Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
LUCA
Luca slowly bent down in his home garage.
He positioned the final, important piece of Pearl’s Airstream: a custom roll-down window with her logo on it.
Whenever possible, he tried to do after-hours work in his garage so he’d be closer to Annabelle.
She couldn’t be in here because of the fumes though, so Olivia was watching her this evening.
The back window of his garage looked out onto his backyard. Toys were scattered around, a swing set swung in the fall breeze, and yellow leaves fell gently from the trees in the setting sun.
AB and Olivia were outside playing with her bubble wands as they both shrieked, trying to catch one another.
Luca’s heart wrenched at the sight: AB in her flannel shirt and overalls and Olivia with her pretty hair flying as she ran laughing through the crunching leaves of the yard.
He tried to take a mental snapshot, to keep with him always.
The perfect fall he’d had with the perfect person in his life and the best kid anyone could ask for.
Everything about his life with AB felt precious right now. He wanted to remember every moment even after she was grown up. He assumed he’d only have the one kid, so this was his one shot.
No mistakes. Everything had to be perfect.
Speaking of one shot to get everything perfect…
He pulled his respirator down and grabbed the thin metal sheet that had Pearl’s logo on it.
He’d bond it to the original, larger piece of metal that had come with the Airstream. There was exactly one chance to get it right.
The bonding agent he used was time-sensitive, and he’d asked Olivia to not come in for the last hour; otherwise, it would completely derail him.
He had approximately fifteen minutes once the bonding agent started mixing. One distraction and he’d have to strip it all off, toss everything, reorder a new sign, and it would be a whole fucking thing.
Now or never, he thought as he started the mixing gun.
He got one bead of bonding agent along the short side of the rectangle, and then a long side.
Over the sound of his machinery, he heard shrieks of laughter. He needed to move a little quicker, but he allowed himself a lingering look to be sure AB was okay.
They’d both fallen in the leaf piles in the back yard, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
He lined the other short side with a thin bead of bonding agent. Carefully, slowly, not too much or too little.
He rolled his shoulders. One last side to go.
He placed the mixing gun and started it.
Something caught his attention from the corner of his eye as he started. A person had entered his backyard. They’d gone around the house and back in through the fence.
Luca squinted in the distance.
Oh, fuck.
His mother.
He watched as Olivia called AB to her from across the yard and pulled AB behind her.
Annabelle didn’t know his mom, and he wanted to keep it that way. He’d never trust her to keep her safe.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He finished the last bead of the bonding agent as quickly as he could. He should make a large X across the metal to better bond it together, but—fuck it.
He quickly grabbed the thin metal before the bonding agent dried and saw his mom crouched down with open arms in the yard, beckoning AB to her.
Annabelle peeked out from behind Olivia, who put a hand out as if to say, Stop right there to his mom.
She and Annabelle walked backwards toward the garage as Luca slid on the top piece, working as quickly as possible, his hands shaking.
She’d never had the balls to come to the house before.
He clamped the piece of metal together lightning fast. All in, the process had taken probably fifteen seconds, but it had felt like an eternity.
The door to the garage opened as he turned around and threw off his mask and eye protection.
“Luca,” Olivia called, her voice sounding nervous.
“I got it,” he said, brushing past her.
Olivia said, “I’m taking AB inside,” right as Luca said, “Get Annabelle inside.”
Luca jogged up to his mom but caught sight of Olivia hauling Annabelle up into her arms and walking with her to the back door. She held AB on the far side, shielding AB with her body and chattering to her.
The gratitude he had for Olivia in that moment practically choked him.
“What are you doing here?” Luca said to his mom.
His mother looked thinner than the last time he’d seen her, but meaner, too, as she glared at him.
Didn’t think that was possible.
She hefted the huge purse on her shoulder in annoyance. “Just trying to spend time with my grandbaby.”
“Did you take a photo of her?” he said. His mom had her phone out on camera mode.
“A grandmother wants photos sometimes. I was gonna see if she wanted to get some ice cream.”
“Mom,” he sighed. “You know why I don’t want you here.”
Because he’d trusted her one time—one fucking time—with Annabelle when she was a baby.
He’d come back after eight hours to a cold, dirty diaper on Annabelle who was crying from hunger, his mom passed out in the recliner from alcohol or who-knew-what and a lit cigarette burning beside a piece of paper.
