It was too late to call now. We hadn’t started eating dinner at Rosa and Alejandro’s until eight, and it was almost ten o’clock. Hudson would be asleep and Preston would, too, since he woke before sunrise every morning to start the day. Or at least, he had.
I’d have to talk to Preston tomorrow at Hudson’s party. I was almost grateful it was too late to call. Every ounce of emotional energy was gone, and I knew I could do nothing more than fall into my bed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Preston
It was the perfect day for an outdoor party. The temperature had dropped slightly and the air felt fresh and pleasantly cool. The farm was lush with new green leaves on all the trees, flowers blooming everywhere, their scents wafting in the air, and the rows of plants in the distance a vivid, healthy green.
The land around us had once been dry and withered, but it had recovered and was now bursting with new life. I wondered distantly if people who had once been stripped bare and cracked open could recover, too, and thought that it was at least worth hoping for. Wasn’t it?
What was the alternative? The alternative was living as my parents had lived—just existing, mostly in silence with short bouts of anger that ended in more distance. God, it’d been exactly like that with Annalia the year we’d lived together, minus the short bouts of anger because Annalia would bite her tongue rather than lash out at anyone. Maybe it would have been better if she’d gotten angry. I’d needed something to snap me out of the fog I’d existed in. That night the rain had come had done it . . . but then she’d fled. I sighed heavily, scrubbing a hand over my face. I’d been too late. When it came to Annalia I was always too damn late. Just a little too slow, too many steps behind.
In the backyard, blue balloons moved gently in the spring breeze and a few tables had been set up on the lawn for those who wished to enjoy the fresh air and comfortable warmth.
I placed one of the gifts I’d gone out that morning and picked up for Hudson on the table next to the cake that was still in its white bakery box.
“What’d you get him?” I turned around to see Tracie and smiled.
“I got him a train table, but it was too big to wrap so I left it inside. That’s a couple of trains to go with it.”
“Oh gosh, he’ll go crazy for that.”
“I know,” I said, pleasure sliding through me at the thought of how my son would react to seeing the train table. He was obsessed with them. We’d read his few Thomas the Tank Engine books so many times I had them memorized. So did he, as a matter of fact. I knew because when I tried to skip pages, he’d call me on it by making a sound of outrage and turning back to what he knew I’d missed. “Is he awake yet?”
“He should be in a minute. I’ll go change him and bring him down.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
I went back into the house. Lia hadn’t called me the night before, and I’d woken up with her heavy on my mind.
I don’t think you’re available for anyone. You’re still not over Annalia.
I’d admitted it to myself, and I’d admitted it to Tracie. The question was, what in the hell was I going to do about that? Anger hadn’t worked. Denial definitely hadn’t worked. So what now?
Open up to her, my mind whispered. Do it. Be brave. Could I? And after I’d closed myself off, turned away, hurt her when she’d been so vulnerable, would she even listen to anything I had to say? Could I take the chance that she might just be . . . done?
I’d almost picked up the phone and called her first thing this morning, but I’d known I was going to see her in a few hours so I’d held off. It would be better to talk in person anyway. That and part of my morning had been spent running out to get a gift for Hudson.
“Preston, darling, there you are. Have you seen Tracie?”
“Yeah, she’s out back.”
“Wonderful. Didn’t she do a marvelous job with the party setup? She really is a gem.”
“Tracie’s great, Mom.”
“How did your date go?”
“It wasn’t really a date. We just had dinner.”
She put her hands on her hips. “It sounded like a date to me. And I’m so glad you took my advice. I think—”
The doorbell rang, and I used the excuse to escape my mother, walking out of the kitchen into the foyer. My heart skipped a beat to find Lia on the other side, biting her lip, and for a moment I felt like a seventeen-year-old boy, tongue-tied and dry-mouthed at the mere sight of her. Annalia gave me a nervous smile. “Good morning.”
“Hi,” I said, pulling the door open wider. “Ma’am.” I nodded to Lia’s mother who was standing beside her, and she nodded back, giving me a thin smile. I’d never given her too much of a reason to like me, although I had paid for her apartment and any minor expenses she incurred when Lia had stopped working and moved in with me. And I’d kept supporting her financially when Lia left. She was Hudson’s grandmother and what had happened between Lia and me wasn’t her mother’s fault. Plus, I was the one who had gotten her daughter pregnant and essentially put the family breadwinner out of commission.
In any case, though, I was pretty sure her mother was a withdrawn person and getting her to warm to me would be a Herculean task that I definitely didn’t have the skill or the charm to tackle. Cole could have. Of course. But not me.
During the few times in the past year she’d visited, she’d barely looked at me and had seemed impatient to leave. Of course, given that her English was so limited, if she’d wanted to say anything to my mother or me, Annalia had to interpret. That probably added to her discomfort.
When Lia left, we’d had no way to communicate that wasn’t cumbersome and inconvenient. The time I’d gone there to question her about whether she knew where Lia had gone, I had to use Google translate just to ask simple questions. It had been awkward and strange, and I’d been wrung dry with panic and hurt and only stayed long enough to find out Lia had told her she was leaving but hadn’t told her where she was going.
Lia stepped forward and the mere memory of that time made me want to reach out and grab her, shake her, and then wrap my arms around her and beg her not to leave me again—not ever to cause me to experience the misery and dread of loss.
I forced myself to relax, my eyes moving from her hair to her sandal-clad feet, her loveliness washing over me like a balm. She was wearing a flowered sundress in different shades of purple and the bright colors made her bronzed skin look rich and flawless. Her hair was loosely braided and fell over one shoulder.