I held the phone to my chest and stared at the ceiling, the only uncluttered part of my house. It didn’t matter. Nobody came over here except my mother. I had no friends with kids, so I couldn’t really hang out with anyone. A lady with a baby was a buzzkill on a red carpet. I didn’t know how to meet people like me.
Meanwhile, Chance was living the life. Industry parties. Preparation for the album release. Because he’d gotten a leg up by meeting Dylan Wolf, he always had someone to see, people to talk to, events to attend.
The money was terrible. A singer starting out was all expense and no profit. I would have to go to work soon unless we could really squeeze a lot out of the last of his signing bonus. If the album did well, there would be royalties. But creative accounting might eat that, and it would be months before a check would get cut.
Down the line, things would be good. But right now was the worst. You had to look good and live the life, but you weren’t paid yet. And here Chance was, getting dragged down by the wife and baby. He couldn’t live lean and party hard.
My phone buzzed and I jerked it up. It might be Tina!
But it wasn’t. Just my mother, saying she’d come over midafternoon.
I should be grateful. I had help. And Phoenix was alive and healthy. So much more than what Tina and Corabelle had known. I got that.
But I was saddled with this terrible need. It had been there as long as I could remember and hadn’t faded by meeting Chance or getting married or with the birth of the baby.
I needed people, bright lights, flashbulbs, attention. I wanted to rub shoulders with fame, to carry their torches, cozy up to their glamour. And now that all this had begun, I was stuck. Home. Alone. Shivering in a wet shirt in a disaster of an apartment. Smelling of sour milk and spit-up.
We were all a mess, all three of us.
But I was going to do something about it.
I got up, stripped off the clothes, and instead of dropping them where I stood, headed to the bedroom. Time for laundry. And to do my hair. And my nails. And get the baby out in the fresh air. And check in at my office. Make a time line for going back.
And find Tina. Help her.
We were all going to get our lives back.
Me first.
Chapter 15: Corabelle
I paced the sidewalk outside the outpatient surgical center. I couldn’t stand the waiting room one more minute. The girl at the desk assured me that they would call my cell phone if I wasn’t in the waiting area when Gavin got out of recovery.
The day had warmed up, so I stripped off my jacket. Birds were singing. The trees were already leafing out even though it was February. California was like that. Winter was a weekend, not a season.
I wasn’t sure if I should keep trying to text Tina. Her messages had to be stacking up. Where was she? Why exactly did she run?
But I knew. It didn’t matter the trigger, just that there had been one. The moment that set you off didn’t have anything to do with the big things, like someone dying or losing your job or crashing your car or a big argument. It was the last little thing, the feather that tipped the scale.
I didn’t get why that was true, but I knew it from experience. My worst nights after Finn died weren’t in the hospital when he took his last labored breath, or the funeral, or arriving home to an empty house.
It was coming across a blue ribbon the same color as the one from a favorite shower gift. Spotting a Baby’s First Christmas ornament in a store. Somebody asking you if you had kids.
Those were the things that did you in. They snuck up and nailed you like a snakebite in the grass.
Or a plastic bag to the face.
Heat rushed through me as I pictured myself as if I was someone else, lying on the floor of my dorm room, breathing against the plastic stuck to my cheeks. That girl felt disconnected from the person I was now. Had to be. I couldn’t be putting Gavin through this, trying to get his fertility back, if I wasn’t well enough to handle it. No way would I fall that far again.
I sat on a metal bench on the corner of the block. Unless it failed. How would I manage that? That sort of blow?
My breathing sped up in its old familiar way. Hyperventilating. I clutched the arm of the bench. No, I was not that girl anymore. I was steady. Calm. I could handle things.
I rolled the jacket in my hands, holding tight. This was no time to fall apart. Gavin and I had made a very difficult decision about how to use the money Albert left us. We could hire a lawyer to fight Rosa over Manuelito. Or we could reverse his vasectomy.
Gavin felt sure Rosa would do the right thing in the end. That she would tell Gavin where they were in Mexico, let him see his son. And two consultations with lawyers told us what we already knew — fighting in Mexico was a whole different battleground. The money might not even be enough to get it done.
So we had called a doctor instead.
My phone buzzed. I jerked it from my pocket. Gavin was out.
I leaped from the bench and hurried back to the surgical center door. The reversal would work. It had to. It just had to.