Dancing in a Hurricane (47 page)

She looked down at her gray dress, low-heeled black pumps, and black jacket. He wore a gray shirt. She shrugged. "Doesn't everyone match at a funeral?"

He laughed. "You're right." Straightening his tie, he asked, "Did you know Ximena?"

"No, I never got the chance to meet her. You?"

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah. Since I was a kid. And if you think he's rigid…" He nodded his head toward Sixto. "Double that and put it in a dress. That was Ximena."

"How do you mean 'rigid'?"

He looked at her for a minute. "Strict, opinionated, clings to the old church."

She glanced at Sixto. "But he doesn't go to church."

"Not anymore, but he still believes in the rules. At least the ones that are mortal sins."

"Mortal?" Looking at her brochures, she asked, "Which one of these has the mortal sin list?"

He laughed and pulled a blood red booklet from her stack. "This is your basic catechism. All the sins listed in order of importance. Growing up, we had to learn this whole book and recite it before we were confirmed."

"Wow." Her Lutheran confirmation was a slumber party compared to theirs.

"Yeah. It's an interesting religion." He took the top brochure from her. "Catholics are big into saints. We even pray to them so we don't have to talk to God directly."

She giggled, the sound echoed loudly in the marble room. "Don't make me laugh." She looked around him at the group of people with Sixto.

"He's not listening." He opened the brochure to a picture of a male saint with a sword in his hand. "They usually have to perform three miracles to be sainted. This guy…" He pointed to the picture. "He only did two, and I heard one of them was a card trick."

Bree burst out laughing and snorted, quickly covering her mouth with her hand while glancing across the room.

Sixto excused himself from his friends and walked toward them. He didn't look happy.

Rico grimaced. "We're in for it now."

"It's your fault and you better take the blame, Rico."

He nodded solemnly.

Sixto stopped next to her. "What's going on over here?"

"It's her fault," Rico said.

"Uh! Not true." She made a face at Rico.

Sixto put his hand on her arm. "Let's take a walk. Rico, see you later."

He took her out the front door as if she were an unruly child being removed from mass. They walked down the steps to the sidewalk and stopped. He stuck his hands in his pants pockets and looked around.

"I'm sorry, Sixto. I didn't mean to be disrespectful."

He met her eye. "You've probably never been to a Catholic funeral before."

She had, but was okay letting him use that as her excuse. "Did I embarrass you?"

"No. I'm not concerned about what people think. I'm worried about you,
cariña
."

"Me? Why?"

"At the gravesite, you were crying, but now it's as if you've turned off your emotions again. As if there's more inside you that you refuse to let out."

She blinked rapidly. "I'm truly sorry for your loss and I feel bad for your family, but I didn't know your grandmother. How much mourning—"

"No, I'm not talking about grief for my
abuelita
." He leaned closer to her. "Was this funeral any different for you than your sister's?"

Her eyebrows shot up. "My sister's? What…what does that have to do with anything?" She was tempted to turn her back on him and walk away.

"This is going to be the shrink talking, but you've never grieved your sister. You've never found closure for her death."

She gestured around her. "Why bring this up now? We're here for your family, not mine."

"Maybe this is the wrong time…" He looked at her. "But it weighed on me during the service. Abuelita Ximena was old. She lived an amazing life and died a peaceful death. We're going to miss her, but we're all okay with her passing. Cloe's life had barely begun and it ended violently."

Why was he dragging up her pain? She stepped back.

"Bree." He took a hand out of his pocket and reached for her.

She moved further away. "Just say what you want to say."

"You won't be able to move on until you come to terms with Cloe's betrayal."

"How? Should I see a therapist?" She jerked her purse strap onto her shoulder. "You're the expert. Tell me what I should do."

He looked down at his shoes. "I don't mean to piss you off."

Here she was, overreacting again. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, easing her tension. "I'm not mad, I'm…" She shrugged. "Unprepared for this conversation. What are your concerns?"

He glanced at her. "The letters."

"The letters from Cloe?" She understood now. "I still have them."

He nodded.

She pointed with her thumb over her shoulder and tried to smile. "Do you want me to go home right now and read them?"

He stepped close and held her. "Uh uh. If I have to eat church basement food, you do, too."

She snuck her hands inside his jacket and around his back. "I'm not looking forward to either activity."

"What's the alternative? Burning the letters and never knowing what Cloe wanted to tell you?"

The thought of her sister sitting down and writing letters that were never read made her extremely sad. "You're right, Sixto. I owe it to myself."

He kissed her. "The sooner we eat, the sooner we can get home." He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Okay. Let's go fill up on cold cuts and lemon bars."

"And Cuban sandwiches."

***

That afternoon, Bree pulled the box of letters out of the closet. Her stress level increased just touching them and she switched on relaxing music, brewed a cup of tea, and changed into shorts.

Sitting on her bed, she dumped the envelopes onto her quilt. There were a dozen of them and she sorted them by date, prepared to read the oldest first. The letters spanned five years. She opened the first one. It talked about Cloe's moving to Florida, finding a job as a photographer, and starting a business. The second letter was near their birthday in January. Cloe mentioned the first returned letter and talked about having Bree visit, celebrating their birthday together the way they did as kids.

The letters grew shorter as the years went by. Cloe's tone became more resigned, as if she knew Bree wouldn't read it anyway. But in every letter, she apologized for hurting her. She said she'd grown to appreciate that Bree was old enough to make her own choices and that she should never had done what she did. Bree read each letter twice and gradually came to believe that Cloe was sincere in her apology.

