behind at the grounds.

“Will you come here?” I asked.

She faced front and gripped the glass shell again. “No. I’m not much on graveside weeping.”

The streets were quiet. We were in a posh part of San Diego. Tina had spared no expense on the location. Albert had left all the decisions to her and Layla.

“Did you keep your baby’s ashes too?” I asked.

Tina frowned. “No, my mother insisted on a grave.” She flinched. “I think about his bones in a box in the ground, and I…” She faltered. “I can’t think about it.”

I winced. Finn had also been buried.

“There’s no good way to do any of this,” Tina said. “Picturing them in the incinerator isn’t exactly comforting either.”

I couldn’t think about these things. “Where would you like to go?” I asked her.

Tina stared out the window. “We should stop by his studio. He left something for you, and now is as good a time as any to give it to you.”

I tried to imagine what it might be. I pictured a ceramic version of Albert’s famous demonic clowns and suppressed a shudder. I had admired Albert and loved his relationship with Tina. But his work? I was not a fan.

“Where is his place?” I asked.

“A couple miles up the road. I’m going to keep his studio open, do some artist-in-residence type stuff.”

“Did he have a house too?”

“It’s all one big estate,” she said. “I still have to figure out how to handle the rest of the house, the upkeep, you know.”

I didn’t know much about Albert’s wishes. “Is Layla going to live there?”

Tina shook her head. “No, she always had her own place. They met in the hospital, and I’m not sure she’s ever even been to his estate. Between the hospital and rehab, he never was able to get out to see it again.”

Her voice caught on the last word.

“You met him at just the right time for him,” I said. “You brought him so much happiness this past year.”

She pulled her cap off and rubbed her head. Her wispy blonde hair crackled with static. “It seemed so short.”

I thought of my seven days with Finn. That had been short. But then, Tina had only three hours with her baby. We could never have had enough. How often did we ever think that time was enough? Gavin had only a year with Manuelito before Rosa took him away again.

Grandparents. Parents. Children. Pets. Never enough time. This was where we should concentrate our energy. Where we should place our happiness. But life kept going. Work. Obligations. They stole our time.

I had to stop thinking about it. My life was making me crazy. I had priorities. I wanted a family to prioritize. But I had no way to make it happen right now. I was stuck. Gavin was snipped. We were barely making ends meet. No time or money for surgery. No time or money for a baby even if he hadn’t had the vasectomy.

Tina directed me through a neighborhood where each house was surrounded by fences and gates. “It’s three down,” she said. “The gray brick one.” She dragged her brown suede knapsack up from the floor and dug around.

When we approached the drive, Tina pushed a button on what looked like a garage door opener. The iron gate glided on a track to let us through.

The road led to a circle in front of a large house with gray pillars. Everything about the property was colorless. The grass was long dead, smashed down with huge patches of dirt.

“Cheerful, isn’t it?” Tina said.

“I guess it matches the personality of someone who painted demonic clowns,” I said.

She sat back, surveying the house. “He was a real mess most of his career. He never got over his wife and daughter. Losing them was the ultimate failure.”

I stopped the car in front of the door. “Nobody could handle that,” I said. “And someone sensitive like Albert didn’t stand a chance anyway.”

She nodded. “The great artists are always the ones who lose it. The world is just too intense.”

I killed the engine, but Tina made no move to get out of the car and go in.

“Have you been here often?” I asked.

“A few times,” she said. “I got supplies for him in the hospital before his condition stopped him from working. And then…after…just once, to get the will and paperwork.”

Albert was lucky to have Tina. I wondered who would be handling all this if she wasn’t around. Lawyers, I guessed. People who didn’t care.

She reached for the door handle and tugged on it. “Let’s go. No use stalling.”

I followed her up to the enormous double doors. She fumbled with a key chain.

Inside was an entryway done all in black and white. The floor was a traditional checkerboard. The walls were striped. Two giant mirrors on opposite walls reflected into each other, creating an infinity of images. If you looked at them for long, you felt disoriented, like you were in a fun house and an evil clown might jump out at any moment.