Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
They’d given Rosa so much medication for the pain that she could barely keep her eyes open. She was glad Jenna came in before she fell asleep, though.
“Mom,” she said, and came closer, sliding herself onto the bed beside Rosa and embracing her, gentle as a breeze. “I love you. You’re gonna be okay.”
“The important thing is you’re gonna be okay.” She pressed her hands to Jenna’s wet cheeks. “I’m sorry, baby. About all this. And my God, the car. Our poor car! And we don’t have collision coverage.”
Jenna said, “Alberto is here. Why does he know more about your health than I do? Cancer, Mom? How could you keep that from me?”
Rosa pressed her lips into a tight smile as her heart broke for her child.
“Because, baby, keeping it from you meant keeping you from the hurt you’re feeling right now for as long as I possibly could.
You, and the girls, too. Alberto—he’s not gonna hurt so much about a woman who was a summer fling twenty-six years ago.
But I didn’t want to leave you with no parent at all. ”
“You talk like you’re gonna die or something.” Jenna knuckled her eyes and sat up on her elbow so she could study Rosa’s face.
It was like tearing out her own heart to hurt her little girl, but she forced the words, all the same. “There’s not much they can do, honey. I’m in a clinical trial, but I can feel it’s getting worse.”
“Mom, no! No, no I don’t accept that!” Jenna got up onto her feet, staring at her mom, fists clenched at her sides, her body shaking.
“Neither do we,” Christine said as she, Bonnie, and Diane came into the room.
“We have too much to do, after all,” Diane put in.
“Yeah. Starting tonight,” Bonnie added.
Rosa looked at Bonnie quickly, because her voice was a little bit growly, and her scowl was downright frightening. She thought back, finally trying to piece together what had happened to her.
She’d been driving, on her way to Bonnie’s, so they could see what was on that phone. And instead…something had smashed into her. A truck with no driver. She’d turned her head, just before impact, and had seen an empty seat where the driver should have been.
Had he jumped just before the wreck?
Had it been deliberate?
Was the pervert she’d taunted before stomping his camera to pieces in lieu of his frickin’ face the one who’d done this?
She closed her eyes slowly.
“Mom,” Jenna said. “Talk to me.”
Rosa opened her eyes, looked at her friends, and then saw Alberto standing behind them in the hallway, tall and straight. His dark hair looked snow-dusted now, and the intensity of his energy felt smoother and easier.
Diane said, “We’ll get you some junk food.”
“Ice cream would be good,” Rosa said.
The women retreated and Alberto started to turn away, but Rosa called, “Berto, will you please stay?”
So he came into the room, and she saw the swarthy musician who’d swept her off her feet one long-ago summer. Her last great romance. Really her only great romance.
He looked good. Damn good. It was a shame she was dying.
She took a deep breath. “Okay, so Jenna, I was selfish. I was scared of losing you, and myself to a man. So…I didn’t tell Alberto about you until I found out I had cancer a couple of months ago.”
Jenna’s mouth fell open and she looked at her father. He stared back at her and said, “I would never have stayed away if I’d known, Jenna. You’re so beautiful.”
She just blinked, and Rosa’s heart hurt even while she noticed the shape of their eyes were the same, the curve of their eyebrows, very similar.
He went on. “I…I’ve been reading your stories since I found out. You’re an amazing writer.”
Jenna held up a stop sign hand so he’d stop speaking and said, “Mom, it’s not fair for you to tell me this now at the same time you tell me you’re dy—you’re sick.
I should be really pissed at you for this, and I can’t be.
Not when you’re…” She closed her eyes against a rush of tears, shook her head as if she could deny the truth out of existence.
Rosa said, “They say I’ll just fall asleep at some point and wind up here. In a…you know…coma.”
Jenna yelped softly. Her father put a hand onto her shoulder as gingerly as if he was petting a dog that might bite. She didn’t bite, though. Just let the hand stay and lowered her head to hide her tears.
“I left clear instructions with the hospital for when that happened,” Rosa said. “They know when I’m admitted to call you and the girls and Alberto. I wanted them all to be here for you.”
Alberto stood quietly, patiently. Time had mellowed him, hadn’t it? He’d been fiery before. His intensity had scared her a little. Now he seemed strong and steady. Like a river, he’d deepened with age.
It surprised her that there wasn’t anger in his eyes for what she’d kept from him.
His child. A terrible, hurtful mistake, she knew that, had always known that, and the regret of her lie was hitting her harder than it ever had now that the two people it had robbed were standing in front of her. And it was too late to make it right.
