The Queen of Cool (38 page)

“
Yazmin’s brother lives
there,” Lo pointed.

“
Yes, yes,” Granny O said
before she opened her door and stepped out.

“
Donny bought the land and
built the houses before he knew you,” Mutt said.

Mutt opened the cab door on his side and
helped her out of the back. Her feet had just hit the ground when
Yazmin ran up to hug her. When Yazmin stepped back, Lo saw a crowd
of Romani people. Nadya, their River Crest housekeeper raised a
hand to say hello. Tobar, their River Crest gardener, was standing
in between Nadya and their cook, Fifka. Dr. Evans and her
granddaughter, and Alisha’s best friend, Vera, were walking toward
her. Her eyes moved from face to familiar face.

Lo put a hand on her baby. She’d been
surrounded by this family, Don’s family, her in-laws, her entire
married life. She had never seen them.

“
We must go Lorraina,”
Yazmin took Lo’s arm. “There is much to do.”

Lo glanced at Yazmin and let her lead her
into the large house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Q

Four hours later

Sunday, early morning—7:45 a.m.

Days: 185

Carrying a paper plate full of bacon,
pancakes, and eggs, Lo looked around the large meeting room for a
spot to sit. The room was filled with close to two hundred men and
women, family members, who had gathered to help her.

“
Lo,” Yazmin waved her to
their table.

Lo sat down between Yazmin and Nadya, their
housekeeper. Nadya hugged Lo. When she sat down, Fifka, the cook,
took the bacon off her plate.

“
No bacon,” Fifka wagged
her finger at Lo. “Bad for Lo. Bad for baby.”

Lo nodded as if she understood. Fifka and
Nadya laughed.

“
You used say that all the
time,” their housekeeper said.

“
Things have changed,” Lo
said.

“
Lo hasn’t been eating,”
Yazmin said. “We’ll be lucky if she eats half of this.”

“
Truly? You always had such
a big appetite,” Fifka said.

“
Can’t you see how skinny
she is?” Yazmin asked. “There’s almost nothing left of
her.”

Lo turned her attention to her food. She had
spent most of the last hours with Dr. Evans and Vera. The doctors
had taken tubes of blood and handed it off to a waiting young man
for delivery to the lab. Then she’d had the world’s longest
ultrasound. As predicted, Lo was having a boy. For a baby who was
not supposed to make it, Dr. Evans thought he was healthy and
growing. By the time they’d finished the physical exam, Lo’s blood
work was back from the medical lab. Lo and the baby were
healthy.

When her physical health was clear, Dr.
Evans sat down for a talk with Lo about her mental state. Dr. Evans
had spoken to Lisa and Yazmin. She was concerned that Lo’s deep
depression would lead her to injure herself. Lo held nothing back.
She talked about her desperate loneliness and longing to be with
Don. With every nod and empathetic sound from the good doctor, Lo
had the distinct feeling that they were waiting for someone.

After a while, Vera came in to tell them
that breakfast was ready. Dr. Evans hugged Lo and escorted her to
what Lo had assumed was a barn behind the houses. Inside, she found
a large meeting area with smaller rooms along the side. This is
where the families meet to make decisions and have breakfast.

Lo had almost finished eating when someone
appeared at the front door. Yazmin tensed and gave a quick glance
at Lo. Mutt nodded his head to Yazmin as if he heard her worry.

“
Lorraine, there is someone
here to see you,” Granny O touched her shoulder. “He has come a
long way.”

Don!

Lo’s heart skipped a beat.

He must be here! He must have been tucked
away by gypsy magic for all this time! Her mind tumbled over
everything she needed to say.

She would be angry because he’d tricked her.
No.

She would be relieved. No.

She would punch his shoulder and he would
spin her around. No.

She would laugh. No.

She would definitely cry.

They would go home!

This horrible nightmare would be over!

Don was alive!

Lo hopped to her feet. Granny O walked her
to the front door where a man was standing with his back to
her.

“
Don!” Lo’s heart raced
with anticipation. She reached her hand out to touch the man’s
shoulder. “Don.”

