The next morning, James was up early for a therapy session and then lunch with an old friend. I didn’t ask if it was a female friend, but the way he wouldn’t look me in the eyes when he said it, made me wonder.
I thought it was funny. I was not the jealous type. If he decided he liked someone more than me then I didn’t want him anymore. End of story.
And he knew better than to cheat on me. I’d made it clear that if he was attracted to someone else so much he wanted to fuck them, that he had two choices—leave and figure out what he really wanted before he came back. Or simply get the fuck out and don’t call me ever again.
There were no other options and he knew it.
I didn’t think he was the cheating type, but if he was stupid enough to blow what he had with me, I wouldn’t look back.
Part of me wondered if he was having a lack of confidence because he couldn’t use his legs and needed validation from other women. If he did, that was his fault. He knew I had been with my fair share of men and ranked him the best. And honestly, since he lost use of his legs, he somehow managed to overcompensate in the sex area. He was hot. And he made me hot.
I kissed him hard on the lips when he said goodbye.
“You be a good boy.”
“Patronizing as fuck, Gia.”
I blinked innocently. “Oh. Sorry.”
He made a face and left.
After I stuck some frozen waffles in the toaster for Rosalie, I made a press pot of coffee and took my mug up to the roof. Django and Rosalie soon joined me. Rosalie sat at the outdoor wooden table and colored in an old sketchbook I’d given her. That girl was into her drawings. She was pretty good, too. Right now, she was drawing Django with the San Francisco skyline behind him. I leaned over.
“Wow. That is great.”
She bit her lip together studying it.
“I don’t like it.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t look like it does in my head.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
She looked up sharply, frowning.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m laughing because that is what every great artist thinks. Every artist alive from an illustrator to a writer to a musician is constantly striving to create what they envision in their head.”
She nodded sagely. “I will keep trying.”
She ripped the page out, and I saw she was about to wad it up.
“Stop!”
She froze. I immediately felt bad. I needed to remember her life before this. Stop meant something different to a girl in her shoes.
I lowered my voice. “Please don’t crumple it up. If you don’t want it, I’d be honored if I could have it.”
She met my eyes.
“I’m serious.”
Without speaking she handed it to me ceremoniously.
Her eyes looked at something over my shoulder. Something far away.
The coyote’s words had been haunting me. Ask her about her mother.
The implication was that Rosalie was hiding something from me. Something important. Did her mother dump her on me so she didn’t have to care for her anymore? Was her mother a drug runner? The possibilities were endless.
I didn’t know. However, one thing I knew was that she hadn’t told me everything. But first I had to make sure that she was even capable of doing so.
“Rosalie, I have something very important to ask you. First do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?
She made a face. “Si,” she said. “I’m not a baby.”
“True,” I said, but didn’t drop my gaze. “If I ask you to tell me the truth, will you?”
She squirmed. She looked at her drawing pad, at Django, at the skyline, anywhere but at me.
“Rosalie?”
Her eyes eventually met mine.
“Is there something you want to tell me about your mother? Something that I should know?”
She looked away again. I saw her eyes begin to glisten.
I took her hand. “It’s very, very important you tell me whatever it is. I promise I won’t be angry at you.”
She bit her lower lip. She looked down. I brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face.
“Tell me about your mother.”
She began to cry. “My mama is dead.”
“How do you know?” I blurted it out before I could help myself. “Have you seen her since you’ve been with me? Did someone contact you to tell you this?”
She shook her head at my flurry of questions. That’s when I decided to shut up and wait for her to speak.
“That was not my mama.” She said it so softly I leaned in. It took me a few seconds to understand what she meant. “That’s Carmela.”
“What?”
It wasn’t what I had expected.
“Carmela paid my abuela for me and Miguel to come with her.”
“Why?”
Rosalie shrugged.
“What about your father?”
She didn’t answer.
“Do you know where he is?”
“I never knew him.”
“So, who raised you?”
Her abuela was the only mother she had known. The grandmother was old and sickly and thought she might die soon so she asked a neighbor, Carmela, to bring the two children to America to start a new life. Carmela was coming anyway and would get a discount if she had children.
“A discount?
“Si.” Rosalie said it as if it were a commonly known fact.
“What were you going to do when you got to the United States? Where were you going to live?”
“The coyote said he knew a family who wanted a little girl.”
“Huh.” Child trafficking. For adoption? For something nefarious? Something didn’t add up.
“The coyote? Did he hurt you?”
She hesitated and my heart stopped dead for a second until she shook her head, her braids swinging back and forth.
“He didn’t hurt you?”
Again, the strange silence and delayed denial.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t let him near you,” I said.
“I don’t want to go to a different family. I want to stay with you and James. And Django.”
I chewed my lip, trying to put the pieces together. The coyote had either been paid or was going to be paid a lot of money to get Rosalie to someone. Whether that was really a family that wanted to adopt her or not was up for debate. Rosalie was acting so strange when I brought up the coyote, but she claimed he hadn’t hurt her.
I was about to let it go when I realized something.
“Rosalie?”
The girl looked up.
“What about your brother? Miguel? Was there a family that was going to take him in?”
“No.” She looked down. “He was going to come to work.”
“How old is he?”
“Twelve.”
“Oh.”
She seemed as if she were about to cry, so I dropped the subject and she seemed to brighten.
We went downstairs and played poker and ate grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I was running out of kid’s meal ideas.
In the afternoon, I put Rosalie in front of the TV and told her to rent as many Disney movies as she wanted while I worked.
I joined a board meeting at my corporation online, explaining that I couldn’t come into the office today. I kept the camera off so they couldn’t see Rosalie in the background. I wasn’t ready to explain why I had a seven-year-old girl in my loft.
Dante also joined the meeting remotely from Calistoga.
We talked about opening up Ethel’s Place locations in D.C., Pittsburgh, and Albuquerque.
I listened and commented on the board meeting, but at the end of it, I knew for sure: I was no longer needed. Joyce no longer needed me to hold her hand. She’d stepped into the CEO role with aplomb, and took it to a new level.
After the meeting ended, I dialed Dante. He picked up and started punching buttons on his phone. “Dante?”
“Gia? It didn’t even ring.”
I burst into laughter.
“What?”
“Were you calling me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I beat you to it. I don’t think we need to be involved anymore.”
“Ditto,” he said.
He sat there in silence for a second.
“I know,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what to do next.”
“I’m sure it will involve saving somebody from something.”
“Ha ha.” I shot a glance at Rosalie. “Any news on the lead James had?”
“Still waiting to hear back from Washington.”
“There’s something else,” I said. I told him about Rosalie.
He let out a low whistle.
“Yeah.”
“Listen, I gotta run, but keep me posted,” he said.
I spent the rest of the afternoon finalizing everything I was turning over to Joyce. I wrote basically a small manual on my duties. I wasn’t sure she’d need it, but it wouldn’t hurt.
James came home with a pizza.
Rosalie jumped up with excitement.
After pizza and ice cream, we tucked her in and watched TV for a while before we fell asleep. As I turned off the last light I thought about my day. It had been so mellow—such a peaceful, domestic scene. Something I’d never experienced before. I both loved it and was terrified of it at the same time.