But there was only kindness in Berto’s eyes.
“I left the list with the hospital and my doctors and everyone,” Rosa went on, knowing she had to explain.
“I called Alberto and told him the truth. I asked him to give me time to tell you myself, Jenna, even though I’d already had twenty-six years.
And he didn’t even argue. He didn’t even tell me off for what I’d done.
” Her gaze had shifted to Alberto’s. He returned a gentle smile.
“I’ve been trying to work up my courage to tell you all this, but um…” She closed her eyes. “I got admitted for an entirely different reason, setting my backup plan into motion before I intended. I suck, baby. And I’m sorry.”
Her girlfriends were back in the hall outside the room. She’d seen them go by. “Listen, kid, they’ve got me pretty doped up here, and Imma be asleep before I know it, but I need to talk to the girls real quick, okay?
Berto’s hand was still on Jenna’s right shoulder. He was standing behind her. She took a breath, and then raised her left hand and put it atop his, and said, “Buy me a coffee? Maybe we can talk.”
His expression changed for the first time since he’d been in the room. It relaxed in relief, and he smiled slightly.
“I’ll send the girls back, Mom. But after this, I’m not leaving your side until you’re home.” Jenna bent to kiss Rosa’s cheek, then she and Berto walked out.
Berto glanced back at Rosa, meeting her eyes and holding them, like he was sending a silent message. It felt like, “I’ve got this. She’ll be okay.” And it felt like a thousand pounds had been taken off her shoulders.
She shifted in her bed, then winced because it hurt to move.
Shoulder, ribs, head. Especially the head.
She tried not to think about what that might mean, and focused instead on Diane, walking softly into the room, and then Bonnie, who was speaking on her cellphone—the real one, not the burner—and Christine.
Christine turned, looked up and down the hall, then closed the hospital room door. Bonnie ended her call, and she and Diane stood on opposite sides of the bed, taking care not to touch her IV lines. Christine came to the foot, and Rosa said, “Crank me up, will you?”
“The button’s over here,” Bonnie said, and she picked up a remote with a curly cord like old fashioned telephones used to have. The kind you would stretch all the way out to reach through your bedroom door as a teenager, for privacy, and then the curls would never be right again.
Bonnie raised the upper part of the bed until Rosa’s ribs screamed and she said, “Stop, stop,” wincing.
“Are you okay?”
“Should I get a nurse?”
Rosa held up her working hand. “I’m okay, but listen. I looked up right before impact. I saw an empty truck smash into me. No driver. What do we know? Have you looked at Terrence’s phone?”
They shook their heads, and Bonnie said, “That was Sam on the phone just now. He’s coming to question you about the accident.”
“Sam is?” Rosa asked.
“He was supposed to start the new job tomorrow,” Bonnie said. “But he happened to come upon the scene tonight…that’s how he knew to come tell us so soon. He says they haven’t located the driver of the truck, and it was reported stolen earlier today.”
“That son of a dick,” Christine said. “He did this.”
Rosa nodded. “He thinks we’ve seen what’s on that phone. He has to shut us up.”
“We can’t look at it here,” Diane said. “Jenna won’t stay away long, and Sam is on his way.”
“I won’t be able to stay awake much longer anyway,” Rosa said. “Girls, listen to me. I’m probably dying anyway, but you’re not. Don’t let some worthless waste of oxygen take your lives away. They’re precious.”
She reached out and grabbed Diane’s hand on her left, Bonnie’s on her right, and fixed her gaze steadily on Christine. “We don’t have a choice this time. It’s him or us. You get that, right?”
Bonnie was riding in the back seat of the crossover. Diane was driving, and Christine was in the passenger seat. The two of them had sent their respective husbands home. Jeff had phoned a friend to pick up Chrissy’s Beamer and drive it back to the lake house.
Jenna had opted to stay with her mom, and one of the nurses said she would set up a reclining chair at her bedside, once she got to a regular room.
They expected to release Rosa tomorrow, barring complications.
But Alberto had told the girls what he knew about Rosa’s condition in the waiting room, while Rosa had been breaking the news to Jenna.
Bonnie still didn’t know how to make sense of the information.
It didn’t compute in her brain. How could there ever be no Rosa?
“I feel like we should’ve stayed at least until they got her settled into a room,” Diane said, as if Bonnie’s thoughts had reached her through the car. But it was what they were all thinking about. Having nearly lost their friend and knowing they might still lose her.
Christine looked back at Bonnie. “I think there’s a reason Bonnie was in a hurry to leave. Right, Bonnie?”