Healing Sands (22 page)

When I still didn't give her the response she seemed to expect, she studied my press pass as if to determine whether I was only impersonating a reporter.

“You'll have to excuse me,” I said. “I'm relatively new in town.”

“Oh, then there you are.” She cleared the air with her hands. “We work closely with both illegal immigrants seeking a better life and legals and U.S. citizens whose rights are being tromped on. We're trying to help Elena through this. She's working two jobs to pay Miguel's medical bills because she doesn't have insurance. She used to work three, but she had to give up her job at the restaurant to spend time with Miguel.”

She glanced toward the counter, where Elena was helping a large-bellied man choose a muffin.

“I don't think Miguel knows whether she's there or not,” she said, voice lowered. “They say it's important to talk to coma patients, just in case they do have some awareness, so we always have someone in his room talking to him during visiting hours. Quite frankly, I think that's more for her than for him.”

Her voice faded, and I turned off the recorder. She was an enigma, this Cecilia Benitez. Ready to storm the courthouse one minute, unwilling to deprive Elena Sanchez of her hope the next.

“If you want to take some pictures of her now,” Cecilia said, “you'll catch the real thing. This is the way she is all the time.” She gave Elena one more long, admiring look before she picked up a drawstring bag.

There was one thing I needed to know before she left. “Is she angry?” I whispered.

“You'd think she would be. I'd be screaming for justice to anyone who would listen if that had happened to my son. Wouldn't you?” I couldn't give her an answer. Fortunately, she didn't seem to need one.

I put out a hand to shake hers in a thank-you, but she was already headed away from me, toward the counter.

“This lady wants to talk to you about Miguel, Elena,” Cecilia said. “She's a reporter, but I think you can trust her.”

The same fear I felt in my eyes glimmered in Elena's.

“It's all right.” Cecilia patted Elena's brown hand. “This is a chance for justice for your son.”

Elena came out from behind the counter and inched onto the chair Cecilia had just vacated at my table. She blinked at the recorder. I turned it off.

“You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to,” I said. I could hear Frances in my head, demanding to know if I'd lost my mind. No—I just knew I might not be able to handle what this lady had to say.

While she continued to look warily at the recorder, I thanked myself silently for using my maiden name on my press pass, just in case she'd been told who Jake was. I felt like an extortionist again, lying to get information out of a woman who had already had enough removed from her.

“What you want to know about Miguel?” she said.

That he's a violent, drug-running gang member who provoked— somebody—into backing over him with a truck. That was what I wanted her to tell me. But if I asked her about her boy, I was going to hear again what a model junior citizen he was, and I was going to feel like my own son was the coldhearted gangbanger.

“I'd like to know about you, actually,” I blurted out.

She smiled fleetingly and looked down at her lap. “There is nothing to know about me.”

“I understand you're working hard . . . being brave . . .” Ugh. Could this sound any more like a low-budget talk show?

The smile was gone, and her face firmed. “I have faith God will take care of Miguel.”

“Is that what holds you together, God and hard work?”

The vertical line between her brows deepened. “I don't understand ‘holds you together.'”

“Why aren't you angry? Something horrible has happened, and you just go on.”

Her eyes widened within the soft folds of her eyelids. I put my hand to my mouth and pretended to merely wipe my lips. I'd spoken more vehemently than I'd intended. The big-bellied man looked up from his muffin two tables over.

“You need more coffee, Laurence?” Elena said to him.

He waved her off, but I felt his eyes continue to keep surveillance after Elena turned back to me. They certainly watched over Señora Sanchez in this part of town.

“This is a bad thing that has happen,” she said. “But why will I be angry when it is already done? What is the good from that?”

“Can you
choose
not to be angry?”

“I just do not feel it here.” She passed her hand across her chest and left it there to rest. “But
you
are angry, yes? For my Miguel?”

Before I could answer, she curled her fingers around my wrist. Her touch was warm, and it surprised me with its strength.

“It has happen to you,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Some pain for your child. It has happen to you. Yes?”

I was forced to nod.

“You want to know these things for
you.
So ask your question.” I couldn't, not with those eyes coming close to what I was about. And yet, what
was
I about? I was a mother, desperate to believe her son wasn't capable of a travesty. I didn't think I could do desperate until I found out who Elena Sanchez's son was. Now I could do nothing else.

“Why, señora?” I said. “Why do you think someone would do this to a boy who is so good, who everyone seems to love?”

“Hate.”

She said it without a thought, and without rancor. Only the sharp line between her brows signaled something deeper than resignation.

“The hate is all around,” she said. “When I was young, my cousin was kill in Los Angeles because it was Tuesday.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Or because he wore the wrong hat. We don't know. But I learn about hate then.”

“But you aren't hateful.”

“No, no. My family, we came here to come away from the hate— and still we find it—but we will not live
in
hate. You see that?”

I nodded.

“That boy who run the truck over Miguel—he hate him for something we can never know, perhaps.”

“You don't want to find out?”

“Will that wake Miguel from his sleep? I do not need to know. But you do, yes?”

I tapped the press pass. “I'm a journalist.”

Slowly Elena shook her head and circled a finger toward the recorder. “Then why do you not use your machine?”

“Elena–
que pasa
!”

I didn't look to see who had breezed into the shop. As Elena turned to him, I gathered the recorder and stuffed it into the bag with the camera. When she bustled behind the counter, I waved to her from the entryway.

“Thank you,” I managed to say.

“Vaya con Dios, Grafa,”
she said. “You will come back.”

It wasn't a question. But I knew the answer.

By the grace of God and the authority of Frances, I got two assignments back-to-back after I left the Ocotillo Coffee Shop. They kept me from torturing myself with what I'd learned there. But neither grace nor authority got me out of my meeting with Ginger. By one thirty I had the photos for both stories e-mailed in, and I didn't have a meeting with Frances until three.

