Threads of Hope: Quilts of Love Series (6 page)

Today he was headed to Tessa Alvarez’s clinic early, since it was his first time to work there. Houston traffic, he learned, had a life all its own, and until he could take its pulse, he didn’t want to risk being late.

Greg pulled into the parking lot with more than thirty minutes to spare, but since her clinic was at the front of a
new residential community, he’d have time to check out the neighborhood.

He grabbed his briefcase, locked the car door, and walked around the outside of the clinic. The white-planked building with its dark green shutters and its wide wraparound porches reminded him of an Acadian home. Even the landscaping avoided the appearance of a commercial building, with curved walkways and bench areas. If the exterior of the practice was this meticulously groomed, then Greg felt sure the interior would be as well. Always reassuring because he’d worked in practices that truly had gone to the dogs.

He’d just taken a few steps when he heard the xylophone ring tone on his cell phone, which meant Paloma, the nanny was calling. Elise hired her to start the day Greg and Jazarah arrived in Houston. “She needs to be a part of your daughter’s life here from the beginning. Otherwise, that’s one more adjustment Jazarah needs to make.” She was right. Having Paloma’s help with all the logistics of moving made the transition so much smoother. Greg did tell Elise that she had to find a two-unit condo because he didn’t want Paloma living in the same house, setting up an awkward and potentially problematic arrangement.

It took a great effort to not stop breathing when Greg saw her number on his cell phone. He was so afraid that she would be calling with terrible news. It was never that. This morning she called to ask if she and Jazarah could go to the zoo and the Children’s Museum. “On one condition. You have to take pictures,” he answered, knowing Paloma already made every event a photo op.

“She asks if she can talk to you.”

“Sure. Put the princess on,” he said and smiled picturing his daughter’s little apple-round face, her corkscrew curls dancing when she nodded, and her bright eyes that seemed to hold
their own laughter. Lily had insisted they keep her Ethiopian name, which meant “beloved princess” because, she’d said, “Isn’t that what she is to us already?” How could Greg argue with that?

“Da-de? I going to the zoo,” she said, her voice rising and falling with each syllable. “See what I wear?”

They’d have to start making face-to-face calls because she thought holding the phone in front of her outfit would be enough for him to see it. At first, he’d tried explaining to her that he couldn’t, but it only served to frustrate her. Incredibly, she did what most adults would do in the same situation. She repeated, “See!” louder and louder, until he would finally tell her she looked adorable.

“You are beautiful,” he told her, and he didn’t need to see her to know it was true.

“Tank you. Talk to P now. Bye!”

Greg heard Jazarah giggling as she handed the phone off to Paloma.

“Do you want I should feed J her supper?”

His daughter and her nanny were on a first initial basis since they met. He expected his name might change to D at any time. “Yes, go ahead and do that since the clinic doesn’t close until six. I’ll call as soon as I’m on my way in case I don’t make it home before her bedtime.”

“You have a good day. We will see you later.”

After every conversation with Paloma, Greg uttered a silent prayer of thanks for this young woman being in his daughter’s life. Over the past year, his prayers were not always of gratitude. Actually, some of his conversations with God were rants of anger and despair and pain. He learned, though, that he could find comfort in the arms of a God who knew grief. He didn’t subscribe to the theory that God took Lily away from them. A drunk driver, with two previous arrests, took Lily on
her way home from shopping for Jazarah’s birthday party. God was giving her back to him, in memories, and his daughter, and the promise that he would see her again.

Manny, now on his leash, high-stepped out of the examination room with Nina following close behind. Neither one of them looked back. He wouldn’t have either in her shoes.

Thomas O’Malley’s sister. What a random collision in the universe of coincidence. Especially since she was the first person he’d seen from his high school since returning to Houston, and she was the last person he would have paid attention to when they were students. He had been a different Greg Hernandez then. Privileged and popular. He and his friends thought they ruled the school. They barely noticed girls like Nina. Girls who paid attention to the teacher and not them during class. Girls who did their homework and passed tests because they weren’t partying all weekend. Greg and his friends pitied their sad lives.

Nina had looked familiar in that way that a stranger appears, but your brain can’t access the file of recognition. Sometimes, days later the connection happens, sometimes, not at all. Had Nina not mentioned her brother’s name, Greg was certain the connection would have short-circuited before ever leading to her. He’d seen her only a few times in the hall before that day she landed on the floor and became a human food tray. Had there been a class superlative for Most Ordinary, Nina would have won. Her hair must have been long because she wore it pulled back from her round, clean-scrubbed face. She wore jeans and sweats, shirts that might have even been Thomas’s. Instead of disguising her figure, the baggy clothes just magnified it.

One of his friends remarked that she might not have fallen if she hadn’t been waddling so fast. That day and for days after, he and his friends would quack when they passed her in the hall. Greg knew her brother had died. He knew her family lived more than modestly. But why would he have told his friends that? They’d think he was soft. His friend Lance said she must really be a duck because all their torments seemed to roll right off her back. They grew bored and moved on.

Now, all these years later, Nina was no longer a lump of coal in a room full of diamonds. She had become a gem herself.

