Don’t Go (Our Little Secret #2)

Chapter 1

Following the medical review committee’s quarterly review, Bonnie Vela’s surgical date has been moved. We now anticipate performing the procedure in late autumn. We know waiting is difficult, and we thank you for your continued patience.

I read it three times.

I was standing in a hotel ballroom’s back hallway, wearing expensive three-inch heels I couldn’t buy and a borrowed black apron tied twice around my waist because its straps were too long for someone who hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch.

My hair was in a bun I’d given up on halfway through.

A pen was tucked behind my left ear. I always kept one there, even though I didn’t know why I needed it at a wine auction.

I'd take it out and gesture with it. Then put it back and repeat.

Late autumn. Just thinking those two words made me feel like they'd already sliced my daughter's chest open, then sewn it shut for six more months of waiting.

The hallway smelled like the kitchen—garlic, warm bread, and the faint metallic tang of someone polishing flatware around the corner.

I started to lean my shoulder against the wall, then straightened right away.

The wallpaper was velvet. Of course it was.

Everything in this building was velvet, marble, or wood you weren’t allowed to touch.

We thank you for your continued patience.

Patience. Sure. I'd been patient my whole damn life.

I'd been patient when a drunk man hit my parents.

I'd been patient when I was nineteen and saw two lines on a pregnancy test, and everything I’d planned for my life, written down inside a notebook cover, fell apart.

I'd been patient when Bonnie's father—and I refuse to call him that, deadbeat asshole fits better—looked at the test, looked at me, and said, "I love you.

I'll always love you. It's you and me against the world, baby. "

By the next week, he was on a flight to Phoenix before I could keep down a piece of toast.

I'd been patient for over a year on the Cross Foundation's surgical waitlist.

And now they wanted six more months.

My fingers had started shaking. I closed my fist around the phone and pressed it against my hip until they stopped.

Sabrina, Sabrina, don't cry in the back hallway. You cry, your eyeliner runs, and Janelle will see it. She will tell everybody in the kitchen. Then you're gonna be the bartender who cried at the Cross Foundation auction, and that's not a reputation you wanna walk out the door with tonight.

I tipped my head back and stared at the chandelier in the ceiling.

How was I going to tell Bonnie?

Because Bonnie would definitely ask. She always did. She'd come down off the couch with her water bottle in one hand and her Pickles plush in the other, and she'd put both hands on her hips and say, "Mommy, when's my surgery?"

I didn't have an answer that wasn't a lie.

"Soon, baby." Lie.

"They're working on it." Lie.

"Don't worry about it." Worst lie of all, because Bonnie always worried about it. Bonnie worried like a forecast.

I shoved the phone in my apron pocket and pulled myself together.

I had a job to do.

I came out into the corridor and crossed past the pass-through window where the catering captain was loading tarts onto a tray.

He nodded at me. I nodded back. Janelle looked up from the prep table.

I gave her a thumbs-up because it’s the universal hospitality sign for don't ask me anything right now.

When I pushed through the swinging door, the ballroom hit me with its full smell—cologne, different perfumes layered on top of each other like a war crime, and the waxy sweetness of the white lilies on every fifth table.

I took my place behind the bar.

It was an extravagant place.

The bar was a long zinc slab at the back of the room, lit from underneath in a soft blue that made everything feel a little too polished to be real.

Behind me, on a tiered shelf, was every bottle the foundation thought made them look like people who knew about wine.

Just pretentious bottles of wine—wines that had a year, a region, and an opinion.

I’d be pouring into glasses I could never afford to own, let alone drink from.

The room was moving. A man in a dove-gray suit was turning a paddle in his hand over and over but not lifting it.

Two women near the front were laughing too loudly at something one of them had just said.

A waiter threaded between tables, balancing a tray of canapés over his head like he was rescuing a litter of kittens from a flood.

By the windows on the far side, a woman in a soft green dress was looking up at a tall, dark-haired man who was looking back at her without blinking. They didn't move. The rest of the room moved around them like water around a rock.

Good for them. Some people got the anchor.

"White, please."

I turned. This woman was wearing pearls and a navy dress, mid-fifties, with a well-practiced smile. I poured the chardonnay. I slid the glass across. Slid is generous. The base of the glass clipped the edge of the runner, and the glass made a sound. The woman flinched. Her eyes went to my face.