That had been her one and only chance.
“That was years ago,” she said, wobbling on her feet. She had the hungry look of someone who lived on menthols and small bottles from the liquor store. He could smell it on her breath.
“Did you drive here?”
“My boyfriend is out in the car.”
Protective anger made him grit his teeth as he tried to keep it at bay. A strange man near my kid?
Fuck.
No.
He raged. “Never come into my backyard uninvited. Never talk to Annabelle ever again without me present.”
“That uppity bitch wouldn’t let me talk to her anyway,” she said with a hacking laugh, taking a pull from a lit cigarette and blowing out smoke. “You just think you’re better than me, right?”
I know I’m better than you, he thought. I worked my whole fucking life to make sure.
“What do you want?” he said finally, crossing his arms.
She tapped the end of her cigarette, sizing him up.
“I just need a little more,” she said, taking a long drag of her cigarette as if life had handed her all the lemons in the grocery store. “So I can get little Annie somethin’ for her birthday.”
“Her birthday was months ago.”
“Oh, shoot,” his mom said. “Right. What was the date again?”
The hair lifted on the back of his neck. “How much?”
“Oh, five hundred will be fine. I wanted to get her something special. Now, tell me the date so I don’t forget next year.”
He snorted. This woman had never bought him a birthday present. There was a fat fucking chance in hell that she was going to buy his kid one.
He didn’t know what kind of information you needed to open things like checking accounts or credit on behalf of a kid, but he wasn’t going to risk it. The less information this woman knew about his daughter, the better.
He kept her at arm’s length, made sure she wasn’t starving and on the street, but that was all she got. “Why do you want her birthday, Mom?”
“I’ll just go ask her if you won’t tell me,” she said, turning around, hefting the giant, cracking leather purse on her shoulder.
“Hey!” he yelled.
“Don’t you yell at me. I am your mother,” she screamed.
God. This was his worst nightmare, the yelling from his childhood that echoed every day in the trailer.
He’d pull Pearl into the yard and then make up games to keep her distracted.
To this day, Pearl thought he’d liked tag as a kid, but he just did whatever he could to get her away from the trailer as fast as possible.
One of the nice older ladies would take them in and make sure they had juice and cookies every few days, nice doilies covering every surface in her well-kept trailer.
“Here.” He pulled his wallet and took all the cash he had. “Eighty dollars. That’s it. Never come to my house again. Never speak to Annabelle again. And if I find out you have, that’ll be the last you get from me.”
“Shit,” she said, yanking the money from him. “Can’t hardly get her anything with this, but I’ll try, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, wiping a hand down his face. “You can try.”
He watched as she tossed down her cigarette butt and ground it into his yard. He rolled his eyes.
He picked up the cigarette. His house would not look trashy.
“Tell Annie I love her,” she called as she wobble-walked through the small gate.
He walked her all the way to the front of the house until she drove away.
Annabelle. His heart pounded again and again as he broke into a jog up his front steps. He tugged on the doorknob and found the front door locked.
Fucking hell, he adored Olivia for that.
Once inside, loud music boomed from the second floor. He locked the back door on his way past it.
The stairs were a blur under him as he ran up, needing to see AB.
Upbeat, classical music blared over hip hop beats from her room. Annabelle and Olivia were dancing like maniacs with the stereo turned all the way up. Annabelle was beaming with a sheen of sweat over her little red face. Twenty pounds of stress floated off of him at how unbothered she was.
“Come dance, Daddy!”
Olivia was twirling beside Annabelle, and she inserted a few headbangs between ballet moves. “I was craving a dance party!” Olivia yelled over the music.
He held her gaze as he let his arms be yanked back and forth by Annabelle dancing beside him. “Thank you,” he mouthed.
She nodded with understanding as they danced. A laugh escaped him as Annabelle did an awkward cartwheel across the carpeted room.
He turned the stereo down to a reasonable level. “Hey, AB, I need to talk to Olivia downstairs about something.”
“Can you get started on your homework?” Olivia asked her.
She danced over to where her crayons were on the floor. “I’m going to draw a ballerina.”
Olivia wiggled with happiness. “Ooh, can she have reddish-blonde hair?”
Annabelle thought hard, then shrugged seriously in a way that reminded him too much of himself. “Best I can do is orange.”
He actually laughed out loud. Goddamnit, he loved his little girl so much.