When the man turned, the bottom fell out of
Lo’s entire world. She staggered.

“
No,” the man said. “Sorry
Lo. I wish I were Don but I’m not.”

How could she have been so stupid? She’d
been to the Medical Examiner’s office. She’d seen Don’s cold body
with the Y incision in it. She’d seen them put him into a box and
the box lowered into the ground. And still, in her heart of hearts,
she’d hoped these gypsies had kept the secret wish she wanted more
than anything. She swallowed hard.

“
Who are you? And what do
you want with my Lorraina?”

Yazmin’s voice rang in her ears. Yazmin
pushed herself in front of Lo. The man looked down at Yazmin then
glanced at Lo. Yazmin’s brother moved to his sister’s side.

“
You don’t recognize me,
Lo?” the man asked over Yazmin’s head.

Lo blinked back the crazy circus of feelings
of self-rage and grief. Yazmin turned to her. Lo’s eyes held the
stunned, glazed look of someone who’d just witnessed something
horrible.

“
That’s enough. We are
leaving,” Yazmin said. “Lorraina is not well.”

Yazmin took Lo’s arm and marched her out the
door. Lo heard a cacophony of angry voices yelling in Romani. Lo
stumbled and the two small women almost went down. Yazmin’s brother
caught Lo’s other arm to keep them from falling. Yazmin opened the
door to a blue BMW coupe with darkened windows and stuffed Lo in
the passenger seat. She slammed the door.

From the seat, Lo heard Mutt yell at Yazmin.
For the first time in all the years she’d know Yazmin, Lo heard her
friend raise her voice. She turned around to see Yazmin battering
Mutt with her words while her index finger bruised his chest. While
she couldn’t understand what they were saying, she knew that Yazmin
was defending her and her baby. Yazmin said one last thing,
sniffed, and got in the driver’s seat. She slammed her door and
locked the vehicle tight.

“
Nice car,” Lo
said.

“
My friend Lorraina bought
it for me a long time ago as motivation to get my driver’s license.
I used to sit in it when I was upset to remember where I was going.
I began driving it about a month ago when I got my driver’s
license,” Yazmin said. “It’s the same color as the car my friend
rescued me in. I love it. Now, where would you like to
go?”

“
I don’t have anywhere to
go, Yazmin,” Lo said. “No home. No money.”

“
Bah. We can go anywhere we
want to go,” Yazmin said. “Montana. I’ve always wanted to go to
Montana. Wide open country.”

There was a knock on the driver’s side door
window.

“
Canada,” Yazmin said.
“Montreal. I’ve heard it’s like Paris. I always wanted to go to
Paris.”

Someone knocked again.

“
We’re not going anywhere,
are we?” Lo asked.

“
I will take you anywhere,”
Yazmin said. “I just can’t right now because I’d have to run over
about a hundred Romani.”

“
Two hundred,” Lo
said.

“
I wouldn’t mind running
over half of them,” Yazmin said. “That Olga really pisses me off. I
told her…”

Lo smiled.

“
You thought it was Mr.
Don, didn’t you?”

“
I thought it was Don,” Lo
said. “Crazy. I guess I thought with all of this… that I didn’t
know about maybe he… But Don would never…”

“
No, Mr. Don would never
leave you. He would never want you to suffer all you have since he
died. He wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. All of this has
happened because he’s gone from this world.”

With Yazmin’s words, Lo’s grief and sorrow
came forward. Yazmin held her hand while she cried.

“
Why am I here?” Lo
asked.

“
To release the curse from
the baby,” Yazmin said. “To speak with Mr. Don’s
father.”

“
The man who came?” Lo
asked.

“
No,” Yazmin smiled.
“That’s your father’s friend from the base. Colonel
Bozeman.”

“
I thought he was dead,” Lo
said.

“
No, he was transferred to
another unit,” Yazmin said. “Mr. Don found him in January after
finding the form.”

“
And?”

“
You have one last thing to
do.”