I gave her my brightest smile. "Enjoy."

She took the glass and walked away faster than she'd arrived.

Sabrina. Be normal. Be normal for ten more minutes. Then be normal for the ten minutes after that. That's all you have to do. Ten-minute increments until you're in a cab going home.

The next guest got slammed with wine. So did the one after that.

By the fourth, I'd developed a little routine where I could slam the glass and pretend I'd misjudged the friction of the bar.

Whoops. Marble's slick tonight. So sorry.

The fourth guest made an offended sound through her nose and walked off without thanking me.

Good.

I pulled the pen from my hair, twirled it, and put it back.

I let my eyes go to the family group near the windows.

There were five of them now. A woman in green stood with a dark-haired man beside her.

An older woman in cream, silver-blonde hair pinned neatly, pearls adorning her neck, stood very still while the rest of them seemed to arrange themselves around her without thinking about it.

A tall man with light brown held a beer loosely in his hand, the kind of ease that came from always belonging in rooms like this.

Near a column, an older man with sandy hair and a California-tan that didn’t quite match the coast leaned back and laughed at something the lighter-haired man had said.

They looked good together. They looked like they came from old money.

I let myself—for the length of half a breath—picture a version of me in a soft green dress with my hair done by somebody competent and my little Bonnie next to me in a beautiful pink dress with a bow.

But Bonnie would hate the bow. She would tell me the bow was a straw man.

I'd tell Bonnie that wasn't what straw man meant, and Bonnie would say, "Mom, Mom, that's literally what it means.

Look it up. You're being a straw man right now,” and I'd laugh and hand her a canapé.

I pushed the thought away. People like me couldn’t afford dreams that lavish.

I knew it would cost me nothing to picture it, but everything to hold on to it.

A man in a cheap suit slid up to the bar.

He came up with his shoulders forward, not looking at anyone directly. His suit was charcoal and the wrong size in the shoulders. The shoes were okay. He was reading the menu like it was going to be on a test.

“Whisky,” he said. “Just whisky. Whatever’s not stupid expensive.”

That made me smile for the first time in forty minutes. “Buddy, all of it is stupid expensive.”

“Then the cheapest stupid expensive.”

I poured him a generous double of the Glenfiddich. I slid it across—actually slid it, not slammed it—and he picked it up and downed it without breathing.

He set the glass down and looked at me. “Another.”

“You okay?”

“I need a drink before I do this.” His voice was quiet. His brown eyes didn’t quite settle on me when he said it. “I’m hoping to talk to the owner of the foundation tonight.”

I poured him a second double.

I didn’t ask anything. I didn’t say anything.

His brown eyes looked nervous, and he stood hunched in on himself.

Maybe he had a kid. Or someone he loved waiting somewhere.

Or maybe just a wall he’d been pushing against for too long—showing up in a suit he didn’t really own, in a building he didn’t belong in, trying again anyway.

I pushed the second glass to him.

“On the house.”

He shook his head. “I’m paying for it.” He pulled out his wallet—leather, worn at the corner—and counted bills onto the bar. He counted slowly. He put down forty dollars for a thirty-dollar pour.

“That’s too much.” I let him know.

“Take it.”

“Sir— ”

“Please. I’m not gonna feel right walking away if you don’t take it.”

I didn't drag the conversation and took it.

He nodded once and picked up the second glass. This time, he drank more slowly. After setting the empty glass on a coaster, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Good luck. Whoever you're trying to talk to, good luck.

I didn't believe in luck. I tucked the forty into my apron and squared my shoulders.

The auction was starting.

A woman at a podium near the front was reading from a card.

“Lot fourteen, a vertical of Opus One, vintages spanning 2012 through 2018, bidding to commence at five thousand dollars.” A paddle went up.

“Five thousand. Do I hear seven? Seven thousand from the gentleman in the back. Do I hear eight? Eight thousand—nine, ten, eleven. Do I hear twelve? Twelve thousand, fifteen—”

The numbers kept climbing. They climbed past my rent for a year. They climbed past the deductible on the surgery I couldn't get scheduled before late autumn, and a man in a tuxedo raised his paddle and bought six bottles of wine for the price of a small car, and the room clapped politely.