But Greg also knew that transformation happens only one way.

Under extreme pressure.

Shouldn’t Mr. Manny be the one barking and growling coming back from the veterinarian? Sounds like you should’ve had a shot yourself. Distemper, maybe?” When Manny spotted Aretha, blockaded on the sofa again, he dashed across the room and tried to jump through the wall of magazines. “Of course you’re glad to see me. What happened to Miss Grumpy, huh?” She set one of the stacks on the floor, so Manny would have just enough space to land on her lap.

“I won’t even mention the traffic,” said Nina as she set the case of special diet dog food on the counter. She dropped her purse on the floor, opened the refrigerator and slid food around looking for a bottle of water. “Do we have any—”

“In the door. Always in the door,” Aretha said. “So, what happened? You look like you tangled with somebody.”

Nina found two aspirins at the bottom of her purse and washed them down. “And how’s that?” She moved to the bookshelf and poured some of her water in the exhausted-looking ivy plant.

“I won’t even mention the aspirins,” Aretha noted in an almost-perfect mimic of Nina. She nudged Manny off her lap and settled him next to her. He thanked her with a hand lick.
“You know I hate when you do that,” she said and wiped the back of her hand on her jeans. “Back to you.” She pointed at Nina. “I know by now when you’re in a snit. Your whole face is wound tighter than Lady GaGa’s clothes, your eyebrows bear down on your eyes, and your mouth does this funny fish thing.” She demonstrated a pucker that made her look like a wild-haired guppy.

For a moment, Nina attempted to maintain her indignant demeanor. But the expression on Aretha’s face broke her resolve, and she laughed so loudly that Manny barked at her. “If only I’d taken a picture of that, I’d have leverage for life,” Nina said. “But, thanks, I needed to laugh.” She cut the plastic wrap off the dog food and as she put the cans away, started telling Aretha the story of meeting Greg Hernandez, omitting what most infuriated her: the fact that the lanky high school teenager with the toothpaste-commercial smile had grown into an even more attractive version of himself.

“What a fool . . . how can someone so mean be taking care of . . . what is the matter with him?” A flustered Aretha was an incoherent Aretha. Nina learned to fill-in-the-blanks as she spoke.

“Good questions. I didn’t know him in high school. I just knew of him. I mean everyone did. Everyone knows the kids with money, and everyone wants to go after the ones who are eye-candy. He was both, and he played sports. A triple play or threat depending.” Nina moved to the chair in the den. “Next to losing Thomas, that day in high school was one of the worst days of my life. I wished I could have stayed on that cafeteria floor until the bell ended lunch and everyone left for class.” Her mind rewound to that teenaged Nina, moving in slow motion as she stood, scraps of food clinging to her jeans. She’d bent down to pick up the tray, and her glasses slid off her face into the mess on the floor in front of her. “Getting out of there
was like trying to get out of a net. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank.”

“Didn’t anyone try to help you?”

Aretha’s outrage only magnified for Nina now how pathetic a figure she must have been then.

“No. Well, I don’t know for sure because I didn’t turn around. I walked straight out through the delivery entrance.”

“I bet your mother wanted to beat every one of them,” said Aretha.

“I’m not sure. I never told her what really happened.” Nina slipped her feet back into her ballet flats. “You’re the first person I’ve ever shared this story with.”

“You could come with me. Manny would be fine in his crate for a few hours.” Nina looked down at her dog, and she didn’t like what she thought she heard. “Like you know the difference between Sunday and Monday,” she said to him.

He pranced off and jumped on the chair opposite where Aretha sat, using a pillow as a laptop desk, her legs crossed underneath. “I have to finish this paper, plus I have that meeting tonight.”

Nina tied her neck scarf. “Meeting? On Sunday?” She looked in the mirror, muttered, and re-tied it.

“I told you about it, but you don’t listen to anything that involves the word ‘church.’ Our women’s group is deciding on our community outreach. We’re just yakking over dinner.” She winked at Manny, then said to Nina, “You could come with me.”

“Not any more likely than you doing the same.” She loosened the scarf. “Do I look like I’m wearing a neck brace? Tell me now because if you don’t, she will.”

“I like it. It softens you.”

“So, are you saying my face looks hard?” Nina looked in the hall tree mirror, turning her head side-to-side. “Is my eyeliner too severe?”

“Sister, you are exhausting. That’s not what I’m sayin’ and you need to get over yourself. Just because you’ve revved up your career engine doesn’t mean you start rolling over your friends.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I have Sunday-dinner anxiety.”

Aretha eyed Manny as she opened her laptop. “Well, now that’s your own fault for saying ‘yes’ when you mean ‘no.’ ”

To avoid thinking about the torture that awaited her, Nina shut off her usual driving music and started planning the stories that would land her in New York. The one she was putting together now had potential. If a local county official was sabotaging how contracts were being awarded, that had legs. And, with some digging, maybe even arms. When it came to graft in government, she had to follow the roots and figure out who was on the other end. And if the ambulance service contract truly did turn out to be a political favor, that meant the mayor was willing to risk the lives of everyone in the county to stay in the good old boy network.