The last letter talked about her boyfriend, Greg, and how she'd like to settle down with him, maybe start a family. Bree dropped the letter in her lap. Cloe was serious about him?

Her chest ached and she breathed deeply to keep herself from crying. She could have been an aunt, visited here a couple times a year, one day bringing her own baby with her. She lay back on the bed, the vision of Cloe and her as mothers brought a sob from her throat.

Glancing at the photo of her sister taken by Greg, she whispered, "Okay, I'm ready." She took a deep breath. "Cloe, I forgive you."

She waited a minute and examined herself to see if anything felt different. "I forgive you." This time it flowed freer. She closed her eyes and drifted back to her wedding day. Standing at the back of the church, ripping off her veil, her scalp stinging where she tugged out hair with it. She'd picked up her skirts and run out the massive oak doors, endured the scene at Kyle's apartment and the days after, waiting for Cloe to show up, planning how to get her out of her life forever.

Then came the haunting mental picture of her sister in Idaho, looking at her phone and stepping into traffic. "Cloe, you didn't deserve such a horrible death." She let the tears flow and soon her sobs wracked her body.

The bed dipped and Sixto spooned behind her. After a few minutes of soul-rending crying, the tremors eased and she opened her eyes to see a box of tissue next to her. She mopped up and lay in his arms, just breathing.

"Can I get you anything,
cariña
?"

"No, thanks, I'm fine." She flipped onto her back and looked at him. "You were right. I needed this."

He kissed the tip of her nose. "What did you find in the letters?'

"I think she was truly sorry. She acted recklessly, hoping to save me, but at the time, she believed she was doing the right thing. Over the years, she came to understand how wrong her actions were."

"Good for her."

She skimmed her hand down his cheek. "I forgave her."

"Good for
you
."

"It is." A weak smile curved her lips. "I didn't realize what a heavy burden I carried all this time. Especially living in her house." She looked at Cloe's picture. "Now that I've let the anger go…" She snuggled into his arms. "It's like I'm reborn."

"Interesting symbolism."

"Okay, Freud." She smiled to soften her words. "Tell me—" Her phone rang. She reached for it from the bedside table. "It's Marisa."

He nodded and got up. "She probably needs to talk."

Marisa was sobbing so hard, Bree couldn't understand her.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The next morning at ten thirty, Marisa sat in a leather chair in front of the fireplace at a coffee house near the beach. Her stomach churned at the smell of the tea cooling in her cup.

Bree walked in, glanced at her, and looked right past her. Did she look that bad? She stood, walking toward her friend. "Bree."

Bree turned and stared, her eyes huge as sand dollars. "Marisa, oh, sweetie." She pulled her into her arms. "You've lost so much weight."

Marisa should care that her clothes hung on her, her hair looked lifeless, pulled back into a pony, and she hadn't had the energy for makeup. But she didn't care. Her life was a living hell.

"I've been sick for a week."

Bree guided her back to the chair. "What kind of sick?"

Gesturing to the counter, she asked, "Do you want to get coffee first?"

"No." Bree shook her head and sat in the chair next to hers, holding her hand. "Tell me what's going on."

Her chin quivered. "I'm a wreck. I don't know if it's nerves or if I actually have a stomach flu, but I haven't eaten anything but soup and crackers."

"You don't…" Bree's gaze slid over her face and down to her shaking hands. "You don't look that bad."

Marisa laughed but it sounded like a croak. "You're an awful liar."

Bree attempted a smile. "Okay, the truth is, you've looked better. You said you needed my help. What can I do?"

She grasped Bree's hand, squeezing it, soaking up some of the warmth from it into her own icy fingers. "I've made a decision. About the baby."

Bree sat as still as concrete.

"I'm going to have an abortion."

Bree slowly shook her head, her lips thinned. "Are you sure?"

"Don't you think I've gone over this a hundred times in my head?" She swallowed to hold back tears. "He—the father—is a cruel man. Powerful enough to take the baby from me."

"You don't know that he'd be able to take—"

"The things he's done to win his cases are immoral, if not illegal. I don't doubt for a minute he'd step over that line to get me back in his control."

"We could fight him."

"With what? I'm unemployed. I could never ask my parents or anyone in my family, to spend millions to defend a lawsuit that he'd just bribe a judge to win anyway."

Bree's eyes shifted. "There are other choices."

"Running and hiding? Never contacting my family again? I won't subject a child to that kind of life. It would be just as bad as living with Victor. Living in fear." She gazed off over Bree's shoulder. "I lived like that for years and it still haunts me."

"There's adoption."

She shook her head. "Victor would never give up his rights. He'd take the child and…" She couldn't even imagine the horrors the little one would face.

Bree tipped her head. "But abortion is such a permanent choice."

"I know, Bree. I was raised the same as you. Life is precious." She dragged in a breath. "But I can't find any other option."

"Who have you told?"

"No one." She grasped Bree's hand again. "You're the only person I can turn to. Will you help me?"

Bree sat back, her mouth dropped open. "Me?" She shook her head. "No. No, Sixto would never—"

"Please. I'm begging you. I don't have any close friends here and I can't ask my sisters. I don't want any of my family to know I'm pregnant."

"Sixto knows," Bree said in a quiet voice. "You should talk with him."

Was Bree afraid of losing him over this? "I'll tell him about the abortion. After."