“
Before we run over all
these people?”

Yazmin smiled at the thought.

“
Better not,” Lo said.
Imitating Granny O’s voice, she added, “Could get you
deported.”

Yazmin looked at Lo and smiled.

“
You need to speak with
Colonel Bozeman.”

“
What about the curse?” Lo
asked.

“
We have released the
curse,” Yazmin said.

“
That’s why the ultrasound
was so long,” Lo said.

“
Yes, Evelyn wanted to be
sure the baby wasn’t affected by us,” Yazmin said. “She watched him
while we worked.”

“
Don’s father?” Lo
asked.

“
Did you ever notice how
much Mr. Don looked like Tobar? You know the gardener?” Yazmin
asked.

“
It’s hard to tell because
Don’s face was remodeled,” Lo said.

“
Same size, same build,
identical laughs,” Yazmin said. “He was Mr. Don’s mother’s first
husband. She believed he was killed in Vietnam. Henry knew she was
pregnant when they married. He couldn’t have children, and needed
at least one to fit the Senator image, so it worked out for him. He
killed her when her husband returned. She threatened to leave
and…”

Yazmin gave a sad shrug.

“
Who fathered the girls?
Why does their DNA report say it was Henry?”

“
Truth be told, he might
have actually fathered them,” Yazmin said. “Evelyn says that he
spoke to her about getting treatments to have children. He hated
Mr. Don so much he wanted heirs to make sure Mr. Don never
inherited his estate. What would be better than to have Mr. Don’s
own wife steal the estate right out from under his
nose?”

“
Did Don know about… all of
this?”

“
No one told him,” Yazmin
said. “Olga insisted.”

“
But no one really knows
what Don knew or didn’t know,” Lo said.

“
Exactly.”

“
Yazmin,” Mutt yelled
through the glass. “Open the door.”

“
Can you do this?” Yazmin
asked.

“
I think so,” Lo
said.

“
I will not leave you,”
Yazmin said. “We will do this together.”

Yazmin squeezed Lo’s hand.

“
Let’s go deal with the
assholes,” Yazmin said and unlocked the car.

Q

The next night

Monday night—8:15 p.m.

Lake Worth, TX

Days: 186

“
Where were you yesterday?”
Manny asked when she opened the door to his knock.

“
I was here,” Lo stepped
back to let him in. “Why?”

Manny pointed to a video camera she hadn’t
noticed before.

“
When was that put in?” Lo
asked.

“
It was here,” Manny said.
“Security for the house.”

“
And you sit by the monitor
and watch it all the time?”

“
I get notified when the
doors open or close. I saw you leave with Mutt, so I didn’t worry
too much. Plus, you answered my text,” Manny said. “That woman was
creepy though.”

“
Granny O,” Lo said. “She
has this look… Terrifying.”

“
Wicked Witch,” Manny said.
“That’s what I thought when I saw her. She was the evil witch queen
coming for our Queen of Cool.”

Lo laughed. Manny looked her up and down.
She was wearing a pair of Don’s jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, an
enormous light jacket of Don’s, and her athletic shoes.

“
You look like you’re ready
to go somewhere,” Manny said.

“
Yep,” Lo said. “I have all
my notes and everything.”

“
So where did you go?”
Manny asked.

“
The Romanis had to remove
the curse Mutt’s father put on Henry Downs. They were afraid it
would hurt the baby,” Lo said. “Dr. Evans was there to give me a
whole checkup and I even met Don’s biological father or really
realized he was Don’s father or… Well, I’m not sure.”

“
Who was it?” Manny
asked.

“
Our gardener, Tobar,” Lo
said. “You remember him.”

“
Now that you mention it…”
Manny nodded.

“
What?”

“
They share a look,” Manny
gestured toward the door and she followed him out. They were in his
car before he added, “If Henry Downs wasn’t Don’s father, why did
they have to remove the curse?”

“
I don’t know,” Lo shook
her head. “How are we gadjo supposed to know how all of that
works?”

“
Gadjo?”

“
Non-gypsy.”