I was still tempted to skip the Ginger thing, tell her I had to take emergency pictures somewhere. But I'd done enough lying for one day, albeit by omission, and like Jake, I'd never been good even at that kind. I considered having Alex tell her, and then punished myself for even thinking of that by showing up at the Milagro— again—at one thirty sharp.

Ginger's red Mustang wasn't in the parking lot, and as I crossed to the shop, I didn't see her on the patio where she'd said to meet her, so I went inside and ordered a panini, though I bypassed the coffee. I had enough caffeine in me to push a semi. When I came out, Ginger was at a table, sending a text message. She snapped the phone shut when she saw me and looked pointedly at her watch. I didn't dignify that with a response.

“I'm going to get straight to the point,” she said, and then didn't. She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head and tucked the cell phone back into her Coach bag and adjusted a gold hoop earring that could have doubled as a bracelet, all the while flashing so much bling on her fingers I was surprised she could operate them at all.

She finally seemed about to tell me what the point
was
when my lunch arrived, carried by the sizzling-blue-eyed barista who'd just taken my order. He didn't have morning barista Ben's dry wit, but he made up for it with well-cut biceps his T-shirt couldn't hide. They evidently weren't lost on Ginger, because she beamed up at him and said, “I'd love a cappuccino.”

So far I hadn't seen anyone at Milagro order from the table, but Blue Eyes said, “I'll get that started for you,” and hurried off. He never once took those blues from her generous cleavage.

The moment he was inside, Ginger drew a bead on me. “There's no other way to say this. I know what you're doing.”

“There'd better be another way to say it, Ginger,” I said, “because I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about Danny. Evidently you didn't take the hint from me the other night.”

“You gave me a hint? All I saw you do was throw a garden hose.” She crossed her legs and yanked her pencil skirt toward her knees. It didn't move much, but I took it as some kind of end punctuation.

“Sorry,” I said. “I'm still clueless. What is it I'm supposedly doing that involves Dan, besides discussing our sons with him?”

“That's just it. What is it you have to discuss for an hour every time you come over, which is every day? I know you're not trying to get child support out of him—hello!—
he
has the kids.”

I could taste the first of the anger, bitter in my mouth. I took a sip from the water Blue Eyes had brought me with my still-untouched sandwich and forced myself not to spit it at her.

“Well?” she said.

“Look, whatever my children's father and I have to talk about has nothing to do with you.”

“It does when you're doing it to try to get him back. Before, I thought you were just trying to upset him, but now I know what you're up to.”

I stared at her.

“Don't play dumb with me.” She shook her head, spilling the curls into her face so that she had to toss them back. The sunglasses remained intact. “He's a different man now, isn't he, since you left him?”

She had me there, but I didn't answer.

“I've watched you, and I know you've seen it. Well, let me tell you something. There are two reasons for the change in Danny.” She held up two crimson talons. “One is me, and the other is you.”

“Me.”

“He started to change the minute you did him a favor and left him. And
I
finished the transformation. Not only have I helped him create a beautiful home and been there for his boys, but I've brought my son into the mix, and he has been like a big brother to Jake. His grades have improved—” She put up her hand, as if I'd tried to stop the rant. “Beyond all of that, I have shown Danny that he is an attractive, sexy, desirable man, every minute of every day.”

She sat back, eyes smoldering. My own anger was giving way to sour amusement. I had never seen such an act.

And she wasn't done.

“
Our
relationship has passion, Ryan,” she said. “Passion and romance, two things I know you never gave him, because he eats them up like he's been starving for years.”

“Cappuccino.” Blue Eyes had appeared soundlessly and put Ginger's frothy mug and the check on the table. “You can just pay when you leave.”

Between the come-hither smile she gave him and the passion-and-romance speech he probably overheard, I was surprised he didn't give it to her on the house. She didn't even wait for him to be out of earshot this time.

“What Danny and I have is deep and real,” she told me savagely. “So don't even think you're going to come in and destroy it.”

So much for amusement. I had the insane urge to stick my finger in her cup and flip foam across her plunging neckline. “If it's so deep and real,” I said, “why this little scene? You obviously have nothing to fear from me.”

“Fear?” Her voice squealed in a way I knew she hadn't planned on. “I'm not afraid, Ryan. I'm just trying to keep you from making a complete fool of yourself.”

“Because you care so much about me.” I shook my head. “Try again.”

“All right, fine. I just don't want our household upset by you trying to take away—”

“‘Our' household? Are you living there now?”

“No. Not yet.”

This was crazy. Why was I even giving her the satisfaction of ticking me off? I moved to the edge of the chair.

“Look, whatever you and ‘Danny' want to do is none of my business.”

“That is a true statement.”

“I'm not there to try to break up your romance. I'm there to be with my sons. Period.”

She scooped up her purse and replanted the sunglasses on her nose. “I'm glad we're clear, then. But if I see any evidence to the contrary, we will have this conversation again. And I will not be so nice next time.”

“Oh, were you nice this time?” I said. “I must have missed that.” She flounced off, giving me the last word. But as I breathed slowly into the perfumed space she left behind, I didn't feel triumphant. I felt strangely sad. For Dan. Because he was mixed up with a woman who thrived on drama and staged romance and would get it from the nearest barista if she couldn't get it from him. For all his faults, I didn't think he deserved that. I felt no deep satisfaction.

Besides—she'd left me with her check.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I
glanced at my watch while Frances was looking at the photos on my laptop. She'd arrived late for our meeting. It was now almost four thirty, and I was supposed to meet the soccer moms at five.